You can find some very good stuff in the Wildlands. Some quests also provide good to very good items. Monster lairs are pretty much hit or miss. The more powerful monster (like Obsidian Golems and Dragons) can provide some very good items, but it is not guaranteed.


Heroic only grants access to quest maps, and gives +50 Influence and +1 Prestige for finishing quests. You need to use the Race of Men to get Henchmen.

I use a custom race, so i wll pick that henchmen trait.

One more question, wise Saunathor: 

1) Tuidjy mentioned something like cty grows is dependent on my sovereign. How is that and in which way?

2) I am confused about xp share with ordinary troops. It is NOT divided with the hero, right? Same like with henchmen, right? So they don't "steal" xp?

3) influence: building stuff with influence hasn't occured to me yet, but can i also build it the normal way? if yes, i would sell the influence to the ai, 100 gold per quest extra isnt that bad . Or is there a better option?

 

City growth = Faction Prestige/Number of Cities+local growth-bonuses. So, if you have 2 Prestige and 4 cities, each city will have a base-growth of 0.5. If any of those cities has a growth-bonus (like the Tower of Dominion or the spell Call of the Sovereign), it will get added afterwards, but only works for this city. Prestige is primarily gained from Sovereign-levels (0.5 per level) and certain techs. Some buildings also grant Prestige. Quests, as I mentioned before, will also grant +1 Prestige, if you have Heroics.


Non-champion units will always get half the amount of XP, your Champion will get. XP is only split, if multiple champions are in the party. In other words: no, regular units don't steal XP.


Building Monster lairs (like Ogre and Dragon Camps) and training certain units (Henchmen and Sions) costs Influence. There is no way around that. Keeping Influence is also, in general, more advisable. It improves your relations with the other factions, and increases the value of any trade you offer. There are also two more options for Influence: The Diplomat profession grants you a spell which allows you to buy enemy units during tactical combat, while the Betrayer trait grants you one which allows you to buy enemy cities. The last one costs 500 Influence, but is well worth it, if used right.

Why are people arguing about what the AI should do?!

 

The AI(artificial intelligence) is designed to do something - in this case win a game of FE. It simply must do so by any means possible. Due to the difficulty of designing a good AI, and the fact that this takes a VERY long time to do (for one you need to understand the game well, which oftentimes the developers themselves don't, or at least they are not immediately aware of all the little tricks one can do in their own game). Because the window between the point when the game is finalized and all the rules are set and the actual launch of the game is short or even often NON EXISTENT, the AI cannot be very good.

Titles like civilization have an advantage because they have been around for 20 years with similar set of rules so it is much easier for the developer to develop AI - at-least they know the direction they need to go in. Others have to watch how Tuidjy plays and make the AI close enough.  

But really, most modern games get decent AI through patches. Even X-Com has horrible AI, but they have clever ways of going around that.

Chess is incredibly simple compared to this game. Still AI does not beat humans, but is tied with the best of them.

The AI needs to WIN by whatever it is that they can do - the problem why the AI cannot effectively rush the player is because they are not good enough to do so while modifying their plan for anything unforeseen.

Since the AI cannot beat the best players - Enter AI bonuses and Player Handicaps - these are balanced in a way as to offer various levels of difficulty for player.

In most games the "normal" level of difficulty is considered one where the AI and player are even, or sometimes this is the level of difficulty above normal with normal being a slightly less aggressive version of the AI. 

The AI will often have different "paths" of development and preferences to mimic real players and make a multi player game more interesting.

There are many factors determining AI difficulty other than pure intelligence - for example its awareness of the game world - the amount of awareness is likely different than Players therefore its not very even in the first place. But it is a lot easier to make an AI that knows everything about the game than it is to make an AI with same awareness as the player.

Its A LOT more fun to play a good AI then to play one that is simply weighted against you with some bonuses and handicaps. Examples of good AI were present in games like Total Commander. Granted this is a RTS but the AI was good (especially for that era) in that game

 

And believe me, no one in star-dock is handicapping the AI not to rush the player so that its "more interesting" to play against.

All three questions are answered in here. This is a work in progress, if anything is unclear, please let me know.

Usually true, I prefer looking at it from a different angle, The AI is designed to give the player a nice game, its designed around being used for the players purpose, therefore I think that on lower difficulties it should not use cheaper tactics.

I do think that on higher difficulties it would be nice to see a chance for the AI if they spot the player early, to try out the RUSH to beat you, that said If they would try that approach the static bonuses would have to be lessened.
Also they should not always try to rush you, because players will adapt to a certain strategy, so if an ai player always goes for the rush approach its gimping itself with monotoneus tactics, the current AI does that too but in different ways.
(You can just create more levels of difficulty in between the current ones) since the current leaps on the highest difficulties are HUGE.

That said, I still hope for two seperate options for intelligence both for world AI and enemy player AI, that is "Intelligence" and "Raw Cheatz".

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

You have no basis to make that claim.

Actually, I believe they are.  The AI was at its most aggressive expansionism around .98x  I have found that AIs are nowhere as effective in claiming land in 1.00 as they used to be.  Something has definitely changed, and I cannot tell what it is. Maybe the AI is scared of the new monster skills, maybe with the 'autoresolve' fixed the Ai cannot mop up the way it used to, but the AI is not starting as well as it used to.

I have seen AI factions getting wiped early (on hard/hard + dense monsters) a bit more now than I did in the later versions (.980+) of the beta.

I tested 1.0 AI in cheat mode many times. Most stupid thing AI do is standing in one tile for 10-20 seasons. Also AI can't bypass powerful monsters. AI loses many units on monsters. Also I think AI doesn't expand as fast as 0.98, because there are groups of monsters in 1.0 instead of single monsters in 0.98, so it is harder to beat them.

Again, its ALWAYS easy to handicap AI aggressiveness for lower difficulty levels, but I would like to believe every developer uses their best AI to play vs you.

Most games have different "flavors" for AIs simply because of course an AI cannot play like a human and will make the same mistake in the same situation(very apparent in battle AI - BTW, please introduce different battle AI, such as all out rush, sit back, balanced and others based on evaluating enemy spell and range damage ability - this is SIMPLE stuff). This game has some too? at-least the leaders seem to have aggressive , expansionist (this is what the guy I was dealing with was) traits and such.

RVGR, please stop stalking my replies, i mean according to you I really have no bases for anything and should go hide under a rock but while I rarely even play games nowadays I have been in the game design community for quite a while and feel that I make my arguments on atleast some bases. You might not like the form I use - if so, just dont reply, at-least directly to me because I get offended easily. 

 

Probably something bad? I mean if the AI sucks more than it did before then its worse - you can easily do AI vs AI simulation as I am sure the Devs do and see which play how. All this just takes time, a good AI is at-least 4-6 months of coding and tweaking for a single coder after game launch. Companies rarely do this because of the costs and no apparent benefit - its easier to just give them some bonuses. The only time it pays off is for sequels that are similar.

There are many games that have at least good Battle AI - look at Kings Bounty - but then again, that's the only AI in the game so that's easy!

Hi guys, AI guy here.

Broadly speaking, in a 1.0 game, our goal is to make the AI as broadly *enjoyable* as possible to the largest segment of players. If that means making the AI more lethal, I would do that. If it means making the AI more passive, I'd do that too.

When an AI is young, like the Elemental AI, you have broad stroke algorithms in which the difficulty levels can only really tweak certain behaviors.  When an AI gets mature, like in GalCiv II: TA, you can start having different sets of algorithms in place at harder levels so that the game actually plays differently.

If you are creating custom factions that have capabilities that your opponents don't have, it's not cheese or wrong by any means. But one has to admit you are playing with advantages that your opponents do not have.  I don't have a problem with that but when someone boasts about winning on "ridiculous" while starting with a player that has advantages their opponents don't have is misleading.

Or put another way, if we were talking a MP game and your opponents were "stuck" playing with the default, unmodified players and units but you got to create your own custom everything I think your opponents would object to saying how great you were if you won that game.

Look in the mirror for this sentence...

Things can change how the AI plays without the coder even changing the AI code, There have been quite some changes from around 0.95 to 1.00 so it doesn't even have to be the AI, just the gameplay that favours the AI slightly less.

The way monsters behave against the AI is different when you have cheat mode - omniscient vision turned on, than when they are left in the dark, I am pretty sure.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Not if they are mute...

Poke me if you need help ofcourse , hoboes with endless amounts of time should be your friend

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Dont think I directly attacked anyone other than in defense, but if people dont like my posts just say so I will stop. I was trying to contribute and this is the first forums posts I have made in about 7 years if that means anything.

Right - that would, by definition I should think, mean that ridiculous and insane would get more aggressive or otherwise better(perhaps aggressive is not better, I don't know about this game, because i am not good at it) AIs rather than Ridiculous and Insane bonuses, doesnt it?

Few people enojy playing AIs that have 1000 units pumped out of nowhere realizing that the game is just very unfair and they could not have played much better to prevent things. Most people WOULD enjoy an AI that is smart on their own merit with similar conditions - that would mean that they COULD be better players and beat the AI... Just like playing a human.

 

The OP was playing vs AI that has everything for free times 10000 so this was hardly fair?

I played a game on challenging on everything default - could not have been more default than that and it was an easy game for someone like me who doesnt know how half the game works.

I am not playing a game on expert with a weak custom race, the AI gets massive bonuses and makes some very poor mistakes. I think one of the main things that should be done is working on the battle AI - there are a few very easy exploits that can be done by the player to kill harder beasts because of issues with battle AI. The AI factions cannot do this and are not on the same level field. So just lower the AI bonuses and tweak battle AI for neutrals(at least fix glaring exploits) and it will be a far fairer game  - this will also more likely require human players recruit more armies as it will be harder to abuse the neutral packs.

 

just my .02

 

P.S. Lets not forget that most people that post here and care enough to naturally compare this game and its AI to other similar games, while (hopefully) keeping in mind that this game is pretty complex! Of course most will have different expectations. But as I am sure Brad will agree, even judging his own creations, games with bad AI go away quickly. Games with good AI always provide a challenge and people will dig those games up after years - this creates a Cult following and will bring in money if future ventures happen for the developer!

(On the flip side of this coin you have EWoM). 

The battle boils down to how sharp the tip of the spear vs. how big the club.

Bonuses to the AI help make the club bigger. But an AI has a hard time with sharp spears (figuratively). That is, advantages that allow the human player to create a very powerful stack are more valuable than general economic advantages.

Most of the AI "improvements" in the short run will be done by balancing custom factions and adding more custom units for it to choose from.

Computer players are ultimately a game of statistics. The goal is to make them broadly more clever but they will always do specifically stupid things.

It should be relatively easy to make a few simple improvements to Battle AI that will eliminate the real obvious abuses. Computer players are very cool. Especially in TBS games. Make them stupid and the game becomes boring. Make them smart and you have got a good game even if the game is relatively simple.

Of course its hardly something that produces income after the game is out, but you never know, I was under the impression many people bought EWoM(which I never played) because of previous stardock achievements in the AI field.

@ Deadly Julia:

First: There is a way to combine free heroes and beastlord actually because there is at least one empire and kingdom Champ (Level 9 who are beastlords one a former sovereign of a faction that got no official support since about the start of the last beta phase some months ago) each, but the trait is most powerful early because it allows a lot of leverage and expansion that is otherwise very hard at the start (and not least especially combined with quest maps because they feature some neat animals to tame)
So even that would be possible (some other vocations can just be gained by getting AI Souvereigns to surrender to you like Adventurer by Relias) but takes a huge chunk of luck.

But it wasn't just that. It was especially the ignoring of the wildlife which magnified the strategy you aimed for as an added extra (which is a very powerful trait as well, I honestly think that should be rather another Vocation. Hunter seems perfect for that actually, so at least you have to chose which ridduculous advantage / playstyle you want.) I personaly don't like it because it downright butchers the most rich and fun part of the game so far (partly even from an optimzers standpoint) which is (for me) beyond doubt the fight against the wild world.

Getting such an absurd ammount of heroes is much harder for you if you can't ignore the wilds (don't worry overmuch about not being able to afford most mid-Level heroes you find it will take some time with the wilds in the way. A huge ammount of the high level ones are something only for betrayers + adventurer. After all you got what you paid for in your traits for getting many of them free.).

The advice with going for expert for first full game was just so you can truly grasp the aspects of the game that escaped you so far by painlessly (meaning less time at the reload screen while still offering a challenge lategame) getting to play a full 400 Turn or 500 Turn game.
I'm sure you have the mental tools to beat a full game (400+ turns with much less reloading while still providing the same results) at riddiculous after that and make more accurate suggestions for how to really improve the game then, not just for optimizers but for everyone
(I'm sure many people whould thank you for that, but playing 50 turns into a game and proclaming how uber you are and how easy the game is might not have been the best introduction to a new community.
Especially since some of the assumptions are from a little bit inexperienced viewpoint [may seem correct on first impression but are not exactly accurate when you deeply know the game or having lived through its whole development from either side of the code, or seem disrespectful to the developers which are a nice and responsive bunch including their boss frogboy who just went to your thread and put down his view why things are where they stand]
no matter how good you are and sure came across much more arrogant than you intended.
This can be a very civil and nice comunity which has some solid moderation to look for keeping people play nice.
But we have a saying in the country where I come from translating roughly to: the echo you'll hear from out of the woods is as loud as you scream into them.).
Also try a large map with monsters / wildlife possibly put to ridduculous or insane and lots of quests and heroes and random events as well as most importantly the highest number of wildlands. Reduce the oposition to maybe 6 factions to give you a better feel what the interacting with the world part is about...

Oh and you'll need to play a custom faction from the race of men (conveniently available as either empire or kingdom custom faction race) to get henchmen there is no trait for it (also needed heroic faction to unlock them in the beta not sure if that is true anyome but its worth it anyways and wanderlust is also nice in lieu for Quest maps to spawn your own quests for getting the influence to get henchmen). As I said this is a very deep and complex game with a huge scope (sadly the in-game documentation still leaves quite a bit to be desired. There is a nice manual around here though just like the old days when manuals where the norm.)

Some Heroes have actually unique or quasi- unique abilities (so rare it only exists in a handful of sources if that many Beastlord fairly sits among them.). Most stuff is pickable (and dependent on the class/es your Hero/es pick/s). Higher concentration of the unique Stuff is found on Level 7 Heroes and above (mostly at Level 9) and still rather rare. Nothing of the unique stuff I know of is exactly broken though and many pickable stuff is rather powerful (stun for defenders for example)

Agreed on the need for balance of some of the truly weak stuff but this game is very much still a work in progress and has come a long long way in that regards from the beta (extra to hit is huge though. As I said first play a few full games and judge stuff before you levy judgement on what is actually underpowered. Lucky is not. There is a thread about it being very powerful for a reason. You got a good nose allready for finding the very powerful stuff allready no questions asked. ;)).



Regarding SSDs: Yes they make the whole game faster, basically everything which tries to access data from it (and everything else actually installed on them. They are not like an external dump for your saves. Place your opterating system on them as well as your most used applications like Office and the games you curently play. Anything else can go into another bigger storage. Or you could spend bigger bucks and get a bigger one and competely replace your HDD. If you don't shuffle around huge ammounts of data your current used HD-Space + approx 50-100 Gigs should do for that and then some. If you land below 400 Gigs needed in that equation it might still be affordable dependent on your coffers.)
They are a possible replacement for an HDD and from a consumer standpoint work just as those (technically they got some huge advantages. One of em if not to a large degree is no meaningful temperature increase because of no moving parts. That may be a big thing for an Overheating Laptop either).

Head over to the tech part of this very forum for deeper advice, I may do tech support but only at end user level, currently nothing to deep. There are people there who sure have ideas about the heat issue with more professional knowledge than I do. Including some highly competent professionals who are partly not even into gaming but will still help gamers asking (Especially Yrag, he seems a bit rough on a personal basis at times alot like some of my more tech-oriented and less human oriented collueges at tech support but he truly knows his stuff.)
A SATA connection is not exactly as easy to use or set as an USB plugs into a windows 7 machine. Especially on a laptop (if you got no free HD Slot in your laptop for extension it possibly means replacing your current HDD as the only option). If you are not experienced in modifying the interior of a laptop better let someone professional or well versed do the switch. Better being safe than sorry after the fact of a no longer working laptop. On a desktop it is much more managable.






@ Frogboy: It may even have been a misconception in the OP that the game whould seem much more winnable (foregone conclusion level) than it actually was (the remaining factions might have trashed her at turn 200 after the non-aggro-pacts ran out and the faction scores whould have been 2-3 times the player's at that pooint. Especially if Yithril or Gilden whould have been among them.). Don't worry high difficulties play mostly allright except maybe for a few fringe cases (Combination of Master Scouts + Betrayers + Adventurer + Monster Repellent being possibly among them.).
Riddiculous is actually riddiculous. (And insane is probably really insane. Will try insane wildlife / riddiculous AI in my next game. GRRRRR on crashing saves at a certain point. Seems my current game is lost to that issue at around Turn 150. Maybe its my setup maybe its the code. Hope you'll find those nasty save-garbling bugs soon enough and quash them with some extra punch for me while you are at it...)
Even for players like me or Deadly Julia who like to use any advantage we can get (which includes of course reloading.) while still expecting a challenge the higher difficulties seem fine as the are right now mostly...

Deear frogboy,

 

thanks for a great game. 

Balancing would also be the main issue for me i haev with the ai. But please make it possible for the player to hinder the economy of the ai.

Don't provide it with 150.000 gold. Countering the ai should not only get back to who ahs themost powerful stack. One should also be possible to stop it by blocking its expansion routes with own cities, plundering caravans, trade with them to reduce their gold etc.

The more you give to the ai, the less complex gets the actual game.

Most importantly: please get rid of peace being the dependent on faction points. Guys like blackmantle and me would always seek to maximize their faction points, because it buys you peae and allows you to overcome the ai easily.

Also, please have a look at my idea with the savegame restrictions (end of turn as a "reward") to minimize reloading.

To sum it up:

it is just not a very enjoyable experience if one play for 20 hours withaut ANY attack of the ai.

So no matter of how the player has achieved that peace, at least some factions should act differently/be extremely aggressive attacking your scouts, pioneers (forcing you to protect them) etc.

the player needs the feeling of having to defend its growing empire.

Also, provide high boni for being within you own borders (movement points, defense + attack boni, lower mana costs etc.). That would encourage players to actually connect their territory, settle wisely, and build some outpost also to celverly connect 2 cities.

All that can be achieved with little effort.

So to sum it up:

please think of incentives players have to circumvent the game mechanisms. Then prevent this behaviour by creating dependencies on cities, heroes, technologies etc. So no one-sided road to victory will be possible.

 

Lastly: more monsters, artifacts + units please ,

thanks a lot, great game!

You can upgrade your Outposts to provide those bonuses. The upgrades need to be unlocked by research first, but they can provide a big boost. 

Add Charge to AI units on highest difficulties.

@DeadlyJulia:  Wow, this was a very interesting thread.  A view into a way of playing these games that is very different from my own experience.

But, Why do you ask for savegame restrictions to end of turn?   There is absolutely nothing wrong with you playing the way you have in the past, but if you don't want to play that way anymore then: just don't!  You don't need Frogboy's help!  

Who is to decree that end of turn is legit?, why not every five turns, or pure ironman, or 3 save/reloads max every 100 turns, or 5 reloads max in each game until you win one but after that play ironman, or reload every time you lose a unit, or reload every time a unit takes any hitpoint damage at all, or best of all ... Just let each player decide for themselves!

p.s.  Sorry, I forgot the actual constructive reason I wanted to post  When you say the AI is passive still after 20 hours, how many turns have actually gone by?  I wonder if it's still simply very early in the game from their point of view.

@smakemupagus

It was turn 39 for me (see first page). But the game is done already, it would just need 20 hours more of building up 4-5 armies with just a handful of heroes in each (to enable them to level up quickly).

The savegame restrictions i just proposed as a mean to make very high difficulties harder. As you see in the threat, many despise save/reloading, and i would also like a feature with an incentive for me to do it less. So like no "extra-hard aif enemy" without savegame restrictions: that would be nice,

In any case, I will start a new game soon with world AI world insane + AI enemy = ridiculous + speed = slow/medium (not epic anymore) to give the ai a chance to attack.

I just hope (not tested it yet) that my beastarmy to come will increase my factionpoints as well.

So i can enjoy what i really love: leveling up a handfull of strong heroes and actually building something .

Question: if i use the city-capture spell for 500 influence, will it convert the city and all its units permanently to me? Or is ther a chance for the enemy to convert it back somehow?

 

 

Broken Loyalties only converts the city itself. Any units the AI has stationed in the city will get expelled. They can move back in the city right after you end the turn, if you are at war with each other, and reconquer the city. So it would be best to have an army ready outside the city-gates, and move them in as soon as the city is yours. If you are playing against Kraxis, and he has 500 or more Influence, he can use Broken Loyalties against you, too. Except for this, however, invasion is the only means to retake the city.