Elemental Forums
I thought it might be slightly cathartic to list the monsters that have wandered into your territory thanks to the AI's idiocy.
I will start with my most recent one:
Turn 27, a group of 6 Ice Elementals wander from the FoW right next to capital. Next turn, bam. No capital.
What idiocy? If I knew that the dragon would not attack me, but go kill my enemies instead, I too would stick a hot pepper under its tail.
Maybe you are on to something. It is all a brilliant move by the AI!
I didn't settle too close to a Wildland.
Sigh. One of the AI's did.
I had a group of golems from the scrapland wander all the way across a large map and enter my territory on turn 70 one game. Took me a long time to even figure out where they had came from. Luckily they didn't decide to attack my city right away, as I only had a few trained troops there and I doubt they could have fought the golems off.
They wonder from those wildlands, sometimes far, far away.
I'll be that guy.
Wildland monsters are supposed to do this. It's not just passive monsters like we find in the world, that you need to upset in order to unleash. Wildlands grow increasingly dangerous as the game progresses, it is literally another frontier you need to worry about.
Agreed, but.. 'as the game progresses'? Turn 27 isn't much progress, that's more like a beeline for the player from the beginning. Even 70 is a bit early for something big like the scrap golem groups. It's the right idea but I think the implementation is off a bit, particularly in monster preference for AI vs. player. The big problem is the AI ticking off the wildlands and 'activating' them earlier than they normally are.. and then the monsters strangely choosing to bother the player instead of the AI that triggered them.
The worst time I had, was with a beta a while back. There were a group of Umberdroths from the Caves wildland(can't think of the name) that went straight from destroying one city of mine to the next, they destroyed every city I had, 5 in total. They didn't even pause from city to city, now a days, monster kinda wander around lazily, but these guys systematically destroyed me in a matter of a few turns. I keep trying to fight them off with champs and armies, but they killed all my troops almost instantly, and my champs and heroes were just not tough enough to beat them.
Unfortunately, while rare, it's possible. This happens in Civilization as well, once in awhile (barbarians destroy your home city). It's extremely uncommon since there are, literally, checks in the AI to avoid attacking the capital. But the AI will still attack a city if it's in their way to something else and even then, that's extremely rare.
A group of Umberdroths? I'm lucky to find a single one. Being a Beastlord, I prize them greatly.
I do hate that the AI disturbs all the lairs with their cities and outposts, but rarely seems to get attacked themselves.
It was a group, a pride maybe? Although a Murder of Umberdroths might be more accurate. It came from a wildland, and I think there was many as 6 in the murder. Yep, calling a group of Umberdroths a "Murder" from now on. Like I said, it happened in an old beta, and haven't seen it since.
I'm sure this is oversimplified, but couldn't the path the monsters take avoid cities in the first X turns?
It's supposed to. But there's a lot of voodoo in path finding to make the game "fast". For instance, if you built on a tile after the path to a destination has been calculated, you could now intersect. The solution would be eto have it recalculate the paths every turn but of course, that would mean you'd increase the time between turns by around 10X.
I increased my turn times and it makes the game simply superior. I have so much to think about during a game, I don't even notice the 10x turn time.
In a beta game a while back I saw Vetrar wandering the country side laying waste to the country side until he ran into a random lv9 champion... and lost... I laughed so hard.
I know what's lost when a monster wanders 20 tiles away from its lair to ravage (accidentally or not) a player city. Sometimes it's cities, sometimes it's games, and sometimes it's a player who rage quits and uninstalls the game. Happened to my wife.
What I never understood is what's gained by having a monster go "Hey, a crappy defenseless outpost is disturbing me. I can sneeze at the outpost and destroy it, and I could wipe out the whole tribe that built it. What should I do.... I know! I'll leave my hoard in my lair, travel halfway across the continent, and destroy what's on my way. But I have to be extra careful to go around the pile of sticks that disturbed me"
Figured that was the case. Another idea:
How about just having it check only what's in it's most current set of moves? As in, "is there an obstacle between me and my destination on this turn?", if yes, THEN recalculate the path. Otherwise, keep on going. Rather than computing the who path, just check the current one. Some overheard, but not as much as the whole thing.
Or another, completely different alternative:
How about making monsters only attack or travel within a very well-defined radius (say, 3 squares) for the first 50 turns? In essence, leash them.
I would not mind an option to choose how agressive monsters are. Just a couple levels
You are going to have to come get me (passive)
Whatever, you might be in my way (normal)
That is too close (aggressive)
I can see you over the mountain and through the woods, and you are pissing me off (very aggressive)
Oh, I had that big Garbage pile swamp creature, something of summer I think, wander out of his wildlands. Helped me out, he stood near a chokepoint and fucked up yithril Jug stacks, and when he was really hurt, I went in killed him and got the glory without ever entering the wildlands.
This sounds like a good idea. Of course, I have no idea how difficult it would be.
You can do it with just one beastlord sov with (provided he has at least 35-ish init or higher) and about 4~5 spiders. golems are super slow and takes time to come to your army. Just make sure your tanking spiders have evade on (air magic). Go to the fight, hasted sov using shrink on all Umberdroths while spiders tank. finish off golems using converted Umberdroths.
Depend on your skill, your loss will be zero to all spiders lost, but even if losing all spiders, Umberdroths are worth it.
Or if you have at least one beast collar, you can easily convert two Umberdroths right away, making things much easier.
Yea beastlord + collar is a neat thing now indeed. Have to say I find fighting Ceresa when she got bound horders more rewarding honestly. 3-4 Hoarders converted and someone to cast haste: Boom unstopable Stunlock. Is even tough enough for fighting 3 Dragons in the dragon Statue Quest... And easier to accomplish
Hoarders are a bit better than Umberdroths even. Yea it could work as you describe but that takes lots of luck / reloads since webs can be resisted (tame probably can't if you chose brilliant). Still possible and even easier to win at that point to actually get another beastlord in addition to the collar. Harder fight without beastlords all together of course. Also with a single beastlord it whould take like forever in real time...
Still one heck of a fight and not approachable as other beasts a beastlord can tame. All I tried to convey is you can't just walk in there with shining eyes and drooling mouth burbling UMBERDROTH and expect to walk away unscathed.. Takes a bit more precaution than other fights involving even the toughest beasts (brining hoarder/s bound or not of course helps there as well but that is true for any fight... :P)
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