merlinme

Willie: Someone tries to vaguely stand up for you and you call their views dribble? Nice. "Plenty of chess games can" beat a human? Well, yes, because some of the best minds and best computers were put on the problem for decades. Do you think IBM is going to spend a few million dollars on improving the AI of Legendary Heroes? And for an example of a very simple game which computers currently struggle with, try http://arimaa.com/arimaa/, &nb

[quote who="Primal_Savage" reply="5" id="3422166"]personally I don't find 1.5 really buggy having played it since the opt-in[/quote] I haven't noticed massive problems, but there's clearly problems with Beastlord, and the "two units on same tile" problem is new as well. I've also noticed some diplomacy weirdness which I'll write up tonight if I have a chance. There wasn't a massively long beta for 1.5, I assume because there were such big problems with games hangi

Can I put in a request that the next patch is bug fix only? It would be nice to get the user interface improvements etc., however I think 1.4 was released a little early, causing problems with games hanging, which required early release of 1.5, which now appears to have issues of its own. Similarly the Dead DLC appears to have had a few issues. Much though I love the new features which have been introduced, I think most of us would prefer it if the game was more stable, and certainly it's

[quote who="Raiddinn" reply="26" id="3422127"]Well, I had tamed a hoarder spider and that was really helping me defend against them, except when my units went into the city it poofed into non-existence. [/quote] There are other threads on this. Did you have the maximum number of units in your army before you tamed the Hoarder Spider?

The main point about slaves is they're free maintenance. So at the start of the game you can train a full stack and still keep taxes low to maximise research and production. Slaves also combine well with the Magnar special abilities from Flesh Bound Tome; when a slave is about to die, cast Cull the Weak to get a significant mana boost. In a tough fight, cast Deathlash to get a buffed unit for one battle only. If you cast Candlecloak then your units are doing damage even when they're b

Procipinee's Crown is worth having. Have a free army of summoned units, for example. Fire is fine as far as it goes but I'd always prefer Air for Haste, Guardian Wind, Cloudwalk, Titan's Breath. Sure you need a different way of winning battles to Fireball, but there are plenty. Fireball is quite an expensive spell which takes two turns. Haste is a cheap spell which takes one turn. Titan's Breath is a battle winner on its own. With -1 casting time and/or a very high ini

[quote who="onomastikon" reply="8" id="3422102"]I agree that the AI has improved, but not yet "greatly". [/quote] The AI has definitely improved greatly. Did you play Fallen Enchantress or Legendary Heroes 1.0? Could it still be greatly improved? Sure, but that doesn't mean you should ignore the progress which has already been made. I personally think the developers (mainly Brad, as far as I can tell) are much more likely to make the effort to improve the game if they feel

I've beaten Ridiculous with all the standard factions. It's not that hard if you get an ok start. Tarth was probably the toughest. On Insane you basically have to find an exploit and abuse it. The only game I've won on Insane I used the Titan's Breath -1 turn exploit + Beastlord (i.e. Kulan).To beat Ridiculous you just need to do what you normally do, only better. Not a great deal of room for mistakes, but there are a wide variety of strategies which could be successful.&

Mobile monsters will attack the AI. As I understand it on higher difficulty levels it prefers to attack the human player. There is also the issue (mentioned in other threads) that because units move in a set order and monsters only have movement 1, monsters find it hard to hit a moving target. If it's really the case that mobile monsters are sitting next to AI pioneers, the pioneers are not moving and the monsters are not attacking, then post the save game so the developers can ha

[quote who="Raiddinn" reply="10" id="3421851"]Proceeding this way is almost guaranteed to result in better outcomes for those people who like to leave auto-turn on. [/quote] For goodness' sake, turn auto-turn off! If you are even vaguely serious about strategy games ending the turn automatically before you've checked that you've done everything you want to is just never a good idea. Good thread though.

I believe PrimalSavage experimented in his AI mod with trying to get the AI to build stronger stacks. In my first game playing with the PrimalSavage AI, Yithril turned up with one Epic stack, which I'd not seen before, and it was quite early in the game. I've not seen so much of an effect in other games since. It is also something of a trade-off, as if the AI puts all its eggs in one basket (or stack) then you can target that stack with strategic spells, which might be harder

I'd have said the lost production is the biggest issue for building a Consulate. I'm building one for the first time in my current game (as the Dead). Even after getting the pioneer to the relevant place and creating an Outpost, I was struck by the fact that building a Consulate was only three turns less than building a Palace (which also gives +1 growth, plus other bonuses). Tying up your city for ten turns to get +1 growth doesn't seem a great trade-off for me in most circumstan

Comprehensive answer as ever by joeball, but note that the level 3 threshold (as of 1.4? I think) is now 120 population, not 150. I haven't checked the other levels.

[quote who="Fallenchar" reply="11" id="3421388"]If you have access to Sovereign's Call, 2 or 3 Grain does not matter much, but if you are an Empire, 2 Grain in your capital will really slow you down.[/quote] This comment confused me. Sovereign's Call increases your Growth, not your grain/ food. So if you cast Sovereign's Call on 2 Grain site, you will hit your (low) population cap quickly. It might still be worth casting so that you get to a level two city as quickly as po

It depends what you mean by "decent", and to give a definite answer I'd have to check my saved games, but I guess I aim to have a stack capable of taking on tougher battles from about turn 70, and that probably includes one mage and one commander of level 8 or so. I normally expect to be on a roll taking AI cities, Deadly lairs, maybe Wildlands, from about turn 100, and then turn 130 onwards is mainly mopping up, game is generally over somewhere between turn 170 and 200. Main factor in ho

[quote who="willie sanderson" reply="25" id="3420517"]there's too much doing the same thing every game to make this game great[/quote] Willie, if I had any indication you had actually put in some hours on the game recently I might have more time for your comments. Playing Yithril is a different experience to playing Resoln, is a different experience to playing Altar, is a different experience to playing Pariden. Mages and Commanders rule the game, especially on higher diffic

[quote who="DsRaider" reply="20" id="3420444"]It is, why? Just sitting there is kinda the definition of useless. [/quote] They're not useless if they are Commanders giving bonus accuracy and initiative to the rest of your army. In any case with Command, First Aid, and the occasional spell or ability (Darkling Cloak Blind has worked for me in the past), I can normally find something for my Commanders to do. But even if they're "just sitting there" they're making the rest of

Like jutetrea said, I use the first hero I get as a Commander, initially for roads, then later the accuracy/ initiative bonuses + Command and Warcry are well worth getting in a field army. Having that hero in my main stack means that levelling up is not a problem. Later heroes are not incredibly useful, I mainly use them for scouting/ unrest reduction/ garrison troops. They quite often get good equipment, which I usually either give to my main stack or sell. It's usually worth sel

Yeah I'd agree AI is greatly improved. Re: ineffective unit designs, you can fix this by playing as this faction and designing your own; the AI will then use your designs when it plays that faction in future games.

I agree with pretty much what everyone else said. At the start it's a balance between being quite aggressive with your main stack to level up your heroes and not being so aggressive that everyone dies. I imagine most people have a story about the time they attacked Butchermen and got absolutely annihilated. It normally makes sense to avoid groups which are stronger than yours. Even if you can beat them with use of spells and good tactics you'll probably lose units, and you want to avo

[quote who="webusver" reply="11" id="3419689"]This feature is more like a cheat for human player. It kills all interest[/quote] Have you actually played a game as the Undead faction? It's quite hard. In particular, expansion is tough. In some ways it plays almost like a single city challenge; your capital will probably have growth from the Tower of Dominion, but for the rest, you can build lots of villages but growth to level 2 is going to be slow, probably impossible until y

There's always the possibility that something in the game is not working as intended. I remember a while back there was a problem with Shattered Statue being a very common "loot" type, and there were only a few drops you got from it, e.g. Stone Mace, so the chances of getting lots of Stone Maces were actually quite high. I've yet to see anything to persuade me that what has been seen in the current game is not within the realms of normal probability though. I don't rememb

I've had a stab working out the Poisson approximation with a friend, assuming our maths is correct I believe the chance to get five duplicates out of 124 items with 100 drops is approximately 27%. The chance of getting four identical drops out of 124 items with 20 drops is approximately 0.25%. The chance passes 50% after about 77 drops.

[quote who="parrottmath" reply="18" id="3419474"]The binomial distribution leads to a miss conception here, when you say 5 identical items, you are speaking about getting 5 of the same thing, not 5 of exactly described one particular item. [/quote] Yes, I think that's what I was trying to get at. It's the point that in my example above, assuming my maths is correct the chance of getting two Assassin's Vambraces (i.e. one specified piece of armour) in four drops

Erm. I can't remember maths I never had, like I said I'm not a mathematician. It looks a bit simple to me though. See; http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/25876/probability-of-3-people-in-a-room-of-30-having-the-same-birthday Given that one answer uses an approximation and the other refers to an academic paper, I don't think it's that