Poko8

Started a new game with 0.914, small map, 3 opponents, challenging, visibility cheat on Checking things I had posted on before at first: AI still founds initial city on the tile the sovereign starts on (3/2 when the next tile is a 4/3, or a 4/2 when the next tile is a 4/4, etc) AI units use all move to depart cities AI still spends several turns sometimes not constructing anything in the early game (turn 20), when no buildings have been produced

OOM? Use a mana potion!

I think both are great ideas and would add a lot of color to the game. I'd also like to see appearance of more lairs / monsters / events as the game goes on (Kamamura's "emergent stories" or Grizzly's lairs gaining population and settling new ones). -So that previously clear area near the mountains by your capitol? A large ogre tribe was just discovered there and is threatening your capitol city. -A huge battle was just fought? A few t

You both make a good point, that the model should be focused on how it impacts the rest of the game, not on realism. And Yazari is right, realism is subject to interpretation from different parties, and no one can really say what the right "realism" definition is. The game mechanism, in effect, trades [gildar] for [production & research]. It's effectively an economic slider that re-allocates "effort" to gildar or production & research. Maybe my prob

Same thing happened to me, I think it's a bug. In my game there weren't any cities anywhere nearby (I razed them), so I don't think it's that.

Exactly StevenAus - the original idea had a population growth bonus from no taxes, corresponding to people flocking to your cities because they'd get protection at no cost.

[quote who="Kalin" reply="3" id="3149741"]higher taxes = higher unrest. Does that make sense?[/quote] That's exactly what I think doesn't make sense. It's very much a non-linear relationship and isn't modeled correctly in my opinion. If your taxes were 0%, you'd go to work, do your job. And you'd be extremely happy that you weren't being taxed. If your taxes were 10%, you might grumble a little bit, but

As long as there's no voice over of Gandalf, I think this is a great idea. Worst. Wizard. Ever.

It still would make people run at no taxes for as long as possible to increase growth, but that cause and effect makes more sense to me at least. The Sovereign is advertising low taxes to get more people to join his settlement. Without that there would be no benefit to setting no or low taxes, so I don't think it can be removed.

I dislike how the tax -> unrest mechanic is currently implemented because it affects 3 things - gildar production, production, and research - 2 of which are seemingly unrelated to taxes. The first is obvious and correct - higher taxes, more gildar. But do higher taxes equal lower production? Do they equal less research? I don't think either of those statements i true (except at extremes), which is why I think taxes / unrest needs another pass. Peop

I'm with those in favor of AI competitiveness, but you do realize that the AI does cheat at higher (challenging and above at the very least) difficulties? At Challenging they all get a gold mine (though I've never seen one put a mine on it, even 270 turns in), at Hard it's sometimes 2 gold mines. They can cast spells like Tireless March at turn 1, and can double cast things like Inspiration and Obsession (even when they shouldn't be able to cast Obsession at all).<

At first I didn't think it was a good mechanic at all, but, thinking about it a bit more, I think it's situational. AI on Easy or Normal? That city should be sacked and all the residents eaten. AI on Challenging or Hard? You're playing at this difficulty because you want more of a challenge - let the AI have monster repellent. AI on Ridiculous? That monster should decide it likes the AI and joins them [e digicons]}:)[/e]

I've found the same thing - monsters often don't attack AI cities. I dropped a shadow world portal right on an AI city https://forums.elementalgame.com/423936 And the demons never attacked it :( I've definitely had demons attack my cities before.

Ya, I waited 10-15 turns and they never attacked the city :( But anyone coming in or out of that city got slaughtered ... It was still epic

Here's my neighbor [IMG]http://img848.imageshack.us/img848/8214/fallenenchantress133619.jpg[/IMG] I don't like them much, they took a city location I wanted early on. I found a spell, Shadow World, while on a quest. What does it do? [IMG]http://img864.imageshack.us/img864/8214/fallenenchantress133619.jpg[/IMG] "Opens a rift to a shadow plane, spawning creatures for the duration of the spell's upkeep. These shadow creatures will att

I started a 4 player (3 AI + me) game on a small map and used the visibility cheat to see what the AI was doing. They're definitely a lot smarter than they were before, but there were some odd things that could be addressed. I didn't reload at all until the very end and I wanted to verify these things were repeatable. I have cheats on (for the visibility), not sure if people will be able to load the save without them. B

Love this idea

From my (unconfirmed, I haven't really played around with it) observations, it's even more than that. If I get a Lost Library that adds 60 research but i only need 20 to complete my current research path, I'll only get 20. The other 40 won't apply to my next tech. If I have a long path set up though, it will apply to the next tech on the path.

Not sure either. And now that I think about it, each AI didn't evenly cast the spells, which I would expect if it was a difficulty bonus. One cast 4 enchantments on their capitol at turn 1, one cast 3, and the third cast just 1 or 2. No idea how they paid the mana upkeep for it either, I think Relias had 6 or more enchantments up at turn 1 but didn't get a shard shrine until turn 16 or 17.

I'm seeing the same thing, but this was present in 0.912 as well (for Tireless March at least). I think it's a feature of the difficulty level? I was playing on Challenging. Free bonus movement, free research, and free production is a reasonable way to beef up the AI at harder levels. But if it's there at normal that's probably a bug?

I see the same thing with Inspiration and Obsession (on challenging difficulty). One city has 2 of each.

Wow, I completely missed any / all of those posts StevenAus - in that light, what I wrote is extremely controversial

No problem doing that at all. I feel I wasn't quite calling out, I was asking a question, but it's clearly caused controversy that has detracted from the points in the main post, and I apologize to any I've upset / annoyed. I'm a huge fan of Stardock and their games (even going as far recently to see if they were a publicly help company so I could invest) and didn't intend to insult them.

That's a great point about the save games, next time I'll keep saves of the turns where weird things happen. Planning on doing this again as soon as I have a few hours free. And I'll skip the editorial :P

I called him out because, as you say, "The challenge he's set himself is really huge". The AI challenge is huge, daunting, and incredibly important to the final state of the game. As CEO, he's probably working 50-60 hours a week just managing the company. If the AI team is just him, the game is going to suffer for that despite his proven skill in AI coding. I'm not 100% sure, but I believe he did GalCiv? That game had exceptional AI. but was he