[bug] Ai getting prefrential treatment from Ai Monsters

I had an interesting related experience. One game, i took out an AI faction with an early rush. When i took their capital, i discovered there was a dragon sitting two squares away on the other side of the city, well within the city's zone of influence.

Since i was in the spearmen technology phase, i wrote the city off as a loss - there was no way i could defend it against a dragon. I set up a building queue and left the empty city to it's fate.

The dragon kept sititng next to the city without attacking it for the rest of the game... I guess he didn't get the memo about the change of management

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Honestly, this is enough of a reason for me to stop playing this game, because it alone has made me quit games multiple times. Mind you, I only play against the AI, and just made it to normal.

I am so sick, of wiping out everything around my city, leaving to clear out other areas since I had a very crystal heavy area, thus went straight into mage tech, rather then military. I play very carefully anyway, make armies as quickly as possible, leave my main group of heros to protect new cities. Only to have a Elemental group come from F-ing no where, or Trolls ignore my area for the entire time and immidiatlly destroy the city the moment I leave to deal with a minor emergency. I have lost so many wonders to this its just tiresome

And I am talking about the Strong armies that you see around, that I have to deal with almost immidiatly after making my second city. Yet, the AI have expanded twice as much as me, have more military, and don't clear out any of the giant mobs in their area.

I don't know how to win without outright rushing straight military every single game, which limits me to one play style. And it's honestly frustrating to think a city is safe, its zone is easily a cicle of around 5 tiles, and suddenly an army of ignis pop out from beyond its zone and destroy it within a turn of me moving the only army that can handle a Strong army, and since towns can't defend themselves for crap, I honestly don't know what I am suppose to do.

From my understanding I can't build outposts on top of city(I think when I tried, it said I couldn't build it so close to a city.) So i can't use warden's to defend it, yet I see ai do it, so I wanna know what the rule is for that. Not that they use it for wardens since when i take them over they have no upgrades.

All around, the AI is frustrating, surving in open areas is easier then dealing with the "Heroic" areas. And the monsters that just roam outright want to make your life hell.

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definitely agreed. sometimes roaming beasts are too strong (like a swarm of ophidians early game) and they don't touch the AI, but hound you mercilessly. it's just plain cheating and i don't like it.

the worst case is when there's a dragon that roams around near some map chokeppoint, cutting off your troop movements, and yet allowing enemy armies through. I once had to fight a REALLY slow war against magnar because there were 2 dragons between him and me,and i couldn't get troops out past them to go invade him, while he happily sent raiding parties through.

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Quoting Epitagh,

reply 2

I honestly don't know what I am suppose to do.

This works for me:

1. Snake cities so that travel between them is near instanteneous.

2. Get "Freeze" and "Tremor" as early as possible.

3. Have at least one reaction force that can deal with crap.

4. When a monster army appears, use "Freeze" & "Tremor" to immobilize it until the reaction force gets there.

In my current play-through, this is exactly what is going on at the moment. I have repeatedly frozen and tremor'd a deadly elemental army as my sovereign's stack is rushing to intercept it. It's turn 81, and in one or two turns, the sovereign and his guards will take on the army.

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except this proves to have a game design flaw, if I have to do it that way, then that means everyone does. I don't usually have a blue mage, unless I am lucky and get one as a pick up. My custom char is a death+green. And if tremor is what i think it is(I don't know the game inside and out yet) then I can't get that in the before expanding once.

On top of that. I only have a base understanding of snaking, from reading about it on the forums, but I am playing on normal. I am not trying to memorize and perfect the game. I just want a casual experience that I can't win with literally one army running right through the entire enemies.(how i beat easy. Rushed magic, got one army with 3 heroes and several company mages and just snowballed all over their face. )

Honestly, I just think that the wildlands shouldn't be MORE dangerous then the other players. If an enemy takes a city, you just walk back over and kick the crap out of them and take it back. If the wildlife takes one, you lose it, and anything in side it, forever. And it ONLY happens to you. I have lost so many wonders to this. THere was one time though when i took an enemy city, was running to the next one, and one wolf(literally... a single wolf) took the city AND claimed it. Said it was owned by "Wildlife". Don't know if this is working as intended but I lmao at it. THen realized my miltia was killed by a single wolf and went wtf.

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We are not even talking about preferential treatment heren there is a problem with the monsters not recognizing AI units as enemy.

I really bad when it comes to uploading, but I have ascreenshot of an AI pioneer unit standing right ON TOP of a silt skath army. I mean come on........ Already put forward the stacking of enemy units onto allied units so that they would be basically been immuned to being engaged by an army and now that.

A couple of turn after, an enemy AI pioneer unit razes one of my altar. So now they have weapons?

Ugh!

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Another issue I am having is when, say, i am fighting a pair of two wolves. I battle it, took 2 damage. I run into the same type of army, autobattle it, one of my heroes dies and the other loses half his health. Sorry, but what?

I feel like by trying to make the wildlife difficult, they lost sight of what was fun for a casual player.

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I agree entirely. The ability for the AI to settle largely without regard to monsters ruins the game for me.

So many times there is an area that has a great settle spot but with a dragon or similar guarding it. So I work towards building a strong enough stack to take the monster, only the see the AI casually walk a settler up, create a settlement and then laugh (cackle actually, as I imagine only the AI can) as the monster ignores it and starts wandering towards my settlements.

Monsters should automatically attack the settlement which disturbed them, then go back to their lair after destroying it (and the square that the now razed city was built on should still be available to build on so that the AI can't deny the player settle spots by suicide settling).

Its been reported many times and Stardock seem to be ignoring the issue. They don't seem to realise that it is hurting their games popularity, despite many people posting that it has turned them off the game (eg the posts in this thread, there are more threads just like it though) and review sites saying the game is too punishing when learning, in large part because of this problem I suspect because the only ways to deal with it require a lot of experience with the game (eg Tuidjy's strategies above, baiting the monster with a weak unit, certain broken builds to be able to deal with strong monsters earlyetc).

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Quoting Epitagh,

reply 8

Another issue I am having is when, say, i am fighting a pair of two wolves. I battle it, took 2 damage. I run into the same type of army, autobattle it, one of my heroes dies and the other loses half his health. Sorry, but what?

The problem here is that auto-resolve is broken.

Many battles the player will take much more damage with auto-resolve than if they fight it out. The worst I've encountered was one hero vs a wildling archer (or similar), auto-resolve consistently said my hero died (25 odd hp I think) but I reloaded and fought the battle 3 times manually and took something like 0, 2 and 5 damage total each time.

Too many serious problems being fixed too slowly is my current feel about the game unfortunately.

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Can we sticky something that says "just because you happen to witness a fluke event does not prove the AI is cheating." The monsters chew up and spit out the AI. Most of the time it happens behind the fog of war. Sometimes it happens somewhere you can see it. And occasionally it happens to the player. Just hit Ctrl+N and try again.

The #1 basic strategy you need to learn is that you need to settle places that are near monsters. If you only settle "safe" spots, you will quickly find yourself boxed in and out-grown by the AI. The odds that a displaced monster will attack your city are miniscule. It's going to happen, but if you let the fear of losing a settlement to a monster prevent you from expanding you are going to have a really hard time with this game.

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Quoting sweatyboatman,

reply 11

Can we sticky something that says "just because you happen to witness a fluke event does not prove the AI is cheating." The monsters chew up and spit out the AI. Most of the time it happens behind the fog of war. Sometimes it happens somewhere you can see it. And occasionally it happens to the player. Just hit Ctrl+N and try again.

The #1 basic strategy you need to learn is that you need to settle places that are near monsters. If you only settle "safe" spots, you will quickly find yourself boxed in and out-grown by the AI. The odds that a displaced monster will attack your city are miniscule. It's going to happen, but if you let the fear of losing a settlement to a monster prevent you from expanding you are going to have a really hard time with this game.

Fluke would imply it was a rare, once in a while thing.

It's every single game for me. If i conquer one of their cities, I have to fight off the monsters that were around it, since the AI didn't need too.

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The AI's problem is that it doesn't know enough to avoid lairs when it sets down cities and outposts. This sets monsters to wandering, and their behaviors aren't identical. I've gone around AI cities several times, and in most cases the monsters have eventually attacked those cities. Just because you don't see it happening doesn't mean the AI gets a free ride. A few games back it was even funny: the AI had set up an outpost with two lairs inside it, and the monsters were milling around. My first time skirting it, you'd think "Hell, the monsters are ignoring the outpost!" I came back about a dozen turns later on the way to my territory, and there was no more outpost.

In my last game, this actually happened to me. I'd anticipated one city of mine expanding slower than it did, and before I was ready, a bone ogre was on the lose. It kept wandering around, but never attacking any of my cities. My stack of champions took it out. But the monster's wandering, changeable behavior worked in my favor, that time.

What's needed isn't an end to a cheat for the AI that doesn't exist. What we need is an AI that is savvy enough to avoid stirring up lairs. That's what I don't like, since the results can mess up them, or me, if I've dropped a city or outpost as well in the general vicinity. Some monsters stick close to their lair even when antagonized, but others like to take extended trips.

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Quoting sweatyboatman,

reply 11

Can we sticky something that says "just because you happen to witness a fluke event does not prove the AI is cheating." The monsters chew up and spit out the AI. Most of the time it happens behind the fog of war. Sometimes it happens somewhere you can see it. And occasionally it happens to the player. Just hit Ctrl+N and try again.

The #1 basic strategy you need to learn is that you need to settle places that are near monsters. If you only settle "safe" spots, you will quickly find yourself boxed in and out-grown by the AI. The odds that a displaced monster will attack your city are miniscule. It's going to happen, but if you let the fear of losing a settlement to a monster prevent you from expanding you are going to have a really hard time with this game.

I think we should sticky the fact that people have been complaining about this since beta, and will no doubt continue to do so as long as the issue isn't addressed one way or the other.

Like I've mentioned before, it doesn't really matter whether the monster AI is actually "fair" or not as Frogboy claims, but that the players "feel" that it is being fair.

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Quoting Ben Yeoh,

reply 14

I think we should sticky the fact that people have been complaining about this since beta, and will no doubt continue to do so as long as the issue isn't addressed one way or the other.
Like I've mentioned before, it doesn't really matter whether the monster AI is actually "fair" or not as Frogboy claims, but that the players "feel" that it is being fair

+100

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While theri at it fix diplomacy

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I don't even understand how the diplomacy in this game works. I have people declare war on me in what feels randomly and almost always feel like I am outnumbered.

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Quoting Epitagh,

reply 17

I don't even understand how the diplomacy in this game works. I have people declare war on me in what feels randomly and almost always feel like I am outnumbered.

Check the diplomacy screen. It breaks down why they hate/like you in clear words, like "you are too close (-1)", or "we have different concerns(+2)". If the sum of those is heavily negative, they will hate your guts and declare war eventually. Also, sometimes they declare war on you as a part of a deal they did with another AI ("declare war on player and well give you 100 metal").

Some other random thoughts based on your posts:

- "...leave my main group of heros to defend..." It is a very bad idea to have a group of heros. Heros are wimps before they level up. They need experience, and tons of it, to level up. But if you keep them together, all the experience one hero would get from a fight is now split between all the heroes in the same army. So after many fights, instead of a powerful hero you end up with several who still are wimps. I suggest you park any heros in the capital, choose one(usually the sovereign) to lead an army and focus on giving all the experience to that single hero. (It is OK to have non-hero units accompany the hero - those do not steal his experience)

- you can have some early warning about approaching monsters by creating an outpost buffer between your city and the edge of your territory. I.e. the outer border of your territory is not created by a city, but by an outpost. Monsters do not go out of their way to attack outposts(they do however destroy them if they just happen to be in the way). Also, a tip(this will probably get nerfed eventually) - if you upgrade the outpost with armory, it will boost the attack of your units within it's zone of control by 50%! That is immensely huge. An unit with 20 attack becomes an unit with 30 attack. This makes defending against invading monsters much easier.

Personally, i like playing on insane world difficulty(just world, not AI opponents). It makes all monsters have three times their normal hitpoints. And it is still playable, and winnable. When you learn all the small tricks, the normal difficulty will be a breeze. Just keep at it

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Quoting Ben Yeoh,

reply 14

Like I've mentioned before, it doesn't really matter whether the monster AI is actually "fair" or not as Frogboy claims, but that the players "feel" that it is being fair.

This "the customer is always right" sentiment is pretty much what is wrong with game development today. What players feel is fair is when everything breaks their way, everything goes according to plan, and all risks are rewarded. It's not fair when that umberdroth army wanders into your town and destroys it. It's not fair that the AI is so far ahead on the tech tree/has so much gold/resources. It's not fair that the AI pays off other AIs to go to war with you. It's not fair that the AI recruited all the heroes on the map before I could research the necessary techs.

Game difficultly is directly related to how fair players perceive it to be. The harder the game, the more unfair it seems.

The added twist here is that FE is not like other games you play. The difficulty of the game derives, not from a series of scripted events hand crafted by developers to give the player a sense of challenge, but from the interaction of many semi-deterministic and random elements. Often your expectations of what is important and what is not are wrong. Until you put out of your mind many of the ideas that you garnered over years of playing other 4x games you will struggle with FE.

FE is hard. It's occasionally cruel. "The best laid plans" and all that. You've become so comfortable with the "arbitrary challenge" idea that's so common in other games that you see it whenever something goes against you in FE. In truth, you just suffered a series of bad rolls; just as your opponents often do.

FE is not without its rough spots (E.g. monsters insta-destroying towns) and there are certainly places where the game could be improved (e.g. diplomacy), but it's leaps ahead of any other strategy title I've ever played. (My opinion of course).

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Quoting Epitagh,

reply 17

I don't even understand how the diplomacy in this game works. I have people declare war on me in what feels randomly and almost always feel like I am outnumbered.

It's tricky, but it's not hard to figure out. The key is to keep your faction power competitive. The best way to do this in the early game is to spread your production out so that you are building useful units early on -- not just buildings. (As a bonus, having troops backup your champs will make the game easier.) You can also get lucky and recruit a bunch of champions.

If you're still falling behind in faction power, you need to spend resources to butter up your likely aggressors. That is, bribe them not to go to war with you.

What is happening to you that's causing the world to gang up against you is you're neglecting your friends and allies and then, when one AI with a surplus of wealth decides to attack you, it pays off the other AIs to do the same. It's important to make this cost prohibitive for your opponent. to ensure a level playing field.

Sometimes though, things don't go your way. Cntrl+N is your friend.

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That was the one thing I really REALLY loved about Elementals: Lords of Magic was that the Ai hated each other the same, if not more than me sometimes.

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I read a tactics very usefull to help your cities from wandering monsters,at least for gaining some time. You only need a unit (any). If you don't have, just rush the cheapest.

When a monster is near a city, put the unit near the monster, with 1 tile between both (if you put it closer, it will attack). The next turn, the monster will probably pursuit your unit, so you repit the same step.

If the monster doesn't pursuit, repit again too.

That way, you can keep monsters far from your cities, using the unit as a lure, untill getting a strong army, or untill your army can arrive there.

It is not 100% perfect, but it works most of the times.

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Quoting sweatyboatman,

reply 19

Game difficultly is directly related to how fair players perceive it to be. The harder the game, the more unfair it seems.

No, the difficulty level in FE isn't what I was alluding to at all. Anyway, when something is unfair it doesn't always mean that it's difficult.

Really it's not the difficulty that people have a problem with. I think generally people like a challenge (and so do I). It's the suspension of disbelief which is ruined when the monster AI behaves in a nonsensical manner that people find annoying.

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This ISn't about discussing how to get AROUND the issue of Monsters ignoring enemy ai in favor of your own. That's the hard lazy route.

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I just wanted to give some help, up to you use it or not. Posts like this exist since I joined in beta .982, and sure that sooner. Tuidjy even made an experiment calculating how often a monster attack an AI unit or to one of his units, being both same close to the monster. Not concluyent, but he had the same impression, as he was attacked more times thant the AI, but not all the times (I think 6 times to him vs 2 to the AI, but not sure)

Developers insist in that there is no preference. But the game is designed as Plaver vs Ai and vs World, so I think they are not going to make deep changes, if they have not done yet at this moments.

Personally, I think monsters should destroy the city/outpost that caused him roam, and then come back to the lair. But it seems that in that case, many of the AI would not survive to the early game, or would be very crippled.

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I have to admit that I sometimes feel the ai monsters have it in for me but I can verify the ai does get its cities and units attacked I just can't tell if there is a bias towards the player. Lord knows the way the ai unleashes monsters with poorly positioned outposts and cities they should shit all over them but if they did we would just have hit end turn and eventually win.

Now I'm still in my game testing phase where I design different races and leaders and play for 100 to 200 turns to see how that race specs plays/feels so I've easily started over 100 games(yes I game way too much). I seen ai civs get wiped out on turn 2 a number of times due to bad city placement and the disturbed monster eating them and I saw one poor ai hero with over a dozen afflictions, don't know how he could even walk anymore. I've setup choke points and watched the ai pile up there until one of the monsters there ate them so I know the monster do attack the ai.

Now I'm still only playing on normal and on large maps but of late I don't seem to have a problem with wandering monsters by being very aggressive on cleaning my area out and keeping the ai empires far away using scouts to block choke points. My favorite unit is a high dodge monk using the sindarian staff(from enchanted race perk, best early weapon) built at a dedicated fortress with all the bonuses I've got, hard to hit and can counter attack and reasonable defense. I've taken down a forest drake, large hoader spider army and a troll army with these guys or gals though never tackled a real dragon.

Finally, one thing I will say is I have been playing stardock games since galciv 1 and Brad's philosophy is to make the ai players treat the human player no different than ai players so if they say there is no bias I believe them regardless how it sometimes feels. Just my 2 cents and we all know how much 2 cents is worth now days .

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