Automation AI

[xienwolf]

I don't know how hard these ideas are, so firing them out there to see what the modders think of them.


Workers:
Do they consult the local city for what you told it to emphasize when deciding what to build? If not, can they?


Scouts:
Is there any way to get them to stop attacking Lizardmen (and other things who will obviously kill them), when set to automated Exploration? Some games I just don't care WHERE they explore and I am busy with my cities, so it is nice to use. But getting a message that they died 2 turns after leaving your border for something THEY ATTACKED is pretty sad, and frequent.

Also, can Explore be reprogrammed to have multiple modes? One that works concentrically outward to expand your known area for future development, and another to find and follow a coastline, then fill in the area between to establish knowledge of your continental limitations.

Defense:
This one is on the WAY out there idea. Can you create a new automation for a unit? My ideas are to automate The Black Wind, or any other HN ship, to scour the coastline and attack everything in sight. Also along the same lines, to automate land units to roam your borders, just inside or even outside, and protect you aggressively from Barbarians and rival Civs.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I agree.

A long time ago I suggested a "defensive mode spell" that would give a unit a promotion that makes them unable to attack, and would be removed by a "spell" that the promotion allows. You could use this to make sure automated scouts don't attack elephants and such, or to move an HN units through rival lands with out open-boarders to attack targets on the other side. In either case, the units would of course still be vulnerable to attacks, but wouldn't start a fight they could not win.

I memory serves, BtS actually added a function that makes ships patrol an area and attack enemies it sees. It seems like that could do what you are wanting ships to do.

 

[Nikis-Knight]

Workers:
Do they consult the local city for what you told it to emphasize when deciding what to build? If not, can they?

This was added to the worker ai in BtS. If you give your city governor an emphasis, workers will build improvements to correspond to that, i.e., cottages if you emphasize commerce.

So this should be in FfH v25+.

 

[formless blob]

I hear you, automation off the little things makes the game run much more smooth. With all the stuff the player has to fiddle with in this mod, automation becomes especially important.

A really nice think to automate, would be the bloom spell, because when you play the elves, you have to micromanage a lot if you want forests everywhere. The bloom spell should furthermore be modified to pillage whatever is in the plot, so you don't need a tag along warrior. A toggle to leave old improvements, like the one for workers could then be added. As it is now, I only bother with my core cities, because of the micromanagement nightmare the elves can be to play.

Similarly for the druids (or nature arch-mages), auto terraform everywhere or auto terraform nearest city would be nice. The same goes for casters of the spring spell naturally (desert->plains).

When playing the Kazar (sp? the dwarves), it would be nice if the auto build governor would stop using gold to rush buildings, it makes it a useless feature, which is too bad, because I like to use it when my empire gets too big. Rubbing salt into this wound, is the fact that the Arete civic gives the gold rush ability, and Arete is the dwarf religion civic.

An auto cast feature for buff spells would be nice (enchant weapon and the like). So if you end your turn with the spell ready, it is automatically cast. As it is now, I use it once for my major stack, and then forget about it for quite a while.

I'm sure I could think of a bunch of other stuff, but these are the things that where a significant annoyance in my most recent games.

 

[Sureshot]

id also like more manual control over combat on defense, like being able to make a certain unit more or less likely to defend when i want