Can something be done about dungeon spawns?
- Thread starter Rutee
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popejubal
Emperor
That's also one of the reasons why I have so much fun as the Sidar. In addition to their super-builder style that suits me very well, I also like the fact that my Worldspell-hidden units can wander through other Civs' territory without Open Borders (and without decaring war). I need 1 hidden unit per Legendary Lair, IIRC, but that's still fine with me.
At best, I get a Great Person. At worst, my unit dies to a super-monster, but I still get to enjoy watching the AI Civ get decimated by whatever I happened to call up.
...and having hidden/invisible Workers and Settlers is astonishingly useful.
I'm reffering to regular FfH. I'm sure someone can look up in the actual code what the probability of these spawns are, I'm guessing it's at least 10% as 1 out of every 10 pops is at least the rate I've seen, but you could also do this: Go set up a Standard-Large hotseat game, and play out the civs yourself. I guarantee if you just explore things, not even the Legendary ones, that someone will pop some of the big guys. It shouldn't require anything more than moving around each civ's starting scout as has repeatedly been said. And for the record all the multiplayer groups I've been with strictly disallow popping lairs just because of this and somehow it's still happened accidentally to a couple of people not paying attention - it's just not that rare. So it's not just an issue of fixing up the AI; I even don't always care when a random AI in the distance dies in a single player game but this issue affects everyone.
While I'm sure the Lanun will be pleased to hear about how feared the Black Wind is, I do believe that the ship you're all referring to is actually the Sailor's Dirge...
We have played about 15 MP games till the end and much more till about turn 200 and we never had this problem before. I don't know what you consider "enough MP" and if only MPs count with players who don't know each other (as those don't care about the fun of a single person) but the epic lairs did last very long time and the AI constantly ignored them. And the AI is the only thing that counts as human players can arrange as they want and don't need a help for this arrangement.
you don't seem to understand the OP's issue.
IIRC, this events appears almost every game if you have enough civs and few landmasses : ie many civs are on the same landmass.
in my 3 last games 1 civ was wasted into oblivion before the appearance of orthus bannor, elohim and current game : the amurites.
(orthus is a civ killer so is ok)
I didn't go to see what happened for all civs but : elohims had wraith wandering in their lands.
Why it doesn't bother me : I have the tendancy to open every lair around me very early : while the few turns of protection are ok, save inside my borders. I reduce the impact of being slaugthered by the 1/20 T4 unit per lair because :
-I go early, reducing the appearance of such killers.
-I KNOW when such a killer is created and I can build a response team of 1-2 more warriors, upping my stack from 2 to 3-4 and be able to survive.
-I play SP, so in the event that it doesn't work, I can start a new game (1/10 games).
Why it is unfun :
-I HAVE TO pop lairs close to me instead of reserving them for a later time, when I may have some über good boni or T4 spawning, and I know I can handle the T4, it being only an xp farming session.
-I play with 9 Ai to be sure to go against 8.
(and even then, 1 Ai killed by orthus : 50% games. Luirchips : 1 50% games, Very Bad Start for Ai : 2... well I play 9AI and in fact I am really competiting against 5 AI)
Why the AI have lairs/dungeon in its territory : I think it is coded so as to NOT open epic lairs unless they have enough units
and to NOT open lairs/ruins/barrow/dungeon close to its cities.
that is why you find epic lairs, and you find unopened dungeons in their territory. But mostly you won't find ruins/barrows.
And if the game is long, you won't find many dungeons ruins and barrows in the wilderness. As soon as they have to power to kill the guarding barbs, they explore the lairs if they are far from their own cities.
Then why are some AI killed by early wraith ?
-because the others AI are coded to open those same lairs that are close to the said first AI. And sometimes it spawns a T4.
so 9Ai, a T4 for 10-20 lairs... it means 9, more probably 18 or more scouts are wandering in the wilderness.
if 30% die without finding a lair or a civ it leaves 12 scouts to open lairs close to an ennemy AI. some do it 2-3 times as they do not dies at each occasion.
you have 12 to 30 lairs open in the early game.
so you have 1-2 barbarian SoD, led by a T3-T4 barb early game, for each game.
Those number are totally random. But I'm pretty sure that you would attain such a result with the real numbers.
So while as a strategy for a civ it is not interesting, producing 18+scouts early being crippling, as a chaotic phenomenon, produced randomly with every civ participating, 1 civ is certainly killed or crippled each game.
I like the comparison of this with an hypothetic event giving 5% chance that the avatar of wrath appears at 10AC and at foundation of AV.
In the same way it doesn't happens every game to the detriment of the player.
but when it happens, it is a sure and sudden death for you...
Kiwi Tyrant
Evil Jollification
I would like it where the Epic Lair's etc. can only be popped by a minimum T2 unit.
eg. Hunter instead of Scout.
Just to delay thing's a little and get you past that window of extreme vulnerability.
Then there could be no excuses.....
eg. Hunter instead of Scout.
Just to delay thing's a little and get you past that window of extreme vulnerability.
Then there could be no excuses.....
cvlowe
King
Don't need to look it up. Kael already posted about it in post#39 There's already a grace period.
While I'm sure the Lanun will be pleased to hear about how feared the Black Wind is, I do believe that the ship you're all referring to is actually the Sailor's Dirge...
Ahhh that's it! See, it's been so long I forgot the name
That would just guarantee you are past the "grace period" and make things worse!
Having read all this, I am wondering if I'll try a new approach to Grace in a modmod.
Idea : Instead of Grace returning a simple true or false, we have a new value which returns a value from 1 up, indicating the monstrousness of the boss. Let's call it Peril.
The Boss tables would be grouped by tier, as would follower tables and promotion tables.
So if Peril returned 1, we would just get a tier 1 boss.
If it returned 3, we might get a tier 3 boss, or we might get a tier 2 boss with a tier 1 henchman type (2+1=3), or a tier 1 boss with a tier 2 free promotion (1+2=3).
If Peril returned 6, that might be a tier 3 boss with a tier 3 promotion (3+3=6).
Make sure Equipment promotions are on the "free promo" list for boss monsters too, so there is added reward to defeating them.
[Taking an idea further - negative values to balance results.]
We could even make it so we have negative promotions, so if Peril is 1 and we get a tier 4 monster spawn, it is given a -3 tier promo to bring the total down to 1, for example Held.
Other negative values might involve spawning help for the player. Peril is 1, but a tier 4 monster 1s spawned; This is 3 peril points higher than we ought to have, so in the balance to bring the encounter down to Peril 1 the game spawns some elven swordsmen under control of the explorer. "Some brave warriors have been hunting this foe, and join forces with you!"
[more random thinking]
The total Peril could be calculated based on game turn/speed, AC, whether the lair was epic... maybe Clan players can use a ritual to increase global Peril levels... perhaps astrological events could affect it....
Idea : Instead of Grace returning a simple true or false, we have a new value which returns a value from 1 up, indicating the monstrousness of the boss. Let's call it Peril.
The Boss tables would be grouped by tier, as would follower tables and promotion tables.
So if Peril returned 1, we would just get a tier 1 boss.
If it returned 3, we might get a tier 3 boss, or we might get a tier 2 boss with a tier 1 henchman type (2+1=3), or a tier 1 boss with a tier 2 free promotion (1+2=3).
If Peril returned 6, that might be a tier 3 boss with a tier 3 promotion (3+3=6).
Make sure Equipment promotions are on the "free promo" list for boss monsters too, so there is added reward to defeating them.
[Taking an idea further - negative values to balance results.]
We could even make it so we have negative promotions, so if Peril is 1 and we get a tier 4 monster spawn, it is given a -3 tier promo to bring the total down to 1, for example Held.
Other negative values might involve spawning help for the player. Peril is 1, but a tier 4 monster 1s spawned; This is 3 peril points higher than we ought to have, so in the balance to bring the encounter down to Peril 1 the game spawns some elven swordsmen under control of the explorer. "Some brave warriors have been hunting this foe, and join forces with you!"
[more random thinking]
The total Peril could be calculated based on game turn/speed, AC, whether the lair was epic... maybe Clan players can use a ritual to increase global Peril levels... perhaps astrological events could affect it....
You seem to have no understanding of what the problem is. The problem is not that these enemies spawn. The problem is that they spawn before a civ can counter them. For a player to get to Hunting, or Bronze Working, or a similar T2 a significant amount of time should pass. This means they and other civs should have also have sufficient defenders to take on the spawns - by T2 unit time you could guard your city against whatever and then it's the civ fault for not having better defenses. Spawns when it's only even possible to have a few warriors are what's unbalanced. But I don't support limiting exploration to T2 units, extending the grace period would just be better.
Calavente's points also seem dead on - you have to play with 10 AI to really try to get 8. Whoever said that the AI doesn't explore lairs is simply wrong as Calavente is also right - the AI explore them around other's territories and after enough time will explore their own; the only exception is epic lairs which can be ignored insofar as there are still problems with the regular ones. And I think it's still a major problem for human play because countering this removes use of a feature that could otherwise be more fun. Also I'm still going with an estimated T4 chance between 1/10 and 1/20 because that code has not been posted.
I like the idea of Peril by the way Marnok, though again I'd be happy with something much less elaborate.
After reading through this again, I wonder if the main problem is boss spawns (which DO have a grace period and I've never seen pre-T2)...or the specter spawns from ruins/graveyards (which apparently don't and I have.) Specters themselves aren't THAT scary early-game, but they have some crazy power to upgrade themselves to wraiths if certain conditions are met (whatever those conditions may be) and can be spawned three at a time from a graveyard if you're unlucky. Wraiths can wreck warriors like nobody's business.
Makes me wonder how many times it was a wraith that did all the pre-turn-100 AI deaths I've witnessed.
Makes me wonder how many times it was a wraith that did all the pre-turn-100 AI deaths I've witnessed.
Rutee
Warlord
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I have seen (IE been eaten by) that, and mentioned it. I think spectres upgrade after killing some poor defenseless scout? If they couldn't become Wraiths, they'd be gravy in my book; They're not any more powerful then Orcs without that.
Certainly not an ability my summoned sheaim spectres had..
cvlowe
King
So if I understand correctly- It's only a MP game problem when you can't just all agree to not pop the big lairs in each others terriitories? Because the AI isnt the one who did it, but another player?
Rutee
Warlord
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Um, maybe if I played with SUPAR COMPETITIVE MUST WIN TEH GAMEZORZ 2 BE 1337 guys like that one who was posting earlier, that'd be the problem. It's definitely the AI doing it, because we play with a level of courtesy about ridiculously cheap things. While I can only imagine a player could more efficiently do the Dungeon Tacnuke bit, it's pretty bothersome that the AI unconditionally looses the damn things on you, without any particular recourse from you. I'd put guards on every damn lair in or near my land if it'd let me.
That said, for more competitive games, it still seems an overpowerful possibility
No, you're wrong. It's not just the fact that some random human player could be a particular jerk, though that's reason enough to fix it. It IS an AI problem in both single player and multiplayer games, AI will get themselves and other civs killed through their pops.
PPQ never met a change he liked. 
It would be rad if any units walking onto dungeons turned to HN while on that tile (but OOS nightmare)
I guess the other option is to simply put guards on dungeons, and kill anyone who comes close. I've tried warning people before, but they pop the lair anyways, which leads to war.
It would be rad if any units walking onto dungeons turned to HN while on that tile (but OOS nightmare)
I guess the other option is to simply put guards on dungeons, and kill anyone who comes close. I've tried warning people before, but they pop the lair anyways, which leads to war.
Rutee
Warlord
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PPQ never met a change he liked.
It would be rad if any units walking onto dungeons turned to HN while on that tile (but OOS nightmare)
I guess the other option is to simply put guards on dungeons, and kill anyone who comes close. I've tried warning people before, but they pop the lair anyways, which leads to war.
Yeah, that's why I'd like the ability to project 1
onto the tile. You seem to have done the killing after the fact, and that won't necessarily save you.Similar threads
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