High to Low?

[mcwill123]

Wow! I've been trying the high to low option lately. It seems like about half of the time the second civ has been mucking around for at least 50 turns without making a settlement. Ususally in the middle of a jungle somewhere Is anyone successfull at this? I'd guess you need to back the difficulty off somewhat.

 

[Kael]

Ive been playtesting patch "k" all weekend, and all but 1 have been high to low games (I played a game the momus scenario to make sure that was working too). As you mention its also a great way to see how the AI is performing.

Keep in mind that since you are jumping to the player with the lowest score you are most likely to get the player in the worst possible position, so jungle placements with just one city isnt to uncommon (FfH Ai does push for early defense instead of early expansion to protect against barbs).

But Ive been really enjoying my games. My first game I started as the Balseraph and didnt need to do a lot to get to first (I was playing on a pretty low difficulty). Then I jumped to the Clan and moved them into hard core assault mode. Warrens were built in all the major cities and we began kicking out doubled settlers, axemen and we were about to get to ogres before I jumped again. The last was as the Hippus and I now had an orcish horde to deal with. My entire major army got wiped twice and I lost a few cities, but in the end I pulled it out and won the game.

My other game I started as the Calabim (I wanted to play with Esvath's new adept models) I bounced to the Kuriotates, and then back to the Calabim. The Calabim got crushed while I was gone because I popped a settler from a goody hut and dropped a city right there, leaving the scout to guard. The free city was enough to jump me to first, but after I loved on the barbs came for the city, took it and built Acheron in it. Now the Calabim had an angry dragon and a wave of disciples of acheron and sons of the inferno as a neighbor and things got bad. But I got that mess cleaned up too.

I love High to Low games.

 

[mcwill123]

You may have misunderstood. In my games the 2nd civ often has NO settlements after over 50 turns. Still wandering around with a settler.

 

[Kael]

You may have misunderstood. In my games the 2nd civ often has NO settlements after over 50 turns. Still wandering around with a settler.

Thats definitely weird. I've never seen that. I think there was some adjusted code for non-optimal city placement (basically telling the AI to give up and go ahead and place a city) in "k" so it should be better. I will watch a couple games and see how it works out.

 

[Emptiness]

bIncludeForcedGold is only set to true if it's turn 40 or later. So this assumes that the Khazad will have a capital city after turn 40. Unfortunately, there are three circumstances where this might not be possible:

1. If the game has Require Complete Kills turned on, with a Khazad AI that has lost all of its cities. (This is pretty unlikely, but not impossible).
2. If the game has a Khazad AI that has not yet settled by turn 40 (Even less likely to happen).
3. If the game is a scenario where there is a Khazad AI with no cities (like Dungeon Adventure, would only happen in modmods).

This can occur in any game (although, as you said, rarely) so it definitely needs to be fixed. I haven't had it happen to me (yet), and I don't think it's been reported, but someone is bound to experience it eventually.

Spoiler - How condition #2 can occur :

On the first turn the AI picks a destination for its settler and begins to move toward it. If, before that settler can build the capital, another city appears that either prevents the AI settler from reaching its destination or renders that destination an invalid city site then the AI settler will just stand around. No city is founded, and so no capital exists. In most such cases, one cultural expansion of the blocking city will move the settler to a valid city site, and the AI will found its capital there. However, it is possible for the first cultural expansion to move the settler to a position where it cannot found a city (the four tiles at the corners of the city's BFC). If that occurs, the settler will sit idle until the second cultural expansion takes place - which for non-Creative leaders who are not using the Religion civic will not be until turn 50 (in standard speed games). This would trigger condition #2, if the blocked civ happened to be the Khazad.

I explain in the spoiler how this (delayed founding of an AI's first city) can happen. It's a problem even if it isn't triggering the crash TC01 was reporting. In standard speed games an AI civ can be stuck until turn 50; at longer speeds the delay can naturally be longer. The non-optimal city placement code would be a welcome fix.

 

[Afforess]

You may have misunderstood. In my games the 2nd civ often has NO settlements after over 50 turns. Still wandering around with a settler.

I'm not a FFH2 modder, so I don't know if they changed it, but in BTS, the AI are forced to settle on turn 1 on their starting spot, to avoid this behavior.

 

[Kael]

I'm not a FFH2 modder, so I don't know if they changed it, but in BTS, the AI are forced to settle on turn 1 on their starting spot, to avoid this behavior.

Yeap you are right. FfH AI is a little more picky, maybe to much so.

 

[Afforess]

Yeap you are right. FfH AI is a little more picky, maybe to much so.

Slightly OT, but thanks for making the Assimilation Mod, it works great in RoM!

 

[Breunor]

I recommend playing without the Infernals (compact enforced) if you play high to low. I have been switched to the Infernals with no cities and no ability to build any!

I HAVE had some real fun with it!

Best wishes,

Breunor

 

[Nikis-Knight]

That happened to me too, recently. Had a glorious defeat.
Lately I've been cheating on High to low and paying close attention to the score, trying to eliminate anyone that looks too weak to compete before moving to the top, then starting wars right before.

By the way, did you note the bug where techs where techs cost one turn after switching in high to low? (I posted a game in the bug thread)

 

[Breunor]

That happened to me too, recently. Had a glorious defeat.
Lately I've been cheating on High to low and paying close attention to the score, trying to eliminate anyone that looks too weak to compete before moving to the top, then starting wars right before.

By the way, did you note the bug where techs where techs cost one turn after switching in high to low? (I posted a game in the bug thread)

Yes, I haven't updated the bug list yet, but I did look at your game. It is an odd bug - not everything takes one turn, if you get through some of the one turn techs, some of the other techs like warhorses take 22 or 24 turns (these should have taken many times that much).

I went into the worldbuilder to see which techs the computer thought you had. I checked to see if it was somehow carrying over techs from your switched Civ's. There isn't anything I can find, I suspect somebody has to find this one the hard way (going into the code).

Best wishes,

Breunor