Is anyone else frustrated with the war map?

[Siptah]

You can move your troops outside the territory, but can't move them around inside. Order them to some friendly place and they'll get there (if there is an unblocked way, they can't walk through cities), even if it takes several turns.

 

[Taefin]

The real danger is ransacking an outpost inside enemy territory and getting the armies stuck there. Or trespassing unmet player on other continents when you have lost at sea boats, since all long routes go through deep ocean.

 

[NombreyApellido]

other awful AI combat cheats:

it will ocasionally isolate one of your stacks from those adjacents to it to concentrate fire on the first round. by the time you're able to deploy reinforcements, you've taken lots of damage

it will ocasionally grow the combat zone just on the 3rd round to allow one of their stacks close by to deploy a late reinforcement

it will ignore river movement penalty and strike after crossing it without any roads/buildings to serve as a bridge

the combat zone limits will take the full footprint of a nearby enemy city even if it means adding a big chunk to the combar zone "square"

it will keep units alive after taking 100 damage and then send them in counter attacks that will net 20+ damage having only 1 zombie health remaining

lookwhattheyneedtomimicafractionofourpower.jpg

 

[Jkchart]

Fun bug today: occupied a Zulu city (vassal of my enemies), and Zulu broke free during the middle of the war. City remained occupied, even after my war with the former master ended AND I had no further conflict with Zulu…yep that’s an edge case bug right there

 

[fortydayweekend]

other awful AI combat cheats:

it will ocasionally isolate one of your stacks from those adjacents to it to concentrate fire on the first round. by the time you're able to deploy reinforcements, you've taken lots of damage

it will ocasionally grow the combat zone just on the 3rd round to allow one of their stacks close by to deploy a late reinforcement

it will ignore river movement penalty and strike after crossing it without any roads/buildings to serve as a bridge

the combat zone limits will take the full footprint of a nearby enemy city even if it means adding a big chunk to the combar zone "square"

it will keep units alive after taking 100 damage and then send them in counter attacks that will net 20+ damage having only 1 zombie health remaining

lookwhattheyneedtomimicafractionofourpower.jpg

Some of these are game features more than cheating.

If you think you're at risk of being attacked, you need to keep your stacks close together. Or sometimes it works in your favour to let a single stack be attacked, if you deploy them in a place they won't die on the first round and then your reinforcements can hit the AI who might have overextended themselves on attack and left flanks exposed etc

The combat area grows over time and this can help bring your own stacks in too. Also I feel like the city footprint is a feature, you can bring troops quickly through a city.

I think every unit can strike after crossing onto a river? They just can't keep moving after that.

Some of the damage dealt by almost dead units is indeed ridiculous, it's because "damaged" subtracts combat score rather than being a multiplier. That's why I think you should one-hit every enemy to weaken them first but then try to finish them off one at a time.

 

[Victoria]

If you think you're at risk of being attacked, you need to keep your stacks close together.

Many time I have had 3 stacks next to each other and they will fight just one for the first round.
I have also sneaked a stack of 6 along a single tile wide coastal bit and been attacked and have a deployment area of 2 tiles.

 

[NombreyApellido]

i'm using the term "cheating" colloquially, as in the CPU controlled players doing something the human player can not do. i'm not proposing the idea of a sentient AI able to pick when to break the rules. if anything, i think all of these stem from lack of fine tuning and edge scenarios that were not considered

now i realize me just saying things don't make them real. but i trust many of you will encounter the situations described in due time

i'll add a few more:

-many times you'll run into the dreaded "your unit can not move this round" after reaching a critical spot for a buffed strike... no units with the ability to pin you down will be nearby... the AI will just decide you don't get to complete your play after reaching that sweet tile that should have given you +4 +4 +8 additional strength

-occasionally, the path selection during combat will only allow a single option and just casually that option is the one which get you stopped by a hidden unit area control

-this one i noted in one of the beta patchs: after a srategic retreat, one of my stacks of 2 scouts got the full 4 tile move that took it close to another 2 scouts of mine that were only 2 tiles apart. so the plan was to join then right at the turn transition to be better prepared for the incoming 2nd attack under "retreating" status, right? well, harappans said no and managed to cover double the distance and trigger the combat zone before my units combined in a stronger regiment. this means the AI broke the speed limit for the whole "simultaneous" turn thingy

-my latest one was magenta mycenaeans being able to deploy a second mounted scout in a battle that started in turn 13 and extended to 14... that means there was an olympics level jump in research that unlocked orgwarf in between turns

 

[Victoria]

In a way it’s nice the AI cheats, after all we abuse the rules, but it is damn annoying.

 

[Taefin]

occasionally, the path selection during combat will only allow a single option and just casually that option is the one which get you stopped by a hidden unit area control

I haven’t experienced the others, but this one is so common, both in and outside battle!

 

[NombreyApellido]

true. in regular gameplay, it's almost a non issue after you get accustomed to move in a tile by tile manner instead of spending all movements points at once a la Civ

problem is during combat mode since tile by tile isn't allowed

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i thought i wrote it down, but here it goes again: during the "speed limit" ordeal i used the trick of leaving a unit selected, then end turn button, and then spamming the movement input that i normally do for a compromised stack...

the game showed me a few animation frames of the enemy stack moving towards me and then the "combat zone" appeared well before it should have, going by what i could see

that's why i concluded i got cheated out of a stronger defense

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i've had my game capped at 30fps and and i use vulkan mode to prevent CPU usage issues. i'm also using usb headphones because my discrete audio card doesn't seem to like humankind since launch but got along fine during opendevs

i believe many strange things start happening when the game starts hoarding system resources. but as you can see, most of what i'm mentioning took place at the early eras when that shouldn't be a problem

i've seen all of these "cheats" personally and got reports of many others since Lucy. some where "confirmed" for instance when a bug was acknowledged related to one AI slot being able to assimilate remote, impossible to contact on their own, independent people. i'm confident there are issues with reloading too particularly related to long term deeds

my group of players seem to have lost interest in the monster fame points challenge because it takes forever and seem to be moving towards the quick finish, less than 100 turn kinda play. i'm sure this will reveal many more issues in the next few days

 

[Siptah]

So far, the players that finish the Mars mission around turns 75-80 all follow the same blueprint. Would be interesting see if you find different strategies to early finishes @NombreyApellido.

There is also the suicide win, which can end the game around turn 30, but it doesn't work that well above empire level AI due to the others having more fame then. And of course it doesn't work in multiplayer at all.

 

[agonistes]

My issue is the reinforcement zones make it too easy for the player. If you stand on the enemy zones, they cannot reinforce. So you move/shoot, bring in a reinforcement who moves/shoots, bring in the next, then the next... and you wipe the enemy out with minimal damage to your troops, then initiate the next battle again with their remaining troops.

 

[Victoria]

My issue is the reinforcement zones make it too easy for the player. If you stand on the enemy zones, they cannot reinforce. So you move/shoot, bring in a reinforcement who moves/shoots, bring in the next, then the next... and you wipe the enemy out with minimal damage to your troops, then initiate the next battle again with their remaining troops.

So… don’t stand on the zones? Or… you just can’t help it.
I agree it needs to be fixed and would be annoying in MP.
But shooting over mountains just made me rage quit a game.

 

[Aristos]

I'll add this to the wonky combat mechanics list:
Took an enemy city, was trying to raze some outposts in their territory, then was forced into surrender...
Ok, so now my armies are stuck deep in enemy territory, and I can't move them, because I don't have that treaty, and they won't give it to me. Seems crazy. If you are going to force me to surrender, why wouldn't my troops get expelled from your territory?
I get that the devs wanted to curtail warmongering. And, as a lifelong war monger... I actually generally like it. I do think they went a little far in some areas though.
Seems like war after the classic is just a no-go at this point.

I think I faced a similar situation before, and solved it by ordering moves outside of the now-closed territory... as in, right-click anywhere outside, IIRC. I have also seen the AI do it just yesterday, so I assume it can be done and my memory is correct. Not ideal, but working exactly the same as armies in EU after a war is finished (black flag, only allowed to return to home land).

Try it that way, and confirm if it is indeed working.

 

[agonistes]

So… don’t stand on the zones? Or… you just can’t help it.
I agree it needs to be fixed and would be annoying in MP.
But shooting over mountains just made me rage quit a game.

Thanks for the pro tip.

If they can stand in my zones, I'm damn well going to stand in theirs. And war is war.

But the underlying point was, you shouldn't have a problem keeping cities if your troops are healthy and the enemy doesn't have many troops left. War in this game is no more challenging than civ vi. Expansion is only slowed by city cap and influence costs.

If you can't keep a city, why take it? Kill the troops first.

If the mongols are so fast you can't see them coming, wouldn't you position a blocking force on the most likely approach? Your issue seems to arise from you being unprepared. I offered you a way to deal with it.

I haven't been able to detect the mechanic governing battlefield sizes (but I quit after three games - I find it boring). It does seem arbitrary. One attack put me in a bf with only 3 hexes to my side, in a one hex wide mountain valley, but managed to include enemy troops that were several hexes away (behind me). So I was stuck surrounded.

... which probably explains my eagerness to block reinforcement hexes, lol. I hate losing a unit. So this type of bs put me over the edge, and its now (or was) scorch earth vs humankind.

Maybe base terrain changes impact where bf lines are drawn? Right now the seeming randomness of bf's is the ai's only advantage, but once you are ready for it (read: ready for anything), the advantage is lost.

If there is a pita feature, its influence on one city forcing my entire culture to change a civic.

 

[Victoria]

I hate losing a unit.

I’ve lost whole armies to it, but there seems to be a natural nack you pick up because it has become less and less but it’s a game you lose units in, which feels more right to me.

 

[fortydayweekend]

I’ve lost whole armies to it, but there seems to be a natural nack you pick up because it has become less and less but it’s a game you lose units in, which feels more right to me.

Losing units isn't too bad, it's maybe around 1.5 turns of city growth and a turn of Industry, and taking pop out of cities doesn't cripple them because of the base yields. With 3 cities you can replace 2 units/turn without losing pop overall.

occasionally, the path selection during combat will only allow a single option and just casually that option is the one which get you stopped by a hidden unit area control

On the other hand, you can sometimes spot those hidden units if they're one tile away from a visible tile by hovering over, the "control" graphic comes up (Similarly on the main map you can find units by trying to place an outpost or district and look for blocked tiles).

ZOC is yet another reason to bring more troops to every battle, units can cross ZOC underneath a friendly unit. Swarm them enough and you can move anywhere. As long as your units can take a couple of hits it's even worth bringing older troops just for this, stand in the ZOC so your better troops can get into position, and then retreat the injured ones (again as long as they pass through a friendly unit they can ignore ZOC).

 

[Aristos]

I haven't been able to detect the mechanic governing battlefield sizes (but I quit after three games - I find it boring). It does seem arbitrary. One attack put me in a bf with only 3 hexes to my side, in a one hex wide mountain valley, but managed to include enemy troops that were several hexes away (behind me). So I was stuck surrounded.

My initial impression is that BF zones are calculated according (or proportional) to movement difficulty... I have to observe more, but as of now I operate under that assumption. I.e. it extends more towards areas where there are roads.

Needs confirmation, but as of now, that is what I think.

Not random, not at all. There is a pattern.

 

[Aristos]

The AI goes for reinforcement tiles, so no, I won't stop myself. This is no civ 6 AI, fortunately. Not perfect, but it has amazed and surprised me a few times already in battle. Flanking AI is alive and kicking, be aware.

 

[NombreyApellido]

forty, please give me some credit... first you explain to me how rivers work and now you suggest i should bring more troops. come on now

the AI appears to lack development time and qa. we can work around it, sure. but the underlying problems remain

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i'm too the kind of player that mourns the loss of a single unit even if it is one of the freebies you get through curiosities. i aim to complete every run without loosing a sinle one, but i fail miserably and consistently. imagine how i felt the time a stack of 4 scouts got deleted when a city just showed up when the outpost was on the last turn of a ransack

i try to go to war with limited forces and trust in better positional combat, that's why i feel cheated when the outcome of a battle appears to be skewed by non adherence to the "rules"

its a great game. but amplitude run out of time to implement overall AI. or they run out of budget. or talent. or a combination of all three

right now, it feels rather early accessy