[MOD] More Naval AI

I'm not sure if there's a reasonable way to implement this, but it would be nice if items could easily be passed between Hidden Nationality units and other units. Even just giving HN units the ability to drop the item would be nice.

 

It would also be nice if HN could have the option to rever back to HN after declaring. I imagine that could cause problems though.

Is there anything in the code that tells the AI to upgrade their defending units? They are pretty good at making large stacks of the latest and greatest, but most of their towns will still be defended by warriors. Makes for some very cheesy rush tactics to be scarily effective, like blitzing in with mobile troops and razing everything in sight.
There's also the matter of troop dispersal. Big stacks of 30 chariots will kill most things they can get their hands on, having all your good troops in one place can be a bad idea. If an opposing army is threatening your towns, some number of troops should be breaking off to form defensive stacks. Instead, they will often divert their entire army, ignoring my weakly defended towns and being picked off by cultists/stygian guards hanging out off the coast.
Also, Basium is insane. Conquered a city on another continent, popped culture with a zealot, then bought the angel gate (names escape me atm). Basium proceeded to charge solo into the middle of enemy territory, other angels eventually trickling in. He somehow survived, but don't you think he should be a little more careful? Wait until a proper stack of angels is available maybe?

 

The thought did cross my mind a couple of times, but by that stage in the game I was set up for a conquest victory. I'd cleared the main continent, and the remaining civs were island remnants from before I'd researched feudalism (or astronomy). A few queens of the line (with support) and they also succumbed to the Pacifist, Republican, demonic horde.

For the culture victory, I think the guilds civic would be better as you're got unlimited bards (+4 culture) whereas with caste system, you're looking at unemployed citizens (+2 culture).

Edit Ahhh. I stand corrected (see post below). That would work quite well, although in my defense I was thinking primarily of large Infernal cities. A situation where you have quite a number of free citizens to assign, where guilds would allow other specialists as well so that production and the economy can be maintained while still pumping out culture.

 

I believe liberty allows unlimited bards.

Edit: ohyay400postsaren'tiamazing

 

In my recent game I was able to defeat a drastically numerically superior opponent using similar tactics. I picked off cities behind the stack of doom, causing it to march back and forth, getting near my cities before turning back to re-take its own. I was able to wear the SoD down over the course of 15 turns or so (Nox Noctis was helpful, of course) and crushed him once the SoD was gone. If he had split the stack into three and defended with one while the other two razed my cities, he could have destroyed me.

 

Better one here: I had a 20-25 unit stack of doom marching against Sheelba, aiming at capturing one of her big, coastal cities. On a hill nearby, not in my immediate field of view, was Rhoanna's 128-unit stack of doom, including Magnadine. I know a biiiiig problem when I see one, and looked at losing Saverous, Guybrush and Hemah in one fell swoop, plus a few archmages and cultists...

Rhoanna's stack happened to be next to a lake. My cultists grinned. A triple-tsunami followed up by Raging Seas drowned 100 units, plus badly hit Sheelba's forces.

I had no casualties, and the power graph two turns later was simply breathtaking.

 

Well, that's definitely better in terms of awesomeness, but it doesn't seem like such a bad thing from the perspective of how the AI is doing. The only thing the AI did there that was bad was leave its stack next to water at the wrong time... which is a bad thing to do, but the sort of mistake that even a human player will make from time to time. I guess you could code a "try not to hang out next to the water with a big stack when the Lanun still have their world spell", but that's a pretty narrow thing.

What concerns me about my story, and Fafnir13's story, is that it speaks to a deeper AI failing. No human would have ever behaved the way the AI did against me - glumly plodding back and forth with his big stack at my beck and call, repeating the same mistake multiple times until he was inevitably defeated.

 

liberty allows unlimited bards, one free specialist and has 100% culture bonus but the game was already won I went 4 culture, I joust want to make it special. Anyway you can make over 2k/turn culture in one city and there are also the great bards that you can generate
And yes I think this is the most inappropriate victory that you can get

 

Apparently my FFh2 likes to use some art files from Pie's mod.

For example my gorilla looks like an axe thrower (coooool!!!) Lol.


- Regarding the tsunami above - mega super lol.

Let's never limit the collateral damage, the amount of damage done by spells nor give a penalty to horses attacking cities.
It's a cool game. One can win conquest from just one city.

Btw, apparently Sheelba forgot that she can build warrens in my last game and power evaluations in general can't be right when i'm last with 100 poison iron chariots and no enemy iron unit in sight. Diplomacy sucks ass too with them being stubborn pricks.

 

For the unit art: make sure you don't have frozen animations enabled. Some of the older art doesn't work with it and will revert to the base model rather than the one intended.

 

Sorry, I got this backwards. Regular units can take items from HN units, but not the other way around. The best workaround I can find is summoning a skeleton, having it take the item, then unsummoning it to drop it. But allowing items to be dropped would be a nicer workaround.

 

If HN can take items from amongst themselves, just play as Svart and hit the world spell...

 

They are really stingy with the tech trading I've noticed. This can be good if it means they aren't trading like crazy with each other too much, but it does seem to take a very long time before they will even consider it.

 

The frustrating thing for me is not their stinginess (which is quite reasonable, honestly... I mean, you still make the deals, right?) but how long techs and other options remain in total freeze-out. I would prefer if more stuff was "on the table", but the AI would only settle for ridiculously lopsided deals early on, before eventually softening their stance and agreeing to deals that are closer to even.

 

To wit: In the scenario I was describing above, Rhoanna and Sheelba were in a Permanent Alliance. After drowning Rhoanna's mega-stack and raiding Sheelba's empire, the orcs were down to their last city. To sue for peace, I'd have to give Sheelba a city and something to the order of 6000 gold. Simple enough: I took her out of the game -- causing Hafgan the Purger and Varn Gossam to break away as Rhoanna's vassal and make peace concessions with me (I gave back Varn Gossam's city; too far away to be of any use)!

 

Many thanks. I just recently turned on that and it could be it.

This is what I mean by they being stubborn pricks. They don't know when they are losing - badly!!

The game is also slower than ever. Oh my G.

 

This mod is awesome; I was crushed by Tasunkes mega stack of War Cried bronze axemen playing as Ljosalfar on prince (yes, I suck at this game )

On another note; I was exploring with my initial settler, and on turn 2 I noticed Sheaim had popped an epic dungeon with his initial scout. Looking at the epic monster stack I just restarted and deleted all the explorable unique features on turn 1 (already play with no lairs).

 

Every second or third game it seems that there'ss a named barbarian Eidolin wandering around in the early game destroying civilisations. I think that it adds to the flavour of the game but I don't like seeing civs destroyed in the first couple of turns. I wonder if it is possible to tie the AIs decision to explore to how many defenders it has in it's capital or empire wide? At the higher levels they start with free archers so early exploring shouldn't be too fatal.

On another note in the last game I played, I killed one of the neighbouring civs on turn three or four. They'd started too close, which is a mapscript issue, but they sent their initial settler off ahead of its escort and when my scout stumbled on the city boundary I could see that the starting units were not in the city so I knew I could get a free kill in quickly with my scout.

 

Hmm, unless Barbarians are an Evil 'civ', I don't think they should have Eidolons. They should have Druids instead, but that early in the game... yeesh.

 

Well some times you just get unlucky and awaken a dormant evil, like the Dwarves in Moria. Even in vanilla CIV and BTS there are the respective barbarian uprisings (Vandals, Goths etc),.

I remember the first time I saw it happen. Civs began dying and I thought it was just probably a wraith. So I beefed up my defenses a little for when it reached me, six or so warriors in each of my two cities. I was close to finishing bronze working and had copper close and then I saw it. It was an Eidolon that was now well promoted (combat and drill). I thought that I might have a chance but my warriors just didn't cause enough damage to be able to kill it. If it hadn't been as well promoted I think I could have killed it with warriors (lots of warriors), but the drill promotions meant that it was not taking enough damage.

I wonder if it would be possible to restrict the epic lairs to being explored by either high level units or heros? There already are some restrictions on lair exploration, for instance elephants can't explore dungeons (or at least couldn't a couple versions ago).

Edit: Oh and I think that Barbarians are an Evil civ. Looking at the civlopeida the orcs are the remnants of Bhalls (Goddess of fire) followers who were corrupted when she fell.