Unit spells + Items = AI Issues

[Medicine_Man_55]

An update: From my game listed above (Nikis Knight's Huge map, Epic, Cassiel of the Grigori, No AI building reqs, custom AI mods).

Moving on towards the midgame now and there is lots of mayhem in the world. Johas Endain of the Clan is swinging around a big stick, at war with most of his neighbours and doing more than holding his own. Alexis is universally despised and is getting slowly beaten down by Viconia and Varn Gosam (not that those two are cooperating). I think the Bannor starting location is a little weak on this map, but they've survived one pasting from a combined Charadon/Clan of Embers attack. I hope to help them out later.

Cardith Lorda is in real trouble and I'm moving to intervene on his behalf. The Amurites and Clan of Embers are steamrolling the Child King, and setting themselves up as a threat on my borders in the process. I just got Feudalism (in order to vassalize) and I want some of Cardith's mana, so the time is right.

** Incidentally: Is it possible to change the ruleset in FfH2 to allow a player to gift (and liberate) cities to his vassals? The inability to do so in the regular game is annoying and unrealistic.

The Clan of Embers are fighting with large stacks of lizardman assassins and rangers, catapults, chariots, goblin worg riders, and they have Rantine out (No AI building reqs changes the game remarkably in this aspect). The Clan is using only a few adepts here and there, mostly with low level chaos magic.

The Amurites, who have been biding their time for the entire game so far, are using several large stacks of chariots, horsemen, catapults, some swordsmen, adepts, wizards, and conjurers. Tasty.

Good news: The AI is definitely using its spell casters now. The Amurites have happily fire-balled my field armies a few times.

Bad news: The AI usually follows up on magical attacks by having the spell caster assault the enemy in person. Watching the Amurite wizards and conjurers try to take on my hero dragon slayers and longbowmen is painful.

Teaching the AI how to build, husband, and protect its spellcasters better would be the ideal solution, but I don't know how much is possible with the tools the FfH dev team has available. The workable alternative is to help the AI recover his lost spell casters quicker, possibly with arcane-style promotions in the higher tiers or upgraded adepts later in the game. Some thoughts for you.

Random thought: I think it takes too many hammers to construct buildings in FfH. The AI doesn't seem to develop his cities very well as a result.

Last note: I've been leaving the Sheim alone, but I see a lot of conjurers in his territory. 1-2 per stack. The arcane civs seem to consider casters an essential part of any force, even if they don't use them brilliantly. No one has the tech for archmagi or summoners yet, but when Teryn Arbadi gets it, I expect to see eaters of dreams.

 

[xienwolf]

So far I can't think of a decent way to keep the AI from using magic users in the attack, but still send them out with the battle group. I might give the Escort & Reserve AI options a chance and see what happens with those ones enabled.

Overall though, sounds like a pretty awesome game

 

[Medicine_Man_55]

Overall though, sounds like a pretty awesome game

Yes, this mod is fantastic... err... pun intended.


I popped open the world builder to see what the AI was doing before heading to work. It looked like the Sheim lost all of his adepts and conjurers in his latest war. Some AI tweak on those units is definitely needed.

On the bright side, the Amurites appear to be mass producing adepts now, to replace all of the units they just lost to me. I may refund both the Tebryn and Vallidia some T2 casters.

On the subject of tweaking AI: how to do it? I've noticed that one or more AI profiles are listed in the UnitInfo XML file. Is the first one on the list the default? Or does the game just chose one AI setting out of the list based on what it thinks it needs?

 

[xienwolf]

Not entirely sure on that one. You have to define a single AI early in the file, possibly that one is used to decide WHAT to build, then later you are allowed to define as many as you want. There I think it allows it to check against the possible orders for each of the options listed and weigh them against one another.

Someday I am hoping to get a bead on where precisely the AI orders are defined so I can create a few of my own, or at least know precisely what each of the currently available ones do.

 

[Medicine_Man_55]

Thoughts on caster AI:

UNITAI_COUNTER may work as well. That seems to be the AI used for units like SAM and pikemen, who are supposed to provide a screen for other units. That could work for casters.

If that doesn't work, an imperfect solution may be to bring the attack power of arcane casters down to 0, while leaving them with their old defence value. This would prevent them from attacking altogether, if I understand the game mechanics properly.

 

[xienwolf]

It ought to keep them from attacking then (ought to...), but then you lose the option of risking combat to gain more XP with them, which is always fun

I'll give COUNTER a shot for a while and see how they handle it.