What is known about the Superiority roles?

[MikeLynch]

I am wondering about Roles #2 and 3 for units -- the Naval and Air Superiority roles. I have searched for answers and found next to nothing.

My specific question involves the Air one. As we all know, it is the role given to Fighters and Stealth Fighters and causes the "Scramble" message if a role-3 units is in a city defending against an attack.

Specific questions I have are:

- What other effects does it have that might not be immediately obvious? In other words, what did the role "mean" to the game designers?

- How does the AI use units with that role?

- What happens if you give land or sea units that role?

On the naval end:
- Must a naval non-transport unit have the Naval Superiority role for the AI to use it properly (or at all)?

- What happens if land or air units have the Naval Superiority role?

- What other effects does it have that might not be immediately obvious?

Always must we push the boundaries of this poor program.

 

[Duke of Marlbrough]

Moved to Scenario Creation since that's where more of the 'inner workings' of the game are explored.

 

[MikeLynch]

Sorry! ... I thought maybe it would be of interest to players in general, not just scenario makers.

 

[Duke of Marlbrough]

If you wanted answers I figured this may be the best place since they routinely work with this stuff, plus I left a redirect in the General Discussion Forum so everyone will still see it.

 

[kobayashi]

you may or may not be aware of the AI restrictions in build choices. It is always restricting to building the 'best' unit for each role-move combo. So one of the major uses of other roles is to assign them to hero or special units so they won't derail the AI. Generally giving air or naval superiorty to a land unit gives it an exploring/patroling trait.

Another use of the non-traditional roles is to give them to the knight and musketeer units to bypass the additional building restrictions that they generate once they become available.

Using just plain attack for naval units is fine as well. It has the reverse effect of giving the naval superiorty role to a land unit.

 

[MikeLynch]

you may or may not be aware of the AI restrictions in build choices. It is always restricting to building the 'best' unit for each role-move combo.

I think I had a partial awareness of this AI restriction. So you're saying that if a unit has, like, triple the movement rate of any other unit in the scenario, the AI *will* build it regardless of its role? Cost isn't a factor?

My specific problem is that I have an air unit the AI is building WAAAAYYY too many of. It has an Attack and Defense of zero, and I'm wondering if maybe giving it a funky flag would stop the AI from building them altogether (maybe the Defense flag?).

So one of the major uses of other roles is to assign them to hero or special units so they won't derail the AI.

Ah ha... I hadn't thought of that. Neat application.

 

[kobayashi]

Originally posted by MikeLynch

I think I had a partial awareness of this AI restriction. So you're saying that if a unit has, like, triple the movement rate of any other unit in the scenario, the AI *will* build it regardless of its role? Cost isn't a factor?

AI splits units into

attack move 1 or less,
attack move 2 or more,
defend move 1 or less,
defend move 2 or more,
anyother units.

in any of the first 4 groups, if any unit has better attack AND defend stats than another unit in the group, the latter will not be built.

For units with other roles, its practically random and much less of them are built.

 

[MikeLynch]

Well then, something's off here. Because if I'm understanding you right, between the following two units, assuming that the AI has the prereqs for both, it would always build the first one and never build the second one...

Armor,               X4,  0,  3.,0, 10a,5d,  3h,1f,  8,0,  0, Mob, 000000000000000
Satellite,           nil, 1, 30.,0,  0a,0d,  1h,1f, 20,0,  0, SFl, 100000000000001

...except that when I tested this scenario, the exact opposite happened. The AI build seemingly hundreds of Satellites.

WTF?

 

[kobayashi]

The rule only applies for domain 0 units.

for domain 1,2,3 units, the attack and defense stats have little or no bearing and cost is one of the factors.

 

[AGRICOLA]

I know for certain that Code 3, Air Superiority, allows ground units to intercept airlifts even if the units do not have the special ability to attack aircraft in flight. No idea about naval units.

 

[yoshi]

Regarding the #3 role (Air Superiority), air units with this role will tend to remain in cities, as opposed to the Attack (Bomber) role which means the air unit will tend to move on every turn, thus staying in the city for as little time as possible.

Then again, if an enemy unit is revealed by one of the AI's units, all air units, regardless of role will be set to the enemy unit's coordinates...even if they don't have enough fuel to get there (now that's brilliant AI :grad: ).

 

[Andrew Livings]

You also tend to find that AI calculations of cost vs A/D/M values tend to exclude FP and HP, which were not seriously applied in the vanilla game but can cause problems when you try to scale up units based on the latter rather than the former.

For example an attack unit with 10a, 10d, 2h 2f will not be seen as inferior to an attack unit with 10a, 10d, 4h, 4f. Always it is cost and ADM.

Also my understanding of the air supremacy role is that units are only "scrambled" if they have the "can attack air units" flag set. Agricola noted that role 3 air supremacy units do affect enemy airlifts and designers do need to be wary of this when trying to expand the AI build list by using non-standard roles.