Re: Turbocharged AI vs Humanities Last Hope - Running
 

I saw that province with only one wraith lord, I am one province away.

Re: Turbocharged AI vs Humanities Last Hope - Running
 

You can go ahead and take it if you'd like.
I'll redirect my northern force down to Abysia.
That fight proved tougher than I anticipated...

Re: Turbocharged AI vs Humanities Last Hope - Running
 

Turn 21 is up.

Hows everyone going so far?

I'm intending upon doing this type of game again and would appreciate some feedback about how your finding the pacing, level of AI threat (perceived and/or real), the slower research and anything else worth commenting on.

Re: Turbocharged AI vs Humanities Last Hope - Running
 

Well killed an Atlantian scout at my castle in province 56 so their a very aggressive AI and I don't doubt I am on their very near future hit list. Just took province 10 which Niefel had expended ALOT of troops on prior turn so I met typical normal troops and only 1 devil this time. Then they attacked me, soooo not sure if the AI will take it as war or not.

Really, and I mean REALLY starting to hate this mod. The new province I just captured only has two barbarian units and both 9k to recruit.

Building my third fort in the extreme south. Having to waste some death gems on summoning some black servants. But have one equipped with bane venom charm and I'm going to use him to weaken Niefel's capital. My second keep is isolated from my main province keep so hard to get a decent recruitment of mages started there but hopefully next turn i should have a sauromancer there to build a lab. Seriously considering an all out push into Niefel's territory considering his fight with Atlantis.

Re: Turbocharged AI vs Humanities Last Hope - Running
 

I don't like the better independents mod either.

I'm scared of the AI. I'm Scared of the independents, lol. I have yet to clear the independents around my starting point due to how hard they were, that kind of blows. Otherwise, I'm having a lot of fun.

Re: Turbocharged AI vs Humanities Last Hope - Running
 

Mauxe, I saw that fight you had with Abysia a turn or two ago - the one in which your elephants turned and routed through your Spire Horn Archers. It looked rough. :(

You haven't solicited any advice on this, so feel free to tell me to go stuff it (maybe you already know this stuff), but I noticed something and thought I'd share. That army you sent againt Abysia had a decent chance of stomping them, or at the very least doing a lot more damage. Mammoths are great for cracking heavy infantry (if you send enough of them - in small numbers they can still be mobbed). However, there were 2 problems with that army as I see it:

1. Too many archers.
2. Starvation.

1. Archers aren't likely to perform very well against Abysia. You're going to see a lot of heavy infantry from Abysia, with prot in the mid teens and many of them have shields. These kinds of guys will largely ignore archer fire. Sure a lucky shot will get through here and there, but in general those heavily armored boys aren't going to be much hampered by the arrows bouncing off their armor. Your mamoths are a different story. Their protection is down around 10, isn't it? That's low enough that they could take some serious damage from your volleys, and since tramplers get right in among the enemy, the arrows will be falling all around them.

2. Starvation is an army killer. It looked like all the guys you had in that fight were diseased, in many cases with additional afflictions besides. Starvation causes disease, and also lowers morale by 4! Your mamoths and all your archers were in single digit morale (what was it - morale 6 on the archers, 8 on the mamoths?). No army will give a good account of itself with morale like that.

That area where you're fighting has a lot swamps, which are really low supply. Best thing would probably be to forge some bags of wine or cauldrons of broth. I have nature mages and can forge some for you if you need.

Overall, I'm enjoying myself so far. :) More specifically...

Semirand: The tough indies from semirand have been amusing, but my feelings on them are mixed because I think they've really hampered AI expansion. Usually at this point in a non-semirand game (Winter of 2nd yr), I'd be in a fight to the death with at least one AI, but as it is it seems like they're still sorting out their borders and dealing with indie provinces. Obviously Atlantis and Niefelheim have both done reasonably well in expansion (I don't have intel on TC), but Abysia seems to have been really hampered. This is all really a feeling though. As buff as NTJedi apparently made these AIs, they may yet come out bigger than I realize (and I do expect dealing with Atlantis to be tough), but at this point my confidence is high. Net result, thus far I think semirand has entertained me greatly, but also helped me in keeping the AIs at bay while I get my research up to spec. So don't take this as a complaint, having to be careful / creative during expansion has been interesting. However, I think it may've messed up the AIs a bit.

Hard Research: No complaints. I don't have a feel for the level of research by the AIs, but I feel like it is slowing down the players in becoming uber. I think the pain of this would be more acute on a non-semirand map.

Graphs: I think graphs on would be a good thing, just in terms of measuring the state of things / how well the AI is performing. I can scout out their province growth, but I don't have a good sense of how they're doing in other respects. In a game where you're doing experiments and trying to gauge how well things come together, it'd be easier to see how well this stuff is working if we had graphs.

Better Independents: BI can be a pain for Kailasa. The monkeys are seriously vulnerable to archers, and so more archers is never good news. On the other hand that can present a challenge, and I knew to expect it from the word go. I haven't actually experienced the mega archer horder yet, though, since I'm not yet at war with the AI. BI also means that it's harder to find indie chaff that's recruitable. Some nations don't care about that because their national troops are so much better than indies, but I think Kailasa likes to recruit indies for niche uses. IMO, indie light infantry with their shields make better arrow screens than any monkey troops, but BI makes about half of these unavailable (you can only recruit the ones with javelins - the no javelin types cost 9K). Finding a province with the right kind of light infantry that has enough resources to recruit a decent number (especially with my sloth scales) isn't easy. I lucked out on finding a prov that yields a decent number, but I could just as easily still be hunting for them.

On the other hand, anything that weakens the players while simultaneously improving the AI is probably still worth doing for a game like this. The worst is when you stomp the AIs with no difficulty at all - game over. If the game is presenting us with a challenge, BI probably deserves some credit for that.

Exactly. Scared of the AIs is a thumbs up for the AI buffing. Scared of the indies is a thumbs up for semirand. Scared is good. :) Frustrated is bad. I haven't been frustrated yet - and there has been some fear. That's an overall thumbs up.

AI Buffing: Thumbs up to Doo and NTJedi. :) I haven't been able to measure the full effect of this yet, but in the scouting I've done and battles I've watched, I think the tailor-made AIs are much better than the random AIs you normally get in SP (at least Atlantis and Niefelheim look pretty kick @**). I think all the AIs would've fared better without semirand, but that's just my impression at this point. We'll see how it goes...

AI Numbers / Teams: I know I'd be sweating things more if we had another AI or two on this map, and/or all the AIs were teamed (ie. if Atlantis wasn't distracting Niefelheim). Don't know how the other players feel about this, but Kailasa is actually getting a lot more breathing room than expected since the AIs are busy messing with each other instead of me.

Re: Turbocharged AI vs Humanities Last Hope - Running
 

I do appreciate the feedback. I'm still fairly new to the game and a lot of things still elude me...

Generally I get that "starving" message right after conquering a province. Is the only way to prevent that having supply items (or a smaller army)?

Is there a way to reverse the diseased troop process?

Re: Turbocharged AI vs Humanities Last Hope - Running
 

If your army eats more supply than what's produced by the province you're in, you get the starvation message. Insufficient supply for even a single unit will give you that message, but how many units actually suffer starvation (and get diseased as a result) I believe to be related to how much the needs of your army exceed the available supply. In other words, if you're only a couple of points over the supply limit of a province, you're probably OK (just don't dawdle there). If your army wants double the available supply, you're in trouble. The exact ratio where it becomes a serious problem - that I'm not so sure about.

Here's a thread that talks about starvation:

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=35873

The short answer is no.

The global Gift of Health removes afflictions on all friendly troops within your dominion. The unique artifact The Chalice heals afflictions of units that reside in the same province as the unit that holds it. And some units in the game have the healer ability, which allows them to heal units. Some nations have healers as recruitables (Arcoscephale & ?), otherwise if you have high level nature mages and a lot of conjuration research you can summon Faery Queens.

http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Faerie_Court
http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Priestess

With the possible exception of Gift of Health (and that only when you're operating in friendly dominion), in general if your army is heavily diseased, it's toast. Most human sized troops don't have enough health to survive long enough for you to do anything about it once they become diseased. 10 HP goes away really quickly.

Re: Turbocharged AI vs Humanities Last Hope - Running
 

Once they get diseased they automatically rack up other afflictions as well.

Its not uncommon for a diseased unit to have its arms fall off. Disease in the world of Dominions is rough.

Re: Turbocharged AI vs Humanities Last Hope - Running
 

Turn 23 is up.