Auto-routing alternatives
 

Please continue the discussion here so we don't clutter the bug thread.

Re: Auto-routing alternatives
 

Re: Auto-routing alternatives
 

Basically what you're saying is because SCs are hard to kill, there should be a feature that makes it easy to gaurantee killing SCs.

We should probably have more features that make it easy to gaurantee certain nations to win every game of dominions. Naa, that's a bad idea. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif


-All nations have access to SCs.
-All nations have access to ways of killing SCs.
-Infinite chaff should not be one of those ways.

I can accept the idea that chaff can be a viable way of making SCs retreat, but not a viable way of killing them.

It was MY OWN chaff that caused the death of MY OWN SC, so... you need to rethink what you are saying here.

video: http://www.elanhickler.com/misc/batt...tle_flash.html

Re: Auto-routing alternatives
 

I do not believe SC's needs more power in any way, or we have Dom2 all over again. And yes, I know some people cry like babies when they get killed but those people just have to get over it, just like with the save game debacle. They have to understand that this is only a game where much of the fun lies in the thrill of taking risks - at least for me. I do not believe I'm alone in that feeling. So, do we really need more certainties?

I like that a vast amount of chaff can take out a power gamed SC. That way the power gamer will get even more excitement when he actually do win in such a battle, perhaps using a combination of regular units and a SC. Much more fun.

Re: Auto-routing alternatives
 

Maybe Golems should get a big red lamp on their chest, that starts blinking 'bi-gon bi-gon bi-gon' when their magic energy charge is about to run out (at 50 turns into a battle).

Re: Auto-routing alternatives
 

YES! That is it! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Auto-routing alternatives
 

Please watch the video I posted. I lost MY SC because of MY chaff in my army against a lone SC. You say it's much more fun to use a combination of regular units and an SC. Yes, watch the video I posted. I used an army and two SCs against a lone SC. Yet the lone SC won because of auto-kill.

video: http://www.elanhickler.com/misc/batt...tle_flash.html

Dedas, basically because of auto-kill, using SC alone or in an army can be equally dangerous as I prove in the above video. If there was never an auto-kill feature in Dominions, I don't think anyone would be requesting it. That would be silly, wouldn't it? "My enemy's supercombatant is killing all my chaff! I think that's a bug! We need an auto-kill feature so I can press a button and make it die!" http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif However, the situation is opposite. We are requesting to remove a feature that never should have been part of Dominions.

Re: Auto-routing alternatives
 

I'm not sure if I read the battle correctly, but to me it seems like:

1) your undead chaff attacks the Tartarian, and is killed, perhaps after your mages rout.
2) Your Catoblepas attack the Tartarian, and are killed.
3) Your golem, which has been casting Drain Life up until now, and the enemy Tartarian finally meet each other. Your golem has attack 13, the Tartarian has defence 20.
4) They face off, your Golem has much more hp. I'm not sure if you had the battle paused while you showed the hp total of the Tartarian multiple times, but it seems your golem managed to keep the Tartarian's regen almost under check, until
5) Your Golem died. The Tartarian went on to kill the remaining longdead.

Is this somewhat correct? The important phase is the longdead and tartarian left after your golem died. If there was still one of your longdead (mindless) on the battlefield, and the auto-rout started, shouldn't it be dead as well? If it was the auto-kill, everyone (including the Tartarian) would have died.

I don't remember how mindlessness and routing works, but to me at least it seems like something else might have happened there. Have you generated a log and checked what it says?

Re: Auto-routing alternatives
 

I think the issue here is that golems, being mindless, die when their side auto-routs.

So it wasn't the final auto-kill feature, but the behavior of golems during the auto-rout.

Apparently mindless commanders behave like mindless units and spontaneously die instead of routing.

Conceptually, the problem may just be that mindless commanders don't really make any sense.

Re: Auto-routing alternatives
 

Sorry Endo, I wish you asked me to generate a log earlier. The turn ended late today. I guess now we can only speculate. HOWEVER! I was counting battle turns and according to my count, my golem *might* have died exactly on turn 50...

OH WAIT! I SAVED A BACKUP!... holy he** I NEVER CREATE BACKUPS!

I'm not sure how to generate a log, but let me post the game files: http://www.elanhickler.com/misc/funhouseserver.zip (C'tis password: dragon / Host password: dragon)

Let me know if I'm missing files.

Re: Auto-routing alternatives
 

Why did the longdead remain if his side had autorouted?

Re: Auto-routing alternatives
 

Sombre, that's a good question that Endo brought up. However, I doubt the tartarian could have done 123 damage in one swing. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif So that's why I think the golem just died. Plus there was no damage numbers floating above his head when he died.

Endo: I don't know where you got the idea my golem had attack of 13. He had 20 attack (15 + sunslayer bonus = 20) Sunslayer also does AOE damage. I'm just trying to defend the fact that my golem would have kicked the Tartarian's A**. Also, near the end I show you how many afflictions I caused, plus old age. That was in part because the tartarian wasn't poison resistant. Why is the tartarian not poison resistant? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: Auto-routing alternatives
 

I'm sorry I got your Golem's attack wrong. I didn't notice the +5 attack of Sunslayer at first, and didn't remember to change that part after I did.

If you launch Dominions with -ddd or similar (from command line, from shortcut, etc), just view the battle and read the log.txt (in the same folder as dom3 executable).

Re: Auto-routing alternatives
 

alright Endo, I'll have the log for you soon. For now I have to go to bed, I've been up for more than 24 hours working on homework. *dies*

Re: Auto-routing alternatives
 

I didn't see that battle of Argitoth but Golems do DIE at turn 50 on attack. Exactly when turn limit comes. From what I know they won't die earlier if their friends decide to rout.

Re: Auto-routing alternatives
 

Here's my last comments on this topic... hope we see some type of adjustment.

============

With regards to immobile commanders/units the end result should be the same result as what happens now when using map edit commands and placing two different nations on the same province. This scenario would have the defender still owning the province and the attacking immobile sitting on top without access to anything within the province. Thus next turn results in an instant battle.

This might be too much programming... so as a second option leave the auto-kill for only immobiles and provide an auto-retreat for only attackers.

An increase for battle turns would be appreciated... as time passes it's inevitable gamers will need to upgrade their computers. The computers of today and tomorrow can handle the increased battle turns. On reflection for increasing battle turns... anytime we've seen in increase for commander and unit limits we've only seen praise and happiness in the community.

==========

Re: Auto-routing alternatives
 

I just saw the auto-rout kill something for the first time. I tested an unscripted holy 4 supercombatant against independents, and because it was unscripted, it proceeded to cast Word of God at the retreating enemies. Because it was alone, and did nothing but endlessly paralyze the three units left, it retreated on turn 50. The three remaining units died on turn 75 because they couldn't get out of paralyze.

It's hard to come up with rules that would work in a situation like this. What if the mage had been a measly S2 guy lucky enough to paralyze the enemy SC for a few turns? He has no chance, better that he runs away. What if it was a single militia, but very close to the mage? Should he try to kill him in melee, or to cast Mind Burn and risk going unconscious? Attacking when all enemies are paralyzed is stupid if you're crippled and unarmed, and they are heavily armored.

The only thing I can think of would help against the turn 75 auto-kill, and not the auto-rout:
First, kill all paralyzed units. If the battle hasn't ended yet, kill all unconscious units. If the battle hasn't ended yet, kill all units.

Re: Auto-routing alternatives
 

It seems to me that the autorout/kill mechanism was implemented to prevent infinite-loop behaviors, like that mentioned by Endoperez.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I assume the cutoffs were set at 50/75 turns for Dom2, when battles were smaller, CPUs were slower, and ISPs charged by the minute.

However, people (myself included) are complaining that turn 50 is being reached before battles are reaching any sort of infinite-loop behavior, when there's still fighting to be done.

In light of all this, and the need for a simple solution that won't take pages and pages of code rewrite, I propose the following quick solution:

Increase the autorout time by 5X.
Increase the autokill time by 5X.

In other words, autorout kicks in at turn 250, autokill kicks in at turn 375.

Modern CPUs can easily handle the extra processing time, and modern networks can easily handle the occasional 375-turn-battle-containing-.trn file.

Re: Auto-routing alternatives
 

Not everyone plays Dominions with a modern computer. I've had this computer for longer than I've had DomII, so increasing the limits by 5 is way too much.

Re: Auto-routing alternatives
 

Who says it would require a more powerful computer anyway? Usually in all those extra turns very little would be happening. It wouldn't be common to get past turn 75 or so anyway.

It might be a problem with VotD though.

Re: Auto-routing alternatives
 

It wouldn't come into play often enough, and I opposed it more because I didn't like your "modern computers should be able to handle it" comment than due to not liking the suggestion.

I'd understand initiating the auto-rout at turn 125, auto-kill at 150, but 400 turns? That'd have been 350 turns of Word of God or 'waiting for one turn to get fatigue from 100 to 95" after the fatigue was enough to throw my SC unconscious.

Re: Auto-routing alternatives
 

OTHER important thing that should be done with routing mechanics:

'never routs' attibute given to the defender of the capitol [just fort, not province]. The last soldiers defending the capitol should never even think about leaving the battlefield. They have nowhere to go so they should fight till death. That's good both from thematic and gameplay aspect.

In one game cleveland attacked my army with quite large force. I have won the battle but I had elephants that died. They triggered the auto-rout sequence and it was my last province. So I have lost 38! [thirty eight!] mages! due to auto-rout into enemy territory. I could have successfully defended that fort for 10-20 turns, until someone would bring proper siege force. But no, they decided to run away into enemy territory when winning just because some elephants died. It has sense when you have a place to run away and regroup.

Re: Auto-routing alternatives
 

But you can retreat from a capital battle. If you've got other provinces, the troops can even escape and continue fighting.

You may even want all your researchers to escape and join the relieving army that was one turn away from lifting the siege before it was too late.

Re: Auto-routing alternatives
 

In history it is VERY rare that defenders, even when defending a castle or bastion, fought to the last man. Either they surrendered or found ways of escape.

Re: Auto-routing alternatives
 

It really was an extremely unsatisfying battle for both of us.

All of his mages spontaneously retreated after I paralyzed his Golem, to be lost because his fort was surrounded. I can justify this, though...they were running for their lives, and choose to surrender rather than be killed on the field; certainly not uncommon in human history.

So all that stood between me and total victory was a paralyzed Golem. My manikins start chiseling him down from 70hp...68hp...67hp......5hp...3hp when the auto-rout kicked. My commanders retreated, and the remaining ~50 manikins suffered mindless dissolution. Doh!

Re: Auto-routing alternatives
 

We are playing a game with pretenders. Most units fanatically follow their beliefs.

Routing from your last bastion shouldn't be an option. You stay there and die in the glory of your god. Well, glory of what's left from that god.

cleveland:
If there was no routing on both sides at all I think I would win that batttle. Golem was not hurt as long as my mages were there. They would banish remaining manikins and golem would probably kill your leaders.

Re: Auto-routing alternatives
 

When I'm fighting golems, if possible, I give at least a couple of cheap commanders hammer of the mountains (only 5 earth gems). It is not a huge investment but it usually pays off when you paralyzed the beast (not very hard to hit).

Re: Auto-routing alternatives
 

But most units don't fanatically follow their beliefs. Some do, some are much more cowardly. And if you're losing your last bastion, isn't that a pretty good indication that you're following a false god? Certainly enough to provoke a crisis of faith.

And again, it's not necessarily true that your capital is your last bastion, or that there is no hope of retreat from a battle in your capital.

Re: Auto-routing alternatives
 

I am now speaking about situation when it is. Especially when battle is won. At least changing 75%HP to 75%HP AND 50-75% unit count. So few high HP units do not force remaining army to rout.

Re: Auto-routing alternatives
 

Definitely. But your army routed thematically: their champion was paralyzed. My army routed athematically: it was supper time, and you can't kill a paralyzed 3hp golem on an empty stomach.

------------
Back to the topic of the thread:
I just threw 5X out there as a seemingly impossible-to-reach-without-having-entered-an-infinite-loop turn limit.

125/150 seems pretty reasonable, and would certainly be better than 50/75.

I frankly don't have enough experience to suggest "optimal" turn limits, but 50/75 is too short; simply increasing the limits would be a quick and easy way to alleviate the problem (read: available in 3.16, in time for the megagame).

Re: Auto-routing alternatives
 

cleveland:

No, my Golem had absolutely nothing to do with it. My elephants had probably around 70% HP of my whole army, golem was doing fine but 1 feebleminded mage with bodyguards decided to help the golem, they died and it was enough to get over 75% limit and start routing of my other mages. If I had no elephants it would never happen, quite stupid solution.

And about limit:
Yep, it should be really increased. Sometimes there are situation when you just cannot finish it very fast. But you need most of the time just few turns more. Usually with all that stales there are just few units and processing that is very fast. My tartarian in urapara would just get few more afflictions [I wonder what happens if he gets all possible ones] but many mindless beings would be saved from that humiliating death.

Re: Auto-routing alternatives
 

Of course the old (dom2) 75% or units was worse. 2-3 points of PD routing or dying meant your SC pretender fled the field.

Re: Auto-routing alternatives
 

I'd prefer to not see the combat length extended beyond 75 turns. In the late game you can end up with 2 big armies fighting each other, both sides with Fog Warriors up, some Army of Lead/Gold, Antimagic, Rigor Mortis, Storm Warriors, Life after Death ... etc etc. That kind of fight can just drag on and on, and mages don't help much because they fatigue out almost as fast as the armies.

What I'd like to see is, instead of death at turn 50 or 75, just move the attackers to a friendly neighboring province, as if they had retreated. No need to auto-route the attacker at turn 50 either. The defender still has a chance to wipe out the entire attacking army, by cutting off all avenues of retreat.

Re: Auto-routing alternatives
 

That would actually be far worse punishment: you have to rescript your entire army, redistribute your troops among your commanders again, etc etc. So much hassle for what was, essentially, a defeat.

You had a good point about long battles, though.

Re: Auto-routing alternatives
 

Are people seriously bumping into the auto-rout limit in pitched battles that much?? I havent seen it once in any of Dom3 games where it wasnt something that probably should have been decided by auto-rout anyway (like a horde of chaff unable to damage an SC or something).

Re: Auto-routing alternatives
 

I just hit it, I think, in a battle against Ermor. Fog Warrior regenerating chaff against Will of the Fates, Army of Lead longdead horse, with neither side having any real large area evocations to do serious damage.

The attacker broke with a lot of troops left on the field, I think it was the turn limit, but I didn't count and I'm not running it again. It ran for at least an hour.

Re: Auto-routing alternatives
 

It's a far worse punishment when units/commanders die because of a battle time limitation. It's only natural to want spending the time reorganizing the units/commanders instead of completely losing the units/commanders.
"Let's see 55 disorganized units and commanders of mine in my friendly provinces OR 55 DEAD units and commanders of mine. "

Re: Auto-routing alternatives
 

So what? You don't have to watch the whole battle.

Re: Auto-routing alternatives
 

Yes, I think rout behavior should be changed when you have no hope of retreat. It should still happen (people do panic) but the threshold should be much higher, both in terms of morale and time.

Perhaps what should happen in a case like that is if you can't rout you run for the edge of the battlefield but can't leave it. Your morale might recover over time, though.

Re: Auto-routing alternatives
 

Some of you claim that increasing the turn limit will give supercombatants more power to last longer.

A lot of you don't realize that it can go both ways. You can sometimes fail to kill supercombatants because your army runs out of turns, or maybe your army has super combatants too.

Someone else claimed that it's better to use SCs in an army as a good way to kill another SC.

You know what makes it harder to kill SCs with SCs? Say you have a huge army with a few SCs and you have a goal of killing your enemy SCs. You attack. BECAUSE you have too many units in your army, the units get in the way of your own SCs meleeing the enemy SC. Because your army retreats, they could potentially they all die, including your SC.

Lone SCs can have a bigger advantage over accompanied SCs. Someone of you who would hate to make SCs more powerful in Dom3 don't realize that you are against features in Dom3 that would make SCs less powerful, because you just don't know any better.

Re: Auto-routing alternatives
 

I still think the real answer is to get rid of time-based limits in the first place. Measure what's happening in the battle, so long as real damage (not offset by regeneration or the like) is being done it continues. If you get in a situation where they bash at each other to no effect (such as one day I sent a very good mage against some holdouts. It was overkill, I didn't worry about a battle plan. Oops--my guy buffed then started spamming skeletons, the enemy buffed and then sat there disposing of skeletons. We faced off at opposite ends of the battlefield, nobody ever directed any attack at the other.) then it's triggered.

Re: Auto-routing alternatives
 

I've had one game with multiple problems with the auto-route. The culprit was an AI monolith. All his magic was long gone, all he could do was stand there. Despite that he took back his capital from a strong PD force--*defender* auto-route. I then had multiple failures retaking it from him. IIRC I had to buff my army so they could do damage fast enough to kill him in 50 turns and I had to leave an army there to keep killing him until the battlefield overload bug ended the game.

Re: Auto-routing alternatives
 

You also don't always know when you have a hope of retreat. If you had a province at the start of the turn, then lost it, you could expect an orderly retreat, but have no where to go.

On the other hand, you could take a province next to a surrounded castle.

You could base it strictly on the situation at the beginning of the turn, but then people would complain that their precious units died because they stayed and fought against overwhelming odds.


The "morale might recover" suggestion did make me think of something that's annoyed me for a while. Priests casting sermon of courage on routing troops. Since there's no way to unrout (other than berserk?), this is pointless and shouldn't happen. Preferably, routing troops who have their morale magically boosted should get a new check to return to battle.

Re: Auto-routing alternatives
 

It's nice to find out why your army is killed, so that the next time you go to war, you can avoid making the same mistake twice. It's not always obvious from watching the first few turns. Sometimes I just want to know why one particular commander died.

Re: Auto-routing alternatives
 

The only fact that the hard turn limit was put so low was so battles wouldn't last forever for old computers at the time the game was made...

There is no good reasons currently to set a limit so low. The best alternative would be to be able to set it (up to whatever). The result would be that in most game the limit would be raised to 500 or even more. 2 reasons come to mind : the first being that most players have a decent computer, and it's stupid to limit a software for the minority that doesn't have it, and the second one is that this limit generates unwanted battle results.

Argitoth and others provided good examples of times when the hard limit doesn't make sense, and I've yet to see a valid reason for limiting this to a number so low.

Even if the solution I'd prefer would be to change the system so the fight drags on for turns. Another good solution could be a cumulative bonus to fatigue / malus to morale for every turn after a set limit. Which would add realism to a battle... after all, who can claim to fight for hours without tiring at all ?

Actually, any solution would be better than this hardcoded killing and routing abberation.

Re: Auto-routing alternatives
 

What you want here is not to stall an eventual turn limit change, it's better replay mechanisms. With all due respect, I need to tell you that you are off-topic.

What answers your problem isn't a limit to 75 turns, but :
- "go to turn XX" command,
- "go forward until this unit acts / gets hit" command,
- "go back in time" command.

Re: Auto-routing alternatives
 

Yes but Loren you are describing here a battle which *should* be decided by auto-rout. I mean you stated yourself that your army couldnt hurt the monolith. So what sense is there to continue the battle? Just auto-rout, reconfigure your army with the appropriate stuff so that the battle will actually come to completion, and then attack again.

Re: Auto-routing alternatives
 

Use the 'n' hotkey for Next Battle Turn

Re: Auto-routing alternatives
 

Yep, faster (variable speed) fast-forwarding (and the ability to rewind) would be very nice features.

The topic is 'Auto-routing alternatives'. I'm not off topic. But thanks for the respect, Booyakasha.

It takes 30 seconds for each the battle turn to resolve when I use 'n'. During that time the screen is just frozen. 200 commanders, 6000 units total. 2.8GHz P4.

Re: Auto-routing alternatives - easy solution?
 

Why not simply make it part of the options when starting a game? One for auto-rout limit and one for auto-kill, set them to default at 50/75, and allow them to be increased by 25 (?) per click.

Wouldn't that make everyone happy?