Quick bits of feedback after about 100 hours of play

[diamondspider]

Originally posted by Zen:
That's good news for me. The computer is inept as far as firing on my commanders Maybe you just got unlucky.

I thought that was the case for a while Zen. Then I had the following situation occur.

The computer had a unit of ONE crossbow troop. I had 6 commanders on the field. By chance, the one crossbow guy was left unharried in a huge and important battle.

What did that guy do the ENTIRE battle? He shot at my MAIN commander over and over (about 6 time) and finally killed him thereby winning.

No way was that luck. My commander was surrounded by about 20 units and was also summoning skeletons by the bushel.

Also, Kriss or Johan did confirm that he thought this might be the case in another thread (I can dig the quote up if you want).

So, YES, I think you are just getting lucky or maybe it is Pythium specific somehow.

[ January 29, 2004, 03:42: Message edited by: diamondspider ]

[Arryn]

Originally posted by diamondspider:
OF COURSE! My commanders are always kissing the back wall.

I had several cases in my Last game where Pythium won battles that I had probably double the number (and power) of troops by moving about 20 Xbows up until they could hit my main commander and raked it over and over.

Then split your forces and be sure the one to the side of the field has orders to target enemy archers. The center force should then engage the enemy infantry, while the side force will go look for those pesky archer types. Archers tend to have low morale so they should rout quickly and your problem will then be over. This tactic should work even better if the archer-hunters have their own leader with a horror helm or other such fear-inducing item or ability.

If you outnumber (and outpower) your foe there's little reason why you should allow the enemy archers to get free shots at your leaders. If you engage the archers, they'll be too busy to shoot things you very much don't want to see killed.

[diamondspider]

Originally posted by Arryn:

quote:

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Originally posted by diamondspider:
OF COURSE! My commanders are always kissing the back wall.

I had several cases in my Last game where Pythium won battles that I had probably double the number (and power) of troops by moving about 20 Xbows up until they could hit my main commander and raked it over and over.

Then split your forces and be sure the one to the side of the field has orders to target enemy archers. The center force should then engage the enemy infantry, while the side force will go look for those pesky archer types. Archers tend to have low morale so they should rout quickly and your problem will then be over. This tactic should work even better if the archer-hunters have their own leader with a horror helm or other such fear-inducing item or ability.

If you outnumber (and outpower) your foe there's little reason why you should allow the enemy archers to get free shots at your leaders. If you engage the archers, they'll be too busy to shoot things you very much don't want to see killed.

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I have to disagree with you here. The range of crossbows makes it VERY easy to just put them behind serveral melee unit close to the front and do MANY hits on my commanders by the 2nd round of combat.

There is no defense against this except getting high air blessings, using magic to lower the power of missile fire, or giving crazy amounts of protection to all commanders. Also, I suppose that IF I had fliers I could tell them to hit the archers and hope they selected the same unit that was targeting my commanders.

However, the MAIN issue is that the computer is CHEATING!

[ January 29, 2004, 03:47: Message edited by: diamondspider ]

If it's cheating, it's allowed

I don't think so though, in all the games that I've played (which is quite a few) I've never had some single crossbowman gun for a commander (though I wish they would).

Though my common practice isn't to put my commanders near enough of a mass of troops to warrant a type 'closest, rearmost, cavalry' etc. They have enough space that if a random arrow flies off and hits them, its their just deserts, but it's very hard to directly target a command position.

Like I said, maybe you were unlucky. The game is filled with variables.

[Arryn]

Originally posted by diamondspider:
I have to disagree with you here. The range of crossbows makes it VERY easy to just put them behind serveral melee unit close to the front and do MANY hits on my commanders by the 2nd round of combat.

There is no defense against this except getting high air blessings, using magic to lower the power of missile fire, or giving crazy amounts of protection to all commanders. Also, I suppose that IF I had fliers I could tell them to hit the archers and hope they selected the same unit that was targeting my commanders.

However, the MAIN issue is that the computer is CHEATING!

I agree that the real issue is that the AI cheats since humans cannot target commanders. That said ...

I haven't been having this sort of problem, even in the rare battles when the enemy has crossbow (rather than regular bow) units. Of course, since my preferred nations are Jotun or R'lyeh that may have more than a bit to do with why I haven't seen what you describe. It may be that in the AI's targetting priority scheme it looks for "closest large enemy" in preference to "enemy leader" and almost all my units are "large", so they shoot the guys in the front. Which is more than fine by me as they can take the hits (well, the guys in the back can too, and even more so as they have more HPs than common troops).

What nation were you playing as when you were being victimized by the nefarious snakes? And what sort of leaders were you having killed (their HPs, magic types/levels, etc.)?

[diamondspider]

Well, suffice it to say that anything is possible.

However, it happened to me several times in one session of C'tis vs. Pythium and really annoyed me.

Here is the quote from Kristoffer O in a post regarding this issue (or a very similar one) that he answered in the List Game Bugs Here sticky on 1/10/04:

"It might be that the AI still remembers how to give the order 'fire at enemy commanders'."

If it was some sort of strange luck deal, it was still unrealistic for a single crossbowman to pick out one commander from literally 100+ troops and kill him in 2 shots from the start of the battle. If it is a bug, it is one that made that game very unfun.

[ January 29, 2004, 04:06: Message edited by: diamondspider ]

[LordArioch]

About the starting positions...you can set that in maps, but whereas you view starting in a corner as an advantage, I think it's a disadvantage. Starting near but not touching a corner would probably be optimal, but in one limits nearby provinces too much for my liking. I remember one game where I started in the one spot in the map with only one adjacent land province. Let's just say my capitol's admin didn't help much.

And about the AI firing at commanders...thinking of it I have seen that at least once from the troll archer, who targets my leaders and kills them one by one. Can't think of anyone else doing it, but if we bother the developers they'll probably fix it in the next patch.

[ January 29, 2004, 04:46: Message edited by: LordArioch ]