Is Ermor still broken for the AI?

Yossar · #1 September 9th, 2004, 12:46 AM

Oh ya, I had that happen in a game a few weeks ago. I thought the AI was dead so I sent an army to take the capiitol. Unfortunately it was patrolling with a lot of the units and next turn finally moved out to counterattack.

Kristoffer O · #2 September 9th, 2004, 04:04 AM

Yuo don't want the AI to play Ermor because two of the themes have economies based on autosummoning of weak undead. If the AI uses default Ermor there is no problem, but otherwise ther might be.

Undead Ermor might amass troops if they do not have enough commanders. Logistics is a problem for undead Ermor, especially if beaten in big battles. Mages are often used in research and priests to reanimate. Ordinary commanders are scarce.

The AI is not good at defending vs hordes of weak undead. If at war with Ermor the AI will spend additional money on priests, but it is not clever enough to make specific strategies vs undead. It will never try to quickly research combinations such as solar brilliance and gift of health to be able to bLast undead and keep troops with sight. It is basically stuck with the single strategy of recruiting priests, and that in itself is not enough to stop the undead hordes.

reverend · #3 September 9th, 2004, 08:16 AM

So basically, Ermor should be marked "Human player only"?

magnate · #4 September 9th, 2004, 10:32 AM

My experience with SP is that if I want to play a game against Ermor, I'll put Ermor in as one of the AI nations. If I don't fancy that, I won't.

I have had one game where Ermor still only had 5-6 provinces by the time I found them, but usually AI Ermor expands very quickly and conquers the other AIs, becoming a very hard opponent to beat. Interesting sometimes, but not every game.

CC

NTJedi · #5 September 9th, 2004, 12:10 PM

More then anything else the next patch hopefully will have some improved AI features. It's sad when the AI masses a huge army of low_class units which are starving because there's so many. You can guess the outcome of battles for the AI.
Perhaps the developers can provide a disable/enable starving for AI opponents.
Perhaps the developers can also change the formula being used by the AI on purchasing less low_class units.

Arryn · #6 September 9th, 2004, 01:30 PM

Quote:

reverend said:
So basically, Ermor should be marked "Human player only"?

No, it should be marked as MP-only. A human player using Ermor in SP is even more of a problem for the AI than an AI-controlled Ermor.

En Forcer · #7 September 9th, 2004, 06:52 PM

Okay, this makes a lot of sense. I've played about 10 more turns since I posted this and I've been consistantly hitting (and getting hit by) Ermorian armies numbering between 150 - 200 units. The AI has been fairly contstant in replenishing these guys but the funny thing is I now have 12 hero priests in my army!

My scouts show a mass of Ermorian troops (close to 500) sitting 2 provinces away and he keeps breaking off pieces to throw at me. Never moving the whole stack at once. Odd...

magnate · #8 September 10th, 2004, 06:44 AM

Yes, a HoF full of 50gp priests is very funny. Sadly they don't make much use of many of the heroic abilities - but then again they are at least able to make good use of heroic precision, which most melee heroes aren't ....

Arralen · #9 September 10th, 2004, 07:04 AM

Quote:

En Forcer said:
My scouts show a mass of Ermorian troops (close to 500) sitting 2 provinces away and he keeps breaking off pieces to throw at me. Never moving the whole stack at once. Odd...

Mmmh, maybe the next time you could pause at the start of battle and check which ermorian commanders are present. I think the AI might be sending enough commanders that it acutally would be able to send all 500 troops as well. Maybe something is 'broken' with troop grouping / squad assembly but the error does not show up with the limited number of "standard" troops but only with the hughe numbers of free summons - Does the AI assign mulitple squads to one commmander? (seldom I think) - Is there a (unintentionally) fixed max number of troops in a squad?

En Forcer · #10 September 10th, 2004, 11:59 AM

The commander assignments seem okay. The "smaller" armies are anywhere from 3 to 6 mound kings.

The big Groups that come at me are commanded by dusk elder and 2-3 mound kings.

I've put together enough troops now to push them back into their territory. We'll see what happens in the next 6 turns.