bitter pill to swallow

[Merry Jolkar]

In my case, the retreat was due to the turn limit. This turn limit is a major flaw. It means that a pretender super combatant is guaranteed to retreat whenever facing an army with more units than it can kill. For my SC VQ, that number is equal to the number of turns in the limit (which I think is 50).

I also think it strange that a flying commander cannot simply fly back to behind its castle walls! I imagine my VQ's flight instructor was pulling he r hair out when she saw her instead try to flee past the castle into the next province only to melt!

How does one suggest fixes for the next patch?

Merry

[ July 24, 2004, 13:47: Message edited by: Merry Jolkar ]

[Boron]

Originally posted by Merry Jolkar:
In my case, the retreat was due to the turn limit. This turn limit is a major flaw. It means that a pretender super combatant is guaranteed to retreat whenever facing an army with more units than it can kill. For my SC VQ, that number is equal to the number of turns in the limit (which I think is 50).

I also think it strange that a flying commander cannot simply fly back to behind its castle walls! I imagine my VQ's flight instructor was pulling he r hair out when she saw her instead try to flee past the castle into the next province only to melt!

How does one suggest fixes for the next patch?

Merry

yeah 50 turns is a bit low . i played around a bit Last days with vq's .
one not so funny thing was when i fought against ermor the ai was quite "clever" and had 10-12 dusk elders/spectators in the army + 5xx undead .
in my first attack i killed ~450 undeads before autoretreat after turn 50. the vq was NOT equipped well.
when i attacked next turn the 12 dusk elders constantly spammed sceletons and that was enough to keep my vq busy for 50 turns ^^.
the problem is that i need 3 turns for buffs and in this 3 turns the ermor dusk elder spawn 100+ undeads . then they can keep a constant spawning of new ones. it was just enough to reach turn 50 always when ~5-10 undead where left some dusk elders got beyond fatigue 100 again and spawned new skelletons .
the main problem for that is the bad ai.
at turn 3 when my buffs are finished most likely the first enemies reach my vq . also i scripted her attack rearmost or attack biggest enemy she just stayed in melee with the skelletons most time . even if she luckily attacks one dusk elder the other will most likely never be attacked because before she attacks the next one she is in melee with some garbage summons like skelettons .

i think if not equipped with really high end equipment ( some uniques ) a vq has almost no chance to ever kill 10-15 death / air mages constantly spamming skelletons or phantasmal warriors/false horrors .
50 combat turns are to short .
it should be increased to 200-250 turns .

you often lose a battle where you get luckily e.g. paralyzed for 30 turns . you would easily beat the enemy army but in the left ~15 turns you can kill only 3/4 or so of the army .
while you can't get damaged because you have e.g. soul vortex + invulnerability up .

[johan osterman]

Originally posted by Boron:
yeah 50 turns is a bit low . i played around a bit Last days with vq's .
one not so funny thing was when i fought against ermor the ai was quite "clever" and had 10-12 dusk elders/spectators in the army + 5xx undead .
in my first attack i killed ~450 undeads before autoretreat after turn 50. the vq was NOT equipped well.
when i attacked next turn the 12 dusk elders constantly spammed sceletons and that was enough to keep my vq busy for 50 turns ^^.
the problem is that i need 3 turns for buffs and in this 3 turns the ermor dusk elder spawn 100+ undeads . then they can keep a constant spawning of new ones. it was just enough to reach turn 50 always when ~5-10 undead where left some dusk elders got beyond fatigue 100 again and spawned new skelletons .
the main problem for that is the bad ai.
at turn 3 when my buffs are finished most likely the first enemies reach my vq . also i scripted her attack rearmost or attack biggest enemy she just stayed in melee with the skelletons most time . even if she luckily attacks one dusk elder the other will most likely never be attacked because before she attacks the next one she is in melee with some garbage summons like skelettons .

i think if not equipped with really high end equipment ( some uniques ) a vq has almost no chance to ever kill 10-15 death / air mages constantly spamming skelletons or phantasmal warriors/false horrors .
50 combat turns are to short .
it should be increased to 200-250 turns .

you often lose a battle where you get luckily e.g. paralyzed for 30 turns . you would easily beat the enemy army but in the left ~15 turns you can kill only 3/4 or so of the army .
while you can't get damaged because you have e.g. soul vortex + invulnerability up .

What I like about your post Boron, is that your examples works as well or better as an argument to keep a short turn limit.

[Boron]

Originally posted by johan osterman:
What I like about your post Boron, is that your examples works as well or better as an argument to keep a short turn limit.

i am not against the turn limit and i think it is necessary . the only point is that it perhaps should be extended to 75 or 100 turns instead of 50 .

i don't know if intended or not but the 50 turns work as a small limitation for sc's. that's a good thing .
if there would be no turn limit or a limit at 200+ turns sc's especially immortal ones would be even more dominant cause they could do even more damage .
it would most likely imbalance the game towards air+death magic . 10 dusk elders summoning skeletons could keep a vq most likely busy for 100 turns too with only slightly worse odds than doing that for 50 turns.

but you would need a proportionally bigger conventional army to reach the turnlimit without beeing completely wiped out . while with the current 50 turns e.g. 500 maenards may be enough to keep an sc busy until turn 50 you would need 2000 until turn 200 .

so the turnlimit indirectly weakens sc's a bit and that's good because they are already perhaps a bit too strong .
a curious question : when you decided the 50 turns battle limit did you have in mind to weaken sc's a bit or what was the main reason for 50 turns ?
i have no clue about programming but i think an alternative model of infinite combat turns would have been even easier to program .
and i see no example where an infinite combat would really Last infinite long because if you are fatigued you slowly recover and then combat goes on . so sometime there would always be a real winner .
do you btw plan unlimited or limited combat turns for dominions 3 ?

[johan osterman]

I guess JK just picked a number. I doubt anyone have any recollection why 50/75 was picked in the first place.

If you have two immobiles without offensive spells, one teleporting in, troops on both sides routing, you would end up with an infinite amount of turns. Battles where both sides have several summoners could also potentionally Last very long. The size of the .trn files would increase as well if battles Lasted longer, if battles Lasted several hundred turns and you had a few of those your trn files would get pretty big, big enough to be a bit of a bother for players playing pbem and utilising dial up modems.

[Arryn]

Originally posted by johan osterman:
Battles where both sides have several summoners could also potentionally Last very long. The size of the .trn files would increase as well if battles Lasted longer, if battles Lasted several hundred turns and you had a few of those your trn files would get pretty big, big enough to be a bit of a bother for players playing pbem and utilising dial up modems.

Might I suggest that the auto-rout turn limit be a user-configurable option at game setup, as are many other options? The default could be left as is, but allow players the ability to set it to whatever number they feel comfortable with, including a value of "zero", which the program would interpret as "no limit". This should be easy to code, and would end, once and for all, this great debate between those that disagree with the current limit and those that think everything is just fine.

-- Arryn (who's not a big fan of one-size-fits-all)

EDIT - while on the subject of user-configurability, it would also be very very nice to have all the game startup options saved/read from a .cfg/.ini file. This would make it faster/easier to set up multiple games with the same settings, or pass along settings to other players. Just be sure that good value-checking is done when the file is read. Hmm, while I'm wishing for things, an import/export for pretenders would be sweet, too.

[ July 24, 2004, 23:54: Message edited by: Arryn ]

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by johan osterman:
[QBThe size of the .trn files would increase as well if battles Lasted longer, if battles Lasted several hundred turns and you had a few of those your trn files would get pretty big, big enough to be a bit of a bother for players playing pbem and utilising dial up modems. [/QB]

Are you sure this would actually happen? From what you've said in the past, the debug dumps, as well as past bugs, battle replays seem to consist entirely of a starting seed value, the data of the combatants, and their scripted orders: Everything else is generated clientside using the random number seed given, yes? Otherwise battles would always be rather huge, particularly if there are a fairly decent number of large battles....

[Arryn]

For the issue of the auto-rout limit, the size of the turn files is of minor consequence. The majority of players of computer games, even this one, play SP. IW surely realizes this, despite the fact they designed the game primarily for MP, else the game wouldn't have an AI, nor would IW keep tweaking it as players find flaws in it. That said, if you play SP you won't be concerned with transmission of turn files. Hence, the file size issue is fairly moot.

If JK (or whomever) adds the auto-rout limit as a game setup parameter, like IW did for commander renaming, along with a warning and/or guidelines for the filesize impact, then Users who do play MP can decide for themselves (rather than have IW arbitrarily do it for them) how big the files can get and how many turns battles can go for.

It'd be a win-win for both players and IW. Players will no longer argue about why the limit is set as it is, and IW won't have to read all the Posts griping about it. Considering this is probably the single biggest remaining complaint about the game that IW can do something about, it seems to me that it'd be sensible and prudent for IW to address it. Of course, it would require a minor UI change, and we all know how IW feels about UI changes ...

[Esben Mose Hansen]

It's just a rule, and I for one do not think it is so important. I for one would rather have more themes, sites, spellcasting AI/scripting and so on than this. It also provides a convenient counter for the SuperCombantant problem. And more importantly, prevents the ever-Lasting-battle-syndrome.

You my 2?

[Arryn]

Originally posted by Esben Mose Hansen:
It's just a rule, and I for one do not think it is so important.

Perhaps if you predominantly played SP on huge maps (where you might frequently see large armies and/or very powerful lone SCs) you might see the issue a bit differently. I, personally, have not experienced the shortcomings of auto-rout, but that is because I have taken great pains to ensure that my battles won't Last that long. Even so, I expect it's only a matter of time (pardon the pun) before this questionable game design decision bites me in a tender spot.

I for one would rather have more themes, sites, spellcasting AI/scripting and so on than this.

As do I, but such things are harder to implement than changing one in-game constant to a variable and exposing it to players via the UI.

And more importantly, prevents the ever-Lasting-battle-syndrome.

I'm not advocating doing away with auto-rout. I'm advocating allowing players to decide at what point it should happen. And for the minority that doesn't want auto-rout at all, to disable it. I'm a firm believer in the "give the user as much choice as possible". IW has shown that it doesn't disagree with the concept of choice in principle, since they implemented the much-asked-for option to allow commander renaming. Which had to have been much harder to implement in the code than the change I'm proposing.