Auto-routing alternatives - Page 5

Loren · #41 April 30th, 2008, 05:59 PM

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cleveland said: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).

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.

Loren · #42 April 30th, 2008, 06:04 PM

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Ironhawk said:
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).

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.

thejeff · #43 April 30th, 2008, 06:05 PM

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.

vfb · #44 April 30th, 2008, 06:05 PM

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cleveland said:

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vfb said:
I'd prefer to not see the combat length extended beyond 75 turns...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.

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

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.

kasnavada · #45 April 30th, 2008, 06:10 PM

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.

kasnavada · #46 April 30th, 2008, 06:14 PM

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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.

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.

Ironhawk · #47 April 30th, 2008, 06:18 PM

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Loren said:
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.

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.

Argitoth · #48 April 30th, 2008, 07:11 PM

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vfb said:
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.

Use the 'n' hotkey for Next Battle Turn

vfb · #49 April 30th, 2008, 07:17 PM

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kasnavada said:

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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.

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.

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.

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Argitoth said:
Use the 'n' hotkey for Next Battle Turn

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.

iRFNA · #50 April 30th, 2008, 10:12 PM

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?