CrazyWizard
Well-Known Member
This is my final plea for that @#%!$$!~ AI you guys have build, it has completely killed the Autocombat feature.
I will try to explain why you guys have #$@#%^ up the battlesystem. without a good working autocombat feature the battle experience becomes extremely annoying, resulting in soon enough no on using it any more than strictly nessesary, essentially destroying all the hard work you guys put in the battle revamp.
Seriously if your 3 star super wonderbuffed units gets there ass whipped more than often agains 2 star unbuffed enemies on the early tournament rounds you have to admit there is a serious game problem.
Solutions:
1. revert back to the dumb AI, most likely the one that designed it found out that making the AI smarter made it no longer work.
2. Use a different AI for the player and the enemy.
When the new AI was introduced, fighting became considerably more difficult for players, to combat this the AI designers put into it some deliberate flaws to make combat easier. this can be used very effectivly by manual combatting players:
Let me explain:
One of the flaws that are programmed in the AI is that a unit will attack the biggest thread to itself first. this can be used in the example above.
when we had the old AI the hellhound (then called cerberus) would be attacking the (blossom) mages.
The new AI instead attacks the biggest thread to itself, in this example I have placed a treant in the thread range of the Hellhound, and this will make the hellhound attack the treant in round 1.
Now lets switch the tables and see what happens when you start to use the autocombat feature where you units use the exact same flaw in the player side AI.
The cerberus placed in the battle by the player is obviously there to give a decisive blow to the mage unit to elimitate this thread, in reality the cerberus decides that the orc deserter is the biggest thread to itself and decides to attack that one instead, the treants on the other had will be chasing the mage unit, whoe the cannoneers will be pounding on them round after round, especially if there is some terrain for the mage to use to avoid the treants.
The AI needs to recognise when it needs to attack it's biggest thread and when it needs to attack unit it's strong against, for example if there are only light melee/ranged units on the player side, attacking the deserter would make sense since it's the biggest thread to all the units on the field, but when multiple units of different types are fielded on the player side, then each unit should focus it's attack on the "weakest" unit instead.
The old AI just ran ahead without thinking much, this offset the problems of a bad choice,
The new AI tries to get the best out of the enemy units, this makes a bad mistake instant death as a result.
What we have seen so far is that on the steel provincies that if you are oppossed by 2 mage units, even if there weak 1 or 2 star versions you are unable to win with any unit configurations.
Now the same counts for the current Crystal tournament, if you encount a province with 2 orkdeserter you can't win any fight on the autocombat features. well you sometimes can win with golems if there arent to many abbots around and your losses are massive.
but even agains a single ork deserter a total loss is seen more than often.
right now every battle seems to be a must manual battle, this degrades the battling entertainmaint a lot, and you will see many people just give up. the thing I have heared the most the past 2 weeks is that people are considering clearing there combat units and go for all out factories instead to handle the tournament since winning normally seems to be to hard.
The first few rounds should be easily be won on autocombat mode, especially if you have a bunch of combat wonders to boost your units, only round 5-6 should need at least some "manual" input, this keeps people getting to bored from manual combat.
Also pay some attention to terrain, all these examples are with plain fields, but with the new AI even a small disadvantage on the field creates either a massive loss or a total defeat. the effect of terrain on the battle result is now dramaticly high unlike with the old AI, who essentially ignored most terrein except for 1 provincies with a nasty set of terrain that neither the new nor the old AI can handle.
I will try to explain why you guys have #$@#%^ up the battlesystem. without a good working autocombat feature the battle experience becomes extremely annoying, resulting in soon enough no on using it any more than strictly nessesary, essentially destroying all the hard work you guys put in the battle revamp.
Seriously if your 3 star super wonderbuffed units gets there ass whipped more than often agains 2 star unbuffed enemies on the early tournament rounds you have to admit there is a serious game problem.
Solutions:
1. revert back to the dumb AI, most likely the one that designed it found out that making the AI smarter made it no longer work.
2. Use a different AI for the player and the enemy.
When the new AI was introduced, fighting became considerably more difficult for players, to combat this the AI designers put into it some deliberate flaws to make combat easier. this can be used very effectivly by manual combatting players:
Let me explain:
when we had the old AI the hellhound (then called cerberus) would be attacking the (blossom) mages.
The new AI instead attacks the biggest thread to itself, in this example I have placed a treant in the thread range of the Hellhound, and this will make the hellhound attack the treant in round 1.
Now lets switch the tables and see what happens when you start to use the autocombat feature where you units use the exact same flaw in the player side AI.
The AI needs to recognise when it needs to attack it's biggest thread and when it needs to attack unit it's strong against, for example if there are only light melee/ranged units on the player side, attacking the deserter would make sense since it's the biggest thread to all the units on the field, but when multiple units of different types are fielded on the player side, then each unit should focus it's attack on the "weakest" unit instead.
The old AI just ran ahead without thinking much, this offset the problems of a bad choice,
The new AI tries to get the best out of the enemy units, this makes a bad mistake instant death as a result.
What we have seen so far is that on the steel provincies that if you are oppossed by 2 mage units, even if there weak 1 or 2 star versions you are unable to win with any unit configurations.
Now the same counts for the current Crystal tournament, if you encount a province with 2 orkdeserter you can't win any fight on the autocombat features. well you sometimes can win with golems if there arent to many abbots around and your losses are massive.
but even agains a single ork deserter a total loss is seen more than often.
right now every battle seems to be a must manual battle, this degrades the battling entertainmaint a lot, and you will see many people just give up. the thing I have heared the most the past 2 weeks is that people are considering clearing there combat units and go for all out factories instead to handle the tournament since winning normally seems to be to hard.
The first few rounds should be easily be won on autocombat mode, especially if you have a bunch of combat wonders to boost your units, only round 5-6 should need at least some "manual" input, this keeps people getting to bored from manual combat.
Also pay some attention to terrain, all these examples are with plain fields, but with the new AI even a small disadvantage on the field creates either a massive loss or a total defeat. the effect of terrain on the battle result is now dramaticly high unlike with the old AI, who essentially ignored most terrein except for 1 provincies with a nasty set of terrain that neither the new nor the old AI can handle.
