Abrasax wrote:

RedChameleon wrote:

Abrasax wrote:

RedChameleon wrote:

The one I was talking about is on Impossible. 

That's odd. I play on Serious or Impossible and I am always fighting full armies, unless they are reinforcing/replenishing as I stated before. Then they may be a handful of units but theydon't lead the charge.

One thing I have noticed (or think I have noticed) about the AI is it seems incapable of sacrificing now for later, which can be seen in their obsession with building a City Center on top tier anomalies and their inability to sacrifice a doomed army to take out a few units (they end up running away, losing half their health, then dying the next turn to battle with half health). They also like to do silly things, like building Lumber Mills in a city with one Forest tile, in the whole region. How embarrassing.

You might want to have a look, that's episode 4 of Inferno playthrough by SB on youtube. One battle is right in the beginning of the recording 11 AI units vs 6 damaged SB units. SB kills 7 AI units in 3 turns and 4 remaining ones (militia) never show up. It is not that the army wasn't full, it is that AI decided not to bring extra 4 units in to battle. 

There is another battle later where again AI had more units than it used in the battle. What it looks like actually is: AI uses all available units around the battle point including those in the city militia to calculate the approximate outcome of the battle. But then, once that is done, it is extreamly reluctant to bring militia in to the battle as reinforcements...

1. Not bringing in Militia is the usual. Without Militia in the city it can be taken with no effort. Militia is the last line of defense against invasion (fortification is added to their health as a barrier of sorts) until reinforcements can show up.

2. See above. Militia will usually not reinforce an army outside of the walls as they are critical units to hold onto the city a bit longer. The only time AI pulls out their militia is during a seige when they either run very low on fortification and they make their last stand, or they feel they will win the battle without much loss.

1. I remember now. There was an issue with AI bringing Militia in to battles and leaving the cities undefended. But now, the problem is that when AI calculates the strength of the armies it includes Militia in that equasion, but when the battle starts it doesn't bring it in. So, the factual strength of it's army is lower. So, I suppose the quick solution would be to remove Militia from the army strength calculation for AI, but only for it's own Militia as it still has to take in to account presense  of other player's Militia (including other AIs). 

Wow, what a lively discussion :)! 

Abrasax wrote:

A couple requests:

1. I would like to see an optional gameplay mode called "Sandbox Mode" where there is only one major faction, the player, but the minor factions pose a much greater threat (depending on game difficulty) to your SimCity wannabe faction (...)

2. Changes to the minor factions' basic roaming army and mercenary loadouts. It seems like they only use a few of the weapon types. This is where I think they should be: (...)

These two changes sound nice, but I'm gonna cut to the chase: I wont do them. The first one doesnt interest me personally, and I am not going to put a lot of work for stuff I personally wont use. The second one would require creating art and assets I believe (?) which I cant do.

BUT: I am not opposed to including changes like these as features, IF someone else (like say ..you :p) would want to do them. Currently the patch is mostly a one man effort, but it can grow as far as I am concerned. 

3. A change to Serum of Iteru, 50% bonuses instead of 100%, as done by ninakoru in the Military Revolution mod. Serum of Iteru just seems gamebreaking.

Agreed, change will be in the next patch.

4. Only allow status effects on successful crit, hit, or graze, but not with a miss. This includes Slow, Exhaust, Unsteady, Parasite, Shock, and more.

I would have to see how to do that, but I put it on my list.

As for the discussion about retreating and reinforcment behavior. These are things that I first addressed in patch 2.1.2. and will continue to so in the following releases. I know now where in the code stuff like this is decided and I have already addressed some issues, especially when it comes to militia reinforcements. For example in my current internal build I have reduced the likelyhood of the AI to retreat when having a big army - even when it projects a loss. Ofcourse figuring out a good balance between "retreating when too weak" and "fighting to the death in hopeless situations" will require some trial and error, but you should be able to see further improvements in that area with the next patch.

Please take note that SBs youtube videos are played with vanilla and are not reflective of the state of the AI with my patch.

LeaderEnemyBoss wrote:

As for the discussion about retreating and reinforcment behavior. These are things that I first addressed in patch 2.1.2. and will continue to so in the following releases. I know now where in the code stuff like this is decided and I have already addressed some issues, especially when it comes to militia reinforcements. For example in my current internal build I have reduced the likelyhood of the AI to retreat when having a big army - even when it projects a loss. Ofcourse figuring out a good balance between "retreating when too weak" and "fighting to the death in hopeless situations" will require some trial and error, but you should be able to see further improvements in that area with the next patch.

Please take note that SBs youtube videos are played with vanilla and are not reflective of the state of the AI with my patch.

Great. I have pinged SB a suggestion to install the patch. He was actually using AI+ previously, but at the moment he is doing his first playthrough with Inferno, so taking it slowly I suppose :) Will keep an eye on AI/Militia behaviour and other changes. 

Dear LeaderEnemyBoss,

Your work as amazing !

Would you considerate to work on rebalancing the things for the multiplayer especially ?

We got some disbalance features and we would like to play with more equilibred factions.

LeaderEnemyBoss wrote:

Wow, what a lively discussion :)! 

Abrasax wrote:

2. Changes to the minor factions' basic roaming army and mercenary loadouts. It seems like they only use a few of the weapon types. This is where I think they should be: (...)

The second one would require creating art and assets I believe (?) which I cant do.

BUT: I am not opposed to including changes like these as features, IF someone else (like say ..you :p) would want to do them. Currently the patch is mostly a one man effort, but it can grow as far as I am concerned. 

2. I'm not sure how they would require art or asset creation/modification. You can already modify loadouts in the military screen for your own units. Say, if I wanted Orc units with longbows, I would just exchange their default crossbow to longbow. All I was suggesting was that the basic roaming armies' loadouts also be adjustedto add more flavor to minor factions. Currently, they seem to focus so much on longspears and battlehammers that factions who run heavy infantry have almost no issue with minor factions (except Haunts), even on harder settings. The same applies for anyone using flying units. Currently there is no roaming army fitted with longbows (flying slayer) and the Orcs (Hurnas) should really be using longbows as default.

My proposal would add more threat to a wider variety of player units instead of the roaming armies running heavily with cavalry slayer. And no assets or art needed, just modification of the default templates for roaming armies and mercenaries (including the ones you get from quest rewards: 2 nidya units, 2 hurnas units, 2 jotus units, etc).

On a side note, there are a few mods that I believe add a lot to the base game while being fairly simple:

1. Endless Heroes by ninakoru - greatly expands the hero roster in the market so you don't see the same dozen heroes cycled every game.

2. Mightier and Magickier by Hokath - greatly expands the hero skill trees though some things should be better balanced (Ardent Mages using Parasitism for one)

3. Re-Items by ninakoru - modifies existing items to balance power levels and remove the sheer dependence on iron talismans, and adds dust-infused glassteel and titanium gear to be competitive with higher tier strategic equipment (though I feel legendary item costs should be much higher due to changes made to legendaries, especially titanium and glassteel uniques).

It would be great if these could be added as optional, but otherwise I would just love to see them be 100% compatible with your community patch. I consider them to be necessary these days and I can't wait to play the completed version with all DLCs (including Inferno) once everything is hotfixed and balanced and I can finally go back to earning achievements with these mods.

Why Amplitude? WHY!? Achievements are meant to be fun, not to be held as sacred for goal-oriented purists ...

Another simple request. Could Friendly Banner capacity (will not be attacked by roaming armies) be added to the Yellow Bathysphere from the quest Yellow Bathysphere, Yellow Bathysphere... you receive in the Tempest DLC?

Currently, outside of pure novelty thanks to this cheeky reference (Yellow Submarine), it's a very lackluster vessel. Adding Friendly Banner to this vessel would give it some utility in scouting the oceans without drawing aggro from the patrolling Fomorian vessels out at sea. As it stands, the quest reward make this one lousy waste of time.

@Jojo_Fr I will do some balance work when I am confident in the change, but I probably wont make sweeping changes like you want them to have (and especially not as fast as you want them to have). For Kapaki balance I will probably wait and see what NGD does with them before taking action. If you want quick, fast large balanbce changes, you honestly should create your own mod :). ELCP is mod compatible after all.

Abrasax wrote:

2. I'm not sure how they would require art or asset creation/modification. You can already modify loadouts in the military screen for your own units. Say, if I wanted Orc units with longbows, I would just exchange their default crossbow to longbow. All I was suggesting was that the basic roaming armies' loadouts also be adjustedto add more flavor to minor factions. Currently, they seem to focus so much on longspears and battlehammers that factions who run heavy infantry have almost no issue with minor factions (except Haunts), even on harder settings. The same applies for anyone using flying units. Currently there is no roaming army fitted with longbows (flying slayer) and the Orcs (Hurnas) should really be using longbows as default.

My proposal would add more threat to a wider variety of player units instead of the roaming armies running heavily with cavalry slayer. And no assets or art needed, just modification of the default templates for roaming armies and mercenaries (including the ones you get from quest rewards: 2 nidya units, 2 hurnas units, 2 jotus units, etc).

Okay, I misunderstood you. I MAY do that, but its not a big priority for me. I have limited time after all. Now if some other user that is interested in that feature would try to do it themselves , I could ofcourse integrate such changes (or that user could release it as a seperate mod). We even have some helpful modders in our discord that would help that other user ;)

1. Endless Heroes by ninakoru - greatly expands the hero roster in the market so you don't see the same dozen heroes cycled every game.

2. Mightier and Magickier by Hokath - greatly expands the hero skill trees though some things should be better balanced (Ardent Mages using Parasitism for one)

3. Re-Items by ninakoru - modifies existing items to balance power levels and remove the sheer dependence on iron talismans, and adds dust-infused glassteel and titanium gear to be competitive with higher tier strategic equipment (though I feel legendary item costs should be much higher due to changes made to legendaries, especially titanium and glassteel uniques).

2. anbd 3. change the game too much in my opinion to be part of ELCP. You can always just use these mods in conjunction with ELCP if you like them. 1. ..... maybe, but I would have to vet all the new heroes to see how well the fit. So it will take a while.

About the yellow bathysphere change: sure, why not.

Not sure if this is the offcial patch or this patch or the game.

Diplomacy seems bonkers.Allies never want trade,research deals,etc and seem to act like neutrals..

I am getting market bans while being in good relations with the Roving clan and so are all the others.Might be what some human players might do but not sure this improve the gameplay as the A.I cant really deal with it and hence makes their armies worse.

Indeed, I ended up with the same conclusion with those mods. It's a shame with Endless Heroes cause it's a really nice idea, I wish someone would pick it up and rebalance it while also adding new heroes for say Kapaku cause with the mod I noticed you barely see any of them. I also eventually stumbled into the problem of longer 8 player matches that without heroes having numbers after them you can end up with copied heroes even with the expanded roster but their names are exactly the same which can be confusing.

Overall I just wish there was a way to rename the heroes, it'd been a better feature, but I assume that can't be implemented and something to add on the list for EL2.

CeltiK wrote:

Abrasax wrote:

On a side note, there are a few mods that I believe add a lot to the base game while being fairly simple:

1. Endless Heroes by ninakoru - greatly expands the hero roster in the market so you don't see the same dozen heroes cycled every game.

2. Mightier and Magickier by Hokath - greatly expands the hero skill trees though some things should be better balanced (Ardent Mages using Parasitism for one)

3. Re-Items by ninakoru - modifies existing items to balance power levels and remove the sheer dependence on iron talismans, and adds dust-infused glassteel and titanium gear to be competitive with higher tier strategic equipment (though I feel legendary item costs should be much higher due to changes made to legendaries, especially titanium and glassteel uniques).

Why would you want these mods to be included in the community patch? You can install them separately. I've tried Endless Heroes because I liked the idea of having more unique heroes instead of clones with different numbers in their names, I bet that's what you want too. But I quickly uninstalled the mod because the new heroes were much more powerful than the vanilla ones and that broke my game. Same with Re-Items, some of them were made completely OP and with the AI incapable of retrofiting its armies it was like cheating. I ended up not using any items at all!

It's ok if you like those mods but just install them alongside the community patch, I'm pretty sure they don't conflict.

I think you missed this part of the statement:

Abrasax wrote:

It would be great if these could be added as optional, but otherwise I would just love to see them be 100% compatible with your community patch. 

Ashbery76 wrote:

Not sure if this is the offcial patch or this patch or the game.

Diplomacy seems bonkers.Allies never want trade,research deals,etc and seem to act like neutrals..

I am getting market bans while being in good relations with the Roving clan and so are all the others.Might be what some human players might do but not sure this improve the gameplay as the A.I cant really deal with it and hence makes their armies worse.

So what I did is I fixed a whole bunch of bugs that often times prevented the AI to engage in diplomacy at all. Sot its possible that they were always mad at you, but before I fixed the bugs, it couldnt act on its rage ;). In general I actually try to make the AI a bit more reasonable. They are more likely to make friendly requests or ask for help in a war (they actually couldnt do that in vanilla due to a bug). But this is ofcourse an ongoing process. Your feedback would be better if you could give more information. The AI usually displays why it doesnt like you in the diplomacy screen. Its also possible that you where near a victory, they dont like that at all. If you play without mod, I can also take a look at your save if you upload it.

In my current game I have a long lasting alliance with two other AI empires against two big ones - this is the kind of block building I like and am trying to achieve. But that wont happen every game ofcourse, there is a random element to it. For example AIs can roll a random personality, and sometimes its an aggressive one. 

@Abrasax

These mods should be as compatible with the community patch as they are compatible with the current vanilla version. If they dont cwork correctly for current versions of vanilla/ELCP, the mod creators need to update them (or someone new has to take on the mantle ;) ).

So do I uninstall the last patch to put this one on or just install over it???

OK thanks!

Btw you can always see if it worked by looking at the lower left of the main menu screen. Even if something goes wrong and your game doesnt start anymore - just verify cache with steam and reinstall ELCP. The game is robust, it wont cry ;).

Guys, my patch had a bug that could lead to the AI locking up. I released a hotfix already. Im sorry :(

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