Ambush

[quartex]

I understand. However if we tinker with ambush to allow a free attack on any enemy unit that enters your ZoC (which is something I would be interested in seeing), then ambush would be very different from other kinds of invisibility.

The point is that as we modify what ambush does and when it is active, it might be useful to the player to know why their unit is currently not visible to the enemy.

On a related point, since ambush is an elven ability for now (I could see other elves besides the ranger maybe getting it in the future), and since all elves have a ranged attack (even the fighters have some skill with bows), it seems that ranged attacks are sort of a racial specialty. Thus it would make sense that an ambush attack should be ranged. Think of the ambush as allowing the unit to snipe an enemy, to get one shot off at the enemy without giving the enemy a chance to respond. We don't want the elven ambusher to be able to get damaged or die because of their special ambush ability, so it makes sense that a surprised ranged attack would allow them to deal damage without getting hurt.

[Insinuator]

Aye, it would make no sense for a unit in the "ambusher's"(I use the term loosely) zone of control to be able to counter attack with ranged. They would be unaware of where the bolts came from. However, if the attack was to be direct, then obviously then ambushed unit would be able to strike back. You can't clash swords with one sword.

[quartex]

You could argue that a really fast melee attack ambushing a surprised unit could allow you to hit once and flee without getting hurt, but it is a lot less realistic that if you restrict the zoc free attack to a ranged attack. And I like the idea of elves sniping out of trees.

Or by extension the night-ambush ability allowing the undead unit to launch of missle or wail out of the darkness, and it's unit would have no idea where the attack was coming from.

[Dave]

I would like to point out that the only reason we're really having this discussion is because I chose 'ambush' as the name for 'forest invisibility'.

If we want to go ahead and make the Ranger/Avenger be able to ambush enemies in the forest, then that's fine, but let's step back for a moment and decide whether they should really ambush their enemies, or simply be invisible in forest.

David

[quartex]

Heh, this bring back the point I made a few weeks back about how ambush wasn't the best name for forest-invisibility.

However the reason why we started postulating on ways of beefing up ambush, were the posts about how it wasn't very good, and didn't seem to be an advanatage for rangers. Before (I think) an enemy had to bounce into your unit to reveal it, now it just has to move next to it. It is true that the reason why Ambush isn't very useful in the current version is that the AI ignore invisible units when it plans it's moves becuase it doesn't know they are there, so it can just plough through them. However even if we fix the AI so that it can detect units when it is adjacent to them, and change it's move, there still isn't much advantage offensively to the skill. It allows you to hide the ranger so it hopefully won't get attacked, but otherwise it isn't that useful, especially for a level 3 unit.

By the way we might also have a problem with invisible units and the undo command. What's to keep a player from searching for an invisible unit my moving a scout through part of the first, undoing the move and searching a different part until he combs through the entire forest. Nothing. Now this may not be a tactic that the computer would abuse, but in multiplayer games a player could. Now currently combat prevents using the undo command (for obvious reasons), if the ranger could ambush an enemy, then perhaps recieving that attack could count as a one-sided combat and thus prevent the player from undoing the move command and retreating the scout. Thus you could search each part of the forest with a scout, over and over again, but if you found the ranger, the scout was stuck. Otherwise the player could just retreat the scout and then send stronger units to take out the ranger.

I doesn't solve the problem, becuase abusing the undo commands can always be used to find enemy's invisible units, but at least by allowing the ranger to ambush the unit that discovers it, we can make the scout pay for it's discovery.


P.S. Wasn't there also talk of giving spearmen first strike against mounted units? Any progress in that. I think you mentioned that that might also be a unit where having ambush capability would be useful, to be able to throw a spear at an enemy that gets close.

[Icekiss]

Spearmen are a different topic, because they are not invisible and thus there aren't any ZOC problems as is. And if I have understood correctly, whats in discussion is altering the attack sequence, not onesided combat.
And it already has its own thread

And of course a move that discovers a hidden unit won't be undoable, just like everything else that reveals new informations to the player (think fog of war).

[miyo]

Before (I think) an enemy had to bounce into your unit to reveal it, now it just has to move next to it.

Before ambush did not work at all in multiplayer games, human players did see the unit, AI just skipped the hex as hex it can not enter.

It is true that the reason why Ambush isn't very useful in the current version is that the AI ignore invisible units when it plans it's moves becuase it doesn't know they are there, so it can just plough through them.

Fix is being worked in CVS, planned to be fixed in next release - when there are invisible units around every moment will be checked if there are invisible units around. Moving through/passing by invisible units is a bug. Invisible units do have ZoC enemy just does not see it before ambush wears off.

By the way we might also have a problem with invisible units and the undo command. What's to keep a player from searching for an invisible unit my moving a scout through part of the first, undoing the move and searching a different part until he combs through the entire forest.

Shroud and fow bring their own share to undo matter.

Now this may not be a tactic that the computer would abuse, but in multiplayer games a player could. Now currently combat prevents using the undo command (for obvious reasons), if the ranger could ambush an enemy, then perhaps recieving that attack could count as a one-sided combat and thus prevent the player from undoing the move command and retreating the scout. Thus you could search each part of the forest with a scout, over and over again, but if you found the ranger, the scout was stuck. Otherwise the player could just retreat the scout and then send stronger units to take out the ranger.

Event that "mutates" game prevents undo... being ambushed even without attack prevents undo.

I doesn't solve the problem, becuase abusing the undo commands can always be used to find enemy's invisible units, but at least by allowing the ranger to ambush the unit that discovers it, we can make the scout pay for it's discovery.

Enemy can not retreat/move after being ambushed.

For further information please read http://wesnoth.whitevine.net/forum/phpB ... .php?t=837

- Miyo

[Dave]

quartex is right though, that the only 'proper' solution to the undo problem is make it so that if there is a single enemy ambushing unit on the map, undos should be disabled if any of your units move next to any forest tile. You have gained the knowledge that there is no ambushing unit there.

However this is too harsh a restriction on undo to consider, so we will just make it that the undo buffer is cleared once a unit uncovers an invisible unit.

David

[quartex]

I agree dave, not allowing undo with any forest movement is too harsh.

"Event that "mutates" game prevents undo... being ambushed even without attack prevents undo."

Cool, I'd been confused because the most common form of mutating the game is combat. But I suppose you also can't undo summoning units either.

Still this brings us back to the roiginal question, if a unit is scouring the forest for a hidden ambush unit, should there be some penalty for actually finding the hidden unit? I realize that next turn the ranger could try to hide again (if the forest is big enough), so a smart player will have several other units ready to swoop down upon the discovered ranger the turn he is discovered to kill him or at least prevent him from fleeing. So if a ranger is behind enemy lines and there are tons of enemy units nearby, not even ambush will keep him hidden, and i admit that 1 free attack won't make that much different in his survival. It essentially allows him to prick the enemy scout who discovered him.

I could see a situation when a forest was at a bottleneck and you used a ranged to try to hold the line, and thus the attacking ambush ability becomes useful defensively.

I think that being able to hurt the unit that discovers you is a good tradeof for being discovered. However I admit that there is currently a standard in wesnoth that you can't get hurt just moving your units around, any any ZoC attack would violate this. Any free attack in your ZoC would change this, is this a standard we don't want to change?

[Dave]

"Event that "mutates" game prevents undo... being ambushed even without attack prevents undo."

Cool, I'd been confused because the most common form of mutating the game is combat. But I suppose you also can't undo summoning units either.

There are plenty of things you can't undo, other than attacking:

- any movement which uncovers any fog of war or shroud
- recruiting, because that uses random numbers to decide the unit's traits. You shouldn't be able to keep recruiting a unit, deciding you don't like its traits, and undoing it.
- recalling, because recruiting is disallowed anyway, and it'd be a pain to implement just for the sake of allowing recalling to be undone.
- any movement which triggers a game event. A game event is anything the scenario designer has specified will happen when a unit moves to a certain location. E.g. you can't move to a cage of mermen, free the mermen, and then undo the move. If you're walking through the forest, and the scenario designer has made a horde of orcs appear when you move on a certain tile, you definitely can't undo that

David

[matta]

Bug: the new ZOC sutff for ambush applied to my own units! E.g. I had an invisible avenger and couldn't move my own archers and fighters past him -- as soon as they got next to him they could no longer move.

This with a build made from CVS 12:01am Monday.

[Dave]

Bug: the new ZOC sutff for ambush applied to my own units! E.g. I had an invisible avenger and couldn't move my own archers and fighters past him -- as soon as they got next to him they could no longer move.

This with a build made from CVS 12:01am Monday.

I have committed a fix to this bug to CVS. Try again

David

[RavenBlack]

I tend to agree with Dave that ambush shouldn't have an attack associated with it, and disagree with those people who think it's useless. For example, one could stick an ambush-capable unit in front of a knight - the enemy is likely to bring forward ranged units to attack the knight 'free', run into the ambush, and be stuck fighting missile-to-missile. (Not only that, but missile-to-missile where the elf has a 70% resistance to being hit - unless the attack is magic.)

It's certainly better than nothing at all, which makes it not useless. (Assuming the zone of control things are all sorted out by now.)

How about renaming it to 'conceal', to remove the misconception that's been caused by calling it 'ambush'?