Fault combat behaviour by leaders

shevegen · Post by **shevegen** » February 26th, 2007, 3:00 pm

Leaders sometimes run to an enemy unit and kill it, instead of RECRUITING units.

I have noticed this in campaigns with moderate difficulty and more lately.

It is bad because, if my allied leader dies, the game is over.
But I have no control over him.

My suggestion is simple:

- If he has money, the leaders first tactic must always default to recruit
units.

I have had scenarios where the silly leader didnt recruit more than 3 units.

And the same scenario with some other stuff happening, he recruits more
than 12 units...

I can tell you, it makes a big difference, cuz if he has many units, he
doesnt die as quickly...

Post by **zookeeper** » February 26th, 2007, 4:06 pm

If this tends to happen in some particular campaign/scenario (is this the case?), you should notify the author (or at least mention which campaign/scenario). If you think it happens almost everywhere, then...well, I suppose the AI could be tweaked, but that's rather hard. The normal AI controls available for scenario creators should be sufficient to prevent overly foolish behaviour, I think.

If there's enemies within reach of an AI leader, chances are it does something silly (like attacks if it thinks it could kill something), but usually that's nice since the majority of AI leaders are enemies.

Post by **Darth Fool** » February 26th, 2007, 8:01 pm

Please post a save game.

Note that AI leaders can get more money over time if you let them control villages, so that two different attempts at a scenario might result in the enemy being able to recruit vastly different number of troops. The AI should already recruit units before moving its leader. If it does not then this is a bug, and a save game demonstrating this will be emensely helpful in debugging it.

Zendra · Post by **Zendra** » February 26th, 2007, 8:06 pm

Ack. The same has happened to us several times. Once, a necromancer had pretty much reigned supreme over a large coastal map, since he took most villages on the map with bats during the first days into the game. After having had much trouble with a horde of undead that he seemingly only built more and more of (silly us having too many villages on that map), we built a large group of mermen to wait in the deep waters on the only side of his castle that he didnt protect, only to discover once we charged blindly on-shore... the [censored] came out to greet us himself. Okay, so magic hurts as hell, but left him to be slaughtered in little more than two turns. Sure, the undead horde still remained a problem (and soon had the mermen mostly turned into fish-smelling zombies and experience for the skellies), but with their leader vanquished, we could concentrate a whole lot more on other targets.

witek · Post by **witek** » February 27th, 2007, 10:21 am

I noticed it on many random maps too. It seems AI generally is attacking mindlessly in various situations. I noticed possibility of attacking without a chance of retaliate (despite the fact other units will kill him next turn), and possibility of killing the unit. Saw many times leader running like even 5-6 moves away from his castle, not to mention losing normal units stupidly too. Conclusiom - AI is lured out too easily, doesnt matter if we speak about leader or not.

IB · Post by IB » February 27th, 2007, 10:50 am

witek wrote:It seems AI generally is attacking mindlessly in various situations.

Funny something without a mind attacks mindlessly isn't it?

Post by **irrevenant** » February 28th, 2007, 12:03 pm

Have you checked that he isn't out of money?

witek · Post by **witek** » March 1st, 2007, 9:00 am

he was out of castle for like 5 turns (several villages owned)

Post by **Darth Fool** » March 2nd, 2007, 3:50 pm

witek wrote:he was out of castle for like 5 turns (several villages owned)

Yes, but how much gold did he have? If he already had several units, upkeep might have been preventing him from making any significant profit.

As a side note, this sort of thing is much easier to sort out with a save game. Then people can just go and look for themselves for some of these details as opposed to continually asking you for little bits of information, then a little more, then a little more...