I agree on the AI. I haven't played a real expansionist AI yet though I haven't started the highest difficulty. I would expect at least some of them to be very aggressively expanding. Maybe some via settler, some via neutral conquering. Usually I see enemy wizards with 2-3 settlements at most and then they seem to do nothing. Can they take chests? I witnessed one of the AIs jump from one chest to another but they didn't seem to "take" the chest. Was still there when they moved. I'll be honest, I find the neutral settlements to be far more aggressive and dangerous. They will probe my defense, then send very large armies with varied units in. I think it's weird that I can inspect the exact garrison of enemy towns. It lets me come in perfectly prepared. I think towns should show only a general strength level and a spell should be created to give a perfect view of the units defending.
My decision tree, Grey Elves example Just to give you an idea what my "decision tree" looks like on the first few turns. I think it’s a pretty standard example of what the AI has to compete against. I fully agree with Trystero, the AI needs to be much more aggressive. I started a new Grey Elf game, with the goal to see how fast I can crank out a full 16 unit army with at least 10 Archers and 4 Druids. Last 2 units filled with what I think best at that point (e.g. Heroes if I get lucky). With the secondary strategy of playing as aggressive as possible, with taking over towns a priority over cleaning dungeons (no more detours, go straight for the towns this time). Starting situation: Prime Plane only, Pangea, 70% Land. Large World, 3 Enemies, hardest difficulty, fast movement, 4x production speed, the 3 resource sliders to lowest, Sorcerer: Istimaeth (standard). My starting town has: 16 max. population, 61% food bonus, 49% prod bonus. Wild game +2 food, 3x Healing Herbs (not important). 13 Forest fields within the town border -> get a Sawmill up asap for the food bonus. Turn 1: Best research offered is Sprites for 30 points. But I already see an RP Chest, so I’ll do Scout for 5 points first (to free up a slot and get a new spell; I won't cast it anytime soon). I won’t have Mana to cast Sprites for at least 5 turns anyways: First, I cast 2 Magic Spirits. Next is Fertile Soil to improve my Food income. I lower Spellcraft and Research to 5 each, to get a bit more Mana. No takeover worthy dungeons are in immediate range, but I see the following: A Mana Chest and Undefended Camp (Gold, Prisoner) to the W/SW -> my Pegasus Rider will grab those, then keep exploring. A Mana Chest to the East. My first Magic Spirit goes for that one. A few squares east of that chest is a promising spot for a new town, with Fertile Soil (+1 Food) resource. The Spirit will continue in that direction. In my Capital, I start building 4 Archers, then a Settler. Turn 2: Pegasus grabs the Camp. I get lucky with an Engineer and Gold. The Engineer goes off to build a road from my Capital towards the new town place. A bit SW of my Capital I see another good spot for a town. This time with mountains and a good production bonus. Marked for later. And I see 2 more spots with lots of Forest around, where I can build more food-producing towns later. 2nd Spirit goes off to grab the NW Mana chest. Surprise: Both it and the Pegasus spot an Inn. The Spirit’s Inn is empty. But the Pegasus’ Inn has Draconian Javelineer’s, very nice. For 45 Gold I hire them immediately, they can bolster my army. Because the Spirit also spotted a Highmen town, defended only by 2 Spearmen. I’ll get my army marching as soon as the Javelineers are in my Capital (Turn 4). I’ll take a risk and only leave the Glaiveguard behind. Both Inns will refresh in 2 turns, so they stay close, just grabbing a few more chests in the direct vicinity. Turn 3: Nothing special happens. More chest-grabbing. I start casting Fertile Soil. Turn 4: Fertile Soil complete. My army moves out towards the Highmen town. Turn 5: Inns refresh: Pegasus and Spirit check again if I can afford something. Pegasus got lucky with an Elven Ranger (move army through all terrain at 1 movepoint, very good trait for the main exploring army) . Also I hit a big RP chest, and completed the Sprite research right away. Next in line is Harpies, which will take a long while. I lower Spellcraft and Research to 1 each, to get Mana faster for casting Sprites at least once. After that, I'll increase them again. In summary, we are looking at 3 towns - 1 just starting out, admittedly - and a decently sized army at turn 7. Nothing to sneeze at, I dare say. Unfortunately all my saves except the starting one got corrupted at that point Maybe I’ll start over tomorrow to see how fast I can get the full 16 unit army. Rough calculation says before turn 20 is possible, depending mostly on food income. Or I give the Dwarves a try. Because they move so slow, I am reasonably certain they'll require a different playstyle again.
Every AI sorcerer Lord has got it's own personality, we didn't underlined this strong enough, so some of them should be aggressive and some not. We are still crunching the numbers what aggressive is. Also it goes farther as how expansionists they are and so on. The more feedback you provide the faster we will make them truly unique, however or major goal was to make them act like players. They can make mistakes and they need to live with those without possibility to load the game. Let us know which SL you have been playing against and how did (s)he behave. I need to check it. Thanks for the observation, which SL you were playing against? We will think about it.
It's weird that this is happening so often with you. I've been playing an awful lot of PC since launch and I've yet (touch wood!) to experience it. And I save virtually every turn, have several games going on at once, and regularly reload past saves to try something new. What is different is that I am playing simple games mostly with a single opponent and on a single plane.
Very nice! What a great ambition. Would you being willing to let us in on how each SL Is expected to behave at some point? (Or perhaps we should simply become better observers.)
Ok, just to check out the AI. Created a single Plane world, two opponents: Tangaroa ( Dark Elves ) and Ariel ( Undead ). Hardest difficulty. Normal size world. All others settings left to default. For purposes of observing AI gave myself necessary skills for Omniscience. Ariel obviously already at war with me, surprisingly Tang declared war on turn 2 without even a demand. I summoned a spirit to scout. A&T didn't summon so I basically went around taking all the chests. Even chests within three spaces of their capitals. By turn 20, T had settled a second colony. By turn 30, T had settled a third colony and A had settled a second. I sent a small army west to take an existing neutral city. Amazingly on turn 35, A sent a small army with a catapult to my capital ( I had a palisade ). I quickly murdered the attackers, but it was nice A at least tried. Meanwhile, T lost his 3rd city to neutrals. Two turns later A lost her 2nd city to neutrals. I took that neutral city to the west. Both of my cities were fully ramping up, paid for by my chest-hunting spirit. I never witnessed A or T actively exploring sites, but maybe they were doing so... Was hard to tell. Around turn 70 now. No one has cast any spell against me even though both have been at war forever. T still has two cities, but one of them is held by a single thrall. As an aside, I still regularly see the bug where I interact with a site, it shows some dwarven or insectoid units, but then when I actually attack they are all high men settlers =P certainly makes things easy for me.
It seems that Planar Conquest does not have iTunes File Sharing enabled. That is something that iExplorer needs to access the files. So I cannot download them after all. Could I suggest you enable this for the next build?
Some more AI observations Some stuff that happened in my new Dwarven game (yes, took the shorties ) : Highest difficulty again. To my southwest, Katya the Paladin has her Capital. Moderately well defended with 6 or 8 Draconian units. She made a few huge mistakes, though. First, she agreed to trade her two Heroes against a cheap spell and a cheap suit of armour I found earlier. This should NOT happen at all. Even more so when those two Heroes provide Gold income with the "Noble" trait. Next, she declared war on me, with only a single unit in front of my second Highmen town defended by 4 Spearmen. Bad move. Then, my Magic Spirit was close enough to her other city to take it over. The single unit defending it fell easily to a few Firebolts. Why she didn't immediately move her Capital garrison to retake it I don't know; it's only 4-5 squares away, Dracs cover that in one turn and can attack. As a minor mistake, she didn't pick the optimal spot for her new town. Just one square to the right would have already been an improvement. Plus, there were two spots within the same distance of her Capital that were even better. I made screenshots, can upload those later. Oh, and thanks to a misplaced warp jum... wrong universe, a lucky shot with a Teleporter Stone that brought my main army right to the doors of the Unhallowed Capital, the slow Dwarves destroyed the Undead Sorcerer on Turn 15. Admittedly, around that turn I won't have a defense up that can deal with a full assault of a 10 unit army either. But that's because my main army is on the road and killing stuff. I didn't see anything by the enemy Wizard coming even close to that kind of firepower. And defending with Ghouls is not the smartest idea ever. Had he chosen for more Skeleton Archers, he could have put up way more of a fight. His Huecuva didn't even cast Darkness, which is bog-standard as Undead vs. Living. If I expect such an attack, which I have to when playing against a competent player (AI or human), I'd 1) keep my main army much closer to my Capital 2) put up a scouting screen around the Capital to get an early warning of an incoming attack 3) have a bigger garrison in the Capital, just in case someone can sneak in a nasty surprise.
@doomtrader Has the 1.1 update been rejected for some reason? You mentioned 10 days ago that the update had been submitted to Apple and according to this link the average review time at the moment is 4 days. (I should know better but the expectation is killing me
I don't have such info. I don't have also information it has been accepted. The line is already a little bit longer than usual as we are sending this to publisher. Let me try to get some word. We are waiting with 1.2 ready to submission here, but we need 1.1 to go live earlier.
Same here, I save a lot and have different games going all the time. Guess I am just unlucky When the update is out, I'll delete and reinstall from scratch, see if it makes a difference. iPad Air1, iOS 9.2.1, not jailbroken. Sithrandil reported the same savegame issues, also on an iOS 9.x device. @fun: what are you playing on? Always good to have something to compare.
Ok. Thanks for the reply. You know (or your publisher should) there is always the option of requesting a much quicker 'expedited review'especially in cases such as you've experienced where the app launch was significantly marred by more or less trivial bugs.
I just received info that the 1.1 has been approved and is currently refreshing in iTunes. Should be available any moment.
Oops! Oops. I guess I spoke too soon, for I've just opened a game which I saved last night and found that a significant number of features on the map had vanished: an enemy city, a neutral city, a siphon (which I had captured) with a count down timer, an inn and other sundry features. My 3 cities in the south were all still there but it was a nuclear 'wasteland' where everything else had been... I had to roll back quite a few save games to find everything again. One clue to the bug: opening the bugged games superimposed the node count down timer over the world map. Hope this helps.
