Forthcoming patch notes

[Tifone]

uhuh Jim ^_^

[NTJedi]

JimMorrison said:
I think the illogical part, is this sort of unstated assumption that there should be no reason that the -only- (read: single, no other options) thing you have available to break this siege, must be sufficient.

They are sufficient for breaking the siege, however they are not sufficient to break the siege within the fixed 50 turn time limit. So it has nothing to do with whether they are strong enough, it's do they have enough time before being auto-killed?

JimMorrison said:
Yes it's just the AI and all, but if your SCs are not built in a way that can handle an army of 450 under pre-existing and well understood game mechanics, why would you send them in there and then complain?

It's because they are being killed by an unrealistic source unrelated to anything from my enemies on the battlefield.

JimMorrison said:
You routed KO, you should be able to route 450 AI chaff.

Yes, I could route 450 AI chaff... if I just had enough time.
Several options for improvement exist... I know Illwinter is busy, so any improvement would be nice.

[HoneyBadger]

I'd like to vote yes to adjustable combat turn limits as a selectable feature at the start of the game, since it's a huge factor in how games play out, and makes Kristoffer bored-should imo go from 50-300, just like supply, resource, gold, etc.

[Chris_Byler]

Extending the turn limit without anything more will just prolong the problem (literally). However, this gives me an idea:

A game rule of 50_battlefield turns would be if the game manual spoke of some all powerful third entity(God_of_War?) which destroyed all things on a battlefield beyond 50 turns.

What if something nasty *did* start showing up after 50 turns? Like horrors attracted by the carnage (actually, if the battle is still going after 50 turns it's probably a *lack* of carnage that is the problem, but whatever). Regular (greater) horrors show up at turn 50, 55, 60, 65, and 70. Doom horrors at 75, 80, 85, 90, and 95. Current auto-retreating behavior starts at turn 100, if anything is still alive at that point.

Horrors autospawned by long battles would clean up the mess of paralyzed and crippled units unable to retreat in time. They might also allow your golem to be killed by something less frustrating than a game mechanic (actually, it's still a game mechanic, but a less arbitrary seeming one).


Mindless commanders, even with 0 leadership, have always seemed like a bug to me. If they can't decide on a course of action for themselves, and they aren't given orders by a commander, how do they take any action at all? Even a dog has some mind, otherwise it wouldn't know whom to bite. Or even how. An entity with no mind at all couldn't even swing a sword, let alone swing it with a skill that made it possible to hit an opponent defending itself intentionally (i.e. with a mind and responding to conditions around it).

I'd remove mindless from the golem and fetish and give them 30 morale instead. Maybe some kind of "strange mind" ability that makes them immune to many ordinary forms of mind altering (certain other beings might qualify too, such as some void monsters).

[elbnar]

I still want my tactical combat mode!!! Like in Master of Magic!

If only as a side minigame.

[Taqwus]

Meh. If you wanted the limit changed, it should probably be changed to have a different mechanic and not just an arbitrary higher number -- like allowing the battle to continue some N turns, and after that threshold allowing it to continue as long as at least one side has a monotonically declining moving average of total hit points.

[JimMorrison]

Chris_Byler said:
I'd remove mindless from the golem and fetish and give them 30 morale instead. Maybe some kind of "strange mind" ability that makes them immune to many ordinary forms of mind altering (certain other beings might qualify too, such as some void monsters).

Oh that's good! At least with the Berserk units, we can just assume that they finally exhaust themselves completely and die of heart attack.


But really, otherwise all the issue requires is use of imagination. I know, I know, my roommate hates that too, if he imagines something should work (that's usually the direction his imagination goes..... imagine that ), then if it doesn't work, he gets -pissed-, and refuses to listen to any of my "oh damn that sucks man, what are you going to do differently next time?" sort of encouragement. In his mind since a computer only does what you tell it to do (technically), that the software/game not doing what HE wants it to do tends to have some sort of horrible reflection on the programmers, as the obviously totally infallible and omniscient beings that they must be, if they can manage to successfully write such a complex program.

WHEW! Though I think a big part of why he gets so mad, is that while I devour the game, and incorporate all of the little quirks into my gameplay - he tries to dominate the game, and rails against those quirks like tartarian chains, holding him down. And thus he is enraged by construing my comments as saying "it's mostly a personal problem". Which, maybe it is..... maybe it is.


Though I'd personally agree completely on two points. The first being that the 50 turn limit may in fact be a tad restrictive. Not just taking into account SCs, but if you look at armies of 1000+ on each side. At this point even "normal" elite soldiers who have berserking (or were made berserk with spells) will be left behind to die. And also the processing factor - for the most part battles do not make it to 50 turns, so it doesn't even matter how large your map is, or how many battles are fought, few of them ever cross that limit as it is. Besides, the vast majority of battles drastically speed up processing after turn 10-20, it's very rare that I see one not just zoom to the end at that point.

However I'll agree on a third, contrasting point - since people cannot agree on the validity or necessity of a change, it's incredibly unlikely that there will be a hardcoded change to the turn limit - almost as unlikely that we'd actually get a custom setting added for it at this point.

<3

[chrispedersen]

I vote against increasing the turn limits. I *hate* SC's.
While we're ranting:

A. I really wish strategic spells did more. Hurricanes <ho hum>. Rain of Toads - big deal. Frankly its a design flaw when accidents of nature <random events> are FAR worse than most spells.

Proof: Whens the last time you heard of someone winning by casting economic spells?

B. Same argument, different verse.
Fires from afar = ridiculous waste of gems, most of the time.

Proof: Various wants and scepters will allow you to destroy turn in and turn out MUCH more than any fires from afar ever will.

The game would be *much* more interesting if there were more spells that could be used on a strategic basis. Call of the wild, call of the winds, are marginally useful.

How about things like: Bad weather delays attack (winter spell that prevents movement into or out of a province).
Ice Storm - makes one sea hex passable due to an ice bridge.

Dysentery: Spell that afflics 22+ units with dysentery. It reduces map move by 1.

New Action by bards: Investigate rumors. Each turn there is a cumulative chance of uncovering a hero.

[Lingchih]

I'm getting tired head on this post.

For the record, I would remove the turn limit completely. We all have modern computers. Let them fight it out till the end.

[Zeldor]

Chris_Byler:

Mindless tag is really good thing for many situations. Especially great against nature nations [charm]. The only stupid thing is that it vanishes without any reason at tutn50.