AI and Monster Lairs

plus the fact that lair guardians tend to wander off their lairs ... which is fine if another guardian has spawned, but not before.

Yes it's not fun that the monsters leave their lairs unprotected. Only spawned monsters should move away from the lair.

Why not just add an encounter to the lair? Then increase the spawn frequency so that they are a real factor in the game. Act I needs to give the user an impression of being at war with these beasts. 

Hmm ... adding an encounter to lairs sounds nice!

(might give extra dangers to lairs that are actually guarded, and kind of a side-stepping fix, but it would certainly fix the current problem)

So, can the AI tell when a lair has treasure and when it has nothing? Us puny humans have to take a risk since not all lairs give treasure. Wouldn't be fair if the AI could tell be we couldn't!

guys you are just getting the wrong point

frogboy is talking about enemy sovereign killing monsters but not going to get the loot and he is wondering the impact on balance on ai getting tons of better stuff in the next patches...

basically their champions sovereigns were playing with basic vendor stuff

yes and no

i miss the feeling of mom of a dangerous world, i loved some early WOM idea about wolves banding together and stuff like that, in some early beta it was quite cool

in the last fe beta its a bit too static so id like your idea of having more challange from the lairs

but...

i feel in the actual game i have to fight TOO MUCH, ai really spams troops, sometimes its fun, sometimes less, right now the amount of fights i have to do in a game is a bit too much imo, thats maybe cause autoresolve is still not consistent so i have to manually play most of them

we need to see how ai evolves, if the game becomes less spammy of troops and multiple fights maybe your idea is perfect, otherwise dunno maybe the game would need  a small tuning to avoid becoming a grinding

The thing is ... without guards, all lairs will dissappear very quickly once the AI joins in on the fun.

Therefore, Lairs should actually be guarded, at least with monsters with better lair-guarding AI.

I'm guessing that all lairs will be destroyed within the first 50 turns of the game once the AI learns to get rid of them too. (without consistent guards)

I think everyone understands the point FB made, they are just continuing the discussion of monster lairs.  Nothing wrong with that.

Troop spam is temporary symptom of the beta not having great AI. "Act I" is the part of the game where you are supposed to struggle against the world. There should be little, if any contact with other nations at this point. Unless you play on small maps. Still, monsters spawning more would get inbetween you and the next nation. You would both have to fight the world to be able to attack each other. 

thats quite a problem btw

sometimes i really miss part of the fun cause ai wiped all the world of quests/monsters

no idea how to solve it, ofc ai NEED to do so to remain competitive with player and not fall behind

maybe when some balance pass prevent so cheap troop spamming ai will think twice b4 sending so many guys just to farm

i would really love to see again monster wondering and attacking way more than now and also the feeling that there is something more scary wating us in the deep of the lair

Hmm, multi-leveled lairs could be cool.

Enter Lair -> Battle

flee or go to next level?

next level -> Battle

flee or go to next level?

final level -> BLAARGGGH and you die

Many ways to implement this concept.

Examples Below:

1. You could have only loot for the lowest lair, and if you flee ... any that enter have to fight through the upper levels again.

2. You get loot for each level, and defeated levels disappear. In this case, if you killed all but the lowest level, and fled .. the strength of spawns would GREATLY increase. (another way of implementing this is that, while spawn strength increased, there was a chance for an upper level to 'regrow' and thus lessen the strength of current spawns)

3. the upper levels (are always there) aka insta-respawn (like option 1)... but you still get loot for each level, but only for the FIRST time that the level is cleared. (this is either really easy or really hard to do depending on how the code is structured ... I think)

In all three cases ... only good, non respawning lairs would have a bottomless pit of evil.

For instance ... a Bear Cave, Wolf Lair, and Butcherman Camp should be a lair that can be spammed and respawned by the "world AI" while only ever having 1 lair.

Spider lairs can have multi-lairs .... with some being easy and others being SUPER HARD like the above examples.

Elemental Shrines should probably have multiple lairs .... (especially for death demon lairs)

Wildlands should definitely have a few pretty scary multi-level lairs.

Not all multi-levels need to have monster spawns on the outside ... but it would be fun if at least a few of them did.

(some could just be creepy creepy caves that you'd be scared you might accidentally wander into and die a horrible death ... speaking about Wildlands with 'random' loot n lairs)

----> more random "Is it loot or is it a lair" could be fun

Point is, this could be done at any level of complexity, including overly simplistic. And that would be fine too ... even having just one Multi-level would be nice.

I want to separate multi-level from Multi-battles ... because with Multi-battles you have no choice.

THE ARENA is a good example of this ... but sadly, you can only enter it once :(   (as its a contest, not a super creepy cave)

-> well, Imagine the Arena where after each battle you could choose to leave ... and you could always come back (and start from battle 1). And it was only destroyed once somone finally won the last battle. That would be closer to what I'm talking about. The arena only gives you one choice to leave, and its so you can get a new Champion instead of continuing on.

I think lairs with multi-levels (and thus can be explored multiple times) would also help with the problem of AIs using all the lairs. Lairs could be used by multiple factions .... until someone kills the bottom level of course.

But as the bottom level, in a really scary multi-level, would be end-game material ... that wouldn't happen for a while

Frogboy,

Will you also be fixing the AI's ability to walk past strong, fearsome beasts without penalty?  It is really irritating to have the other factions throw outposts up all over the place and i can't get my troops past a river slag or a troll shaman even if I go two spaces around. 

Thanks for fixing the unguarded goodie huts, it would be great if defeated enemy heroes dropped one piece of loot everytime they were teleported back to a city after I defeated them in battle.  Half the fun in HOMM3 was getting the Shackles of War or the Golden Bow off of an enemy hero.

I would also support more rampaging monsters and special monster encounters as long as the AI was getting some share of them as well. 

Thanks for the hard work by all of you Stardockians!

Edit/add to above posts:

Didn't Heavenfall mod some dungeons in to WOM?  That would be great fun!

They might just be spamming Pioneers until one survives, and its just the variability of the Beast AI at work.

I've walked past beasts without getting attacked before.

In my latest game on ridiculous against 8 AIs set the same level, I've had Ceresa repeatedly march low level groups of peons, gravewardens and pioneers right past a river slag and a Troll Shaman stack to attack my defended outpost and my home city.  My troops with sov walk by and we get attacked.  This is all within my border or just outside of it and all within my LOS. 

Part of the fun of these kinds of games for me is how the monsters on the map either hinder or aid the player by creating a safe zone or by making things harder.  I don't mind harder as long as the AI suffers a little too.

I would also love monster bribes/offerings to pass by a stack or single beast and/or monster alliances as a trait, tech or spell.  Or as a faction bonus to help with the all important making factions play differently.

Missing quests a lot in this ridiculous level game... my sov and his one hero have around 50 hp each and Ceresa has 207 .  Don't know how she is managing this... but it is manageable with several stacks of archers (barely!).

I always liked the random rolls for lairs in FFH2 - it made clearing lairs a real risk because your unit could be killed/afflicted and the lair could spawn even more monsters like big freaky flaming flying heads with freaking laser beams (OK, no lasers )

But the other thing it did was introduce the idea of escalation - the armegeddon counter meant that some really bad things could happen as the world sunk into hell - angels and demons also enter the picture and they sometimes became very scary very quickly - there were also the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse. 2 evil races were designed to actively work towards screwing up the world too (Shiem and Illians) - you also had new lairs, monsters, and barb cities spawning all the time (including barb heroes) - in short, it was a dynamic world, which kept it interesting.

Two things I'd like to see in FE are lairs spawning in unsettled areas as the game progresses and I love the events idea for lairs too - and these would be even better if the number of guards spawned had a random element becuase I'd like some risk and uncertainty - it would be fun too if some of the 'weak' monsters lairs sometimes spawned a powerful mastermind monster - for example those mites could be directed by an evil warlock/witch working behind the scenes.

In terms of escalation, how about the powerful creatures in the wildlands, worried by the rise of all these empires repond by creating their own armies and sending them out (led by special monster champs) to lay waste to any city in their path - or maybe they could capture them and turn that land into wildlands too? What about this mystery fallen enchantress showing her face and razing hell throughout the world with uber spells and summoned armies and zooombieees - I'm probably getting carried away here but it would be fun

They are not. Ive never seen monsters attack AI cities or units. One of the most annoying parts on conquering the world is that in some parts of AI territory there is huge hordes of high lv monsters that attack you and any cities after you conquer them. If monsters attacked the AI those cities could not exist.

Also I keep some lairs around for the exp they generate, the AI should consider this as well.

Also when your territory expands over monsters they shouldn't run off, they should attack you.

I fully support lairs never being unguarded. EVER

Escalation would be great. It would make sense that as much as the fallen and men are growing, the creatures are expanding where they are unchallenged by us. This would fill i those blank spots on medium and large maps that facilitate too much expansion too quickly. 

I think some of the lairs should have borders. From the borders you know not to enter the area unless you want to get attacked. The borders slowly expand, so you will have to deal with the monsters at some point. If there is border-pressure between your civilization and the monster's borders, they will begin attacking the pressure-maker.

The lairs should be guarded by strong monsters and spawn easy monsters (stronger later on). Currently it seems to be just the opposite, for example the spider lairs spawn strong monsters, but are guarded by weak monsters.

Of course champions can become much more deadly with better weapons. So the AI should be helped.

Like the encounter and multiple-level encounters that are being suggested. Also the like the idea of lairs spawning weaker wandering monsters.

I'd also like to suggest lowering the buy and sell prices for weapons and armor. I can run with no or low taxes the entire game because of how much magical loot sells for. Tax income from multiple cities full of people should be more comparable to the price of magical loot. It would also be more fun to be able to go to a shop and fully outfit my champions in non-magical gear. Doesn't seem balanced.

Regarding the stuff earlier in the thread:

I actually like that monster lairs are often undefended. It feels good to sneak in behind a monster and grab their stuff, then high-tail it out of there. It's a gamble, if I succeed I get good items at no cost, but if I fail, I end up losing units and/or stuck in the city healing. 

Monster attacking isn't random. That's all I'll say.

It isn't random.  They ate all the black people first.  See any black people in Elemental?  Nope, cause the racist bears ate them!