Autoresolving for fun and profit

from JoeUser Forums

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Tactical battle, fought by me vs. AI.

and…

Auto Resolve:

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It was raining today so I thought I’d peek in on how the auto resolve code worked.  The idea behind auto resolve is to provide a *fast* perf wise estimate of going through the motions of a full tactical battle.  It’s not the same and can’t be by design because otherwise, the time between turns could get ridiculous.

However, some smart beta testers (who we’ll refer to as evil overlords who I’ve sent goons after) observed that the auto resolve didn’t make use of the various abilities and spells sometimes available, especially to monsters.

So that’s what I did today was hook those up.  What I didn’t do (sorry fellow grognards) is hook every single thing up to the details area (hence you’d lose a lot of the perf with all those strings being written out).  Mainly buff spells and the like. They’re used but they’re not documented in the turn by turn because there isn’t a reporting area for buffs in the code and again, the purpose here is speed, speed and speed.

But as you can see, auto resolve and my efforts at tactical resulted in the same result.  The only shameful thing is that when I fixed up auto resolve I realized that there were some combat abilities not being used well by monsters in tactical (like acid spit). 

The good news is that this should make sure that auto resolve can’t be abused to take out range-heavy armies or armies that rely heavily on spells.  Sorry Verga. 

But unlike most people. I don’t fear Verga and his Trogs. Those goons would never dare confront me. 

Hmm. Someone’s at the door…

42,148 views 18 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

*Turns out the lights, grabs the laptop and hides *  Some things were blatantly unfair.  I'll give you that. 

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top


Awesome for those that use auto-resolve. :thumbsup:

Galactic Civilizations IV
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

I'm like how your tatical play and your autoresolve match up pretty well. I understand not showing all the buff and stuff, but at least you noticed that there was something fishy going on with the code and it seems you fixed it. I'll sleep good tonight knowing on monday I'll get myself destroyed either way I play (tatical or auto-resolve).

Can't wait to face you (AI) in battle...whos that at the door...

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

Good deal - rarely use auto-resolve myself though.

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

Dark wizards have just taken over the world of Elemental, there are no Kingdoms, there are no Empires, there is only Despair...

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

This is really good news. And I'm really hopeful about the other fix about performance.

I've been following at a distance lately and I have to say these two "upgrades" (which are more important than some people think, I believe) give good reason to hope for the future of the franchise. It seems right now we might expect a really solid game with two areas that will still need some work:

-Tactical battles (most agree they lack "something")

-Magic (some - including myself - agree it lacks "something") 

But if the core engine is reliable, they will get there as well, eventually :) 

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting mastroego, reply 7
This is really good news. And I'm really hopeful about the other fix about performance.

I've been following at a distance lately and I have to say these two "upgrades" (which are more important than some people think, I believe) give good reason to hope for the future of the franchise. It seems right now we might expect a really solid game with two areas that will still need some work:

-Tactical battles (most agree they lack "something")

-Magic (some - including myself - agree it lacks "something") 

But if the core engine is reliable, they will get there as well, eventually  

I have a few (less than 5) remaining "significant annoying bugs" and some minor tweaks that I will submit again after the Monday release (provided they are not fixed), but overall I agree 1000% with you: this new version of the game (0.984) seems closer to polished and ready for release than several other released games.

The various new features that we all wish to see (tactical battle complexity, unit placing in tac battles, the return of dynasties, more summons, a better path of the governor etc.) can either be modded in or planned for an extension...

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

Nice. I don't use autoresolve much, only for fights I'm sure to win, but in the  end it's ony fair this got fixed. 

Reply #9 from Elemental Forums Top

Manually fighting every battle can be tedious, especially against weaker opponents but the standard order of battle places the weakest units in front. It would be nice if the game was smart enough to distinguish between melee and ranged units - placing the ranged units in the rear and the strongest melee units in front.

Reply #10 from Elemental Forums Top

What I didn’t do (sorry fellow grognards) is hook every single thing up to the details area (hence you’d lose a lot of the perf with all those strings being written out). Mainly buff spells and the like.

This may result in some confusion among people looking at the logs to figure out why a certain amount of mana was used, or how the outcome played out that way.

This is probably too late for 1.0, but is there somewhere in the tactical summary that could show the amount of mana consumed during battle? This could be for either auto-resolve or tactical. For bonus points you could add a tooltip that listed the spells (if possible).

Reply #11 from Elemental Forums Top


Its a shame that the report doesn't specify in at the end the type and number of spells cast (just not when).

Reply #12 from Elemental Forums Top

However, some smart beta testers (who we’ll refer to as evil overlords who I’ve sent goons after)

 

Wherever you think I am and have sent assassins, I have replaced myself with your past self and have glamoured you to look like me. Good luck fighting your own goons. 

 

*Clasps hands together maniacally*

Reply #13 from Elemental Forums Top
Great job! Thank you :)
Reply #14 from Elemental Forums Top

Excellent. That's one key item off my list of important issues I would like to see solved before release.

However will it use the players mana in autoresolve? Ideally there would be two autoresolve buttons, one for using mana one without, but failing that I would prefer that autoresolve didn't use any of the players mana on the basis that it is often a precious resource for me and usually the battles I autoresolve are the small ones that are one sided and therefore would be a waste of mana. If I want to use mana then I can always manually do the battle and make sure that the correct spells are cast rather than the AI having to guess what I would like to spend mana on.

Reply #15 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting JMiddleton, reply 10
Manually fighting every battle can be tedious, especially against weaker opponents but the standard order of battle places the weakest units in front. It would be nice if the game was smart enough to distinguish between melee and ranged units - placing the ranged units in the rear and the strongest melee units in front.
 

Good news, Frogboy posted this today.  We didn't get the ability to place our units, but looks like this is a nice compromise.

https://forums.elementalgame.com/433862

Reply #16 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Mistwraithe, reply 15
Excellent. That's one key item off my list of important issues I would like to see solved before release.
However will it use the players mana in autoresolve? Ideally there would be two autoresolve buttons, one for using mana one without, but failing that I would prefer that autoresolve didn't use any of the players mana on the basis that it is often a precious resource for me and usually the battles I autoresolve are the small ones that are one sided and therefore would be a waste of mana. If I want to use mana then I can always manually do the battle and make sure that the correct spells are cast rather than the AI having to guess what I would like to spend mana on.


Derek has already mentioned that the autoresolve will try not to use mana, but if it feels necessary to win the battle it will use it. He doesn't want people to use auto-resolve no-mana ending with a lost battle, while when using mana leads to a victory. I don't think they are changing this before release.

Reply #17 from Elemental Forums Top

As long as healing spells get "hooked up"   as well. 

Reply #18 from Elemental Forums Top

"Frogboy: What I didn’t do (sorry fellow grognards) is hook every single thing up to the details area"

While I understand why you didn't, it is sad since it will only cause confusion for the player.

"Lord Reliant: For bonus points you could add a tooltip that listed the spells (if possible)."

That would be nice.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej