AI Wars: Evaluation

You have Kraxis and Tarth twice

What is the difficult level of the AI?

Please give us more info. How many AIs per game? Which ones? 

Be real surprised if penalty laden Pariden and Resolin win a lot of games.  Really no surprise that Tarth, and Kraxis are up there twice, and Gilden and Yithril.  Kind of suprised to not see Athar not up there, maybe their benefits like henchmen and quest maps are not great for AIs and I am kind of surprised by not seeing Magnar either, their slaves should be a big advantage.  

Means Tarth and Kraxis won twice.

This is cool.  I would play AI vs AI just for fun.   You'll have to tell us how you set this up.

Frogboy, can you also add at what turn the game ended?

Start a game with cheat mode enabled. press ctrl-z ingame. Have your sovereign outside a city. Ctrl-u to see whole map. Ctrl-z to stop the AI wars.

No surprise the two magical ladies aren't up there indeed. Maybe the obnoxious -25% efficiency could be reduced to something more sensible like 10%?

God, I even forgot they have other penalties too, like inefficiency and scared along with Resolins no armor.  They don't have a chance.

At least the Kingdom v. Empire dynamic seems balanced from this limited testing. I would also like to watch an AI war, that'd be kinda cool. 

Lady Porcupine is probably the worst built Sov in the game.  She has spent all her sov points on 3 magic paths, 2 of which she could easily get through her nations enchanters ability, and has that terrible inefficiency ability to pay for it. 

How do you start with cheat mode enabled... is it an .ini switch?

Add this to your shortcut

"C:\Program Files\Stardock Games\FallenEnchantress\FallenEnchantress.exe" -cheat

Yeah, it never ceases to amaze my how unbalanced the weakness picks are.  You go from "Absolutely harmless with a modicum of care" (Clumsy) to "Seriously nasty" (Cruel) to "Damning" (Inefficient)

Same with professions: How can you possibly think that "Bandit lord" and "Hunter" are in any way comparable to "General" and "Armorer"? I'm not even talking about professions which can decide a game when properly leveraged, like "Beastlord", which can get you a Black Widow on turn one, and a great wolf when you next get the mana.

Of course, depending on the difficulty level, weaknesses and advantages shift in importance.  Karavox does much worse on Ridiculous+ and Procipinee much better.  From Derek's outcomes, I guess the AI were challenging.

I have been playing standard sovereigns lately, and they are all very poorly designed for their purpose... Which I guess is OK from a lore prospective.

She is also a summoner with the worst possible magic books for summoning. Fire and Earth are best with water a poor third.

Inefficiency is by far the worst negative trait in the game. It's much much worse then most negative faction traits. Mind Boggling. 

Which factions are the best and worst is discussed in the Five Worst Faction Traits thread. Pariden and Resolin both blow a point on Adepts which is almost totally useless. It's basically just +40 mana to start. 

Yea, wealthy is pretty much nothing on higher difficulties.

Inefficient production is a game killer, in my opinion.  Not sure why it's in there, unless somebody wants to see how badly they can handicap themselves while still pulling out a win.

Proserpine used to have it better when spellbook apprenticeships costs one-per-book.  She's never been reevaluated since the cost doubled, and is simply uncompetitive with anybody else, save possibly for a lone mite.  And I would probably bet on the mite unless it was asleep the whole time.

I don't know how much the AI changed since 983, but my game ended with a big knock-down drag-out between me (Lady Porcupine, apparently) and Relias. Relias had been doing very well and conquered Yithril, Gilden, much of Tarth and Magnar (before they surrendered), and so out-powered me about 450 to 150 (or maybe more, don't remember exactly). I think the AI leveraged henchmen quite well as long as it was winning: they kept leveling and got better equipment, etc. Once I pulled off several major tactical victories (through extensive magic use) they seriously underperformed without good enough supporting troops, but I'm not sure he ever stopped building them. By the time my armies caught up to his they were a liability, either by having too many wounds to be useful and taking up army slots, or by being outright negative with dysentery or whatever that wound is that gives -x% to army hp. In fact, when I started rolling up his cities he lost any chance he had as all his henchmen would respawn in cities but be immobilized, and then when I attacked his troops were at a total -50% hp thanks to multiple cases of cholera (or whatever). (Not to mention Relias had a base hp of 3 thanks to the useless familiars he kept summoning, but I take it that has been fixed.)

[Re: Quest Maps: does the AI even do quests?]

Quick fix: don't let malaria (or whatever it is) stack.

AI fix: teach the AI when a hero or henchman becomes a liability and have it put him/her out to pasture.

Mechanics fix: have heroes (or at least henchmen) die for good at some point. Alternatively, perhaps tone down wounds a bit (and/or put in a healing mechanism) but cause the hero to drop an inventory item upon defeat. (So the setback is serious but temporary.)

Aside: I think "sidekick" is a better term than "henchman" because henchman implies a faceless goon whereas sidekicks traditionally have some personality, but less of one than a hero.

That's some good points.  Those penalties do stack, and I bet the AI doesn't even recognize how much a liability really wounded champs/henchmen can be.

Inefficient is not that bad.  I take it all the time.  The penalty is only applied when the sovereign is actually in the city.  My sovereign spends 99% of my time in the wilderness, thus I get no penalty for 99% of the game.

I tested it out in a quick game in .992.  I had a building requiring 11 more turns to finish with the sovereign in the city.  It dropped to 8 when the sovereign left the city. 

I look forward to more results this way. Of course AI vs. AI I would like to know the AI personality in the process. You know isolationist, expansionist... these things should be put in these results (unless they are all the same personality, which should also be mentioned). This could play a role in the winners, for example are all these winners expansionist personalities. I think this would play a determining factor in these contests. Also, are these wins by conquest or is it by other means?

Oh  I assumed a 6 AI free-for-all. Some more details on the AI Wars would be nice

That's one thing that's not explained.  Is the production penalty all the time or if the champ is in the town.  Should probably write that in the tooltip.

Also why can't we have efficient as a trait to pick ?

efficient would be a better trait functionality. It would cause a real tatical question of to leave the sovereign in city or adventure,

Inefficient I thought applied always...Who keeps their sovereign in town for long periods of time? I think this is kind of bugged because it turns out not to be a real weakness at all. I would suggest implementing it always, and have the penalty turned lower to 25%.