@Frogboy - can you manage to squeeze this into 1.7 also?

Just a quick note here, since you are looking at pathfinding.

Strategically, you can move a unit square by square until you run out of movement (this is fine).  However, tactically you are only able to 'click to move' once during an action, with your unit ending it's movement where you clicked.

Normally, this isn't a problem, but if there is 'inclement' terrain such as mud or fire, sometimes your unit chooses to move through the bad terrain instead of the perfectly obvious to a human 'safe' path.  I've had units get damaged a couple of times because of this, or pick up the 'mud' terrain effect even though they moved to a 'safe' square, hence being unable to move in future turns because of the mud.  Using 1.6 btw.

I realize that allowing a unit to move/click square by square during their tactical combat round until movement is exhausted is a big change which might take some time, but could you at least look at the pathfinding in tactical to see if an 'avoid bad terrain effects when possible' can be written in?

Even better would be a system like Fire Emblem. You could move a unit to a location as much as you want, but it wouldn't matter until you took an action with them (including passing or defending). I like the flexibility of moving around to test out the impact of a spell/AoE.

+1.  I think the old Shining Force games had a similar system.  WASD ftw. ..Perhaps in Elemental 2015, now that we're getting a fixed camera??

*Addition

I just finished some testing, was trying to get the AI to use City Enchantments smarter. Unfortunately it seems strategic spells ignore ValueCalcWrappers.

Frogboy I would like to request the ability to add IsWorthy tags to strategic spells and city enchantments in particular please.

So I can do things like make them only cast certain spells on cities with a minimum amount of essence, maximimum amount of population, or only on certain city types.

Posted that request twice [1, 2] in the "My victims, welcome!" thread, didn't seem to make it in the "16 Engineering hours for LH v1.7" features list. Still hoping it does and one more voice requesting it can only help...

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Or instead of changing the AI, could all of these auto-improve resource output as soon as the techs unlock?  Saves human micro-management, saves AI thinking about it, leaves building queues open for more interesting things to build. 

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Are you talking about how you cannot change the UnitGroupingType from the mods folder?

Ok.  Second 8 hours begins now!

Awesome.

Another ability/spell that it would be great if the Ai would use (in addition to Blink, other spells target an empty tile) : Escape.

Also pls see reply 101 above (getting the resource upgrades working for AI) and reply 105 above (getting strategic ValueCalcWrappers working). If you can get any of that done that would be brilliant.  Personally i'd take any of that over 1 hour on "New Spells", as i'd rather have current stuff working for AI.

All good though.

PS - read the Stardock report today, thanks for sharing (again) always find it an interesting read.

Thanks.

Yea, the spell stuff is much more time consuming.  I've added a new type of spell class called Target All Enemy Champions and I fixed some bugs that was causing the AI not to be able to cast AOE spells effectively.

I'm not familiar with ValueCalcWrappers but I'll look.

If the spell stuff is the most time consuming, I humbly advise you to wait until last before adding spells.

imo. more smaller items is better than one larger item (especially if it doesn't exist yet)

For example, if you could address comments #64, #66, #88, and #100; those would go a long ways more than 1-2 new spells. (save the spells for the DLC )

My excitement in writing:

- Does the AI use the spells Birth of Summer and Bloom of Twilight now?

- Recommend that the spells Birth of Summer and Bloom of Twilight have a %chance of improving tiles that it is cast on over and above what there exists stats are. The spell is expensive enough as it is, and is questionable at best as to it's results. It often sucks getting those 4/2/0 locations, often when it appears as though the location you've cast the spell on should be better. I think this could only make the game more interesting as the player would feel more fulfilled when the spell is cast and the AI would have another avenue in which to expand there empires/kingdoms easier and stay competitve against the player.

- When you trigger the third gate in the master quest, does the Pit of Lost Souls animate out of the ground? (as Curgeon's Volcano would)

- When having heros appear near your capital city, did you attempt to associate the summoning with a building instead of the sovereign? (I'm attempting the lead you into implementing my capital city designation idea: #7 @ https://forums.elementalgame.com/452034/page/1/

- Would you be willing to add some addditional flavor to city defense? #5 @ https://forums.elementalgame.com/452034/page/1/

- With adding outposts upgrades to the AI (and hopefully resource upgrades as well), how will this negatively affect the AI's queue times and ability to stay competitive?

- Are you willing to add a Binding creature for the Life shard so that custom Kingdom sovereigns that use Binding won't miss out?

- With unrest now generating bandits, will the AI have higher priority on those types of buildings?

- The Pyre of Man spell doesn't seem to fit it's place in the trait tree. It's not strong enough a spell...or it costs too much...or both. Balancing possibilities? (or please explain to us how this summon is suppose to be useful)

- The Mirror Elemental from the Binding Trait doesn't seem strong enough. The reflect damage maxs out at the mirror elemental's HP. Imo, the young Mirrors should reflect 25% of damage dealt, regardless of hp. The regular mirrors should reflect 50%. Etc for the other two...

- The Burning Archon from the Binding Trait doesn't seem worth the mana investment. Since the +2 fire attack is lost after each combat, and since it takes the unit's turn to cast, removing the mana cost associated with the spell maybe prudent...

- Does the Cragen's Earth to Mud spell work properly?

The things you mention would go way beyond teh available time I have left unfortunately.

I think quite a few of the spells now will do a lot more as I fixed some things that was preventing the AI from casting certain spells.  The *effect* of which I don't know yet.

The list I posted at the beginning of this thread is the list.  Anythinb beyond that would have to wait until a future update.  I've gotten a lot of small things fixed (bug fixing) along the way but otherwise, it is what it is.

I like seeing how much passion you have for this game. Its heart warming to see the amount of happiness and relaxation that comes from it. :')

Well adding a spell type was definitely a time sink.

I created a spell type that targets all enemy champions (as opposed to just enemy units).

I'm STILL trying to get it to work.

More than good enough!!  Looking forward to 1.7!

Although it's a rare occurrence, I've seen the AI cast Escape several times. Of course, it didn't prevent me from attacking again on the following turn since it doesn't seem to have mastered the concept of fleeing on the strategic map. 

I just wanted to note that APPARENTLY someone at Stardock is already using Heavenfall's Stat Background mod, and apparently has played the Children Of The Storm Mod.  DLC04 custom Sovs have a bunch of BG tags in it, noting CoS in some commented out text next to those tags, that are part of the Stat Background mod (see the code for Generic Undead Sovereigns).

So you guys are halfway there r.e. implementing those Background stats (the Undead already have them 'coded in'), so 1.7 would be a great place to formally implement these tags for 'everyone' (IsImmortal, etc.).

IMHO, I'd just leave that to other people though, and focus on the rest of the stuff on your list, Frogboy (unless you are the only guy working on 1.7).  Shouldn't take that long for Derek to fully add it in, or to assign someone else to implement it, seeing that Heavenfall already did the heavy lifting waaaaay back when...

One other note, something to put on the 'might want to consider changing at some point' list.

I've noticed that some icons for passive traits end up 'cluttering up' the column of traits on the left when viewing details on a Sov, or that they appear in the row next to the Round Unit pic in the Army Action window in the lower left.  It'd be nice to have some sort of<doesnottusuallyappear>>1</doesnotusuallyappear> or similar tag.

This would help 'move' the background traits out of the Army widget window in the lower left at least, when you pick a specific unit, freeing up those first few slots for more important things, like special attacks and such!

Said tag could also 'kick' the background abilities (the ones that don't require the player to do anything once they've picked them) to the end of the list in the Sovereign/Unit/Champion details window.

A 'icon/button priority' tag could also do this, with say <buttondisplayranking>2</buttondisplayranking> abilities given priority over <buttondisplayranking>1</buttondisplayranking> abilities.  Obviously, abilities without such a tag would have a ranking of 0.  This would allow modders and others to 'move' abilities that get used a lot to the top of the list, so that they are readily available, with the lower ranked abilities being relegated to the submenus, hence not 'cluttering up' the top level display.

Just a thought for the future...

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Hmm really thats interesting.  I've never seen it, and it has an AIPriority of zero so I assumed it never happens.

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16 hours may not be enough to address all the issues going on and bug fixes can lead to more bugs you really shouldn't rush this stuff.

Because the game is...precious to you and you can't...force progress!