As of late, the AI seems to be very persistent about razing early, poorly/undefended settlements. Although a right piss off, it is not the end of the world as if your SoV is away, he/she can return and rebuild, or start up elsewhere. It does kill any sort of momentum but that is the price to be paid I guess.

I kinda of like that behavior personally as it does force you to have someone (Champ/Hero) stay at home, or spend Pop and resources buying some club wielding peons if you wish to explore immediately after settlement creation.

If I had to suggest a change it would be to have the AI seize the settlements, rather than simply raze them outright. That way we could fight to get them back, intact, and not have to start all over. Perhaps the loss of one structure could be implemented as the penalty for being slack in your defense of your newly found Capital.

Re: that drota enclave. I noticed AI in 1.09e won't build improvements on world resources that require a technology, if they don't have the tech when it first falls within their influence. If they gain the tech later, it is never built.

Awesome! I'm excited for the new AI and these monsters grouping together. I think that's a badass trait-As civilizations get more complex-So do thugs, crime rings and all that. They band together-Tame some animals-You know barbarians and all that. I also like the fact of an intelligent creature being able to lead them!

Keep improving on this, looking forward to more AI updates soon.

Hmmm what about half-intelligent critters like this swamp-drakes/dragons? It would also be interesting if some of the bandit take over a city instead of destroying it after all these guys nee also food and money.

As for equipment of soldiers: maybe you could give the Ai some guidelines for its units. Stuff like "matching" Def and Atk or for Tarth a bias towards longbows. 

Perhaps contrary to some, I don't actually want monsters to be *too* smart about attacking settlements. I'd prefer  there to be some fuzziness to the decision making.  Otherwise, every time monsters attack you at all, it tends to be a death sentence, since they know they have you outmatched.

There should always be opportunities for players to *win* defensive battles, and gain EXP for their defensive troops, as well as the troops in the field. There should be times for "Helm's Deep" style defensive stands, and not simply a choice between having so many defensive troops nobody bothers to attack you, or auto-lose monster invasions.  I'm not saying this is the direction Brad is going, but it's something I've seen in other games and it always frustrates me a little.

Perhaps if there were an increased period of monster *raids* on a city prior to a massive assault, alerting players to increased danger in the region, and allowing them to make strategic deployment decisions, rather than getting surprised  by the random giant stack of spiders that comes barreling out of the woods, one turn away from your city.

>> One of the things I noticed when I was playing was that after awhile, the monsters become simply fodder for experience and gold. The low level ones just don’t keep up.  So I made it so that intelligent monsters (like bandits) will tend to tame/combine up with other monsters into bigger and bigger groups as the game goes on (basically as they find each other). <<

This is a good idea, but one that should be expounded upon. Not only should small groups consolidate, but there should be a method that when they do, there is a possibility that they get a weapon/armor bonus update. In addition, since the group gets bigger, the loot from a successful battle should be increased as well. In fact, there should be 'Dark Heroes' that look for these bandit groups and take them over thus making it a priority for a given kingdom or empire to hunt down and eradicate groups that become too big.

In fact, allowing an event to be spawned when a bandit group gets big enough that allows a given kingdom/empire to place a bounty on the heads of the group could be fun as well.

Just a thought.

oddly enough.. i think i had some spiders attack my almost empty settlement. (janusk with no/crap weapon?) ... they killed the defender... and then... just sat outside the empty settlement... i think.

since someone brought up city invasions, when can we hope to see some work done on porting some viable tactical choices when invading a city from the planet invasion screen in GC2? Invading was like half the fun in that game.

Ooh! Catapults could even work like the toxin unit the drath had, though in this case giving a significant bonus to attack and damaging the enemy befor combat starts.

To me, it seems a lot of games talk about having a 'living world' but it does not really feel that way.  For example, Elemental has these towns with people going about their business, within and outside of the local village zone of control.  Wouldn't it make sense, then, to occasionally have one of the NPC, maybe the lumberjack or trapper, come around and say something like "Geez...there are sure a lot of spiders/wargs/wolves/whatever in the woods these days."  Or, "You would not believe the droves of dragons I saw flying aorund a week ago up in Blasted Falls..." or something similar.  These are the kinds of 'warnings' about buildup I think you would realistically get, and it would add a nice atmosphere to the game.

Too many games give you the feeling people OJNLY live within the city walls, and that they are completely oblivious to anything else outside the walls.

How about the misattributed quote to Patton...

"I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor, dumb bastard die for his country."