AI expansion is ridiculous

IcantHear

Join Date 07/2012

AI expansion is ridiculous

So after playing a couple of games I think Fallen Enchantress turned out pretty well, can't wait what it will play like on release.

What I noticed though is that there will always be one AI faction that gets mega strong while all the other AIs tend to fall behind hardcore and end up just as a sort of puffer between you and the super AI. Today I got lucky and had a game where a ) my main hero got a lot of nice stuff early on and b ) there were a lot of settlement tiles nearby so I was able to expand fast since I didn't need to worry too much about military.

I soon stumbled upon the neighbouring AI which turned on me after a couple of turns. With my hero being lvl 4 and having a good combination of items and skills I took settlements without too much trouble. I ended up conquering the whole peninsula on which I started, waiting for the message to pop up that I defeated the AI but wait, there's more. The AI ended up having about 10 settlements and a level 10 main hero (while mine was level 5 after fighting and question a lot). I finally defeated my neighbour but I was a little upset how the AI works in this game to be honest.

I'm not sure this is part of the pacing issues I read about on the forums but there's just no way to play on the same level as the AI in terms of expansion. You spend so much time training and scouting early that you don't even have enough time to get anywhere as much settlements going as the AI. With the settlement titles popping up randomly it's down to luck if you're gonna make it or not, while the AI just knows where to go without building explorers and wasting turns scouting. Adding to that, the majority of tile types reduce your movement and it takes forever to get anywhere, even when riding. In the end, the AI had a belt of settlements that spanned over half of the map.

I know it's common to give the AI an advantage in strategy games (I was playing on the 2nd lowest difficulty setting though) but I feel like in Fallen Enchantress the factions just "snowball" way too quickly with so many early settlements. If you're unlucky and don't start next to the one AI that's supposed to be the super AI then you're in for a bad awakening after a couple hundred turns.

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Quoting Raledon,

reply 19

Quoting MiamiBigAL, reply 18I would actually recommend not playing a custom faction/sovereign as they are way too overpowered to really enjoy the game. Serious nerfing of faction/sovereign points is needed--A good system is like in Master of Magic--if you customise a sovereign you have less custom points to spend when compared to a pre-made one.

I have started only playing standard sovereigns now and it is a hell of a lot more fun. I'm still easily winning challenging but I expect expert and above may actually be a decent challenge now.

1) One of the major points in the game is the cusom faction/sovereign. You can gimp yourself by choosing a sub-optimal (for personal playstyle!), premade selection, but it's just that. I personally would throw this game out of the window if I'd be forced/unable to make custom sovereign/faction.

2) You seem to be mis-informed regarding MoM. In MoM, you get the same amount of picks both with pre-made and custom archmages. In MoM, though, the game was "balanced" in that regard that commiting to a school of magic gave you more spells from that school, and in later numbers (9/10/11) reduced cost, extra starting spells, and 11 books gave you all basic spells and the option to start with the stronger ones. Commiting in such a way hurt you in other places, as the faction powers and spells were connected- you couldn't pick this if you picked that, and such.

Personally I liked the Archmage customization way better than the sovereign/faction, but hopefully it'll be moddable by game release.

1.) I never said I was against the idea of custom factions. I just said it was overpowered and at this point in time it is too easy to win with a custom faction. It is open to numerous combo-abuses and needs to be nerfed to balance the game. I suggested the idea of multiple picks for certain traits but the devs seem to disagree or haven't got round to implementing it yet.

The only reason I "gimp" myself by going with a regular faction is because the game is broken as it is with custom factions.

2.) I have MoM on my computer right now. I am not mis-informed. You get less picks as a custom archmage than a pre-made one. If you don't believe me then download dosbox, get a copy of MoM and see for yourself.

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Quoting UmbralAngel,

reply 23

The problem is that expansion is the only viable strategy.

Similarly, turtling doesn't work in FE. Cities produce gold and research in huge quantities, and its impossible to defend a bunch of outposts if you only have a couple cities. Having high growth from prestige is useless if you can't research and produce food buildings. You also made it so now you need lots of towns to reach high level cities, which hurts this strategy even more.
.

I'm not so sure about that... If you have the right city I think you could turtle pretty well... my current game 95% of my resource/production comes from 2 cities (out of 8 or 9) with those 2 cities and a research facility right now I could trump every other AI empire on the map.

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Quoting Sierra Falcon,

reply 27

Two questions you should ask yourself.

1. Would these cities be as powerful as they are if they did not have a few towns supporting them via the grocer line of buildings?

2. Would the AIs have left you unmolested if your Empire appeared as weak as it would have without the other 6-7 cities?

Of course, you are still right. One does not need to expand his Empire in order to win. I have won on Insane, with a standard race/sovereign (Irane), in revision 0.98b, without settling a single city. You do not need anything but a hero with Life magic to beat the game.

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Quoting MiamiBigAL,

reply 26

Was thinking about this complete off-topic thing, so decided to open up MoM, seemingly I can re-create all the archmages at my disposal, my attempts where with around 50% of the archmages, but I screenshotted the attempt at Sss'ra so you could see, mostly because this could very well be changed in a patch.

http://imageshack.us/a/img832/6396/momsrrra.jpg

http://imageshack.us/a/img841/5200/momcustomsrrra.jpg

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

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Quoting Sierra Falcon,

reply 27

It is not a question about when you can trump the AI... because the AI still needs work, it is a question about whether you were better off using massive resources expanding or not, and I have seen no cases where I got burned by expanded, on the contrary that new city got the ability to churn out new units and pioneers at will, so I just "expanded" my build queue to triple the amount, ofcourse only the really dedicated cities produce big research and gold, but then again, you can dedicate all your cities to this, some better than others, but all of them will produce atleast 3-6 research and 2-4 gold per turn.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

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