Army of Butchermen attacked one of the cities I took from Mancers, and oops they're Magnars oh well at the moment i don't respect the AI factions very much due to all the massive cheating I see going on with monsters and factions.

After that army of butchermen died a horrible death, an army of 3 heroes*cheaters* attacked my city right after the butchermens died off. Needless to say that they didn't even kill a single soldier.

You see a couple of rock elemental armies? Yeah, they kept on heading for Rilkaz but every time I moved Pelleon back they retreated, but if i move in they head for Rilkaz again so I got fed up and killed them before moving in.

Unmolested Tarth Outpost surrounded monsters until I came by and killed everyone.

A frail newly settled Fortress that didn't get attacked by dangerous Spiders of doom despite it being defended by 3-5 militias at best. -.-

This is very early in the game, me staring at the monsters while being dumbfounded at their wizardy to make monsters disregard AI pioneers/armies.

THEY SHALL PASS! SAYS THE ROCK ELEMENTALS!

Then at this point start to get really livid after watching alot of panthers let another Pioneer go by unharmed so I decided to send a scout and pioneer the same route.. both got killed by same panthers.

Yeah sure, murder my scout but let AI scouts and pioneer pass on by unmolested, sounds logic.

And after watching my Scout get killed by cheaters, I decided that its really fail of Stardock to do a shameful thing like that. So I worked hard and cleared out all the monsters blocking my path to scout out the lame resolynsomething city.

Behold and lo I see a powerful Fire elemental lair there.

I have to steer clear of them or get murdered early game.

So I decide to stay 3 tiles away but i see the fire elmental leave it's lair to attack me by moving one tile into forest and then by next turn it attacked my army with predictable results, my poor lord got murdered and used as a new throne for fire elementals just because I'm a human player, not AI.

So after 34 hours, I give up on massive amount of cheating going on despite the promise of the Set up menu, ah sweet sweet lies.

When will there be a patch going up to fix this ridiculous cheat?

Quoting Frogboy,

I'm going to quit arguing this because there is no way to change the perception of this: The monsters attack the AI just as much as humans. It's a placebo effect when players think they are attacking the other way.

Only at difficulty levels above challenging (on world difficulty) do monsters start to look at the players differently. But on challenging or less, it's a random roll without knowing who it's going after.  

If people want to say the monsters aren't giving the AI a hard time, there's nothing I can do to convince them otherwise. But it's not happening. I've spent enough time on this particular issue to determine that it's all perception and not reality. In a typical game, the AI loses a lot more units (pioneers especially) to monsters than a typical human will (mostly because humans are more careful).
 

 [quote who="Fistalis" ]

Frogboy,

Whether or not the AI is treated differently or not, the fact that players perceive it this way is an issue. The randomness you say exists is probably part of the issue. If players could see the AI acting in a consistent manner IE it always attack a hero that lands next to it, always go for the nearest city etc. Then this wouldn't be an issue. However the randomness in its actions is and will continue to make the players think that it's weighted to attack the player more.

Consistency should be the word here, not randomness if you want some players to not feel they are being targeted in a different way than the AI.

You can scream off the rooftops that it is fair and balanced, but it doesn't matter if the player feels he's being cheated in some way consistently. Players who feel like they are being cheated consistently aren't likely to be having fun, have a positive opinion of the game or suggest it to friends.
 [/quote]

Posted in Nov. of 2012. so um ya.. he didn't listen then he likely wont now.

Or to put it a different way

Edit: Just for clarity this was a discussion regarding FE, and while LH has some improvements in this regard I'm pretty sure the above post still stands for both myself and frogboy.

As a matter of curiosity, does anyone know how monsters treat players differently above Challenging world difficulty (as stated by Frogboy)? Do they attack the player but not AIs, or is it more complicated than that?

I play on Ridiculous and I do find it a bit disconcerting when my town expands over a lair and the monsters head straight for my town, whereas the AI seems to be able to survive with lairs all over the place. It's not stopped me playing the game though, and I should emphasise that this is on high difficulty; Frogboy states that there should be nothing other than people's perception for Challenging and below.

Thanks. There was a bug (which should now have been fixed) where monsters were unable to find a path to targets one tile away from them. This might explain some of the behaviour seen in the earlier threads. However it wouldn't explain what Ericridge says he's seeing in 1.3.

Personally I accept that (certainly on high difficulty levels) the AI can get away with stuff I can't, and just get on with it, but I understand some people might find it annoying. Especially if it's happening when it's not supposed to.

It may be that the AI is getting an advantage that is hard to understand from the code and how all the parts work together.  At least that's what I hope it is.

But certainly, I see AI creatures and lairs all over the AI players' lands (Challenging Monsters/AI Players) in 1.3 and I have only seen an AI city get destroyed by monsters once.

I'm playing medium map with 4 opponents on challenging and I can confirm that this is happening.

AI can build anywhere without any reprisal from roving monsters. I have to protect my assets all the time otherwise I will get my a@@ kicked.

I remember when I use to play MOM and this would not happen. Roving monsters and lairs would attack the AI.

I wonder why Stardock is in denial.

I'm a generous soul, i shall play at least one more game and document every single event of Monsters and AI factions conspiring against me. Just to see how truly random it is.

It might be that the monsters attack the player more frequently on high difficulties and at the same time treats AI-players like it would have a human player on lower difficulty (i.e not attacking them often)? If so, then the perception of being "unfairly" attacked often is correct on higher difficulties (which Frogboy also writes).

I see no reason why Frogboy would lie about this. IMHO the debate could be caused by a mix up of randomness and posts from really high difficulty games. (I saw a similar mix up at work today, observing that you need to know all parameters and the exact situation before judging.) 

I fully understand the OP's frustration.
I cannot comment on if/how much the AI cheats at challenging difficulty, but I experienced the same on the highest difficulty levels, and at first it infuriated me just the same. Since then I have come to accept it, after realizing that the AI is pretty dumb and simply needs cheats like this to be competative. Note that I accepted this even before I read that these kinds of cheating are indeed intended on higher difficulty levels.

Ericridge, it is probably not what you want to hear, but I don't think you will achieve much with long posts with countless pictures (which is also what Fistalis more or less wanted to express). Instead I would advise you to simply accept it (I have!), and play accordingly.

I hope you can look past this issue, because the game really is fun.

A suggestion about threshold AI attacking stuff, ignore this if it already exists.  Set different threshold between behaviors levels based upon intelligence/aggressiveness.  If a monster has a low intelligence have it act random like mentioned but if it is aggressive have it attack things 1 square away.  Have the distance for aggressiveness increase by intelligence level like Animal / very low / low / normal / high / very high / exceptional such that the max auto attack distance if a monster is aggressive would be 7 squares if it is exceptionally intelligent and aggressive.  As I said this is likely useless as it is what probably already exists but if not I hope this helps.

That makes some sense, thanks for the explanation, Frogboy. I think the example where I found it a bit disconcerting was with spawned monsters; when my city ZOC expanded over the lair I was not attacked immediately. However I think the first group of monsters spawned headed straight for my city, although that's probably fair enough on Ridiculous. Is it correct to say then that mobile monsters are more likely to target the player on higher difficulty levels?

I'm glad for your guys's patience, I currently have a game in progress that's on 10 hours now..

Unfortunately not very much AI pictures yet but I forgot to include this two pictures from yesterday. So lets start with that.

I forgot about this two sweet photos.

I was inspecting the opposition that was facing my mercenary army. First one, plaguestalker army okay.

What's that second army under there, oh just a pioneer army. Disregard. ... WAT!

And now for the ones from today.

My scout was following this road to scout out this altar territory and promptly ran facefirst into a dragon at full speed.

PLEASE DON'T HURT ME JUST MAKE THIS VERY FAST DRAGON OH GOD PLEASE!

This screenshot showing the dragon chose my scout over a trio of lovely maidens. I suspect this particular dragon is female because aren't they supposed to kidnap maidens for steady supply of wannabe knights diet?

And then in my capital zone, there's a nest of powerful poisonous spiders that I didn't dare to attempt to remove until like later into the game like 5 hours after the beginning I didn't feel like losing my lvl 6 militia guys to them However I did learn that they do leave the nest when they sense a certain victory if they can reach me but they only pursue you for 1-2 hexes at most.

Middle note, This current game in progress has managed to amuse me tremendously. Why? Because lemme tell you..

First worldwide event: Plague struck my cities, so I chose to make communities for the sick and have them live separate from my healthy citizens.

Then second event: Undead uprising. yes that's right, there was skeletons everywhere.

Then third event: Eclipse. Yes that's right those skeletons got buffed two levels against early game militia armies I love this, it made the game more funnier for me. They was surprisingly tough. I had to apply battlefield tactics which involved kiting the skeletons until there wasn't any space anymore then MELEE!

Then fourth event: Blood Season, worldwide war just like that cuz everyone decide they want blood for the blood god.Although I didn't do anything other than pillage a couple of altarian's Outposts cuz he said i looked ugly to him in middle of blood season. I'm sure he regret it now. My scout pillaged his two outposts good!

And the fifth: Despite the increasingly civilized world, unmentionable horrors still lurk. The event where they basically spawned five armies of doom next to my first three cities. I manged to pull all my armies from borders and intercepted them just in time before they could raze my capitals. 2 turns. I bet that Amheh guy was gonna raze my capital on the third. So freaking close. Been long time since I had suspense like that. Last time was civ 4. So freaking long. Reminded me of how fun it was to take on that barbarian invasion in stone age and win with just one surviving warrior left who held off ten+ barbs and killed them all.

Anyways back to the monster+AI alliance i keep on mentioning.

I saw an marvelous unexpected test site which was just as perfect.

5 food 3 prod and 1 mana something? I have no clue what that blue symbol is for. Essences or something?

Back to that landsite, I decided to rip a page out of AI cheater handbook and settle a village on that exact tile, dragon be damned. I wanted to get attacked so I can accuse the AI of cheating. So I yolo'd my pioneer onto that Tile and set up a village successfuly, and it was completely undefended except for 4 militia something.

And to update the status of Atlar's resident dragon pet.

Its still alive and well and yes, he snacked on my second scout ><

But i did get some kind of indicator that it wasn't only snacking on my scout by seeing it's exp bar, its almost lvled! , apparently it killed LOTS of AI units walking on by.

Seeing that Exp bar be near full made em think maybe there really isn't any insidious cheating going on? Then I raged pretty hard. Because my Dragonic pet decided that my Village shall not live anymore and attacked it while Atlarian have a peaceful dragon that only snacks on the patrols. QQ I suspect bias QQ

Well screw this i lost the village anyways *presses autoresolve to get it over with and move onto declaring war onto atlarian to remove the city next to dragon in revenge. Wat.

So dragons is too weak? No wonder why they never attack AI villages, its because they will die in process Stardock need to buff drakes bad. They too weak to the point where they can be trolled by militia.

More pics coming in next post.

heh.

its very fun to read your posts. 

+1 karma for you