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Author Topic: [39e] the 19  (Read 781 times)

numerobis

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[39e] the 19
« on: July 24, 2008, 08:30:56 pm »

I have here a battle of 506 elves versus 19 humans.  In the end, 199 elves die, and just two humans; the elves retreat.  You'll note that on average, each human killed more than 10 elves.

This seems... surprising.

There's a number of other battles that are also unbalanced in the same way, but the humans keep winning.  Check out the entire "Conflict of Frenzies" in the age of heroes; this, worst, one was the second battle, "The Onslaught of Igniting".  On the other hand, a single elf took out a dragon.

Seeds:
Code: [Select]
[TITLE:MEDIUM]
[SEED:2070021736]
[HISTORY_SEED:3123108240]
[NAME_SEED:2925315440]
This is totally vanilla except for a couple fixes in init.txt
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Alenth Eneil

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Re: [39e] the 19
« Reply #1 on: July 24, 2008, 09:04:24 pm »

This is because humans have better weapons and actual buildings.  At least I assume that is the reason, I figure that Dwarves have the best defensive rolls in worldgen of everyone, considering their tendency to win against all odds.
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Yngar the Wise

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Re: [39e] the 19
« Reply #2 on: July 24, 2008, 10:25:40 pm »

Not a bug. Elves are pansies.
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Toady One

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Re: [39e] the 19
« Reply #3 on: July 24, 2008, 11:24:34 pm »

I think it often gets in that kind of rut when you have a few very skilled people left at a site, and a civ that has spent their skilled people, and wave assaults the site over and over.  Due to how skills work in this game, the attackers just die.  I have some stuff written down for numeric advantages and general tactics etc. for world gen wars, and that might help this out.  I'm not sure rewriting the basic duel function to give less advantage to the skilled is a good idea, but the skillllless megabeasts certainly need some help.
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Teldin

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Re: [39e] the 19
« Reply #4 on: July 25, 2008, 12:20:41 am »

Why not just make dueler size + damblock come into play instead of stat vs. stats? That way you can also fix the fact that so many megabeasts die so early in the history gen.
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Flame11235

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Re: [39e] the 19
« Reply #5 on: July 25, 2008, 01:45:02 am »

Dueler size matters, making megabeasts 800 size units bigger than they should be makes all but one or two of the megabeasts survive. All credit goes to Mayday for this discovery.
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Shadowlord

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Re: [39e] the 19
« Reply #6 on: July 25, 2008, 02:17:39 pm »

I'd teach them some strategy instead. Make them go for the weaker points in the target empire. If there are heroes and large armies in city X, and only a tiny force in town Y, sneak around to Y and raid it. If town Y is important to the empire, that's even better. And, best of all... If the empire goes "OH SNAP" and responds by sending a force to try to take it back from you, then:

1. You'll be able to defend, and you chose the place at which it would occur (that particular town), putting you in a much stronger position than if you had just blindly charged their well-defended city X
2. They've just left their previously well-guarded city much more open to attack, if they sent troops from it. (If they sent them from somewhere else, well, that's a different weaker location then) So while the enemy army is marching to retake town Y, you can assault city X.
3. If you had spies in their empire, you could know what their armies are doing and when, so you have some idea of whether they're sending an army out - unless, of course, they have counter-agents feeding you false information.

Basically, apply some of Sun Tzu's the Art of War. :P

Of course, if all the civs had Sun Tzu running them, things might be kind of weird. But individual rulers could perhaps have a strategy skill - and could be targeted for assassination, especially so if they have a high strategy skill and are winning a war.

For megabeasts, maybe they should be able to use their non-megabeast worshippers to spy on towns to locate weak ones, and preferentially target those. Dragons perhaps ought to be able to just fly over towns and spy on them, too.
« Last Edit: July 25, 2008, 02:20:07 pm by Shadowlord »
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Jay

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Re: [39e] the 19
« Reply #7 on: July 25, 2008, 07:15:29 pm »

Dueler size matters, making megabeasts 800 size units bigger than they should be makes all but one or two of the megabeasts survive. All credit goes to Mayday for this discovery.
But therein lies the problem.
800 is 40x the biggest vanilla creature's size.
That much change should not, under any circumstances, be required.  For that matter, that much change SHOULD cause them to be unkillable.  And when you go to kill them as an adventurer, it probably does.
But size is not taken into account as much as it should be during worldgen and so causes this problem.
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