DeepT
1841
I just finished a game, the first random map I played since I started playing AoW 3 again. I just do not understand the diplomacy system and if there is any logic / reasons why the AI does certain things.
Somewhat early on, I met another AI player to my north. We were far enough apart where our cities didn’t impact each other. We made friends and opened borders. This as far as went being friendly. The AI would not ally with me. Later on, I had a huge army, owned like 12 cities to his 5 and he would not ally with me. Then he got in a big war with another AI across the map and still would not ally with me. I even offered him gold bribes and he always turned me down. The guy he was at war with DID ask me to ally with him and eventually I did. I then had to kill my former friend because he would not join in any alliance with me.
Can someone explain to me the mechanics behind diplomacy and why this guy who was friendly with me would never go the last step? I think this kind of thing is what turned me off this game the last time. It the large strategic errors the AI kept making. Speaking of that kind of thing, one AI was involved with 2 wars for a while and then declared war on me for no reason. I had a huge army. I proceeded to crush him like a bug. It made zero sense why that AI made such a stupid decision.
I figured out what happened in a game that was head-scratching for me a few days ago. City centers count as an attackable army, and adjacency rules are applied to it. So below, the city center tile can get attacked and only pull in A for a city defense, while attacking the outer city tile would pull in A and B for a city defense. Attacking B would pull in A and B in a field battle.
Don’t get yourself fooled and taken apart piecemeal!
City Center | City Tile | Not City
| A Army | B Army
I’m in this weird limbo where I win King so easily that it isn’t fun but Lord is causing me major problems. I may need to try a smaller map. In my last 2 games, I had a sizable empire (last game I had just hit the 7-city empire quest), each city guarded by a 6-stack to protect against the random wandering neutrals that like to show up. In addition I have 2 stacks running around separately expanding my territory. Then I meet up with one of the AIs, a few turns later they declare war and slam in to me with 3 full stacks moving in unison.
Starting to feel like I need to keep 2 full stacks on my leading-edge cities to keep them protected against the AI, which gets prohibitively expensive.
Maybe I’m not aggressive enough and need to strike first when I discover the AIs.
As a general rule, you should only be concerned about defending your front line (between you and the AI factions). Meaning, these are the only cities you will want to keep larger defending forces. You shouldn’t have 6-stack defenders sitting in cities deeper in your territory all trying to defend against wandering neutral invasions. If you’re suffering from neutral invasions, that means there are camp(s) you need to find and eliminate. Doing this will stop the invasions (unless there is a cosmic event, or a Rogue spell in play which might also be responsible, but as a general rule it’s just monster camps).
Here’s an example of a monster camp, this one is a Brigand camp, and there are different types of spawn locations each with a unique look (Examples being: Brigand Camp, Undead Boneyard, Pirate Nest, Monster Den). The main thing they have in common is that they will have Units sitting atop them and they will most likely have a red glow/aura about them, like this one. But not all locations with units on them will spawn wanderers, some are just treasure sites. You can click questionable tiles on the strategic map and they should tell you if they’re spawners or not:
You should focus on scouting out and eliminating spawn camps like this rather than beefing up defenses on inland cities. As a general rule, wandering neutrals don’t spawn out of thin air.
Once those camps are gone, you won’t need to keep dozens of units protecting all those cities (from then on you can keep an eye on those areas with a couple scouts or strategically placed towers). Then you can use that huge military for other things. Being able to redirect all this military power (or even significantly reducing your military and upkeep, if needed) should help tremendously.
As for base aggression, I still find early rushes to be pretty handy for at least one early victory against a nearby AI if I find them soon enough, but I never seem to maintain any sort of momentum beyond that until I start raising up unit tiers. The game does a pretty good job now days of slowing down an average player on that front, for the most part. But on a medium map with 4-5 teams, I can usually take at least one out before they know what hit them. Any early eliminations I get after that usually boil down to me stumbling across an enemy Leader stack fresh out of battle, near their main city.
robc04
1845
After winning 3 or 4 in a row I was put back in my place, losing a close call on Lord difficulty. It looks like that AI beat up on her neighbors and grabbed a couple Seals before I was even thinking about doing it. I quickly took out 1 AI after that and was able to go up 3 Seals to 2, but her head start had her winning in 5 turns to my 12. Both of her Seals were heavily defended, so I started making a beeline for her cities, not knowing where her throne city was. I believe I took all but the throne city and 1 other and was closing in on both of them. I couldn’t make up for all of the lost time and she won.
So far the Dreadnaught is my least favorite class I think, even though some of their machines are pretty potent. I still find I rely on the class units much more than the regular race units. For most of them it seems like if you can afford them there really isn’t a downside.
Squee
1846
I haven’t played druid much yet but I’d probably agree on dreadnaught being my least favorite too. Their units tend to work best as support, and overall I favor 3-attack ranged units to muskets even though there are distinct advantages to the single large strike of the muskets. And it’s weird because rogue class units are specialists too, but I get more of a kick out of seducing enemy units to my side more than most dreadnought units. I haven’t played dread in ages though, I may like them more after many patches.
Well, dreadnought or warlord. For the life of me I haven’t been able to satisfactorily grok warlord.
Dreadnought is awesome because it breaks a bunch of game rules. Cannons shoot way too far and hit multiple things. Musketeers blow up everything while not being utterly incompetent at melee like a true archer. Flame Tanks just utterly ruin the other guy’s day if you can position them right. Golems are actually better now at T2 IMO, because they come out faster and Guard Breaker rocks. I love Dreadnoughts.
Juggs are a little underwhelming these days; I’m sad that they’re just kinda shitty Shrines now, but I honestly don’t tend to build all that many T4s anyway.
MikeJ
1848
Yeah, musketeers seem a bit underwhelming when you are shooting up weak units. You can start to think an archer would be better. But then you are facing units with strong defense and melee attack, the archers are plinking away with 1 damage and then get taken out in a couple of swipes. Musketeers can still bring the pain.
Oh and there’s the whole “machines are immune to half the damage and debuffs in the game” thing. I love that part too.
e: Don’t underestimate the tougher body and mobility of the musketeer. Traditional archers are awesome, yes, but are as a rule fragile as hell and can only move one tile before their damage goes to shit. Musketeers are happy to move four tiles into moderate danger and get their full 22-30 damage in. And yeah, what MikeJ said about high-defense units. And also what whomever said upthread about the alpha strike.
God bless the alpha strike.
Plus their weakness electric damage is one of the rarer damage types. Only really see it from sorcerers and elves.
Machines are a pain to heal though - without a dreadnought hero with repair machine around, they get hit hard by attrition (the engineer passive per turn heal is OKish).
They do, and engineers are fragile as hell. Same story as Undead, just that Reanimators are a better (and more expensive) unit than Engineers. And they get the heal-in-cities building way the hell earlier.
robc04
1852
I agree that Dreadnaught stuff is effective, I just didn’t dig them as much as the others. Maybe they’ll grow on me. I still love Elvish longbowmen. I did like pairing Cannons with engineers so I could reload them and get off shots each round.
Do you tend to stick with a similar city build order when starting each game? I tend to go Builder’s Hall, Storage House, Laboratory. From there is depends on my mana situation - either shrine or the observatory. I usually don’t build any troops until I get many of the economic buildings in my first city. In the early game I’m following roads to try and discover as many independent cities as I can to start hoovering up vassals.
robc04
1853
Some of the hero upgrades at level up just seem so much less desirable than others except in very limited situations. Free Movement ignores terrain movement penalties for the hero / leader. That’s really not going to matter unless he is leading an army of fliers / floaters, or if all units in the army have some type of movement bonus through rough terrain that you plan on moving the army through.
I tend to take more general ones - such as +1 resistance for all in the army, ones that give the hero new spells / skills, or a couple HP, defense, damage perks.
Free Movement does work in combat, too - terrain still impacts your movement when you are fighting in the tactical battles, so Free Movement is actually pretty awesome, especially for kiting and keeping distance before popping a spell, or in the case of Rogue heroes getting that all important flank on a key target.
God, I’m a fucking idiot. I never noticed this. Like robc04, I’ve tended to ignore free movement hero upgrades except for certain rare circumstances as well.
robc04
1856
On the tactical map all terrain costs 6 movement points according to the Tomb of Wonders. I assumed it was correct.
Maybe there’s hope for me yet. When I am at my gaming machine I will make it a point to check this. My sanity hangs in the balance.
Well, hmn. I could be thinking of the beta or something. I was pretty sure some terrain was rougher than others but maybe not? Maybe that was too big of a bonus to let folks move more efficiently, except Tigrans only spend 5 movement points per hex in combat (Athletics, I believe) so there IS a precedence for it.
The Tomb of Wonders: Where Wonders Go To Die
;)
Hah, I just had an AI somehow snipe my potential ally super early – the neutral that always starts nearby – presumably by buying vassalage after an auto-peace treaty.
Stupid AI allies.
