Yeah, I’m also almost 100% positive tthe AI has the same rules as a human for fog of war and line of sight.
In one of my games, I had a small group exploring a remote map edge isolated by water, with only a couple of avenues of approach. I got jumped by a bunch of vehicles too powerful for me to beat. So I fought a strategic retreat, but had to leave behind three damaged infantry units trapped on the other side of the AI’s armor. But they were leveled up and one of them had even earned a battle title! So they hid in the woods while my retreating units ran off to regroup. I would occasionally move my retreating units forward to see what was going on, and there were tanks running around grabbing an artifact and ore field not two hexes from my wounded infantry, who had pulled out of line of sight in the woods. The AI tanks were also tangling with one of those big Kastelan Robots and a few stray Kroot Hounds (I love watching the AIs fighting each other and neutral units, knowing I’m not getting special treatment for being human). The AI’s armored units could have easily taken a 1 hex detour into the woods to kill my infantry, but it didn’t seem to know they were there. I eventually rescued them.
I’ve also seen the AI popping off the scouting radar ability repeatedly. At first, I wondered why it was bothering. But if it has the same fog of war and line-of-sight restrictions, it makes perfect sense.
One of the things I really like is how regularly the AI heals and retreats wounded units. There are certainly some dumb attacks, but otherwise, it seems to know when to run away. I’ve won some engagements by just damaging enough units so that they pull back. In a game with veterancy, this is crucial.
I’ve had a pretty good amount of play and can agree with the comments regarding the AI following the line-of-sight and fog of war rules. It also does pretty good job of retreating it’s damaged units as well as focusing fire on my damaged units to try to eliminate them. These are all good things to see and are much appreciated.
However, a recent game makes me suspect the AI is not remotely playing by the same economic rules the player is or this was a bugged city/situation. I started a crowded game (15 NPC’s, hard difficulty, on a huge map) and had an Orc city about 15 spaces from my own capital. It was in the bottom corner of the map in a down-slope valley with my city just over the ridge-line above and a few hexes back. By turn 20 or so i had Space Marines parked in woods 3 hexes from his city with clear views of all his city hexes. For the next 30 turns i watched him produce a non-stop series of troops that i killed as they spawned (1-3 per turn). I had a nearly perfect ‘killbox’ situation with the terrain setup and my troops ended at level 7 or so. Some turns he would output a ground unit, a mechanized, and a hero simultaneously. i added Devastators as time went on to keep killing units as he kept accelerating production. I eventually had to kill the city capital with a rush attack (Devastators and Melta bombs) but only after watching a truly ridiculous quantity of troops/hero’s spew from that city with only 4 total land slots claimed and no other map resources. There is absolutely no way the ‘hard’ difficulty mode (which gives +15 loyalty points, which equates to +30% resources) would allow for that kind of resource output. I thought initially i would be able to deplete his resources by killing a few waves then rush the capital to take it down, but the non-stop horde (which also kept getting upgraded to higher and higher research tiers) he kept summoning for 30 straight turns made that impossible and i lost more units than i think were justified for the situation.
Either that NPC was operating from an infinite pool of resources or he just gets to ignore costs and operates on some kind of adjustable timer system based on the difficulty setting. That or something broke as i haven’t seen anything that ridiculous from the next NPC I encountered in the same game. I’m hoping for an isolated fault as i do otherwise enjoy most of what the game offers.
That’s my concern as well, @Vormithrax. I thought I had an AI city buttoned down, but he was getting lots units on the board, and quickly, and further and more widely advanced on the tech tree than I would have expected.
The settings for each individual AI player only specify loyalty bonuses, which are global modifiers to a city’s output. I’ve had them at neutral, with no advantages or disadvantages. But is to tooltip that explains the setting being deliberately cagey about other kinds of AI advantages that we have no option to adjust?
While I cannot comment with any definite knowledge, I can say Ork Boyz are practically free, with the real bottleneck being upkeep. I think buggies are dirt cheap too. And I am pretty sure you can have parallel lines of production going.
Oh and quick side comment: the mobile repair unit for the Marines is the Thunderfire Cannon. I have no idea why! This is super important because it and the Apothecary are excellent at their jobs.
Yeah, i was prepared for a long line of low level units like Ork Boys to churn out, but he was producing higher and higher tiers of units and a non-stop stream of various hero types. That’s why i had to perform a ‘suicide’ charge on his capital once i figured out this progression was never going to end.
So far it does seem like an outlier situation thankfully. I did not experience anything like it in my first game on normal difficulty either. Let’s hope it’s just a weird one off. Time will tell.
Ok, i am having trouble figuring out the math/behavior behind the Fortress of Redemption for the Space Marines. The description for this structure/ability reads: Fortification that automatically gathers resources from adjacent special resource features. Now maybe i am dense, but i never realized that this actually means “treats the adjacent special resource feature as if it was inside your capital city borders”. Meaning that you are able to get the large percentage bonus the resource applies to your entire city production, not just the 2 base points of increase a standard outpost supplies. This alone was a REALLY big revelation that i hope others already know if they are playing the Space Marine faction. But now i am trying to puzzle out the actual bonus that is being applied and getting weird numbers.
Pardon the wall of info but here it comes:
New map, city deployed, Turn 2. A Ruin of Vaul is a few hexes south of my city borders, unexplored and unclaimed. The Ruin of Vaul provides 2 points of research if an outpost is created (your unit steps on it) and/or a 20% citywide bonus to research if it is within your city borders. My current research numbers are: +7.3 per turn (+6 from buildings, +0.6 from features, and +0.7 from loyalty). All of this is straightforward and understood. Here is where things get ‘odd’. If i deploy a Fortress of Redemption adjacent to the Ruin (before any of my units has ‘claimed’ it) i get an immediate change in my research numbers to 10.6 per turn (6.0 from buildings as before, +3.8 from features, and +0.8 from loyalty). If i then have my Marine step on the Ruin i ‘claim’ it and get the +2 research bonus. So my final numbers after dropping the Fortress and claiming the ruin are: 12.6 per turn (+6.0 from buildings, +5.8 from features, +0.8 from loyalty). I know part of my problem figuring this out is that i don’t know the order the math is being applied and also sloppy reporting by the game (that ‘from features’ category is reporting both base number increases AND the empire-wide percent increase in the same field) but it still feels…off. Also the fact that just dropping the Fortress acquires the % bonus for your city but does not ‘claim’ the tile for the remaining 2 points is weird.
Well, hopefully someone finds this info helpful/useful. I am tired of playing with the math and will just go back to figuring out how i am going to destroy two Necron NPC factions that are next to each other with the only valid assault path leading right in between them.
It’s pretty easy to test whether the AI is getting some sort of undocumented economic advantage. Just start a two player game on a small map, scout it out, and keep an eye on how much the AI is producing. I do this routinely with 4Xs to see what the AI is doing and whether it seems to be using the same rules as a human player. I just haven’t gotten around to trying it with Gladius.
Maybe I haven’t been looking closely enough to see it get sloppy, but I’m impressed with the way the numbers are reported. Have you checked the mouseover tooltips at various stages of the process for each resource? There’s a complete accounting globally, per city, and per building. Furthermore, I’m pretty sure the order of bonuses and reductions is the order they’re listed in the tooltip.
Okay, so I just confirmed that the AI doesn’t seem to be doing anything outside the parameters of a normal economy. I was able to hem in an AI city and watch what it did for a while. Nothing suspicious!
All the talk about Warlock has encouraged me to buy this and I can see what people mean. I’m playing as the guard and greatly enjoying the game except for the slow rate of development. I should probably build extra barracks to churn out troops but it’s taken me about 30 turns just to build all the basic factories. As it is, I have two factories building two units every four turns but I’m losing many more units than that in combat. I’m recreating the German collapse in front of the Siberian reinforcements during winter '41. It’s pretty gripping in it’s own way but I have a gut feeling that all of the unique resources I’m giving up in my flight will just continue to tilt the balance against me.
Don’t lose units! Even as the Imperial Guard, I think you really want to keep your guys alive. I just lost a four player game after about a hundred or so turns (one of the scripted story beats did me in!), and it was encouraging to see on the line graph how well the AI kept its units alive.
Also, Peter, if it’s too slow for you, there’s a speed setting when you start a game. It adjusts the rates of development, research, etc.
In my second game as Space MarinesI’m at turn 71 or 72 and I’m now just back filling on the tech tree. This is more than a little disappointing. The fact that there’s no Civ IV style upgrades for all units doesn’t make sense. This is the one time to actually use them (I like the Civ IV mechanic but it’s an odd fit for a civ game). I like being able to upgrade heroes with special gear finds and all that.
But overall this is leaving me feeling a bit cold. Some interesting ideas - I love the faction asymmetry, I don’t understand why more 4x games aren’t properly exploring this as a mechanic - butI don’t feel like there’s enough there.
Against a force of about 16 necrons, you gotta lose quite a few units, even when running away. I almost formed a decent line of defence but then one of their leaders carved his way through me. I definitely lost the resource race somewhere.
