Meh, thats an easy one, all enemies are 2 hexes, so all you need is to get cornered by dogs and one reduced behe stack, then your HP gets back every round, wait/attack and return, done.
I've seen AI fight very well, if you give him the right spells.
And if you remove magic items both part ? Here you dont chose the weakiest for you considering the situation. On an other I think everybody agree AI is rather predictable.
Salamandre said:Meh, thats an easy one, all enemies are 2 hexes, so all you need is to get cornered by dogs and one reduced behe stack, then your HP gets back every round, wait/attack and return, done.
I've seen AI fight very well, if you give him the right spells.
I think you'd be hard pressed to win it with your suggested method - there is only 60 spell points.
Anyhow, this is really meant to show 'stupid AI'. Here is a hint: this battle (same setup) is also easy to win (just long).
Salamandre said:if one day, you want to test your skills vs a progressive AI, THIS is the way
Yes, you touch every point and the progressive gains are a must. I've been trying to enhance the challenge in Huge HotA maps by giving AI progressivelly more resources and creatures (it build up to more then 30 level seven and 800 level 1 a week for the starting towns) but as soon as I beat the customized heroes once AI can't handle it, even with extra creatures.
On the other hand, I don't like the idea of an AI wondering around with thousands of creatures and 99 in all prims frist week. I had some surprises when I wogified custom maps, like guy locked in castle learns Town Portal from Eagle Eye at start of the game and is at my door with hundreds of Phoenixes and thousands of messengers day 7 week one.
Salamandre said:Meh, thats an easy one, all enemies are 2 hexes, so all you need is to get cornered by dogs and one reduced behe stack, then your HP gets back every round, wait/attack and return, done.
I've seen AI fight very well, if you give him the right spells.
I think you'd be hard pressed to win it with your suggested method - there is only 60 spell points.
Anyhow, this is really meant to show 'stupid AI'. Here is a hint: this battle (same setup) is also easy to win (just long).
Since no one took a bite at it, here's the solution... should be self-explanatory regarding AI logic - or lack thereof.
Salamandre said:No people, what I mean is: stop using the reload feature. When you lose an early or late battle, vs neutrals or AI, just continue. Or be more careful. Then not larger than large map. You want challenge, accept to do a few compromise.
I don't know about you but if I played without ever touch the "Replay opponent turn" and "View Wold" buttons things would be a lot more frustrating, even if maybe not challenging...
RoseKavalier said:
Anyhow, this is really meant to show 'stupid AI'. Here is a hint: this battle (same setup) is also easy to win (just long).
Since no one took a bite at it, here's the solution... should be self-explanatory regarding AI logic - or lack thereof.
Except that the player splits his Arch Devils into a stack of 6 and 1, as opposed to the 7 shown in the picture. Furthermore, once he goes out of mana, the single Arch Devil is killed. The video stops there, but I fail to see how the AI doesn't kill the remaining 6 in the next turn.
Also, what could be the reason the AI doesn't kill the single Arch Devil with his Behemoths when he has the chance? Does it assume the Arch Devils will kill the Cerberi, giving access with its Behemoths to the stack of 6 Arch Devils?
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The last Reasonable Steward of Good Game Design and a Responsible Hero of HC. - Verriker
Maurice said:Except that the player splits his Arch Devils into a stack of 6 and 1, as opposed to the 7 shown in the picture. Furthermore, once he goes out of mana, the single Arch Devil is killed. The video stops there, but I fail to see how the AI doesn't kill the remaining 6 in the next turn.
Also, what could be the reason the AI doesn't kill the single Arch Devil with his Behemoths when he has the chance? Does it assume the Arch Devils will kill the Cerberi, giving access with its Behemoths to the stack of 6 Arch Devils?
That was a screenshot for people not interested in looking at the map. Initial post makes it clearer...
Now, as to what happens in the video: once the setup with the Cerberus is achieved, the behemoths are afraid to come within range of attacking the 1 ArchDevil. Why? Because the AI calculates that you can inflict more damage to it by casting Meteor Shower (killing 1 Behemoth and 1 Cerberus). As a result, all Behemoths remain frozen in place as long as you have spell points to cast Meteor Shower. The last portion of the video shows you what happens when you don't have enough spell points.
To win this fight, you don't even need to cast 1 spell, for the purpose of explanation, I emptied the mana pool.
If you use different placement, behemoths will not be intimidated and kill you regardless.
Ah, yes, it makes sense that way . I had sound off, since I was watching the video at work, no clue if there's a voice-over explaining things . But yeah, that's stupid.
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The last Reasonable Steward of Good Game Design and a Responsible Hero of HC. - Verriker
What beats me is...
how do ppl find joy in finding / using exploits in a very old game?
It's not "AI stupidity", just something the programmers didn't think of.
Those are called exploits, they exist in most games and they are never fun to use for me.
(and i won't even start on how much fun it is to spend time on such long and basically mindless "battles" )
man, the level of expertise in some of you make me worry that none of my maps will be anywhere near challenging enough, while they'll certainly kick my ass if i play them even halfway to difficult.
fred79 said:man, the level of expertise in some of you make me worry that none of my maps will be anywhere near challenging enough, while they'll certainly kick my ass if i play them even halfway to difficult.
I wouldn't worry about it, difficult maps don't suit everybody; just like story maps don't suit everyone.
If you want insight into AI logic, then play Aeris maps! Beautiful maps? Darklord! Story maps? Duncan!
So long as your map meets your own goals, then you've accomplished what you set out for.
RoseKavalier said:If you want insight into AI logic, then play Aeris maps! Beautiful maps? Darklord! Story maps? Duncan!
well, i want to make maps that are a little bit of everything. i'd say 40% tactical, 40% beauty, and 20% story. i'm working with 3 pre-existing maps atm to make a campaign that accomplishes this, that i want to release once finished. this is further down the road though, for sure. i still have a lot of work to do to them, to make them fit into one another like puzzle pieces, while at the same time making them tactical enough to present a challenge, and writing in the story and little details throughout the maps. the beauty part is easy, i've been working on that since i got into modding(and for the most part, the maps are already done in that aspect). my tactical expertise is very limited though, as ever since i've been playing the game, i've been deliberately making the AI either equal to, or weaker than me. it seems that everyone else has been doing the opposite since they've been playing. shouldn't be too hard to implement a stronger AI, but as i don't know how the AI reacts, it'll be more difficult to predict what the AI does with whatever buffs i give them.
the stories have already been scrapped for each map, as they were all seperate, with their own events tying in. that has to start from scratch. the first thing i did, was make sure that the factions that are in each map, are the same in every map; as that is part of the story line i'm working on.
but all this isn't really on-topic, so i'll stop yammering.
Fred what difficulty do you usually play on?
Hard is the most balanced in terms of starting resources, but ai are handicapped in how many heroes it can buy. So I suggest expert or impossible, of course like everything else in heroes it depends, some maps on impossible could be exactly that due to a lack of starting mines/resources.
But I say the best maps are played on impossible, but with a fair possibility of getting gold and resources.
It's not fun being stuck in town unable to do anything for days or even weeks...
Well I also mostly play my own map, with my own rules, but even if I play at impossible it's not that bad. I try to tweak the map a little all the time, but generally I know it better than my own back pocket.
But for a more challenging game I also suggest banning Town Portal, Dimension Door and Shackles Of War, maybe also Fly but in HotA it's not so abuseable anymore, if the map is set up correctly. So I play with Fly, also for some variation in the level 5 spells and not to make Tower and Air Magic totally suck.
Since we are all in the same track let me finnish test my new HotA AI map and I share it with you.
@Fred I do the opposite of you, I always start by letting computer create a random map for background (cause my designning skills are inexistent) then I change stuff and add events giving AI more money and creatures.
I also give them modified heroes and put some others in prisons near the starting town and disable tavern for the first week (just to make sure they free the bulldozers, cause without this sometimes they didn't, just using the unimproved heroes they could find in tavern). All these heroes are unavailable for me to hire after they are killed.
Then I put a bunch of heroes in unreachable prisons in the underground, just to make sure enemy improved heroes are always around, circulating between them.
But the truth is, without BAI special events giving them more experience, prims and movement I still didn't succed in making them progressivelly stronger. They start well but after a some defeats they just can't handle it, their prims become lower then my media for heroes that are usually in the field. Also, I have to use the secondary skills to give them movement and sigth radius and since I am limited to 8 slots that doesn't allow for much diversity...
phoenix4ever said:I also suggest banning Town Portal, Dimension Door and Shackles Of War
In general, XL map banning town portal are bad designed maps. From my experience, after testing and playing hundreds of maps, the best maps, surprisingly, were the ones which also banned nothing, including dimension door (however used partially or at a specific moment, then removed).
My humble guess is that you never played the basics of HoMM 3 mapmaking, as Tew 1-2, Unleashing, To kill for power, all Darklord and Andrew Tanzi maps, so you just think Heroes is "like your map". Unlike Rosen Kavalier, which said previously that if you want beautiful maps, play Darklord ones, I believe that Darklord maps are more than just "beautiful". They have a perfect structure, plot progression and difficulty. Gaming is having fun, when it starts to look like work and asks the player to actually search for hours in editor or reload hundreds of times, then is not for everyone.
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Well I simply disagree with you Salamandre.
With Town Portal and Dimension Door the map just turns in to a contest of who can learn these spells and Wisdom, Air and Earth Magic fastest, whoever is lucky enough with this gets a huge advantage.
Town Portal also means you only need one hero to defend all your castles.
I find it much more interesting to actually have to think about attacking and defending and not always use a cheap Town Portal to get back when you are in trouble.
My map is completely open and you will get a different experience every time you play. Of course I have an advantage since I know the map so well, but looking in the editor to spoil stuff is not necessary and is just another way to cheat imo.
This thread is pages long: 
posted January 30, 2016 09:05 PM
. I had sound off, since I was watching the video at work, no clue if there's a voice-over explaining things 
. But yeah, that's stupid.
