Fiddling with the attack/defense knobs in the .ini
Posted: 31 Oct 2016, 22:54
I very much like these being there and I've had a wonderful experience of playing against a totaly different AI just now. Not necessarily smarter, but definitely different, and it was doing some things I watched with my mouth open in awe as I thought "Oh, so you CAN do that you bastard!".
They'll take feedback.
Now I reported something related to this allready and it got a "not a bug", and while it's "not a bug" it's affecting performance a lot. The AI is too eager to attack with 0 powered creatures, or creatures which will just survive combat even without any fiddling with the .ini it seems. This, sadly, ends up as "the AI will effectively just tap it's dudes", and the kind of dudes it'll tap are the 0/4 or 1/3 dudes whom it needs for defense.
I got the AI to attack more and chump-block less, and it was a pleasant and strange experience where the AI was suddenly pressuring me and attacking into trades, but it seemed to attack when it had no chance of either dealing damage or killing anything in combat. That's kind of the spillover from the "eager to attack with whatever will survive attacking". It seems to be able to calculate what that is even at about -84 "reluctant to attack" but attacking just to have everybody survive and do no damage AND kill nothing says something is missing.
It was also a bit frustrating that it had to become suicidaly "brave" to just attack with it's critters. On the other hand, I've kinda built the decks for an insanely paranoidly defensive AI. Feels weird that the dials even go any further in that direction, I have to see what happens if I turn them that way.
I'll run some tests and post some results, and anyone who does or has adjusted their attack/defense modifiers in the .ini is wellcome to, too.
The main thing is that this kind of setting will always suck on a global basis whatever it is. If each enemy had it's own overriding stats like these, so that you could tweak it's style as you build it's deck, that would be very interesting. Considering that the difficulty setting seems to override the thinking time as set by the shandalar.ini, I wonder if it's possible to hook up behavior-pattern overrides to individual enemies? That last bit might be just nonsense, but who knows?
They'll take feedback.
Now I reported something related to this allready and it got a "not a bug", and while it's "not a bug" it's affecting performance a lot. The AI is too eager to attack with 0 powered creatures, or creatures which will just survive combat even without any fiddling with the .ini it seems. This, sadly, ends up as "the AI will effectively just tap it's dudes", and the kind of dudes it'll tap are the 0/4 or 1/3 dudes whom it needs for defense.
I got the AI to attack more and chump-block less, and it was a pleasant and strange experience where the AI was suddenly pressuring me and attacking into trades, but it seemed to attack when it had no chance of either dealing damage or killing anything in combat. That's kind of the spillover from the "eager to attack with whatever will survive attacking". It seems to be able to calculate what that is even at about -84 "reluctant to attack" but attacking just to have everybody survive and do no damage AND kill nothing says something is missing.
It was also a bit frustrating that it had to become suicidaly "brave" to just attack with it's critters. On the other hand, I've kinda built the decks for an insanely paranoidly defensive AI. Feels weird that the dials even go any further in that direction, I have to see what happens if I turn them that way.
I'll run some tests and post some results, and anyone who does or has adjusted their attack/defense modifiers in the .ini is wellcome to, too.
The main thing is that this kind of setting will always suck on a global basis whatever it is. If each enemy had it's own overriding stats like these, so that you could tweak it's style as you build it's deck, that would be very interesting. Considering that the difficulty setting seems to override the thinking time as set by the shandalar.ini, I wonder if it's possible to hook up behavior-pattern overrides to individual enemies? That last bit might be just nonsense, but who knows?