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I found a few quirks with the AI and combat.
One of the most obvious "tricks" is that the pathfinding always will go for the shortest FREE way to smack you. Which can mean when lots of enemies are around, or fire or the enemy that moves before them blocks the more logical approach that enemies go as far as needbe to reach you and if it means walking 7 tiles or more which when you know it can make for some funny and useful exploitation.
Another is when there is no way to you (thanks to fire or enemies) they get even stranger, instead of piling in as close as possible or getting out of bowrange they idle on the spot they are making it sometimes possible to block a path with one enemy so you can easily pick of other enemies.
This can extend to enemies piling in in a way that 2 enemies to tiles away don't manage to both pile in as one blocks the way of the other leading to one piling into melee range and another enemy just shifting at 2 tiles away while both should be able to get into melee range.
Than there are dragons and there special behaviour: When a dragon gets low it tries to escape and spellcast which isn't the best option for a dragon if they can't retreat as they take up time they could spend with a melee attack instead of preping a spell that gives the adventurer time to react like they do on 3 or 2 health.
I really think the AI is underperforming for the task at hand. While they still give a numeric challenge they fail on logical level making it in some cases a shooting gallery.
P.S.:Once you have 2 entrances to a room free the enemies are also waaaaay to easy as you can pop in from a distance and do bow attacks with sneak over and over and over again. Might wanna limit the amount you can pull of sneaking to maybe 1 time per entrance or so.
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The pathfinding is actually completely detailed in the rulebook, and I feel that having it be simple is actually a good thing as it allows the player to plan ahead and take account of all the nondeterministic factors. There are a few interesting interactions that different choices for enemy behavior would create:
Squeezing in / fleeing to corner when no path available: Squeezing in would make them susceptible to bow and worm attacks, while running away gives them a disadvantage to subsequent melee (and looks weird for aggressive ones).
Occupying all available player-adjacent tiles: This would raise the tactical difficulty but seems out of place with the strict turn-based concept. I think keeping the randomness in is slightly more fun.
Dragon melee while cornered: Depending on your equipment, the threat of a fireball hit or summoning another monster (as well as a breath attack) can be just as bad as two melee attacks, plus it commits you to attacking the dragon on the next turn rather than being able to flee.
Sneaking from another entrance: As I mentioned in the other thread, if you can already do bow attacks from alternate entrances indefinitely then the sneak bonus is just speeding up the inevitable. I believe that if both entrances are "free" then the room should be essentially cleared and there's no need to make the remaining monsters harder.
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Those are good points, Leogrim. We could do more to make the monsters behave intelligently. We may take steps in that direction, but what unekdoud said about making the monster behavior simple enough to complete understand is a priority for us.
And Yes on what Unekdoud said about "sneaking in from the other side" -- it's just to speed things up given that you are already in clean up mode in that case.
There are a couple things we are considering which releate to this thread:
- Make the dragon spellcasting an unlock. So they don't start doing that until there are multiple dragons in the room, at which point taking the time to cast a spell makes more sense. It would also make dragons easier to understand for new players.
- Make it so that if there is only one monster left in the room (maybe 2), and it has one health, and it is closer to an exit than to you, it will attempt to escape the room and go into some other room in the level. So you'd want to kill it before it got out to reinforce some other room. If you leave the room, retreating monsters would automatically escape (so going back and forth between exits won't help you once the monsters are in retreat mode.) There are some monsters, like dragons, bosses, ghosts where this behavior would not make sense and would not be implemented. I'd love to know what you think of this idea.
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I'm with unekdoud to keep the path finding simple and predictable. It gives the players a sense of achivement when they notice this and can leverage on it to gain a victory while expendng less resources than they would otherwise. If the AI is a little more robust, it may require less monsters in a room to make it less deadly than what it could become.
> Make the dragon spellcasting an unlock. So they don't start doing that until there are multiple dragons in the room, at which point taking the time to cast a spell makes more sense. It would also make dragons easier to understand for new players.
I don't think dragons are difficult to get, although the first few times they move and attack in the same turn might surprise new players. Cating only with backup seems like a more intelligent behaviour for dragons. Spells are very powerful, but perhaps the dragon AI should consider the character it faces. Against the elf, perhaps it would prefer to charge into melee despite low HP, due to her skill with the bow - making spellcastng actually a very risky option. Against the swordsman and the dwarf, if it can retreat to spellcast, it should, since they need to move close - expending resource to do so, or risk the spell.
> Make it so that if there is only one monster left in the room (maybe 2), and it has one health, and it is closer to an exit than to you, it will attempt to escape the room and go into some other room in the level
Interesting, but does that mean any 1 HP monster, or only multi-HP monsters with 1 HP left? Would be more frustrating for the swordsman than the elf (with her bow) and the dwarf (with his charge attack).
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> *Originally posted by **[shift244](/forums/979845/topics/1783594?page=1#12968794)**:*
> Interesting, but does that mean any 1 HP monster, or only multi-HP monsters with 1 HP left? Would be more frustrating for the swordsman than the elf (with her bow) and the dwarf (with his charge attack).
Any 1 HP monster.
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> *Originally posted by **[RogueSword](/forums/979845/topics/1783594?page=1#12968411)**:*
> I'd love to know what you think of this idea.
Sounds scary.
I want to try it.
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Since you asked on thought about the retreating.
I like it as it makes encounters that previously would be basically won still have some kind of stakes. Retreating enemies could drastically increase the difficulty of bordering rooms. On the other hand it would reduce the difficult of already "weak rooms" so it's probably a good idea to keep an eye on that (I had rooms with 2 1hp enemies and one got killed by a worm). Not sure how rooms are generated but I definitly would keep an eye on keeping room generation and retreat at an level were it's not guaranteed that you bring your enemies to autoretreat on the sneakturn or the first/second attack but only after doing some major damage. One thing that also could murk with it are mages which even with one hp can field far more "meat shields" some of which could have 3hp. Or even other mages. Which could reinforce other rooms by one physical unit but technically way more.
Where I think it would be interesting is with tunnels and slimes. I always manage to miss one slime...if I had that slime retreat it would scare me plenty as it could mess up the next room. Taxing either my health or flame scrolls.
Generally I like the idea as it puts a twist to the final moments of a room but there are a lot ifs one would need to consider to not have it spiral into unforseen consequences. Some the player has control over some they have not or that would put extra strain on the player resources to be balanced out elsewhere.
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Just to add to the list of AI mishap:
Purple Worm appear and there was one enemy left in the room: A ghost wizard with 2hp.
Ghost wizard casts enlarge on purple worm > Purple worm attacks ghost wizard and hits > Wizards enlarge spell for the purple worm gets interrupted
Given what the mechanics of the AI that I saw so far it's logical, given that one enemy tried buffing another "enemy" just to be interrupted by said "enemy" it's illogical from a enemy/purple worm pov.
Hilarious nonetheless.
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Another approach to detecting nearly cleared rooms is to see how many consecutive "free attacks" the player can get in, where no scrolls are consumed and the enemy doesn't get a chance to attack, which would sort of represent enemy morale being lowered enough for them to flee. There's still a chance the player might want to manipulate it though.
Instead of having fleeing monsters immediately reinforce other rooms (and possibly ruin their thematic consistency), it could happen on a delay, spawning them next to a door in the next room once you take an action in it. In easier or partially cleared rooms, you could spawn more than one reinforcement to keep it challenging. If there's a warning turn before they're spawned, it could also make fleeing spellcasters less painful.
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There is a simple AI change that would be consistent with all current stated AI rules, make the game more fun to play optimally, and make the game more challenging: whenever a melee monster has to choose between two tiles when closing distance to the player, have them choose the tile closest to the center of the board.
Currently the elf 1v1 can kill any melee monster on any map without taking damage, and also often against two monsters. This strategy can take many turns to carry out and adds a lot more character switching, both of which are annoying. However the simple change outlined above would prevent this on maps without pools/pits on non-edge squares, and would make it more difficult against 2+ monsters on all boards.
I am positive my current win streak would not have been possible with this rule, but I'm about to die anyways as I push this week's tournament, and I'm happy to contribute to this game I have enjoyed even if it hurts my results.
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> *Originally posted by **[w_alloy](/forums/979845/topics/1783594?page=1#12971999)**:*
> There is a simple AI change that would be consistent with all current stated AI rules, make the game more fun to play optimally, and make the game more challenging: whenever a melee monster has to choose between two tiles when closing distance to the player, have them choose the tile closest to the center of the board.
>
This is a very good suggestion.
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How about a pathfinding change to check whether they block another monster. The situation is:
when two enemies are closing in you and there are two free spots next to you (let's say other are blocked by pits or walls) They can each move one tile in such manner as to both end up next to me.
Often, one enemy closes in, but also moves in such manner that it blocks the other one, forcing him to go around.
Example: E1 can go left or right. E2 can only go left, because of pit. If they both go left, they both end up next to you. But if E1 goes right first, the E2 can only go around his back.
-- E1--- E2
tile - tile - PIT
---You
It could be solved with something like:
"if multiple paths: check if someone else wants to take one of them.
If yes and one path is free, move to it.
If no, go random.
If all paths contested: if first, go random, if not, check for available and proceed with normal algorythm."
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> *Originally posted by **[Geraltmustdie234](/forums/979845/topics/1783594?page=1#12973115)**:*
> How about a pathfinding change to check whether they block another monster.
contested: if first, go random, if not, check for available and proceed with normal algorythm."
>
Also a good suggestion.
A problem I have with both of these suggestions is that I think it's fun not always knowing what the monster will do, and hoping they'll do something dumb that helps you.
The suggesion from w_alloy makes a lot of sense for the elf to at least make the room interesting. But for the human/dwarf, sometimes you want escape a room without being attacked, and so you move along the edge hoping the monster will follow you along the edge rather than cutting to the middle. It's kind of silly, but there's so much other stuff to think about in the game, sometimes it's nice to just do something mindless like that and hope the monster gives you a break.
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I'm not a fan of the retreating monsters idea, but it doesn't sound terrible either. How about creating a new enemy type that would behave like that instead of having all other monsters change their AI? I mean it would only make sense with certain enemies anyway - I can imagine a big rat or a frog running away as they are injured, but a Wraith or some giant creature doesn't sound that likely, especially not the undead.
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