Author Topic: My Megaglest  (Read 5068 times)

mjace72

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My Megaglest
« on: 29 April 2010, 04:41:13 »
I wasn't sure to include this one is an existing topic.  Something to share.  I won at megaglest(computer megas), well, sort of.  I used three computer mega's(Egypt, Romans, and Dark Magic(first game with this faction).  I played as Indians using the Twilight Ruins map(4 different teams).  I will say playing the computer mega's becomes very stressful.  I did discover a way to help yourself out if you're in a similar custom game.  Using 5 horsemen I would swing down to the center of the map, ride down to an enemy base with them, engage a single unit and then beat feet back up to map center, and then down to another enemy, thus bringing along one army who is chasing me, and leading them right into another enemy base where a massive battle leaves two armies devastated.  I actually used this method and was able to keep 3 of the 5 horsemen alive.  Egypt was the first to go.  I was happy with the Dark Magic faction though my fire archer army was little challenge against them, seemingly losing 4 archers to each enemy unit I killed.  The main reason of the post is not that I won, but how I won.  This also happens in Glest too.  There just comes a time in the game where the computer stops harvesting even though they have plenty of resources left in their base.  When I finally did go down and wipe out the Romans, they had a single horseman left, the Dark Magic made three or four more units when I invaded them, but their workers(that weren't all blocked up by each other, were just standing along the entrance to their base.  I really have no concept of game programming and won't pretend to but is there a way to correct this so computer workers continue to harvest, if there are resources left in the base they occupy?  The amount of battles I endured, different tactics I was using during the game, it just seemed lacking at the end when I had little resistance destroying the final two enemy bases.  It was nice to see the Dark Magic faction creating numerous defensive structures, but waves of axe throwers were able to quickly destroy them without any troops left to defend them.  I enjoy playing the game so my objective going in isn't just to go kill everyone as soon as possible but it seems the game is geared to play that way, given the fact the computer basically gives up after a certain amount of time.
Also, and I'll include it here, the Romans faction, are there more than one?  If so which is the better faction to use?  I have a romans faction named Romans_beta and dowloaded it as a single faction to paste into my glest.  From some of the things I've read here, it sounds as if there are two romans factions.

ultifd

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Re: My Megaglest
« Reply #1 on: 29 April 2010, 05:20:51 »
Ok, nice tactics. Not sure if they will work on other kinds of maps though...  ::)
Factions not harvesting after a long time are normal...but it isn't good either...  ::)
Mega? Well, good...one reason you survived was because of the map...even though flying units should have got to...  ::)
The leading to... tactic... I do that a lot too...   ::)  :thumbup:
No, there are only one roman faction right now...the beta is the old version of the romans...(actually fantasy romans) (since someone was supposed to make historical romans...  ::) ) but I can see how you got confused...  :|
Yeah...that map is cool.  :O

jda

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Re: My Megaglest
« Reply #2 on: 29 April 2010, 07:22:25 »
Well, this might be silly but...
When an unit sees itself surrounded by an overwelming enemy force, they'll automatically retreat (including human controlled units; you can work around this by giving them a Hold command but that's not always what you want, certainly not with workers which BTW have no Hold command! :O Well, Magic Initiates do have it 'cause they do have an attack command but... :P).
Anyways, workers naturally feel overwelmed very easily... The retreat they will make consists of a rather short move in the oposite direction of the attacker. Once they've reached that hopefully safe place, they will stop unless the enemy closes in again. You might already have noticed all of this... so on to my hipothesis.

Suppose at the end of the game, a worn out player (erm... not really a worn out actual person or computer of course :P) has little defense against strong late game units. They'll be more likelly to run away.
So suppose your enemy player's workers did run and hide to a seemingly safe location while its fellow military units temporarilly kept you at bay... Your foe might have reacted further had it more resources but... the workers were too "afraid" to harvest some more... :O
Granted, the human player will order them back to work and they will ofteh obey (depending on how the situation has changed). And I believe this is where the AI fails. It doesn't order them back to work so... it's done with. :P
If all my hipothetical thinking is correct... that would indeed be something to improve in the AI. ;)

titi

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Re: My Megaglest
« Reply #3 on: 29 April 2010, 09:53:45 »
I will add some loginformation to see whats going on with the AI.
What I believe happens is that the AI has enough ressources. It has so many ressources that the workers are not needed.
This is , because the AI cheats! it has a multipliyer of 3x for ultra cpus and of 5x for mega cpus. So one gold harvesting worker collects 5 times more gold then human players do.
And if the AI has enough ressources it stops harvesting. Maybe (just maybe!) thats all we see.

Does the AI really stop producing warriors too? Or are there just idle workers? If its still producing everything is ok but keep in mind that it doesn't produce all the time!
Try Megaglest! Improved Engine / New factions / New tilesets / New maps / New scenarios

ultifd

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Re: My Megaglest
« Reply #4 on: 29 April 2010, 22:47:13 »
Yeah...  :|
--------------
5x? Is that all to the Mega CPU?  ::)  :O

mjace72

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Re: My Megaglest
« Reply #5 on: 30 April 2010, 03:36:31 »
At some point, the computer does stop creating units.  If I have a teammate, like Indians, after awhile everyone goes away and all that's left are the buildings.  Sometimes a lone Shaman remains and walks around until he is discovered and killed so yes, resouces stop getting harvested and then units stop creating and I'm left defending a ghost town, if I choose to do that.

ultifd

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Re: My Megaglest
« Reply #6 on: 30 April 2010, 03:44:34 »
Yeah...that is regular, happens a lot, if a game has been going on for a long time...
Anyways, I just played a game...and sometimes workers of factions just stand around because they want to harvest something that is behind other stuff, so they are just huddled in a spot  ::)

I guess this is somewhat related   :|

I'm left defending a ghost town, if I choose to do that.
:thumbup:

mjace72

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Re: My Megaglest
« Reply #7 on: 30 April 2010, 13:27:14 »
Yeah, I have that same problem.  The workers all become one big group.  If it's a resource just out of reach of defensive structures I'll fly a thunderbird in there and rack up a bunch of kills.  It doesn't seem fair but after I zap a dozen or so they start moving about hastily, and by then enemy troops are on the way so I'm out of there.

titi

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Re: My Megaglest
« Reply #8 on: 30 April 2010, 13:58:19 »
This grouping thing is a known misbehaviour in glest. It especially happens when the map design doesn't give enough space to build houses has only small access to ressources. I still don't have a real idea how to solve it yet.
Try Megaglest! Improved Engine / New factions / New tilesets / New maps / New scenarios

mjace72

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Re: My Megaglest
« Reply #9 on: 30 April 2010, 14:10:16 »
I've been doing some minor modifications to maps and have seemed to make improvements as I go including changing the starting location, even just slightly seems to help with this problem, removing trees to close and bringing in a small line of trees from the closest edge.  Also I noticed some maps have resources and trees mixed together.  I notice things like these cause the grouping too.  A resource that can be accessed from all four sides seems to work the best for my computer opponents.  Instead of making a huge block of gold, I make the same amount of gold but from the corner of the base, the first line may be one "X" joined by two in the next row, and larger the further from the base you get so that first row is still close enough to the base that they will harvest it.

mjace72

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Re: My Megaglest
« Reply #10 on: 30 April 2010, 14:15:16 »
One other idea I had would be more to the game programming itself than any map alteration and may get mixed reaction but what if the game was to limit the amount of workers or better yet, taking a concept I saw in the dwarves faction of using miners and workers so that maybe you can only have so many workers that are programmed to harvest wood, others that can only harvest gold, and others for stone.  So if the stone is gone, they can not get gold or wood.  This might help in the grouping or might not.

jda

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Re: My Megaglest
« Reply #11 on: 30 April 2010, 14:17:52 »
This grouping thing is a known misbehaviour in glest. It especially happens when the map design doesn't give enough space to build houses has only small access to ressources. I still don't have a real idea how to solve it yet.

Well... isn't that the map's faulty design responsability or even possibly intended map design?...  :look:

mjace72

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Re: My Megaglest
« Reply #12 on: 30 April 2010, 14:28:44 »
I would agree it's more a faulty map design than the game itself though if we could get the workers to move further from base to harvest, I think the grouping may go away

Gabbe

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Re: My Megaglest
« Reply #13 on: 30 April 2010, 14:47:01 »
Why not make the workers thinner, then they might be able to harvest prperly without using the traditional roadskill: "Queing"

jda

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Re: My Megaglest
« Reply #14 on: 30 April 2010, 15:34:57 »
Erm... all workers discussed here already size 1... They don't get any thinner that that... :P

Gabbe

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Re: My Megaglest
« Reply #15 on: 30 April 2010, 15:45:12 »
make it so that workers can walk through workers?

ultifd

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Re: My Megaglest
« Reply #16 on: 30 April 2010, 22:42:23 »
Well, the map design isn't too bad, after all, at least only the AI have problems...  :|
If you edit the maps, then if you want to play multiplayer games that might be a problem...  ::) right...  :|

jda

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Re: My Megaglest
« Reply #17 on: 30 April 2010, 23:20:11 »
make it so that workers can walk through workers?
:o ::)
That's just not how the engine works... It's not based on the good old sprites-collision of ZX Spectrum, ya know... It's position-collision based... Does that make any sense to you?  :look: