Uh-oh... BAD NEWS!
Unfortunatelly, there's bug (I'd call it an omission but after my tests, I do call it a bug
![Tongue :P](https://forum.megaglest.org/Smileys/SoLoSMiLeYS1/tongue.gif)
) in all three engines, GAE included. This is related to having two different kinds of worker units. The AI will use only one and ignore the other.
Here is the GAE ticket for it: Ticket
#53: AI not 'aware' of different worker typesThe ticket above actually links to the Dwarf faction I'm working on.
I didn't tell you about this before because I thought you were goiing to use different buildings for different worker units, which BTW will probably solve nothing (see my tests #2 and #3, and later):
Dwarf faction situation:
- Two different worker units ("Workers" and "Miners") can be produced by the main building ("Stronghold").
- The Worker can harvest Gold, Stone and Wood. It can also build buildings. It can be morphed to an Engineer later in the game.The Worker costs 80 gold to produce.
- The Miner can only harvest Gold and Stone. No other skills. But it harvests considerably faster than the worker (faster harvest speed and higher load capacity meaning less trips to the resource and back to the building it drops them in), specially fast harvesting Gold is a great advantage for the Dwarves, they also use Stone more than Magic and Tech so that's also good. The Miner costs 100 gold to produce.
- Default faction startup (defined in dwarves.xml) gives two Workers and one Miner to the player.
- All works fine on the Human-controlled faction.
- AI controlled faction (all four CPU Easy, CPU, CPU Ultra and CPU Mega) will produce only Workers, never a single Miner.
- AI will use the Miner given on startup correctly though.
My tests to try and workaround this bug were based on trying to make the production of the Miner more atractive to the AI:
#1 Make the two units cost the same. Results: No difference at all.
#2 Give the Miner an Attack skill and corresponding command (based off the Magic Initiate->Battlemage promotion the AI gladly does). Results: The AI still won't produce any Miner, plus it 'now' (then, when I tested) sometimes send the Miner out on a scouting mission...
![Roll Eyes ::)](https://forum.megaglest.org/Smileys/SoLoSMiLeYS1/eye_roll.gif)
It's kind of logic that it would (I also tried three different attack values: symbolic, like 20 +-10 I think, = to the Warrior (basic military unit) attack, > Warrior attack). Still... why would it not procuce any, even when it was a better military unit than the Warrior?!
![Shocked :o](https://forum.megaglest.org/Smileys/SoLoSMiLeYS1/shocked.gif)
#3 Give a Morph command for the Worker to morph to a Miner (by this time I was thinking I might actually get luckier in figuring this out if I tried and look at the source code, only... it's been almost 20 years...
![Tongue :P](https://forum.megaglest.org/Smileys/SoLoSMiLeYS1/tongue.gif)
). The AI never morphed it. Tried with appealing costs and such, still nothing. Actually... I gave free (no cost) morphing skills/commands to both the Worker and Miner to morph to each other and then back. The AI did not hesitate to morph the Miner given at startup to a Worker and never a Miner was seen again for those players (all CPU levels did this).
![Shocked :o](https://forum.megaglest.org/Smileys/SoLoSMiLeYS1/shocked.gif)
#4 Pretty much mixed all the above together in different mixes to try and make the Miner more appealing... No luck whatsoever.
![Tongue :P](https://forum.megaglest.org/Smileys/SoLoSMiLeYS1/tongue.gif)
Now that I'm thinking, the one thing I did not try was placing the Miner before the Worker on the list of units the Stronghold can produce. Hmm... I might try that... Maybe it will then produce Miners and once it needs wood (that the Miners can't harvest) maybe produce Workers...? I'll try.
![Wink ;)](https://forum.megaglest.org/Smileys/SoLoSMiLeYS1/wink.png)
Back to your mod: Cyberdemons should be fun but what really gets me curious is that Spider Mastermind...
![Cool 8)](https://forum.megaglest.org/Smileys/SoLoSMiLeYS1/cool.gif)
EDIT: GOOD NEWS! We nailed the source of the bug! See reply #30 below.
![Wink ;)](https://forum.megaglest.org/Smileys/SoLoSMiLeYS1/wink.png)