Hi everyone,
We've been discussing FC - and especially AI FC spellcasting - in the office.
Adding options to the combat prompt - e.g. don't cast spells - is easy, but doesn't solve the problem when playing humans.
The defender doesn't get the prompt, so there's no moment of choice for him/her.
This is especially apparent in PBEM play, since having a prompt for the other user - as a solution to the issue - would slow down play severely.
Same logic hold for anything we could add to give some choice and options in the combat prompt screen btw.
As a secundairy consideration, if there's no human there the AI gets to flip the toggles.
Won't go into detail here, but lets just say AI will have a hard time judging what to do.
So the perfect solution would be something that would help out the AI in battle, which could automatically fix the issue above.
So, there's a bunch of things we could do here. I'll jot down some of the things that were discussed below, so you can tell us what you think.
If there's any other suggestions for how you'd like this tackled, please post them here too.
I've numbered my solutions for easy commenting, please do the same : )>
1) We add the toggle to gameplay settings. I.e. never cast spells in FC, which could be set true or false.
We could do fancy stuff here like a slider for combat castingpoint expenditure per turn, but all of these are basically the same thing with more or less bling.
Some attempts at AI friendly solutions.
2) We don't have the AI cast spells ever, when you are preparing a strategic map spell.
That rule would also guide the AI player's choice.
Nice, simple, clean and easy to understand. No need to micro a button in the options panel.
3a) We have a per turn casting pool for strategic and one for tactical combat.
Completely avoids the 'where to spend my casting points' issue.
This does introduce an exploit/AI issue. Multiple attacks in a turn could be used to have a player/AI spend casting points, before sending in the army with valuable troops - e.g. heroes.
Having the AI opt to not spend casting points so it can do so in future battles is a hard nut to crack.
Just think of all the games you've finished with a bag full of health potions and resurrection scrolls that have sat there unused ; P>
Arguably, this exploit was already present in AoW:SM. But still, the goal is to improve upon AoW:SM here.
This then leads us to a modified version of 3a.
3b) We have a per turn casting pool for strategic and a per battle casting pool for tactical combat.
Avoids the exploit/AI issue above. Actually, this makes things real easy for the AI. It will empty its clip asap each battle.
However, this introduces another exploit. Now you can send in a single unit, kite with it while you burn all you castingpoints. Rince and repeat with cheap units, untill the enemy is dead.
The only thing preventing that would be the mana you have available, but it's easy to stockpile mana before a big engagement.
Worst thing, it will a good strategy that's very tedious and boring. Especially when you are on the receiving side.
Sorry for the wall of text, and the lack of tl:dr.
No real way of giving a brief version of this, that doesn't leave out something vital.
Here's a cookie for getting through it all ... *gives cookie*
There will be another cookie for whoever comes up with the perfect solutions for this ; )>
>>>Delete Yourself; You've got no chance to win<<<
Atari TeenAge Riot
[This message has been edited by sikbok (edited 03-24-2013 @ 11:38 AM).]