I have a few questions I thought I would post to see if anyone can tell me the answers.

1. Sometimes when I take a Wizard's home city, but s/he still has other cities left, I Defeat the Wizard, and sometimes I merely Banish the Wizard. Is there some predictable basis for figuring out which will happen?

2. I was wondering if someone could tell me the precise advantages the AI gets on the Hard, Extreme, and Impossible settings?

3. Why can't the program calculate the amount of food which is supposed to be produced correctly? I have Insecticide n, and the problem remains. Most of my cities simply do not produce as much food as they are supposed to.

If I think of more questions I will edit my post and add them.

I only have the answer to your first question- whether the wizard is defeated or just temporarily banished depends on whether they have enough mana reserves to cast the Spell of Return. Upon having their capital city captured a wizard is normally banished and must immediately start casting the Spell of Return, but if they don't have enough mana to cast it then they're defeated.

Just for question 1, a refinement of DarrkPhoenix's answer: If, AFTER THE BATTLE when you conquer the wizard's home city, that wizard has ZERO mana, they are defeated. If they have any mana left at all, they are banished (assuming they have other cities of course).

This can make it a bit tricky if you are trying to banish but not defeat someone, especially if it's a wizard who uses spells like fireball or countermagic that allow them to spend extra mana points. If they end with such a spell, they'll probably throw all their remaining mana into it, and be defeated instead of banished.

There's not much you can do, other than attack wizards who have more than twice as much mana as spell skill (so they can't spend it all), or hope the wizard ends on some spell with fixed cost (web, for instance) which leaves them with a couple of unusable mana points. I haven't noticed this. Can you explain - how did you determine there was a problem?

I simply noticed that there were apparent inconsistencies in how much food was produced by a given number of farmers in my cities. In some cases, the first several farmers beyond the mandatory minimum number of farmers for the city, produce two food each. In other cases, the very first farmer, and all subsequent ones, beyond the ones needed to support the city, only produce a single unit of food. This looks like an inconsistency, and therefore, an error. It could be there are variables I am not taking into account. I haven't actually tried to analyze it carefully, I just thought it was an error.

Interesting, Ylidor! While I've noticed that not all farmers produce equally, I've never thought to see what's going on. I tried some testing, and here's what I've found, using a troll city, population 21, max population 25, The total "food" value of all 21 resource squares is 22. 5 farmers are required.

Granary produces a constant 2 food, farmer's market 3.

The first 11 farmers produce 2 food each, after that it's 1 food per farmer.

The forester's guild produces 2 food until 13 farmers have been allocated, thereafter it produces 1.

The most bizarre effect is for the animist's guild, which by description adds 50% productivity to the farmers. It's actual effect:
Up to 7 farmers, it adds 1 food per farmer (a 50% increase as expected).
For 8 farmers it produces 7 food, the same as for 7 farmers.
For 9 and 10 farmers, it produces 6 food (!)
From 11 farmers on, it produces 1 food per two farmers, rounded down (so 5 for 11, 6 for 12 or 13...)


This is speculation so far, but I note the animist's guild's productivity drop occurs when the total food produced by farmers + animist's guild exceeds the total food value of the city's resource squares. There's some hint in the manual about this:
"...animist's guild. This building allows individual farmers to harvest 50% more food than normal; the total amount of food a city can produce, however, is not affected."

Another city, with maximum food from resource squares of 12.5, saw its animist guild producing 1 food per farmer until just 6 farmers, when it dropped to 5 food. I think there's something going on here. In this city, only the first 7 farmers produced a raw 2 food each, the 8th and up produced 1 each.

Very interesting - too bad I don't have a solution as such, but I think it's fair to say this relates to the total (food) productivity of the city's resource squares, and so is an intended limitation on farming, even if it seems very peculiar in practice.

I haven't tested this for halflings!

Well Legraf, I am impressed by how much detail you uncovered, and how quickly.

It seems like it may be a deliberate effect based on total potential food production.

If so, the formula is apparently a bit on the complicated side, as the effects of farming on food production seem to vary considerably, but it is an interesting detail. I guess in practice you just try to maximize your food production through trial and error.

//

Well, that seems to be questions 1 and 3 taken care of. Anyone care to take a stab at question #2 (computer bonuses on Hard, Extreme, and Impossible settings)?

Ok well on Hard and Impossible difficulties the computer players all get to start with 150 gold as opposed to your 25.

Also on Hard the computer gets 13 picks with 15 picks on Impossible compared to our measly 11

Found this out using the Hold Alt and type "RVL" on the magic screen.

I also swear they get a lot more that we cannot see. Like there immune to upkeep costs other than food as there is really no other way they could keep so many summoned creatures around otherwise.

Also I believe that computer players are immune to "Rampaging" or "Wandering" Monsters as I have had them bypass 2 comp cities and come right for me before.

Although to make up for this I do not believe that computer players attack ruins, caves, stones and etc... other than Nodes.

I just do not know how the computer can quite often maintain such a big army early and still build things like Parthenons, Miners Guilds etc to crank out top tier troops.

My best start by far in a game happened just recently. My starting town had 2 WILD GAME, 2 GOLD MINES AND 1 Adamantium source!!! A nearby town, like 8 squares away, had 3 Wild Game and an Adamantium source for my second town as well. Sadly there was already a Beastman town on the site that was quite heavily defended as you can imagine. Had to build Alchemists and 2 Longbowmen to raze the town then colonize myself. Did that asap. ;)

Thanks for the information and I'm impressed with your start; I have never had a start that good. If anyone knows more about the support costs, if they get a break on building costs, or anything else I would like to know about it. It does seem to me that the computer players get more than just a few extra picks on impossible, but I don't know what.

I don't know what the specific numbers are, but the AI players essentially get a multiplier to their production/mana/research/etc values as the difficulty increases, as well as having more confrontational attitudes toward the player. IIRC they actually operate at player baseline levels on Easy, not Normal.

Thanks for the information. That would appear to match the information I have been collecting. I have been checking on what the capital city of each computer player looks like on turn 4. Their cities appear to start pretty much the same as the human player's city. Four population, a barracks, a smithy, and a builders' hall. The only point of difference was that on Impossible, the computer players had about a 50% chance that their city had grown to five population by turn 4.

So, given that the computer players appear to start with about the same resources (I had wondered if they started with extra population or extra buildings, but they don't really seem to), it does seem like their bonii are probably multipliers for Production, Spell Research, probably Gold, Population growth, and so on.

I almost feel like I read something about this before; I should go through the manual again.

According to the official strategy guide: at Normal difficulty, the AI gets a +50% bonus to population growth and production points, a 25% reduction in upkeep costs, and no more than three wizards will wage war against you at once (unless, of course, you decide to declare war on the lone holdout).

At Hard, those bonuses go to +100% (double what you get), their upkeep discount increases to 40% (60% of what you pay), and everyone can gang up on you if they so choose. In fact, there's a built-in 25% diplomacy penalty.

At Impossible, population growth goes to +200% (triple yours), production goes to +150% (2.5x yours), the upkeep discount drops to 50% (half of yours), and the diplomacy penalty rises to 50% as well.

At Hard or above, at least one wizard (possibly two) will have their starting city on Myrror. In addition, Hard wizards start with two additional starting spell picks (13 vs. 11), and Impossible ones get two more (15 vs. 11). At Normal difficulty and above, there's a 25% chance to lose any hero fleeing an encounter. Random events also occur more often: on average, 2-3 turns sooner per difficulty increase.

Last but not least, neutral cities can have a starting population range of 2-5 (Normal), and up to 11(!) on Hard and Impossible. According to the manual, there's about a 20% chance of a city exceeding 5 population right from the start.

Surprisingly, even on Easy the AI enjoys a 10% discount on upkeep costs, and no more than two wizards can wage war on you at once without a casus belli.

Hey TwoHandedSword, thanks for the detailed information.

This game remains interesting, engrossing, and very challenging even after all these years.

Even now it still attracts a community of enthusiasts.

Amazing.