Gladius - v1.1.3 is out!

[AlbertoC]

Hi all!

We are releasing a new patch today, one that's been in testing for a few days.
As usual you can find the full changelog below, and you can download the update from the Members' Area.

Stay tuned, there will be some real juicy news soon!


Patch Notes:

These are mainly AI improvements as well as a fix to the AI performance drop that was introduced with a recent version. We're currently in the crunch phase for the new faction, so balance changes are postponed to the upcoming big update.

AI
- AI will now be more aggressive when fighting other factions. This might slightly weaken them in FFA scenarios but should be more fun to play against.
- AI will no longer retreat its units when their cities are under attack and take damage. Instead it'll also fight with the damaged units.
- AI now tries to keep support units units behind other units and out of harms way.
- AI is now less likely to shoot their own enslaved units when there's other units around (like an Enslaver).
- Targets for capturing and exploring will now always be picked considering the distance form the AI's army. Targets for attacking will be picked considering the distance from the cities. That way the AI still prioritizes defending but will not waste so much time going back and forth with their army for recapturing and exploring.
- When retreating a unit to heal, the AI will now not just go out of immediate attack range of the enemy but also further back in general to make it harder to chase the retreating unit down.
- AI is now more afraid of Enslavers.
- Added AI flags to a lot of technologies so the AI knows what they are good for and can choose research accordingly.
- AI shall now prefer targets it can deal a lot of damage to over targets that are safest to attack.
- AI shall no longer leave an important frontline where it still feels it has the upper hand in order to chase some easy targets.
- AI will no longer build a colonizer production building in every single city when it already has one.
- AI now will no longer completely disregard important techs it might not need right now but later.
- AI now takes the lacking resources into account that it saves by disabling buildings when it calculates which resource buildings it needs.
- AI no longer considers to let a unit heal when it hasn't lost at least 10% of its health. This helps against "stunning" Ork melee units via miniscule damage caused by morale loss.
- Whether AI tries to keep their population growth maximized now depends on whether they have enough production capabilities to keep up with the population growth.
- Ammo Runt and Signum abilities are now used by the AI.
- AI Weirdboy should no longer cast warpath on himself and shall prefer more expensive units as targets instead of random ones.
- AI shall now prioritize units to which they deal the most damage overall rather than the highest damage percentage (still taking into account if a target has lower health).
- Fixed Librarian using Telekine Dome when there were no enemies nearby.
- Fixed an issue with potential division by 0 in score evaluation for Neutrals.

Bug Fixes
- Fixed AI slowdown.
- Fixed an issue that caused recommended tiles for founding a city only being the tile the builder was on.

[ErissN6]

- AI will now be more aggressive when fighting other factions. This might slightly weaken them in FFA scenarios but should be more fun to play against.

That's the way. A perfect AI is only fun for its dev, the player wants to be able to win.
A game AI must be given flaws, for different difficulties, in quantities (different levels) and qualities (different kinds of AIs in a same global given difficulty).

[CustodianV131]

- AI will now be more aggressive when fighting other factions. This might slightly weaken them in FFA scenarios but should be more fun to play against.

That's the way. A perfect AI is only fun for its dev, the player wants to be able to win.
A game AI must be given flaws, for different difficulties, in quantities (different levels) and qualities (different kinds of AIs in a same global given difficulty).

Agree, I've no doubt we can write AI to beat humans. (See chess, GO AI events and so on) The challenge is to write AI that is fun to play against as a human.

This patch looks good. Look forward to giving the game a spin with these AI improvements.

[sIg3b]

Disagree with the two above comments. At higher levels, the AI should ground me into the dust when I make mistakes, or where´s the challenge?

[ErissN6]

At higher levels, the AI should ground me into the dust when I make mistakes

Humans always make at least a tiny mistake, so you'll lose. Errare humanum est.
Okay, your challenge would be to lose the later.

[sIg3b]

No AI is that good. But it should punish serious mistakes. And at the higher levels, I do not want an easy win; I want a struggle.