Author Topic: Monster Problems  (Read 123140 times)

Malus

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Re: Monster Problems
« Reply #300: March 29, 2017, 01:15:37 PM »
A ton of advies means that they are clearing dens and such, which I would assume has it's own independent impact on keeping rogue hordes manageable. Dunno how strong that impact is, though.
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Nosferatus

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Re: Monster Problems
« Reply #301: March 29, 2017, 02:14:19 PM »
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Madina could have been removed from the map RL years ago, and things wouldn't be any different today.

It actually did, Madina was completly destroyed by the multi realm Aurvendil.
Falkirk freestate was created as a colony by Aurvendil untill Fissioa defeated Falkrik, it was then that the current Madina was founded which copied its name and flags from the original realm.
It didnt contain any nobles from the original Madinan nor any of its ideas what so ever.
It quickly turned into a rogue fighting realm hence forth.
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Beldragos

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Re: Monster Problems
« Reply #302: April 01, 2017, 03:38:22 AM »
Actually my character joined Madina before the fall and before Falks joined the battle, it was a creation of the Vandils but you are otherwise correct.  I was the last Judge of Madina when she switched to Fissoa ruling.  There are a couple characters still around from before like mine but when Fissoa retook the land, it used the name and flags but adopted Fissoa values.  When Fissoa was broken by Luria, Madina was the result because we had to split the realm as part of the Fissoa-Luria treaty.

Madina has gone their own way since then, dedicating itself to allowing expansion westward because they were prohibited from eastern politics and the west was supposedly freshly opened until the mods seemed to change everything on us with these ridiculous hordes.
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Chenier

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Re: Monster Problems
« Reply #303: April 01, 2017, 03:26:44 PM »
Yea, well... when Luria was broken, Madina could have decided to get back at it for that shameful treaty. I get why Fissoa bowed down after being pummeled, but Madina had much better natural barriers.

My point is that the only time I remember Madina getting involved with other realms of its own accord was back when D'Hara seceded from Shadovar, and aspired to expand up to Paisly, which Madina considered its own domain. After their initial fights, which Madina lost 100%, Madina never again declared war on anyone. Falkirk, as far as I recall, were the aggressors and declared the war on Madina. And if they didn't... well, you don't get much credit for joining in against blatant multi abusers that late and that reluctantly. Had Madina ceased existing long ago, and never had been reformed in any way, the island completely removed from the game, it wouldn't have had any impacts on any other part of the continent. Because they just don't involve themselves and their positioning makes their PvE inconsequential, not to mention extremely linear and non-stimulating. Even Westgard, who is pretty much stuck to PvE, had some wars with humans, changing diplomacy, synchronized campaigns, an adventurer scandal, and various levels of communication and interaction with foreign realms. Madina, from what the ex-pats say, is just filled with people who don't care, which makes for a realm that contributes very little to the game. And it's far from being the most active realm I've ever seen.

Didn't mean to rant on and on about Madina, I got my own things keeping me busy. But while geography can explain some levels of isolation, I can't think of any other realm, not only in Dwilight but the whole game (disclaimer: I don't know every realm to have existed on all continents), who has such a history of utter passiveness.
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Anaris

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Re: Monster Problems
« Reply #304: April 01, 2017, 06:42:22 PM »
An update: There are still more monsters deliberately seeking out Sabadell than I'm happy with, particularly given that I thought I'd closed off one of the ways they were using to do so. Further tweaks will be incoming once I figure out a) how they're still doing that, and b) precisely how I want to change their behaviour.
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Chenier

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Re: Monster Problems
« Reply #305: April 01, 2017, 07:17:26 PM »
Do you have a database with a bunch of target lists? I guess... you kinda need to, else it wouldn't even be possible, right? Never really thought about this before. :P

Sabadell did attract some new monsters, but it only got to 20k so far, and they quickly split up over various regions. Some to Ammando, some to Aquitain, some who knows where. They came from Eidulb Outskirts, might have went back there. At least we got a break for a few days, we got to refit, our allies went to refit, we are retaking our core regions, sure feels like a lot of pressure is off us already.

Now, if being adjacent to a ton of rogue regions was what made it attractive, and we could only make the Shrine rich enough to field decent militia, it would make a nice monster killing funnel. :P

We were wondering, though, how do non-physical barriers influence monster pathing, if at all? If monsters want to attack Avernus and Westgard holds Ygg d'Razhuul, the only land path there, will that in any way influence their behavior as opposed to Yggdramir was adjacent to "the largest contiguous rogue region"? Same with Eidulb Outskirts and Astrum? We used to think that Ygg d'Razhuul was hopeless to hold, because all the monsters aiming east wanted to pass by there, but the monsters stopped going there as soon as we did, they never seemed to actually try to use the pass. Since then sea travel was also added for them, though.

If if the monsters take Eidulb away from Astrum, will they then just take the ferry to Libidizedd? Or can they not take sea routes anymore?
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Anaris

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Re: Monster Problems
« Reply #306: April 01, 2017, 07:36:45 PM »
Do you have a database with a bunch of target lists? I guess... you kinda need to, else it wouldn't even be possible, right? Never really thought about this before. :P

There's actually a combination of different things going on.

Smart monsters, those spawning in the big rogue area in the west, have a chance of getting an actual long-distance target that they will then charge off across land and sea to wreck. At present, I believe these are now correctly going preferentially for low-density realms, and within those preferentially for regions without lords and/or without knights. (These are the ones that have an entry in the database.)

If they don't have one of these targets, they'll look in their general vicinity for a non-rogue region and attack it.

This is why Sabadell, in particular, gets hit so damn hard: it borders a LOT of regions, which means monsters from almost all of those regions see it as the only bordering non-rogue region. (And, of course, monsters slightly further away see it as a possible nearby target.)

I'm trying out a change to the system where monsters essentially see regions of high-density realms as being rogue for the purposes of targeting—that is to say, they might wander into them totally at random, but they'll never move in en masse deliberately. There was a small bug in that, that was causing some of the cases to fail to properly respect the high-density status, but I just located the source of it. It will be fixed for next turn change.

Quote
Sabadell did attract some new monsters, but it only got to 20k so far, and they quickly split up over various regions. Some to Ammando, some to Aquitain, some who knows where. They came from Eidulb Outskirts, might have went back there. At least we got a break for a few days, we got to refit, our allies went to refit, we are retaking our core regions, sure feels like a lot of pressure is off us already.

Now, if being adjacent to a ton of rogue regions was what made it attractive, and we could only make the Shrine rich enough to field decent militia, it would make a nice monster killing funnel. :P

Well, not if something happened there like happened to Paisly the other day. I don't think you could ever stack enough militia in any region to repel over 100k CS of monsters in one go ;D

Quote
We were wondering, though, how do non-physical barriers influence monster pathing, if at all? If monsters want to attack Avernus and Westgard holds Ygg d'Razhuul, the only land path there, will that in any way influence their behavior as opposed to Yggdramir was adjacent to "the largest contiguous rogue region"? Same with Eidulb Outskirts and Astrum? We used to think that Ygg d'Razhuul was hopeless to hold, because all the monsters aiming east wanted to pass by there, but the monsters stopped going there as soon as we did, they never seemed to actually try to use the pass. Since then sea travel was also added for them, though.

If if the monsters take Eidulb away from Astrum, will they then just take the ferry to Libidizedd? Or can they not take sea routes anymore?

They're not prevented from using ferries, but they might very well decide to just hop on a raft at this point, depending on where they want to go to.

As far as monster targeting...I'm not entirely sure what you're asking.

At present, monsters never target realms. They target specific regions, and if they take it into their head to hit a particular region, they really don't care what's between them and it. They will charge for it in as straight a line as they can manage, until they forget about it (which they will do, after a certain number of turns).

And yes, holding that pass will now be much easier, as monsters should be vastly less interested in using it.

...For what it's worth, if you could manage to get enough people together (probably a coalition of realms would be required, starting a new monster-buffer-realm), you could cut the entire northwest section off from the main rogue area, pacifying the monsters there (somewhat), by holding Duil, Chrysantalys, Wallershire, and the Corridor of Torment.

Of course, that would probably be nigh-impossible to take, and hell to hold, but hey, life goals, right? ;D
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Chenier

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Re: Monster Problems
« Reply #307: April 01, 2017, 08:11:40 PM »
This is why Sabadell, in particular, gets hit so damn hard: it borders a LOT of regions, which means monsters from almost all of those regions see it as the only bordering non-rogue region. (And, of course, monsters slightly further away see it as a possible nearby target.)

So basically, the problem is gerrymandering? :P If Forguthrie touched Aquitain, cutting Sabadell off from Zereth, and that the limits of the Shrine intersected with it (Forguthrie) without being "adjacent", that's make Sabadell have a more normal amount of neighboring regions, while making all of the regions a bit more regular in shape. ;)

Well, not if something happened there like happened to Paisly the other day. I don't think you could ever stack enough militia in any region to repel over 100k CS of monsters in one go :P

Surely with the proper dev love we could ;)

...For what it's worth, if you could manage to get enough people together (probably a coalition of realms would be required, starting a new monster-buffer-realm), you could cut the entire northwest section off from the main rogue area, pacifying the monsters there (somewhat), by holding Duil, Chrysantalys, Wallershire, and the Corridor of Torment.

Of course, that would probably be nigh-impossible to take, and hell to hold, but hey, life goals, right? ;D

Did you think we were trying to draw a penis Scandinavia on the map when we expanded all the way to Crotona? ;D

Banker called taxes out of sync twice during that campaign, though. By the time we got to Crotona, we just had a ton of bonds. We should have kept going and taken K'dira, but at the time the call was made to not risk desertion.

Passing through the mountains was a mistake, though. Not only were the travel times needlessly long, but some of the intended targets were starving. Going along the northern rurals was deemed a prefferable alternative, if we get such a chance again.

Of course the southern pass is even better, though the regions you mention contain a few starving one, and moving into a starving mountain to take it over, far from home, is painful to say the least.

I actually don't think it would be as hard to accomplish as you seem to think, given how close we came to pulling it off on our first try. Were the taxes called at the specific times I asked them for, or had I decided to sacrifice the army for K'Dira, we'd have completed that East-West chain. Though holding it... I have no idea. Monster  behavior is constantly evolving, I honestly have no idea how they would behave to such a line. But it would be frigging epic. Distance from the capital was already a major issue, though. Unfortunately there's no good capital candidate that would allow us to block the Western subcontinent latitudinally.

« Last Edit: April 01, 2017, 08:16:49 PM by Chenier »
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Nosferatus

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Re: Monster Problems
« Reply #308: April 05, 2017, 07:23:34 PM »
Does anyone know what causes rogues on Dwilight to fight each other now and then?
For example most recently in Darfix and Under Darfix.
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Chenier

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Re: Monster Problems
« Reply #309: April 05, 2017, 08:57:49 PM »
Does anyone know what causes rogues on Dwilight to fight each other now and then?
For example most recently in Darfix and Under Darfix.

Peasant militias. Avernus seems to like looting Darfix and area, which springs militias that then fight the rogues. Happened in Aquitain before we moved back in, too.
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Chenier

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Re: Monster Problems
« Reply #310: April 11, 2017, 04:04:39 PM »
All is calm on the western front... but for how long?
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Chenier

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Re: Monster Problems
« Reply #311: June 01, 2017, 03:55:04 PM »
Nearly 100k converging on Candiel Fields. Nice.  ;D
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DeVerci

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Re: Monster Problems
« Reply #312: June 09, 2017, 12:28:42 AM »
Oh boy, guess what just started landing in Morek!

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Re: Monster Problems
« Reply #313: June 09, 2017, 03:09:50 AM »
Monster sailing on BT and DWI was finally fixed in the last week, so monsters are finally sailing through multiple sea zones and landing on the far side instead of sailing into a sea zone and then landing back in the region they embarked from. As was requested by the players, they will be targeting the least dense realms.

Chenier

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Re: Monster Problems
« Reply #314: June 09, 2017, 12:40:51 PM »
Sweet. Now give all those regions to HD and look at the monsters swamp them ;)
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