Monster Hunt 2.0

[Computer_Player]

Just played a game (and obsed one) on the new update. Thanks once again.

I'm attaching a couple of replays. One thing I noticed is that it becomes really hard for heroes to heal once villages are taken out in an area (especially for knalgan) and even though healing ponds exist, the absence of healing makes removing disease a moot point sometimes. Given the name, I'd also suggest that healing ponds should heal +8 . This also adds them as really important strategic points in the map even in the late game (where disease is rampant and its hard to heal your units.

The format of the game also lends itself to a certain deceptive mindset. You might think that the heroes, having defensive missions i.e. Village defence, City defense, Escort mission - that they can play more passively. However that is not true and as the name suggests, the Heroes should be proactive in trying to kill/limit Monster HP because the longer the game goes, the more the Monster has a chance to snowball.

Likewise, hanging back is also a viable strategy for the monster as they have renewable resources in hp and free zombie spawns.

Bug: The 1st replay has a sort of error appearing intermittently. At first I thought that was because of a recall attempt, but now I don't think so as why repeat?

Spoiler:

2nd replay the heroes reported that the Light aura item didn't activate when the elvish rider got it.

Thanks for the updates once again and look forward to more games.

[Limabean]

Just played a game (and obsed one) on the new update. Thanks once again.

I'm attaching a couple of replays. One thing I noticed is that it becomes really hard for heroes to heal once villages are taken out in an area (especially for knalgan) and even though healing ponds exist, the absence of healing makes removing disease a moot point sometimes. Given the name, I'd also suggest that healing ponds should heal +8 . This also adds them as really important strategic points in the map even in the late game (where disease is rampant and its hard to heal your units.

The format of the game also lends itself to a certain deceptive mindset. You might think that the heroes, having defensive missions i.e. Village defence, City defense, Escort mission - that they can play more passively. However that is not true and as the name suggests, the Heroes should be proactive in trying to kill/limit Monster HP because the longer the game goes, the more the Monster has a chance to snowball.

Likewise, hanging back is also a viable strategy for the monster as they have renewable resources in hp and free zombie spawns.

Bug: The 1st replay has a sort of error appearing intermittently. At first I thought that was because of a recall attempt, but now I don't think so as why repeat?

Spoiler:

Screenshot 2024-02-24 201701.png

2nd replay the heroes reported that the Light aura item didn't activate when the elvish rider got it.

Thanks for the updates once again and look forward to more games.

Today I pushed another couple bugfixes, including the one that Atreides pointed out. So the monster should now get gold immediately after giving control to AI. I have a few others planned for this coming week, and I'll also check out the temp5 error you saw and confirm the illumination artifact is working correctly. Thanks for the bug reports and replays.

I've gotten feedback from multiple people that they feel pressure to move all the zombies to prevent the ai from misplaying, so I'll be adding a toggle to turn off automatic ai control at the end of the turn. Adding heals to the healing ponds is also a good idea, so I'll do that and also add another healing pond location. I want disease to be a useful tool to weaken ai, but more of an inconvenience for players. If I need more changes to achieve that I will think of some.

As for larger balance changes, I agree with all your points. One particular problem is that in the end game the monster has an incentive to just turtle around a single grotto and delay until they get strong enough. This is a boring end for everyone involved. I plan to fix it with two changes:
1. Heroes can rebuild destroyed villages by just resting a unit on the hex. No other cost besides the unit being delayed for a turn. This solves the lack of healing problem you mentioned, and gives the monster more villages to eat as a nice bonus.
2. At turn 20, all villages start spawning units for the heroes, and destroyed villages spawn zombies. So the game becomes entirely about map control. Neither side can afford to turtle and delay, because the other will take most of the map and overwhelm with reinforcements.

You're also right that some factions struggle as heroes. Particularly dwarves and undead. I've considered making unique tailored perks for them to make up for their weaknesses. No specifics yet though.

[Atreides]

Those all sound like excellent changes. I too sometimes felt that I wanted to save badly hurt zombies by rest healing them (slow but beats throwing them away) but the auto AI always moved them unless I order them to not move (not sure it works even, I think it might move them anyways).
Idea for healing pool maybe they should heal 4 not 8 just to make it more important to try and save the village nearby.
Undead heroes is sort of a "mirror" match I guess. They're my fave core faction though, I should try them here. (normally I play addon eras and hehe of course there anything is possible!)

[Computer_Player]

Just posting this replay here. 2nd game by Conrad (his first game, he mass recruited trolls.. that went about as well as expected )

[Atreides]

Watched it, neat. I like the new trick for pairing disease with poison. Disease is too slow but hacking them down quick with poison first works well.

I think it's pretty much a given that killing the enemy leader is not gonna be the usual way to win so that makes grotto/center city defense the critical aspect of victory.

BTW I am pretty sure that the preloaded recalls are a feature, I recall reading about it somewhere. No clue though if they're customized per faction.

[Atreides]

Just tried out the latest update. Love the new healing pool graphic. The old was nice but this one really looks the part. A nice hot swirling jacuzzi to ease away that nasty disease and poison. The popup says it heals them, does that mean 100%?

The lower right grotto now seems to create player zombies, interesting.

I did run into something "weird". While playing the monster vs droided heroes on turn 5 I suddenly had no monster and my leader was the ghost in the upper left. I'm fairly sure I did not weaken him enough for the L1 and L0 he was near to be able to kill him. No ghast lost in the stats either. Rolling back one turn I couldn't see what happened. I'll have to try this again and see if something is really "weird" or if I was just not paying enough attn. That does happen... : ) Hmmm... wait, shouldn't I have lost? OK something is wrong for sure. OK better attach the last save.

[Limabean]

An overdue summary of recent changes:

1. I fixed all the bugs reported up to this point, except that latest from Atreides. The only explanation I can think of is a store/unstore error on the unit. But I can't reproduce it, so no fix yet. I'll keep an eye out for it, let me know if it reoccurs.
2. Healing ponds now actually heal units (+8hp per turn, in addition to removing status effects like poison, disease). There is a new healing pond in the lower right.
3. Convenience option to toggle on/off the automatic control of AI for unmoved zombies at the end of the turn. So if the monster player wants the zombies to stay in one place, they can toggle this once rather than having to move all the zombies.
4. Increased the number of AI units helping the hero, and made some small adjustments to the map. This is mostly a response to Computer_Player's replays (thanks for those). I was impressed with how quickly you were able to rush the center city, I didn't intend for it to be that fast. The extra AI defense should hopefully slow it down a little. I did also see the suggestion that Monster recruits shouldn't be able to move/attack the same turn they are recruited. As the replays showed, it can be abused, but I decided not to change it. I think it opens up some fun tactical options for the monster, so I'd rather fix balance issues in other ways.

I do still plan to make the larger changes I mentioned earlier, but it will probably be a while before I finish them.

[Atreides]

1. I fixed all the bugs reported up to this point, except that latest from Atreides. The only explanation I can think of is a store/unstore error on the unit. But I can't reproduce it, so no fix yet. I'll keep an eye out for it, let me know if it reoccurs.

It happens every time to me. I just tested it with only the Age of Heroes (core) and all mods turned off just in case but yup, it happened again. I tried to see if I could find a trigger but since it happens not on my turn...

I increased autosaves to 2 because 1 isn't much use here, only shows the post-error state. : ) [I knew autosaves were useful for something other than cheating!]

2p - Monster Hunt-Autospeichern4.gz

before (I hope)

(117.14 KiB) Downloaded 32 times

2p - Monster Hunt-Autospeichern5.gz

after (I think)

(113.36 KiB) Downloaded 22 times

[Limabean]

1. I fixed all the bugs reported up to this point, except that latest from Atreides. The only explanation I can think of is a store/unstore error on the unit. But I can't reproduce it, so no fix yet. I'll keep an eye out for it, let me know if it reoccurs.

It happens every time to me. I just tested it with only the Age of Heroes (core) and all mods turned off just in case but yup, it happened again. I tried to see if I could find a trigger but since it happens not on my turn...

I increased autosaves to 2 because 1 isn't much use here, only shows the post-error state. : ) [I knew autosaves were useful for something other than cheating!]
2p - Monster Hunt-Autospeichern4.gz2p - Monster Hunt-Autospeichern5.gz

Alright, I think this bug should be fixed now, although to be honest I'm still not entirely sure what triggered it. Thanks for pointing it out. If you're curious about the details:

Spoiler:

The minion leader (ghost in the top left) was somehow getting caught up in a "name=unit placed" event. This was happening long after it was first placed, and I don't think it was ever being placed again, so it still doesn't make sense to me. This resulted in its side being changed to the Monster's side. Later, I stored the monster using its side and canrecruit=yes. But because the ghost switched sides, there were now two leaders stored, and only the first (ghost) got unstored.

[Atreides]

The minion leader (ghost in the top left) was somehow getting caught up in a "name=unit placed" event. This was happening long after it was first placed, and I don't think it was ever being placed again, so it still doesn't make sense to me. This resulted in its side being changed to the Monster's side. Later, I stored the monster using its side and canrecruit=yes. But because the ghost switched sides, there were now two leaders stored, and only the first (ghost) got unstored.

Fascinating! That is odd indeed. Perhaps a bug in unit placed. Or maybe when the zombies were re-assigned that triggers unit placed. That is place unit may be run when a unit switches sides. Just speculating.

[Computer_Player]

Thanks for the update. Some bug reports:

1st replay displayed an OOS and the Light item not working. Unsure if they are related or not (though the OOS appeared when I tried to teleport).

2nd replay the zombies intermittently kept NOT moving when passed to the AI. They all rest healed but then didn't move. Sometimes though they do move. I was unable to nail down how this happens. I would also suggest moving the toggle regarding AI - ON/OFF away by a space or two in the right click menu from the Pass to AI toggle to help mitigate misclicks.

[Limabean]

Thanks for the update. Some bug reports:

1st replay displayed an OOS and the Light item not working. Unsure if they are related or not (though the OOS appeared when I tried to teleport).

2nd replay the zombies intermittently kept NOT moving when passed to the AI. They all rest healed but then didn't move. Sometimes though they do move. I was unable to nail down how this happens. I would also suggest moving the toggle regarding AI - ON/OFF away by a space or two in the right click menu from the Pass to AI toggle to help mitigate misclicks.

Alright, I took some time today to look into these. I suspect the OOS was caused by the artifacts. I mistakenly had an [allow_undo] in the moveto event. I've removed that, although the side effect is that when there are any artifacts that have been bought but not picked up yet, the hero player won't be able to undo moves. There is hopefully a better way to design this, but i'll need to think about it more. I have also removed the light artifact, at least until I can confirm there's nothing wrong with it.

The 2nd bug was another tricky issue caused by the "name=unit placed" event. The zombies were being switched to the minion side correctly, but at the start of the AI's turn, they were ALL being deleted and re-placed. Then my "unit placed" event would fire, immediately changing them all back to the player's side. I am 99% sure that it is not any of my custom events that is deleting and re-placing the zombies at the start of the AI turn. It seems like it is a mainline event related to the resting mechanic. At least, I fixed it by filtering out units that need to rest from the "unit placed" event. I still don't know why it only happened sometimes, and I plan to ask for more info in the WML workshop. Thanks for the replay, it was very helpful in figuring this out.

I also made some small changes to the starting layout, and added a bunch more possibilities for elite reinforcements.

[Atreides]

Ran it vs AI (yes it works OK if you play as monster and run 1st turn for heroes yourself and then droid it, oh and if they kill a grotto you pick for them - be fair!) and all seems well. Chose the "endless" attacks option for heroes and whew can it blow through a lot of zombies. I think it may be better than the extra moves/healthy pick.

Also I came up with a cute name for the pig recruit: "Piggy Bank" 8 > (gotta say I've not actually found the recruit that useful so far - you gotta wait a long time for the "bank account" to grow enough to get a decent return on investment...)

[Limabean]

Ran it vs AI (yes it works OK if you play as monster and run 1st turn for heroes yourself and then droid it, oh and if they kill a grotto you pick for them - be fair!) and all seems well. Chose the "endless" attacks option for heroes and whew can it blow through a lot of zombies. I think it may be better than the extra moves/healthy pick.

Also I came up with a cute name for the pig recruit: "Piggy Bank" 8 > (gotta say I've not actually found the recruit that useful so far - you gotta wait a long time for the "bank account" to grow enough to get a decent return on investment...)

hmm, possibly related to the mods, but when I try to load that replay it ends immediately. I like "Piggy Bank", I may steal it. I believe current "breakeven" for the pigs is 5 turns, and I think I'll buff that to 4 turns and see how it feels. I agree with you: I haven't found it too useful either, probably because of the opportunity cost of spending hp on the pig rather than something else.

[Atreides]

Ran it vs AI (yes it works OK if you play as monster and run 1st turn for heroes yourself and then droid it, oh and if they kill a grotto you pick for them - be fair!) and all seems well. Chose the "endless" attacks option for heroes and whew can it blow through a lot of zombies. I think it may be better than the extra moves/healthy pick.

Also I came up with a cute name for the pig recruit: "Piggy Bank" 8 > (gotta say I've not actually found the recruit that useful so far - you gotta wait a long time for the "bank account" to grow enough to get a decent return on investment...)

hmm, possibly related to the mods, but when I try to load that replay it ends immediately. I like "Piggy Bank", I may steal it. I believe current "breakeven" for the pigs is 5 turns, and I think I'll buff that to 4 turns and see how it feels. I agree with you: I haven't found it too useful either, probably because of the opportunity cost of spending hp on the pig rather than something else.

Ah sorry about all the custom stuff, I've run into such problems with dl'ed replays myself. I too suspect a mod, Reflections specifically since I recently noticed that it "leaks" because some of it is not inside a modification tag. Parts of it are active even when deactivated (!) ... Most mods are purely events which do get saved in the replay file.
Go on use Piggy Bank, the unit is created nameless as is. : ) Hmmm so 6 turns to gain what 4 or so HP? For a juicy 20 you'd really need to wait 10 turns. (estimate didn't look up stats) Yeah it could use a boost I suspect. There are 2 ways to boost it I guess: less init cost or more growth. I'd think that less cost would be better since you need to recruit it on turn 1 for best results and on that turn I often find my monster already pretty low from the upgrades which are also best done on T1.