Naga Glutton is broken

[CNC]

The game says its chance to eat the unit is based on something like hp remaining or whatever, but it functionally is 100%. I've fought gluttons and now I have one and it eats units every single time, even manticores and enemy heroes. It's not a chance, it's a 100% guarantee to eat the unit.

That's insane, that's way too overpowered. The glutton breaks the game. I don't even want to use it anymore because it feels like cheating.

[Iguana-on-a-stick]

It's a pretty strong unit, but I don't think it's particularly broken.

It's definitely not a 100% chance, which I know because I've fought them plenty and not gotten eaten. But for low hitpoint units the chance of being eaten gets pretty darn high.

But the Glutton also has significant weaknesses: it's slow and its defense is VERY low.

Abilities like throw net or entangle usually have an 80% chance of working on it, making it pretty easy to counter. Ranged attacks can bring it down pretty easily despite its high hitpoints, though you'll need to concentrate fire.

And if a unit does get swallowed, killing the glutton brings it back.

That said, the AI is pretty dumb so you can indeed exploit them pretty easily with gluttons, which will then keep healing it and offset the damage it takes from its low defense. Still, there are plenty of ways to exploit the AI, and it is a tier IV dwelling unit so it's not like you can spam it.

[justus_cap]

Many ways to take these things down. They are weak towards cold. Flanking is also pretty effective considering low defense. Curse and other immobilizing effects make their melee largely useless (stiffen limbs). Another tactic is wearing out the attacks of opportunity, then its free game from there. High level priest "daze" effect makes them not even able to retaliate. Degenerate makes them really weak. Steadfast ward makes you "uneatable". Tons of other tactics, lemme know if you wanna hear more. I used to feel the same when first facing them, so I get where you are coming from.

[CNC]

I don't have a problem facing them, they die easily when I fight them. What is ridiculous is that when I have them they just eat everything that attacks them. I'm playing a rogue goblin game and I started near a naga dwelling so I decided early on to invest heavily in it and spam out matriarchs and gluttons. I decided to lean fairly heavily on the naga units, partially because I wanted to try them out.

I know it's not supposed to be 100% but it basically seems to work that way. I have my gluttons on the front line and they get attacked over and over and just keep eating everything over and over again, including enemy heroes. I've never had a fight where the glutton didn't basically eat everything that melee'd it. The unit is just completely bonkers. I was having fun at first because it was hilarious how my glutton would destroy entire stacks by itself, but it got lame really fast. I don't know, perhaps one of my mods has screwed with it. I can't think of what mod that would be, though, other than the PBEM mod.

[Iguana-on-a-stick]

I don't doubt it, but it seems more of an AI problem than a glutton problem in particular.

You can get the same results with a hero with life-stealing, tireless, and some stunning ability. Enemies will just batter themselves to death en-masse.

Difference is that if that hero also high defense, the AI will usually bypass him to target weaker things.

With the glutton the issue is that according to the algorithm it SEEMS like a great target, but it doesn't account for Swallow Whole and instead they just end up healing the glutton.

[CNC]

Yeah, which is why the swallow ability doesn't seem to work. I think swallow should be an active ability with a long cooldown, and work like other abilities in the game, in that it has a chance to work based on defence, and then there is a different effect if it fails (like the unit is covered in slobber and is effectively entagled or something). The AI doesn't understand 'swallow whole' at all.

[CNC]

Btw, Iguana, I'm trying to figure out how to set up a game in such a way that I get a challenge but also get to play well into the late game. I want to see and use the late game stuff. What game settings would you recommend for that? (currently I am getting bored of playing free for alls because the AI just seems to fight itself the whole game and ignore me, even when I'm ahead). I guess I should start playing vs teams of AI's but not sure how to set that up so that the game can go late.

[Iguana-on-a-stick]

because the AI just seems to fight itself the whole game and ignore me, even when I'm ahead)

The AI doesn't target players who are ahead, because it (correctly) thinks it will lose. It targets players that are behind, because it thinks it can win.

This generally means that the AI is more dangerous to new/bad players than to experienced ones, which is perhaps not the intended effect.

That's one of the reasons I like to use the Seal victory sometimes, just so I can trigger a mass AI attack against me. Though because of those seals the AI still won't mount a very effective attack.

in such a way that I get a challenge but also get to play well into the late game.

Unfortunately I don't really know if that can be done. Challenge tends to be early in the game. By the time I get to the late stage I'm generally in a pretty dominant position. That said:

I generally like to reduce research pace a lot and city growth by some (i.e. very slow gameplay in vanilla, or with extended settings mods you can tweak further) which tends to set the player back more than the AI. (who gets a lot of bonuses to income and so doesn't suffer from the reduced speed as much.)

Likewise, reducing the number of treasure sites and (to a lesser extend) income sites helps the AI as they get a lot of bonus income per city, and are also bad at exploiting mystic city upgrades.

AI does better on maps without much sea and defenders and roaming units should be kept at normal.

To prevent too much infighting and let the game go on longer, having a larger map or fewer AI players tends to work better. For 8 players I use large + underground, typically.

A "house rule" I like to enforce for myself is not building forts. The AI can't, so having forts makes things much easier.

A small thing that can help is making sure you fight AIs with good class and specialisation picks. They're bad at playing necromancer, for example. You can either select your opponents directly, or use the mod that forces the random choices to pick from your own custom leaders only, and make sure those are good.

Finally, if you play evil instead of good, there's a bigger chance the AI will gang up on you. But that will probably happen in the early game, not the late game, leading to a shorter game overall.

But even with all that I haven't really found the AI to be challenging in the late game.

[CNC]

Yeah once I stopped sucking and was able to beat the AI, I noticed I was winning games before T4's were even a thing, so I increased map size and slowed down game speed but the AI just seems to really not scale into the late game. I'm not sure what's going on. In my current goblin rogue game I have something like 25 cities. I settled about ~6-7 of those myself. I own the entire underground and have a few cities above ground.

What really shocked me is that half the map above ground is empty. Each AI player had like ~5-6 cities and there's tons of empty space on the map, even on turn 70. It seems like the AI isn't too fond of settlers.

I'm starting to think that the only way to get a real challenge is to play vs a large team of AI's. Once I'm finished my all race, all class playthrough I'll try playing vs a team of AI's.

The problem with seals victory is that even if I set charge count to 100, the game is over long before any of the late game stuff. The pacing of this game is weird. In my current game I'm on turn 74 and could have won probably 15 turns ago, I have something like 150 units, but I only just researched age of deception and am working on dark pact now, and this is with me spamming labs/obs in every city and even setting cities to 'seek knowledge'. Late game research takes foooooreeevvverrr.

[justus_cap]

Try the Middle Earth 4 user generated scenario. Make all your AI allies "Lord" Level. Make all your AI opponents "Emporer" level. I've found this to be pretty fun since they AI comes at you with pretty sizable armies and your allies aren't too aggressive. In fact I have to usually station supporting units in strategic ally cities so they don't get wiped out early.

See if you like it?