wierd fire elemental behavior

[Zulton]

I thought i was being clever....but.

I used moats to completely keep the fire elementals away until I had the defenses ready. Spectres go where they should, the rest go to the main door. The fire elementals walk the entire width of the map to thier land bridge, walk halfway back to the 1 tile opening for them. They then stop 2 tiles before their opening into the village, turn 90 degrees and burn down 8 curtain walls (the wall is 3 thick, they burn it lengthwise) when they could have walked 40 or 50 more tiles unobstructed on a land maze 1 tile wide surrounded by water. They walked on the entry bridge path that had a wall on one side. Do i need to have a wall on their maze path too? They stopped and turn n burned as if the maze was impassable. I fail to see the obstruction though....I mean, 40 more tiles to go? They just walked the width and a half of the map to get there.

I watched it for awhile, then the hand of God decided they needed a lil' swim.

The whole deal feels buggy to me. I've read where others report similar things, but was mostly passed off as the beginning of the end.

Killing 800+ mobs a night, shooting for 1000.

[Tiberiumkyle]

Sounds like their pathfinding decided the route was too long to go the full way, so they made a different route.

[Eagle_of_Fire]

Not buggy at all. Once I had a very big surprise when I realised that the corruption had overtaken hafl a whole mountain range. Problem was there was a gap in the middle and enemies spawned there. Probably took them a few days but they dug thru the rest of the mountain range and started attacking my village from "the back".

Good thing I had plenty of golems. But it certainly made it "interesting" on that map until I got to 20 days.

When you start underestimating the enemy is when you open yourself to "surprises"...

[Zulton]

Tib, feels like not only water, but other different things decide a fire's path? I say that because a few odd mobs also took the fire elems' path, but they kept on going into the village once they got to that opening. I click on the fire elementals from their origin and traced it to their destination. They get to that destination and that's that. Why go to nowhere for nothing? (after totching a few walls in the way).

I'm fairly sure that burning walls is intended behavior, but wouldn't it be because of what was on the other side?

Maybe they only go so far and the only thing left were those walls? I would assume 200 villagers would taste better and 40 more steps for dinner makes more sense.

I'll change a few things and see how it goes.

I'm glad I got to play today, after you fixed me up with my crash :)

[Tiberiumkyle]

Monster pathfinding is based on movement cost. When a monster decides on a route to take, the pathfinding portion of the AI looks at the movement cost of everything between the monster and where it wants to go. Base terrain has the default cost, paths and roads lower movement cost, resources like crystal raise it, as does water (fire elementals refuse to go into it as it harms them) and tar. Forest and mountains have quite high costs, and walls can as well. Gates don't have as high a cost as walls, so will get targeted over walls more often.

A newer addition to this is that each mob that's planned a path through a tile, whether they're actually in it or not, slightly raises the movement cost of that tile, causing them to spread out. You may find yourself needing to go with 2 or even 3 thick walls in some places, depending on all the variables.

Actually spotting this in game can be tricky, yes. Ray has plans to make it easier to figure out, once he can get to it. Monster pathing heatmap view or some such.

[Eagle_of_Fire]

Originally posted by Tiberiumkyle:

Ray has plans to make it easier to figure out, once he can get to it. Monster pathing heatmap view or some such.

Wow, that's pretty much akin to cheating. It would not of course because that's a tool directly provided by the Dev... But really, that would destroy a HUGE chunk of the appeal of this game to me.

[Tiberiumkyle]

You already get it to some degree, just have to select each monster and see where it's plotted a path to.

[Eagle_of_Fire]

I know that. That's nowhere as much as knowing where every single monster has been or will be at the same time.

[Zulton]

Problem found.

Fire elementals will not cross 1 wide land bridges that are on a 45 degree angle. I didn't think they could, I just wasn't seeing the narrow spot blocking their passage.

They will burn a curtain wall forever in length if it is on that 1 tile wide land bridge. It gives
ice ballistas time to murder.