How is zombie wave AI exactly determined?

[Zeatrix]

I played brutal/brutal, and finally had a good go. I was conviced I'd win this time, everything was going well and I was prepared on day 74.

All the waves spawned, but every single zombie went passed all my defences - ignored them completely - and only wanted to enter at the east side of my map, which funnily enough was the most protected peremiter. It wasn't enough though, they just massed it completely. I had about 15 executors that didn't fire a single bullet, as well as many shocking towers. What a buzzkill.

[Thuar]

Did they attack you from the other sides before the final wave? Or did they run past them also ?

[Zeatrix]

They were acting as normal and attacked me from random sides

[Kellar]

Did you block off your entrances with houses?

[Zeatrix]

Originally posted by Kellar:

Did you block off your entrances with houses?

What do you mean by that?

[lmehare]

Basically if you completely block off an entrance to your colony with buildings (not walls) so that there is no path through that entrance, zombie waves will ignore it and go another direction. It's a weird bug/feature that you can use to manipulate the zombie wave pathing if you're clever about it. So it's possible that you blocked all your choke points with buildings except on the east; that would cause the zombies to ignore all those entrances.

[Chems]

Originally posted by lmehare:

Basically if you completely block off an entrance to your colony with buildings (not walls) so that there is no path through that entrance, zombie waves will ignore it and go another direction. It's a weird bug/feature that you can use to manipulate the zombie wave pathing if you're clever about it. So it's possible that you blocked all your choke points with buildings except on the east; that would cause the zombies to ignore all those entrances.

Imehare, I thought that glitch was patched? Is it still working?

[Firebody]

Gomez replied earlier on that saying that nothing needed to be fixed concerning this issue.
Idk.

[Liro Raériyo]

Originally posted by Firebody:

Gomez replied earlier on that saying that nothing needed to be fixed concerning this issue.
Idk.

yeah i found that added weird lag, so i didnt do it.

but my guess is that every zombie is A moving to the CC, but they have special code that specifically tells their pathing to ignore walls, however every other structure isnt checked, since they would attack and destroy them normally anyway

[Zeatrix]

Interesting. The entrance points were quite tight, and if towers are coded as "buildings", I suppose they could've been blocked. I often do executor -> tower -> executor. East side was also the only side I had a gate on.

[Firebody]

Honestly, I think that should be fixed if it really works this way.

[Gomez]

Originally posted by Jericho:

Originally posted by lmehare:

Basically if you completely block off an entrance to your colony with buildings (not walls) so that there is no path through that entrance, zombie waves will ignore it and go another direction. It's a weird bug/feature that you can use to manipulate the zombie wave pathing if you're clever about it. So it's possible that you blocked all your choke points with buildings except on the east; that would cause the zombies to ignore all those entrances.

Imehare, I thought that glitch was patched? Is it still working?

This glitch never existed, so there is nothing to fix. You can test if you want.

Thanks.

Regards.

[salieri35050]

WHOA GOMEZ! Are you saying it is intentional? Because this does happen. There are countless screenshots and videos of people using houses, and other buildings to screw with Zombie pathing. I'll link to a screenshot below. Are you being sarcastic by saying it never existed? I'm seriously asking you as sarcasm doesn't come across sometimes when typing.


https://www.reddit.com/r/TheyAreBillions/comments/7w8ds1/ai_manipulation_with_house_walls_needs_to_be_fixed/

[Gomez]

No, this is not intentional and im not being sarcastic. In every map and depending of the obstacles the different hordes move to the colony looking for the quickest way to get the Command center. This theory about "blocking the path with houses" is totally dumb.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSm6g7ejSnw

You can see in this video, the guy in this video thinks his theory is working, but from the minute one is failing hard, this is not a glitch or a bug. I invite you to test it.

Thanks.

Regards.


EDIT: By the way Dev team communicates to me that Zombie pathfinding will be improving deeply for the next update.

[salieri35050]

OK maybe I should have been more clear. I'm not talking about just the house block thing. But blocking with 2 Ballistas with a tower in the middle in a 5 gap wide space has caused Zombies to reroute to a different area when they were previously headed right for the Ballistas. I actually tested this once and watched the horde reroute itself when it was making a beeline for the ballistas. I added the tower and TADA! they turned towards a different path. Also had a game on brutal where there was only a 1 tile path into my center which I blocked. Zombies tried to attack me from across the lake opposite this 1 tile block. Like this pic below. I beat the game with snipers in towers. Every wave ignored the 1 tile entrance and went acrosss to the lake. Wish I had screenshots of my game


https://imgur.com/a/9PumX

[Zeatrix]

I can also say with certaincy that the zombie waves disregarded the shortest path to the command center. I was blocking some narrow points with ballista - tower - ballista, as the above poster is describing. Maybe that's what caused it.