Good game, but raiders are flawed

[Stefan]

-- Warning: I will do some whining while arguing my point! --

Raiders behave like from a Mad Max movie and the barbs from Sid Meier's Civilization. Here are two reasons:

1. They don't have a sensible objective, such as taking control over the community or seizing wealth;
2. They attack even if outnumbered and they don't attempt to retreat when losing;

Raiders should be tactical and, if outnumbered, should do hit-and-run attacks. They should have a 'will to power' and should be concerned of their well being instead of doing senseless attacks. Stone Age raiders have no good reason to raid in this game, unless you want to argue that they want to get food and tools without having to work for them; however, a basic risk and reward calculation ought to show that the risk is much greater than the reward.

The game simply has too many abundant resources and no working economy. Stone Age trade was very sophisticated and involved a variety of jewelry, which the game lacks completely.

What frustrated me most is this: I built these palisades in one area in order to prepare for the Bronze Age. I had a watch tower on the other side of the map. Before building the palisade, when the raiders came, I would simply alert the community by blowing the horn and they would arrive, but this time they went to the palisade and the ladder where they can shoot down enemies from, instead of heading towards the watchtower where the enemy was heading to. So in a matter of seconds, the raiders destroyed several houses, the watchtower and started even attacking monuments, while my villagers were waiting for the enemy at the other side.

Man, if I blow the signal from the watchtower, you head over to the watchtower, not elsewhere! Like, zero discipline. Now I'll have to start over.

[Gorby]

I'm pretty sure triggering the horn from a specific building is no different than triggering by pressing F6. There's no way to tell your villagers which buildings to go to, it's just a programmed mass behavior.

That said, if you have one or more gates built the raiders will usually go for a gate, especially if you have a watchtower or 4 next to it. You don't even necessarily need walls according to screen shots I've seen of other peoples' games but I usually build walls.

[Stefan]

Ok, so:

1. Since each watchtower is an object, it could easily be used to direct the nearest troops to it instead of calling to a general assembly;
2. Raiders should learn pathway and take the least costly route that pays the most award.

Second point is difficult to program for the AI, but the first point is easily implemented. And the raiders need to chill out, they go kamikaze on you just to pillage a couple of bones and a flint. They should be opportunistic, maybe hit an area that is weakly defended. In a way, these instructions already exist in the program, in one form or another: they are for the beasts that target people outside of the settlement and will sometimes try to escape the hunter.

[Gorby]

Agreed, the raider behavior is wonky as hell

For your 1st point, the devs answer to that problem was to give us the ability to disable/enable individual towers and raised platforms. When they're disabled your villagers won't occupy them when you've triggered the horn defense alert. Still not sure how I feel about it but I guess it comes in handy sometimes.

[Stefan]

One simple solution is to let the player order the villagers to an assembly point where the battle is to take place. For now, this is done by selecting the villagers and double-clicking on an enemy, but this isn't practical when the villagers are scattered around. An assembly point should be doable.

As for the towers, I was surprised to see how easily they break. If a couple of raiders can destroy a tower by throwing spears at it, then a tower can only be used as some kind of bait, much like you mentioned in your first post, Gorby, that by building a gate, you lure the raiders to that location. Cute, but it's pretty much gaming the game instead of simulating a stone age environment.

In conclusion, here's what I would consider:

1. Change the raiders to be less aggressive and more opportunistic, as described in earlier posts;
2. Reduce the resources by at least 75% including animal husbandry;
3. Make towers far more durable;
4. Allow for an assembly point;

These, I believe, are three simple things that can be done in coding. However, raiders still need a justification for risking their lives and, like mentioned before, raiding a couple of bones and some skins is not worth it.

[Gorby]

1. I don't know... maybe I've played it so much that I accept it as normal. I now mostly play mod/workshop scenarios that have increased raider party frequency and size, and I even edited one of those scenarios to have a bit more raiders than that. I'm numb to the flaws maybe, but I enjoy it.

2. Not sure what you mean; decrease the abundance of resources? I'm definitely not on board with that

3. ironically I believe they made them more durable in an update a few months ago. I think the idea is to do whatever you can to prevent the towers from being attacked, which I do by leaving a 6 space gap between the towers and wall. The towers have longer range than the raiders.

4. I like that and it's definitely better than the individual structure enable/disable BS. Dare I say, allow for multiple assembly points?

[Stefan]

Ok, allow me to elaborate, but before I continue, I repeat: this is a good game and I enjoy it. It makes for a good discussion and it makes you think!

I'm not against aggression, but the aggressors (AI) should do what's in his best interest, which is to bet on the best outcome and to reap the best reward. If this cannot be accomplished, then they should be presented differently in the game. From what you tell me, you enjoy the warfare in the mods, but you seem to be playing some kind of tower defense, because the raiders are not tactical. A couple of examples: in the Age of Empires series and the later Civilization games, the AI doesn't know how the map looks like, so it sends scouts to explore the map, after which it decides on how to coordinate future attacks. In this game, the raiders appear and simply destroy objects.

About resources: yes, they need to be a lot less, or, better said: not less, but harder to exploit. One example is animal husbandry. A small patch of land (in this game) is able to sustain, in theory, hundreds of animals. In real life, grazing grounds differed, tribes fought over the best land for their flock, grass depleted, a bad season led to decreased productivity and, last but not least, the animals had to be maintained (by shepherds and other types of workers) and selected. In this game, the animals pretty much take care of themselves, people only take the resources without having to put in much work.

In fact, domestication makes hunting and fishing less efficient, but it's possible that the game gives you an advantage for offering a diet variety.

So if the game is not able to simulate some of these things, then the resources should be decreased or the productivity shouldn't be so high.

Overall, the game makes it look as if the entire map is a paradise and, if it wasn't for raiders, it would've been, but that's not how it went in history. Even if the land was rich, people didn't just pick resources like they were living in Eden.

[Gorby]

I see where you're coming from; I have almost 400 hours in this game and I've been playing since nearly release day. They've added and changed a lot, but I get the sense that the developers don't want to focus on the fighting and warfare aspect of the game as much as the "natural" survival and village building aspect of it.

It seems like the raiders are meant to simply be another way to introduce yet another potentially minor or potentially game-ending event into the game. I've had raiders attack that I killed with relatively few losses of life or structural defenses, but because the raiders happened to attack at the right(wrong) time during fall harvest I wasn't able cut down all the crops and I lost a lot of folks to starvation the following spring... or I wasn't able to chop down enough trees after the harvest to last me through the blizzard that came right at the onset of winter... and so on. The threat from the raiders as they are now isn't a "they destroy me or I destroy them" situation and that'st he kind of unexpected challenge I like.

I don't disagree that the in-depth improvements you're suggesting would be good and could be done, I just don't think they intend to take it that far. Your talk regarding the animal husbandry resources borders on making the game a livestock farm simulator... lol. DoM seems meant to be played in short scenarios, the base game becomes easy after a couple playthroughs and that's when you can really have fun with the mod scenarios. And I personally am good with that

[Stefan]

No, Gorby, I'm not saying that they should make it a farming simulator. What I'm saying is that the resources are easily earned. The solution is to decrease the variables that award these resources. Here are some things that are very doable in just a few lines of code:

1. Allow wolves and other prey animals to target domestic animals over people while slightly increasing the rate of these prey animals. This would be historically accurate and it would force the player to check these animals a lot more in order to sustain productivity.

2. Decrease the crop productivity by at least 40% to compensate for bad seasons (lack of rain for example), fire and other natural disasters, birds and pests consuming your crop, etc.

You make an interesting point about raiders being some kind of substitute for other challenges in the game. So they're almost like a natural phenomenon, instead of a tornado or earthquake, you get to deal with raiders who are presented as competitors that can't be reasoned with. On the other hand, the game does force you to kill them or else they will kill you, so of course that it's about you vs them. There's no middle ground because they don't retreat.

I've only played 35 hours of this game and I haven't passed the Stone Age (because I wanted to wall-in first), but despite my little experience, I think I have a lot in common with other players in that I want a primordial simulation/strategy game, and a simple combat mechanism is not something attractive.

What are the possibilities of making a mod? Can you add new objects (units, buildings) with their own qualities?

[curtadamsCA]

Making the raiders "logical" would detract from the game. Raiders are supposed to add a moderate amount of challenge to the game in that they add another goal to juggle (defense) and attacks normally cause some but not disastrous losses. If the raiders were "sensible" then when they show up they're either going to leave if weaker (so greatly reduced challenge) or wipe out the settlement, which is an unsatisfying end to a long buildup. On occasion the match would be more even and like a "boss challenge". That's not necessarily bad as a game but it's a big shift from the current style of a long epic series of smaller challenges so I'd rather it stayed as it is rather than being a variant of the well-supplied RTS genre.

[tanyfilina]

Originally posted by curtadamsCA:

Making the raiders "logical" would detract from the game. Raiders are supposed to add a moderate amount of challenge to the game in that they add another goal to juggle (defense) and attacks normally cause some but not disastrous losses. If the raiders were "sensible" then when they show up they're either going to leave if weaker (so greatly reduced challenge) or wipe out the settlement, which is an unsatisfying end to a long buildup. On occasion the match would be more even and like a "boss challenge". That's not necessarily bad as a game but it's a big shift from the current style of a long epic series of smaller challenges so I'd rather it stayed as it is rather than being a variant of the well-supplied RTS genre.

Agree. I mean, more logical raiders would be great, but only together with some defence tweaks, like guards profession and more smart defence behaviour (like not just standing before gates, but reasonably attacking the raiders). Also, conception of "thieves" raiders would require some other defence mechanics than "call everybody to arms near the gates".

[Himelin]

The system of the current raiders is good. It is an element of the game that gives "spice".

But their mode of destruction is not very "realistic". I would be more for a fire system for buildings. Fire that could be extinguished and then repaired (but very rarely). Wooden palisades and wooden towers should also be burned (arrows and inflamed spears).

I do not see any interest for the raiders to destroy the fire and the storage of wood and stone ... and the construction projects (small stakes).

The stone walls should not be destroyed (impossible with the equipment of the raiders, or very, very difficult) and only the doors could be (by fire). But the raiders could besiege the stone fortified places (less resource, low morale of the people, ...), like a war of attrition.

We could also think of groups of different enemies :
Thieves, who would try to steal food (without destroying buildings) in warehouses, fields, stables, and who would flee as soon as they would be inferior (only dogs could detect them).
Plunderers, who would send a negotiator (like a merchant) to ask for a ransom. If the ransom is not given, the plunderers attack the colony.

A defense zone (or guard zone) would be nice :
It would work like other areas (hunting, ...), we could assign people armed (1 to 5) during the time that the area exists. One could also designate one of these areas as a gathering point when there is an alert. These areas could also protect a site from wild animal attacks.

... I made fortifications without any door (only a few small protected openings), and the armed people go and regroup to the fortifications closest to the raiders.

Have a good day !

[tanyfilina]

Agree with the idea of fire. I only want to suggest (not only if fire would be added, it is needed now all the same) - to make it so that a rebuild projects appear at the places of buildings destroyed by raiders.

Also agree that stone walls should be not destroyable.

Besiege mechanics require water-troughs for animals, and probably some other tweaks.

[Himelin]

As soon as a building is on fire, the raiders move on and let the building burn (which slowly deteriorates before completely destroying itself). Thus the raiders, who attack the buildings outside the fortifications, would be more quickly in contact with the armed people of the colony. Ruins may remain for some time on the locations of destroyed buildings (to facilitate reconstruction).

The buildings on fire would add a certain realism, and a tension in the game : The raiders are there, they plunder, kill, and burn all on their way !

For the stone walls, I really think they should not be destroyed (the raiders do not have the materials to do it). Only doors and wooden towers should be destroyed (by fire).

But the idea of ​​besieging would be good. When the fortifications are built largely of stone, we can imagine that the raiders do not attack, but build a camp (some skin tents) to signal that they are besieging the colony. This would quickly degrade and weaken the colony behind the walls. It would be necessary to make an "exit" to destroy the raiders, or we can imagine a system of ransom to make leave the raiders who besiege.

The fire system could also be used during storms: lightning falls on a house and there is a fire.

Have a good day !

[Dragonrubi]

I don’t agree that you don’t need to Wall all.

I had some gates and I was slowwwwly walling around my villages.

So when I was not fully walled raiders attacked.

Yes MOST of them stayed in the nearest door.

But a few gone to another doors and few surrounded the wall to get inside the village; even when few you can’t ignore them they may cause a lot of damage.

So they are not a mindless hive that goes for a single objective.