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    Your Elvenar Team

Auto-fight from a beginner's perspective

Fayeanne

Well-Known Member
Mortars make good support units, even on AI (since they don't need to move much and are not impacted by terrain). Admittedly, they get better at this once you have higher stars where they gain their maximum attack range. But yes, I often use them with Heavy Melee and Mages, and even with my archers at times to help them take out Light Ranged and Light Melee enemies. In my experience, anyway, this works decently well on auto-fight. Granted, you are subject to the whim of the AI and whether it will actually have the Mortars target the desired units first, but especially when those desired enemies are Light Ranged, this works pretty well since Light Ranged units have such high Initiative so they tend to get targeted first anyway. Your mileage may vary, but it has worked for me.
 

Moho

Chef
Mortars make good support units, even on AI (since they don't need to move much and are not impacted by terrain).
I've just had a Tournament battle where the enemy had a larger Squadsize (something like 85:91) and I should have used the mortars, but I was afraid I was going to lose lose the battle anyway and waste my only mortar squad I have left. So I tried a different troops composition and I focused on positioning them as well as I could too. About 60% of the fighters died, but I least I won.
 

Henroo

Oh Wise One
I think a lineup of 5 squads a Paladins would work for the 2nd fight you are showing. The enemy force is 3 light melee, 1 heavy ranged, and 1 light ranged. If you go in with all Paladins, you will have bonuses against the 3 light melee squads and the heavy ranged squad. It is true you will be at a disadvantage against the light ranged unit. However, overall you would be getting bonuses against 80% of your enemies and would only be suffering a penalty against 20%. I like those odds.
 

Moho

Chef
I think a lineup of 5 squads a Paladins would work for the 2nd fight you are showing.
I don't remember exactly, but I think I used mortars in the middle. I won the battle but those mortars are gone. (I may have lost them in the next battle on the Spire - I am not sure. The Spire is fun, but you lose a lot of troops in there; so I had to stop.)

The rest of the mortars are gone because there have been some tough Tournament battles where my Squadsize was 80 where the enemy's was 85, and I had to make use of my best units. I no longer have mortars left from the instant I activated long time ago, but I am researching Superior Residences at the moment and the next research on my list is Mortar. Yay. For the remaining battles of the current Tournament I will rely on the Orc Strategists provided by the Grounds of the Orc Strategist building. I have a full squad now, after losing my previous (almost full) squad in another Tournament fight.

Great discussion here. It has taught me some useful stuff and boosted my morale too. I used to negotiate all the tricky battles, especially those where my Squadsize was inferior. Now I am a bit more confident and, I hope, more knowledgeable. :)
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ETA: Knowledge hurts. I have just finished a battle where my Squadsize was inferior (something like 95 to 115, I'm not sure) - I lost my Orc Strategists and it was a defeat too. I had to negotiate. So far my score in the current Tournament is 1728 and I may be able to have one more fight. Not too shabby considering I've been playing the game for only (about) a month.
 
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Moho

Chef
fight 01.jpg
 

crackie

Chef, Scroll-Keeper, Buddy's #1 Fan
If there is more than one enemy within range, usually they go for the enemy with the highest Initiative (and for units of the same type, this goes according to the order shown to you at the bottom of the screen). However, enemies do also seem to prioritize certain unit types over others. I am not sure if this is the same when your units are on AI. (I have mostly watched the enemy AI.) Curiously, I have seen examples where it seems this type of prioritization kicks in only when the enemy is higher level (e.g. star rating). This might have been coincidence though.
I have been experimenting in this tourney. Plank Tourney has boatloads of enemy archers. Normally, it’s not wise to then go into battle with mages against a slate of enemy archers but I was curious if my sorceress or banshee will survive past the first round in this situation. Her mission is to just be a martyr. She needs to survive long enough to nerf the rocket guy in the back to buy me time to get to him before he does too much damage to my archers. If she dies before then, my archers are still strong enough to recover despite being down one unit so it was a good experimental scenario.

My observations:
  • If you don't line up the mages across from the archers, they generally won't go after them on opening round so I always make sure my mages are across from the heavy melee.
  • The enemy archers choose to shoot at my archers even when the sorceress or banshee are within their range. They allow the sorceress and banshee to skate on through as if they're ghosts, sometimes just even walking by them.
  • However, the enemy archers will go after a blossom mage over an archer though.
  • In a similar situation involving a steinling (enemy golem) instead of a cannoneer, the steinling will go after my mages though.
I find this curiously fascinating and it supports @Fayeanne's observations of AI chasing initiative and class type. Archer vs mages matchup is to their advantage but they go after the more even matchup against archers. Steinling to archer matchup is also to their favor, but they went after the mages, which is a terrible matchup for them. As @Fayeanne said, this is the AI enemy behavior and not sure if this is the same when AI controls our units in an autobattle. Two more rounds of Plank Tourney left. Will keep collecting data points.
 

samidodamage

Buddy Fan Club member
not sure if this is the same when AI controls our units in an autobattle.
You can check this. Set up your troops, click 'fight'. Once on the battlefield, click the top left sword button on the bottom UI, then watch how the AI moves both your troops and the enemy troops.
 

crackie

Chef, Scroll-Keeper, Buddy's #1 Fan
Haha, I know. It’s a matter of having the intestinal fortitude to watch it play out. I only have one UUU down for this week’s tourney. I mean if the scenario comes up on like province 30, I’m going to need a paper bag watching AI control my big stacks.
 

Fayeanne

Well-Known Member
It's funny you posted this, because I was just now manual-fighting a battle that included an enemy Orc Warrior equivalent (the Heavy Melee). I was using a mix of archers and Mortars and I couldn't take the Orc down before he came within attack range of my Mortar. Knowing he'd pretty much take out the Mortar with one hit, on my next turn I deliberately put one of my archers within his range...and the orc went and attacked the archer (which has a defensive bonus against Heavy Melee), dealing only a small amount of damage. Very curious choice on the part of the AI--he would have done much more damage on the Mortar. Makes me wonder: What was the AI thinking? Ha ha.

I also just now noticed that we never got around to replying to the OP's most recent message above. I somehow missed it. Sorry!
 

Gkyr

Chef
OP has not been on since February, but here goes:
You say you have read the material, but there has been no mention of the 'wheel of relative strengths'. Until you understand that wheel, you are handicapped seriously.
The battle algorithm can be completely understood if you manual fight. You can predict and even force moves from the enemy. Don't call it AI because there is no learning involved; it is a pure invariant choice hierarchy routine(s).
With Auto-fight, the enemy's algorithm becomes your algorithm; its weaknesses become your weaknesses.
When you say you do not understand the moves made by the machine, chances are they are staying out of your range and maneuvering for an advantageous position.
You need to think 3 moves ahead in order to minimize losses: after learning relative strengths you need to learn how not to block your attackers with your own troops.
More if you check in.
G
 

crackie

Chef, Scroll-Keeper, Buddy's #1 Fan
Alright, first 15 tents is about all I have stomach for watching AI autofight with my stacks with 1UUU down. This one was interesting...

mage test.png

I've picked archers vs. archers so there'd be archers for the enemy to pick from in order to test the theory they like to prioritize going after archers (highest initiative). The sorceress are selected to see if they'll survive with that many enemy archers around and to nerf the two heavy range units. Well, the enemy archers again left my mages alone BUT my mages went after the archers instead of the heavy range every time until there were no enemy archers left. :rolleyes:

First turn was excusable because the mages couldn't reach the heavy range units yet. After that, it became "I want my money back" because I'm paying the mages to nerf the heavy range ASAP. Sorceress vs. light range matchup is not in her favor, but sorceress vs heavy range is. Yet, she kept picking the worse of the two matchups. It does however, further support the initiative priority talked about earlier seems to be weighted a lot in the algo.

The sterling also went after my archer the first time and then went after my mage the second time (archers still within his range) so his job might be to just throw sand into as many people's eyes as possible. The cannoneer stayed on my archers the whole time. I also theorized maybe they go after your units with the most damage to kill them off first, but in one of the higher tents, I had a sorceress bleeding out with 5hp left and they left her alone for the rest of the battle, another head scratcher. It stood out because I kept anticipating they'd kill her off next move and it never happened. I mean, mages have decent initiatives. They go second. Anyway, it seems try as you might to pick the best matchups, AI will just ignore them anyway and pick the worst ones instead.
 

DeletedUser27062

Guest
OP has not been on since February, but here goes:
You say you have read the material, but there has been no mention of the 'wheel of relative strengths'. Until you understand that wheel, you are handicapped seriously.
The battle algorithm can be completely understood if you manual fight. You can predict and even force moves from the enemy. Don't call it AI because there is no learning involved; it is a pure invariant choice hierarchy routine(s).
With Auto-fight, the enemy's algorithm becomes your algorithm; its weaknesses become your weaknesses.
When you say you do not understand the moves made by the machine, chances are they are staying out of your range and maneuvering for an advantageous position.
You need to think 3 moves ahead in order to minimize losses: after learning relative strengths you need to learn how not to block your attackers with your own troops.
More if you check in.
G
If you read through the whole thread you'll see plenty of evidence that the OP is familiar with the 'wheel of relative strengths'.

You say the battle algo can be completely understood if you opt for manual fighting so perhaps you could lend your 'understanding' to explaining some of the 'oddities' other contributors to this thread have noted.

You said "more if you check in" but the OP isn't the only person who is reading this thread. Perhaps you'll be so kind as to share what you know for those of us still learning.
 
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