To Luxor, everything now grew clear

Clumping together...I’ve spent some more time looking at the AI for Doomdark’s Revenge, trying to work out why it doesn’t quite appear to be playing like the original. One thing I noticed is that I have completely misunderstood the recruiting logic when it comes to Loyalty and Treachery. I made changes in the last version, but I am going to need to revert them.

The approach algorithm

  • compare the the attributes of the lords and looking for matches gain +1 for each match.
  • If the character being approached is not loyal then +1
  • If the character being approached is treacherous then * 2
  • if the recruiting character is the liege of the character being approached then +3
  • If the recruiting character carries a crown of persuasion then +2
  • If the score is greater than 3 then the approach will succeed.

The basic concept that I have misunderstood is: Loyal characters are less likely to be recruited away form their current liege and un-loyal characters are more likely, therefore the algorithm gets a +1 for none loyal characters. And that treacherous characters are more likely to leave and thus the *2

The next thing I have missed is the lords following the objectives of their lieges.

It works like this.

If the lord has a liege and that liege is following their liege or their foe, then we must follow our liege. Otherwise pick a new objective.

There is a 32% chance that we will pick a new objective. Although that should be 25% because we could pick the objective we already have. That leaves a 68%/75% chance that we continue doing what they were already doing.

The problem for me is the first check. If we use Shareth as an example. She has a 12.5% chance that she will choose to follow either her foe or leader. As she has no leader she reverts to Luxor, which is her foe. So she has a 12.5% chance that she will follow Luxor. All the lords that follow her now have a 100% chance of following Shareth, and this ripples all the way down the stack of lords. Which at the start of the game means that 47 Icelords will disregard what they are doing and follow her.

The mistake I had made is that I had made the following lords take the objectives of their liege when their liege was following their liege or foe. What this means is that when the liege is following their foe the lord follows their own foe. So using Shareth again as the example, when she is following her liege ( Luxor by default ) then all her minions will head to her location, but when she is following her foe ( Luxor ), then all her minions are heading to their foe and not to her location. So as an example, Imgaril the Icelord would be heading to Imgorthand the Fey, who, is likely the the other direction of Shareth.

Hopefully this fix should make the game more like the original, but it bothers me that it is a flawed AI. I ran the game for the first ten days, up until the first battle took place, I ran it on the emulator too to compare notes. Here is what Shareth did over those days.

  1. Head Home
  2. Head Home
  3. Head Home
  4. Follow Luxor
  5. Head Home
  6. Follow Luxor
  7. Follow Luxor
  8. Follow Luxor
  9. Search for object
  10. Head home

Now Talormane does this

  1. Head Home
  2. Head Home
  3. Search for object
  4. Search for object
  5. Follow Lorelorn
  6. Follow Lorelorn
  7. Follow Lorelorn
  8. Follow Lorelorn
  9. Follow Lorelorn
  10. Follow Asorthane

The reason for the delayed follow on day 4 is because Talormane is following Lorelorn who is following Shareth, but Lorelorn is lower in the processing order than Talormane, and thus Talormane doesn’t know that Lorelorn is going to follow Shareth in that turn.

The final thing that I changed was that there is a 6.25% chance that the change of objective will be DO NOTHING. This is especially important for being in a battle with someone who is not the lords foe, because it means that without this the lord will always leave the battlefield. The mistake I had made was that I persisted the do nothing as an objective, i.e.. The lords objective becomes do nothing. But it shouldn’t, it should stay the same as the previous objective, and this turn that objective is ignored.

Going back to Shareth. If she chose to DO NOTHING then her objective would no longer be follow liege or foe, which means that her followers would be able to perform whichever objective they chose. However, if her previous objective had have been follow liege or foe, then her followers should still be heading towards her when she chooses to do nothing. This would have the affect of allowing them to catch up on her.

6 thoughts on “To Luxor, everything now grew clear

  1. Hi
    Have a problem with DDR on my iPhone 5.
    I cannot recruit certain characters even with their liege . One being morildraine,
    None of the fey will recruit him at all.
    Regards
    Kev Riley.

  2. I know the loyal/treacherous recruiting is a bug, but in a way, I like the recruiting algorithm change, although it does need some tweaking – it makes Icelords harder to recruit, which I think it should be, although it threw me a few times with characters I’ve always known I could recruit suddenly refusing to join.

    It’s interesting with the Icelords following foes instead of liege/Shareth as well, they suddenly popped up in the most unexpected places. If they had arrived in force, instead of just one or two, it would have actually made it quite interesting, tactically.

    A couple of things I’ve found, which may or may not be addressed in these bug fixes:
    AI lords, primarily those following foes, just sat one league away waiting instead of attacking. They would follow if the foe moved, always one league away. You could say it was self preservation as 1 v 4-5 isn’t good odds, but they would eventually, randomly, attack.

    Second point is combat – failing to recruit or even just attacking, it seems extremely difficult to keep an AI lord in combat! They just wander off.
    Is there some way to calculate “odds” for a fight for the AI, and if the fight isn’t too unbalanced, have combat become a priority? Everyone seems to be cowardly at the moment 🙂

    • Fix has gone to test, should be out in the next week or so.

      The fighting AI is flawed in the original. The lords can just walk off. They don’t take into account what is happening around them, just their current objective. I hope to address this in an option that will allow the player to play the game with original AI or updated AI.

  3. Similar issues . Can’t recruit ️Morildrane even with liege ️Lorangriel. Treacherous lords are hard to recruit even with *2. Can’t ever recruit Imgorarg. Played this many times on iPad and original.

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