[1.00 (since Beta)] balance issue with AIs taking quests

What level difficulty is the world st at and what level is Magnar set at?

Ridiculous/ridiculous, but I think I have seen people asking "How did the AI get an ashwake dragon" when they were playing on Normal/Challenging.

It should not happen at any difficulty.  Yes, on ridiculous Magnar is pretty scary from the get go.  He still has absolutely no chance whatsoever to get through that quest alive.  An AI should be theoretically able to win the quest's battle. The difficulty setting would help by making the AI stronger, it should not help by making the AI be able to handle everything.

And in any case, I just found the thread in which I had seen this:

So it did not come from the difficulty setting.

This one, I think, comes from the Dragon Statue quest where you have to collect the 'eyes' of a Dragon. The last time I did this quest, I fought an Ashwake Dragon and a Fell Dragon, and the Ashwake Dragon joined my army after I won the battle.

Also, unless the experience gain from the Arena of the Slakhanan has gone down significantly recently, that Magnar only gained three levels from it is rather surprising to me, since the one time I completed the quest (in version 0.98x) I was using a level 20 champion and he gained seven levels by completing the quest.

So they are getting a free pass for quests? That is surprising and unfair. I haven't seen any of this, but then I never see the enemy ever doing quests.

Now that I am watching, I've seen it again.  Level 5 Markin walking around with level 8 Ariana in tow.  That quest involves killing a huge spider that could have had Markin for breakfast.

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Heh. I now have a savegame that will have a level 4 Magnar waltz through the Arena of the Slakhanan before turn 30. Just make sure you do not move Deras, and you will see it.

I do not see why anyone would be interested, unless they don't believe me, but if so, I can put it on dropbox.

Hm odd, I haven't been looking too vigilantly through my last 2 gameplays to notice, but this... aww

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Yea, the AI automatically wins every quest they enter, and they enter most of them and soon the game is quest empty.  

Wow, this is big.

Give it time.  The game had to be released now to hit for the holidays, but I'm pretty confident Derek and his time will be on top of things like this for some time to come.  Stardock has an excellent record when it comes to balance issues and bugfixes.

Yeah, Frogboy said the AI generally avoids quests on lower difficulties and when it does do a quest, it rolls combat rating against quest difficulty to determine if the AI wins or not.  Oh well, I guess the calculations used for this could use a little tweaking, but we would never have noticed this if the AI didn't win any of the big quests before Season 50.

hmm i'm surprised they didn't do an automatic fight to get the answer. i guess that takes more memory, but is the extra detail worth it?

I'd say it's worth it so that level 4 solo sovereigns do not complete quests that take a level 10+ and an army.

This issue is not fixed in 1.0, as reported by CogBurn here.

AI not being able to do quests at all would be better than this...

I actually don't think I'd mind this if they dropped their equipment when you killed them. As it is, all the nice quest stuff is just gone into the void.

This is annoying.  I hope it gets fixed, and quickly.

I had this happen on Challenging (Magnar with a LOT of dragons).  Thought it was my fault for not playing faster with a new faction I'd created.  Glad to know it's not my fault 

Should the header of this be changed to [1.00][Bug] if it is still happening

this is so incredibly disappointing

probably the way ai cheat is the usual "high difficulty, hp get multipliers for ai, so his combat rating is high even at low levels and stomp the world np"

No, this goes way beyond this.  The HP multiplier is not enough to make Magnar come anywhere close to the combat rating of the Arena, not at level 4.  The AI simply 'wins' quests, and the bug is that it should not attempt quests that it has no chance of winning.

It would be a much better fix if the AI had only a probability to win a quest depending on its party combat rating, and different sovereigns had a different allowed range of quests (i.e. Relias would attempt at 60% chance of winning when Procipinee would never attempt at less than 100%)

But the above is wishful thinking before the developers at least fix it so that AIs do not simply 'pick' Ashwake dragons on turn 30.

this seems strange man

i get RNG is RNG and it should exist but given ai has a proper rating and arena has a super high rating the chances to win should be low

so on average game the bug should be that ai dies over and over again against quest, while ppl report them having many dragons

so yes, 1 bug is ai attemping quests they shouldnt

another bug is ai succeding where it shouldnt and if its true that quest result is just a roll with ratings then ratings are wrong

In a recent game, I subdued both Procipinee and Magnar to be my vassals, they both were level 6 at the time.

Procipinee had already acquired a piece of Chest Armor with 16 defense to her inventory, And Magnar was carrying Scythe of the Void. As they both were low level, they were just carrying the items, not using them. 

yep its a big issue

Facepalm material even... 

bump?

~ K