Competitions 89 and 90

[darkdrone]

Congrats to Roch and thapper !

i only had time for playing C90 and came nowhere close to winning , but this is the first game that I got TWO artifact weapons - Forasgil and Glamdring.

also my first priest.

[joshhimself]

Based on joshhimself winning chars, I'd say those two are actually pretty similar. What surprised me is that player turns and active turns difference is actually quite a bit less in his Dwarf winner than his H-Troll winner, even that H-Troll has regeneration, which exactly opposite that one would have expected.

That's because I didn't realize that the goal was fewest active turns until after I had already finished with the dwarf. So I played the troll a bit differently, resting more. I even rested at 50' a few times to get the shops to cycle (with the half-troll), since this takes no active turns other than finding the stairs back up.

I feel like the dwarf is actually a faster and easier priest, at least for my playing style - especially in the early and middle game.

[Pete Mack]

Dwarf has about 2x the SP as a H-T, so their absolute regen rate is about the same. (HP is a different story.)

[Timo Pietilä]

Competitions 89 and 90 have now finished, with Roch the overall winner (with the fastest win, in competition 90), and thapper winning comp 89. Congratulations also to joshhimself for the remarkable feat of getting a game winner in each comp, and to dummy for a winning Darin.

Based on joshhimself winning chars, I'd say those two are actually pretty similar. What surprised me is that player turns and active turns difference is actually quite a bit less in his Dwarf winner than his H-Troll winner, even that H-Troll has regeneration, which exactly opposite that one would have expected.

[Nick]

Competitions 89 and 90 have now finished, with Roch the overall winner (with the fastest win, in competition 90), and thapper winning comp 89. Congratulations also to joshhimself for the remarkable feat of getting a game winner in each comp, and to dummy for a winning Darin.

[Roch]

Despite the results so far, I think I agree with Timo. The Dwarf feels faster to me, which may be why my attemps so far have ended in stupid deaths. The better I feel like I'm doing, the more risks I take and so I die. I hope to have the time to give the Dwarf one more try before the comp ends. I'm curious for the same player to have a winner in each comp - not a perfect control but probably the best we can ask for. Not to ignore the impressive feat of joshhimself of doing just that, but he noted that he "didn't realize with the dwarf that I was supposed to be going for active turns and not total turns." And his turn counts are almost the same, so it'd be nice to see if another data point provides at least an anecdotal difference.

[bron]

How does people feel? Did you find Dwarf easier? H-Troll?

I think the contest results speak for themselves: at this point, all the HTroll winners finished in fewer turns than any of the Dwarf winners.

[Timo Pietilä]

Analysis of differences

Did a bit thinking how my chars progressed and I think that while H-Troll is a bit faster at the start and both of them are pretty much same at the end, the difficult-part of the game which is mid-game Dwarf is so much easier to play than H-Troll because of much easier 0% failure with less equipment hassle that it wins the competition there.

How does people feel? Did you find Dwarf easier? H-Troll?

[Timo Pietilä]

It all depends on your luck. In my current game, I have not seen anything with a str or dex bonus. I have used Narthanc and Forasgil to good effect, because I get 2 blows. I think the 2nd blow was the difference in being able to clear an orc pit. In my previous game [YASD] I never found a good light weapon and so the str and dex were irrelevant.

Luck is somewhat odd in my game. I'm not really advancing as I was hoping for (H-Trolls really suck as priests), but I found Cubragol and three RoS (+7, 2x+6) before 2600' from ordinary drops. Not even good drops, just ordinary "get out of my way" monster drops. I have also seen all but the deepest mage spellbooks, but only Ethereal Openings from priest dungeon books. Which pretty much sucks. RNG is having way too much fun with me just now.

Oh, and BTW my first weapon artifact was Glaive of Pain in 1500' dropped by some random hill giant. I would have expected *thancs or some lesser weapons first.

Now I have two immunities, but game has been lost in competition point of view.

[Derakon]

I wouldn't be at all surprised if they just try to maximize straight-line distance from the player if they're trying to run away, and they're stuck in a local maximum for that.

[buzzkill]

When you are powerful enough, or maybe when you have killed enough, I don't know the rule, some monsters run away if they can.

I thought that I had observed this (usually in town), but always wrote it off as a bug or other abnormality. I didn't think monsters actually had the intelligence to run away unprovoked.

If this were the case in this situation, wouldn't the orcs have fled out the door and into the far (lower-right) corner of the room.

[Timo Pietilä]

When you are powerful enough, or maybe when you have killed enough, I don't know the rule, some monsters run away if they can. If the orcs near the door were all scared of you, and no one could push past another, that might explain it.

That might be it. I don't know. Feels that it isn't because I wasn't ready to handle that many orcs, but OTOH snagas start to avoid you pretty soon and IIRC those were the closest to the door.

[PowerDiver]

When you are powerful enough, or maybe when you have killed enough, I don't know the rule, some monsters run away if they can. If the orcs near the door were all scared of you, and no one could push past another, that might explain it.

[Timo Pietilä]

If the door is on the other side of the pit from you, then the orcs won't get out. Perhaps that's the explanation?

I don't think I've ever seen a locked or jammed door in a pit before. Reason being that those doors are always secret, which IIRC precludes them having any other special features.

No, at closest it looked like this:

#.#ooooooooooooooooooo#.#
#.##########+##########.#
#.......................#
#########################


       ##################
       #....@............
       #.################

They should have stormed out of the pit, but they didn't. Are those doors always secret? Couldn't secret door be locked?

[PowerDiver]

From my observations of monster pathfinding, they'll try to get as close to you as they can even if the path is obstructed.

Sure, but I figured Timo knew that. I was looking for cases where it looks like they should open the door based on common experience but they do not.

Another huge problem with pathfinding is passwall monsters and permanent walls. I think they are coded to ignore walls entirely, and so get stuck in greater vaults in positions where a non-passwall monster can pathfind to reach you easily.