Some thoughts on difficulty

[the Invisible Stalker]

The best way to make the game the game both harder and more interesting would be to make the monsters smarter. At the moment they are appallingly stupid.

[Oramin]

The best way to make the game the game both harder and more interesting would be to make the monsters smarter. At the moment they are appallingly stupid.

Yep, Morgoth should constantly use Mana Storm until you run out of Healing, *Healing*, and Life potions. Then you'll have to run away to restock or he can just Mana Storm you to death.

Makng them smarter would require a few other tweaks for the game to remain winnable. If you doubt me, run a modded version where Morgoth only casts Mana Storm and see if you can win.

[fizzix]

Makng them smarter would require a few other tweaks for the game to remain winnable. If you doubt me, run a modded version where Morgoth only casts Mana Storm and see if you can win.

Usually, improved AI also comes in tandem with something like Monster Mana, or some other nerf. Then the strategy becomes wait out their best attacks and then engage. It doesn't make the game really much more tactical than it already is, but it does often require more consumables.

The more I've thought about it, the more I conclude that dumb and random AI is actually really the best for both difficulty and replayability. Smart AI is predictable, the amount of consumables/HP/SP you need for the final battle would be very well constrained. And once you figure out a winning tactic, you're essentially done.

[Philip]

I just played the O comp a bit. I discovered that a number of uniques are close to unkillable until you are well over their level as long as they have heal. Wormtongue is really hard to kill, as he runs away and heals a lot, but the drop is excellent. Boldor and Nar are nasty, but on the other hand, nastiness might be necessary.

Smart AI may be predictable, and one strategy may be enough, but one must recall that dumb AI might be just as predictable. Perhaps the solution is complex AI, but that's a nightmare to code and upkeep.

I'm not certain the game needs to be winnable, there just needs to be a mechanism to win. Moria was designed to be unwinnable, every time someone found a way to win, it was closed.

[LostTemplar]

Smart AI is better then dumb AI. If you want more randomeness add it exactly, e.g. random spells for every monster with some theme, random mana, etc.

Btw at least FAangband AI does not make monsters predictable, with the exception that they don't do stupid things, e.g. they dont breath fire to fire immune @ twice.

[OOD Town drunk]

I might consider turning on some of the options that make the game more difficult (e.g. no selling, monsters exploit player weaknesses, disconnected stairs, ironman etc., etc.).

FYI The no selling flag actually makes the game quite easier, in that you no longer have to deal with hauling around unnecessary shit to sell. You actually find a whole hell of a lot more gold lying around, which it doesn't tell you in the one line of flag description readout in the options. But ever since I discovered the beauty of this option, the game has felt a lot more streamlined. I like being able to explore multiple levels without constant trips back home every level.

[Derakon]

Smart AI is better than dumb AI only in the event that it makes the player think more about how to conduct combat. If all it does is require the player to tank the monster's offensive spells until they run out of mana, then it's not an improvement, just a requirement that you must stockpile lots of healing items.

I think it's certainly possible to have a smart AI that's an improvement over the dumb one currently in Angband. But just making spell selection smarter and counterbalancing by adding monster mana is not the solution. At least, it's not the solution on its own.

[Philip]

Perhaps make the monster try to lure the player into melee range if that's it's thing, or staying away if it's not. Monster cooperation is another method. Sil does an excellent job of both of these, it truly feels like a battle of wits. There's something odd about a monster with highly damaging spells and the method to keep away from the player to haste self and then just ram into the player and be chopped up.

[LostTemplar]

Smart AI is better than dumb AI only in the event that it makes the player think more about how to conduct combat. If all it does is require the player to tank the monster's offensive spells until they run out of mana, then it's not an improvement, just a requirement that you must stockpile lots of healing items.

At least in FAangband monsters barely ever run out of mana. in practice this may only happen with three unique monster out of about 100. In general mana cost of offencive spells is so small, that it may as well be zero.

Smarter AI maybe does not make player think a lot more, just make monsters look less stupid and gives overall better gameplay.

In general only high summons and big heals have significant mana cost. Also monsters avoid to use all thier mana to summon, leaving some for offensive spells.

At least, it's not the solution on its own.

This is true, all (significant) monsters should be reconsidered and rewritten from scratch. You cannot just change code and get result, you should also change data.

[AnonymousHero]

Smart AI may be predictable, and one strategy may be enough, but one must recall that dumb AI might be just as predictable. Perhaps the solution is complex AI, but that's a nightmare to code and upkeep.

Actually, you really don't need hugely complex AI to make a game interesting. Most of what you need to make a game difficult-but-beatable is randomness-with-smarts. Let me explain: I play quite a bit of Baldur's Gate with the SCS I/II mod and most of what that mod does is simply to give enemies a general idea of which spells combine well and may present a challenge to the player(*) -- the actual set of spells that an enemy gets is random, and the choice of which spells to cast is also sort-of-weighted-random (AFAIUI). The human tendency to see patterns everywhere means that you'll think "oh, how clever of X to do Y in this situation!" when in reality it was just a coin flip.

This is really enough to make the game interesting.

(*) It sometimes veers into the "annoying" rather than "challenging" territory, but that's not a necessary consequence of the general idea.

[the Invisible Stalker]

The best way to make the game the game both harder and more interesting would be to make the monsters smarter. At the moment they are appallingly stupid.

Since several of you seem to be reading things here which I didn't write, let me try to explain a bit. I'm not talking about Morgoth. He is hard enough as he is. I'm not talking about spellcasters choosing spells. I'm talking about the 95-99% of monsters which behave completely incompetently. If you want to live past dlev 5 you learn very quickly not to attack things which are faster or stronger than you, unless you're cornered and have no escapes. The game would be a lot more interesting if monsters behaved like that as well. There is simply no excuse for a snaga somewhere deep in the depths of the dungeon trying to take on a massively hasted clev 45 clev character. I could accept someone saying "yes, but coding good AI is hard". What I find baffling is that some of you seem to be saying this kind of thing actually adds something to the game.

[Oramin]

Haven't you noticed (via telepathy) monsters running from the awesomeness of your presence?

The low level monsters do that until you get sufficiently close and they decide that they might as well die with some dignity. They believe the same thing the aggressive divers do, the RNG favors the bold.

Realistically, unless you're running Tucker's Kobolds (Google it) at us, then kobolds (and snagas) are pincushions to a high level character no matter how much you improve the AI.

[Therem Harth]

There is an option for that. It's quite broken, as monsters with healing spells will just heal continuously and never run out of spell points, since SP aren't implemented for monsters.

IMO monster SP (or equivalent) will be necessary if we want to have significantly better AI.

[Pete Mack]

@Oramin
Of course, they usually die in their sleep to the most evil character in the game...

[buzzkill]

We just need a level playing field. Good players use 'smart AI'. That is they spam entirely predictable, high value, attacks and heal whenever death is a possibility. What's good for the goose... is what you need to begin to solve the problem. If both sides using 'smart AI' result in an unenjoyable playing experience, then some of the core mechanics need to change.