Can someone tell me which version is the best to use for the "borg"

[jford_2505@hotmail.com]

Can someone tell me which version is the best to use for the "borg"? He seems to get stuck in v3.5 when he picks up more than 40 of a single kind of item.

He also seems to be seriously paranoid - eg. bolting for the stairs whenever a battle-scarred veteran appears in town; venturing 3 squares from the down staircase to pick up an item, only to scuttle back and go back up again.

I switched off connected staircases to try and make him a bit more adventurous, but that only got him killed.

[Derakon]

Can't help you on the version numbers, but the borg has always been incredibly paranoid. Angband doesn't penalize going slowly, and the borg has infinite patience, so why not? Besides it being rather tedious to watch, of course.

[Nick]

The borg home page suggests that 3.4.1 is the latest where the borg has been worked on; I suspect that it is not all that optimised, though. 3.2.0 borg is pretty good - I have one of those running as my work screensaver, and it only has the odd problem with ID and selling stuff.

[jford_2505@hotmail.com]

How's he every supposed to pluck up the courage to battle Morgoth if he lives in mortal dread of townsfolk?

I've got 3.2.0 + the borg exe from the page you suggested. So far he's just got stuck on a piece of rubble once.

He seems to have his own special way of doing things. I saw him shoot a few arrows, then wander half way across the level before deciding to walk back to pick them up again.

[jford_2505@hotmail.com]

Caught him in the act! He actually builds anti-summoning corridors. Plus he found Ringil, the Bastard!

Well I guess maybe I would too if I took 32 million turns to reach level 47.

[Timo Pietilä]

Can't help you on the version numbers, but the borg has always been incredibly paranoid. Angband doesn't penalize going slowly, and the borg has infinite patience, so why not? Besides it being rather tedious to watch, of course.

Angband actually does penalize going slowly, but not for being paranoid. Angband is numbers game, if you give it enough chances to create insanely bad series of events it will do it. Going very slowly does not have any point after some point of the game, because no matter how well you prepare you won't get much better than you are (and "getting better" stuff are deeper anyway).

[jford_2505@hotmail.com]

Angband actually does penalize going slowly, but not for being paranoid. Angband is numbers game, if you give it enough chances to create insanely bad series of events it will do it. Going very slowly does not have any point after some point of the game, because no matter how well you prepare you won't get much better than you are (and "getting better" stuff are deeper anyway).

The penalty for going slowly is the risk of making a human error. Forgetting to check if that big D is actually a great wyrm; not noticing that your HP have got too low; carrying on for an extra turn when you have too many big nasties in your line of sight. These are all problems which the borg is immune to.

Besides, if you're willing to wait, you can find good stuff at shallower levels:
(1) Ringil - found lying on the floor at 1550'
(2) Feanor - found lying on the floor at 2200'
(3) Hithlomir - dropped by a novice rogue at 1050'
(4) Celegorm - dropped by a ghoul at 1450'

And the list goes on. I have not found (1) or (2) ever, and that includes with several winners.

[PowerWyrm]

Can someone tell me which version is the best to use for the "borg"?

The Bjorn version?

[Philip]

The penalty for going slowly is the risk of making a human error. Forgetting to check if that big D is actually a great wyrm; not noticing that your HP have got too low; carrying on for an extra turn when you have too many big nasties in your line of sight. These are all problems which the borg is immune to.

Besides, if you're willing to wait, you can find good stuff at shallower levels:
(1) Ringil - found lying on the floor at 1550'
(2) Feanor - found lying on the floor at 2200'
(3) Hithlomir - dropped by a novice rogue at 1050'
(4) Celegorm - dropped by a ghoul at 1450'

And the list goes on. I have not found (1) or (2) ever, and that includes with several winners.

Sufficiently bad luck can kill almost anyone, although priests are pretty damn hard to take down late game. You just need insanely bad luck. The borg is immune to most error, but not to bad luck.

Also, Ringil base depth is 1500', it's just really rare. The base item is one of the more common weapons at that depth. Feanor is 2200', and also reasonably rare, again with a standard base item. Hithlomir is 1000', not that rare, common base item and not much better than standard elvenkind. If you mean Celegorm, and not Celeborn, that's 1500', common base item. Celeborn is 2000', although finding it early would be insanely hard, since it has to generate Mithril Plate Mail first.

Many artifacts aren't deep, they're just rare, so you're not likely to find them until you've spent a lot of time in range, which starts at base depth and usually doesn't really stop. Easily killable and non-unique drop_good monsters help too. The borg spends lots of turns at one depth, and will have a tendency to find many of the local artifacts.

[Timo Pietilä]

The penalty for going slowly is the risk of making a human error. Forgetting to check if that big D is actually a great wyrm; not noticing that your HP have got too low; carrying on for an extra turn when you have too many big nasties in your line of sight. These are all problems which the borg is immune to.

OTOH getting borg to understand that phase spider is deadly if there are plasma hounds nearby is pretty hard to code. That kind of errors kill the borg, but not humans, and frequency of those instances is not low.

[jford_2505@hotmail.com]

Sufficiently bad luck can kill almost anyone, although priests are pretty damn hard to take down late game. You just need insanely bad luck. The borg is immune to most error, but not to bad luck.

Also, Ringil base depth is 1500', it's just really rare. The base item is one of the more common weapons at that depth. Feanor is 2200', and also reasonably rare, again with a standard base item. Hithlomir is 1000', not that rare, common base item and not much better than standard elvenkind. If you mean Celegorm, and not Celeborn, that's 1500', common base item. Celeborn is 2000', although finding it early would be insanely hard, since it has to generate Mithril Plate Mail first.

Many artifacts aren't deep, they're just rare, so you're not likely to find them until you've spent a lot of time in range, which starts at base depth and usually doesn't really stop. Easily killable and non-unique drop_good monsters help too. The borg spends lots of turns at one depth, and will have a tendency to find many of the local artifacts.

Speaking for myself, most of my deaths have not been caused by bad luck, but human error or lack of knowledge of game mechanics.

Having said that, I have noticed the borg behaving in incredibly stupid ways, the deeper it gets into the dungeon. Here's several examples:
(1) Attacking two drujs from a distance with magic missiles, or some other similarly pathetic spell.
(2) Allowing Cantoras, Feagwath and a black reaver to be in LoS for several moves before retreating, and then only when health fell to about 300.
(3) Recalling back to the dungeon without any potions of healing (and only two rods of healing), even though it had 90 !healing and ~50 !*healing* lying at home.

Concerning (1), the borg does seem to favour ranged attacks, even in situations where H2H would be far superior.

Re: Ringil, clearly I need to hang out more at 1500'

[jford_2505@hotmail.com]

OTOH getting borg to understand that phase spider is deadly if there are plasma hounds nearby is pretty hard to code. That kind of errors kill the borg, but not humans, and frequency of those instances is not low.

Never come across the phase spider/plasma hound combo before. I'll be sure to look out for it in the future .

[Timo Pietilä]

Having said that, I have noticed the borg behaving in incredibly stupid ways, the deeper it gets into the dungeon. Here's several examples:

(2) Allowing Cantoras, Feagwath and a black reaver to be in LoS for several moves before retreating, and then only when health fell to about 300.

I find this the main problem with borg. It seems that it doesn't calc the danger rate correctly sometimes. Feagwath & black reaver in LoS is potential 800 points of unresisted damage in single turn. Add any of the Cantoras distance attacks and you are toast unless you happen to be H-Troll Warrior.

OTOH it might be extremely scared about something completely harmless.

[Timo Pietilä]

Never come across the phase spider/plasma hound combo before. I'll be sure to look out for it in the future .

I lost a near-invulnerable char to that not very long ago. It was partially off-screen: saw one, it commanded me to it, and it's LoS neighbor did the same, suddenly I was into middle of large pack of plasma hounds. KO in single turn and RIP without chance to recover. What makes that extra annoying is that I had crown of serenity in my pack.

After that I have been really paranoid around anything that can do tele-to, especially if there is group of those.

Recognizing that situation is one level higher thinking than plain raw deadliness of the monster because it depends of something other than monster itself. Situational awareness that borg just doesn't have.

3.5.0 did reduce pack sizes a lot though, which makes those instances a lot less likely than they were in 3.4.1.

[jford_2505@hotmail.com]

I find this the main problem with borg. It seems that it doesn't calc the danger rate correctly sometimes. Feagwath & black reaver in LoS is potential 800 points of unresisted damage in single turn. Add any of the Cantoras distance attacks and you are toast unless you happen to be H-Troll Warrior.

OTOH it might be extremely scared about something completely harmless.

Just saw it take on a red dragon pit with 3 wyrms and ~7 ancient dragons in LOS at once. Even with double resist active this seems incredibly stupid. What if RF drops out at just the wrong moment?

It should make an ASC for this battle.