Some questions about SCSII

[Wisp]

I actually found that I did not enjoy the game with enemy HLAs installed. I could eventually get the wins. But gameplay required far too much reloading for way too many battles, for my taste.

Are you talking about the ToB portion of the game, or SoA? I've never played with that component. I was wondering, in practice, how many opponents end up with HLAs in SoA? Are they overpowered for that point in the game?

 

razly

 

The component comes in two flavours. In one, it gives every mage/priest who can cast level 9 spells HLAs. A ridiculous proportion of the mages in SoA falls into this level 18+ category (it is even worse in ToB). Dunno about priests. Personally, I have never used it (due to realism concerns).

 

The other one only gives HLAs to a select few mages (the specifics can be found in the spoiler part of the readme). It is quite manageable in SoA, I think, but you need to take it into consideration when you play. E.g. going to Spellhold early is not such a good idea, as you are liable to be gunned down by Irenicus' Dragon's Breath or whatever.

[Ardanis]

Isn't that sensible strategy?

Technically - yes, as it's logical behavior. But since BG2 isn't a chess game, it's gameplay doesn't revolve around carefully calculated strategy only. It's ultimate goal is to entertain, and seeing cool giant sword wielding guy, constantly drinking up bottles instead of hacking noobs away, doesn't really help that entertaining.

 

I'm surely not telling you should try to recode the entire system (which it good anyway), that's obviously next to impossible, especially given SCS already strains IE to it's limits (30-40 sec loading time on P4 2.4GHz 512MB RAM). Rather wishing aloud for a perfect world...

[DavidW]

I actually found that I did not enjoy the game with enemy HLAs installed. I could eventually get the wins. But gameplay required far too much reloading for way too many battles, for my taste.

Are you talking about the ToB portion of the game, or SoA? I've never played with that component. I was wondering, in practice, how many opponents end up with HLAs in SoA? Are they overpowered for that point in the game?

 

razly

 

The component comes in two flavours. In one, it gives every mage/priest who can cast level 9 spells HLAs. A ridiculous proportion of the mages in SoA falls into this level 18+ category (it is even worse in ToB). Dunno about priests. Personally, I have never used it (due to realism concerns).

 

The other one only gives HLAs to a select few mages (the specifics can be found in the spoiler part of the readme). It is quite manageable in SoA, I think, but you need to take it into consideration when you play. E.g. going to Spellhold early is not such a good idea, as you are liable to be gunned down by Irenicus' Dragon's Breath or whatever.

 

I have to say that personally I don't play with the SoA HLAs. I coded it for completeness and because I was pretty confident that some hardcore players would request it if it wasn't there.

[DavidW]

Isn't that sensible strategy?

Technically - yes, as it's logical behavior. But since BG2 isn't a chess game, it's gameplay doesn't revolve around carefully calculated strategy only.

 

I don't really mean "isn't it optimal strategy from a gameplay perspective?" I mean "isn't it what a sensible enemy in that situation would do?" I mean, you and your mate are holding off two enemy meleers, and unless you take at least one of them down quickly, things aren't going to go well for you. Which one are you going to concentrate on - the lightly armoured wimp, or the thickset dwarf in full plate mail?

[razlyubleno]

I mean, you and your mate are holding off two enemy meleers, and unless you take at least one of them down quickly, things aren't going to go well for you. Which one are you going to concentrate on - the lightly armoured wimp, or the thickset dwarf in full plate mail?

I'd take out the thickset dwarf, myself, since it's wise to get rid of the greatest threats early, and that would probably be the dwarf, right? You do this with your own AI, when you program it to ignore incapacitated opponents; all hits on Held opponents (for example) are automatic (no die gets rolled), and this is comparable to the lightly armoured wimp.

 

razly

[Lemernis]

I actually found that I did not enjoy the game with enemy HLAs installed. I could eventually get the wins. But gameplay required far too much reloading for way too many battles, for my taste.

Are you talking about the ToB portion of the game, or SoA? I've never played with that component. I was wondering, in practice, how many opponents end up with HLAs in SoA? Are they overpowered for that point in the game?

 

razly

 

I tried it for SoA, with all difficulty increasing features installed.

 

IIRC my party began the game around level 9-10, since I imported the character from BG/ToSC and used BG2 Tweaks 'ToB Style NPCs'. Some of the battles I fought were the Guarded Compound, Planar Sphere halfling cannibals, the Umar Hills Shade Lord quest. It would have been tougher with a party starting at level 7. Anyway, it was a long time ago that I played it, and I can't remember when I uninstalled the HLAs--but it was still in chapter 2 and I do remember I was encountering mages and prriests with HLAs with great frequency.

 

I just found it brutally tough. I guess at some point I might consider installing the HLA components at a relatively late point in a game, just to see. But for me the difficulty is about right with

 

Smarter General AI

Better Calls for Help

Potions for NPCs

Smarter Mages

Smarter Priests

 

That's usually all I want or need. I may also sometimes glean a bit here and there from among the following:

 

various spell tweaks

Increase difficulty of level-lependent monster groupings

Improved random encounters

various smarter creatures (species)

various smarter specific encounters (mob bosses)

 

But in the balance, I find that smarter general AI, mages, and priests gives me about the right blend relatively easy 'cannon fodder' battles and very tough multiple reload battles.

[erik]

I mean, you and your mate are holding off two enemy meleers, and unless you take at least one of them down quickly, things aren't going to go well for you. Which one are you going to concentrate on - the lightly armoured wimp, or the thickset dwarf in full plate mail?

 

I'd say that ganging up two-on-one and ignoring Korgan would get the one nearest Korgan killed _fast_ in any reasonable melee. Having enemies swarm and gang up, ignoring huge threats nipping at their side/back, smells a bit of metagaming. IMO.

[DavidW]

I mean, you and your mate are holding off two enemy meleers, and unless you take at least one of them down quickly, things aren't going to go well for you. Which one are you going to concentrate on - the lightly armoured wimp, or the thickset dwarf in full plate mail?

I'd say that ganging up two-on-one and ignoring Korgan would get the one nearest Korgan killed _fast_ in any reasonable melee. Having enemies swarm and gang up, ignoring huge threats nipping at their side/back, smells a bit of metagaming. IMO.

 

Well, two points:

 

(i) the AD&D combat system, and in particular the BG2 version of it, just doesn't incorporate any allowance for the difficulty of holding off multiple attackers. I agree that in realistic combat, anyone fighting head-to-head against two opponents at once is basically dead, irrespective of skill difference - but BG2 just doesn't work that way (and a good thing for the PC, since they're usually heavily outnumbered). Ultimately any BG2 AI mod has to work within the framework of the combat system. And I seriously doubt there are many players out there so punctilious about this that if two of them are ganging up on enemy A and enemy B wanders along, they break one character off and send him to B.

(ii) in any case, the BG2 scripting language is too rudimentary to allow you to tell anything much about tactical situation. Even if I wanted to say "spread attacks as evenly as possible", I can't. All I can do is tell creatures how to prioritise attacks, and my rule is just "attack the person who's easiest to hit". Within the constraints of the language, I can't really see how to improve on this.

[DavidW]

I mean, you and your mate are holding off two enemy meleers, and unless you take at least one of them down quickly, things aren't going to go well for you. Which one are you going to concentrate on - the lightly armoured wimp, or the thickset dwarf in full plate mail?

I'd take out the thickset dwarf, myself, since it's wise to get rid of the greatest threats early, and that would probably be the dwarf, right?

 

Not necessarily, since attack and defence aren't the same: the badly protected guy may still be packing a pretty strong punch. AC and damage/round don't correlate very tightly.

[erik]

And I seriously doubt there are many players out there so punctilious about this that if two of them are ganging up on enemy A and enemy B wanders along, they break one character off and send him to B.

 

Conceded. Only if he's wandering past toward the fragile mage/thief/bard.

 

(ii) in any case, the BG2 scripting language is too rudimentary to allow you to tell anything much about tactical situation. Even if I wanted to say "spread attacks as evenly as possible", I can't. All I can do is tell creatures how to prioritise attacks, and my rule is just "attack the person who's easiest to hit". Within the constraints of the language, I can't really see how to improve on this.

 

Having a medium-probability but high priority "switch target to whoever damaged me last" ought to help easing their ganging up and singlemindedness. Is that there?

[DavidW]

Having a medium-probability but high priority "switch target to whoever damaged me last" ought to help easing their ganging up and singlemindedness. Is that there?

 

No, because I'm not clear it's a good idea. If you're being attacked by two enemies, it makes no sense at all to spread your attacks around just because both of them are hitting you. Concentrate on taking one of them down instead.

[Icendoan]

Also, having 'attack who damaged me last' really isn't optimal. To see for yourself, the ingame script Default Attack (or similar) has this option. Within a load of archers, you will walk to one of them, maybe even roll an attack, and another's hit you, and you meander back and forth around the battlefield, just getting killed.

 

Icen

[erik]

Also, having 'attack who damaged me last' really isn't optimal. To see for yourself, the ingame script Default Attack (or similar) has this option. Within a load of archers, you will walk to one of them, maybe even roll an attack, and another's hit you, and you meander back and forth around the battlefield, just getting killed.

 

Whoever damaged me last and is in melee range, then. I'm not claiming one line is good enough, but I'm simplifying to get the idea out of my head.

[DavidW]

Also, having 'attack who damaged me last' really isn't optimal. To see for yourself, the ingame script Default Attack (or similar) has this option. Within a load of archers, you will walk to one of them, maybe even roll an attack, and another's hit you, and you meander back and forth around the battlefield, just getting killed.

 

Whoever damaged me last and is in melee range, then. I'm not claiming one line is good enough, but I'm simplifying to get the idea out of my head.

 

That gets around Icendoan's objection, but not mine.

[erik]

Having a medium-probability but high priority "switch target to whoever damaged me last" ought to help easing their ganging up and singlemindedness. Is that there?

 

No, because I'm not clear it's a good idea. If you're being attacked by two enemies, it makes no sense at all to spread your attacks around just because both of them are hitting you. Concentrate on taking one of them down instead.

 

Two-against-one, sure. Take out the easiest target. But the scenario I'm thinking of is rather the two-against-two:

 

AI A is attacking bloodthirsty swashbuckler PC B. PC B is retaliating.

AI C helps out by attacking PC B as well. All's well so far.

PC D comes to B's aid, giving C a good whack. C hasn't been attacked by anyone else so far.

 

Wouldn't it in this scenario make sense for C to transfer his attention to D? Does he, at present?