Reduce gold income and hero movement bonuses for AI

[ihhub]

Since we added logic for marketplace usage by the AI and it has a very significant gold bonus, it is very hard to face the AI on highest difficulties. Having 60% of gold bonus is too huge. We are going to expand marketplace logic for monster purchase and upgrades so we should limit its bonuses.

This pull request also reduces movement bonus for the AI heroes on Expert difficulty to differentiate from Impossible difficulty.

These changes are subjective and you are welcome to suggest something different or even decline the proposal changes.

[sonarqubecloud[bot]]

Kudos, SonarCloud Quality Gate passed!   

0 Bugs
0 Vulnerabilities
0 Security Hotspots
0 Code Smells

0.0% Coverage
0.0% Duplication

[oleg-derevenetz]

Hi @ihhub although the logic for using marketplaces by AI was added almost a month ago, a wide audience of players met with it at best yesterday, after the release of the next version. I propose to get some feedback from the players, and then make a decision.

[Branikolog]

Hi, @ihhub I personally experienced that in the majority of cases AI manages to buy 90% of troops in the castles that is threatened by my forces (considering the fact that AI is constantly facing other players). Only on a later game stages, when AI is close to being defeated he starts experiencing gold shortage. It seems to me that he has more than enough money currently. I believe we're ready to decrease a little (10-20%) money cheat for him. But this thing needs to be tested thoroughly.

[zenseii]

Hi, everyone!

I'm about to wrap up a playthrough of the Black Forest scenario on impossible using the latest snapshot as of this message. This map is very resource-scarce. Playing as Blue, when I captured Red's castles I noticed that they still had a few troops left to recruit of the ones it had in its army, and they also had only constructed the fifth level dwelling in its castles which were Warlock (main) and Barbarian. It had crystal and sulphur mines. Meanwhile I had built the Red tower for Phoenixes.

This map also doesn't have any AI boosting scripts which means it's great for gauging its competitiveness.

The way I see it, the biggest issue with the AI and gold is how it will send its secondary heroes (scouts) off to die, disregarding any threatening nearby hero. This loss of 2500 Gold per hero lost, which is usually more than one, is probably not enough to compensate for with the marketplace.

As for differentiating between Expert and Impossible difficulties w/r movement points, I'm fine with this change.

[oleg-derevenetz]

This loss of 2500 Gold per hero lost, which is usually more than one, is probably not enough to compensate for with the marketplace.

The marketplace is currently used by AI only for castle development (including the purchase of boats at the shipyard). AI hires heroes and troops only for cash.

[zenseii]

This loss of 2500 Gold per hero lost, which is usually more than one, is probably not enough to compensate for with the marketplace.

The marketplace is currently used by AI only for castle development (including the purchase of boats at the shipyard). AI hires heroes and troops only for cash.

Yes, my point being that the AI throwing gold down the drain by sacrificing scout heroes is too big of a problem for the marketplace to be able to make up for it when it lacks gold to construct buildings, or could have used said gold to get resources it was lacking.

EDIT: It should be noted that this is a problem because the AI will then spend 2500 gold to hire a new hero, which is where the gold spending issues become a problem for using the marketplace. If buying a new replacement hero comes before using the marketplace then the wasting of heroes inevitably affects the possibility to use the marketplace. Though more importantly it directly affects possibilities to construct buildings or recruit creatures.

[kitovyj]

AI also has movement bonus? I believe that is a bit too much. At least I would prefer it to be a separate option. When game mechanics of AI is completely different in comparison to the game mechanics you can experience yourself that makes the game a bit... hmm chaotic.

[oleg-derevenetz]

AI also has movement bonus? I believe that is a bit too much.

AI has movement bonus of 75 movement points on Expert and Impossible difficulties because it has the same bonus in the original game. Consider:

https://github.com/ihhub/fheroes2/assets/32623900/3f734f08-ccdd-48af-8948-97bddf78d439

[kitovyj]

AI also has movement bonus? I believe that is a bit too much.

AI has movement bonus of 75 movement points on Expert and Impossible difficulties because it has the same bonus in the original game. Consider:

DOSBox.0.74-2.1.Cpu.speed_.max.100.cycles.Frameskip.0.Program_.HEROES2.2024-01-13.03-10-01.mp4

I see. Thank you for the clarification.

[ihhub]

Closing this pull request in favor of #8402.