Same story.

Well that is unfortunate Heavenfall. Of course I would like to hear word on what the devs are doing about 1.3 beta at the moment. Will they extend it, will there be another beta form. Just some curiosity matter

I've been kinda waiting for them to smooth out those AI concerns players are having before I install 1.3. And if they can't get it figured out in time...I may just wait for 1.4.

Brad's on vacation this week so there probably won't be any AI fixes until he gets back next week.

Thanks for the reply.

I'm sure 1.3 will get released in a playable state.  It might take a few iterations though, which I think Frogboy suggested in this thread or one of the recent threads on AI.

As of today I still have problems with my units pathfinding, both on the strategic as well as on the tactical maps.

Part of this is due to the way roads are built on the strategic map. One example:

The engine put one of the roads between cities right adjacent to a dragon's lair. I have lost several units because I set a long range path for them and since they tend to seek out roads in that case, they stop next to the dragon. Sizzle. Frustration. I can only avoid this by micro managing them into a detour. Worse, I don't seem to have/get road-building capable units any more, which might help to circumvent the problem.

Countless other examples in road-less wilderness -- a pioneer sent out to claim a resource somewhere will go and stop next to a known monster lair.

Squish. If that unit had the wits of a gnat it would detour around, but no ...  having to micro manage every unit across the strategic map is not my idea of smooth hassle free gameplay. 

On to the tactical map.

I summon a Fire Elemental. Flame clouds ... I set my champion to attack a unit past the fire elemental, now we're looking at a straight path from my champion to the unit that wants attacking -- what does she do? She actually puts a kink into her path to detour through the flame cloud and take damage instead of riding in a straight line (the shortest way). This is ridiculous. It is majorly annoying, even if the flame cloud cannot seriously damage her at this level, it still is gnat-wit city all over again.

I have had many more instances where units walk - shall we say an unfortunate path, or put themselves in a seriously dangerous or undesirable position when you target an enemy unit and send them in to attack.

On the tactical map it would actually be advantageous to have the ability to micro manage your units step-by-step instead of losing the remainder of the movement points after one move, to avoid this kind of frustration.

Incidentally I have not experienced the One City AI thing in the 2-3 games I've played in the 1.3 beta, so far. Go figure. Nor have I seen any of that assassin armor that was muchly talked about a while ago. Not any: none. (and this is games started new, with 1.3 - not 1.2 saves reloaded.

-P. 

I'm back from vacation and working on it.

The AI was getting far too paranoid about dealing with the monsters. There's a fine line between risk management and bunker mentality.  It didn't affect all AI personalities. The "Expansionist" AI personality was unaffected.

Your Commanders get the ability to create roads.  It's actually pretty awesome.

Great to hear. I've just finished my 1.2 game, which definitely seemed to be more challenging to me on Ridiculous (I had to reload a couple of save games after taking on battles I couldn't win). I'm looking forward to trying out 1.3, but from the sound of it at the moment there's not a great deal of useful feedback that can be given until the one city paranoid AIs are fixed.

I havent' noticed the 1 city bug because by turn 100 the AI has lvl 12+ heroes that squash me.

Just to seed this thought, but each faction has it's own AI personality....you mention 'expansionist' as being one of them.

Would it be a worthwhile venture to have all AI start off as expansionists, and after acquiring some objective/goal (for example...when it reaches 3 cities), switch over to their personalized AI personality?

 I have encountered severally now that the movement on the strategic map freezes, and the "end turn" button becomes inactive. Other things still work, like the governonce button brings up the appropriate window, Ctrl-S does a quick save, but escape to menu does not. Have to tab out, kill via taskmanager, on reload things work again.

Tonight's check-in:

+ Improved algorithm that allows AI to detect different types of threats to its cities and units
+ AI prioritizes pioneers more when there is good land its LOS (and less when there isn't)
+ AI prioritizes maximizing its army size before going into battle
+ AI more willing to sacrifice non-champion led armies to soften enemies before sending in champions/sovereigns
+ AI now makes use of a "ready for battle" flag to determine which armies it should send where
+ AI is less paranoid about distant monsters and more cautious about nearby monsters
+ AI has less ADD when it comes to targets of opportunity
+ AI generally less cautious about taking on battles as long as its armies are deemed ready for battle (i.e. AI is less cowardly)
+ Fixed AI bug where an AI would target a quest in unfriendly territory and then abort destination because of that and get stuck in a loop (result: AI sovereign would just sit there)
+ Some AI personalities won't try to build improvements early on so that they can focus on expansion while others will do the opposite in order to build up their capitals faster
+ Improved the AI's decision making for deciding how many units should stay in a city to protect it
+ AI generally smarter about when to build pioneers vs. other types. SOME AI personalities will create more pioneers than others depending on what strategy they are employing
+ firxed AI bug where AI would sometimes not train units because it had improvements in the queue
+ Fixed AI pathfinding where the AI units could not "find" their rally point and as a result would no be able to concentrate their power.
+ AI will generally notify player when they've cast an offensive strategic spell on them (complete with snark).
+ Increased odds of AI interacting with player regarding world situation events
+ Improved performance of battle engine for autoresolve (makes AI vs. AI battles faster)
+ More AI weighting if players aren't geographicaly near each other (+1 to +2).

Wow. Does that automatically get pushed to the beta patch?