Rebalance Deeper Dungeons levels

[Loobinex]

Deeper Dungeons with Keeper enemies have become harder than original. We should rebalance them to play out similarly to the original game.

[elemanzer]

Can I ask which levels specifically? I did a playthrough of DD on both KFX and DK a couple months ago and didn't notice anything. DD was always hard even on DK and the keeper AI improvements didn't make things that much harder ime.

[Loobinex]

Can I ask which levels specifically? I did a playthrough of DD on both KFX and DK a couple months ago and didn't notice anything. DD was always hard even on DK and the keeper AI improvements didn't make things that much harder ime.

You cannot because I do not know :p.

I had a report of somebody claiming DD was quite hard and claimed keeperfx AI changes would be to blame. So, if any, the ones with enemy keepers. But if you're saying it's all more or less the same, then we can close the issue.

[elemanzer]

I mean with my playstyle pretty much the same strategies I used on DK worked on KFX even if it did take longer on some levels. But without more info on what specifically is frustrating the player... what to improve on is anyone's guess.

[Loobinex]

But without more info on what specifically is frustrating the player... what to improve on is anyone's guess.

Original report here: https://www.reddit.com/r/dungeonkeeper/comments/1bepld3/comment/m05m798/?context=3
I invited the user to come here and share more info.

[ortwic]

Hi there.

I just replayed a few level on deeper dungeons so far. So my current evaluation is sparse. But what I have noticed:

• Creatures are not killed anymore but knocked out for imprisonment. So the number of creatures is not decreasing, which means that no more new ones are added.
• The "call to arms" has also become much more agil. The enemy "recalled" call to arms only on fighting imps. So it doesn't work anymore to "sneak" to the dungeon heart while in symbiosis.
• Another strategy was to claim the enemy dungeon with an invisible imp while the enemy imps were very busy with gems. I tried it in Pladitz and claimed the ground until the dungeon heart. The old AI didn't realize that while attacking the heart.

25 yrs ago I was a very defensive and perfectionist player with the most beautiful dungeons imaginable. Almost none of my creatures died bc of very stealthy strategies. I think it's gotten a little harder to distract the enemy keeper. Maybe I was a cheesy coward. :-P

However, in deeper dungeons you have to fight your way through hero fortresses to the enemy Keeper, while he has the time to train his usually better troops of Dark Mistress, Bile Demons and Dragons to level 10, while you usually have rather limited creatures.

Belbata would be interesting to evaluate, where you have to fight three keepers with an army of skeletons and a few vampires. The blue Keeper is relatively easy if you cut off the gold vein with gems at the very beginning. But I read somewhere that in Keeper FX it's no longer so easy to drain him financially, because now keepers sell workshop items to get gold.

My suggestion would be some difficulty slider easy to hard where on hard mode creatures are imprisonated, doors and traps are sold etc.

EDIT:
I started to play Belbata. In the original script I think you were not able to build prisons after claiming the four neutral ones. Same goes for the graveyard. Changing this makes it a lot easier since you can bould then your XXL prison. Status quo: You're staring with 4 warlocks. Creature limit is at most 4 then. Additinally gathered bonus creatures: 1 Bile Demon, 6 Vampires and 16 Sekeltons. In total then 27 creatures vs. 30 creatures each (green, yellow) of Bile Demons, Dark Mistress and spiders. All level 10. Blue has 25 creatures in total. Feels quite unbalanced when it's about pure fighting with a smart AI.

But finally I found a solution with lots of Indie traps, magic doors and collapse spell. Weaken the enemy heavily and then attack.

[elemanzer]

@Loobinex

Read the reddit post and recent comments and it's plenty to go on. 3 suggestions:

1. Add a way in-game to change the default ruleset used when starting a campaign (e.g. on Campaign Intro #2487). Easy mode selection could also go here. Players could then choose the legacy ruleset more easily if they don't like the KFX balance or want a more nostalgic feel.
2. Legacy keepcomp that preserves DK-like computer player behavior.
3. Easy mode config: Drop enemy creature health to something like 80-90% and a separate keepcomp-easy that nerfs the crap out of Computer Player's abilities and aggessiveness.

The easier access to changing ruleset could lead to more fanmade configurations that might surprise us.

[elemanzer]

@ortwic

On Belbata, since you have prisons, make more skeletons! Start with the heroes guarding the prison. Draw them toward your dungeon, delay them with magic doors and lava traps until you can claim the prison. With 30+ heroes available you should have no trouble raising a skeleton armada.

Imprison blue's creatires when you attack him. Then use his torture chamber to convert the powerful ones and turn the rest into more skeletons. Convert the hero knights and samurai (if you waited). Repeat the process for yellow keeper to the right and don't forget the bonus mistress hidden to the right of the prison.

Even with this armada, green is a pain because he's boulder trap crazy. But a concealed imp can trigger his boulders right into his own creatures!

But you're right. Pure fight strategy is hard to pull off on Deeper Dungeon levels but it's harder on KFX.

[elemanzer]

@Loobinex

It kinda sucks but I guess it's what's needed for legacy:

Build Graveyard 3x4 > 4x5
Build Training 5x6 > 4x5
Dig To Greedy Gold 2: distance_inc_turns 200 > 50
Dig To Greedy Gold 2: slabs_at_once 10 > 7
Check for enough imps 1,2,3,5,7: Increase per gems faces value > 0
Computer check imprisonment > disabled
Event check rooms full: Max room tiles 72 > 0
Computers 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,9,10,11,12;
Removed Checks: Prison1 SplFly SplVsn
Removed Events: RoomLost MoanPris1 MoanPris2 SaveTort1 DoorAtck1

keepcompp-legacy.zip

No way to configure things like crate selling though.

[ortwic]

I finished Belbata yesterday and it was fun. The first time I tried it over 20 years ago, I opted for the skeleton strategy, but this time I went for vampires because managing so many skeletons is a bit of a hassle. As I wrote in the previous post, I found a way with boulder traps (indie traps), magic doors and collapse spells. It was very satisfying to win this way. This strategy should work for most other levels too.

However Dixaroc is my very favorite level of all. I'll retry it next. Gold is scarce, no portal and no boulder traps available. Here are the stats: https://dungeonkeeper.fandom.com/wiki/Dixaroc

[Loobinex]

A legacy keepcompp.cfg is on the wishlist anyway, for when campaign specific keepcompp files work.

But this is about tweaking the default levels to have correct difficulty, without reintroducing idiotic AI behavior or bugs. If maps became too difficult because the AI train their creatures too fast, we could simply give them fewer creatures for example, or take a bit of gold away so they can train slower.

[elemanzer]

@Loobinex

Going through the reddit post, this particular comment hits home:

I looked around if it was a bug or I'm doing something wrong, but no. I just need to cheese it or know end game strats straight out of the tutorial.

I think the core issue is that the creature v creature balance on KFX classic is very different from DK - tuned for veteran players and very unforgiving towards casual players. At that point, people start looking for what's different on KFX from DK (like AI imprisonment or torture conversion which ime don't really alter balance that much).

There's a strong case for an easy mode here - casual players can get through a level they aren't enjoying and veteran players won't complain levels have become too easy/altered from original.

without reintroducing idiotic AI behavior or bugs

Legacy is a failsafe - a place for people to go when they feel the KFX implementation is failing them...

[walt253]

I think what @Loobinex meant is to focus on tweaking it for classic and not for legacy.

[elemanzer]

@walt253

My apologies - I've been sucking at communicating lately. I'm on the same page about tweaking classic here., In fact I've been poking & prodding the classic config for DD and believe I've made headway there but more on that later.

Regarding my legacy point - If you look at the reddit post linked earlier here, there's a laundry list of complaints about a wide range of OC levels being too hard for a lot of people. While we fix each of these levels, I think it'd be a good idea (as a fallback) to make it easy for people to change to a legacy config in-game when they run into a level that feels "off" to them. That way we don't get the "keeperfx is trash" comments.

@Loobinex

Investigating Belbata as a starting point, I believe I've found the issue. Running the level on a legacy config (to determine what the difficulty curve of Belbata should be on classic) and comparing to classic, config, it takes about 43 L10 skeletons to wipe out a fixed selection of the blue keeper's L10 creature army (no spell intervention) vs. classic's 45 (so very similar).

The key difference, however, is the time the battle takes: legacy = 65s, classic = 34s. So players have nearly just half the time to apply heal and what they observe is skeletons dropping like flies at a rate they can't hope to react to. This is probably due to fixing the str and dex bugs but not addressing HP to keep the balance the same.

Would increasing HP across the board by something like 30% be feasible?

[elemanzer]

Re-review of Deeper Dungeons Keeper Levels

The general theme of DD even on DK is it's HARD - The levels are designed to be played at least twice, to force the player to learn the map and find the best strategy to gain the advantage early.

80, Morkardar
On both DK and KFX, the player has to explore quickly to capture as many neutrals/heroes as possible before the enemy keeper breaks out of their dungeon.

We can remove AI door attack to make the enemy keeper less 'efficient' at breaking out, but note that this will only be cosmetic as without it, the keeper will still use CTA to break out.

SET_COMPUTER_EVENT(PLAYER1,"EVENT ENEMY DOOR",144000,36,2500,2,0)

There's also a bug preventing the player from getting to the reveal map on the west side as it is no longer possible to build bridges over water tiles with traps placed on them.

81, Korros Tor
No change necessary. The level is about breaking out of the dungeon early to gain the advantage and 23 vs 30 is hardly a difficult battle when you have access to a strong creature pool and all the spells you could want.

82, Kari-Mar
It's 15 v 40 so it's supposed to be hard. KFX has already made the level infinitely easier by blocking the enemy keeper's ability to dig north (assuring graveyard for the player), giving workshop plans once it is captured and repositioning destroy walls where the enemy can't get to it first.

Since OP had trouble with the concealed, encroaching imp strategy, removing additional imps per gem faces makes sure the keeper is too occupied with gems to reclaim lost land as on DK.

SET_COMPUTER_CHECKS(PLAYER3,"CHECK FOR ENOUGH IMPS",200,11,5,0,0)

83, Belbata
OP's 6 vamp (instead of the intended 2 vamp + 40+ skel) strategy works on DK because the enemy keeper 'dies' a slow death once you cut off their gold supply. On KFX the keeper will sell crates to make up for this. I'm not sure we want a bug-like dead keeper behavior but this would require the ability to disable AI crate-selling within keepcompp.

Playing the level the intended way still works. Though Skeletons are particularly weak on KFX post rebalance and prone to swings in battle outcomes in this level, you get to make more skeletons and convert other creatures after the dust has settled. No rebalance necessary imo.

84, Caddis Fell
The AI on kfx goes a little nuts with over expansion here when they have limited space to do so - ending up with 3 training, 2 library, multiple workshops, treasure rooms and barracks. They also dig south towards player gems, often getting themselves killed by digging to the hero Horned Reapers too early. Player0 also loses access to the specials on either side of the enemy dungeon as early as < 1 payday. Although I've had some success with disabling DigGreedyGld1, the level is far from fixed.

SET_COMPUTER_PROCESS(PLAYER1,"DIG TO GREEDY GOLD",0,1,72000,7,900)

85, Pladitz
No change recommended. Player has all the time in the world here and the enemy keeper does not break out of their dungeon. EDIT: Though OP wants keeper not to respond when attacking its heart, this is something that might belong in an easy mode since other players would complain about this being too easy.

87, Svatona
The enemy keeper digs north (to hero area and player0's gold veins) before exhausting their own provided gold supply. This never happens on DK. Giving the computer player default GreedyGold1 values seems to restore expected behavior. Please retest this as I cannot explain why.

SET_COMPUTER_PROCESS(PLAYER1,"DIG TO GREEDY GOLD",0,40999,400,7,900)

97, Dixaroc
No aberrant behavior noticed so no change recommended.

Please review changes.

[walt253]

There's also a bug preventing the player from getting to the reveal map on the west side as it is no longer possible to build bridges over water tiles with traps placed on them.

There is traps placed on water? Weird.

Skeletons are particularly weak on KFX

This is the second time I hear this claim in 24 hours, can you please elaborate what makes you think Skeletons are weaker on KFX? The other person refused to elaborate. 😝

[elemanzer]

@walt253

My take on it is that skeletons were already weak on DK but the rebalance on KFX classic made this weakness more apparent because:

1. Strength/Damage cap no longer applies against skeletons (or other creatures)
2. No Dex overflow so higher hit chance against skeletons @ L10.
3. 2.5x luck/double damage chance applied to all creatures.

So what I observe with all skeleton army vs. diverse army is the same battle can have huge variation in outcome depending on how much (3) factors in and in these cases there's barely any time to apply heals. This is why I suggested increasing health across the board to make high damage battles last a little longer.

[Loobinex]

Thanks a lot elemanzer. I will act on your research in due time. Some short points at this time:

1. I do not believe it to be a bug that you cannot build bridges over traps. You cannot build other rooms over traps either.
2. If we raise all HP across the board to slow down damage I am sure we introduce a lot of new unbalanced things, like making spells weaker in comparison and whatnot. What is causing the faster battles? And is this always or just in this specific battle setup?
3. The skeletons could be comparatively weaker because they benefited less from stat fixes than high strength/dex/hp units. They fell off compared to the strong units.
4. A lot of people do complain about difficulty yes, but this is not specific to keeperfx. People do have trouble when they first time play gold too, new people and people who only played the unfixed version alike. This is not something we can ever fix.

[elemanzer]

@Loobinex

1. I do not believe it to be a bug that you cannot build bridges over traps. You cannot build other rooms over traps either.

You can build bridge on trapped water tiles in DK Gold and Morkardar was designed around this - it is the only way to get to the Reveal map on the level. You can remove the traps from the map since they're hardly an impedence - as long as that part of the level isn't broken, I doubt anyone will complain.

What is causing the faster battles? And is this always or just in this specific battle setup?

2.5x luck, no strength cap, and increased hit chance. It probably applies to all weaker creatures (flies, spiders, beetles, warlocks) but it's more noticeable with skeletons because there are more levels where they are your primary unit while the other weaker creatures are phased out in later levels where they might reach level 10. If HP increase would create imbalance, I can't think of any easy solutions to this.

A lot of people do complain about difficulty yes, but this is not specific to keeperfx. People do have trouble when they first time play gold too, new people and people who only played the unfixed version alike. This is not something we can ever fix.

There's a tendency to blame keeperfx when something goes wrong. But if they were able to try it again on legacy config, they might realize when it's a skill issue.

[walt253]

But traps are supposed to vanishes once they ran out of ammo, when they are placed on strange location, I believe water should be considered a strange location. 🤔

[elemanzer]

@walt253

You're right. For some reason I thought Poison traps had 12 charges but you can build a bridge after deactivating it 5 times just fine. No fix needed there - my bad.

[Loobinex]

@elemanzer On Caddis Fell did blue -not- get himself killed on the reapers on DK1?

[Loobinex]

I think I found a fine way to tweak Caddis Fell.

Looked at Svatona as well, and for me blue took ages to try and steal your gold too, and since he won't bridge you and you have gems I do not see this as problematic at all. I do not think the AI needs to be further handicapped there. Please check out #3763 and let me know what you think.

Svatona does not make blue too strong for the player to kill? I assume people always fight maxed vs maxed there anyway.

[ortwic]

I have played all the deeper dungeons levels. It was no problem and a lot of fun. It was very different from the original because many rooms became available that couldn't be used in the original. I think in the level kari-mar where you can't build a workshop the magic door is available but could never be built by the creatures because the workshop taken over was just too small.

In the end I always went for the boulder trap strategy to weaken the opponent. Also I've taken his rooms with the invisible imp strategy. Luckily he is not intelligent enough to hold back his creatures from Boulder traps nor realizing that someone attacks his rooms.

[walt253]

@elemanzer On Caddis Fell did blue -not- get himself killed on the reapers on DK1?

Related issue: #1566