AI & Ludonarrative Dissonance

I've decided to focus these devlogs more on a discussion around game design instead of a changelog. Hopefully, this approach will be instructive.

In Chapter Titans Clash, Wolfheart takes the battle to Duke Tyrus's legion. It's a straightforward premise, the battle occurs on a plain and the enemy formation is a box. 

Because of the way the game is balanced, most enemies on this map are more powerful than most of your characters. You only have a select few characters who can effectively compete with the enemy in specific ways, but because of the lack of healing, these characters are limited resources and you need to consider carefully how you invest those resources and how you can avoid unneeded costs to them. Or, at least, that's the theory.

Higher difficulties are an interesting design tool; they force you to interact more meaningfully with the underlying system. In Titans Clash, on higher difficulties, it becomes increasingly difficult for even the stronger player units to achieve any significant success against the enemy formation. The easiest solution is to provoke the legion and retreat. Because of the way the base AI works, enemies will quickly break formation, allowing you to pick them off one at a time. Not only is this extremely lame, but it also gets the player to think about the AI and not what the enemy is. Duke Tyrus's legion is elite infantry that should know how to advance without breaking formation. The only reason the enemy units break formation is because of the game AI, of ludonarrative dissonance.

In order make the map play out correctly, I've changed the AI for the legionaries. The change is surprisingly simple; by scoring positions near other units of the same group, the AI will bunch up enemies together. It then becomes much harder for the player to split the enemies and defeat them in detail. Though still possible, it will require considerable active effort, at which point it is a victory well earned.

To balance things out, I've slightly nerfed the enemy units on this map. Hopefully, this difficulty is more interesting than it previously was.