Elemental: Fallen Enchantress Developer Journal

Stardock's Brad Wardell brings us another developer journal for their forthcoming Elemental: Fallen Enchantress standalone expansion pack, and this time he dives into the AI changes the add-on will require due to its "less desolate" landscape, the changes being made to the way monsters roam the countryside, and more.
Another AI challenge has been dealing with monsters. In Fallen Enchantress, the monsters won't enter your territory voluntarily. So if you stay within your borders, you're safe. However.if your territory expands into a spot where a monster is already hanging out, then bad things are going to be done to you (or the AI player). Monsters won't be attacking cities (or I should say, it'll be extremely rare). But they will camp out in the outskirts waiting for meat to come their way.

Now, there is also a new concept called the Wildlands. This is actually a new AI player that I've had to program that has been very interesting to do. The Wildlands control a portion of the map. Kill their leader and you get to colonize their awesome area and get to their fabulous quests and goodie huts (easier said than done). If you stand outside their (territory), they won't bother you. Walk into it and they will hunt you down. Marketing won't let me show you call the cool new monsters they've got in there but the art team has had a year to come up with some horrible, nasty things to have lurking around.