Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. In Progress.
 

Not to hijack this thread, but could someone tell chrispederson the next time you see him to clear out his in-box....:rolleyes:

Thanks, Grudge

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. In Progress.
 

Im abit confused by this. I would be bothered if anyone sprung this onto players. But I think that the AI and its level was well spelled out for this game long before anyone joined.

That would tend to be vanilla or low level AI which is often complained of. Part of the reason I agreed to do this, and plan to do more, is that the scenario option of AI is broken. Players are not able to easily play against boosted AIs without it being a server game. I appreciated a chance to show that the AI has more options than people know.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. In Progress.
 

Gandalf, as I said several times, I greatly appreciate all the work you've done here. Your AI could be wonderful in all-against-AI games. People do like them, I'm sure. But this was not supposed to be such kind of game, or at least, I didn't understand it clearly. The problem here is that fighting AI is at all times less interesting than fighting people. Also, while you did a tremendous amount of work of modding all this, I don't really think you made the Dominions AI smarter, you just gave it the bonuses that make it perform much better (well, I may be mistaken here, of course). What I see now is boosted in many aspects AI with enormous hordes of troops (normal behaviour for AI). Maybe I haven't yet seen its full potential, of course... But anyway, for me Dominions is definitely not fighting AI.

p.s. Also, I never saw the exact explanations of what bonuses AI has, only general words. Even now I may only be guessing.
p.p.s. As mentioned above, I don't want to spam the thread with complains. I'm also not accusing anyone of anything, just expressing my opinion. Septimius, you did want opinions. This is it.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. In Progress.
 

Well, its still very early yet, lets see how things pan out. A few things in this game, settings, BI mod (to keep the AI from recruiting chaff), Gandalf's work, are intended to make the AI more challenging. But of course, short of rewriting the AI game code, there are limits on what can be done.

Anyway, right Ano, I did want opinions on the difficulty level and thanks for your suggestions. The AI is stated part of the game and a strategic element, but I will do my best to make sure it is not the whole game. I'm closing the poll. On a scale of 1-5, people seemed to favor #3. Thanks for responding.

If, Ano the AI is boring to ya and not a challenge at all, feel free to kill em off or ignore them as you like. There's no law that says you have to fight them, Children of Crom is ready for ya whenever you want to come over and see us. If the AI is not giving you the beat down you want, I am sure someone else will be happy to do so. :D

And, Ano whats with that gold you keep sending me? Psychological Warfare? :p It won't work.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. In Progress.
 

Personally, I think it would be better to do no indies for the next game. That would help remove the feeling of the AI recruiting walls of chaff. While the BI mod does help a lot with that, the AI will still use every opportunity to spam units at you without rhyme or reason. The major consequences of this to players are the removal of recruitable indy commanders and mages, which is unfortunate. But those could be added back in, if you are willing to spend the time on it in mapmaking, or you could use something like my mod that adds some indies back in. Or you could use semi-rand. Lots of options :)


I don't think anyone is complaining that the AI is not a challenge ;) I think it is just not the kind of challenge that Ano would prefer. I think the inclusion of AI nations is probably one of the most controversial aspects of the series. The last one may as well not even be a human VS game, with the likely strength of the AIs. They will probably occupy all human attention, and possibly even wipe out entire teams by themselves. I would instead bill it as a survival game, and leave out some of the other elements. But I think also that the bonuses given to the AI should be known about pre-game. Anyway, this is just what I think, feel free to ignore me :)

As far as that game goes, it seems likely the AI is going to have to be taken down by a concerted effort from the players. Bickering is likely to just leave you all weakened. Even normal AIs can be a bit of a pain to deal with. Jacked up ones like this one are probabl going to be show stealers :P

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. In Progress.
 

By the way, one thing I don't particularly like about these AIs are troops from other nations. Would it not be possible to restrict such add-ons to troops from other eras or something such? Just to keep things thematically sound? Not that this would prove to be much concern with Ermor/R'lyeh in the 3rd game, of course...

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. In Progress.
 

Its just sharing between the allies (as closely as I could arrange it). Its rather interesting which ones do and dont use it. And Id like to know how taking the capital works.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. In Progress.
 

So far, for me, these AIs are like super-independent. Interesting challenge shaping the world before we get to the later apocalypse. Fighting hard against AIs knowing that they are not even the real enemy is kind of exciting ;)

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. In Progress.
 

Thanks for the input. I am always looking for ways to improve the series, so all suggestions will be taken into consideration for the next game. I certainly don't want the AI to become the entire focus of the game (and if I can help it, it won't be). If we need to do some AI toning down, it will be done and even though I like to have fun with the genocide stuff, rest assured we've no intention of actually murdering players or pitting them against insurmountable odds. :D Next poll will be on the Merc.

I do agree with Numahr a bit, I do like these mixed unit AIs, brings a fresh challenge. Sorta of like fighting the armies of TC, the varied units makes finding the right tactics intriguing. Certainly don't want AI that are pushovers or can be rushed in the first few turns.

I enjoy playing against both AI and humans. Some NvV and team play purists, as Rdonj mentioned, don't like the AI and RPG elements, and I understand this. Nothing yet devised can entirely replace the human element. And the scenario/RPG elements appeal to some and not to others.

However, I am quite impressed by the advancements in game AI that have taken place over the years. Contrary to what we might think though, the AI does not do things without rhyme or reason as humans may sometimes be said to do. The AI/comp can only do what its told to do. That being said, I'd love to play against an AI that fully approximates how a human would react and I think many AI programmers have attempted to do this by incorporating learning routines, personalities, or even random actions in an attempt to mimic human behaviour. Thus what seems to us to be nonsensical may either be an attempt at that goal or simply our lack of understanding of the programming logic behind it.

Rdonj, regarding the BI mod, actually only two indie commanders are made unsuable by the mod, The Barbarian Chief and Horse Tribe Chief, all other mages and commanders and a good number of the more "useful" (a somewhat subjective statement) units are still recruitable. Adding back in some units that humans actually might actually find some uses for is certainly very easy to do.

Game note: Thanks to rdonj, for coming aboard in a limited advisory capacity for Children of Crom.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. In Progress.
 

Septimius
I am sure you do need gold so never mind.

rdonj
I did suggest an organized attack before but nobody bothered to answer. Go and kill the AI or it will come for you.

Gandalf Parker
Are they allied with the corner AI's as well? Eriu recruits a lot of Vaetti.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. In Progress.
 

I've asked Tonno to start a thread on the Deva's Den for coordination of AI attacks (look for it shortly). Participation is of course up to each team. I am all for it of course, as I've always said. Don't think anyone can afford to ignore them completely. You seemed to be spoiling for a fight with humans so that is why I said you can ignore them if you want to.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. In Progress.
 

Regarding BI: Not making the horse tribe commander available but making the heavy cavalry commander available seems really silly. The horse tribe commander is useful because he's move 3. The heavy cavalry commander is in fact pretty useless relative to other indie commanders (move 2, more expensive than indie commander, etc...).

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. In Progress.
 

That's absolutely true

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. In Progress.
 

They have NAPs with the AIs in the corner.
But what you are seeing is the population of that second castle which they get as if it was a conquered castle. That poptype seemed semi appropriate to a fairie-type nation.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. In Progress.
 

You mean there is a possibility to program NAP in an AI? For scenario, I mean? Instead of an alliance?

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. In Progress.
 

Basically the #allies map command is a NAP with no time limit.
#allies

specific AI will not attack AI
The extended alliance of sharing units is new.

And a cool thing about the old map-based allies command is that its one of the few commands that does not care if that nation is in the game or not. Its one of the few that works as "IF the nation is in the game and IF the nations are both AI THEN they will be allied". It doesnt give an error if that nation isnt in the game. I wish more of the commands worked that way. Many of them require that the nation be in the game and be AI which is a problem since the scenario command is broken. You cant force a nation to be in, and ai, without server commands.

But if you wanted to, you could create lots and lots of ally commands covering all of the nations and add it to a map. So that whatever nations are in as AIs, they will be allied. Or you could create what you feel are logical alliances (undead with blood, holy with holy, nature with nature, man with man) which means different games on that map could go very differently depending on what nations are in as computer players.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. In Progress.
 

Gandalf,
Where can I learn who to use these commands? I went to the modding tutorial, but there is nothing about such scripting. I am very interested, where should I go / what should I do?

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. In Progress.
 

Hehe, that's a question you'll probably want to address to the mod's creator, Edi. I've just incorporated it unaltered for our games so far. But a good suggestion for a possible alteration in the future.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. In Progress.
 

There are two pdfs in your documents folder. One is the modding manual. The other is the mapping manual. You'll want to look up the mapping manual for map-oriented commands like that.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. In Progress.
 

What does it mean? Now server shows that Ermor's turn is not uploaded. but a few hours ago it was shown as uploaded. How could this happen?
I have a turn of Ermor locally and I may reupload it but is a pretty weird situation because if someone uploads a turn and then it mysteriously disappears and he stales... Meh... I hate rehosts but in such a situation I would understand a person, whose turn just vanished, being very angry.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. In Progress.
 

4 hours left till hosting. Perhaps I will wait a couple of hours with reuploading the turn. Maybe Gandalf will look at the issue...

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. In Progress.
 

Running a verify on the 2h files seems to show that most of the 2h files are for turn 9, but ermors is for turn 7. This would seem to be an advantage of direct connect over email. Its saying immediately that it has no turn file yet for Ermor for this turn

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. In Progress.
 

Ermor's file showed up as fine a few hours ago (since yesterday, actually). Only Ulm was left.
Well, no problem, I'll reupload it. Hope this doesn't happen again.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. In Progress.
 

Also, how could it happen that there's a turn 7 file for Ermor? We could suppose it was left from previous turn but that's impossible because previous turn was turn 8. So, the server somehow accepted that turn 7 file or it is just not the file that was uploaded.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. In Progress.
 

The llamaserver doesn't accept incorrectly numbered turns, so it's not really problem for it. Certainly though, it seems to be a good idea to use direct connect for your server.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. In Progress.
 

Yes, and actually it looks strange that invalid turn .2h's pass server verification.. This should be implemented by Dominions engine itseld, shouldn't it?

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. In Progress.
 

Ok, 3 hours left and I submitted Ermor's turn. And I really hope situation like this doesn't occur in future.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. In Progress.
 

It is. It wasnt showing an accepted file for Ermor.
Plus the file verify command which is part of dom3 (dom3 --verify gamename). LLama was shown it and uses the same principle to check his. By advantage of direct over email I meant in general, not comparing how the two servers manage.

The new ermor file sent does now check as turn 9, and the game shows it received, so we should not have a problem.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. In Progress.
 

Ok, I will not argue. Perhaps 3 people were just blind :) Hope this doesn't happen again.
Thanks for your input.

But... Just another question already asked above.

How would you explain this? If the server did NOT accept the invalid turn (or no turn was sent) then there should have been turn 8, not 7 (Could be 7 if Ermor staled the previous turn but he didn't). I can't explain the situation for myself and I'm still pretty sure that it was showing only Ulm with a cross a few hours ago. But again, let's just hope it doesn't happen again.

And regarding DC vs PBEM concepts, what I like in PBEM is that you can always see what you have sent. Any email server or local email client store outgoing email. And now I just have no proof to my words and can't prove them even to myself:)

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. In Progress.
 

I didnt say it refused a turn 7 file. Just that it didnt count it.
Id have to do some testing on sending in old files to get an answer.
Im also hopeful it doesnt happen again. :)
But we all know from experience that at least such things can be seen prior to a hosting.

You can verify the files you have at your end the same as I did. Using the --verify switch. And possibly use one of the backup utilities posted in order to store a copy of the file you sent

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. In Progress.
 

I guess, just like PBEM, it takes time for players unfamiliar with direct connect to get used to the way it works. I know it took me a bit to get used to it. Now that I am, I do like it. But I don't know why a check would be there and then disappear(haven't had it happen to me) unless their was some lag time or something between upload and server recognition. Maybe the log file contains more details.

Waiting on Ulm only. I might have to submit for him.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. In Progress.
 

God damn!
After all this *** with Ermor C'tis has got a "your CD key was used on multiple instances". Yes, it was the same key but it was the same CPU, and, IIRC, turns can be perfectly submitted from the same machine if it is the same instance of Dominions... So basically I staled instead of Ermor. And I have no clue why. :(
You see?! I also did submit turn for Ermor....

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. In Progress.
 

Ano, please see my pm

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. In Progress.
 

No, I actually wasn't present at my home PC. And I couldn't send it from work, direct connection and all... :p
Still, I hope you was able to put your turn, wasn't you?
If necessary I personally would agree for rollback.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. In Progress.
 

No, no... No rollbacks.
After my anger has passed, it seems to me that the problem is that the turn of Ermor was saved on another machine (and Dom copy) and I just submitted it from my computer without entering and saving. This could be the problem but still pretty weird.

Thanks, Chris, for your input! I'll consider your suggestion as well.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. In Progress.
 

Alright, it is turn 10 (we will be going to 40 hours as of turn 11).

Time for my score graph analysis:

Expansion vs. Indies phase is almost over (36 indies left)

Expansion/all out war vs. AI or between human teams becomes increasingly likely. It should be pointed out that war between teams is not yet completely necessary at this juncture and could leave the parties in a weakened state. Victory conditions allow for any team (including the AI) to actually win the game.

C'tis and TC are tied for province leader at 18. Good job by the crafty Ano.

The Usurpers Mictlan is doing very well at 17 province. This must be due to the courageous Algae Nymph.

Atlantis is hanging in there at 13 provinces. How's it going Zegc? Looking for more discounts and services soon. Maybe buy one, get one free or something. :D

Among human team members, C'tis unsurprisingly leads in gold income, and Shinuyama leads in gem income.

An AI start has fallen, and the Supplicants have picked it up. Giving them 5 VPs overall (22 needed to win).

It's mostly downhill for the AI from now on. They've will likely have reached their maximum expansion very soon.

Good luck!

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. In Progress.
 

It is false. All the rest is probably true. I'm just curious who will be able to tear the 120 PD on AI castle down along with all Mammoths, iceclads, longbowmen etc..
Suggesting that we could in 10 first turns capture a castle with 120 PD and 800 defense, well... You overestimate us :)

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. In Progress.
 

False? How so? The game is only supposed to award a VP if you are in control of a castle from my understanding. One castle must have fallen, I didn't say it was the capital.

Included in that PD is a bunch of militia and chaff from what I can tell as well.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. In Progress.
 

Think of it. The answer is pretty simple.

Also, if you're tracking the graphs you may notice that the turns Shiunyama got the VP and the castle are different turns so your suggestion is just impossible

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. In Progress.
 

My mistake your right, I hadn't noticed that the AI team still possesses 2 VPs each. So it wasn't a start that had fallen apparently. Oh No! I hope it was a sea province and not what I think it might have been. But Atlantis is short a VP (if they had been able to get all 5 sea). So it could very likely have been a sea province. :) Well, still gives your team the human VP lead at 5.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. In Progress.
 

Thanks, but the credit should go to my captain. I never would've thought to...nope, that'd be telling.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. In Progress.
 

Septimius, again, all info can be gained from the stats. HoF this time :)

You'll tell us after the game what it was. I'm curious :)

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. In Progress.
 

Whoever got AI caps, could you PM me and fill in some info for me?
What nation. What did you come up against? Did it do well?
What did the cap have as sites, and what did it allow you access to?

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. In Progress.
 

Second this. ;)

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. In Progress.
 

I shall, I've always been good with words.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. In Progress.
 

You know, LA Ermor is feared for its hordes of "chaff" as well... I just want to see how and when you are going to clear the half of screen of troops. Be it chaff or not.
Btw, it is also a thing that should not have been included, IMO. The hordes of AI are enormous without this terrific PD amount.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. In Progress.
 

I debated and debated that amoung other things. Then decided to let myself off the hook with an easy out. If its supposed to be level 6 of 10 then I let 6/10's decide many numeric factors

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. In Progress.
 

No problem, Gandalf. It just seems to me that Septimus underestimates this amount of PD a bit. Calling it "chaff" is actually the same as calling so ermorian undead legions. Yes, they are chaff but go beat them :)

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. In Progress.
 

Yes, I was going to check the HOF to see if one of my own creations were dead, apparently not so.

For the record, I did think the amount of PD a bit high (perhaps a bit of an understatement, cuz its more than twice what it was last game) but the AI is/was Gandalf's show to a some extent. I certainly don't underestimate it. It will be difficult to capture the caps most certainly, and they will likely be the last to fall, but I don't think it is impossible or insurmountable.

Re: Noobs and Vets II: Days of Infamy. MA, BI. In Progress.
 

I was speaking not about the capital, actually. Such PD for a secondary fort just seems a bit high to me. But it doesn't matter much, of course