Re: Suggestions for Improving the AI opponents
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I don't see anything wrong with the AI shuffling it's troops at random. I agree that it might be better if the AI "intelligently" determined where to move it's troops, but that type of "intelligence" is tough to implement and random shuffling does keep the Human player guessing.

As a great philosopher once said: "If you can't be smart, be random" </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">It gets pretty crazy. Not only is it hard to do in any game, its majorly hard to do in a game which is basicaly written to not keep track of things over multiple turns.

Also, the smarter an AI gets, the more predictable and beatable it gets. I know that seems wrong but consider as just one example that if an AI always chooses the most efficient path to reach you, then how long before you start baiting and ambushing it? As is often said in the AI newsGroups "There is a difference between artificially intelligent and artificially human". The easiest and simplest way to make an AI more human is to add stupid surprising randoms to its actions.

If you cant be smart then be random? Sounds like one of my sig lines that says
If you cant beat them, then join them.
If you cant beat them or join them
then at least try to surprise them.

Re: Suggestions for Improving the AI opponents
 

The AI often doesn't support its armies with enough casters and priests; often you'll see a horde of sacred units (sometimes with a good blessing) led by a melee commander.

I tried out Atlantis recently, and was attacked by Pythium, who used battle vestals, indicating that the AI had taken water cult. This was quite good and unexpected. However, does it mean that the AI often takes a generic theme? Does it take restless worshippers, but a low dominion? Does it sometimes take golem cult?

[ July 22, 2004, 17:31: Message edited by: Sandman ]