Re: designing AI for era 1 Mictlan
 

Seems like Mictlan is going to be a real rough one for the AI to handle. Most of the crap troops the AI likes are extra crappy with Mictlan, and it doesn't really have the capacity to use Mictlan's strengths. Even if you give it an uber bless with a high dominions score the sacred troops are going to be a negligible part of the army, and without a decent blood hunting strategy neither are demons. The question of blood sacrificing isn't a deal breaker to me (assuming the AI blood sacrifices at all), with a high dominion score just sacrificing at the rate that you get them from your capital will keep you with a decent dominion through the early part of the game, and honestly I don't see how the AI could last past that anyway. I really don't see how you could do this without changing the AI, playing this nation is just too different from how it works.

1) SC god? The AI will kill him off real quick.
2) Good scales? For what, even more Warriors? Won't be able to push dominion very far anyway without blood slaves.
3) Uber bless? As little as the AI will take advantage of this, it may be the only real option.

Soooo, I'd go with maybe even a triple bless crappy scales and let the sacreds the AI does recruit really bite.

Re: designing AI for era 1 Mictlan
 

There is at least this nation modding command:

I think modifying one of mictlan's starting sites adding some blood slaves and forcing mictlan's god to awake and a rather high dominion per mapedit should be enough for starters.

If Mictlan would get about 30-50 Slaves per turn from it's capitol site and have a good dominion it might hopefully be decent.

Re: designing AI for era 1 Mictlan
 

OK then. What nation DOES use the AI fairly well? Giants? Marignon?

Re: designing AI for era 1 Mictlan
 

Attached is a very small mod giving them 45 blood slave income, 500 extra gold and some extra fire and astral gems just for the hell of it. All via two modded magic sites.

Give it a go and see what happens.

Re: designing AI for era 1 Mictlan
 

Imho the AI uses especially those nations with useful but low resourcetroops well.

In my games Ctis, Yomi, Pan, Ryleh, Vanheim and Helheim are often quite strong.
I recently lost a sp game where Yomi attacked me quite early around turn 15 and i couldn't find a good countermeasure vs. the combo of swarms of archers and tough Oni demons in time http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.

But i am all in all anyways happy enough with the AI, i just always set them all to impossible and imho they give me enough challenge then and i get often enough swarmed to death http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.

But it would nontheless be probably cool if the AI could use standard SCs. If this feature could get exported and be modded i think it would add a lot of fun for many people.
It should be in some way modable because then modders can tweak the AI SCs for their modded nations or other mods like CB which rebalances items and SCs.

Re: designing AI for era 1 Mictlan
 

Well SCs can be built and given in the first turn. You can choose any unit, hero, even pretenders and assign them to the nation as a commander. You can give it any equipment you want. And you can boost eh experience. That would at least provide the SC challenge in small map games.

For larger map, longer running games, Im guessing that the AI is operating by a priority list. If it has lots of gems then it will probably have enough left over to forge things. If the #startspell thing gets fixed then we could give it some decent SC-summoning spells to give it something to put the equipment on.

Re: designing AI for era 1 Mictlan
 

I wonder if giving a snaguine rod to an immobile god might spark additional blood hunting

Re: designing AI for era 1 Mictlan
 

Wow, that was rough. Let me put some keywords Ive used over and over to try and find this thing. I will put them in here for other people who might be interested in finding it. In this thread there is an AI MOD by Sombre which creates a better AI Mictlan of Early Era. Basically it gives them a few boosts such as pretty much unlimited bloodslaves. You can find it as an attachement back in page one of this thread. And remember what I always say people. If you want more free stuff then you need to "pay" for it by please and thankyou's. If you dont thank the modder then dont complain if more dont get done.

It does seem to work pretty well. In a few tests I did, Mictlan did not fall out of the game from lack of dominion. Other peoples impressions might help also.

Now, if we scour back posts about Mictlan and its faults, maybe we can improve on this abit. Im thinking along the line of map and game settings.

Maybe a Monolith god with a Sanguine Rod. It wont go to arenas and it might actually bloodhunt? Giving the Jade Dagger to a god I dont think would do anything. And I dont think there are any immobile gods you can give it to anyway. Too bad there arent any immobile priests. Anret there statues or summons that dont leave the province and do priestly things? Can one of them use a dagger?

Re: designing AI for era 1 Mictlan
 

Did you look at the other AI Mictlan mod?
It's also not listed in the "official mod list" I think. Another one of those unpoplar hidden mods.
AI Challenge Mod, EA Mictlan
It tries to do more. Maybe you could paste them together?

Is Mictlan really so special? Maybe some other AI mod could help.

Re: designing AI for era 1 Mictlan
 

I saw it. I wish I had seen it sooner. My apologies to Mivayan for not seeing it and thanking him. Especially considering it looks like he tried alot of my hints. He used my favorite trick with the logo and used "my face" from the game directory. He created a bless god, and took away all of the non-blessable units. He auto-summoned useful units. I think alot of those were in the discussions of turning the experts "the AI sucks because it" into active suggestions on what we would need to change. He should have gotten more recognition for it but I dont keep up on the mod stuff as much as the map/server stuff. I let others do that.

But there are the comments from Arrelan which I didnt quite follow but I cant ignore. He is one of the beta testers and has a login on my servers. Ive gotten some great hints from him over the years.

I need to read thru the thread and the mod abit more. Maybe we can ressurrect that thread and get Mivayan to update the mod. There are some bits there that Arrelan seems to have liked so maybe we can steal those.

If I did a scenario download for all this then the god/scales would be set by map commands anyway.

I also have to come up with a storyline of some sort. Maybe steal from Leifs "Vampire Wars" and assign alot of blood-based indepts. Call it "the Rise of Blood" or "AntiBlood Crusades" where the players have to try and stop blood magic from taking over. Hmmmm there is something about the rise and fall of blood magic in the Dominions storyline isnt there?