magical summons anyone ?
 

Hi,

Dont know if I'm been 'unlucky', but so far I never saw in any of the AI's armies a magically summoned creature, except a specific blood creature type (fiends of darkness for Mictlan, and thats all).

I hope some of you will tell me they faced conjured units. Thats rather strange because in dom1 you didnt have to wait long before getting call of winds against you, or summer lions, fall bear, various drakes, etc.

Re: magical summons anyone ?
 

on a related topic, the AI seems so eager to build a lot of crappy units, that I seldomly see any mages too. Have any of you faced a group of mages (with accompanying units). Except for an occasional sorceress, a black priest, or various priests, I had never had the 'chance' to face a serious magical opposition.

The problem is certainly more akin to the spending behavior of the IA though.

Re: magical summons anyone ?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">This was discussed in the AI's thread. Summoned creatures are very rare. Another AI weakpoint.

Re: magical summons anyone ?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">They can't be that rare. I've had Caelum use call of the winds on me nearly every turn when the AI was only on normal difficulty.

Re: magical summons anyone ?
 

I've had quite a few call of the winds/wilds thrown at me from Pangea and Man. I also saw serpent fiends in Mictlan armies, and several of them to boot. I think it might be too early to see a lot of them at this stage of the game, as they require both resources and (in many cases)empowerment to summon, and the AI probably cannot play as fast as experienced and focused human player (I mean, I wasn't able to summon too many creatures either in demo games). The same would go for mages as well. They are around, but probably not in massed Groups as human player would use them.

However, there might be another problem. By looking at the score graphs, the AI always has a very low gem income. This might mean that it's not searching the provinces enough, and hence cannot summon creatures because of the lack of resources. The only times I saw their gem income increase significantly is when Pangea cast Mother oak global enchantment. The AI also gives a decent number of gems to its mages, which is not a bad thing per se, but may further limit the gems available for summons if they don't have a good income to start with. Furthermore, they are constantly moving armies back and forth in their provinces, which I also mentioned in the AI thread, so they might not be able to search them since they are not occupying them for two turns in a row. I guess they are moving the armies because of the starvation issues, which in turn may happen due to the large armies of cheap units that they muster, and they run out of supplies because they are far away from their home castle while they don't build any additional ones. So, this can all be hypothetically linked into a cause-and-effect network, but whether its true and which parts of it actually apply, that I don't know.

Btw, another thing that I saw in the score graphs is that the AI Mictlan is having real problems with their dominion. If I understand correctly, they need to perform blood sacrifices otherwise their dominion won't spread at all. Again, maybe it's still too early in the game, and it remains to be seen how easy it's going to be to do just that when human player plays Mictlan, but they do remain close to their starting dominion value even after 40 turns when everybody else has their values multiplied manyfold. Maybe this is the way it's supposed to be, I don't know. It's just an observation.

[ November 08, 2003, 19:07: Message edited by: HJ ]

Re: magical summons anyone ?
 

The "how to fix AI" discussions are interesting but they might be running counter to each other. One complaint is that the AI should build more hvy units instead of a swarm of cheap ones. Another says they should build more castles. Now there is a need for more summons (which means more sites which means more mages). The devs have said that they are willing to tweak the AI.

Do we have anyone in this group who happens to be a budget manager? Sounds like the AI needs one. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: magical summons anyone ?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">They can't be that rare. I've had Caelum use call of the winds on me nearly every turn when the AI was only on normal difficulty. [/QB]</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Sorry I meant that the AI won't use too much summoned creatures in his army.

Re: magical summons anyone ?
 

The most I've seen was while attacking an AI home province. There were a couple of Spine Demons there, and early in the battle, they blood-summoned four giant black bat-wing demon things with venomous claws, which picked off my prophet.

PvK

Re: magical summons anyone ?
 

yes, I saw these blood summons to (fiend of darkness is the name you are seaching for http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif ).

But not a single one magical summon from gems. So something is screwed there IMHO.

Re: magical summons anyone ?
 

The AI doesn't search magic sites?

OTOH i have seen gems on commanders and i am not sure if Celestials are summonings from spells. If so, i have seen Tien Chi often summoning Celestial Warriors.

In my latest game, Serpent Cult Pythium summoned Horned Serpents.

I have also seen C'tis with Longdead units couple times.

[ November 09, 2003, 08:07: Message edited by: Nerfix ]

Re: magical summons anyone ?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I played one SP game with all races, and Mictlan died on about turn 5 from running out of dominion.

Sorry, that's a little off topic. I also have seen AI blood summons and undead, but no non-demon non-undead summoned units. In Dominions I there were a lot of gem summons in AI armies.

[ November 09, 2003, 08:08: Message edited by: Saber Cherry ]

Re: magical summons anyone ?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I agree, and this is already mentioned in the AI weaknesses list. IE. The AI won't use too much summoned units.
Barely it is using them, but it is quite rare.

Re: magical summons anyone ?
 

I saw a couple of horned serpents and vine men today from Man. Maybe it's too early, and they use the gems they get for other things, like giving them to mages. The kind of gems they get in home province mimics the kind of mages they get from the start, so maybe they're pumping them up. I certainly saw that many times. Furthermore, this early without empowerment they cannot access other kinds of magic/gems, since their national mages can only find sites that will give the same kind of gems they have in the home province. Also, many magical summons require a fair amount of gems (drakes are 11, e.g.). Even if they find a site, it's going to take some time to accumulate the gems, unless they are getting +5 in the home province, so the first few turns might not be very representative. It remains to be seen how it's going to play out later in the game. I hope that both summons and alchemy/empowerment will work fine, and that we'll see nice and diverse AI armies/mages later on.

I was wondering what sort of info do other people notice on the score graphs with regard to the AI gem income? Is low AI gem income a more widespread phenomenon, or are the AIs in my games just unlucky?

Re: magical summons anyone ?
 

I've seen Summer Lions from the Marignon, Shades and Longdead from C'tis and my mystics have summoned Phantasmal Warriors and Lesser Air and Earth Elementals on their own. I've also seen some Lesser Vinemen, don't recall from who.

[ November 09, 2003, 17:23: Message edited by: Altus ]

Re: magical summons anyone ?
 

I can only say one thing : that in dom1 the Ai fielded many magical summons, far before turn 40, whereas in dom2 I never saw a single one.

Re: magical summons anyone ?
 

Interesting observations...

I've seen Marg using Summer Lions by turn 20, two summonings worth. I've seen small amounts of undead in Jotun and Ermor (go figure... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif ) The tac AI likes to summon during combat though, but that's not really the same issue...

I've also noticed that the AIs seem to have really bad gem incomes (compared to mine anyway). Its a bit difficult to tell how poor they are since mine are often giganitc, and there's no scale to measure against, well I guess its reletive and the bottom is zero... I'm just to lazy to do that math http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

I've seen some mages in enemy armies, but I've not seen the enemy do alot of searching, though usually when I do hit a province that has sites it has 2 or 3... does the AI cheat at all in knowing where the sites are? (probably not, but it seemed strange to me).

There has been alot of productive discussion about the AI and army composition. Though many of the suggestions may not be workable, I think the key point is that the formulas that control the ratios of units and also commanders should be looked at again. The formulas for fort, lab, and temple building are connected to the AIs ability to field different unit and commander mixes as well, so they need to be taken into consideration.

Really if Illwinter were able to externalize those forumulas so that they could be tweeked by mods I'm certain that the community would quickly create tweeked formulas to give the AI 'better' army composition. I'm also certain that Gandalf would figure out some way to randomize the values in the formulas to make a skitzo AI that might or might not 'whomp ***' http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: magical summons anyone ?
 

I've seen some Mandragoras from Jotunheim, IIRC. The AI has had better gem income than I have in the few games I played. Of course, there are a lot of other ways it could be using those gems.

BTW, I saw Mictlan evaporate from zero dominions too after I and the other AI's had reduced them to a few provinces for a while.

I sort of thought their standing armies would remain as independent defense forces, at least, but when I marched in, I met no resistance at all. Seems to me it'd be more interesting if the old armies and defense forces had to be overcome.

Also, the other neighboring AI's didn't hurry to gobble up the undefended provinces. Seems like the AI might be wanting a priority tactic to attack any really weak adjacent provinces, especially if an pretender evaporates and this has the effect of leaving completely up-for-grabs provinces.

PvK