national armies?
 

An army of Ulm:

http://phmalacher.free.fr/Dominions/Ulm.JPG

An army of Man:
http://phmalacher.free.fr/Dominions/Man.JPG

no comments http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

[ February 25, 2004, 11:22: Message edited by: Pocus ]

Re: national armies?
 

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Re: national armies?
 

Dont understand? Must I point the problem?

Re: national armies?
 

I believe Pocus is trying to draw attention to the sad fact that the AI likes to build massed light infantry (and occasionally heavy infantry) rather than the more expensive national troops.

Re: national armies?
 

Of course the "knowledge" of the troops problem is because there is only one AI. It operates in general Categorys. An AI for Ulm would probably act differently than an AI for Man if there were seperate AIs.

It would be very difficiult to come up with a generalized plan which would fix this problem for Ulm without making a bigger problem for Man, or worse yet for Pangaea.

Re: national armies?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">It might be possible to put a greater preference on national troops for recruitment - whatever the nation, whatever their type, without greatly hindering the AIs ability to fight. (This is probably already done to some degree, but only the developers know whether the "home troop" weight can be boosted even further)

Even if, God forbid, the resulting force composition was actually worse than the current one (which seems unlikely, but you never know), it would at least result in thematically more different armies, which would make for more interesting battles in SP. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

In an ideal world, of course, the AI would be better at saving up for and building fortresses. Even if we ignore the troop recruiment aspect of fortresses, most of them pay off handsomely long-term when built in high-population provinces simply for the increased gold income. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

(Alas, we do not live in an ideal world, and the buy/save issue is hard to make good rules for an AI to follow)

Re: national armies?
 

as of now the AI put tons of temples everywhere, and dont build any castles. Perhaps some tweak is in order Gandalf. Stop thinking that something is not done, because it cant be done. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif
Its a game made by a small team, and they cant fix things, if nobody report them. Its a well known problem, and I'm rehashing it, with pictures this time, because it's a problem still overlooked.

Re: national armies?
 

In Gandalf Parkers "Poke in the Eye" map, with its large number of castles, the AI builds quite a lot of national units. I does however seem to go for quantity over quality. It makes sense though since the AI doesn't know what will hit it and a larger number of low tier troops are usually a lot more flexible tp use than fewer, more expensive, troops.

I got nothing to complain about in the summoning aspect of things.

Re: national armies?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I didnt say it couldnt be done. Nor do I think its overlooked. As you say its all rehashing and I didnt want new debaters jumping in thinking that its only an "Ulm should do this" type of problem as some of the previous discussions went. As has been said by the Devs before, specific quick little fixes will gladly be considered. And as far as I can see many haven been put in. The AI does seem to make better general use of its cavalry and javelins.

I think the best answer will be splitting the AI. And Id love to see them outside scriptable. Until then...

Using indeps to take indeps doesnt seem like a bad plan. After all they need to build home units for staying at home and guarding the capital.
hmmmmmmmm new thought. Maybe the AI needs to swap in indep armies to the capital in order to move capital armies outward? It would slow the growth of the empire but might achieve what people have in mind.

As to castle building we tried to come up with specifics. One I remember is 1 castle in any province where the AI owns the province and all the provinces touching it, and none of those provinces have a castle. It would seem to make maximum use of admin points though low on strategic-placement.

[ February 25, 2004, 16:49: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

Re: national armies?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">A gold-maximizing strategy might work better. It is the one case where the AI is sure to get a long term benefit of the fortress, regardless of whether it recruits in it at all. Additionally, it would make it easier for the AI to build more castles http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

(Am I the only one who loves high-admin castles for their long-term income boost?)

Re: national armies?
 

Pocus is showing again some already stated problems of AI strategic choices :
1/ Prefers lots of crappy light troops over less numerous strong ones - maybe it tries to optimize number of troops bought and/or maximal usage of each province resources individually
2/ And don't spare money to build castles - this in turn results in few resources, so more crap light troops..

I don't think any nation specific AI is required : all sensible players would favor Pythium legionaires, Abysian Hvy Inf or Ulm and Marignon Pikeneers over Barbs or Militia... the AI does the contrary http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif

Re: national armies?
 

I wonder how is (and in which order) is spent the gold of the AI. Either there is a big unspotted bug (the one which prevent the AI of building *any* castle), or ... or ... well, or the developer in charge of the AI really hate to spend too much time into it http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: national armies?
 

The ressurection of the "AI" thread.

What was the consensus Last time we talked? 1 Castle every 5 provinces and up to a maximum of ~50 LI before only making HI?

I don't think we even need the LI as the computer does a reasonable (if somewhat slow) job of dealing with Unrest.

Re: national armies?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Then you are saying that Pangaea should build minotaurs over satyrs, and Atlantis should build those big guys over their little ones?

Re: national armies?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Then you are saying that Pangaea should build minotaurs over satyrs, and Atlantis should build those big guys over their little ones? </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I'm not a Pangea specialist, but the little I've played them I've found the basic Satyr were pure crap, maybe worse than militia cause they aren't even cheap !
So I'd largely vote for Satyr Hoplites, Minotaurs and Centaurs http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif
Maybe there's an use for sneaky bands of satyrs but I don't think the AI can have any idea of a "sneaky strategy" http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif
Atlantis should also favor Coral guards or at least Reef Warriors over basic Spearmen.
I see no problem here ...

Re: national armies?
 

I wouldn't vote for Satyr Hoplites (in their current form), they are useless. I'd say Centaur Warriors and Coral Guards for Atlantis.

Re: national armies?
 

AI dont know how to sneak. For the AI, its head to head, or die. So yes, it can for the armored minotaurs and other beasties.

Re: national armies?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">But I dont think the AI does them that way. Isnt it more like lt troops, hvy troops, lt cavalry, hvy cavalry? Its just one AI. If the good thing for Ulm is hvy infantry over lt infantry then Pangaea and Atlantis get the same change dont they?

Of course if it goes to seperate AI's for each nation then all kinds of great strategies could be put in.

Re: national armies?
 

Well couldn't you just label a unit type as a
"Priority 1" or "Heavy Infantry" for each nation ?

So you label Abysian Infantry with a Morningstar Priority 1, and Coral Guard, and Centaur Warrior and that accounts for a certain % of the gold usage.

Or use something like Protection greater than 14 (If it's stat based)?

I don't know exactly, but if the limits of deciding gold usage on troops cannot be defined or labeled, what is it doing right now?

Re: national armies?
 

Of course this doesn't address the Mage production issue, which I feel if the AI has no reason to produce a non-mage unit, it doesn't. It's standard or default should be mages. You could even go as far as having the AI make 1 Normal Troop commander for every 5 mages (to carry troops) and have % of those mages (depending on the threat of neighbors) put into active duty with armies.

And of course, the AI should dome it's research centers. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

[ February 25, 2004, 20:37: Message edited by: Zen ]

Re: national armies?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">But I dont think the AI does them that way. Isnt it more like lt troops, hvy troops, lt cavalry, hvy cavalry? Its just one AI. If the good thing for Ulm is hvy infantry over lt infantry then Pangaea and Atlantis get the same change dont they?

Of course if it goes to seperate AI's for each nation then all kinds of great strategies could be put in. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">If you just change the order to Hvy Inf, Hvy Cav, Lt Inf, Lt Cav it'll be OK IMHO - From what I've seen in MP this is more or less what 90% of players do http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif ...

Re: national armies?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Which is what Paradox did with HoI, for example. IMO, the only thing that makes HoI remotely worth playing is the fan-made tweaks to the AI, since Paradox has no clue how to code a decent one. IW has made a good one, but it could be made far better if the almost unlimited amount of time that fans can devote to it were to be applied to externalized AI files. It would also free up IW's time to devote to other aspects of the game.

[ February 25, 2004, 21:25: Message edited by: Arryn ]

Re: national armies?
 

It seems like the single most significant thing that could be done to improve the AI is getting it to build some forts early in the game. (Since in the long run these forts lead to more resources, more income and more oppertunities to build national troops). I'm personally of the opinion that any simple heuristic (whether it be build a fort in "any high income province", "any province with many neighbors I control" or "every fifth province") would be better than no AI fort building. Getting the AI to build forts in truly strategic locations seems difficult but it seems very likely that even sub-optimal fortress building would still help the AI significantly.

- Matt L. :->

Re: national armies?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The fact that Paradox provides the tools that allows dedicated modders with lots of time on their hands to build better AIs than the stock AI they ship games with through an open AI architecture, and that they add new AI commands in patches to support new ideas that have come up years after the release of their games, proves that Paradox has no clue on how to code a decent AI!?!?

No modder could have made HOI use fronts intelligently if the HOI AI programming did not have support for the concept of fronts.

Say rather that there is rather more time to write and test AIs amongst the dozens of modders and thousands of happy players, than the ~7 man development team and beta testers have during each 12 month development cycle.


...But I digress. I certainly quite agree that if AI variables were exported for players to tweak, there would most likely arise a more competent AI. It would be strange were it otherwise, as the amount of time that players can spend on actually PLAYING and TESTING always outweighs the time developers can manifold.

[ February 26, 2004, 07:19: Message edited by: Peter Ebbesen ]

Re: national armies?
 

Finally I found out:
<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">AFAIK the problem is two- or morefold:

1) The provinces stats have been dumped (dumbed?) down. DOM2 prov are smaller, generate less income and ressources than those from DOM1

2) The AI doesn't build forts. Maybe because of 1) - could be it's still searching for the right place when the game is already over.

3) It has the annoying habit of building troops all over the place. Fits nice to the other bad habit of moving armies constantly around - they could pick up troops quite nicely this way. But results in a hodgepodge of indie troops with few nation-specific ones (mostly the handful the initial commander started out with from the province I think)
Thinking 'bout it - could it be the case that the AI build troops in the forts first, than in the provinces in DOM1, and that this has been reversed somehow in DOM2?
Would not so easy to test this, but doable !?

4) The AI understands the concept of troops types only partially. It's uses rider for flanking, javelin-equipped troops are kept apart from other so they can fire their weapons during approach (at least, most times), it even sometimes uses "target Archers" or "target largest monster" instead of nearest for it's archers.
But it doesn't now about blessable troops or those with special aurae, or medium/heavy troops.
So obviously it cannot know if there's some type lacking in numbers or effective orders.
------------------------------------

Than again, I had Vanheim throw armies at me which where 80% those human guys with javelins and prot 15, backed up by some Vans etc., in a SP game lately. 'Was the Karan map (which has few "small" provinces, in contrast to Illwinters maps), with ressource settings on default.

[ February 25, 2004, 12:13: Message edited by: Arralen ]

Re: national armies?
 

Personally I would love the idea of player scripted AIs. There are some old threads here discussing possibilities. The defensive one, the diplomatic one, the barbarian horde, the reource collector, the magic researcher, the insane one which every 10 turns randomly selects from the list... The problem is that the game has to be written from the beginning with hooks (tags, variables) available for everything seperate from the variables that the game uses to process things. You cant write "if my_gold greater than 600" without a my_gold tag in the game. Such a huge rewrite would take alot of effort. Whether the Devs thought it was a good idea or not, its still not likely to happen soon.

Changes for a patch could be done if they are quick and simple. Try developing the rule you WISH the AI would use and test-play it. I disagree with the "even if it built a fort every" type of responses, but I dont know because I havent tested it.

Hmmmm I guess I COULD start a game with Ulm and some nation of my choice and try to play Ulm but the rules I made up. Writing an AAR here would be nice also. Force myself to ...
A) if commander has 10 light (any-type-of-troop) then build 1 heavy (same type of troop)
B) every 5 provinces build temple
C) every 10 provinces build castle
Does that sound about right? At turn 100 I could turn Ulm over to the AI for control and see if I can beat him.

Re: national armies?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Doesn't the AI sometimes build forts? Or are the extra forts I see them with all captured, conjured, or discovered forts?

A heuristic should probably be smarter than every fifth province. Should probably take into account current economy and number of existing forts, at least.

Incidentally, I think I've only built a single fort in all my Dominions II play so far... and I think it was overrun during construction and I lost that game to the Marignon AI. In winning games I've captured capitols at close to the same rate I'd want more forts, anyway.

Just some thoughts,

PvK

Re: national armies?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Pangaea should build centaur warriors, mostly.

[ February 26, 2004, 19:14: Message edited by: DarkSol ]

Re: national armies?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Pangaea should build centaur warriors, mostly. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Probably true.

But Im not sure how the AI (in general terms) considers Centaurs. I would suspect that Centaurs are cavalry and therefore it would be the light cavalry vs heavy cavalry rule.

But if the people who feel the AI should be "fixed" to purchase Heavy Infantry over light infantry (for Ulm is their usual example) then I think it would end up causing Pangaea to purchase Minotaurs instead of Satyrs. The point being that as long as its just 1 AI and 1 rule then it needs to be one that either takes the middle road as far as pros and cons, or be the rule most likely to boost the weaker nations.

[ February 26, 2004, 19:37: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

Re: national armies?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yet another point in support of having nation-specific AIs, preferably with externalized files for fan-modding ... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: national armies?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Not entirely. That presupposes that the only measure of weight is how well the AI does in battles. While that is certainly a dominant aspect, it is not the only one.

Another important aspect is that of setting the right fantasy world mood. This is strengthened when different nations field different sorts of troops - even when not in optimal force composition - and significantly degraded when all the opponents field the same sort of armies with a large percentage of default troops.

To put it bluntly, I would prefer a colourful but slightly less efficient AI over one that believes that light infantry rules the world. It might even mean that you would have to adapt different strategies towards different AI opponents to a higher degree than currently.

Re: national armies?
 

Peter and Gandalf
The problem now with AI is that it "thinks" it rules the world, whereas in reality it's crap...
In a current SP game I've seen the capitol troops of Pangea (at turn 30 approx) : 120 satyrs, 30 Hawks, and a couple Minotaurs commanders http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif . No archers, no heavies, no cavalry, no mages. This army is very very crappy, if the AI had bought anything else than Satyrs it'll be that better ...

PvK,
You don't build forts ? Either you're referring to SP games or very small maps, but anyway even in these cases regularly building forts is a better medium/long term strategy than not doing it.