Any AI mods to make it more challenging?
 

Are there any AI mods to make it more challenging without cheating? I'm especially interested in fixing the AIs tendency to build too many low level units instead of the more powerful ones. Thanks in advance.

Re: Any AI mods to make it more challenging?
 

Play MP? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Sorry, I couldnt resist :}

Re: Any AI mods to make it more challenging?
 

PDF made a mod increasing the cost of poor units *quite* a lot (999 resources actually), to prevent the AI from building some of the weakest troops. The thread in question is available here .

There are also special maps that may fit the bill; for example, Orania Nasty Edition or Gandalf's random maps (Poke in the Eye and Random Opponents). Or perhaps even thrown in a few alliances between the AIs for added fun. Or all of the above.

Re: Any AI mods to make it more challenging?
 

Would be nice to see a new MOD for one or more nations which made them extremely strong so any map can be used to provide a great game.

Here's some ideas for making a powerful nation for AI opponent:
1) All commanders do not eat since the AI doesn't know how to handle starving units. Ideally starving should be disabled for AI opponents since they don't know how to handle a starving army.

2) Nation starts with a Lore Master for helping with research... since AI opponents don't know how to use provinces with libraries.

3) All commanders have a minimum 50 Life, 20 Magic resist, 15 for all other stats.

4) Each commander brings in one type of gem per turn.

5) Most mages have nature magic LvL2 or better which will also help prevent units from starving. Priests Holy and/or Unholy.

I'm sure I've missed some other ideas too

Re: Any AI mods to make it more challenging?
 

You can check out some of my stuff altho it uses map commands instead of mod commands. www.dom2minions.com

Re: Any AI mods to make it more challenging?
 

Alneyan,
Thanks for the ad http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif BTW did you test it and what do you think ?
AS it is this mod makes the weakest units unbuildable, so it's not perfect but I didn't see this as a real problem when playing... As long as AI build algorithm cannot be changed I don't see any other elegant way to fix the problem.
Reading NTJedi's post gave me an idea however for the mod : adding a "supply bonus" to basic commanders. Mod will have to be broken down by nation to *not* give the bonus to player(s), but I think it'll fit the bill about starving.

Re: Any AI mods to make it more challenging?
 

No worries about the ad; please send the scroll of "Bind Succubus" to the usual address. I am looking forward to making business again with you in the future.

I didn't get much of a chance to try your mod yet; I heard about it at the Net4War forums a couple of days ago, and have a hard enough time with the AIs for now. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif (Though most of my problems are with certain nations, where I cannot expand quickly with Independents 9)

Speaking of which, what kind of settings can be used to help the AI? Wouldn't powerful Independents hinder the AI more than the player? In my Arcoscephale SP game (Indies 9), I have about three times as many provinces as the biggest AI player, and I have lost a few battles due to my silliness. Do hard and very hard research settings help the AI, or cripple it?

Re: Any AI mods to make it more challenging?
 

Alneyan,
From my not-so-large experience and readings, that's what I suppose about AI behavior :
Low Indy strength results eventually in AI demise, because the AI expands too quickly and send small armies all over the map, that pose no threat to player. OTOH a very high Indy strength makes it difficult for the AI to expand initially, so indy 5-7 is the best AI ally !

AI sucks with magic overall, so I feel that hard research makes things harder for player and not that much for an AI that will never properly use Rituals, Communions or gem-consuming "heavy" battlefield spells. The same goes for site freq - human players can properly manage their income more than an AI.
Another obvious AI helper is the difficult settings that give them more design points and income - unfortunately the AI overloads more than not its pretender and never take great scales, nor does it build much castles (surely 'cause it doesnt spare money to do so..).

My 0.02 € cents http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Any AI mods to make it more challenging?
 

How about a mod-on-the-fly?
It wouldnt be much more work to write the individual nations boosts for AI into a program. Let the user select who he wants AI'd and writeout the mod. That way the other nations are left unaffected and larger boosts can be incorporated. Heck its all text files, it could even be done with inster files being copied together overwriting the mod and done with a bat file. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

It might be a fun add to the Mohansen site (we really need to come up with a name for that). Perl, Java, just about anything altho I dislike the "you must load this to run this" stuff. I could probably do a basic program and compile it.

Re: Any AI mods to make it more challenging?
 

Gandalf, do you mean having a program make the appropriate mod given the setup of the game?

I didn't thought of going with average Independents; it should work out quite nicely however, although it looks like the AI can handle its own in sheer expansion. In yet another game with Arcoscephale, Independents 9, some of the best AIs are doing quite well in Orania Nasty Edition, even if I am using a SC (Virtue) for training this time. But then, all nations start up being much tougher than on a usual map, so.

I was wondering if making Pretenders dedicated for the AI would help or not. A benevolent user would create a few series of Pretender files for the AI, featuring reasonable designs, and possibly even beefed up Pretenders. Having a few such files for every nation may help the AI, while still allowing for randomness; that is, as long as the crafty player does not look at the AI Pretenders in advance. Thoughts?

Re: Any AI mods to make it more challenging?
 

The discussions on "how to build a better AI" I tend to avoid. I dont tend to agree with many of the suggestions.. BUT just for example.. if the person chose Ulm as an AI and the MOD it created removed the cheap units from Ulm.

It works very well. Actually you can do that with map commands and I have some scenario maps on my site which do that.

Ive suggested the same in various diffrent layouts. Newbie gods, player created opponents (anyone want to play Norfleet the Pretender of Ermor?), and player suggested provinces which could be randomly placed on maps.
www.dom2minions.com

Im sorry, in other words, Yes. There is no reason that wont work very nicely. And I would gladly offer a directories to collect player created opponents. I can add it to my nightly run so that games are created by adding 1 random Ermor file and 1 random Caelum file and 1 random... well you get the idea.

Re: Any AI mods to make it more challenging?
 

Here's what I run as AI (copied together from some notes).. I start them as players, then hand them over. (Haven't checked the points with the latest patches, though.) They do quite well - and would do much better if the AI would build castles ...

It's fairly convenient to create those pretenders, then zip up all the .2h - files in the newlords directory, and un-zip them before starting a new game, so the old player pretender gets overwritten.

Would be great to have them created via map commands. Doing a random .map file that adds the AIs (choosing from the precompiled list) would be great.

By the way, did you tweak your randomizer to take care of terrain when placing additional troops?


__Abysia________________________________
Moloch
theme: standard
Fire 4, Blood 4
order 3, prod 3, heat 3, growth 1, luck -1, magic 0
DOM 7
Fortified City 50/100
5 left

__Atlantis______________________________
Son of the Sea
theme: standard
Son of the Sea
water 4, nature 4
order 1, growth 1, magic 1
DOM 6
kelp citadel 40/100 (80pts)
3 left


__Phytium____________________________
Phoenix*
fire 4, air 2
order +3, prod +2, growth +2, illfort +1
Dom 6
Castle 40/100 (80pts)
4 left


__Man_______________________________
Enchantress
Fire2, Air 2, Water 2, Earth 2, Astral 3, Death 2, Nature 2
DOM 3
City 50/100


__Ulm_______________________________
Crone
Ceremonial Faith
Fire 2, Air 2, Water 3, Astral 2, Death 2, Nature 2
Order +3, Prod +3, Growth +1, Luck -1, Magic -3
DOM 5
Fortified City 50/100 (80pts)
0 left


=> Titan°
Titan
Air 9
Order +3, Prod +3, Growth +1, Luck -2, Magic -3
DOM 6
Fortified City 50/100 (80pts)
8 left



__C'tis_____________________________
Father of Serpents
theme: standard
father of serpents
Fire 4, Death 4, Nature 4
order +1, prod 0, heat +1, growth +1, luck 0, magic +1
DOM 5
Castle 40/100 (80pts)


__Arcoscephale______________________
Shedu
standard theme
Astral 5, Earth 4
order +1, prod +2, growth +1
DOM 5
castle 30/150 (60pts)
6 left

__Caelum___________________________
Blue Dragon
standard theme
Water 9
Order +2, Prod +1, Temp -3,Growth +1
DOM 6
Fort.City


# Ermor ###############################
Vampire Queen°
Death 4, Blood 4
Order +3, Prod +3, Growth -1, Luck -3, Magic +3
DOM 6
dark citadel 20/350 (40 pts)


__Marignon_____________________________
standard theme
Baphomet
Fire 4, Astral 4
Order +2, Prod +3, Growth +1, Magic +3
DOM 6
Castle 40/100 (80pts)
6 left

_Pangea_____________________________
theme: standard
Golden Naga*
Fire 4, Water 4, Death 4
Order -3, Prod -3, Growth +3, Luck +3, Magic +1
DOM 5
Castle 40/100 (80pts)



__Vanheim_____________________________
Allfather
Air 4, Water 4, Death 4
Order +2, Prod 0, Temp -1, Growth +1, Luck -1
DOM 7
Castle 30/150 (60pts)


__Jotunheim_________________________
Niefelson
theme: standard
Air 4, Water 5
Order 3, Prod 1, Heat -3, Growth 1, Luck -1, Magic 1
DOM 6
Fort. City

__R'lyeh______________________________
Void Lord ??
Water 3, Astral 6
Order +3, Prod +1, Growth 1, Luck -2, Magic +1
DOM 6
Dark Citadel 20/350 (40pts)



Mictlan



__T'ien Ch'i__________________________
Jade Emporer
Air 2, Water 2, Astral 5
Order 2, Prod 2, Growth 1
DOM 5
Fort City

__Machaka___________________________
Scorpionking
Fire 4, Earth 4
Order 3, prod 2, Heat 2, Growth 1, Magic 1
DOM 6
Fort. City

Re: Any AI mods to make it more challenging?
 

I have a request in for a change to the way that indeps handle castles. As it is now they run inside which makes it too easy to abuse. If we get a change such as a #patrol command so I can have a group inside and a group outside then it will make it worthwhile to add indep castles to a map. That will give the AI castles along its path that it can capture. Not the best thing but better.
The interesting thing about doing that would be you can turn off cheat-check and create unfair pretenders. Even ones that are not on the usual pretender list (a Harvester pretender, an Aboleth pretender, a Horror pretender)
No Im afraid not. I got the code worked out to recognize the terrains and put a merman in the water of each province and a cavalry in each land. But I never got a database or spreadsheet of all the units that I could select from.

Like many of the projects at dom2minions.com they all ran out of steam from lack of anyone showing any interest in them. One thing I do want to do is change the map generators to use the very nice new VGA quality that Leif gave it.

Re: Any AI mods to make it more challenging?
 

The #patrol command is so definitely needed.
Taking it one step further would be adding a #break_siege command which would allow an independent group inside the castle to try breaking a siege each turn.

Re: Any AI mods to make it more challenging?
 

NTJedi, try the Wishlist thread.

Re: Any AI mods to make it more challenging?
 

I will be thinking about that AI Pretender idea. A couple of better Pretenders for the AI may also be needed, but that would depend on checking what the AI is good at with her Pretender. For example, a few tests seem to show the AI doesn't use Pretenders in battles, even with an army to back them. But I would expect the AI to use their Pretenders for research at least, where a bonus would likely be welcomed. And so on.

The biggest problem when dealing with the AI is indeed to make it clever rather than powerful. There are not so many ways of making a clever AI for the Users of Dominions, but powerful AIs are very, very easy to make. Since AIs with unbelievable bonuses are unlikely going to be fun, the goal is to strike a balance between "lack of cleverness" and "bonuses to compensate for said lack of cleverness". But I am digressing.

Incidentally, does anyone know of a way to fully spy on the AI? The best I can do is cast a free Eyes of God spell, and put as many Astral Windows on the map as possible (giving yourself a *slightly* increased astral gem income helps obviously; these Astral Windows do not Last long enough otherwise). All these spells are cast by free Mystics, who can in turn summon other Astral mages, and so I can watch an AI play without too much problem.

However, it doesn't tell me how the AI uses her commanders/research, and so my information is still not too accuracte. Is there a better way to spy on the AI, and is it actually useful to know more about how the AI plays?

Re: Any AI mods to make it more challenging?
 

The devs have ways but have not informed us.

The closest you can get is to set the parameters the way you want and put the game into a hosting loop for about 50 turns.

From your points Im thinking that there might need to be more than one set of gods. Some people totally play beserker SC head-2-head combat. They might want SC gods. And others might prefer to play nation-vs-nation and would rather have reasonable support-role pretenders.
Might be worth doing a poll.

Re: Any AI mods to make it more challenging?
 

I have some positive feelings the next patch will be excellent too.

Re: Any AI mods to make it more challenging?
 

.

In a current game (Karan,turn80, very difficult research, 1player, 11 Ai, 4 of them already extinct), the "Father of Serpents" and the "Scorpion King" from the above list are showing up in battles since around turn 40. Sadly, the AI managed to kill both multiple times ...

In another game, I'm 67% shure I have seen a Ghost King go sitesearching ... . Definitly the AI uses human rainbow pretenders for research (you can see this from the research graph).

I think the devs have a "debugging Version" of the game, which spits out lots of information which players shouldn't get (easily). I doubt they'll make it accessable to anyone of us http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/shock.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/rant.gif

Re: Any AI mods to make it more challenging?
 

Eh, I've seen AIs use Pretenders in battle. If anything, they seem too willing to throw their pretenders into battle against impossible odds and get all sorts of afflictions.

Re: Any AI mods to make it more challenging?
 

You were lucky then, or I was facing a pretty craven AI myself. Marignon and Caelum did not send in their Pretenders when I watched them, though they were quite eager to send mercenaries against impossible odds (ten pirates against as many knights and supporting units, I take your bets).

I am currently toying with the notion of putting five hundred clams in a corner of the map, and/or a few provinces with the Scrying magic sites. It should do the trick of watching all the moves of the AI, with the Eyes of the God thrown in for good measure.