has the AI been upgraded?
 

I bought this game when it first came out and was VERY excited about it. I played it for a bit and was very impressed with what I had seen. I then started reading Posts here that stated that the AI was not too strong once you became familiar enough with the game. I then proceeded to put my copy of the game away because I didn't want to invest too much learning time in a game that I will be able to slaughter all of the time. I unfortunately only play against the computer and not any humans, otherwise I wouldn't care about the AI so much. I was just wondering if any of the Last few patches have updated the AI at all. I REALLY want to get into this game now that I have more time available to me. or should I just wait for dominions III?

Re: has the AI been upgraded?
 

Though the AI is bad if you play with vh opponents on a crowded map it is not that easy too win .

But even against stuff like devils the ai can't do too much .

Fortunately a lot can be modded in dominions . So you could just really quick mod the AI a few advantages or use some mods . Especially the black moon mods are imo very nice . The troops there or in the Crusader mod are a bit tougher then most normal troops .
So once you can beat the game with the standard nations try winning against modded nations http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif .

Dominions though is mainly a MP game . It is like diablo or starcraft . Though funny in sp for a short time it really shines in mp .

Re: has the AI been upgraded?
 

Set indies to 7.
Less will make the AI expand to early with lots of small armies. More will actually slow it down too much.

Mod the supply factor to 300% or more.
The AI can't handle supply problems - neither by pathfinding nor be making supply items.
Some of this problems stem from the third:

The Ais still does not build castles - you have to provide them on the map for them.
Without additional castles, there's a lack of supplies. Furthermore the AI has difficulties recruiting heavy units with only one castle.

Use maps with 12..17 provinces per starting nation.

Use difficult/very difficult research
The AI doesn't really know about rushing for crucial spells. With slow research, it's standard troops have a longer "time frame" where they are useful.


With this setup (w/o add. castles, though), I have a "normal" AI (Marignon) seen build up an army of 340 units, 24 of them Fire Snakes and Summor Lions, 6 commanders (4 spellcasters), only 50 or so light inf and the rest medium Marignon Inf and crossbowman.
And that must have been about half the troops it had available at around turn 35 ..

Re: has the AI been upgraded?
 

I'm tired to hear Dom2 has not a good AI. Dom2 is a lot more complex (ie has many more variables, or degrees of freedom or what you want) than any other game. The AI of Dom 2 is very good considering the exponential tree of possibilities the game has. In the vast majority of other strategic turn based games a good AI (or a high difficult game) is obtained by giving lot more resources to the computer player (you can say "cheating"). I think that Dom 2 is so complex that an ai that make reasoning comparable to human strategy in Dom2 could be embedded in a military computer not far form the matrix movies one. I'm joking but you have understood what I mean. Artifical intelligence is an extremely difficult (and in the Last years almost dead due to difficulty) field of computer science.
A great thank to the developers to the effort (in the ai too) put in the game!

Re: has the AI been upgraded?
 

Well, that's also true for domII =P

Anyway, while the end result will probably be you slaughtering the AI, it can take a lot (and I mean a lot) of time getting to that point.
I don't play that much, so Im no vet, but Im still having troubles beating the AI. (yeah yeah, shame on me)
Oh, and besides that, you can make the AI better by modding extra powerful nations for it, or deciding what nation you want him to play and then add +2 to all of his units' stats, its cheating, but it can make things a whole lot harder.

I'd advise against putting down Dom II if your reasoning behind that decision is AI.

BTW, if you wanna see really sucky AI, go play Warlords IV, the AI there couldnt beat a ten-year-old and the game has no balance (as an example, playing the elven race means winning, and playing against them just gives you a headache).
Though the Warlords: Battlecry (RTS Warlords) game has much better AI, I still can't beat the ultimate difficulty (thuogh Ive stopped playing, because of Dom II among other things, so I probably can't beat it even on knight difficulty :\).

Don't let Dom II slip from your hands!

Re: has the AI been upgraded?
 

In terms of extremely weak AI/low difficulty, the game 'Ascendancy' has a heck of a reputation, but I can't vouch for it personally.

Re: has the AI been upgraded?
 

Master of magic had a really bad AI imo http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif .
Same for the AOW series , especially not patched AOW 2 where the Ai attacked gates with only 2 units always . So 8 archers were enough to defend any town against anything . Or 2 strong fliers .

Those 2 games are less complex than dominions , but the same genre and their ai is still inferior to the dominions AI http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: has the AI been upgraded?
 

Hmmmm...I've noticed that people are talking about which games have bad(poor) AI, but never tell which games who's blessed with advanced/complexed AI. Does it exist? I mean I have been on several strategy Boards and there's always someone complaining about poor AI. Not that I say there aren't room for improvement there always is and always be untill an AI can think like a human brain.

Just a thought http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: has the AI been upgraded?
 

Galactic Civilizations, I think. Never got into it, but as it is a single-player only strategy game built, IIRC, to see if the AI they developed was any good it should be. There is a demo, so you can try it.

Re: has the AI been upgraded?
 

In Dom2's case, it's not just a question of "poor AI", but a question of the AI not being very fun to play against. The inability of the AI to really use any strategy other than throwing masses of low quality troops at you makes playing against it very boring.

In other games, the AI may not be great. but in many cases, it's at least fun to play against. For example, in SEIV, each race has its own distinctive shipbuilding strategies, so it would be boring to play against the same AI over and over again, but there are lots of different AIs to play against.

Re: has the AI been upgraded?
 

It looks like a very good point. Even in GalCiv which probably has better AI than other games, AI needs large bonuses to compete with good player. However, GalCiv's AI plays much more like a human player, it plays differently for different races and its strategy is much less obvious, which makes it more interesting to play against. Dom2 is much more complex game, and, surprisingly, AI isn't too bad, with relatively mild bonuses it is doing decent job, but it follows a very simple plan which makes the best use of its bonuses. Unfortunately, it makes all games vs AI look alike.

Re: has the AI been upgraded?
 

I wasn't even aware the the AI didn't build castles. that is too bad. that would make it much more difficult I think. how is the AI compared to the Civilization series?? Civ III kicks my butt even on the lower levels. I guess I'll put Dominions back on my shelf until the next patch and I will hope and pray that there will be an adjustment to the AI. At least so they build castles. I know nothing about programming so can only assume it would be a monumental task to alter.

Re: has the AI been upgraded?
 

The code-writing developer doesn't like AI programming. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

As someone suggested, playing maps with pre-placed castles AI can conquer would help. And while the AI won't be able to do everything, it will still prove quite a challenge. Especially if you play one of the races that depend more on armies and less on magic. In multiplayer most national units become worthless in few turns, but in single-player I find using them more rewarding than bLasting enemies by magic.

Re: has the AI been upgraded?
 

I would it say it is better than in Civ III. I've found Civ AI relatively competitive only on the hardest level, where it has insane bonuses. Dom2 AI, even on hardest level has fewer bonuses, though hardest Dom2 AI is somewhat easier to beat than hardest Civ III AI. One problem with Dom2 AI is that you need to play very specific tactis to win against it, which is totally unlike the strategy one would play in MP.

I don't remember AI in Civ I/II very well, but I think in both of them you could win reliably against the hardest AI. At least I remember playing England to start on the small island and make game more challenging...

That's not normal. You need to practice more http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: has the AI been upgraded?
 

Blizzard games tend to have a good AI.

I I remember one game of starcraft where I heavily fortified my position with lots of rocket turrets around my base, enough to destroy anything airborne the enemy might throw against me.

I lost the game due to the fact that the AI did not bother to destroy the defence and strictly flew towards my main base, loosing about half its aircrafts.

But then, on a per developer basis, dom 2 surely owns all other game AIs

Re: has the AI been upgraded?
 

Hey, at per developer basis it owns every game out there =P

Re: has the AI been upgraded?
 

Scenario-based games frequently pose more of a single-player challenge, as (a) the author frequently has the tools to write a customized plan for the AI, and (b) single-player scenarios tend to be grossly unbalanced in terms of advantages granted to the AI(s) to the point that were the computer replaced by even a novice human opponent, defeat would be all but automatic. In addition, the human player frequently needs to fight the interface itself and (relevant in RTSes) the fact that his units tend to be utter imbeciles who need excruciatingly exact, explicit instructions every step of the way forces micromanagement.

Random-map TBS games have a harder time giving a good game to the single-player -- the player might actually have the time per turn (if not necessarily the motivation...) to micromanage, and random setups prevent exact scripting.

That said, some more configurable games have done somewhat decently without massive scenario-specific scripting. The tactical AI of the Combat Mission series, for instance, does at least try to avoid some large possible errors (such as firing too early and accomplishing nothing but revealing one's location, or sending units piecemeal) and employs some reasonably healthy habits (like sometimes towing a gun away after its location is known, so that it's gone before your artillery responds). It may even be capable of blocking your LOS with smoke rounds, IIRC. It's not a match for an experienced human player, particularly on offense, but it tends not to make one scream at its idiocy quite as much as does, say, an AoK AI which cheerfully stays put on its tiny island and waits until the Imperial Age to build a dock. I once played a random map AoK game in which one AI somehow managed to mine *zero* gold during the entire game -- and this was a game in which I'd taken a absurd (and were it multiplayer, surely a guaranteed-losing...) amount of time building economy and teching up before bothering to assemble an attack force. How? Heck if I know...

Re: has the AI been upgraded?
 

In my opinion:

Multiplayer games with humans has the most fun yet most people play the single player game of Dominions_2. The biggest improvement for single player games would be improving the AI. Most game developers just focus on getting the AI to attack/defend and expand... then when human players discover a pattern its easy to win.

The biggest improvement for multiplayer games would be having an option for maps to be randomly generated and/or a more user friendly map editor. (Hopefully the developers can glance over the map editors from Heroes_III and AgeofWonders:ShadowMagic for ideas)

Also I'm praying the arena death match gets improved where human players can consider it worthy enough to send someone. Currently the prize is not worth risking the life of a good or even average commander.

Re: has the AI been upgraded?
 

There is another disadvantage of single player dominions 2:
You do to many turns in a row. The fun thing with multiplayer is that you are eager to do the next turn because you have to wait for it. It makes every turn special.

Re: has the AI been upgraded?
 

On the other hand, when you have to wait for a really long time for your turn, you forget what happened so far and what you have planned for the next turn.

Re: has the AI been upgraded?
 

Mercurycs, I play Dom2 exclusively single-player (just don't have the time to make a commitment to play MP with folks I've never met, and am still trying to get friends to play it with me!), and I am finding, after about 9 months of an hour or two a day that I'm only finding the limits of the AI. Some of that came from reading stuff here where people talk about the limits of the AI, I probably never would have figured it out on my own.

The gameplay is different enough for each faction (and each Pretender design) that there's a significant learning curve, which is fun whether you're playing AI or not.

There are certain tactics in use among MP (primarily involving a "Rush" to get certain spells and/or magic items fast) that the AI doesn't rely on. But I'd play it yourself and see if any problems with AI performance slow you down.

Bottom line: Most good AI is not a function of programming, it's a function of game design. Game systems built to allow easy modeling and decisionmaking by a computer allow for good tactics. On the other hand, computers have a hard time modeling wacky and non-statistical combinations and permutations (e.g., "Am I better off casting Haste and Giant Strength on the same unit? What if it's a flyer?").

Just one example from another TBS: In Heroes of Might & Magic 3, the AI did a lousy job with spell selections. BUT, if I faced a Barbarian opponent (Barbarians don't use spells, but rely on combat troops that are more magic-resistant than others), the AI "got" a lot smarter.

One benefit of not allowing super-scripted combat is that the AI doesn't enjoy such a huge handicap in combat. I'm hoping that, in Dom 3, the designers might be able to tweak the Castle-building system in a way that subtly changes game play, but allows for more gradual castle building (and thus allows for more effective modeling of Castle-building decisions in the AI). At this point, that's just a dream of mine, though, and I don't think it's shared by that many.

Re: has the AI been upgraded?
 

You can do a few easy to do things to increase the AI's performance :

- Vh opponents
- Vh magic research
- Taking yourself a drainscale
- Mod supply to 5-10x as much as atm , then the ai will attack you with 500-1000 men armies where not 90% are starving
- Play against some strong but interesting modded nations
- Play yourself "weaker" nations if you enjoy that

If you have some time you can do some maps/mods on your own where the ai gets some boni .
Imo the ai is anyways quite ok , at least as you said compared to HoMM or even more to AoW which are very similiar games .