Was going to buy the game and then!
 

I found out it had no A.I diplomacy.What a let down, the game looked great.I really hope the next version has serious AI.The developers should know most folk only play single player games.:(

Re: Was going to buy the game and then!
 

The thing is, thematicly, there should not really be a lot of diplomacy going on anyway. Yes, it would be nice if you could get weak AIs to submit to joining your pantheon, but it really does not hugely detract from the game. And also, why not multi-player?

Re: Was going to buy the game and then!
 

Even if you figure it's a war with only one victor, there's tons of reasons for allowing diplomacy -- the big one is not everybody wants to fight everybody else all at once.

One player may have a strategy that depends on high-level spells, so he wants to grow quietly until he gets them. Another may believe he's weak against one other race, and wants to concentrate on wiping them out first. Or player A is clobbering B, and then is attacked by C, and would like peace with A (or A and B want to co-operate to fight C).

I'd like the addition of pantheons or alliances, too, but I'm willing to wait for that if it would take a lot of work on the AI.

Re: Was going to buy the game and then!
 

The developers made this game to be a multiplayer game first, and single-player game only after that. It shows, mainly in the shortcomings of the AI. I don't know if this is going to change even for the sequel, because Illwinter team has only one programmer.

Re: Was going to buy the game and then!
 

Fine with me if A Ashbery doesn't buy the game. I don't want Illwinter/Shrapnel to spend their time and money trying to improve single-player mode when they could spend it instead trying to improve multi-player.

Re: Was going to buy the game and then!
 

Don't sell single player short. I just don't have time for more than a little multiplayer. Even then it's only PBEM with a friend of mine. My time to sit down to a game varies and is too inconsistent to make regular turns. That said, it's still a solid game. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Scriptable ai would be a great addition to the game. Don't give up on Dominions Ashbery. Even with the ai's shortcomings, it is still an enjoyable game. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Was going to buy the game and then!
 

Lack of AI diplo can look like a big gap at first, but I can't remember of any game that has better than a ridiculous diplo AI (maybe except GalCiv, and even). In the end it does not detract much from the game, you should reconsider this as a minor point in fact ...

Re: Was going to buy the game and then!
 

I completely agree with PDF, I can't think of a game good diplomacy AI.

Re: Was going to buy the game and then!
 

It wasn't perfect, but Civilization - Call To Power had pretty good diplomacy, and you could edit the ai. No, it wasn't as good as human diplomacy, but still made for a entertaining game. A later version (Call to Power II) added some more interesting features, but broke the diplomacy in my opinion.

Re: Was going to buy the game and then!
 

To say that AI is only important for SP is to miss a lot of gaming potential. The most interesting games I have played were a mix of players and AI nations.

I totally agree that a simple diplomacy interface is necessary. It's my number one wish for Dom3. It doesn't have to be complex - I agree that games which try for "realistic" diplomacy models usually come unstuck (eg. MoO series) - but a simple interface for buying peace would be a start. Almost any race will leave you alone if you give them enough gold and/or gems (or blood slaves, items, provinces, etc.). That would make playing the harder SP games much much more satisfying. Instead of having to beat all the AI nations at once from early on(which is really not realistic, until you have become a significant global threat), you can buy them off for a while.

Add to that other functionality like persuading an AI nation to declare war on another nation, entering into research-sharing treaties etc. etc. and you have some great enhancement to the game for fairly minor effort (once you have coded the basic interface for transactions).

Ultimately it would be good to allow allied armies to fight together and move through each other's provinces, but I'd understand if that was a little beyond what Illwinter saw fit to program. Being able to sue for peace with the AI is a must though.

CC

Re: Was going to buy the game and then!
 

The way CTP handled most diplomacy was with treaties. "No Trespassing" being one of my favorites. Would stop the enemy from exploring in your territory. Breaking treaties affected your standing with other ai nations in the world as well, but that wouldn't always stop the ai from doing like a human and breaking the treaty if he saw you as weak. I guess a dominions twist on that would be to sign a no trespassing treaty then scout cautiously, because then if your scout is revealed/caught you've just broken your treaty and will find future diplomacy more difficult potentially making your nation the target of all the others. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

That's just one example.

Re: Was going to buy the game and then!
 

Not to mention that the ... insanity of the current AI mechanism essentially completely ruins the SP game for many of us. The way AI nations declare war on the human player, for no reason, while they're on the opposite side of the map with no contact, is ludicrous, especially when it happens even when the human player has the smallest, most backwards of nations (it'd be a little different if the human was in the lead and could possibly be perceived as a threat by the AI nation).

Add to this the way the AI gets to cheat by lobbing remote spells when they should have _no_ idea where the human player is, and you have a situation where it's way too frustrating to consider even a test game involving Caelum, Abyssia, Man, or other nations with easy access to seeking arrow, fires from afar, etc because even on a 300+ province map, you're getting mages killed remotely by turn 10 or 15.

Re: Was going to buy the game and then!
 

I think strategy game AIs have to cheat to be at all competitive. I'm not saying I like it, but it's part of the price of a decent SP strategy game. Even GalCiv's much vaunted humanlike AI (where designer Brad Wardell said "you're effectively playing against me") has to start with a fully-explored starmap to be competitive. I think Cainehill's point is a good one though - the AI abuses of artillery spells could be toned down a bit on larger maps.

The point about ridiculous declarations of war is a better one though. The AI ought to grade the threat of the human player pretty much the same as those of the other AIs, with a little added on for ingenuity. But a human player who is ranked 16th in terms of army strength, income, research and provinces should not be the one whom the AI chooses to attack (unless I directly threaten its capital or something). Similarly, it is not sensible for a relatively weak AI nation to declare war on a strong human player.

The diplomacy interface should also allow you to find out who is at war with whom. This is something you can sometimes infer from the score graphs, but it would be good to be able to find out by scouting (so you can then influence it!).

CC

Re: Was going to buy the game and then!
 

There is no purpose to worrying about Declarations of War! Who cares. The objective is to eliminate ALL other pretenders anyway. You are effectively at war with all of them on turn one. Do you declare war on them? No. You just go about taking there land!

As for artillery spells, do you know for sure the AI isn't sending hiding units out to your domain to fire them? And if it can be explained in this manor it could be looked at a an exceptable AI cheat.

Re: Was going to buy the game and then!
 

Don't trash SP completely. I know that most active people on this board prolly play more MP than SP. But I bet the majority of those buying the game probably play more SP than MP. I am one of those. Even if you would be able to be in 3 stances with other nation (Allied, Neutral or War) I think that would be a major addition.

Re: Was going to buy the game and then!
 

In responce to the initial subject- "Was going to buy the game and then!"

Every game I buy has major AI problems. Hearts of Iron 2, Rome: Total War, World at War, Battles in Normandy, etc.

I would say the Dominions 2 probably has the most competitive and realistic AI of any game I've played. Is it perfect, no, but neihter are humans.

Re: Was going to buy the game and then!
 

I think that the lack of diplomacy will scare a lot of players away but such features are propably tertiary concerns to the devs. Such a small team propably has to set some strick paths when adding new features...

I think the AI is a bit lacking - programming it to use the same exploits/"exploits" as humans use would make it a lot better. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Was going to buy the game and then!
 

Well in SP I don't use exploits. I just follow sound strategy. But sound strategy may be what the AI will never be able to do.

Re: Was going to buy the game and then!
 

I have had just as much fun playing the AI as playing humans (i.e., tons of fun both ways). A really good diplomatic AI the could be interesting, though I've almost never seen a good diplomatic AI (get Chris Crawford...). Better support for scripting scenarios with alliances with AI players could be neat, though.

PvK

Re: Was going to buy the game and then!
 

Irrelevant declarations of war by remote nations do happen frequently, but if that "ruins the SP game" for someone, I see little hope such players will ever be satisfied. As was said, the scenario is everyone's hostile anyway.

I have seen some remote spells hitting in surprising places, but it never seemed impossible they were scouted, nor to be a major problem - the AI uses them less frequently and less effectively than humans can and often do. Moreover, it's not cheating to fire remote spells randomly at the world. It's not perfect, but where's the problem?

PvK

Re: Was going to buy the game and then!
 

Finding a game with good or great AI is extremely rare because it's 1000_times easier to show your next employer how good your 3D graphics can be compared to how clever your AI game code is.

THUS... we see so so so many games which have state of the art graphics with prehistoric AI. It's like finding a great looking car with a rusted 30 year_old engine.
Personally I would love to see the computer AI improved to the point where multiplayer games would consider including them more often.

Re: Was going to buy the game and then!
 

I agree, but I think that is why we need to NOT fall into the mentality of "computers will never be able to play good without cheating" or "computers will never be able to play at a human level". There are already plenty of examples I could give that prove that with devotion of time and resources, artificial intelligence of very high quality is quite possible.

Please don't think that I am dogging Dominions on this. I am really impressed with the algorithms that the ai uses and believe it is a very solid opponent even at the non-cheating difficulty levels, until the human player learns the game and improves his tactics over time. However, as many people have noted, there is certainly room for improvement, and if pointing out those weaknesses and possible solutions or improvements in any way gets developers and publishers of this or any other game to give the ai more attention, then I'm all for it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

While I am at it, here are some links for those interested in learning more about artificial intelligence and how far it has come (and has yet to go):

http://www.gameai.com/
One to check out closely at this site is "Cloak, Dagger, and DNA". It is a Risk like game that uses genetic algorithms. It can be downloaded from that page as well. Very cool.

http://i5.nyu.edu/~mm64/x52.9265/january1966.html
ELIZA--A Computer Program For the Study of Natural Language Communication Between Man and Machine

http://satirist.org/learn-game/
Machine Learning in Games

http://www.loebner.net/Prizef/loebner-prize.html
Home Page of The Loebner Prize--"The First Turing Test"

http://www.freewebs.com/ballbariansw/links.htm
This is a link to my own links page with links to the above and other ai and alife sites that I found interesting.

Re: Was going to buy the game and then!
 

Of course the AI doesn't need to cheat. Well before the start of the 1900s computers (well, robots) were already winning chess games against strong human players.

Of course, each "computer" / "Robot" had a dwarf inside it controlling the pieces, but in this day and age there's no reason we don't have the online equivalent. Each Dominions 3 game should have a Chinese person playing each AI nation.

After all - farming for hours and hours in online games works for them, we shouldn't need to pay more than 10 cents per turn and they'd be happily on the road to "rich" by Chinese standards.

Re: Was going to buy the game and then!
 

Give it ten years and it will be the Chinese paying the yanks 10c a turn to play the AI nations in Dom6 ...

Re: Was going to buy the game and then!
 

Diplomacy is overrated - lets go to war!

I do not understand why "time" is preventing people from playing MP games? Sure, an MP game takes much longer to complete that any single player game, but I think it is kind of healthy to have the MP-brake preventing the just-one-more-turn disease. Its a PBEM-only game for me. This was what I was searching for and why I found my way to Dom2.

Re: Was going to buy the game and then!
 

Indeed. I didn't follow the Cloak, Dagger and DNA path, but found my way to virtual evolution. Program that works as an ecosystem, where raw numbers are processed by program-entities that reproduce affected by mutations. I didn't delve too far into it, but foud a mention that when some developer (or someone using the program in his research) tried destroying all new creatures with positive mutations, they started "playing dead" and still managed to start reproducing faster. Also, while in low- or high-resource environments only one "species" prevails, in certain conditions multiple "species" specialize to use different resources.

Very cool. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Re: Was going to buy the game and then!
 

Evolution?
What is that?

We are not being thaught something like that at school http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: Was going to buy the game and then!
 

Perhaps instead of working on AI, Illwinter could simply publish and document the format for .2h and .trn files. In fact, it would also help to render them into a more human-readable format instead of binary. Then people could write their own AIs and we could swap them the way we do mods.

Don't tell me that this would enable cheating. Cheating is already enabled, and the only way to disable is to do all consistency checks on the server. This would help the devs disable cheating by making it obvious to everyone how cheating can be done. :-)

Re: Was going to buy the game and then!
 

You don't need .2h files to write an AI. The game could provide an api for you to write to.

Re: Was going to buy the game and then!
 

It seemed to me that the easiest way for the time-pressed Illwinter devs to make the game "AI-moddable" would be to publish the specification of the .2h file. The alternative of writing an API for the AI-mods to invoke is probably much more time-consuming.

Also, as a potential AI-modder myself I would probably prefer the open .2h files over the API.

Note that this is only for strategic AI mods. For tactical AI mods so that you can configure mages to stop casting Breath of Winter and killing all of their friends, or to cast Aim on the units that actually have ranged weapons instead of on the melee units, or to cast Flying on units that DO NOT ALREADY HAVE FLYING, and so forth, then you would require a different interface.

Re: Was going to buy the game and then!
 

diplomacy would be a little silly if you think about it, there not going to go mixing religions

Re: Was going to buy the game and then!
 

Play against a human and see if diplomacy is silly. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Was going to buy the game and then!
 

but the thing is the ai is meant to b the pretender, humans r just humans