Huh? AI implodes on turn 5, please tell me why?
 

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Hi guys, I've just had a daft game of Dom3 which I set up to be a fast duel between me and a single AI, first to 25 provinces, so I could experiment with the Yomi. Well, I wanted it to be fast but I never expected that the game would declare me the winner on turn 5!

The AI turned out to be Mictlan, and I got the message that it had no dominion left - therefore it was out and I was the winner.

If you check the map you can see that I was in the North and Mictlan was in the South. My dominion was spreading only very slowly as my pretender was asleep and I had no prophet. I just had one temple to spread the word, and my dominion managed to only move only 2 provinces south.

Now bearing in mind that there were no other AI's around it, how did Mictlan self destruct by having no dominion? Even if (like me) its pretender was asleep it should have at least had a temple.

I'm begining to think that having sleeping pretenders for the AI is screwing it up. Even so, I'd like to know what removed all of its dominion so quickly when there were no outside pressures at all. A deadly random event?

Any thoughts appreciated, what have I missed...

Re: Huh? AI implodes on turn 5, please tell me why?
 

Mictlan spreads dominion only by using blood sacrifices or through their god. If god is sleeping then there is no dominion spread without sacrifice ... apparently the computer is not too good at being sure to do some sacrificing.

Re: Huh? AI implodes on turn 5, please tell me why
 

There are also events that can lower your dominion. If he had misfortune, then he may have gotten one of those and coupled with weak dominion, it killed him. I saw this happen even on non-blood nations but its really rare event.

Re: Huh? AI implodes on turn 5, please tell me why
 

Hmmmm... Shouldn't that be fixed? Sort of like how you can no longer get temple/lab destruction evnts right away... It's really unfair to mictlan... since with a sleeping god they are stuck with dominion one untill they can sacrifce, and, as someone pointed out in another thread, sacrificing is weaker now, since all priest levels are reduced. (You sacrifice one less slave with each priest.)

Re: Huh? AI implodes on turn 5, please tell me why
 

Played Agartha, early age, with a imprisioned bless god. Only took dominion 4, my dominion was really low the first 20 or so turns, only 5 candles burning anywhere. Then I started being swamped by enemy dominion. If u take low dominion, with a dormant/imprisioned god u after build temples/preach otherwise u could end up with dominion death. I came close, lucky Agartha has such strong priests, so I could dig myself out of the hole.

I can see why the AI is having problems early on.

Re: Huh? AI implodes on turn 5, please tell me why
 

Anyways guys, all of you who want AI improvements must be patient if you ask me. [also the modders must be patient] I think that the first 1-3 patches will totally focus on bugfixing. So please, don't even start to "whine" when you won't see AI improvements in those patches, don't forget that only 2 devs are working on this game, and they don't have that much time to add new things, if there are lot of bugs, because bugfixing is always on the top on the priority list.. Not to mention that the devs cannot work on the game 24/7, since they have a job also. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

Re: Huh? AI implodes on turn 5, please tell me why
 

Yeah the AI probably took misfortune and sloth.

Re: Huh? AI implodes on turn 5, please tell me why
 

I would make a quick and dirty hack and disable Imprisoned pretenders for AI. AI is too stupid and vulnerable to rush for it to work.

Re: Huh? AI implodes on turn 5, please tell me why
 

Thanks for the responses.

This reeks of poor design and feeble testing. This happened in only my second game, and in the first I also noticed one AI exit very early, so I don't believe it is 'rare' at all.

I have a lot of time for this game and the devs, and recommended Dom2 to others. However there is no excuse for an AI that kills itself almost immediately. I've seen many terrible AIs in 20 years of gaming, but a self destructing one is a new low.

Fingers crossed for a fix.

Re: Huh? AI implodes on turn 5, please tell me why
 

Might be better to restrict the occurence or severity of Dominion dropping events. I've seen the "merchants in the temple" event occur around about turn 3, dropping my dominion in the capital to around 1.

Maybe just prevent such events occuring in the capital?

Re: Huh? AI implodes on turn 5, please tell me why
 

I've mentioned this already in a previous thread. There should be hardcoded fixes for the AI, including that the AI players shouldn't take very bad scales ever, they should use proper magic for the given nation, also the AI shouldn't send his pretender to suicide missions.
These fixes would the most important.

Re: Huh? AI implodes on turn 5, please tell me why
 

With dormant/imprisioned gods, u r losing yr most powerful source of dominion. U only have yr capital + 1 temple at game start, a prophet, 1 or 2 turns later. This is ok for a person, playing Dom 3, u can plan for it, build temples, recruit priests and preach. So no problem from the players point of view.

BUT

The AI needs to be changed, so it can avoid dominion death early on from taking low dominion, using dormant/imprisioned god strategy and taking bad scales. Seen several AI's at normal/difficult level getting nowhere due to lack of domonion and/or poor scales. The AI needs improvement in this area and hopefully the developers will look at it in a future patch.

The AI overall when it gets going is giving me a good challenge, at normal/difficult level. So I am happy with it so far.

Re: Huh? AI implodes on turn 5, please tell me why
 

I wonder if this is one of the reasons Mictlan was a pushover in DomII, but it was never this extreme because their pretender was at least around to spread a little dominion. I can't say for sure, though. I have no idea how good the AI is at blood sacrifice. It make simply be that Mictlan will never make a good AI opponent. It's like how Ermor makes too good an AI opponent.

=$= Big J Money =$=

Re: Huh? AI implodes on turn 5, please tell me why
 

If Mictlan is anything like in Dom 2 (still have only the demo of Dom3) it would make a poor AI opponent even if they could manage their dominion, since it takes a good blessing strategy, effective use of blood blood magic, or probably both, to do well with Mictlan. The AI doesn't really handle those well (or maybe at all).

Re: Huh? AI implodes on turn 5, please tell me why
 

Well yes and no. In one lets-test-this-pretender-game I played to turn 10 or so I noticed only one AI nation out of six keeping up with me in province count: Mictlan. On the other hand, computer apparently can't handle blood sacrifices since while every other nation's dominion score had increased during the game, Mictlan's had flatlined to the starting dominion of one. Easy pushover unless the god awakens in time.

Re: Huh? AI implodes on turn 5, please tell me why
 

Mictlan just bit the dust on turn 5 of my game as well. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

Re: Huh? AI implodes on turn 5, please tell me why
 

Yeah, saw that happen too in one recent game. That was my one game with a "medium random map" and many AIs (since I still have only the demo, I tend to use small maps).

Re: Huh? AI implodes on turn 5, please tell me why?
 

It doesn't always happen. I have an AI Mictlan in one of my games who has a very strong dominion, and just defeated Jotunheim. I imagine it may have much to do with the AI's choice of base dominion strength, and of course the map crowdedness and dominion strength of the neighbors they end up with.

Re: Huh? AI implodes on turn 5, please tell me why
 

Sleeping god and getting the prophet killed in turn 3 vs indies ...