What I\'d like see AI do in SP play
 

In playing SP games, I've noticed that the AI really doesn't build or conjure up many specialty units. I'd like to see the Ai build more Bemeaths, Elephants, angels etc. I think this would make SP play a lot more fun and probably a little harder as well. In D2, the ai seemed to build/conjure more then in D3. In D3 i've seen some elephants once in awhile but only in very small groups and a few other special units but not in quanity. But, why can't it build 15-20 of them or bemeths in some of their armies or Iron Dragons, Stone Gargoyls, and many others in decent amounts?. This would make for a tougher game. In additon I would like to see Helheim go back to the way it was before the patch. It was a lot tougher when it could build its special units in all their forts. I know this would hurt multiplayer games but maybe they could restrict it to only SP play?? Like most games, multiplayer has a direct affect on SP play and sometimes it takes strength away from SP play. Maybe restrictions on certain units or whatever in multiplayer vs sp in order to keep sp a little tougher. Oh well, just my 2 cents. Its a fun and additive game http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: What I\'d like see AI do in SP play
 

I've seen the AI use quite a lot of summer lions etc. The MA arco AI builds normal elephants. It seems rare for the AI to both get to conj9, and have a mage able to cast awaken tarrasque.

I've thought of making a mod that makes overpowered copies of the coolest summoning spells which the AI can use but I will not use myself. Like, AI_call_abomination, conj7, S2W1, 25 gems.

You could play against middle era vanheim rather than helheim, they can build their vans everywhere... but their normal guys aren't glamoured.

Re: What I\'d like see AI do in SP play
 

I think the biggest thing the AI needs to change is the decision process behind when and where to attack,.. and with what forces. I can't count the number of times the AI has thrown small forces of assorted crap at a province which either has a big force stationed there or has some insane province defense. If it had built up said assorted crap for 4 turns before sending 'em out there then they /might/ have had a chance, but no, it has to jump the gun every single turn. I mean when the AI will throw a group of about 20 militia, an /expensive/ leader unit (which is inevitably destroyed) and maybe 10 other random missile units at a province that's armed to the teeth,.. for the 10th time in a row,.. well that's just not right.

I'm not saying there's no challenge there, just that the AI is much worse than was suggested to me.

Re: What I\'d like see AI do in SP play
 

Yeah--I've stood off a more powerful empire with a single chokepoint with something like 100 PD. It was attacked every turn, he kept bleeding away his force and destroyed himself without my ever doing anything about him.

Re: What I\'d like see AI do in SP play
 

i've seen AI use iron dragons, in the mega game, mind you.

Re: What I\'d like see AI do in SP play
 

What I've found has helped is providing AI opponents with extra powerful magic sites within their capital. The extra gem income allows them to use more magic for summoning.... during one long game I had Arcos attack me with 5 Juggernauts!
Also as you may have noticed the AI usually does poor when it comes to research... to help the AI with research provide him with a library within his capital. This works on having his research match closer to that of a humans even for multiplayer games.

To make this possible you can edit the .map file and make changes based on information from the map edit PDF document.

Re: What I\'d like see AI do in SP play
 

The problem with "Ive seen the AI" threads is that the AI does in fact have a logic path that it thinks on. Ive actually seen some well thought out alternatives that seem to have been worked into the AIs logic. But its hard to do.

You get into laying out a specific course of action such as IF you have ### gold then recruit xxxx, yyyy, zzzz. And IF you have ## gems then cast ccccc. You might end up with a decent logic path but it tends to play well only for certain nations on certain maps.

Re: What I\'d like see AI do in SP play
 

I'd just like a check,..

Question: If I invade with these troops will I win this battle? Answer: No chance in hell. Action: Do not attack yet.

Obviously it's not that simple, I'm just saying that's the major problem I've seen with the AI. not the troops that its building but the way it's sending them lemming like to their deaths every turn for no gain.

Re: What I\'d like see AI do in SP play
 

I dont remember seeing quite that much lemming action. Do you set all the AIs to aggressive by any chance?

Re: What I\'d like see AI do in SP play
 

I've noticed that too. Especially with water nations. I built up a border of 30 PD around all my water accessiable proviences and the computer has hundreds of troops in the water, but keeps throwing 30-40 agaisnt the PD which get slaughtered.

Jazzepi

Re: What I\'d like see AI do in SP play
 

It pretty much happens no matter what I set the AI to.

Maybe it's because I play 3.00, but I don't recall any AI fixes in the updates, so yeah,.. lots of lemming action in every SP game I've played. I mean 40 guys of theirs per turn against a 40pd province - that's what my border wars usually look like, only over about 5 provinces.

Re: What I\'d like see AI do in SP play
 

I agree with the lemming tendency. The AI really should be better at assessing odds. I assume there is some algorithm at the moment; I haven't looked into modding at all. Are there any AI options which you can mod?

Re: What I\'d like see AI do in SP play
 

I'd also like to see the Ai use better intrinsic defense again in better numbers. It seems that a lot of provinces I attack there is no intrinsic defense for the ai.. i like the idea of a library, maybe even an extra gold mine or two to increase in wealth as well.

Re: What I\'d like see AI do in SP play
 

The AI setting doesn't matter as the AI opponents will march armies until they die. I've seen very very small wounded armies attack very strong provinces. These traveling armies will pickup other units while traveling across an existing friendly province it owns... but march to death.

Re: What I\'d like see AI do in SP play
 

Lemmings action is common.

At this time, I'm playing a game, and the AIs (Difficult Ulm & Tien C'hi - random behaviour) have several medium sized armies around some provinces I own, with a strong PD and a big army inside. But they keep attack my one by one at a time ! They don't regroup the 2 or 3 (or 4) armies together for one really big deadly attack (even with a unfitted assortments of disparates troops) ! Something a human can do easily ...

I don't play MP games (no Internet) so sometimes it is very disapointing or frustrating ... But I know that programming AI isn't an easy thing, so, I don't blame anyone.

But I have to admit that AI in Dom3 isn't very efficient ... I remember the last patched AI at Stars! and they were really really tough !!! [mass driver bombing make me insane !!!]

Re: What I\'d like see AI do in SP play
 

The more I play dom3 the more the lemming action bothers me. It seems like I can basically beat the AI in almost any case simply by expanding slowly and upping PD. They throw all their troops away every turn for no gain and thus even if they're much larger than me I

Now I know that there are always little exploits and things a player does that make him/her that much better than the AI, but this is just basic stuyff. I'm trying to play an entertaining game here, not steamroll the AI, but that's pretty damn hard when they just toss away everything they make on 100% hopeless battles.

I would LOVE to see the AI patched to wait and build up just a little more (one or two more turns) before rolling out. If they did that you'd have to have a PD of more than 30 or so and it would get so expensive that you wouldn't be racing ahead of the AI.

Re: What I\'d like see AI do in SP play
 

Yep. Coordonate attacks & a much better appreciation in gain/loose battle ratio will be a good improvement.

For the PD, the fact is that it is annoying because it is continuous. Remember : you don't have much informations if you don't scout/spy the provinces. So, a try or two is acceptable, as would do a human, just to test. But the fact that this particular province as a strong PD must definitively be considered by the AI afterward.

It's seem that the AI just don't remember anything of all the informations that it gains from its actions. That is much strange, because I often see it cast the global spell 'Eyes of the God' as soon as possible ... [and I blind it as soon as I can ;o)]

Re: What I\'d like see AI do in SP play
 

No the game, and the AI, isnt good with "remembering" from one turn to the next. Its part drawback of the pbem (play by email) structure of it. Anything being remembered has to be written out and read back each turn. So the AIs actions are a straight run-thru script which it rethinks each turn. Also, its pretty much just one AI script being applied to all nations so not many of the individual abilities of nations gets used

Re: What I\'d like see AI do in SP play
 

Well, it explains a lots of AI behaviour ...

It is really dispointing, too, because not all people can afford playing MP games : time, money, schedule, technical limitations, ... Well ...

But it is not just about Dom3 : a LOT of game are very disapointing in AI actions, behaviours and so.
A little number of games can be just considered 'correct', and it is mainly gestion-like games (Stars!, as mentionned early, but also Civilization & Alpha Centaury, Master of orion, ...).
It is a wide subject : people love beautifull games where they win, not ugly ones which beat them everytime ;o)

But just some ameliorations could greatly improve solo enjoyement of Dom3, I really think.
Is this possible or wanted ? Well, in all cases, I'll be dealing with ;o)

Re: What I\'d like see AI do in SP play
 

At the moment there are some MOD projects to create nations which are boosted and make good use of the AI thinking.

As far as the developers... Dom1 was almost entirely a play by email game. Dom2 provided better direct-link multiplayer play. Dom3 vastly improved solo play and the AI. We have seen great improvements within the structure that the game is built on. The devs have hinted that they might consider a "start over from scratch" game next but it might not be a Dominions game if they do that.

Re: What I\'d like see AI do in SP play
 

It's not entirely a matter of memory though. I mean the game works out what happens in all battles, involving human players or not, watched or not,... so the AI players could basically calculate in advance whether it will win or not - then having done a single theoretical attack rather than an actual one, it could decide whether to commit or not. Granted this would make turns take a bit longer to process, but if you limited it to SP then I can't see that many players would complain - you'd get a dramatically less idiotic (not actually smarter) AI.

At the moment, I really, REALLY think it should be improved in a patch. I'm not expecting a huge leap in AI, but today the AI attacked a province with 45 PD with,... get this,.. a single sage. Then in the next turn it attacked with another sage and 4 militia. That's NUTS.

Re: What I\'d like see AI do in SP play
 

Actually I culd see "test attacks" being used by the AI as being possible with the game as it is now. But it might lead to complaints about the AI cheating, using knowledge that it shouldnt have. Such as an army of units that cant usually be seen ahead of time such as glamoured units. Or commanders that have special items. It would seem hard to avoid having such things in the "thinking" process but maybe Johan could program the tests to not include items and glamoured units.

I think that the AI does do some thinking. Putting large armies of many units on the border does cause it to think twice about attacking. Part of the problem seems to be in how the AI tries to gauge the worth of its SuperCombatants. I know that there is a point formula since it comes up in balancing pretender designs, and there is plenty of disagreement by players on the results of that formula.

It appears to be an effort by the programmer to get the AI to use things that players use. Not JUST army vs army comparisons, but also equipment, SC's, and panic situations such as the seiging of a castle which seems to cause every nearby army to at least try and do damage.

Re: What I\'d like see AI do in SP play
 

It's not 'will win', but 'expect to win with certain troop, resource and opportunity cost against an expected opposition'. You'd have to run multiple simulations based on various scenarios (reinforcement, gem allocations, the resolution of army-push-army rules, et al).

It can only do that calculation if it has perfect information regarding order of battle, resources, commands, and all player's orders for that turn. It doesn't get that. There's no legal in-game way for it to spy on your orders for that turn before it gives its own -- not that this has stopped other game developers like Creative Assembly, of course.

Incidentally, such a thing could also be gamed; if, for instance, I knew that a fairly strong force of mine would almost always deter the AI from attacking because it ran sims based on that army staying there, and if I also knew that a neighboring province of mine would be invaded by the same potential AI army because I'd left that province deliberately tempting, there's an obvious sucker punch to use.

Re: What I\'d like see AI do in SP play
 

I like the idea of test battles but the AI should only fight against what it knows about. Keep a record of what the AI knows of PD and the abilities of any commander the AI has faced before.

Re: What I\'d like see AI do in SP play
 

Keeping memory isnt very likely with this version of the game. It would have to be written out each turn and then read back in.

I also figure that anything that was put in would have to be added as an optional switch. Im not sure that many solo players would want to wait while the AI tests 3 or 4 battle options in each province up to 1500 of them. And most multiplayer games dont have AIs.

Re: What I\'d like see AI do in SP play
 

Well I don't think I'd have it test all the possible places it could attack. Instead I'd have it only test in that one place that it was going to attack, and then decide whether or not it will based on the results. This would require less than twice the length of time that it currently take to calculate. And when I say test I mean actually run the whole battle, as dom3 normally does, only as a test. Yes, this would be 'cheating'. But it isn't like the AI can use all the extra information it would get - the only thing it would effect is stopping armies of 14 people marching to certain death turn after turn. Ok, so they shouldn't really know about glamour armies before attacking - but I honestly don't see why anyone would need the glamour advantage against the AI. I mean right now in order to beat it all you have to do is let it kill itself off against your PD while you build up forces. That removes a lot more strategy than losing the ability to 'trick' it with glamourous defence forces.

Unlike most 'exploits' that you can use versus the AI this lemming weakness that they have isn't something you can choose not to exploit if you prefer a more challenging game. I mean you could choose not to use PD at all against the AI, but that's pretty extreme and you'd still be guarding your provinces and they'd still be suiciding into them. So what can you do, refuse to defend your borders at all?

If it used this form of test before attacking you could basically forget you knew about it and not use it against the AI - it is still deterred by strong PD and armies, but eventually it's going to attack with a much more built up force. Plus the AI would still make mistakes - since the outcome of battles is somewhat based on a series of random numbers there's room for it to get the test wrong. You could also tell it to only perform the test 80% of the time or something.