designing AI for era 1 Mictlan
 

OK lets also try Early Age Mictlan.
This is one of the worst for the AI. Randomly selected scales has had this nation fall out in the first couple turns in many of my solo games. So lets design a Mictlan for us all that can play as a decent AI. Using map commands (mod commands do more but this is simpler). EA-Mictlan is nation 7.

#computerplayer 7 4
#god 7 #
#scale_order nation -3+3
#mag_astral
#dominionstr 7 1-10
#additem
#allies 7 #
#specstart 7 prov
#setland
#fort
#temple
#lab
#startspell 7 "spell name"
#commander
#comname
#bodyguards # monster
#units # monster
#knownfeature
#unrest
#defence
#population

Re: designing AI for era 1 Mictlan
 

So the first line sets Mictlan as AI at difficulty 4.
The next line says Mictlan God should be...... what?
Any pretender in the game, any creature in the game. If you could set its magic and equipment, what would it be?

Personally I love Lord of NIght for Mictlan but I dont think the AI could play the assassin ability well. Maybe the Blood Fountain and fill the 4 misc equip slots with really good items. The AI couldnt send it to arena or into loser battles since its unmoving.

Or maybe "Colossal Head" which has 300 hp. With strong starting dominion it could probably withstand the fluctuations better.

Re: designing AI for era 1 Mictlan
 

Mictlan needs an awake god with high Dominion to keep from passing out from Dominion kills.

Also, probably needs a high bless (the AI almost never creates a true 9-path bless strategy). Anything more complicated i fear the AI can't handle, since, as far as i can tell, it doesn't actually blood hunt.

Re: designing AI for era 1 Mictlan
 

The ai cant really work with bless pretenders from what ive seen. An awake, high dom, good scale immobile pretender would probably be best.

Re: designing AI for era 1 Mictlan
 

So lets go with Colossal Head for now? immobile 300 hit points.

So next comes scales. If we are avoiding blood then what scales would be good.

Come to think of it, if we are ignoring blood, will it be worth anything to try and boost mictlan at all?
Maybe we should start a thread for.... R'lyeh?

Re: designing AI for era 1 Mictlan
 

Surely the AI must blood-hunt now. I know it didn't used to in Doms2 but if it still doesn't then any attempt to design a pretender for EA mictlan must ultimately be pointless... I can't imagine it surviving without a decent supply of sacrifices.
Has anyone seen AI mictlan survive until the late game? I don't think they've been in my last few games so I really can't remember.

(edit)
Just had another thought... is it possible to mod new magic sites? If so, then giving mictlan one with a very high blood slave income might give them a boost... and actually allow the human player to confront some properly demonic armies

Re: designing AI for era 1 Mictlan
 

I was hoping to do it with map commands rather than mod.
I think it can be done by mod but someone else would have to tackle that.

I can add magic sites, or replace them. But EA-M starts with 4 national sites. I could replace one of them but it might knock out one of their mages and one of the gem incomes

Re: designing AI for era 1 Mictlan
 

You can mod in a high blood supply site, sure.

If people are really interested I can do that tonight, no problem. Actually I can make AI versions of all of the dom3 nations, to be used with map commands sorting out their initial setup. It's really just a matter of editing a couple of sites, maybe making a couple of useless units that the AI uses not suck so much.

I've been thinking recently that the AI might do much better with no indy troops available to recruit. Can this be done with map commands gandalf? I mean you'd make a copy of a map like Aran and just have it so no-one can recruit any non national troops (by removing poptypes maybe?).

The alternative would require someone who has some scripting know-how. You can make a mod which selects all of the indy available troops and commanders (including weird site based ones) and sets their resource cost to 9999 or something. It's too time consuming to do this by hand, so yeah, it would require a script to produce,..

#selectmonster (number of indy)
#rcost 9999
#end

.. for each of the indy monsters. I don't know how to do that, but I'm sure someone here could do it easy.

Re: designing AI for era 1 Mictlan
 

Just assign a poptype > 87 to a province and nothing can be recruited from this province. Do that for all provinces in the map and presto, no more independents to recruit.

I think it was Edi that first pointed this out.

Re: designing AI for era 1 Mictlan
 

The poptypes could possibly be zeroed out. I dont think Id enjoy that much. Personally, I tend to add crazy indepts to the map rather than remove them.

But if someone wants to start a thread in the mod forum on AIs Id be glad to see it there.

Personally, I always thought that the first thing we needed was a library of mods that did nothing other than duplicate the nation. That way it would be a "control" file that new modders could use as a starting point. Not to mention that it would allow some fun games (like making all the nations Ulm so we can find out who plays the best Ulm)

Re: designing AI for era 1 Mictlan
 

Seems like Mictlan is going to be a real rough one for the AI to handle. Most of the crap troops the AI likes are extra crappy with Mictlan, and it doesn't really have the capacity to use Mictlan's strengths. Even if you give it an uber bless with a high dominions score the sacred troops are going to be a negligible part of the army, and without a decent blood hunting strategy neither are demons. The question of blood sacrificing isn't a deal breaker to me (assuming the AI blood sacrifices at all), with a high dominion score just sacrificing at the rate that you get them from your capital will keep you with a decent dominion through the early part of the game, and honestly I don't see how the AI could last past that anyway. I really don't see how you could do this without changing the AI, playing this nation is just too different from how it works.

1) SC god? The AI will kill him off real quick.
2) Good scales? For what, even more Warriors? Won't be able to push dominion very far anyway without blood slaves.
3) Uber bless? As little as the AI will take advantage of this, it may be the only real option.

Soooo, I'd go with maybe even a triple bless crappy scales and let the sacreds the AI does recruit really bite.

Re: designing AI for era 1 Mictlan
 

There is at least this nation modding command:

I think modifying one of mictlan's starting sites adding some blood slaves and forcing mictlan's god to awake and a rather high dominion per mapedit should be enough for starters.

If Mictlan would get about 30-50 Slaves per turn from it's capitol site and have a good dominion it might hopefully be decent.

Re: designing AI for era 1 Mictlan
 

OK then. What nation DOES use the AI fairly well? Giants? Marignon?

Re: designing AI for era 1 Mictlan
 

Attached is a very small mod giving them 45 blood slave income, 500 extra gold and some extra fire and astral gems just for the hell of it. All via two modded magic sites.

Give it a go and see what happens.

Re: designing AI for era 1 Mictlan
 

Imho the AI uses especially those nations with useful but low resourcetroops well.

In my games Ctis, Yomi, Pan, Ryleh, Vanheim and Helheim are often quite strong.
I recently lost a sp game where Yomi attacked me quite early around turn 15 and i couldn't find a good countermeasure vs. the combo of swarms of archers and tough Oni demons in time http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.

But i am all in all anyways happy enough with the AI, i just always set them all to impossible and imho they give me enough challenge then and i get often enough swarmed to death http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.

But it would nontheless be probably cool if the AI could use standard SCs. If this feature could get exported and be modded i think it would add a lot of fun for many people.
It should be in some way modable because then modders can tweak the AI SCs for their modded nations or other mods like CB which rebalances items and SCs.

Re: designing AI for era 1 Mictlan
 

Well SCs can be built and given in the first turn. You can choose any unit, hero, even pretenders and assign them to the nation as a commander. You can give it any equipment you want. And you can boost eh experience. That would at least provide the SC challenge in small map games.

For larger map, longer running games, Im guessing that the AI is operating by a priority list. If it has lots of gems then it will probably have enough left over to forge things. If the #startspell thing gets fixed then we could give it some decent SC-summoning spells to give it something to put the equipment on.

Re: designing AI for era 1 Mictlan
 

I wonder if giving a snaguine rod to an immobile god might spark additional blood hunting

Re: designing AI for era 1 Mictlan
 

Wow, that was rough. Let me put some keywords Ive used over and over to try and find this thing. I will put them in here for other people who might be interested in finding it. In this thread there is an AI MOD by Sombre which creates a better AI Mictlan of Early Era. Basically it gives them a few boosts such as pretty much unlimited bloodslaves. You can find it as an attachement back in page one of this thread. And remember what I always say people. If you want more free stuff then you need to "pay" for it by please and thankyou's. If you dont thank the modder then dont complain if more dont get done.

It does seem to work pretty well. In a few tests I did, Mictlan did not fall out of the game from lack of dominion. Other peoples impressions might help also.

Now, if we scour back posts about Mictlan and its faults, maybe we can improve on this abit. Im thinking along the line of map and game settings.

Maybe a Monolith god with a Sanguine Rod. It wont go to arenas and it might actually bloodhunt? Giving the Jade Dagger to a god I dont think would do anything. And I dont think there are any immobile gods you can give it to anyway. Too bad there arent any immobile priests. Anret there statues or summons that dont leave the province and do priestly things? Can one of them use a dagger?

Re: designing AI for era 1 Mictlan
 

Did you look at the other AI Mictlan mod?
It's also not listed in the "official mod list" I think. Another one of those unpoplar hidden mods.
AI Challenge Mod, EA Mictlan
It tries to do more. Maybe you could paste them together?

Is Mictlan really so special? Maybe some other AI mod could help.

Re: designing AI for era 1 Mictlan
 

I saw it. I wish I had seen it sooner. My apologies to Mivayan for not seeing it and thanking him. Especially considering it looks like he tried alot of my hints. He used my favorite trick with the logo and used "my face" from the game directory. He created a bless god, and took away all of the non-blessable units. He auto-summoned useful units. I think alot of those were in the discussions of turning the experts "the AI sucks because it" into active suggestions on what we would need to change. He should have gotten more recognition for it but I dont keep up on the mod stuff as much as the map/server stuff. I let others do that.

But there are the comments from Arrelan which I didnt quite follow but I cant ignore. He is one of the beta testers and has a login on my servers. Ive gotten some great hints from him over the years.

I need to read thru the thread and the mod abit more. Maybe we can ressurrect that thread and get Mivayan to update the mod. There are some bits there that Arrelan seems to have liked so maybe we can steal those.

If I did a scenario download for all this then the god/scales would be set by map commands anyway.

I also have to come up with a storyline of some sort. Maybe steal from Leifs "Vampire Wars" and assign alot of blood-based indepts. Call it "the Rise of Blood" or "AntiBlood Crusades" where the players have to try and stop blood magic from taking over. Hmmmm there is something about the rise and fall of blood magic in the Dominions storyline isnt there?