AI Questions
 

It seems like there may be many spells and actions which are pointless against AI players.

I've never noticed any rhyme or reason in the locations of AI armies. With a player, if he has 500 troops in a province, he probably has 500 troops the following turn as well. He may move them to a nearby land, he may split them up and send them in different directions. He may attack or be attacked. The troops and characters may be killed or otherwise affected by spells or events, but they're all accounted for.

With the AI it seems very different. He may have a huge army in a province one turn, the next turn it vanishes. Where did it go? I wonder, is there any real benefit to assassinating AI characters, Horror marking them, etc? Does a spell like Wrath of God serve any purpose in an SP game?

What's the consensus of the experienced players?

Re: AI Questions
 

AI troops and commanders are accounted for, they just move often without any notable purpose. Spamming assassin spells on AI armies is actually a quite effective way to shut them down, they just don't know how to deal with it (in fact the AI is not really reactive in much of any way).

Re: AI Questions
 

The current AI has no strategies for blesses, supercombatants, expansion, research, defense, death_arena, diplomacy, trading, gold income and food supply. All reasons why a scriptable AI would allow the AI to become stronger as the community continues to improve different unique AI personalities. The AI probably shines its best on the battlefield knowing to place archers in the back, cavalry on the side with attack rear or hold and attack rear, and other attack commands/positions.

Assassinating AI commanders/mages near or at the front line does help minimize the armies marching into your provinces.
Wrath of God is useful during any type of game... anyone on the receiving end quickly feels its pain even when far far away from its owners dominion. I usually avoid casting Wrath of God during SP games because it provides the human player too much of an advantage.

From my experience to get the best SP game experience map tweaking is needed and banning of specific spells. Adjusting the .map file so multiple AIs are allied, giving all AIs a growth_2 or higher starting setting to help prevent starvation, and sometimes giving the AIs SuperCombatants at the start of a game since they can't build any of their own and almost never summon the elemental royals.
Specific spells need to be banned as well since they provide too great of an advantage for human players. The spells I have banned for my SP games are Ghost Riders, Send Horror, Flames from the Sky, and Wish.

Re: AI Questions
 

Thats kindof unfair. The AI does have strategy. If you look at the logs it does quite abit of thinking. The biggest problem with it is that it only has one strategy which it uses for every nation being played in every manner. So I have always said that scripted AIs would be great. But it looks like we wont be getting it in Dominions.

Re: AI Questions
 

What does it matter what's in the logs? The real test of a single player AI is how it comes across to a human being - if it 'tricks' you into thinking its smart or beats you without you seeing that it's cheating, that's far more impressive than a log output which shows how much it 'thinks'.

From casual observation, the AI hasn't shown me anything beyond basic "move army into enemy province" behaviour. It could have taken a huge number of things into consideration in the process of behaving that way or it could have been a simple bit of code: the end result is the same. Beyond the basics it appears to build, move and generally do stuff pretty much at random.

People like to say "Oh but dom3 is so complex, the AI is amazing when you consider that". Tell me, what complexity is the strategic AI actually getting into in dom3? It builds and equips items seemingly at random. It researches at random. It recruits at random. It doesn't matter how much there is to do in dom3 if the AI either flat out doesn't do them, or does them at random.

Note I'm not complaining about the tactical or battlefield AI, because that's fine. It has problems, sure, but it doesn't come across as sack full of hammers dumb like the strategic AI.

Re: AI Questions
 

Then say that it sucks!
Its less insulting than saying that the AI has no strategies at all. At least "sucks" is an opinion. Not stating as a fact that no effort was made. OK the ****ing AI SUCKS IT SUCKS IT SUCKS IT SUCKS. (against any player that has played more than a few dozen games against it or read the forum telling you how to beat it).
Next round?

Re: AI Questions
 

Don't act like I'm kicking your wife in the teeth.

If you need more than a few /dozen/ games practice or some recycled exploit from the forums to beat the AI, I can only conclude that you're the one who sucks :]

I beat the AI first game, on normal. I moved to impossible. Found it very easily beaten, not with exploits or bless rushes, but simply with PD and sensible use of troops, not throwing them piecemeal into a meat grinder. Now I stale for 4 turns or so at the start of a game and set the AIs scales etc up myself to avoid it going for misfortune turmoil death and some insane useless bless. I still have plenty of fun with SP, but the AI continues to suck some of the enjoyment out of it with its 'strategy'.

I should point out here that I'm not even any good at dom3 or any other strategy game like it.

Re: AI Questions
 

I agreed that it sucked.

I dont know of any AI that doesnt suck against some one who has played enough games to know the game.

But it does have features that can be worked with to improve it. Since we arent going to get extensive rewrites we might as well work with those or toss all of it.

Re: AI Questions
 

The Dom AI is just throwing hordes of troops at you, so the only thing you have to do to win is to keep the attrition low for you by buying high PD and only high end troops who dont die in a battle.

I think it would be a major improvement for the AI, if she would remember that she attacked a province with 100 units before and that she was defeated so that she would take 200 units the next time. (Or even simpler, that the AI just attacks only every second turn, so the invading armies would be twice as strong)

Re: AI Questions
 

heehee. Backed down again.
We do not have any more problem with G now that Somber is moderating him.

Re: AI Questions
 

Actually the AI does NOT have strategy in most of the listings I mentioned. So let's review:
The current AI has no strategies for blesses = TRUE
The current AI has no strategies for supercombatants = TRUE
The current AI has no strategies for the death arena = TRUE
The current AI has no strategies for the trading = TRUE
The current AI has no strategies for diplomacy = TRUE
The current AI has no strategies for the food supply = TRUE

The only questionable AI thinking is just enough to keep it alive and growing. Its strategy in regards to expansion is the same as an amoeba. Its strategy in regards to research doesn't appear to have any organized plan, seems almost random and usually does poor in the graphs compared to humans. Its strategy in regards to map defense mainly consists of building forts and poorly invests in province defence. Its strategy in regards to gold income is also poor as it blindly purchases units from independent provinces.
Overall the AI is still good for two developers.

Yes a scriptable AI which randomly uses one of many AI personalities would have been best.

Re: AI Questions
 

True... the #startspell would greatly improve the AI, if it eventually gets fixed.

Re: AI Questions
 

The current AI has no strategies for blesses = TRUE
probably true
The current AI has no strategies for supercombatants = TRUE
wrong
The current AI has no strategies for the death arena = TRUE
wrong
The current AI has no strategies for the trading = TRUE]
true
The current AI has no strategies for diplomacy = TRUE
true
The current AI has no strategies for the food supply = TRUE
wrong

and wishing for a #startspell is a little bit more likely than wishing for scripted AI but its still not as good an effort as using the AI's abilities better.

Re: AI Questions
 

You'll need to elaborate with details of evidence. Otherwise you're just spitting out a fish story as I can easily provide details as why my statements are true. As for its death arena strategy... it selects one of its largest sized units which does more damage as it will blindly send its large sized pretenders to a stupid death.
Just because the AI is able to participate with the death arena does NOT make it a strategy!

I would definitely want scripted AI over the #startspell.


[/quote]

Re: AI Questions
 

Good grief. Listen to _yourself_, people.

The way Jedi and Gandalf are arguing will clearly go nowhere. Step back, think it over, and approach it again with a plan, or step away from the keyboard.

Re: AI Questions
 

The AI does create equipment and give it to its commanders. Maybe you could come up with something better (Ive asked for it many times and havent seen it but Im sure someone could). At the moment it appears fairly random, but it is there.

And the AI obviously takes food supply in consideration when it builds armies and sends them out. Ive rarely seen it starve its armies unless its been forced back into it.

Your evidence is that the single-minded AI strategy is easily beaten by human players. Not that it doesnt exist. You are complaining that a 10-line strategy should be a hundred-line strategy.

[/quote]
You didnt get my point. The #startspell MIGHT be something we MIGHT see fixed. The AI is awfully unlikely. Sing the song over and over if you want but I will look to fixable areas. There are ways to improve the AI that do not involve waiting on the devs, and I have laid them out often enough.

Re: AI Questions
 

I've never seen the AI consider supplies. It marches huge armies through multiple wasteland provinces as a matter of routine.

The evidence for this is pretty clear if you play on a large map. Look over the troops in the AI horde that just arrived at your borders. If there are low supply provinces between the AI forts and your border, they will usually be starving and diseased.

In regard to equipment, saying 'the AI is there' is pointless. If you had one AI set to build and assign items totally at random and one AI using the current system, could anyone tell the difference? I doubt it. The only way to judge an AI is the impression it gives human players. It doesn't matter if it thinks about it or does it at random if no-one can tell the difference.

Re: AI Questions
 

Just because the AI is able to place equipment onto commanders does not make it a supercombatant strategy. It's the same as being able to eat and being able to eat healthy... both are very different.

Something better won't be seen unless Illwinter hires an extra developer or two which focuses purely on artificial intelligence OR if AI scripting becomes available.

I agree with Sombre and frequently see the AI starving its troops. Perhaps you don't examine units on the battlefield as closely as Sombre and I. It builds armies and will march 500+ unit armies straight into a small wasteland or swamp province. These armies are usually all traveling different directions which is why we'll see one province with 500+ units and the next turn it splits different ways.

As I wrote earlier just because the AI is able to participate in the death match arena does NOT make it a strategized participation in the death match arena. Doing something and doing something with a strategy are two different things.

The veterans with 1000+ posts in the Dominions forums are all aware of the ways for improving the challenge from AI opponents. We all know what might be fixed and what will not be fixed.

Re: AI Questions
 

Pttthhh!
The veterans still have not made us a decent AI nation. They whine over and over about the same things. They wait for the devs to completely rewrite the game. You all sound like corner fanatics praying for the second coming.

If the things that the AI does and does not do is so plain to the veterans then why don't they fix it? I hate to say it but the only tips on improving the AI that I can use is crap that I have seen in posts by gandolf and ballbarian and others like them.

Re: AI Questions
 

Other than making better pretenders for the AI, there isn't much players can do for it. The AI doesn't understand how to build an SC or play a coherent strategy. We would need for the Devs to make changes in the game, either getting better AI or giving us tools by which we can control or hint to the AI what it should be doing.

It may (and let me emphasize *may*) be possible to gain some control over the AI by hacking the .2h files, but if it is possible it's not just a few days work.

Re: AI Questions
 

If you know what the AI does well and does not do well then you should be able to design a AI nation. Take away what it wastes and give it more of what it can use.

A Scene Map like G talks about add to that. I have seen the suggestion that giving non-moving pretenders or non SC pretenders can avoid the arena problem. Or fully equip the SC so that it can live the arena.

The suggestions to change the game settings already work real well. The Scene map could do more and give the AI extra resources at the castle so that it will build more elite units.

And the most dangerous bless strategys should be able to be built into a scene game.

Re: AI Questions
 

Of course, you could give the AI a nation with one commander with six in all paths, and recruitable angels of the host as its only troops. Play on a map with no indies, with a W9 E9 pretender.

But what kind of game would that be?

The problem is that the AI doesn't make full use of what it has (as in any game), and thus must be given more to compensate.

Re: AI Questions
 

I already stumbled upon 'heim' nations controlled by AI, who mostly used its good national troops. I don't think the recruitment is completely random, as the AI often puts up big groups of one type of troop. I think the problem is that it often seem to have no clue of how to regroup them in larger armies. ie : no mages supporting chaff hordes, or elite sacreds without priests.

Re: AI Questions
 

In a game with low resources and boosted resources at the AIs capital, it definetly uses more of the elite troops and fewer indept troops. So there is some sort of logic at work.

If you built an AI on a map. And gave it the provinces around it. Then boost the resources in the capital and nearby provinces then it should help quite abit. To make sure that the extra resources are used at the capital, you could either remove the recruitable indept from those nearby provs or make sure that they are useable units.

Im not sure about the same sorts of boost for a blessable nation. Does putting temples in those additional starter provs increase the number of holy recruitables at the capital?

Re: AI Questions
 

Yes, but the AI is so bad at using sacreds, it's really not worth it.

It'll just recruit more of the expensive sacreds, then send them off to die without sending a priest to bless them.

Re: AI Questions
 

I've never seen the AI give a useless item to a commander, nearly all of them provide a benefit in some way.

Re: AI Questions
 

Who play with the AI? All players I know use AI to feel a new race. Even for testing stuff, it's better to play both sides as human. AI sucks? Play players!

Evan before we were told about this board, we were playing each other, not AI. If you compstomp to feel good, bad AI is good. If you want to feel better, stomp humans.

I would have developers fix exploits like Vengeance of Dead, battlefield spells after dead/retreat and bugs like undead bless failure and dominion effect loss in early turns. AI? I for one don't mind.

Re: AI Questions
 

Arent there nations which make that almost impossible?

Re: AI Questions
 

Yes. MA Ulm.

Re: AI Questions
 

AKAIK, there are no 'useless' items. Although you have point, I think Sombre is right. Half of the time, the Ai does stupid things, like equiping non-assassins with skull talismans, or mages with black plate. The other half of the time, they make decent choices, but I've never seen the Ai equip something that looked like an Sc or Thug because of its equipment.

It seems to me that this might actually be easy to remedy. Couldn't we just devise a couple of hundred item 'sets' that the computer would try to follow. E.g. large commanders look up item profiles from a list that includes sets like firebrand, charcoal shield, ring of regen, amulet of resiliance and dragon scale mail.

Of course, that assumes the computer could reach lvl 6 in con, which is often doubtful in short games, so we'de need lots of different lists for different circumstances. But I doubt the community would be unable to come up with a few. It wouldn't be that different from something like the SemiRandomizer, would it?

Re: AI Questions
 

AI Item strat: Give them bane venom charms. Last time I checked they randomly distributed them amongst their mages and other non stealthy commanders. I have seen them give random melee/ranged weapons to old frail mages, boots of strength to giant leaders - pretty sure I've even seen path booster items like skull staff on guys with no death magic. Don't know if that's because they just picked them up after the AI suicided its mages somewhere, but it's still stupid.

Regarding AI nations: The main people who have expressed interest in AI nations are Wikd and Gandalf. I haven't seen either of them do anything about it. Even if you could consider my criticism of the supposedly good AI 'complaining', the reason I haven't made lots of AI nations is that there isn't any fun playing against the kind of nation the AI would be good with - ie unlimited gems, unlimited gold, troops that don't need to eat, all troops having glamour etc. It would be like playing chess against an idiot and compensating by swapping all their pieces for queens. Zero fun. In order to be more interesting for SP, the AI needs not so much to be /harder/ (this is easy, just stale for 25 turns after starting the game) but /smarter/.

Btw, I made an AI mictlan after Gandalf started a thread talking about how the nations could be improved for AI. No-one had any interest in it.

If you want AI nations make them. From a technical standpoint it's easy.

Re: AI Questions
 

Well no one can argue that the AI isnt stupid. But as long as it has some actions, we might be able to work with it.
Thats a good idea. Not for inside the game itself since I wouldnt expect it to get used by the devs unless they ask for it. But it would be a big help to the randomizer program. That does accept equipment lists so if some expert wanted to create a mage list, a commander list, an SC list, an assassin list, (a scout list?) then it would be helpful to people who are working up other game boosts for the SemiRand program to use. It wouldnt control the use of such items in the game but would help in designing starting units with abit of random to them which would still appear to be logically created.

Gandalf Parker

Re: AI Questions
 

That is pretty stupid. I wonder how much it would affect the game to have a database of every unit in the game (3000?) and every item in the game (500?) and put just a plus or minus on each item? Of course it would not afect the MP games much but the SP games would suck. (isn't that what we are trying to fix?)

Actually, the things I listed came from G's threads on the subject. Seems like he has done the most to list the things that affect the AI games even though he drags most of it out of the experts. And you cannot ignore what his mods and maps have done for SP/AI gaming.

And I have done my part. Kicking the experts in the *** is my contribution to the cause. I am very good at it.

Aww crap! Complain that the AI uses none of it. Then say that it would be no fun to play against an AI that has tons of it. All this from someone who does not consider SP worth playing anyway. I am sure that someone can mod a nation someplace in the middle. Too powerful for a human player to play in a game with but perfect as a harder enemy in a game.

Link?
Im good at lurking and searching. I just tried many combinatins and could not find it. Is it in your mod list?

Oh yeah (BS) it is one of the easiest things in the game. For anyone who is expert in Dom3 modding, and expert in the faults of the AI, and wants to be the one to put their name on it which seems to be the one thing we cannot get Gandolf to do.

Re: AI Questions
 

AI mictlan is real. That much I know.
Modding AI nations is, in fact, very easy. It looks like this:

#selectnation 11
#clearsites
#startsite "Throne of the World"
#startsite "Ultimate Gateway"
#startsite "Cathedral of the Spheres"
#startsite "Unholy Sepulcher"

#addreccom "Eater of Gods" (unit number)
#addrecunit "Hunter of Heros" (unit number)

etc...

Re: AI Questions
 

I would also like to see the AI Mictlan mod. I find a dozen or so mentions of it but I cant seem to find the mod.

However, one of the comments I did find doesnt make me too eager anymore.
"I made an AI Mictlan in some random thread but no-one seemed to have any interest in it - it just gave them unlimited bloodslaves basically, since the AI is miserable at blood nations."

Heehee. Sounds like the kindof response I would get if I tried to mod a nation. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

But it might be worth looking at. Maybe someone will come up with something better.

Re: AI Questions
 

Heehee. Thats interesting. A bigger badder Pangaea loosing disasters onto the world. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Here is a quicky mod I posted a long time ago to spark some nation building.

#modname "fledgling nation"
#icon "../guihead.tga"
#selectnation 79
#era 1
#name "Home"
#epithet "fledgling nation"
#end

Its playable if you want a really extreme challenge. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: AI Questions
 

ROTFL
I can see why Sombre was not in a hurry to find the AI Mictan mod. Thats a great example of how to whip off a mod that you do not really think should be used. Love the logo!

And after all that, hidden and all, it still got some fair downloads. Sombres crappiest and most hidden effort gets better downloads than any of G's http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: AI Questions
 

Well as I have said before, my attention is on maps. There are plenty of commands there and much that has not yet been done with maps. I would like to see more downloadable scenario games. I spurred the modding early on but it seems pretty well covered even if it is one of the most complicated parts of the game. Im (against my better judgement) still the source for many of the server and map projects. Knowing those two sets of commands is plenty for me.

The few little mods that Ive created (and more that Ive half-created) are no where near the level of the stuff Ive seen. I will gladly make my modding requests to the modding experts http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: AI Questions
 

The AI has no methods of identifying what items to give to its commanders/mages. I've seen normal commanders equipped with two shields and a fever fetish. I've seen non-stealthy mages equipped with assassin hearts. I've seen high encumberance armor placed on small mages. And as previously mentioned path booster items on mages/commanders with no matching magic path. Honestly it is so painful I would seriously disable specific items for AI opponents if it was possible.
The only 'thinking' I've seen done by the AI is how it does seem to place more importance for equipping items onto its pretenders which sometimes causes more damage to itself.

Re: AI Questions
 

Really?
It defines units by type such as doing "comtype Illusionist", and it does assign items by type when it does things like mercs.

And it definetly assigns "random" equipment around the map based on unit types. You can see it assigning the items by type.

I wonder why it wouldnt use the same files for the AI? Probably too limiting I guess. You would have to either define everything in some huge database. Random at least allows for surprises.

Does it put more items on its pretender? I got the impression that it was only the big pretenders. Kindof an effort toward doing some SC. Equipment goes on the big guys first.

Re: AI Questions
 

I don't think I've ever seen a path booster on a non-mage unit, barring of course those it's managed to pick up post-battle.
I've not seen it make full use of items such as research boosters and the like, but it's always seemed reasonably sensible with equipping misc items.

Only if you wanted the AI to use every item. You could always restrict the initial pool of items the AI will even consider forging, then simply define the remainder by type (could be as simple as mage / warrior, could get hugely complicated with preset layouts for thug / SC / Researcher and so forth).

Re: AI Questions
 

Would that work for all nations? Pangaea, and Abyssia, and Ctis, and Oceania?
Would that make it smarter? or stupider?
The database cant be too big since its solo players we are trying to help out. It doesnt matter as much how much thinking an MP game does to host a turn

Re: AI Questions
 

Should work for all nations. Items are drawn from a common pool after all. Unless you're willing to get incredibly detailed you won't perhaps see the greatest combinations, but you'd still see an improvement in the quality of the AI commanders. Pretty much any forged shield is going to be an improvement (in some respect) over the basic shield a commander comes equipped with, regardless of nation.

The database doesn't have to be huge, bearing in mind that the AI doesn't understand how to use many items (like the Chalice for example) there's no reason to include them in the database. It could simply be a case of setting a flag on a specific set of items (differentiate between wizard and fighter equipment for example) and then force the AI to only forge from those lists, and only equip the items on a commander of the requisite type. It's more restrictive, but it would at least deal with the 'superfluous items equipped' complaint.

Of course, you could also use a similar model as the spell casting AI and simply have it run simulations of the best possible item to equip (presumably either from the lab inventory or from all currently forgeable items, depending on how cruel you want to be) based on a simple criteria, e.g. what provides the biggest stat increase. Again, you'll not see it make full use of combinations or the like, but you will see a general improvement in the quality of commanders it fields.