What races does the AI play best?
 

Actually, a double-question - which ones does the AI play best, and which ones worst? Note "best" doesn't mean "just as good as a real person". :-)

I've seen the AI do well with MA Vanheim repeatedly, but I haven't played enough games to make a judgement about the rest.

-Jeff

Re: What races does the AI play best?
 

Seems pretty good with LA Ermor to me. Also seems to do well with MA Jotunheim for some reason.

Re: What races does the AI play best?
 

AI still seems pretty hapless with any blood-hunting race, especially when it relies on blood sacrifice to spread dominion.

Re: What races does the AI play best?
 

I would say EA Mictaln is by far the worst, which is what Tichy said. It self destructs in 5 turns or less for lack of dominion at least 25% of the time. If it makes it past that point, then it does okay. The next worst is Caeleum, all ages, which has trouble expanding virtually all the time.

In my experience Atlantis, Ulm and Pangea, both EA and MA ages, are nations it plays pretty well on a consistent basis. It also does quite well with all nations having recruitable giants.

Other than that the other nations seem to be pretty uneven.

All AI nations also seem to be better when you play 300 gold and 300 resource settings. These help you, but it seems to help the AI expand much more than it helps you. Also if you set indies to a low number the AI expands better and thus is tougher.

I cannot comment on LA because of limited experience.

Re: What races does the AI play best?
 

In my experience, I can state a few:

1) Almost any nation with Glamour. Virtually all the Van nations, Tir na nog, and Eriu.

2) EA Ulm and Marverni.

3) Fomoria and the other Giant nations.

4) Presumably Sauromatia.

Having said that, there are a few other indications. Generally, the lower the indy strength the better the AI does. I think it has a problem with figuring out exactly how bad certain provinces are, and it does not seem to prioritize in terms of easiest win. Rather, it prioritizes in terms of highest gain. It thus has problems running into HC provinces.

Re: What races does the AI play best?
 

It's not that the AI is good with LA Ermor, it's that the AI is terrible at countering LA Ermor. You need simple but specific strategies to counter those undead hordes, and the AI never fields such strategies. So if you're playing a medium-to-large SP game against multiple AI opponents inclosing LA Ermor, Ermor is going to crush the other AIs handily, and expand unstoppably throughout the game, making it an extremely powerful foe unless you catch it very, very early.

I rarely play against LA Ermor in SP for this reason. It's just not much fun, there's no variety, since every other foe is dead, just you and vast wastelands full of skeletal hordes.

I do agree that the AI does best with nations that have solid recruitable troops, such as Heims, Giants, EA Ulm, and so forth.

Re: What races does the AI play best?
 

I've seen AI implode with Marverni more than a few times. They always seem to get overrun. Why do you think AI is good with them?

Re: What races does the AI play best?
 

Mainly because they can gain provinces quite fast. I think the 'implode' issue is that they sometimes recruit hornblowers in large numbers, which is not an effective strategy.

Re: What races does the AI play best?
 

Ah -- I'd just gotten used to seeing them "?-Whoozit the god of Marverni..." pretty early on...Now I'm interested to see what it's like to meet them in an SP game.

Re: What races does the AI play best?
 

A lot of it depends on the indie settings. I consistently play with indies 7, hard research, 100% gold and resources, magic sites 35 or less and Better Independents mod to disable the chaff.

With that setup, the EA nations that consistently come out on top with AI are the glamour nations (Van, Hel, Tuatha), Ulm, Ermor, Marverni and Sauromatia. Niefel varies a lot. Lanka is very often a strong one for the AI, but it doesn't use the blood aspect much. Tien Chi is also a fairly safe choice for the AI in that it will be at least semi-competent.

Haven't played much since 3.10 came out and never with Fomoria as an opponent, so I have no idea how that plays out. C'tis has variable success. The AI generally sucks with Abysia and isn't too competent with Arco.

MA and LA I haven't played appreciably, so no big trends, but anything that has decent armor and hits hard and straightforward is usually good for the AI.

Re: What races does the AI play best?
 

Actually, Fomoria seems to always come out as one of the top if not THE top nation when AI is playing it in my games. I usually play large SP games with 12+ opponents in it so there is usually lots of competition in them. I suggest you include Fomoria in yours too as AI with Fomoria seems to be much more consistent and stable then Niefielheim (another giant nation). Niefelheim usually expands fast but gets beaten later by other nations while Fomoria seems to keep its advantage. Well, that is what I had experienced so far.

Re: What races does the AI play best?
 

Oh, I will include it, all right, just that not playing a lot of Dom3 at the moment. HoMM5 has stolen my attention for a while, though I still hang around here. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: What races does the AI play best?
 

MA Ermor [always very strong]
MA Oceania
MA Machaka
MA Jotunheim [but it can also be quite weak]
MA Pangea

The worst AI nations, MA too:

MA Bandar Log
MA Caelum

But it really depends on scales. I am not fighting MA Pythium that has 10k people in capitol [Death 3, Misfortune 3!]

Re: What races does the AI play best?
 

Abysia always does really badly, yeah, I forgot to mention that. Seems they always tank and die horribly before any other non blood AI nation in my games.

Re: What races does the AI play best?
 

MA Mictlan can be really nice if it doesn't die fast.

Re: What races does the AI play best?
 

Is HoMM5 fun?

I loved 1 and 2 but didn't like 3 for reasons that I have long forgotten. (HoMM1 must have come out 15 to 20 years ago. Great game.) Because of that I skipped 4 and 5 entirely. I think I remember reading that it was put out by a different company than the first 4, but I've found that once a series goes starts going downhill, either books, games or movies for that matter, the slippage is seldom reversed.

Re: What races does the AI play best?
 

the 4 was bad, because Heroes become units like others : you made armies of heroes and campaigns was very buggy.

I don't like the 5 too, candy eye but poor story, poor optimisation, and game very similar to the 3rd one without several nations.

Re: What races does the AI play best?
 

I realize this post is drastically off topic, but since I was asked:

I like HoMM5 very much, it is very similar to HoMM3, which I also liked, though the skill system has been changed rather drastically and everything is 3D. Heroes 4 was crap out of the box, but the Heroes 4 Complete version (included both expansion packs and all patches) was a good game, though played very differently from its predecessors since heroes were on the battlefield like units and a lot of the concepts were stolen from AoW.

I don't think the story in the HoMM5 campaigns is a bad one at all. But if you don't like campaign play, I recommend buying the Tribes of the East expansion straight out. It's standalone, you don't need basic HoMM5 or the Hammers of Fate expansion and everything that was wrong with the heroes and skill system in the base game and HoF has been fixed in ToE. ToE also has the combo artifacts that were introduced to HoMM3 in the Shadow of Death expansion.

Re: What races does the AI play best?
 

I apologize for dragging the thread off topic.

Thank you for your replies. I'll probably try ToE, primarily because of my fondness for 1 and 2.

Re: What races does the AI play best?
 

It's good enough with LA Ermor to cast Burden of Time halfway through year 3 http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/shock.gif. And here I am on the other side of the world realizing it would be a really good plan to finish researching Enchant 5 before all my researchers die. I'm just hoping the AI doesn't use much of a boost to its globals.

Vast wastelands full of skeletal hordes? I sometimes hang awake at night dreaming of vast wastelands full of skeletal hordes! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: What races does the AI play best?
 

I'd say the AI plays Neifelheim as the best nation for long games... just make sure the game has very very high supply settings.

As Neifelheim its nation has access to water, air, nature, death, blood and astral. This allows the AI to find more magic sites.
On a large map where the Neifelheim AI has been provided lots of provinces and time for research you'll face battles against spells such as Mass Regeneration, Mass Protection, Anti-Magic, Doom, Wind Guide, Rush of Strength and a few others.
Now SC's is usually an easy solution to defeating the AI, however if Neifelheim is provided the time to finish it's researching SCs won't work as it will be casting "claws of kokytos".

(For smaller maps where research time is limited LA Ermor is difficult)

Re: What races does the AI play best?
 

I think the AI as real problems playing factions relying on magic to win battles, like caelum and abysia (all ages) or EA agartha.

Re: What races does the AI play best?
 

Humakty is correct. The AI is much better using mundane armies than magic in battles. When it does use magic it is more of a complimentary tactic than primary tactic. It also seems to cast the wrong spells (IMHO), or at least spells of little use quite frequently.


The spells it uses well are smite and any summon skelton type battle spells. When I watch death match battles, a prophet seems to win most of the time.