Why does the AI choose Death Scales all the time?
 

Is it just me or does the AI choose to weight its scales towards Death with nations and pretenders when it doesnt' make any sense?

I am just about to finish off an Arcocephale AI nation whose scales are heavily weighted towards death. Obviously the tactic of death scales is annoying to deal with because of low supplies and the generally decimated state of provinces when you occupy them.

But does this dominion setting really help the AI? Arco uses huge armies of weak units and I could watch them die off due to supply issues all the time. In particular I remember one huge stack of Arco infantry of 300+ units that kept shifting around his territory. When I finally faced it, it had only about 100 men.

My question is does the AI choose death too often and is there any reason that they do it?

Re: Why does the AI choose Death Scales all the time?
 

The AI chooses its scale at random, so it should be abouth half the time (well, 3/7th), not all the time. But it is clearly not based on any strategy on its part...

Re: Why does the AI choose Death Scales all the time?
 

When playing SP with the AI, since the AI pays no attention to starvation or supply issues, it's best to set supplies to 300%

Re: Why does the AI choose Death Scales all the time?
 

I will do that from now on.

Re: Why does the AI choose Death Scales all the time?
 

Typically I will use mapedit commands to also provide AI opponents with a 3 growth scale as well since it suffers several ways with a death scale.
1) Gold income for the AI will steadily decrease
2) Supplies for its lands will also shrink hurting the AI more than humans
3) These points spent on pretender magic paths are almost always a bad investment since the AI's don't organize armies using the blessing bonuses.

I also recommend setting supplies to 300% for helping the AI

Re: Why does the AI choose Death Scales all the time?
 

How do you use mapedit to change the AI's growth scales?

Re: Why does the AI choose Death Scales all the ti
 

By forcing the AI to have a specific type of god, then you can set the scales.

Re: Why does the AI choose Death Scales all the ti
 

#scale_chaos <nation nbr> <(-3)-3>
Forces the dominion scale of a nation to a value between
-3 and 3. Other scales that can be altered are lazy, cold,
death, unluck, unmagic. 3 means that the scale is fully
tipped to the right and -3 means it is fully tipped to the
left.

To give Marverni (nation 3) Growth 3, insert

#scale_death 3 -3 to the xyz.map file of the map you want to use. The modding pdf has more recent list of nations, if you can't find the one you are playing against from the map-editing pdf.

Re: Why does the AI choose Death Scales all the ti
 

Actually the #god command is separate from the scale commands. The AI god will still be random when using the scale commands.

On a side note the #god command only works at the capital.

Re: Why does the AI choose Death Scales all the ti
 

Thanks for correcting me. I hadn't paid enough attention, so I didn't know that.

Re: Why does the AI choose Death Scales all the ti
 

I'm still unclear.

So you are modifying individual maps to force the AI to have certain gods or certain scales or both?

Re: Why does the AI choose Death Scales all the ti
 

If you read the map edit PDF it will explain how it's possible to provide the AI with one or more specific scales. The option also exists to provide the AI with a specific god... you could even place equipment on the AI pretender at the start of the game so it's less likely to die early or later equip poor items.

I'm hoping with DOM_4 the AI opponents will know how to effectively place sacred troops with priests for blessings.

Re: Why does the AI choose Death Scales all the ti
 

Ah!
This must be the thread that Edi was talking about a few days ago. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

For anyone who may be using RanDom &/or SemiRandom and was unaware, the latest versions are able to set random start locations and it is possible to create and add custom AI gods that will be assigned randomly. These custom gods can be given all manor of bonuses along the lines of what NT Jedi has been recommending. The AI opponents can simply receive beneficial scales, or give them bonuses such as magic items, extra starting sites, bodyguards, troops, etc.

I am currently working on a "god file" editor based on the functionality of the province editor to make creating custom god files easier. Hopefully when it is done, we will see an increase in the number of available custom AI pretender gods for the RanDom program. In the meantime, if you are comfortable adding gods to existing maps, you should have no problem creating custom gods for use by RanDom.

Following is a clip from an old post discussing this functionality:

Re: Why does the AI choose Death Scales all the ti
 

very kool stuff Ballbarian !

one important note... if the AI opponents are given bodyguards it will not leave them as bodyguards, which is unfortunate.

Re: Why does the AI choose Death Scales all the ti
 

What is RanDom?

A custom program for this kind of editing?

I feel very dense, but I feel like I've come into the middle of a discussion on this issue, though I started the thread.

I have been trying to make sense of how to use the mapedit commands to modify every map file I might use to have pre-set AI gods and its just too much work. I'm confused if I'm going about it in the wrong way.

Re: Why does the AI choose Death Scales all the ti
 

The map-editing commands are meant for scenarios, not balancing. It's possible but boring to use them manually, but thankfully we now have a the RanDom program. It makes the same changes, or more, automatically.