Suggestions for SP play?
 

I'm trying to get back into Dominions, but I cannot think about playing MP at the moment (look at me... no thinking! That does come easy to me, admittedly...), so I was wondering if there have been nice maps or scenarios to make SP a little bit more exciting?

Oh, and I remember there was talk of getting a Pretender pack to help the AI pick a half-decent Pretender and not something I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy (you know who you are)... Has anything happened in that direction?

Any other pointer for SP play would be much appreciated... It's been a while since I've been around, and I'm still trying to get my bearings (oh, shiny blue forum...). Thanks! :)

Re: Suggestions for SP play?
 

Try the Better Independents 2.1 mod. It prevents the AI from recruiting chaff hordes and forces it to use a lot more national troops, so it becomes a lot tougher opponent. Link is in my sig.

Re: Suggestions for SP play?
 

Edi's turning into Aezeal! :O

Re: Suggestions for SP play?
 

? :confused:

( PS: Welcome back Alneyan :) )

Re: Suggestions for SP play?
 

I suggest using the mapedit commands to provide specific pretenders to the AI opponents and it also allows you to configure them as allies.

If you're feeling very brave provide an AI opponent with one or more SCs... thugs won't last long enough.

Re: Suggestions for SP play?
 

Thanks Edi for the mod! I like it so far... well, I'm not sure 'like' is the appropriate word as it's resulted in a bit more pain for me, but still, that's what I was after!

I could script the AI myself, but I'd know what I'd be up against, so I would have a much easier time coming up with a counter well in advance. Well, unless I designed the perfect SC I suppose...

Re: Suggestions for SP play?
 

Check out Ballbarian's SemiRandom/Random suite of tools. Not scripted, but at least better designed AI opponents are possible. You could design them yourself but leave enough randomized to make it not totally predictable.

Re: Suggestions for SP play?
 

I think you are thinking of my pretender pack project. It never came into existence.

However the concepts were included into Ballbarians SemiRandom program.
It does logical provinces, and logical AIs. So far there arent many of them and we would certainly love for you to help fill in the gaps. (or anyone else who would like to donate their favorite god-build)

Re: Suggestions for SP play?
 

I don't know much about the RanDom program, but I was under the impression that there's already a LOT of user-contributed random province material in there. Sadly, the AI will probably fare worse against them if they're harder to beat than standard indies.

Re: Suggestions for SP play?
 

Actually thats part of the problem. What has been turned in has been killer provinces. We need to add lots of simply interesting, or trivia, or joke provinces so that a SemiRandomized map only has a few killer provinces scattered around.

But its the gods she was asking about. And those are very lacking.

Re: Suggestions for SP play?
 

"She"? Oh, Alneyan. I always thought that was a guy. :P

No girls on the intarwebs!

Re: Suggestions for SP play?
 

Oh dear.

Gandalf, how dare you stereotype Alneyan for having a female looking avatar!

And conversely, ICH, how dare you stereotype Alneyan for being on the internet!


And thus, the world crumbles in on itself, under the sheer weight of anonymity.....

:shock:

Re: Suggestions for SP play?
 

Experience.

If that doesn't convince you, I'll raise the "meme" card.

Re: Suggestions for SP play?
 

< shrug >

I have met plenty of real women on the internet (proven by telephone and/or webcam). Granted, they are vastly and wildly outnumbered by men, but the ratio is gradually shrinking over time - something that pleases me even if the greater part of the change is occurring in the younger generations, who just like to tease me with their "being-vastly-younger-than-me-ness". :shock:

That's a generic "me", of course, not specifically directed at all. >.>

Re: Suggestions for SP play?
 

Your pack was indeed what I had in mind Gandalf. I'll be having a look at RanDom now, and see what I can contribute once I've figured out what it does exactly, but I like what I'm seeing so far! I enjoyed your random medley-style map, but it just felt a little bit too random for me, and the AI was even better than me at destroying itself against nasty provinces...

The last few posts in this thread remind me of that old Lord of the Rings saying somehow :p "Wizards, never meddle in the affairs of mortals, for they are subtle and quick to confuse you." (Is now a good time to mention I've taken up to liking metal, and I do mean real metal?)

I didn't know my avatar looked feminine, though... I thought it was pretty much androgynous, but then again, I also thought there was a second creature in the background (most people seem to think it's just a hood, but trust me, there's a menace lurking behind me...) Oh well, there's always the Dominions ads I guess!

Re: Suggestions for SP play?
 

Alneyan, I was working on a mod some time ago that provided pre-made thugs to the AI via a suite of low level spells. I found that it added a very interesting level of spice to the rare SP game that I played. The AI doesnt use them like thugs should be used but they often make for unpleasant surprises in battles with the AI.

I could dig it up if you were interested.

Re: Suggestions for SP play?
 

Im old OLD Internet. I consider it to be good manners to treat the person as whatever they care to portray on the net. The name could go either way, and the avatar looks female, which says to me that the person wishes to be referred to as she.

Re: Suggestions for SP play?
 

Yes I now generate chaos mapped games on the server.
http://game.dom3minions.com/bin/Chaos_chk.cgi
Its been improved (the AI is an active player, the indepts can attack you, the indepts have PD and can spot scouts, and the castles have patrols). But the total randominity does tend to spark people to want to create more logical provinces so I steer them to the RanDom program.

Re: Suggestions for SP play?
 

I completely agree.

Re: Suggestions for SP play?
 

lch--we don't actually *exclude* females from the intra-webs. That's a bad lch!

It's just that most of them get sacrificed to our demonic masters, in order that we may drink their blood, imbibing their vital essences. For example, Annette and Mindi are both female, as far as we know, and they both run faster and fight harder than our blood hunters do. Especially since the satanic gym had all those budget cuts from higher management (Who's great idea was it to put the demon of sloth in charge?).

Being vastly younger than JimMorrison (but not anyone else, except maybe Gandalf), I find it simplifies my life to assume that everyone I meet on the internet is A: a dude, B: a flabby, hairy, sweaty, uncomfortably affectionate dude (in real life), lacking a firm grip on basic hygenic theory, C: who was castrated in an unfortunate bizarre threshing accident, just to be on the safe side.
Ouch. I feel for you all!

Now, to add to the discussion in productive ways: Alneyan: One thing I do to improve my SP experience is to run each and every Nation myself, from the beginning, as a human player. It not only suffices to improve Pretender and Scales choices, it also allows me the educational opportunity to obtain a firmer handle on how each Nation works. I usually will run them-non-aggressively-for up to 3 years. Considering that I play on extremely large maps (a "quick" game for me is SP 'Glory of the Gods'), those three years, aside from allowing me to make smart decisions for each Nation, don't grossly affect the map, itself, or the balance of the game. Typically, I confine myself to just capturing the provinces surrounding each capital, building a decent army and stable of commanders, doing a little forging/summoning, and directing research into the most important areas. It also allows me to-if I so choose-select imprisoned Pretenders, and play the Nations out until the last Pretender awakens. I then switch them to Impossible AI.

On a 1500 province map, this method, while time-consuming, is invaluable towards making the SP game more challenging, and the map, frankly, is too vast to be very helpful in determining where a specific Nation happens to be.

I hope that helps!

Re: Suggestions for SP play?
 

HoneyBadger,

How do you switch them to Impossible AI? I thought that was, well, impossible. Did a recent patch add the ability to pick the level of AI when you cede control? Or do you do it with a hex editor?

-Max

Re: Suggestions for SP play?
 

It doesnt really matter much. The main difference is the number of points that it uses in creating its pretender and scales. So you cant really create a mid-game AI that is more than "average" (players level of starting points) unless you use the nocheat-check switch and create pretenders that are way off the scale at the beginning of the game. Then play it for abit before turning it AI.

Re: Suggestions for SP play?
 

I might have been wrong about that, MaxWilson, I'm just going by memory, but if you choose the Pretender scales and point-distribution, and then switch them to AI, it will usually work out to being better than arbitrary AI.

Re: Suggestions for SP play?
 

It is (and the basis of the SemiRand's pretender library which can randomly select AI gods from pre-made better builds)

Re: Suggestions for SP play?
 

The higher points are non-trivial, but the real benefit IMHO is that Impossible AIs get +100% to research, gold, gem production, etc. Of course that makes it pretty obvious why your nation is not allowed to become an Impossible AI just because you resign...

-Max

Re: Suggestions for SP play?
 

I wish there were some way to just save Pretenders for different Nations, and then have the AI always play with that specific Pretender, unless instructed otherwise.

Re: Suggestions for SP play?
 

You probably could with MODs but knocking out all of the options excent the ones you want might take abit of doing.

Its fairly simple with AIs added to a map file. But its rather absolute. It even applies to human players taking the nation.