House Rules against the AI
 

I nearly exclusively play single player against the AI and i use some House Rules to give a "fair chance" to the AI, i´ll post my house rules here and i´m curious to other house hules:

1. Always use a Imprisioned Pretender.
2. Only attack an AI if attacked first (you are free to attack independents).
3. Only 1 researcher per lab.
4. Do not use battle spells that need gems.
5. Do not use global spells (You are free to Dispel the ones the AI casts).

By using these house rules and setting AIs to Difficult i find the SP more of a challenge...

So, any house rules against the AI that you think are fun?

Re: House Rules against the AI
 

Do not over bid on mercenaries.

Re: House Rules against the AI
 

Don't bid on mercs at all :]

I also refuse to use geared out thugs (gear is reserved for ordinary commanders that have proven themselves)

I use NI maps.

I stale the first 5 turns.

I don't use archer decoys or arrange my troops in an overly clever way.

Re: House Rules against the AI
 

Set all AIs to Impossible Aggressive, and starting provinces to 9.

Also set Supply to 300 and use Edi's Better Independents mod.

Re: House Rules against the AI
 

There is a switch called SuperHost. It runs host over and over and over. You can add it to your dom3 icon and use it to force the game ahead many turns before stopping it, take the superhost off, and then join the game in normal mode with the AIs having a big head start.

Ive actually been outbid on mercs lately but the AI doesnt tend to bid more than a slight amount. Most of the outbids I thnk are the newer changes of "merc preference" which makes some mercs cheaper for certain nations to hire over others. My rules might include only one set of mercs at a time.

I like to RPG abit in my solo games so I treat AIs as if they were players. I even send messages. In some case, gifts. Particularly if I see that a nation I can probably beat easily is on the "other side" of some nasty nation. Such as, if I see that an undead nation is getting close then I might send "Herald Lances" to a nation on the other side of them, or even between me and them. The lances allow the AI to hold back the undeads but dont cause me much problem later.

I even form NAPs (non-aggression pacts) with AIs. On the one hand some will find that really funny. On the other hand some will say it works exactly the same as it does in MP games with humans. Everything seems good for awhile then suddenly the AI "changes its mind". At least with the AI its rarely a surprise attack. It tends to build up on your border giving you a chance to RPG an exchange of disappointment and threats of counter actions. Its good practice for the real thing.

Other things you can do:
Maps such as NI, Tower, or Pipe can give you a better game with AIs. Pushing up the resources setting for new games can help also. And lowering the strength of Independents.

You can add some commands to the end of your favorite map that makes the AIs allies with each other. Or team up. The commands are ignored for human players of those nations or if the nation isnt in the game so you can create some interesting alliances and forget you did it.

Maps can have designed AIs added. Things such as giving it only small gods, or immobile gods. The AI doesnt tend to use SC (super combatant, big mobile gods) very well unless its a small map. It also helps to use designed AIs so that it doesnt choose scales that can kill itself.

Other ways to get Designed AIs is to start the game as human for all players. Build the nations pretender and scales logically, then after a couple turns use the games Options screen to change that nation to AI for the rest of the game. Or use the SemiRand which can add random designed AIs to a map.

Re: House Rules against the AI
 

Mercenary preference is definitely what causes the outbidding. For instance, if you are outbid trying to hire Hannibal, he probably went to Machaka. A year ago it was impossible to get anyone to believe this.

Re: House Rules against the AI
 

I second this as a general setting as I dislike handicapping the way I play to accommodate the AI. I differ from these exact settings by using NI maps instead of BI mod, set starting provinces 2-5, independent strength 0-3, and use an all ages mod to select some good opponents.

Re: House Rules against the AI
 

I always play SP only to test out MP strategies, so crippling myself isn't really an option. I still enjoy those games and roleplay with myself on the way.

I prefer to buff the AI by designing good pretenders for it, basically maxed out scales since the AI can't handle SC or bless. With special considerations for nations that need it(LA ermor, Miasma, Mictlan). This also seems the most effective way to me.

Re: House Rules against the AI
 

If you set the AI to impossible they get so many free design points and so much extra income that it totally outweighs economic scale design (though it doesn't change that they sometimes pick scales which are ridiculous for non economic reasons, like cold 3 with agartha or a misfortune/turmoil combo).

Re: House Rules against the AI
 

Are you sure?

The AI often funnels these design points in super uber magic paths that it is too stupid to use, then cheerily sends the supercharged pretender out to die. All the while succumbing under some completely ridiculus scales.

To me it has seemed more effective to design an imprisoned god, preferably immortal, with some death for skele spam and other paths suitable to cast the nations need of globals, plus good income scales and suitable other scales.

Re: House Rules against the AI
 

Little human type pretenders tend to stay home, and of course immobile pretenders stay home. Its just the SC pretenders that tend to go out. And thats what they are meant to do.
The AI doesnt seem to have a concept of pulling back within the domain candles to recover and wait for new backup to arrive. But if the god goes too far and dies then it just does "Call God" and gets it back to start out again (losing some magic) so I guess piling magic on it fits the tactic. Not a GREAT tactic, but a tactic.

Re: House Rules against the AI
 

Even with horrible economic scales, the income and resource bonus from impossible difficulty completely outweighs the negatives.

The AI gets + 100% to gold, resource and gem income on impossible. That's far more than going from all negative 3 scales to all positive 3 scales can net you.

So to reiterate: Don't start the game with human players with sensible scales then set them AI to try and give the AI an economic advantage. It doesn't make sense. You can give it a research advantage or something more marginal to do with cold blooded etc, like I said, but economically speaking the AI is always best off being set to impossible.

Re: House Rules against the AI
 

That may be what SC gods are supposed to do, but the AI can't handle SCs.
They go out with random or no gear, run up fatigue casting marginally useful buffing spells and get killed.

It's fine to say that's intended, but it doesn't work.

Re: House Rules against the AI
 

That happens every time? :) Or randomly?
I never said it did it well.

Re: House Rules against the AI
 

It happens virtually every single time. The AI will take an SC pretender, not give it any equipment, have it cast flying shards once then attack.

Re: House Rules against the AI
 

When I've had the AI draw one of the bulls as a pretender, it tends to not completely waste it. Generally, imo, good pretenders for the AI are pathless SC pretenders. The AI will usually get best use out of these, and if it dies it can just be resurrected with no penalty. Of course, it will eventually become useless anyway due to afflictions unless it has nice regeneration and or recuperation.

Re: House Rules against the AI
 

My major gripe with the AI is that it´s incapable of keeping up in the research curve... it simply does not research fast enough.... thats the reason of my house rule of 1 researcher per lab... it´s the only way for the AI to keep up...

Re: House Rules against the AI
 

The AI seems to do fairly well with independents at strength 7 and impossible AIs, especially if it has good scales (happens sometimes). Indies 7 means you need a lot more troops to beat them than indies at 5, and the AI resource and gold bonuses mean that it gets going pretty fast. It's not at all uncommon to get swamped by two or three hordes while you're still trying to get basic things done.

I play with the Better Independents mod and difficult research, so that slows me down a lot more than it does the AI.

Re: House Rules against the AI
 

There are pros and cons to the AI doing things totally randomly.
On one hand, it usually gets it wrong. On the other hand it can surprise us.

Good AI (artificial intelligence) is not good AH (artificially human). Good AI is the intellgent choice. "A straight line between two points" which is too predictable.

Good AH is almost achieved by "random selections filtered thru intelligent choices" but that takes alot of code. Even for ONE of these nations such a set of rules would be huge to do it with any variety for replayability.

The best bet WE will ever see are more designed AIs for each nation being submitted to the SemiRand. Or a really good mod builder creating an AI.

"AI programmers consider it a giggle that to go from AI to AH requires dumping some intelligence in favor of randoms. There must be a comment there about the human race."

For more reading: the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence
http://www.aaai.org

Re: House Rules against the AI
 

How can it surprise us? By doing exactly the same thing in every game?

And yet, the best chess programs in the world work in exactly that way.

I'd rather worry about competence before I worried about replayability. The AI is currently incompetent at anything beyond pushing armies around the map. And yes, I mean it when I say that it's incompetent. It only has a chance against a non-beginner when the odds are more than three to one in its favour.

How, exactly? No mod can change the AI behaviour in the game. Better pretender designs won't fix the lack of coherent pre-designed plans for the AI. Allowing the AI to cheat by giving it massive starting advantages isn't a solution either.

Re: House Rules against the AI
 

What it really needs to be able to do is adapt, at least marginally. Your enemy's attacking with fire, give fire resistance a higher priority. Astral mages - boost mr, undead build and send more priests.

Some of this, even within the basic combat spellcasting AI would be possible. "Lightning bolts crashing all around me? Hey, I can cast Resist Lightning!" (This would help the mp game as well, if mages could react to the situation.)

Exploitable by a clever player, sure. But far less than it is now.

Some basic guidelines on gearing/buffing thugs would be nice, again modified by what's been killing them lately. Some awareness of blesses, sacred troops and the need to send priests along with them.

Basic attention in pretender design to scales. Heat preference, age of mages, resources needed for troops, etc. Keep it randomized, but weight things that make sense more heavily. Not predetermined weights by nation, but derived from the actual game data.

None of this is the simple "design a script for each nation" strawman, nor is it build a functioning human AI, pass the Turing test, win fame and fortune. It's complicated, it's a lot of work, but it's not fundamentally a hard problem.

Of course, it's not going to happen. Would require a major rewrite and the devs have moved on.

Re: House Rules against the AI
 

My god, is this even a worthy topic? One uses the SP AI to test out strats and summons. Playing a game against it is like playing against a six year old.

Re: House Rules against the AI
 

Unfortunatelly a lot of people (myself included) have problems playing MP games because of variable work schedules and SP is the only alternative to playing Dominions... I have months where i can play almost every day, while other times i must stay 2 or 3 weeks without playing... this makes difficult to play MP games...

Re: House Rules against the AI
 

Dominions AI isn't much worse than any other (ie : Civ 4 AI), it's the game which offers so many different tricks so quickly. I mean, by year two you'll have around 100 spells available, how to you want an AI to use efficiently all of those ?

The only really bad point dom 3 AI has is the propention not to buy any mages whatsoever, partially cured with NI maps or BI mod. That, and recruiting militia...*sigh*

Re: House Rules against the AI
 

Its also not a bad AI considering how it was created. Dominions was created with a minimal plugged-in AI. And the game has grown in pieces. So even "easy" fixes dont tend to be so easy. Such as "use of lightning should mean use protection against lightning". But there does not seem to be a simplye single variable for lightning in the code. Each item and spell was coded separately without much in the way of categories. So the code would have to maintain a huge list of spells and counter items. Thats why we still find holes where some unit is supposed to be immune to something, or some spell isnt supposed to work. Because each one needs to be noticed and tagged.

We have gathered much info on what the AI does and doesnt do. What pretenders it uses well and which ones it doesnt. Units it uses well enough and which ones to avoid. Spells it prefers to use so we might be able to selectively grant more or less ability to use the ones we feel it uses well. Eventually I will use all of this to give us all a fantastic modded nation designed for no other purpose than to be a bigger better AI for the game. Of course this will be done by me creating some horribly crappy little mod that will instantly spur someone to show me up by doing it much MUCH better. :)

Re: House Rules against the AI
 

You know Gandalf. We're all quite capable of reading this thread and don't really need you to repeat the things that other people have already said in it.

Re: House Rules against the AI
 

Gandalf: A mod won't be made that makes the AI a worthwhile opponent. What you're talking about could already be done easily by any number of modders on these boards and you could easily create an AI nation that would destroy even the best players in SP, no problem. But it would still suck to play against because we can't mod the AI. Giving it nothing but the incredibly simple stuff it can actually cope with requires making this stuff ridiculously powerful for it to stand a chance. That is zero fun to play against.

You go on and on about this all over the place, talking about AI mod nations and mods designed to improve the AI and blah blah blah. It's all just wishful thinking. Oh and shill work of course.

Re: House Rules against the AI
 

Well shill is one thing I do well. :)
But you are probably correct that its not possible to mod a worthwhile AI. Even if we could mod the AI I dont think thats possible. Its not even possible to program a worthwhile AI. Especially not for this game.

But since there are people who play the AI, and there are known features about the AI, then it should be possible to mod a better AI than the random that most people are playing against now. It is likely though that like other projects it wont happen without a shill effort first.

Re: House Rules against the AI
 

Good luck with that. How many years have you been talking about it again?

Re: House Rules against the AI
 

Of course it would be possible. Just create a nation where the AI can recruit juggernauts as troops and vampire lords as commanders for 1 gold and 1 resource each. It would easily crush any human player then, but still wouldn't be a very interesting opponent.

Anyways, you're still conflating the AI with nation/pretender design. The AI is the decision making engine. It cannot be modified, changed, or affected in any way by the players. One can create better pretenders and cheat in other ways for the AI, but this is _not_ AI modding.

Re: House Rules against the AI
 

I haven't played MP, but have played SP exhaustively.

My latest rule , is

1) all AIs on impossible and aggressive
2) I'm not allowed to recruit troops or mercenaries. I only get starting troops, commanders, troops from random events, and nationals summons.

Ken

Re: House Rules against the AI
 

Heehee. Yeah I end up doing about 1 a year. Not like some of the fast burner mod makers.
And dominions has dropped on the list. As far as this project goes I havent gotten very far in even play testing my own efforts from the other thread, or the mods done for AI such as NTJedi. On the other hand mentioning it shouldnt hurt since there seem to be people who speak up that have much more specific info on what the AI does and doesnt do well than I have.

Re: House Rules against the AI
 

Since the AI can't be modded directly, about the only way that it can be affected is by limiting its choices, which is the driving force behind both the Better Independents mod and the No Independents maps.

They work fairly well given the limitations, but fighting the AI is always dealing with hordes and fairly little magic (in light of the enormous potential that you see wielded in MP games). With the BI and NI solutions, you just face hordes of quality troops and more national troops instead of identical militia/light infantry hordes.

Something that would help if it were possible to set non-random AIs, ala creating an AI pretender with the point bonuses that could only be assigned to an AI nation (just like you can create and load pretenders for human controlled nations). Sure, you'd know what kind of build you're up against, but it would make for a better SP game experience when you don't have half the AIs turmoil/sloth/death/misfortune 3, which causes them to fall apart after around twenty turns.

Re: House Rules against the AI
 

I hear a lot of people say the Better Independents mod works well but I have to ask how you got around the huge flaws that the mod had before.

In the past the Better Independents mod either increased the gold cost or the resource cost of the bad Independent units. This created two scenarios that pretty much destroyed the AI.

If the gold cost was raised, Militia events would devastate the AI's economy.

If the resources were raised, the AI would not be able to produce units in any castle except the capital because it would queue up the independent units that had the resource cost it could never hope to meet ultimately only allowing armies to be built at the capital.

How did you get around these limitations?

Re: House Rules against the AI
 

The current version fixes it so that units generated by events don't have altered gold costs but the same units in national rosters are replaced by a copied unit that does have higher cost. I never ran into the queue problem myself.

Re: House Rules against the AI
 

Thats part of the SemiRand program. Run your map thru it before playing and it will attach a randomly selected pre-built pretender/scales for the AIs you select. Most are versions of player builds but some by Stavros are quite cranked and well thought out.

Re: House Rules against the AI
 

What about the standard militia event?

To test the resource hang up I am talking about, you only need to take over any AI controlled castle besides their capital. I am pretty sure the AI makes the same decisions in provinces without castles but you just don't see the queue hang up because that bug only allows you to see the queued units when you conquer a castle.

If the AI doesn't do this anymore, I may give it another shot!

Re: House Rules against the AI
 

Does it show up if you open an AIs turn file?

Re: House Rules against the AI
 

Really, Humakty? Dom AI is about the worst there is. Civ, GalCiv, a dozen other games, beat it by a mile. This game is all about MP.

Re: House Rules against the AI
 

My House Rules against the AI:
1) Typically I provide every AI opponent with Order_3, Growth_3, and Luck_3 using the mapedit commands. This really makes a massive difference.
2) The game is setup with at least Independents of 7 or higher.... and Supplies at 300.
3) I never build the unique artifacts and never bid on mercenaries.
4) I use the AI Opponent Balance Mod: http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=42679
5) For large maps I provide one AI opponent(usually Niefelheim or EA Argatha) with at least a dozen SCs, an extra province with a fort, immobile mages and library(!!research!!), then last a super powerfully equipped pretender.

** And to increase the challenge one only needs to setup two, three or four AI opponents as allies.

That's why I'm looking forward to playing Elemental: War of Magic when its released during August of 2010. Besides regular modding the game will also allow modding of the AI opponents.

Re: House Rules against the AI
 

Yeah it's been very difficult for me to want to mod Dominions anymore with Elemental on the way. My mod time has gone to learning Python better. I wrote Pong, Hoorah!

Re: House Rules against the AI
 

The standard militia that appears by event is unmodded in terms of gold cost. It will not cause bankruptcy. It will also be recruitable in the gold cost version from those poptypes that have it (two or three, so you see some of it in the AI armies). Nations that had other crap in their rosters still have them, but as copies. So e.g. if they had light cavalry 26, they now have other units (unused) that had light cav copystatted on them.

If the queued up units don't show outside castles, then yes, that would be a problem for the resource mod. I use the combo or the gold cost version myself most of the time. So the resource version may or may not suffer from that problem.

The only problem with gold cost mod is that enslaving indies via astral magic can be hazardous to your finances, so a look at the mod code and the poptype list in the Dom3 DB is advisable before experimenting.

Re: House Rules against the AI
 

@ Lingchih :

Civ 4 AI is all about cheating, and much more so than dom 3 AI. Even on noble difficulty, it gets bonuses, and, mind you, there isn't anything too complicated to do in civ, well nothing as complicated as dom 3 spell system.

Civ 4 AI, at emperor difficulty, has at the very least ten different bonuses, ranging from troop XP to Great People generation, really every kind of bonus you could think about is covered.

So to evaluate Civ 4 AI, you'd have to play on warlord difficulty, were you could realise it is utter crap, not able to do anything consistent, not even by accident.

In conclusion, the only merit of civ 4 AI is to have much more bonuses than dom 3 AI, and I would in no way compare it to Galciv AI, which is able of a somewhat consistent gameplay.

Re: House Rules against the AI
 

I recently bought Sins of a Solar Empire (the Trinity pack) and the AI seems to be very good.... i am mostly playing the AIs in Normal difficulty yet, but according to the developers, up to the Hard AI, it does not have any kind of bonuses, only it uses more advanced tactics, only in the difficulties above Hard the AI start gaining bonuses...

Seems to me to be a very good AI design... spceially considering that i still didn´t beat the AI on Normal difficulty yet....

Re: House Rules against the AI
 

I only have basic SoaSE game, but I do get regularly kicked over by normal AIs too ( I love playing the cool psychic ones ). I don't play much though, base game is kinda limited, do you think the expansion pack is worth it ?

Re: House Rules against the AI
 

Actually I think the AI is pretty decent as games go. Much better than the CIV4 AI in that it is willing to attack other AI nations and can master a few basic battlefield strats (even if all that is is artillery+waves of chaff+flanking cavalry, that's something).

My house rules involve massively rich settings and hard research. The time of game when the AI is most challenging is early midgame, when as a player you want to be building forts+mages and racing up the research tree, but instead you have to keep armies around designed to beat waves of chaff. I just give up on reaching the endgame and play like there's nothing above level 6 magic.

Re: House Rules against the AI
 

Well I only play SP since I can't be sure to keep up with the turns in a MP game even if I would prefer that. I only have a few houserules I follow and those has already been mentioned earlier in this thread.

My favorite way of playing SP is simply trying to break my own records in winning as fast as possible. While the AI won't challenge me, my earlier win records will. My favorite map are Dawn of Dominions (I think that's the name) where about 10 or so EA nations are preset on a very nice map. The starting locations are not balanced but very thematical placed which makes me more immersed into the game.

Re: House Rules against the AI
 

Ive seen some great advances in the subject of improving the Computer Players in Dominions 3. We still could use a thread specifically listing the settings, maps, mods, and 3rd party programs that are directed toward AI improvement. Possibly sticky, altho we might have to wait until a new regime for that.

Some levels for Indepts above 9 tend to go AI'd, Allied, SemiRand, Chaos, Designed, GameMaster.

Some MODs would be Better Independents or the AI Opponent Balance Mod.

Some MAPs such as the Tower Map seems to help, and the NI (No Independents) maps. And now Im adding another map. Based on the idea that the NI maps help the AI use more elites, and cuts micromanagement, I have created a PI (Partial Independents) map. Approx 1 out of every 10 provinces will allow their usual recruitment of independent units. The others still force you to fight for them but do not allow recruiting (unless a magic site provides something). To keep the locations from getting memorized from continual replay, my server will re-randomize this file daily. Check out the PI version of the Parganos map called Partial_anos on my server.
http://www.dom3minions.com/maps.htm

Re: House Rules against the AI
 

I'm deliberately reviving this thread! :eek:

When I first joined this forum, I tried to follow this guy's advice:
And later he confirms:

Now I'm still a simpleton a while on, and this is depressing. I don't know who this Makinus is, but has anybody actually tried beating some (Impossible) AIs with restriction of you can only have 1 researcher per lab all game? Because this has haunted me, I certainly couldn't achieve it...

Re: House Rules against the AI
 

Was his pretender a Great Sage, and was his one mage per lab a Starets?