Hi People

This is the thread for a five humans vs AI's game.

The map will be Cradle of Dominion, firstly run through the SemiRand program and then passed off to NT Jedi who has offered to improve the AI's chances with a few tricks. Thanks NT Jedi :up:

There are two AI teams, 3 land AI's in a team (Abysia, Niefelheim and Tien Chi) and 1 water AI by itself (Atlantis).

Game Parameters are:

Era: Early Era

Mods: Better Independents 2.1 (click to find the download). We are using the Gold and Resources version.

Patch: 3.26

Renaming: On

Hall of Fame Entries: 15

Gold, Production and Gem Site Frequency: Normal

Research: Hard

Graphs: Off

Turn Timer: I will set the turn timer initially to 48 hours but ask that players, at least up to turn 15, take their turns every 24 hours. Extensions will be granted when asked for. If turns start getting too long the tun timer will be lengthened.

Players:

Endomorphious - C'tis
Hrum - Kailasa
Mauxe - Caelum
Thanatus del Dragos - Fomoria
Doo - Tir na n'Og


During play I intend to record the action from my point of view using FRAPS and creating an AAR.

Turns 1 to 16 for Tir na n'Og AAR

Turns 17 to 23 for Tir an n'Og AAR

Re: Turbocharged AI vs Humanities Last Hope
 

Players who have not picked a nation please do so ASAP.

Re: Turbocharged AI vs Humanities Last Hope
 

Brainstorming time...yea, pretender designed...hmmm...gonna have to think about this...I'm not terribly bright...I don't need a SC becasue I have big *** giants, have to decide on either a rainbow to search for independent mages, as my non capital mages are crap and limited or a bless strategy for my pretty good holy troops and holy mages. Earth and Nature are always a nice choice for giant types, these guys seem to suffer from some end problems...if I go for a bless strategy, then I might as well imprison the god, and make decent order for cash, and research, as my non capital mages are garbage...man, I really am a newb, just can't make a decision yet...going to have to play around tonight.

Re: Turbocharged AI vs Humanities Last Hope
 

How's your Fomoria build going, Thanatus? I'd offer some advice, but I've never looked at Formoria, or played against them, so I have no idea. :)

I'm still tinkering with my Kailasa build, but I think I've settled on the general approach I want.

How's everyone else coming along with nation selection?

Re: Turbocharged AI vs Humanities Last Hope
 

I have settled on an imprisoned monolith with 4F4E4S6N 5Dom 3 Order and 1 Magic. Going to draft as many unmarked and god kings as possible, and work research to lay down the thunder magic. Thats pretty much all I got so far.

Re: Turbocharged AI vs Humanities Last Hope
 

I've yet to hear anything from Mauxe and Endomorphious regarding their nations and pretenders.

I've been informed that what we want to do will be more of an effort to set up on the llamaserver so I've asked Gandalf Parker if we can run the game on his server and he said we can.

I have just pm'ed Mauxe re his nation and I've heard nothing from Endomorphious for a while. I'm keen to go ahead so I will give them until tomorrow to let me know if they are still in and we'll go from there, even if it is just the three of us :)

Re: Turbocharged AI vs Humanities Last Hope
 

The profiles for Mauxe and Endomorphious indicate they're still active on the forum. Perhaps they don't know the location of this thread?

Re: Turbocharged AI vs Humanities Last Hope
 

Hi sorry lost track of the thread. As far as kingdom goes Im flexible, lately obsessed with MA Ctis, but will play just about anything.

Just need to clarify is this human players vs AI? Or a free-for-all for all concerned just with some humans and some AI's?

I really dislike adding mods of any kind to my games, since I'm not terribly good at undoing them once their on there. How does the mod affect my regular SP gameplay?

I'd be happy to play EA Ctis, Mictlan, Sauromatia, Mictlan, Arco....

Re: Turbocharged AI vs Humanities Last Hope
 

Dom3 "knows" which mods need to be on and will take care of it for you.

Mods only have to be manually turned on to create a pretender for a game, or if you are playing solo then your mods choices need turned on when you start the game. But after that, everytime you open that game up it will automatically turn on the mods it needs. You dont have to leave any mods on all the time.

IF the game is going to be a direct-connect game (instead of play by email) then even that doesnt have to be done. Connecting to the games server and port will turn on the mods that particular game needs. Then you can quit back to the pretender generation menu being sure that the right mods are on. Its a good way to make sure that you have the correct versions of each mod.

Added note: the maps dont actually have to be downloaded in a direct connect game either. If you connect to a game and you dont have the map, the game will send it to you across the connection. However thats very slow so for larger games its much better to download the map so you dont have to wait for everyone to get their map one at a time.

Oh yeah, and if you have lots of mods you play with often but not always the same ones, you can create a seperate desktop icon to open Dom3 with those mods. My shorcuts to Dom3 games type in the server and the IPs. My shortcuts for solo play change lots of game defaults and use different mod sets.
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=44262

Re: Turbocharged AI vs Humanities Last Hope
 

How about EA Ctis then endomorphious?

The Better Independents mod makes the crappier independent recruits cost something like 5000 gold and 900 resources. Basically they become unrecruitable. The purpose of this is to stop the AI from spending all its gold recruiting crap independent troops, instead (hopefully) investing in better troops. Independents that remain recruitable are those that you get for free from lucky events (or imagine what the upkeep on 50 odd 5000 gp's a piece units would be) or independents that are uniquely good (eg amazons riding lizards).

Glad to hear from you endomorphious :)

Re: Turbocharged AI vs Humanities Last Hope
 

Sounds safe to place Endomorphious as C'tis ... only Mauxe needs to provide a nation.

Re: Turbocharged AI vs Humanities Last Hope
 

I think I'd like to be Atlantis.

If you would rather I not go water I'll be Caelum.

Mauxe

Re: Turbocharged AI vs Humanities Last Hope
 

Actually I was hoping to only have an AI Oceania in the seas, I kinda think with a super-charged AI they would be tough to kick out of the seas as land nations. If its no bother Mauxe I'd ask you go Caelum.

I'll go..... Tir na n'Og... The land of the forever young....


Cheers for signing on everyone, I'll spend tonight putting the base map together.

Re: Turbocharged AI vs Humanities Last Hope
 

EA Ctis will be fine can u link the mod and map (and perhaps a friendly guide on adding mods/maps)

Re: Turbocharged AI vs Humanities Last Hope
 

I also recommend having only one AI opponent in the seas and no human players in the seas. Instead of Oceania as the AI opponent could I recommend Atlantis?

These are the land opponents I recommend for the AI opponents:

Cold Allies= Pangaea, Helheim, Neifelheim
Hot Allies= Abysia, Tien Chi, Argatha
then Atlantis could either be solo OR computer allied.

Re: Turbocharged AI vs Humanities Last Hope
 

I'm having issues with SemiRand working with the Alexander map so I'll go with the original choice of Cradle of Dominion. Due to the size constraints I'll limit the AI's to a single team of four, three land nations and one water nation.

I am thinking the AI's should be on "Difficult" setting.

The mod can be found here, of the three versions we will use the Gold + Resources version.

Cradle of Dominion you should already have.

To answer your previous question, this is an AI vs humans game, there is to be no fighting between human nations. Deals about swapping provinces or allowing another nation to take provinces for movement purposes are fine.

Re: Turbocharged AI vs Humanities Last Hope
 

For fun I'll detail my process for making the .map file.

Firstly I have run the .map file through the SemiRand program with the following nations selected:
http://i608.photobucket.com/albums/t...e/SemiRand.jpg

Seeing as the human team has one hot and one cold nation I thought it would be good for the AI team to have the same.

Re: Turbocharged AI vs Humanities Last Hope
 

Next I create a copy of the map to mark what provinces have been designated starting locations by the SemiRand program (note the map we play on won't have these marks on them, also I never bother to do this when playing a SP SemiRand map).

http://i608.photobucket.com/albums/t...HLH_scaled.jpg

133 looks to be a nice starting place, I think I'll use that for the AI and give that AI a second castle in the north west corner. I read somewhere that if the AI starts with two castles it will devote energy to link the two, if this is true this should create a strong positioned mid game AI.

Re: Turbocharged AI vs Humanities Last Hope
 

Manually placing starting positions to make it more even and a challenge, I give each AI a second starting castle. All land AI nations are allied.

The staring map will look like this:

http://i608.photobucket.com/albums/t...s_HLH_done.jpg

Re: Turbocharged AI vs Humanities Last Hope
 

I've passed the .map file on to NT Jedi. Please have your pretenders ready to start.

Re: Turbocharged AI vs Humanities Last Hope
 

Are our starting positions going to be random, or did you place them? I'm bored at work, so if I knew my starting point, I could starting thinking about strategy instead of just sitting around trying to look busy...

Re: Turbocharged AI vs Humanities Last Hope
 

You will be starting on Province 186 as chosen by Doo. Based on developer design Fomoria must start next to a water province.

Re: Turbocharged AI vs Humanities Last Hope
 

For the humans:

C'tis is at 18.
Kailasa is at 36
Tir na n'Og is at 157
Fomoria is at 186
Caelum is at 195

For the AI's:

Thats a secret until you find out in game, although it can probably be guessed who starts at 92.

Re: Turbocharged AI vs Humanities Last Hope
 

Ha, awesome, I started a SP game a couple days ago to kind of practice, and I started at 186.

Re: Turbocharged AI vs Humanities Last Hope
 

I'm trying this strategy:

Dormant Fountain of Blood
4E 2D 4B
7 Dom
3 Order
3 Production
2 Growth
2 Misfortune
1 Magic

I'm hoping to get a mini blood economy going to forge Blood Stones and Lifelong Pacts. The Death is to summon Revenants, empower in Air and forge Vision's Foe en mass (Sidhe Lords start at 16 precision and can cast both Aim and Eagle Eyes, precision overkill?). At Alt-8 Revenants plus a Skull Staff gives Disintegrate. Alt-7 is where Fog Warriors is at.

To get there I'm relying on cash and production creating large numbers of glamour troops backed up by Sidhe Lord thugs (Mirror Image and Mistform). I'm not too sure about Evocation-4 research in the early game to get Thunderstrike as we are playing Difficult Research and I want to get what I need and no more. Alt-3 gives Protection, I could spam that to increase survivability of the rank and file.

Never played Tir na n'Og before but this is my plan.

Re: Turbocharged AI vs Humanities Last Hope
 

I've got my pretended and scales decided on, Monolith 4F/4S/4E/6N with 5Dom 3O, 1M. Going to concentrate on efficiently buying troops. Unmarked as my main focus at the capital, followed by Nemedians and Firbolg javelin warriors and Fomorian warriors and Firbolg javelin warriors at others. Kings for main researchers and later as SCs, and Nemedian Champions for everything else, main troop leaders, stealth raiders, researchers when I can't afford Kings. Going to go Evo 3 for Air magic offence first, then alt 3, thaum 2, and encht 2,Con 4 to thug and SC, then back to Evo 5, and then conj all the way for death summons and unique summons like morrigans and bargest. Will be recruiting a lot of Druids to research and later to use as shocking mo-fos and Fomorian Champions to pray and then thug later on non-capital fortresses.

So Storm, lighting spells, and death summons, good bless, and dance of the morrigans, should be pretty tough. Pretty simple plan, but I think solid against AI.

So, when we starting this?

Re: Turbocharged AI vs Humanities Last Hope
 

I've given the .map file to NT Jedi, just waiting on word back from him.

Re: Turbocharged AI vs Humanities Last Hope
 

Good lord, I'm outclassed. Thankfully, this isn't a PvP game. My strategy is..uhhmmm...yeah.
1. Steal underpants. 2. uhmmm. 3. Profit.
Seriously you guys have really thought out your position well. I am waffling between an awake PoD with a 4E/4F and possibly 1 or 2 extra death. 10 Dominion. Scales are still up in the air, but I am leaning towards 03,S3,H3,G/D0,L/M0,D2.

Initial plan is rapid expansion with the PoD. Recruit lizardman elite for 2 more initial expansion parties (slow going from SP tests) then mass some chariots. Recruit Suaromancers as researchers.

Dash to Con4 for skull mentors. Begin Recruiting Shamans for research and to be skull monkeys. PoD comes back home as a forge peon. Skip the mid portion of the game.

Spam leviathan and take over the seas.

Re: Turbocharged AI vs Humanities Last Hope
 

A lot of profit to be made in underpants, just ask Calvin Klein :)

I made an error in my thinking, I'm used to playing CBM where the Fountain of Blood gives +3 blood slaves per month for free, this doesn't happen in vanilla and it does make a difference to the speed of setting up the blood economy.

Also in a SemiRand test game, be prepared for an AI pretender decked out in good items in the early-mid game. I'm not sure what pretenders NT Jedi was planning but this can be a killer if your not prepared (or your mages spam phantasmal warriors instead of lightning. I HATE those summon phantasmal rubbish spells). While we are not playing I suggest you give the SemiRand a test run to see what it does.

Get it here.

Re: Turbocharged AI vs Humanities Last Hope
 

I'm not expanding quick enough in my practice runs. Going to go Evo 3 THEN Con 4 in research, get those thugs and SC's out sooner.

Re: Turbocharged AI vs Humanities Last Hope
 

Better Independents 2.1

a) in case someone else didn't have it already.
2) so i can grab it quickly for my other machine later.

Re: Turbocharged AI vs Humanities Last Hope
 

Hey everyone... I should be finished within 12hours. I vanished for a few days because of work and girlfriend. Anyways I'm almost done.

Re: Turbocharged AI vs Humanities Last Hope
 

ok.. I have read through a few posts and I have looked at the vsAI game list.. but I have not seen our game.. or I might be missing it.

Would someone give me either specific directions to upload my pretender or point me to a good set of directions?

It is possible we cannot upload yet. If so I will still need some guidance for when we can. I have played only on llama so far.

Mauxe

Re: Turbocharged AI vs Humanities Last Hope
 

We need to wait for NT Jedi to be done with the .map file. Then its given to Gandalf Parker who creates the game on his server, which we upload our pretenders to.

Once I know we are ready to upload to Gandalf's I'll PM everyone.

Re: Turbocharged AI vs Humanities Last Hope
 

Map file finished and sent to Doo

Re: Turbocharged AI vs Humanities Last Hope
 

I recommend placing the supply setting at 250 or higher so the AI opponents are less likely to starve units.

Re: Turbocharged AI vs Humanities Last Hope
 

Thankyou very much for your input on this NT Jedi.

If you ever need a kidney contact me :)

I've emailed Gandalf Parker to ask him to set up the game on his server.

Last chance to tweak your pretenders and download the Better Independents mod. Also be sure to have downloaded and installed the 3.26 patch.

Re: Turbocharged AI vs Humanities Last Hope
 

Trust me, I'm terrible at this game. I wouldn't be surprised if I am not the first person out. Even against AI. And I've been playing pretty much since the game was released. But, I want to get better, so I hope this is a start.

Re: Turbocharged AI vs Humanities Last Hope
 

Alright, uploaded my pretender.

Re: Turbocharged AI vs Humanities Last Hope
 

Gandalf has informed me of the game being ready for our pretenders.

I've emailed or PM'ed everyone the log in details, please log in and upload. Note the game starts as soon as the last person uploads their pretender, can I ask whoever that is to post in this thread that the game is underway please?

Good luck everyone. NT Jedi has told me he's betting on a human win but is expecting the AI to be putting up globals and giving a strong fight.

NT Jedi is betting on us, lets not let the rest of humanity down, lets kick the AI back into the 286 age!

Re: Turbocharged AI vs Humanities Last Hope
 

Alright, this game has taken almost 3 weeks to set up, lets get started kicking some AI butt!

Re: Turbocharged AI vs Humanities Last Hope
 

Hello everyone, Have my pretender ready to go but i need help in loading the mod. It seems to be in a DM format that my computer is not reading. Any suggestions for a program that can read it or suggestions on what Im doing wrong to load it.

Re: Turbocharged AI vs Humanities Last Hope
 

What happens to the game after the AI are destroyed? Do we turn on each other?

Re: Turbocharged AI vs Humanities Last Hope
 

endomorphious, when you unzip the mod all that stuff you get (the folder and the various .dm files) goes in the mods folder of your Dominions install (for me, on WinXP that would be "C:\\Program Files\dominions3\mods\").

Just stick everything that you unzipped in that mods folder and launch Dominions. Then you should be all set - I don't think you even need to select the mod or turn it on or anything for Turbocharged. I think Dominions will know that we're using that mod when you login to dom3minions.com so you should be good.

However, if you just want to confirm that the mod is being seen by Dom3 after sticking it in that folder, you can launch the game, and from the first menu choose Preferences (? ...umm Options?) and then see a new list of sub-options one of which should be "Mod Preferences". If you see Better Independents listed as an option you can click on and enable, that means you're all set.

Nice!

Ninja'ed! :p

I have my pretender design all set; I'll upload it once I get home from work tonight. Didn't see this update yesterday - was out and about until kinda late, and when I got home the focus was dinner and sobering up before bed. ;)

Indeed - if I'm the last one (seems like I will be) I'll post here.

Thanks to NTJedi for helping get this game up and running with extra AI evilness. And to Gandalf. And to Doo for starting this game in the first place.

I hope to not embarass myself early on with the monkeys. I think they tend to be weakest early on, so we'll see if I can make it to the tasty summons at which point I should (hopefully) be alright. Of course, with all the boosts the map tweaking team have made to the AIs with their buffed pretenders and whatnot, the AIs might be coming into their own just when I'm at my most (over)confident. Hopefully, I'll manage to do more than just fling poo at our adversaries. :)

I was figuring we'd just declare victory. I guess if some people want to celebrate by trying to smash each other, that's an option.

In any case, I look forward to waging war on the unholy ones with you gentlemen! Death to the AIs!

Re: Turbocharged AI vs Humanities Last Hope
 

Yeah, Thanatus del Dragos must have been like an Olympic sprinter crouched at the line and itching for the starters gun to go off, I only emailed him like two minutes before I posted on the thread :D

What happens when the AI is kaput? Whatever we want! Thats what we are fighting for are we not? Freedom? :p

In playing SemiRand maps before being aware of potentially encountering an awake SC with free starting gear can be important. I don't know if NT Jedi has done this to us, so have a think how you might stop an early SC rush. I'm bee-lining straight to Evo-4 for Thunderstrike.

Re: Turbocharged AI vs Humanities Last Hope
 

I'm thinking thunder strike and a swarm of Nemedians.

And, most of the time, I have nothing better to do other than hangout at forums at home or work...I do have a life, it's just not a very exciting one, and the girlfriend works nights, so she sleeps a lot when I'm on...so yea, I'm going to be posting a lot. No real threat of me taking a lot of time taking my turns either.

Re: Turbocharged AI vs Humanities Last Hope
 

Just to clarify, I didn't mean that it just lands there when you unzip the mod. You unzip the mod and move/copy all the files for the mod from whereever you unzipped it to your "dominions3\mods\" directory. There is no installer - you just unzip, move the files to the right place, and you're done.

Maybe that was clear already. I dunno. :)

I any case, my pretender is uploaded. It looks like we're just waiting on C'tis.

Re: Turbocharged AI vs Humanities Last Hope
 

Nemedians probably won't hit often enough, although when they do it will be hard. We are talking Body Ethereal, Lucky and defense 22+ SC's...

Maybe NT Jedi has not been that mean.

Thunderstrike will do the job, as long as they are not resistant to lightning and the wizards don't spam Phantasmal Warriors/Wolves.

Re: Turbocharged AI vs Humanities Last Hope
 

Sorry guys. Just can not get the mod to get recognized by Dom3. I've downloaded and unzipped like 5 times now both directly into the mod file and not and then manually moving it over after extraction. Any ideas on what Im doing wrong. I used to run mods on WoW so I've done this type of thing before. Not sure what I'm bungling right now.

Re: Turbocharged AI vs Humanities Last Hope
 

What operating system?
And when you connect to the game, what does it tell you?