AI Helper Builds
 

It's possible, in SP games, to set all your opponents on "Human" for the first round, and then go in and set up their Pretenders/scales/etc. You can even play the first round for them, and then reset them all to "Computer" and allow the AI to carry on from there. I've noticed recently that there's been a lot of requests (even more than usual) for ways to improve SP difficulty. This seems to be one of the most common solutions, but it's also one of the least accessible, especially for people who are new to the game (or like me, aren't necessarily that strategically adept in the first place).

We've had a few threads about this before, but I was wondering-for those of you who have given this any thought-what your suggestions are for a starting Pretender build for each of the nations. Include what to do for the first round, and strategies for the various mod nations, if you'd like.

Re: AI Helper Builds
 

You should note that when you set players to AI, they will be controlled by the normal AI and there's no way to adjust the difficulty, AFAIK.

Re: AI Helper Builds
 

However, "difficulty" setting does not affect AI behavior- it instead gives the AI bonus creation points, gold, research, etc. A well-designed pretender might more than make up the difference.

Re: AI Helper Builds
 

Agreed with Ewierl.. it would even be nicer if you could give them more points though to compensate should be possible.. I guess you could make a mod to give all players more points and then just not use them ?

Re: AI Helper Builds
 

You can set AI gods _and_ put them on Impossible, via map commands. Unfortunately I pretty much channel my tech poking with dominions on to the multiplayer side, and so haven't invested any time in this, but I know it can be done, and I think it's reasonably easy too. Try the mapping manual (in dominions3/doc).

Re: AI Helper Builds
 

Fixing the scales manually will NOT even out the difference between normal and impossible AI. The bonus it gets to gold, gems, production; these are greater than the difference between order3 and turmoil3 and so on. Besides which the AI on impossible gets extra points at pretender creation and is therefore more likely to have positive scales anyway.

Re: AI Helper Builds
 

The fix to this would be of course to allow you to set the difficulty of the AI when you turn to AI control. That would go a long way toward making SP more challenging.

Could we expect to see this improvement in a patch sometime soon?

Re: AI Helper Builds
 

This is 100% accurate. I have found that the AI does better (most of the time) on impossible settings than making edited pretenders and scales, even cheating magic and scales. The time required to set a game using map editing of cheated magic and scales then Human start and switching to AI is fairly substantial, and not worth it in my opinion.

Besides, the AI on impossible presents adequate challenge for me. If I need a more substantial challenge I'll try and convince the wife that playing Dom3 is a good use of my spare time and that there is no down side to drinking beer.

Re: AI Helper Builds
 

I've never played with it, but I think what llamabeast was saying, is that you can start with Impossible AIs but use map commands to change both the scales and the actual pretender.

Thus they still get the Impossible AI bonuses and intelligent design.

I've never tried, because I agree that impossible AIs provide sufficient challenge in the early/mid game and the micromanagement makes me give up before the late game anyway.

Re: AI Helper Builds
 

I agree... this works the best for providing a more powerful AI opponent. As mentioned in a different thread it's best if the AI pretenders are immobile or a size 2 otherwise each of them will blindly send their pretenders into the arena death match.

The arena death match could actually be a very fun and interesting event if the prize was improved to provide the winner with gold and gems based on the current game turn. An improved arena prize would increase the interest of all human participants to send a good challenger.