[Johan K]

Hey, no need to call the mighty AI a cheater!

It does play with fog of war and has no idea where your little arch mage is walking around peacefully, searching for magic sites. Unless he has a scout there, of course.

To make the AI creation a possible task there are some differences in how it and a human player get information. But this should have no noticable effect on how the AI plays the game, compared to a player with the human information. It does have info on the ownership of provinces when targeting spells, but in most circumstances a human player would have a very good knowledge about that too by looking at the score graph, using some old scout info and making a qualified guess.

I think the Dominions II AI is exceedingly honest. If you assassinate one of its arch theurgs it really must cancel that order for 45 gladitors if it wants to replace him. If you conquer half of its provinces it really looses half of its income and he will be in just as much trouble if he gets sieged by a barbarian horde on turn 5. And of course he receives just as many unlucky events as the next player.

I think it is important that the AI plays by the same rules as much as possible. I really don't like a game where the AI is unaffected by any attempts to destroy its economy and instead it sits around with an enormous pile of cash waiting for you to get powerful enough to destroy it in one swift blow instead.

If the Dominions AI gets a pile of cash it will just spend more money in order to eliminate you faster. Therefore it is always short on cash just like any normal player.

/Johan K
Creator of the AI, God of War, patron of merchants