[Wendigo]

Originally posted by johan osterman:
[QB]The strategic AI can handle more situations in dom 2 than in dom 1, it is slightly better but it isnt Deep Blue. I hardly ever play single player TBS games so I do not know how it holds up against the AI's of other games.
QB]

Well, we certainly do have a crowd of tbs game players that can offer opinions on this.

I do not play as many games as I used to in the past (in part due to RL being more demanding, and in part due to your game stubornly staying in my drive), but I can talk about the AI of a few classics.

MoM: Mom AI was very simple, and depended on bonuses mainly to stand vs the player. The tactical AI made a priority to target heroes, mages & missile units, but apart from that it was realtively simple to beat with inferior/specialized troops. The strategic AI just hyperexpanded relaying on its bonuses.

Kohan: Pausable RTS, so it basically plays as TBS.
The tactical AI retreats its units to heal them when badly damaged, but that's about it. When the AI wants a city it just sends anything it has vs it. AI Units are not tailor-designed to the opponent even on the highest lv as far as I can see, despite the design being far far simpler than Dominions. The strategic AI is correct.

Total War: A very annoying bonus of Shogun:TW was that the AI could 'see' your strategic move, and act upon its knowledge...this was extremely fustrating, you could have 2 defended provinces, empty one moving the army elsewhere & the AI would walk a few peasants from a nearby province & conquer it.
The tactical AI is extremely simple: just rush forward in offence (even walking into a killfield of arquebuses) without flanking maneuvers. In defense it sometimes stays put until targetted.
It's worth noting that missile light cavalry really performs as such in this game, with skirmish orders & keeping distance from the opponent.

All the above were notable games, yet none of them had a particularly challenging AI.

I wont comment on crap like Legion, Lords of Magic or similar, suffice to say that those barely survived a week in my HD.