[Wendigo]

Originally posted by HJ:
I said "as far as the AIs go", not when compared to Napoleon or Alexander the Great. Very few games have anything comparable to TW AI. The AI is exploitable, for sure, but it can perform really well. If you see another game with the AI that can perform flanking and combined arms attacks, let me know.

This is strange, it sounds as if we were talking of different games. I have never seen the TW AI perform a flanking maneuver (although it indeed answers your own flanking atempts by rearanging its army formation). In my experience (in the highest lv in STW, and one of the higher if not the highest in MTW) the AI will just charge forward its melee units to engage the nearest enemy unit & fire with skirmish or hold orders with its missile units. That can hardly be considered 'combined arms attacks', when it basically ignores its own rock-scissor-paper rules in its offensive.

Frankly, it's anything but bright. If it tried to at least engage your cavalry with its spears, maneuver for a flank charge, try to gain the higher ground...but it doesn't do anything like this. Its only notable doings are the skirmish script for missile units and the army formations that at least keep some order before they break & the mounted troops rush forward leaving the infantry behind.

And all the calculations are done in real time. (I'm not a RTS fan, I'm just saying why it isn't comparable). And what other variables might those be, btw? I mean, since there is no terrain, no formations, no charge bonuses, no accurate targeting?.

Some other poster expanded on this, but basically in my little knowledge of AI scripting I find it easier to write some glorified IF-THEN conditionals to account for:
a couple dozen units x 3 different facings x 3 or so different terrains x higher/lower ground x a handful of different formations in order to decide whether to charge, fall back or maneuver for a better postion. Maybe add a couple more conditionals for morale & experience.

In Dominions however said conditionals would have to acount for _many hundred units_ ^ modified by many hundred spells (note that multiple spells can affect the same unit, thus we have an exponitial increase in posibilities here)^ magic items x morale, experience, afflictions, HoF bonuses, dominion bonuses, starvation.... see the difference?

Even with TW being RT handling a few thousand triggers (or maybe only a few hundred, as units can be grouped into similar types that would act the same 90% of the time) should be doable for any modern computer.

They are not supposed to be simultaneous, and they are not. You take this into acount when making moves that it's IGO-UGO (sort of), and not simultaneous.

Just curious, is this a guess or a deduction you made from MP experience? And what game does it refers to? I ask so because this issue raised many complaints with STW, but I do not recall the same feeling from MTW, so I have to wonder if it was changed.

I also liked them because of all those things, but I also find them to put up a decent challenge. More so than vast majority of other games. Since you're talking about Shogun, may I suggest trying out MTW if you can find it on sale

Thks for the sugestion, already got it. While I enjoyed both installments I guess I must differ regarding the challenge, for the reasons stated above.

[ October 15, 2003, 11:39: Message edited by: Wendigo ]