[Chris Byler]

Originally posted by Kristoffer O:

quote:

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Originally posted by Alneyan:


I would like a confirmation: is Dominions AI cheating? I would tend to believe it is not the case. If so, Dominions AI is really not that bad, and is one of the few AIs that does not rely on extra resources to provide a challenge. And I will be then in the side of "The AI isn't that bad, really".

The AI is not cheating on normal level. At higher levels it gets more design points and earns more money. Thats about it.

I got an idea regarding AI dependancy on LI when I was away. Vacations are 'foyson' for the mind.


Regarding fort construction. I'm not sure how the AI works, but where would you build a fortress? Consider fort type, nation, geography, income, resources etc.

What is the most important matter? How should they be weighted? How much shall current wars affect the spending of time and money. What army should build the fortress?

I wouldn't mind a numerical evaluation of this such as:
Castle cost / 2 < Income + res + gem income x 25 + neighbors x 5
Add a couple of other conditions.

Just to make you think. Eventually it might result in something good.

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Some responses to these questions:

1. In your list of factors you don't list population type and sites in the candidate province. I often fort to enable building more of an indep troop (especially amazon sacred cavalries, which are all useful; but also e.g. heavy cavalry for Caelum or C'tis, longbows/crossbows for any nation with weak missile troops) and/or protecting a location with high gem income or useful mages (either pop based (amazons again) or site based).

A good first rule is that if you can't spend all your gold buying useful units in forts you already have, you need a new one; if your units are frequently starving because of insufficient supplies far from your forts, you need a new one in that area. (Which reminds me - supply production can be a factor in fort location too.)

Rarely build a fort next to another fort (it is occasionally worth it for something that can be only found in that province, for example I will always fort a province that contains Mount Chaining in Dom I - in Dom II it isn't as powerful but is still pretty good if you are a blood using nation).

2. You don't need an army to build a fort. I usually don't use one. There is some risk in building a fort where you don't have an army, but I find it is often better to have the army doing something else - either taking more indeps (if they are available) or distracting the enemy so he doesn't have time to Call of the Winds every place I might be building a fort. Get some province defense though - it's annoying to have your fort sieged by Call of the Winds (and of course even more annoying to have the construction interrupted).

3. Fort selection value: (Adjustment * (resources + supplies)) + (gems x 10) + value of rare units recruitable here (this value should depend on the rarity and power of the unit; longbows and crossbows count a little, amazon cavalries and mages count more, something like grey knights would count a lot; mages with paths different from your nation are more valuable than mages that duplicate your nation's paths) + misc site value (enter-to-summons, cost reducers).

I don't generally take income into account directly (although the first two terms value high population provinces more). "Adjustment" depends on the admin and gold cost of the castle; higher admin and cost should raise the value of the adjustment. Adjustment = 0 if there is an adjacent fort (this will reduce fort-next-to-fort except when gem income, rare unit value, or site value are high, which are the exceptions to the no-adjacent-fort rule).

4. Once you have built a fort, build a temple. Temples are vulnerable to enemy attack, but in a fort they are far less vulnerable. Then they spread your dominion, let you recruit priests and preach better. Mictlan might be an exception to this rule because their temples don't radiate - but blood sacrifices are more effective when performed in temples (IIRC), so they might want to build temples anyway so that they can sacrifice there. It's better to preach or sacrifice inside a fort because it protects the priest (high level priests especially are pretty expensive).

Build a lab if you are likely to want to recruit any mages (if you are fortifying because of local troops or sites you probably want a lab for that anyway; some nations like Marignon always want to recruit mages) or summon/construct troops there to supplement your recruited troops (C'tis usually wants to do this; but Desert Tombs C'tis can do without the lab, if you don't mind shipping in your unpriests).