[HJ]

Originally posted by licker:
I agree that there are some (balance mostly) issues that may be negatively impacting the AI right now. However, I don't think that only modding is going to be the answer to 'fixing' the AI, unless the modders are able to somehow change the priorities of the AI in game. It is fine to make maps that should be more challenging, but it still doesn't strike at some of the underlieing (supposed) weaknesses. Starting the AI with more HI is fine, but if they don' continue to build more HI the advantage is soon lost (well depending on how many HI you start them with). Taking LI away from them completely (assuming you can do that by modding the units files) is another work around, but its also not really satisfactory in making the AI 'smarter'.

Alot of the discussion in this thread has tried to uncover the mechanisms by which the AI is making its army build selections, already it has been uncovered that perhaps the AI isn't building enough forts to allow for better troop recruitment, maybe the AI doesn't understand how to save money to build what it needs to, I don't know, but issues like that can only be 'patched' by scripting maps, they need to be fixed by some tweeking of the inputs to the AI, that's what I'm hoping is possible, as I don't want a complete rewrite, just the ability to tweek existing inputs.

I agree with most of what you said. Pre-scripting the AI conditions is pretty much the same as giving the AI the ability to cheat. So, for example that on impossible difficulty the AI gets free units, etc. This is what most of the games do to increrase difficulty, from RTS onwards, but this is not really what most people were saying that they want in this thread. Beside, one of the big pluses in Doms II is that you can start the same map many times over and have a vastly different game due to other factors being fairly randomized, such as starting locations, richness, sites, etc. Hardcoded scenarios are not really a solution in terms of replay possibilities (one of the greatest strengths of this game, IMHO).

The thing where I don't agree is that externalizing the AI input would solve the problem. I would much prefer it to be done in the vanilla game than to have mods to do it. Maybe it's just me, as I never found mods to be attractive: there are always things that I don't agree with in them, and I don't feel compelled to accept that in the same way I think about the vanilla game, so I never play them. That's not to say that mods wouldn't help input-wise, as people could have more exact suggestions to give to the devs, but I would like nothing better than to see it improved in the actual vanilla (patched) game.