[licker]

Originally posted by Joonie73:
I noticed that AI neglects to do some things that are vital at the endgame stage, such as:

1. build high-quality troops;

2. cast high-level summons;

3. forge high-level items;

4. protect high level commanders, etc.

They do OK in the demo Version but I am wondering if these problems may make the AI a bit too easy to beat in the full Version. Any informed views?

I've actually seen the AI do all of those things above. Maybe they don't do it all the time, or enough of the time, but I've seen Ulm use knights and HI (along with chaff), I've seen Marg and Ulm use seasonal spirits and *buckets* of cave drakes (14 of them in one army... that was nasty...).

I've seen some magic items, though high level (depending on what you mean by high level) isn't really doable in 40 turns. And I've seen protected commanders.

What the AI doesn't seem to do well is search (or find) magic sites, their gem income is almost always terrible after 30+ turns. Perhaps they are given more gems on higher difficulty levels and as such don't feel the need to search? Perhaps they arn't scripted to do heavy searching until after turn 40? I don't know, there are many issues that remain to be resolved once we can play more than 40 turns.

Also as Gandalf pointed out, you can handicap the AI by the map settings, or you can make it more challenging. I don't think though that changing the difficulty setting of the AI has any relevance to how it approaches a map, other than by having more resources to boost its economy. That by itself will have an effect, but I get the feeling Gandalf is implying that there is more to it than that, please correct me if I misinterpret your statements Gandalf.