[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by proteus:
I guess my first post told you about the AI weaknesses:

This has been done often in other threads, and better than I can do it, but lets go over these again....

1. The AI is massing weak troops. Why? I see hella lot of light infantry and cheap troops. Pointless, they are toast.

There is only 1 AI and it plays the same in small or large games, low indepts or high, low magic or high, and any nation. LI are not pointless. They are only pointless to certain nations in certain games. If you think their purpose is to beat up your hvy troops then play some more.

If you REALLY feel this can be improved then show us a forumula. What type of troop, when, how many, what percentage of the formula? Write us the AIs code so we all can test it to see if it holds up in more different game situations than the one now.

If you check out the threads I mentioned then you would see that there is alot that players can do on this even if they are not coders. Do a search for...
SUGGESTION: AI castle building algorithm
SUGGESTION: AI troop building algorithm

2. The AI is making weird strategic decisions. It is moving around with strong commanders without a point, and without a decent army.

Like much of this, this is an opinion stated as a fact. If you are going to work with quantity over quality then random movement is best. It holds up against human players much better than smart movements.

3. The AI is not equipping its heroes properly, sometimes not at all.

Another area where a small effort on your part to come up with a formula would have kept you from making statements like how easy these would be to fix. Get specific and lets test it.

4. The AI is not protecting its heroes/commanders.

Probably true. I think it does a better job when they are at home, and probably when they are first sent out. But eventually the flak troops die off and you are left with just the big ones. Especially bad if thats the AIs god.

Im not sure how well the path-finding works for something like a "go home" plan. Especially since the AI does not store information well for multi-turn actions so each turn it would have to re-decide that the piece needs to go home.

Maybe a "stop and build army if less than 100" command or something so it can boost up with whatever indepts are at that province but that would end up with "crappy stupid armies" again.

5. The AI isnt using the mid/late game spells very well.
Same problem as equipment. Come up with a formula. One of the reasons that AI's in other games can do better is that the choices are less and more obvious. The AI does cast spells, it does select what it casts, youjust think it could be improved. But would your improvement work for all nations in all games without alot of "if this and if that"? (and how well would you take it when somoene says your way is stupid and broken?)

6. The AI wont summon too many "heavyweight monsters". -> I wonder what the heck the AI is doing with its magic income.

Since its a turn-based PBEM game its hard to write in multiple turn planning. Saving up for things is difficult to write. Thats true of things like castles, temples, major spells, major summonings, major equipment. If an AI has 50 gems and needs to decide what to do with them then it will decide to make 5 castings of a 10 gem summoning instead of save up for a 75 gem summoning. To decide any different would have it saving up gems early in the game when it should have been doing small summonings.

7. The AI's battlefield tactics is kinda laughable as well.
Actually Ive seen alot of improvement in this. It now uses more formations and positioning on the battlefield. Unless I use scouts to watch their battles as they approach me I can have my strategys ruined by the formations they use. Of course such surprises are easy to beat if you know they are coming but thats alittle hard to fix in an AI.

[ May 09, 2004, 14:59: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]