[Kristoffer O]

Hmm. I think this discussion needs to stop before anyone gets annoyed. So I'll round up this with the following.

It is clear that MStavros is unsatisfied with how the single player AI works, and I can't blame him. I do not have any big problems defeating the AI at most levels.

MStavros says that we shouldn't add SP AI if we can't do it properly. Here I disagree. I have had many good and fun games watching my realm grow and heros come and go. There are people who enjoy playing SP games as roleplaying experiences where the empire is the character.

If I'm correct it is not the AI but the lack of improvement that bothers you the most. This is understandable. It is probably a bad desicion (or non-desicion) PR-wise not to improve it.

Unfortunately were not paid to do stuff. We don't have a publisher or lead developer that tells us what we must do and in what time frame. In school I get paid to teach my students this and that before summer etc. If I don't I get fired (or something). As a developer I have few restraints on me and I'm a quitter. If I get frustrated I quit the project and start another one. If I get feedback, from my own work or from players, I work harder. Thus many ideas are started, discarded and eventually restarted. If an improvement doesn't work I give up and do something else. That probably makes me a bad developer.

So, to sum this thread up:
Our skills in AI programming will never make the dominions AI a match for a human player one vs one.
On the other hand there are some issues that if fixed would improve the AI performance to some extent. How much I do not know, but it would perhaps remove some cheesier anti-AI tactics available to the experienced player. Some suggestions on cheezy-fixes have been posted here and earlier on the forum. Some of them might appear, probably not all. One of these fixes are fort-building.

I hope this clears matters a bit. Thanks!