[Sammas]

Hmm, replied before but it mustn't have been processed.

The fact that a pretender ascends after a game is *not* an issue. The ascension is only implicit, after all. Is it really not possible to vanquish enemy pretenders one at a time? eg. after defeating on pretender, you may receive the information that on a distant shore, the followers of X are growing in number..

On AI, I think if someone writes a bot that is a threat to human players, then that would be terrific. I think it's fairly obvious that such a bot would be more of a benefit to the game than a negative. Think about it: there is no advantage in running a bot over a period of weeks in order to win a Dominions game. No money-making opportunities, no immediate visual feedback (eg. headshots), no special status etc. But having a bot that could provide a challenging game for skilled players would be a really good selling point.