[Arralen]

Maybe the problem is not the game nor the AI, but the players ?!

I have the vague impression, that some SP players try to "beat the game".
Not beat single nations, their adversaries on the gameboard, mind you, but the game engine itself. After a time they succeed, find out which moves the AI uses, which tactics it cannot cope with at all. Then use that knowledge to roll all over it.

Maybe this comes from all those badly designed games out there, be it "strategy" (tactical) games which let the player re-start insanely difficult scenarios until they figured out the only way to win, or RPGs with pre-set pathes to follow .. dunno.. .

However, the effect is, that no AI which could be realised within the constrains of Dominions will ever satisfy them - it would require "thinking" on a human level. Even (e.g.) the best chess AI would be hopelessly inept, because Dominions is so much more complicated.


Actually, I myself do not play (blitz) MP anymore, because I'm thoroughly fed up with the ultra-competitive play this requires: Lots of pretender builds simply do not work then, lots of aspects never get used.

Instead, I play SP. With AI on normal level - I mostly use pre-designed pretenders for the AI. And as I do quite some roleplaying, I get some fun out of it. E.g. at some point my prophet (2nd in HoF) got killed by some string of bad luck. In a competitive game, I would have simple got my a new one as soon as possible. In my SP game, I switched every mage available to research enchantment-7 to get my prophet back as mummy. I'll have to empower some mage, maybe my pretender, too - quite costly, therefore inefficient and suicidal in MP.
But fun.

And sometimes I even get my butt kicked by some AI which had a lucky (head)start for some reason. That's ok.

Therefore - try to make in-game decisions. Not to out-whit the game rules or the game engine itself ...