[13lackGu4rd]

if armies of 20 cannons are killing you in AoE3 than you're doing something very wrong :P speaking of AoE3, the AI there is pretty good compared to other AIs. it's alright in medium difficulty(alright as in what medium should be) and starts to get a bit tough on hard, and pretty tough on very hard. still, it's the AI so there are obviously ways to exploit it and destroy him, such as using mass Hussars or whatever those sword armed light cavalries are called, to destroy cannon heavy armies with no pike protection. but still, compared to other games in general and specifically RTS games, Microsoft actually did something right in AoE3, something I can't say about most of their other programs.

Dominions' AI is nothing like AoE3's, it's pathetic. sure, it amasses armies of 300+ men, but it has piss poor magic support, and generally a single army killing spell, from Earthquake to Rain of Stones to Flame Storm, etc, completely annihilates those massive armies.

the main problem is that Dominions is so complex and with such a variety of both units and spells, that no AI can actually handle it properly. even those super genius chess AIs won't do well in Dominions due to the sheer amount of options and variables upon which said options are evaluated on. in chess you have a lot less moves, and the success/failure of said move is a lot easier to calculate. in Dominions there are a ton more options, and the results said actions lead to(mainly on the strategic map but also during battles) are very hard if not outright impossible to predict.

with that being said, there are still a lot of things that *can* be improved with Dominions' AI, such as combat scripting(or well, lack of, hence automatic behavior), actually casting/dispelling globals, actually using rituals, site search, not stack a ton of useless PD, etc.

the main question for the developers is whether all the work that needs to be done to improve the AI will be worth it. is there enough demand for a better AI in Dominions and in other TBS in general? personally I don't think so, as no AI will reach the level of multiplayer, as I've explained above, so multiplayer will still remain the favored options by seasoned players. those who love single player and endless hours of AI annihilation will continue to do so with or without an improved AI. thus I don't think the AI will get much better than it already is, which is unfortunate. the only field which I think might(or at the very least should) actually see some work is the battlefield spell choice, as that affects both single player and multiplayer(when you forgot to script mages, and more commonly when they run out of their 5 turn script).