designs for best single play experience

[Ygramul]

I had been enjoying this great game for the past few days... It is sucking away my life - I feel like like a starspawn who just entered the void gate...

Anyway, I usually don't have the patience to play a game over a month, so I play solo. I'd like to hear the advice from old timers on how to design a solo game.

First a few of my observations:

1) AI Race Choices:
So far, I noticed that having Ermor or Jotunheim (even at lower AI settings) will have them dominate the map against other AI's. Mictlan even at high AI does badly.

Playing as Ermor can also be too easy.
One fun memory was against Ulm: I as SoulGate Ermor dominated the map and with my countless legions of spirits assulted the Ulm castle their Last remaining province. The turn executions took something like an hour and the end of which my legions were slauhtered. Those mindless automatons they summoned bogged my legions while the priests banished my spirits. (Of course, then I got angry and cast an Utterdark spell. Almost a cheat.)

2) Map settings:
I wonder how the AI handles different map settings, like magic site frequency and indy strength. I find that AI gets penalized at higher indy strength. I wonder how it would deal with a high magic site setting.

I initially hoped that I can just run a magic only nation. Armies consisting of summoned critters mostly etc. I find it very hard. Magic is largely irrelevant it seems till one gets to late game.

3) Map Choice:
Big or small maps? Are the AI's better at early or late game? How good are AIs with handling water?

(Specifically, I wish to try out Ry'leh again and conquer many seas. Is there good balanced map somewhere. (Aran seems to be the best of the lot in the prepackaged set.))

4) Micromanagement:
This is a biggie. Late games of any strategy title can get cumbersome, but D2 is especially bad as you cannot cue purchase orders or assign "go-to" commands etc. (PBEM nature no doubt)

I wonder which nations are the least troublesome at this point. I hate having juggle gems to front line commanders only to see them waste the gems in a single battle for trivia. Decking your commanders with artifacts also becomes mind boggling as you have many couriers juggling items back and forth. (MOM had a teleport item feature for a mana cost)

I considered playing Mictlan just for the blood (no powerplaying here) but I fear it will be too cumbersome even in midgame with all the blood management, patrolling, sacrificing etc.


Please post your best single play experiences, including map settings, nation picks, AI choices etc.


Yg.

[Gandalf Parker]

The AI does badly if you reach them too soon. Setting the AI on impossible and the independents on 3 gives you the impression that the AI is worthless. With normal AI an indep setting of 5 seems to work well. With imposible then indep of 9. Larger maps also let the AI play better.

If you want to play a magic game then use the biggest map, hardest indeps, and play Arcos.

[licker]

I still wonder why we can't get some kind of 'automate' commands for mages to search out sites in owned provinces, or priests to build temples, or any kind of repetative thing that will occur over several turns. I'd also like to be able to set travel destinations that require more than one turn and not have to continully tug my slow troops one province by province every friggin turn...

Little things to be sure, but get enough little things right and they make a big thing

As to best SP game... well alot depends on what you are looking for. Certain settings handicap either the player or the AI (as GP pointed out), and setting up 'themed' games, like one human race aginst all the nonhuman races (or vice versa) can be entertaining from a RP point of view. I usually don't play with Ermor active though, since the other AIs just can't seem to handle them, and if I don't start close to them to keep them in check, they tend to just overrun the rest of the map. That can be fun to play against too, but it also gets a bit repetative.

[General Tacticus]

1) Just for the record, Ulm kicked Ermor's *** in my SP game (Impossible AI, World War scenario, indy 9) with no help whatsoever on my part. Of course, I don't know what theme Ermor was playing, if it was Broken Empire it is less impressive.

2) Impossible AIs on a large map with indy 9 do very well. Indy 9 force them to build large armies rather than rush the start and leave themselves wide open, and large map also give them time to collect the return on their research/site searching investment, and not have to worry about an early rush. The opposite, small map and low indy, mean you can gooble an AI or two and rule the game ever after, especially with a SC Pretender. The AI do know how to cast big spell and search for sites, but I don't know how they might handle extreme settings.

3) I'll late you know how good the AI are at late game when I get there. The problem is, the player is usually quite good at it, so the AI would have to be just as good... The AI doesn't seem to pump more research late than early, but it might be enough.

I am not so far impressed with the AI ability to conquer/jump across seas, except of course Atlantis and R'lyeh. Ermor often conquers a few as well, but that's about it. I suspect the AI knows how to use amphibious troops, but is not good enough at building them on its own.

4) Aye, micromanagement is a bore. Try to steer your game toward things that are automatic (blood hunt, monthly rituals, summoning sites) and having a large cash pile so you can order 5 (or 10) turn worth of armies at a time. Build castles near your borders if you can, and go for massive attacks rather than attrition wars. Anything to reduce micromanagement.
I also like to play with luck 3 and use crossbreedings or other random spells, just for the excitement (oh, look, a basilisk ! and a free castle !).
I treat each turn as a mini-game : play one, take a 10 minute break, then come back and don't try to remember what I was doing, but rather what I should do given the situation I now have Sure, I forget things, but then I check a castle and find the big army I had ordered, or a summoning site and discover 50 lamias ready to go...

[Coffeedragon]

Originally posted by Ygramul:
1) AI Race Choices:
2) Map settings:
3) Map Choice:
4) Micromanagement:

My .02:

1) Randomize them, using dice or something. Or invent yourself a storyline, and use the approriate AIs. But you shouldn´t play Ermor, it´s too easy.

2-3): Indeps 5-6, use lots of AIs, some may get lucky. I like one player/7 provinces. (50 province map would have you and 6 AIs.)

4): Use Victory Conditions that end the game, before it gets boring. For example, choose Dominion, with (#towin=#provinces*8).

[Coffeedragon]

Originally posted by General Tacticus:

2) Impossible AIs on a large map with indy 9 do very well.

This may be well be true. I am not yet ready to move up to impossible/large, though.

Playing on small maps with difficult AIs, the one thing they seem to be bad at is fast expansion, that´s why I use lots of AIs, to limit what I am best at (speedy early expansion).

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by licker:
Little things to be sure, but get enough little things right and they make a big thing

I dont think those are such little things for a PBEM game to do. Remember that everything is packaged up and sent to a host for processing (even in a solo game). And there is no real setup for remembering things across turns. I think almost everything is refigured each turn.

[Ygramul]

On a related note:

What is the best water fighting experience you had?
(Map, map settings, AI list etc.)

I tried Ryleh on Aran with 7 opponents including Atlantis. By about turn 25 I control all 11 sea provinces and I can now choose to decimate whichever coastline I want. Used no magic sofar except for Voice of Tiamat and Astral Probing (or whatever) (Mostly normal and difficult AI's, indy=5, magic=50).


Maybe I should try the WorldMap but I fear the game will Last forever then.

Ygramul

P.S. Is Atlantis more fun then Ryleh>

[GavinWheeler]

Originally posted by Gandalf Parker:
And there is no real setup for remembering things across turns. I think almost everything is refigured each turn.

Well, if you can remember that mage X is casting such-and-such a ritual every turn, or that a scout is bloodhunting every turn, then you could presumably remember that commander X is trying to get to province #133 (or whatever) and use that every turn to calculate an automated guess at the next step in the journey.

There would be plenty of opportunities for things to go wrong (automatic pathfinding seems to be one of those tricky things to implement that quickly get complicated with various special cases) but the facility could be provided on a 'caveat emptor' basis - use it at your own risk.

Like the bloodhunting thing. If you could order bloodhunters to bloodhunt until full, then transfer their bloodslaves to the nearest laboratory before returning to their original province to start hunting again, that would eliminate the tedium of micromanaging bloodhunters. Each would simply need to know where it was, that it was on 'automatic bloodhunt in province XYZ' orders and how full of bloodslaves it currently was, and it could work out what its move this turn 'should' be. You would just run the risk that the bloodhunters would wander happily into the midst of a battle or something similair. Your choice - use it or not as you wish.

The problem is that there are so many little things like that which could be added, and only two programmers, if I have understood correctly. Implementing a scripting system like the one in the Baldurs Gate series) might let fans contribute their own 'bloodhunting scripts' or similar items, but it's not as if a scripting system like that would be trivial.

[olaf73]

Originally posted by licker:
I still wonder why we can't get some kind of 'automate' commands for mages to search out sites in owned provinces, or priests to build temples, or any kind of repetative thing that will occur over several turns. I'd also like to be able to set travel destinations that require more than one turn and not have to continully tug my slow troops one province by province every friggin turn...

Little things to be sure, but get enough little things right and they make a big thing

As to best SP game... well alot depends on what you are looking for. Certain settings handicap either the player or the AI (as GP pointed out), and setting up 'themed' games, like one human race aginst all the nonhuman races (or vice versa) can be entertaining from a RP point of view. I usually don't play with Ermor active though, since the other AIs just can't seem to handle them, and if I don't start close to them to keep them in check, they tend to just overrun the rest of the map. That can be fun to play against too, but it also gets a bit repetative.

I agree. The more I play, the better I start play. Which leads to me being in the driver's seat more and more late in the game. Which means there is a ton of crap to do every turn.

I *really* wish there was a goto command that worked within contiguous friendly provinces. Its such a huge pain the *** to try and direct stacks that move 1 province per turn from far off.

Auto-building temples would also be cool, as would auto-searching. Auto dumping blood slaves would also be nice, why isnt that done?

olaf