Some questions about the AI...

[LintMan]

I have a scattering of questions about the AI and (some tangents) that I'm curious about and maybe you guys have some insight on...

1) Does the AI "cheat" at all? (ie: omniscient view, bonus income/units, etc) What effects do the various difficulty settings have on the AI? Is there any way to tell what level the assorted AI's are set to in a game? (Aside - what difficulty level are the AI's set to in the Walkthru game?)

2) What makes AI decide to attack or hold off attacking you? What are its criteria for doing so? In my current game, I've shared a long, peaceful border with Pangaea for many turns. Then, it attacked me unprovoked and started a war. I later reverted to an earlier saved game that happened to be from just a turn or two before that attack, and despite my actions largely being the same as before, many few turns later, we are still at peace. Along the same lines, what does the AI consider "provocation" for an all-out attack? (ie: is putting temples/preachers along the border offensive? What about peaceful global effect spells (ie: Gift of Health)? How about finding a scout of yours in their territory? What if you take one/a few of their undefended border provinces?

3) In some experimentation, it seemed like several of the AI's were actually frequently entering its Pretenders into the Deathmatch Arena contest! Is this common? Does the AI frequently enter its pretenders into the deathmatch event? That seems potentially a very rash move that risks afflictions/death and at best saddles your pretender with a (albeit powerful) cursed item. (As an aside - what triggers the deathmatch events - is it purely random, or is it X number of years?)

4) Does the AI handle/adjust/adapt to game settings like high/low magic site percentage, strong/weak independent forces, map size vs number of nations, etc, or do these throw off its game plan? I guess my biggest two questions here are:
a) Could adjusting the independent force strength to be high/low have the effect of crippling the AI game (if it can't properly adjust to these conditions)?
b) Can the AI remain competitive in a game where there is a fairly large period of "peaceful" expansion and research before nations come into direct conflict? i.e: a large map, with not a large number of pretenders. I ask this not because I'm some hotshot awesome player (definitely not - I'm still learning), but because this is my favorite mode of game, but it is a common weakness in the strategy games I've played, and usually results in disappointment. I'm thinking specifically of my game of Space Empires IV, where I played an epic game in a huge galaxy with only a relatively few races. In the late game, I came to discover that *all* those other races had simply failed to expand at all, and were hopelessly behind in economy, territory, and research by the time I encountered them.

5) How likely is the AI to try to dispel a non-offensive global enchantment like Gift of Health, Mother Oak, or Forge of the Ancients? How many extra gems are needed? If I can only manange the spell's basic gem cost, is it even worth casting these type spells, or will they go down quickly?

6) Does the AI forge magic items and equip them intelligently on its commanders? Does it target its research to its strengths (ie: avoiding spending research on spell levels it has no use for (if it doesn't have the proper mage types)). Will it empower and equip mages to raise their magic paths to have access to more powerful spells?

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by LintMan:
1) Does the AI "cheat" at all? (ie: omniscient view, bonus income/units, etc) What effects do the various difficulty settings have on the AI? Is there any way to tell what level the assorted AI's are set to in a game? (Aside - what difficulty level are the AI's set to in the Walkthru game?)

The AI, on higher difficulties, receives more nation points to spend, and on lower difficulties than normal, receives less. The level of the AI is set at the beginning of the game. Regardless of the difficulty setting, the AI does not receive any income bonusses. The AI is ostensibly not omniscient, although it is aware of the ownership of any provinces, regardless of scouting: Of course, humans can infer most of this data also.

2) What makes AI decide to attack or hold off attacking you? What are its criteria for doing so? In my current game, I've shared a long, peaceful border with Pangaea for many turns. Then, it attacked me unprovoked and started a war.

The AI will often choose to attack you if it believes you to be easy prey. Sometimes this is determined rather randomly, and it may arbitrarily flip out and go postal on you for no reason...other times it will do nothing even when you don't defend the border.

Along the same lines, what does the AI consider "provocation" for an all-out attack? (ie: is putting temples/preachers along the border offensive? What about peaceful global effect spells (ie: Gift of Health)? How about finding a scout of yours in their territory? What if you take one/a few of their undefended border provinces?

Invading them, or getting into a fight with them will start a war for certain. Preaching, globals, even hostile globals, don't appear to start a war. Having one of their scouts busted doesn't usually start a war either.

3) In some experimentation, it seemed like several of the AI's were actually frequently entering its Pretenders into the Deathmatch Arena contest! Is this common? Does the AI frequently enter its pretenders into the deathmatch event?

The AI does this rather frequently, and you can witness some horribly afflicted pretenders in action this way.

(As an aside - what triggers the deathmatch events - is it purely random, or is it X number of years?)

It appears to be random. I've seen them appear nearly back to back before.

4) Does the AI handle/adjust/adapt to game settings like high/low magic site percentage, strong/weak independent forces, map size vs number of nations, etc, or do these throw off its game plan?

The AI will take into account potential independent forces before attacking, but higher strengths will increase the odds that the AI will fail an attack. It does not appear to seriously consider map size, number of nations, or site percentages in great detail, and always searches poorly.

b) Can the AI remain competitive in a game where there is a fairly large period of "peaceful" expansion and research before nations come into direct conflict?

The AI, due to its lack of fortress building and general lack of interest in strong research, performs poorly when it cannot rush somebody. By midgame, most of its armies will consist of poorly sorted independent rabble.

5) How likely is the AI to try to dispel a non-offensive global enchantment like Gift of Health, Mother Oak, or Forge of the Ancients? How many extra gems are needed? If I can only manange the spell's basic gem cost, is it even worth casting these type spells, or will they go down quickly?

The AI seems to rarely attempt an explicit dispel, although it will happily overwrite your spells with useless globals that provide it with minimal benefit, or even hurt it. As a general rule, 300 gems is a good number to make sure your spell sticks. If the global board is becoming especially crowded, overwriting will become a serious problem, but if the global board is empty, the AI won't really attempt to dispel you, even if you cast a nasty global, until the board fills up.

6) Does the AI forge magic items and equip them intelligently on its commanders? Does it target its research to its strengths (ie: avoiding spending research on spell levels it has no use for (if it doesn't have the proper mage types)). Will it empower and equip mages to raise their magic paths to have access to more powerful spells?

Yes, the AI will forge magic items. No, it does not equip them intelligently. It doesn't appear to research terribly intelligently either, and does not strongly pursue research. I have seen it empower mages, but it does not appear to deliberately reach for specific spells, and it seems to more or less haphazardly cast whatever it can, rather than deliberately attempting a focussed strategy for a specific spell.

[ March 18, 2004, 22:08: Message edited by: Norfleet ]

[Cainehill]

LintMan:
Along the same lines, what does the AI consider "provocation" for an all-out attack? (ie: is putting temples/preachers along the border offensive? [...]

Norfleet:
Invading them, or getting into a fight with them will start a war for certain.

I hate to open my newbie yap here, but I don't think it's "for certain". A game I started today, T'ien C'hi declared war before I could even see them on the map. On the other paw, I took either two or three provinces from Ulm without them going all hostile on me.

[Arryn]

Originally posted by Cainehill:
I hate to open my newbie yap here, but I don't think it's "for certain". A game I started today, T'ien C'hi declared war before I could even see them on the map. On the other paw, I took either two or three provinces from Ulm without them going all hostile on me.

Just because they failed to counterattack (thus far) does not mean that the Ulm AI does not consider there to be a state of war between you. Ulm may well have been fully preoccupied fighting someone else to pay any attention to you. Furthermore, if you made an opportunistic land grab, and Ulm was distracted by other affairs, they might revert to being at peace with you by the time they could amass a strong enough force to have counterattacked, if you left them alone after that initial attack. Timing matters.

EDIT: if you attack an AI, you will not see an official message saying you are at war. It is presumed you are at war since *you* initiated the hostilities. The fact that AIs do go back to being at peace is one reason some of us have been clamoring for some sort of indication on the list of in-game nations as to which nations we are at war with. Presently, there is no way to know.

[ March 19, 2004, 01:10: Message edited by: Arryn ]

[mlepinski]

If you want to play a game with a significant period of "peaceful expansion", I would recommend that you edit the map file and place a scattering of fortresses on the map for the computer to conquer. The AI will not build forts, but if you put them on the map it will gladly conquer them and use them to build troops. I've found that on higher difficulty levels, the AI's performance is much improved (and actually quite respectable) if you give it some forts to conquer and allow it a period of "peaceful expansion".

- Matt Lepinski :->

[Taqwus]

Eh, just infer it and figure that the AIs aren't obligated to tell you how they REALLY feel, just like how a human player might attempt a surprise Alpha Strike.

If they're massing troops onto the border or lobbing Imprint Souls at you, you can pretty much safely infer that they don't like you very much and it may be time to send reinforcements to the weaker provinces, whereas more minor harrassment like Call of the Winds doesn't mean that much other than perhaps probing prior to an attack.

Well, if it were a human it'd be a probe -- to gather province name, check for presence of domes, check local defenses, perhaps roughly estimate what magics your pretender started with in case your guys cast Bless or determine your theme or how much you bother equipping or so forth. It's not a very subtle probe, and you know the caster's nation, but it'd perhaps be informative.

It _might_ be possible for a nasty global to provoke a war; I seem to recall suddenly once being involved in a three-front war in Dom I after casting The Looming Hell, and that seemed to be the obvious trigger. Might have been a coincidence however.

[LintMan]

Thanks everyone for all the info/tips (especially Norfleet for covering all my Q's)
Once I get more experienced, I might try that tip about adding forts to the map.

-LintMan

PS: Norfleet - TA is definitely my favorite RTS as well. Nothing since has really come close. What did you think of TA:Kingdoms?

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by LintMan:
PS: Norfleet - TA is definitely my favorite RTS as well. Nothing since has really come close. What did you think of TA:Kingdoms?

I found it to be thoroughly insuperior to the original Total Annihilations and related materials. Most specifically, I was greatly distressed by the lack of a D-Gun on the Commander. Also, blocky graphics look really good on robots, not so good on people, and the units in the original were totally superior. Give me PeeWees or give me death!

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by LintMan:
Thanks everyone for all the info/tips (especially Norfleet for covering all my Q's)
Once I get more experienced, I might try that tip about adding forts to the map.

If you want a longer game with scattered forts and other surprises then try the "Poke in the Eye" file which uses the EYE map that came with the game.
http://www.techno-mage.com/~dominion...2/Poke_Eye.map

Its re-randomized every day.