So...the customers wont be cheated this time?

[Kristoffer O]

Endoperez said:

Actually, it's listed as four now. Johan K. and Kristoffer O., with help from Johan O. and Daniel Serra. Surprised me, too.

Daniel is mostly in as the company form 'ekonomisk förening' requires at least 3 members. He does some economic stuff and is the main contact with Erik and Anna of Falsobordone and Dråm.

My brother comes up with ideas and speaks some in the fora, but he doesn't work on the game per se. He is also the devils advocate (when JK is silent).

[Oversway]

Both of these would be doable if the format for .trn and .2h files were released.

Perhaps the AI should be given some "recipes" that it seeks

Then Id like to see changes made which would heavily support 3rd party scripting. Im not much interested in Dom3 for multiplayer but Id be VERY interested if it got to the point that really involved scripts that made the host take hours to do a turn could be generated. That would turn the AI into something exciting.

I think the main concern is cheating, but you already can cheat even without the information.

I know others have asked for this, although I never saw an offical response. Perhaps there is some problem that I'm not aware of. The community could make some interesting AIs with this info.

[Graeme Dice]

MStavros said:
Well the feature list was fake then. It clearly stated "very good AI".

How many games did it take you before you could guarantee a win against 16 AI opponents on a properly sized map? If it's more than four or five games, then you did get a good AI, but you personally are one of those people who have no concept of the difficulty of programming an AI.

Not to mention that they forgot to mention "We wont care about the singleplayer part after the release."

So you've never played any mods singleplayer?

[MStavros]

Graeme, I dont know how hard is to program the AI, you are right...but since Illwinter is talented, we can clearly see this from the Dominions games, I am pretty sure that they could fix it. Someone here posted that it wasnt fixed because scripting the AI was boring !

I think after a company is releasing a game, they must support it, interact with the players that what is wrong, what to fix etc. This is how its working for all games.

..and yeah I never played any mods for Dominions 2..there were any mods to fix the AI errors? I really missed those if there are any.

[Graeme Dice]

MStavros said:
Graeme, I dont know how hard is to program the AI, you are right...but since Illwinter is talented, we can clearly see this from the Dominions games, I am pretty sure that they could fix it.

I asked you how many games it took you before you can guarantee that you will win against 16 other AI players on a ~160 province map. If you can't guarantee that win, then the AI is clearly still capable of beating you. As for your ignorance about the difficulties of AI programming, it doesn't just take talent to build an AI capable of defeating humans. It took decades of research effort to build an AI that could defeat humans at Chess, a completely deterministic game with an 8 X 8 movement grid, and 6 individual unit types. Dominions is only has a few dozen orders of magnitude more choices to make.

I think after a company is releasing a game, they must support it, interact with the players that what is wrong, what to fix etc. This is how its working for all games.

Are you claiming that Illwinter hasn't supported their game? Do I need to go through the patch list to point out where you are mistaken?

..and yeah I never played any mods for Dominions 2..there were any mods to fix the AI errors? I really missed those if there are any.

So you are complaining that Illwinter didn't support single player games, while at the same time you never even _used_ the things they did add for single player games?

[Gandalf Parker]

Some people like scripting AI, some dont.
You could at LEAST take a stab at it. Here, I will get you started...

(turn 1)
send out scout (if you have one)
put pretender on research, set research to Evocation
put leader with troops on patrol
turn taxes to 200 percent
make bid on mercs cost+10
recruit priest (in case random event burns temple)
if cant afford priest then recruit leader
if cant afford leader then recruit scout
spend rest of cheapest troops (more patrollers)

(turn 2)
assign troops
set infantry to the front
set archers to the sides and slightly back
set cavalry to the far sides

give gems to mage equal to magic type and level*3

select weakest nearby province and attack
set taxes back to 100 since everyone is leaving but pretender
bid on mercs cost+20
use leftover cash to purchase cavalry
if cavalry at 10% of troops then purchase hvy infantry
if hvy infantry 50% of troops then recruit archers
if archers 20% of troops then lt infantry

(turn 3)
in new province:
purchase defence of population divied by 1000
recruit leader
if cant afford leader then recruit scout
recruit 10 archers or slingers


Doesnt that sound good? You want to keep it going?

[Strider]

ioticu's post is dead on concerning the AI.
Illwinter made it clear that they were developing a multi-player game. During the testing of DOM2, a lot of it was done in multi-player mode. If something 'feasible' was found that could affect the AI, it was implemented.

[NTJedi]

Gandalf Parker said:
Some people like scripting AI, some dont.
You could at LEAST take a stab at it. Here, I will get you started...

It would be great if DOMINIONS_3 had the option for gamers to adjust/improve the AI. With time we'd see some interesting AI's appear.

Also it would be great if the AI has multiple personalities instead of one fixed AI used by all computer opponents. HOPEFULLY AI opponents are randomly given an AI personality at the start of each game which would make it MUCH more difficult for gamers to predict what the AI will be doing in the game. Also the option to disable one of the personalities in case it's weak or bugged.

Examples:

The_Sage: Usually peaceful and more concerned with mastering spells than conquering the land. Beware he/she hungers for territories with strong magic sites. He/She's also known to attack anyone with greater research then him.

The_Cutthroat: Untrustworthy and usually organizes his assassins to attack the same time his troops march into provinces. He will make temporary alliances to knock down the greatest threat(most troops & highest gold/gems). He's known to attack territories which bring high gold income.

The_WarMonger: Purely focused on taking territories to expand his kingdom. Weak enemies nearby will be his primary target unless someone owns more territories which he truly hates. Sometimes known to use assassins.

The_Paladin: His expansion is based off those which do the most evil which includes using death magic, blood magic, death scale, and most importantly who is killing the most warm blooded creatures. His actions are usually honorable... in fact always honorable in his eyes. Known to ally with a weak nation to focus on a common stronger enemy.

The_Psycho: The actions and behavior are completely random and unpredictable. Sometimes he will attack the strongest and sometimes the weakest. It's known those with the highest dominion are more frequently attacked.

The_ArchMage: No known flaws or weaknesses and is an aggressive expansionist. A hunger for magic sites has the archmage searching more intense than the others. Also very effective for using spells before marching into territories. The player with the most gem income are more likely to become an enemy.

The_General: Able to focus on specific bottlenecks between provinces as he expands. Sometimes known to proceed in setting up supercombantants(SCs) to march and take territories as a team and occasionally send stronger ones solo. He will form allies with anyone willing to attack the player with the total largest army size.


==========

Just my ideas.
Maybe a Dominions_3 expansion can provide this suggestion??

[PhilD]

Oversway said:I think the main concern is cheating, but you already can cheat even without the information.

Cheating, as in "alter the world state", can be addressed by using a signature scheme on the .trn file. If the .trn file doesn't match its signature, then it means someone tampered with it.

Cheating, as in "peek at what other players can see", can be addressed by encrypting each nation's section of the .trn file (assuming there is one) with the nation's password. Leave an unpassworded section unencrypted.

But then, this would proabably require a complete overhaul of the game's turn files. It would be nice, though, to have the turn and order file formats open, so players could use their own external programs to help in their micromanagement (generate partial .2h files, like, or generate "report" files that tell them, say, where everything is and so on). Most likely, though, this will not happen until Dom4 or Dom5...

[Arralen]

Gandalf Parker said:
Saber, You are quite right about the headaches of programming AI in Dominions. That was shown in the forum when we asked for flowcharts and ai scripts which would fix things. Some tried and quickly shifted from whiners about the ai to just low grumbles.

Hey - I put quite some work into my suggested algorithm(s) to fix the castle and troop building.

Noone ever tested them, you included.
And I can't do a dozend of test games all on my own for sure!

And IMHO MStavros is mostly correct. It's a shame that the most obvious, AI-crippling bugs are not fixed in Dom2: That it can't build castles, but only get them from sites/events, and does not recruit indie mages.

If you put a bunch of admin-30 castles on a map, it will go for them quickly, though, and start building 'serious' armies. It will not start recruiting indie mages, unfortunately.

And I can't really understand why this is not fixed - other than because the devs/shrapnel think we better should buy Dom3 ... .

Alas, this is not the kind of support I want for games I buy... .