enemy AI

razorbackjac · #1 November 15th, 2006, 10:31 PM

Playing against the AI(on easy) to learn the game. New to Dom3. Ive notice in all four starts the other nations are at my borders in about 12 or so turns.

Is this normal?

Gandalf Parker · #2 November 15th, 2006, 10:38 PM

How is the "Independents" set?
Some people turn that down thinking that it will make an easier game but its just the opposite. Turn it up to 6 or 7. And make sure the map is big enough to allow each nation a few provinces between them. Something like 10 provinces per nation or higher.

You will tend to make better decisions about who to attack, and when to attack them, than the AI will. A low indept setting will cause you to get rushed by the AI.

Endoperez · #3 November 16th, 2006, 05:35 AM

Also, it depends a lot about the size of the map and the number of enemy AIs you chose to have. In Silent Seas, as an example, having just two-three enemy nations would probably give you more time before they get to you. If even that's too much, take just one enemy nation for Silent Seas. Unless you get really unlucky in where the other nation starts, you should have lots of space to expand to. If you happen to meet the other nation early on, put some Province defence in the provinces neighbouring it. It'll notice that you have some forces there, and the AI usually prefers to take independent provinces before attacking players. PD 11 is usually enough, and going much above 20 is too expensive to do that in any but the most important provinces.

Belcarl · #4 November 16th, 2006, 06:21 AM

If you play a nation with strong PD like Jotunheim. Putting a PD of 35-45 will most likely repell most attempts of AI invasions into your provinces.

If the AI has amassed armies of 250+ troops though, simple PD will not be enough.

Remember that this is against the game AI, any human opponent will trash your regular PD easily. It is really expensive too, and may not be the best use of your gold.

Endoperez · #5 November 16th, 2006, 06:31 AM

That high PD IS good for some nations. Man of MA and LA gets Spearman, 2 Militia, a Longbowman and a Tower Guard (and Chelms Tower Guards are superior to MA ones) for every point of PD over 20. 45 gp for 5 units is pretty decent.

Jotunheim only gets giants at even numbers of PD. At PD 46, they only have 46 Jotuns, half of them Militia and half Javelineers. 46 gp for two giants isn't bad, but it isn't that great either. In Dominions 3, Jotun PD is quite mediocre. It needs some support units to become great - some chaff to be coupled with the giants to prevent the Jotun from being massed, perhaps. Javelineers are nice ranged units, but with just 2 ammo they could use some archer support.

Hullu · #6 November 16th, 2006, 06:33 AM

Regarding enemy AI.

Does the difficulty setting (easy-impossible) only make them better players, or will it also give them extra resources etc?

Endoperez · #7 November 16th, 2006, 06:38 AM

The AI intelligence level is the same at all difficulty settings. The only thing that changes are the amount gold, resources, pretender points and various other bonuses it gets. I think an Impossible AI gets bonuses to research and gems, but that might just be due to the other bonuses it gets.

Hullu · #8 November 16th, 2006, 08:29 AM

Ah, so the traditional 'buff the stupid ai' is what the difficult setting is about?

I didn't find a mention of the exact effect of the difficulty setting in the manual...

PhilD · #9 November 16th, 2006, 12:39 PM

Writing a good AI for a complex game is a very difficult task, Illwinter's original goal was on providing an interesting multiplayer game, and they all (both of them) have day jobs. All of this probably turned the problem of providing a competent computer opponent into a very secondary problem in their eyes.

The only thing they could have done would be to have moddable AI - but then, this would most likely be opening the door to so many bugs it's not even funny (in the sense that, to provide nontrivial moddability for AI, they'd have to let you write some actual code to be executed by the game - unless it was in the form of making the .trn and .2h file formats into open formats so that people would be able to write external programs for their own AI, but then that would not be modding the AI, it would be letting players rewriting one from scratch)

Hullu · #10 November 16th, 2006, 12:53 PM

I never implied that creating a good AI is easy. But I would have appreciated a paragraph in the manual about the AI difficulty level - since I have/had no idea what it affects, I actually thought they just use more intelligent algorithms. And I'm a little bit afraid I might lose the game I'm on now playing against 20 impossible AIs since I know just simply outwitting them is not enough, I have to also outwit their superior resources