Does the AI Boost?

[Ironhawk]

Does the AI ever forge magic boosting items?

I've been just experimenting with some unusual game concepts vs the AI and I had an idea to make them significantly more powerful. But I need to know whether the AI will actually intelligently forge boosters (tho I assume it does not). Does anyone know for sure?

[Kristoffer O]

Not intellegently I think.

[Sombre]

Never seen it use any boosters to be honest.

[lch]

I sometimes see AI commanders with magic items. But I'm not sure if they forged those themselves or got them from independent defenders in a province. I guess it does forge them but as KO said without involving much of a thought.

[Ironhawk]

Yeah ok. I didnt think that it would be able to plan things in that much detail but I wanted to be sure.

My thought for the AI was to modify some summons to make them "thugs" without any need for equipment. That way if the AI did manage to get around to summonng them, it would not need to equip them (which is super complicated). And perhaps mod a few high level summons to be SCs right out of the box as well. One problem i see of course is still how to incent the AI to try and cast these spells to begin with. I'm not sure the AI programming can even conceptually understand shelling out 20 gems - even 10 gems! - for a single heavy-duty unit.

[jutetrea]

I like the idea.

Any idea how the AI prioritizes rituals or if it does at all? Prioritizes commander purchases?

Possibly make it a research lvl - 0 national spell, muli-path'd to their rarer capital only magic combination and a moderate gem cost (maybe equiv to a lvl 3-4 summons)?

Possibly a high resource/high gold cost commander as well, no leadership, thug stats/abilities.

I'm not sure if the AI:
site searches well
accumulates gems towards goals
alchemizes
boosts
summons "bridge" magic users
summons "diversity" magic users
casts gem producing/beneficial globals
Summons troops effectively

On a random note, can rituals ever cost 2 gem types? Even via mods?

[Kristoffer O]

> On a random note, can rituals ever cost 2 gem types? Even via mods?

Nope

[Edratman]

jutetrea said:


I'm not sure if the AI:
site searches well
accumulates gems towards goals
alchemizes
boosts
summons "bridge" magic users
summons "diversity" magic users
casts gem producing/beneficial globals
Summons troops effectively

?

I think you have summed up the major deficiencies of the AI and why a person can beat the AI once he learns how to play the game.


Despite these shortcoming, the AI kicked my butt for a month or so until I finally quit playing the game like CIV. So I think the AI is pretty impresssive. Because it doesn't perform the items on your list well and I guarantee that your list will be expanded (no Nostradamus points available for the prediction) it is not perfect. I don't know if a perfect AI is achievable.

Look at the time and resources IBM put into making a computer that can beat chess champions. That is the type of effort required to make a near perfect AI. Is it reasonable to expect that from a game company?

Everyone's suggestions are probably helpful to the Dev's and I imagine they evaluate all, or at least most, of them. And the devs probably put a good number into the category of "WOW, good idea, wish I knew how to do that".

[Jazzepi]

Chess is also extremely simple when compared to games like Dominions 3. There is no hidden information, and there are only a certain set of given moves.

Jazzepi

[Folket]

Sure chess is more simple then Dominions but on the other hand good chess players are probably much better at chess then good dominion players are at dominions.