I agree with you Gandalf, though I'm not sure that randomly swapping strategies is the best way to go. I think that there can be a rubric by which the AI can decide if a certain strategy is more needed at a certain time. An example of this would be in the early game, where expansion is key, basically you'd want all AIs to be expanders (though their means of expantion could differ) until they reach boarders of other nations. At that point you have a decision point, do I aggressively attack my neighbor(s), do I hunker down and focus on research or summoning, or building an elite force, do I ignore my neighbor and continue picking up indies, ...
The decision made *should* be able to be influanced by looking at the current compostion of the AIs nation. If the nation is filled with poor provinces more wieght to an early offensive, if the nation has rich provinces, more weight to building up a superior force, if the nation has high gem income, or lots of indie mages them more weight to going down a magic path.
This is another area where externalizing the inputs to make these decisions would be useful so that modders can tweek them to get more aggressive AIs for various nations. Different nation need different weights for these decisions to start with (and the use of SCs should be in there too somewhere...).
I think these discussions are getting more useful all the time
Lets keep working on specifics, the Devs have asked for that time and time again
Re: Dominions 2. AI. Suggestions, that how to fix it.
Threaded Mode