Dominions 2. AI. Suggestions, that how to fix it.

[MythicalMino]

ok, here is a report on my current game...

Playing the Aran map, Indeps set to 4 strength. 5 other AI's, 3 Easy, 2 Normal...I am playing as C'tis (Miasma theme)

Caelum just attacked me with about 30 troops...the make up of the troops:

Wingless (had several of these)
Blizzard Warriors (Several of these)
Spine Horn Warriors (had several of these also)
1 Wyvern
Seraphine
Caelian Infantry
1 Temple Guard
also, they were attacking with their Prophet

In another border province, they have about 20 troops, mostly made up of Spire Warriors, and they have a Wyvern there also.


On my other border, Michtlan is making their move i think, against me:

110 Troop army:

made up of Warriors, Slaves, Sun Warriors and several Fiends of Darkness

They are placed as 4th place in Army Size. 3 other AI are ahead of them. Michtlin is a Normal AI, Caelum is easy AI.

Anyways, there is my report for this game....what i have seen so far....I have come across several times 20+ armies on my borders, but they pull their troops elsewhere...possibly to fight on another border with another nation? IT would seem....cause the AI's are losing/gaining provinces quite a bit...

[Gandalf Parker]

originally posted by licker
I don't see why this wouldn't work for Dom as well. You'd have a list of commander types (maybe also broken down into magic types for different mages) and a list of unit types (classes rather than specific units so indies fit in). Then a weight is assigned to each type, a crude example for just infantry could be:
LI: 25%
MI: 50%
HI: 25%
So the AI would look at its current army and see that it had only 10% LI, then it would build more LI to get the ratios set. Something like that should be made external so that modders can tweek away to their hearts content. In fact you can use lists like that to control many aspects of AI choices, you can do it for magic, artificing, recruiting, summoning, ... and have master matricies to control the embedded ones...

Seems simple and workable. On the other hand, lets pick one race and try to write it all out. Ulm should be simplest. It has a cheap and expensive Version of each of its units which is nice. But I suspect that anything we come up with to "fix" this will amount to fixing it for the indep 2 games people are playing (fast player conflict) and will need fixing again for 4, 6, 8. Then for levels of magic research, and levels of resources, etc. Im thinking that this level of "thinking" might end up being equal in size to the game now (Ive run into this problem before).

[Gandalf Parker]

originally posted by cbeller

Anyways, there is my report for this game....what i have seen so far....I have come across several times 20+ armies on my borders, but they pull their troops elsewhere...possibly to fight on another border with another nation? IT would seem....cause the AI's are losing/gaining provinces quite a bit...

Ive seen that. Im just guessing but it might be a simple way of providing some "smarts" to the AI. He moves the big army around inside his borders. If he kept it still Id be able to plan better. And many times Ive moved on a province of his that I thought was clear only to meet his big army head on.

It would probably work better if he had more armies, a variety. Maybe kept up with the number of provinces he had such as armies=provinces/5

[licker]

Originally posted by Gandalf Parker:

quote:

---

originally posted by licker
I don't see why this wouldn't work for Dom as well. You'd have a list of commander types (maybe also broken down into magic types for different mages) and a list of unit types (classes rather than specific units so indies fit in). Then a weight is assigned to each type, a crude example for just infantry could be:
LI: 25%
MI: 50%
HI: 25%
So the AI would look at its current army and see that it had only 10% LI, then it would build more LI to get the ratios set. Something like that should be made external so that modders can tweek away to their hearts content. In fact you can use lists like that to control many aspects of AI choices, you can do it for magic, artificing, recruiting, summoning, ... and have master matricies to control the embedded ones...

Seems simple and workable. On the other hand, lets pick one race and try to write it all out. Ulm should be simplest. It has a cheap and expensive Version of each of its units which is nice. But I suspect that anything we come up with to "fix" this will amount to fixing it for the indep 2 games people are playing (fast player conflict) and will need fixing again for 4, 6, 8. Then for levels of magic research, and levels of resources, etc. Im thinking that this level of "thinking" might end up being equal in size to the game now (Ive run into this problem before).

---

I don't know if its as large of a task as you make it out to be

There would be a series of matricies, and it would be a bear to optimize them, but if they are moddable... then we can count on the relentless fans tweeking their fav nations to get them to be kick *** wicked

As to the differences in game settings... I agree completely that these need to be factored in, but I don't think its that hard to do. You have a matrix for the game settings with 'correction' values to the national matricies. Or you may have a game setting matrix for each nation (though some nations are similar enough...).

What I think we would find if we did this is that there are indeed preferable units for nearly all situations, especailly when we are dealing with shades of grey in Ulm Infantry, in fact this would give the AI a boost as it wouldn't be tempted to use inferior units (slight though the difference is) as a human would be.

I'd still like to hear from the devs is such a system is at all possible before I devote any more time to specifics. Though if others want to take a nations unit roster and break it down go for it. Remember that the %s should differ depending on what the goal of the nation is (magic, might, dominion, ...) also modified by the available richness of provinces, income, ... its alot of tables, or inputs, but its not that hard to do (I think )

[Mortifer]

I had an interesting game today with the demo:

Indies were set to 9! I couldny expand too fast, and when I conquered a few provinces, I met with the first AI oppoment: Man. The AI [man] had a nice army right near my province. It had 120+ troops, but those units were weak/mediocre, + the army consisted very few "heavyweight" units. Oh and I didnt met with summoned AI units that much at all.

I think Kris posted something about the AI - supply thing. Maybe that is causing the trouble? IE. The AI won't make/summon decent units?

[ October 31, 2003, 12:17: Message edited by: Mortifer ]

[DominionsFan]

Yeap. It seems, that the Dominions 2 AI love to use these worthless units.
Ok they are not worthless, but without good units and monsters, those armies are very very very weak, compared to the elite human armies.

[licker]

I think its hard to tell from the demo how effective the AI is with units. The game settings do make alot of difference. I still think the discussion and suggestions in this thread are valuable, and I wish a dev would deign to let us know how things are currently set up.

I had some time to fool around Last night and I was playing with Indies at 6 or 7 (can't remeber exactly) with all nations on normal or difficult on the bigger map. Anyway, by turn 10 I had expanded or scouted to other nations borders (not surprising as the map was crowded), by turn 15 I had 4 nations declare war on me, though only one was actually adjacent to me. I routinely saw armies of 100+ units moving around though, and I managed to catch Marginon's big force with mine (playing Pythem) I slaughtered them, mostly because I had sent in an assassin who picked off a couple of mages (well inquisitors... you know...) and my Arch Therug with 3 slaves doled out some nastyness...

Anyway, a few turns later I regrouped and reenforced and set seige to their capital. The next turn I had to repell a relief army with 8 summer lions and assorted pikeneers and x-bows. I beat them back, but it wasn't clean... So the AI does seem capeable of using summons, and it will make bigger armies.

Part of the problem some of you are encountering is probably due to not having enough opponents on a too big map. With a cramped map the AI is forced to consolodate more (though it could still probably use some tweeks to the units it recruits). In the next 20 turns of this game it will be interesting to see what the other nations who declared war on me do, 2 more of them now have provinces boarding mine, and if I can't finish of Marg quickly I may have to recall that beseiging army to deal with other threats. All in all this game has been entertaining, at least for the short duration it's Lasted.

Again though, there is alway room for improvement of the AI, I hope that the discussion in this thread is not being ignored