Gandalf's Random Circus for Dom2 (was demo)

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by Alneyan:
An idle technical question: how did you manage to tweak the AI behaviour? I don't ask you to get really technical, but merely what kind of programming/editing/coding/scripting you did.

I didnt really change the AI behavior. I cheated. As APoger properly deduced I just gave it access to things people said they thought the AI should have. Its really just the same sort of random scattering I used in my Dom1 maps with a couple of the new Dom2 commands added.

The AI's get an added commander randomly chosen from the 1010 possible. That commander has a high chance of also getting a random magic item. Also some troops assigned, and some personal bodyguards. Of course the way I do this is to give every province an additional commander etc etc. You also get one when you start. The random equip command doesnt seem to work the same in Dom2 as it did in Dom1 but its in there anyway.

Someone COULD do a map making sure that JUST the AIs got the additional armys and proper units for that race but to do that you would have to lock-down the starting positions for each AI which would take down the replay on it.

The AI gets more castles/temples/labs because I scattered a bunch over the map. Of course you get that advantage also but thats as close as I can get unless someone wants to do a manually edited map where only the AI's get this.

Since the provinces all get that surprise additional army you will find that the map must be played carefully even on indep of 2. Ever tried to take a province guarded by monoliths?

Avoiding stupid moves? Well the only thing I could come up with there is that there is a bunch of ally commands tossed in. Im not even sure who is allied with who. But it means that some of the AI's wont attack other AI's. Maybe that way by the time you get there they can have something more challenging waiting for you instead of banging against each other.

As for what programming was used..... I use BASIC to run these maps. YABASIC to be exact (Yet Another Basic). Its free and available for nearly any operating system. If I get bored of this map I can double-click the basic file and it generates a completely new .map file for me to play on with all new scatters.

If you want to try your hand at manually making a more challenging map by purposely giving the AIs what you feel they should have then go for it. The mapedit docs are part of Dom1 or can be downloaded with the preview mapkit for dom2. The .map files are just a text file and can be edited using notepad, or wordpad, or word. The images of the map (the .tga file) can be edited with many paint programs. You could download GIMP (a free paint program but possibly too powerful for most people to really want to play with).

If anyone requests it I can quickly re-generate that map to scramble things again. Or make my sloppy basic code available. Thanks for all the nice comments, I really just tossed this off thinking it wouldnt go over well.

[ November 04, 2003, 15:08: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

[Sammual]

Gandalf,
I would like to see your code. I am currently working on a senaireo editor for the web right now and it could be a great deal of help.

Sammual

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by Sammual:
Gandalf,
I would like to see your code. I am currently working on a senaireo editor for the web right now and it could be a great deal of help.

Sammual

OK but dont laugh. I didnt say it was GOOD code.

It doesnt like me posting it here for some reason. It reads it as html and doesnt like part of it. There are some other examples (.bas .yab)at http://www.techno-mage.com/~dominion/

There is also an Online java Version done by a friend of mine in alt.hacker at http://members.aol.com/mp0werd/web/DomMapGen.html

[Sammual]

Hmmm. It looks like you are not checking to see if the Province is a water province or not. What happens when an Aquatic Commander is put on land (Or the otherway around)?

Sammual

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by Sammual:
Hmmm. It looks like you are not checking to see if the Province is a water province or not. What happens when an Aquatic Commander is put on land (Or the otherway around)?
Sammual

It wasnt possible with Dom1. We had alot of conversations about that and the terrain tag that has been added to Dom2 sounds like it might have been sparked by those conversations.

If water units are on land, and land units in water, they drown that first round. The results are just a touch more random then they were with some provinces having no guardians at all. What was worse were my totally random games where I scattered native races. Having a land province that can only create water units or vice versa was rough.

With Dom2 some reasonable assignements can be made. That can be alot of fun but Im not sure if other changes might not have made things harder for the "Random Map Cult" (as we were called in the newsgroup)

[georgevtucker]

Thanks, Gandalf -- tons of fun.

"The province is guarded by about 70 units. The army is made up of militia, archers and vampire lords."

[Gandalf Parker]

I cant wait to see what happens if I pull a map from the old DomMap program into the new MapEditor. Everyday I generate 30 each of large/medium/small maps for the old Dominions game. Glancing at them and downloading to my machine the ones that are kindof interesting it is a morning ritual for me. I have quite a collection built up and I dont know if they will work for Dom2 or not.

http://www.techno-mage.com/~dominion...humbnails.html
http://www.techno-mage.com/~dominion...humbnails.html
http://www.techno-mage.com/~dominion...humbnails.html

The code for generating these is available as raw source so maybe someone will update it.
http://www.ont.com/~keldon/dommap.html