national armies?

Well couldn't you just label a unit type as a
"Priority 1" or "Heavy Infantry" for each nation ?

So you label Abysian Infantry with a Morningstar Priority 1, and Coral Guard, and Centaur Warrior and that accounts for a certain % of the gold usage.

Or use something like Protection greater than 14 (If it's stat based)?

I don't know exactly, but if the limits of deciding gold usage on troops cannot be defined or labeled, what is it doing right now?

Of course this doesn't address the Mage production issue, which I feel if the AI has no reason to produce a non-mage unit, it doesn't. It's standard or default should be mages. You could even go as far as having the AI make 1 Normal Troop commander for every 5 mages (to carry troops) and have % of those mages (depending on the threat of neighbors) put into active duty with armies.

And of course, the AI should dome it's research centers.

[ February 25, 2004, 20:37: Message edited by: Zen ]

[PDF]

Originally posted by Gandalf Parker:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Zen:
I wouldn't vote for Satyr Hoplites (in their current form), they are useless. I'd say Centaur Warriors and Coral Guards for Atlantis.

But I dont think the AI does them that way. Isnt it more like lt troops, hvy troops, lt cavalry, hvy cavalry? Its just one AI. If the good thing for Ulm is hvy infantry over lt infantry then Pangaea and Atlantis get the same change dont they?

Of course if it goes to seperate AI's for each nation then all kinds of great strategies could be put in.

---

If you just change the order to Hvy Inf, Hvy Cav, Lt Inf, Lt Cav it'll be OK IMHO - From what I've seen in MP this is more or less what 90% of players do ...

[Arryn]

Originally posted by Gandalf Parker:
I think the best answer will be splitting the AI. And Id love to see them outside scriptable.

Which is what Paradox did with HoI, for example. IMO, the only thing that makes HoI remotely worth playing is the fan-made tweaks to the AI, since Paradox has no clue how to code a decent one. IW has made a good one, but it could be made far better if the almost unlimited amount of time that fans can devote to it were to be applied to externalized AI files. It would also free up IW's time to devote to other aspects of the game.

[ February 25, 2004, 21:25: Message edited by: Arryn ]

[mlepinski]

It seems like the single most significant thing that could be done to improve the AI is getting it to build some forts early in the game. (Since in the long run these forts lead to more resources, more income and more oppertunities to build national troops). I'm personally of the opinion that any simple heuristic (whether it be build a fort in "any high income province", "any province with many neighbors I control" or "every fifth province") would be better than no AI fort building. Getting the AI to build forts in truly strategic locations seems difficult but it seems very likely that even sub-optimal fortress building would still help the AI significantly.

- Matt L. :->

[Peter Ebbesen]

Originally posted by Arryn:
Which is what Paradox did with HoI, for example. IMO, the only thing that makes HoI remotely worth playing is the fan-made tweaks to the AI, since Paradox has no clue how to code a decent one.

The fact that Paradox provides the tools that allows dedicated modders with lots of time on their hands to build better AIs than the stock AI they ship games with through an open AI architecture, and that they add new AI commands in patches to support new ideas that have come up years after the release of their games, proves that Paradox has no clue on how to code a decent AI!?!?

No modder could have made HOI use fronts intelligently if the HOI AI programming did not have support for the concept of fronts.

Say rather that there is rather more time to write and test AIs amongst the dozens of modders and thousands of happy players, than the ~7 man development team and beta testers have during each 12 month development cycle.


...But I digress. I certainly quite agree that if AI variables were exported for players to tweak, there would most likely arise a more competent AI. It would be strange were it otherwise, as the amount of time that players can spend on actually PLAYING and TESTING always outweighs the time developers can manifold.

[ February 26, 2004, 07:19: Message edited by: Peter Ebbesen ]

[Gandalf Parker]

Personally I would love the idea of player scripted AIs. There are some old threads here discussing possibilities. The defensive one, the diplomatic one, the barbarian horde, the reource collector, the magic researcher, the insane one which every 10 turns randomly selects from the list... The problem is that the game has to be written from the beginning with hooks (tags, variables) available for everything seperate from the variables that the game uses to process things. You cant write "if my_gold greater than 600" without a my_gold tag in the game. Such a huge rewrite would take alot of effort. Whether the Devs thought it was a good idea or not, its still not likely to happen soon.

Changes for a patch could be done if they are quick and simple. Try developing the rule you WISH the AI would use and test-play it. I disagree with the "even if it built a fort every" type of responses, but I dont know because I havent tested it.

Hmmmm I guess I COULD start a game with Ulm and some nation of my choice and try to play Ulm but the rules I made up. Writing an AAR here would be nice also. Force myself to ...
A) if commander has 10 light (any-type-of-troop) then build 1 heavy (same type of troop)
B) every 5 provinces build temple
C) every 10 provinces build castle
Does that sound about right? At turn 100 I could turn Ulm over to the AI for control and see if I can beat him.