has the AI been upgraded?

[Beorne]

I'm tired to hear Dom2 has not a good AI. Dom2 is a lot more complex (ie has many more variables, or degrees of freedom or what you want) than any other game. The AI of Dom 2 is very good considering the exponential tree of possibilities the game has. In the vast majority of other strategic turn based games a good AI (or a high difficult game) is obtained by giving lot more resources to the computer player (you can say "cheating"). I think that Dom 2 is so complex that an ai that make reasoning comparable to human strategy in Dom2 could be embedded in a military computer not far form the matrix movies one. I'm joking but you have understood what I mean. Artifical intelligence is an extremely difficult (and in the Last years almost dead due to difficulty) field of computer science.
A great thank to the developers to the effort (in the ai too) put in the game!

[Agrajag]

Beorne said:
In the vast majority of other strategic turn based games a good AI is obtained by giving lot more resources to the computer player /(you can say "cheating").

Well, that's also true for domII =P

Anyway, while the end result will probably be you slaughtering the AI, it can take a lot (and I mean a lot) of time getting to that point.
I don't play that much, so Im no vet, but Im still having troubles beating the AI. (yeah yeah, shame on me)
Oh, and besides that, you can make the AI better by modding extra powerful nations for it, or deciding what nation you want him to play and then add +2 to all of his units' stats, its cheating, but it can make things a whole lot harder.

I'd advise against putting down Dom II if your reasoning behind that decision is AI.

BTW, if you wanna see really sucky AI, go play Warlords IV, the AI there couldnt beat a ten-year-old and the game has no balance (as an example, playing the elven race means winning, and playing against them just gives you a headache).
Though the Warlords: Battlecry (RTS Warlords) game has much better AI, I still can't beat the ultimate difficulty (thuogh Ive stopped playing, because of Dom II among other things, so I probably can't beat it even on knight difficulty :\).

Don't let Dom II slip from your hands!

[Taqwus]

In terms of extremely weak AI/low difficulty, the game 'Ascendancy' has a heck of a reputation, but I can't vouch for it personally.

[Boron]

Taqwus said:
In terms of extremely weak AI/low difficulty, the game 'Ascendancy' has a heck of a reputation, but I can't vouch for it personally.

Master of magic had a really bad AI imo .
Same for the AOW series , especially not patched AOW 2 where the Ai attacked gates with only 2 units always . So 8 archers were enough to defend any town against anything . Or 2 strong fliers .

Those 2 games are less complex than dominions , but the same genre and their ai is still inferior to the dominions AI

[Thilock_Dominus]

Hmmmm...I've noticed that people are talking about which games have bad(poor) AI, but never tell which games who's blessed with advanced/complexed AI. Does it exist? I mean I have been on several strategy Boards and there's always someone complaining about poor AI. Not that I say there aren't room for improvement there always is and always be untill an AI can think like a human brain.

Just a thought

[Endoperez]

Galactic Civilizations, I think. Never got into it, but as it is a single-player only strategy game built, IIRC, to see if the AI they developed was any good it should be. There is a demo, so you can try it.

[deccan]

Thilock_Dominus said:
Hmmmm...I've noticed that people are talking about which games have bad(poor) AI, but never tell which games who's blessed with advanced/complexed AI. Does it exist? I mean I have been on several strategy Boards and there's always someone complaining about poor AI.

In Dom2's case, it's not just a question of "poor AI", but a question of the AI not being very fun to play against. The inability of the AI to really use any strategy other than throwing masses of low quality troops at you makes playing against it very boring.

In other games, the AI may not be great. but in many cases, it's at least fun to play against. For example, in SEIV, each race has its own distinctive shipbuilding strategies, so it would be boring to play against the same AI over and over again, but there are lots of different AIs to play against.

[alexti]

deccan said:
In Dom2's case, it's not just a question of "poor AI", but a question of the AI not being very fun to play against. The inability of the AI to really use any strategy other than throwing masses of low quality troops at you makes playing against it very boring.

It looks like a very good point. Even in GalCiv which probably has better AI than other games, AI needs large bonuses to compete with good player. However, GalCiv's AI plays much more like a human player, it plays differently for different races and its strategy is much less obvious, which makes it more interesting to play against. Dom2 is much more complex game, and, surprisingly, AI isn't too bad, with relatively mild bonuses it is doing decent job, but it follows a very simple plan which makes the best use of its bonuses. Unfortunately, it makes all games vs AI look alike.