Dom-III discussion at GalCiv

[Archonsod]

Morkilus said:
I've run across some game-breaking retardedness in the GC2 campaign AI, such as enemy ships being built without weapons.

That's not retarded. The idea is to upgrade the design to one with weapons as soon as they become available . In the meantime, the ship will prevent you from invading a planet with a transport, unless you send warships in.I've even seen the AI build most of their fleet weaponless, only to upgrade when my ships were about to attack (thus rendering my carefully chosen armour useless against the lasers I never knew they had...).

Thing is, Dominions 2 doesn't really need a decent AI to make the game playable (and that's from someone who prefers single player over multiplayer). Remove the AI opponents from Dominions and you still have an intricate, detailed and fun game which plays differently everytime. Remove the AI from Gal Civ, and you no longer have a game. It's all about focus - Dominions' strength lies in it's depth and complexity. Gal Civ focuses more on the competition.

[Tyrant]

Interesting that they brought up MoM. When i'm proselatizing for DomII I always try to explain it as "Masters of Magic meets VGAP," but so far not one single person has known what i was talking about. I loved MoM, and always hoped they'd do an MP sequel. They didn't, but Illwinter stepped up to the plate and hit a homer.

As for he AI, <shrug>, who cares? Nearly all 'puter strategy games are SP. If they have MP at all it's an afterthought pasted onto a game system that's ill suited for it. Often games last hundreds of turns, or one strategy is clearly superior. Dom is a rare strategy game that's made for MP from the ground up. If i want to play an SP games and "solve" AIs there are hundreds to choose from. Dom is the best strategic MP game i've found by far, and I'd buy Dom3 even if it didn't have an AI at all.

That said, I'm confidently hoping the new AI will be better :>. I'm also pretty confident that after X games i will be able to crush it reliably.