Artificial stupidity

[Arker]

BigJMoney said:
I keep noticing you say that there isn't the need to add all the extra logic checking about battlefield dangers because it can be done much easier, but I've missed what that easier solution is. I'm not sure if it was in an early post somewhere or not, but tell again, if I've missed it, what the simpler solution is that you suggested because this thread just doesn't read correctly without it, lol. I like someone's suggestion to be able to ban spells from a world list or also a specific caster's list.

Well of course if you define the topic at it's broadest - "the AI is rather dumb' - there isn't any simple solution, no. Making the AI smarter in general would be complicated, I'm sure.

But if you look at it from a narrower point of view, chop the topic up a little, there are simple solutions. The biggest problem, for me, is BoW. The simple solution is simply to remove that spell from the list of spells the AI will cast unbidden. Which I gather is exactly what has been done in Dom3.

Another example I've run into is nature mages insistently casting 'protection' on all your troops, when you either are, or are fighting against, Abysia. Of course, Abysian troops radiate heat, and protection raises AC but lowers fire resistance... VERY poor trade when facing fire radiating troops, even WORSE trade when your own troops are radiating. Obviously susceptible to the same fix - just removing it from the list of spells the AI will cast on its own immediately ends the problem.

Another player had the AI cast 'vortex of returning' for him. Hilarious... if it's not your army that just got recalled from a battle they should have won to the other side of the map Again, the simplest solution is to remove the spell from the AIs list.

It can be objected that this gives the human player another advantage in the game, but I don't think it does, because the AI is just as bad at determining when to cast these spells for the computer players as for the human ones. The best I understand, it really *doesn't* have any logic for determining these cases at all, just a random number generator and a preference for casting spells that do direct damage. That preference keeps spells like this from being cast very often, but it doesn't do anything to cause them to get cast when they'll actually help, or not cast when they wont, it just keeps them from being cast at all most of the time.

In fact, this is why I think yanking these spells entirely is probably a better idea than introducing a user interface to ban certain spells. That, I'm afraid, WOULD favour the human over the AI.

For some spells the case for removal is better than others, though. BoW obviously is more likely to harm the AI than to help it, but that is probably not true of protection. Heat-radiating units are much more rare than non-cold-immune units. Still, it's just as bloody annoying to the human player when it's cast at the wrong time.

So, yes, a more sophisticated AI would be wonderful, but realistically, when simply yanking the spells off the cast list has the same effect in most cases, where is the motivation to go to a lot more work for almost the same result? That's what I meant by mentioning motivation. It's perfectly reasonable if you can make a good enough fix in 1 hour or a *slightly* better fix in 1,000, you're going to have trouble finding motivation to go the extra mile, particularly when there are other things you could be working on instead. At any rate, simple solution NOW, more complex solution later, when/if it can be done, seems like the sensible thing to me.

Another fairly simple thing that could be done would be to recode what the AI does with a mage when it has no targets in range. Apparently what it does now is go to 'stay behind troops.' This is not a very smart thing to do at all, as it results in a bunch of leaders piling up right behind the rearmost unit of troops for no real reason. Since it usually happens late in battle, it's not as big a problem as it could be, but it's still definitely in the category of 'not-smart' and REALLY becomes a problem when one of those mages has BoW. I would suggest a mage set on 'cast spells' should, when no enemies are in range, 'advance' until some enemies ARE in range, and then resume casting, instead. It would also be good if troops NOT seeking melee (i.e. on 'fire' or 'cast spells' orders in particular) would advance directly forward, maintaining their position in relation to the top and bottom of the battle map. Currently, for instance, archers set on 'fire' will advance towards the nearest enemy when they cannot fire, so they move forward and left or forward and right, resulting in more troop clumping.

This *might* solve the problem with BoW for human players without removing it from the cast list, as it would make some of the responses I got early in this thread actually make sense - the big problem isn't so much just that the mages cast BoW, but that they typically follow up on that by all clumping together right behind the archers. I'm not sure, but honestly I think it would be a good idea either way. I'm sure it's less simple to do than removing some spells from the cast list too, but it shouldn't be nearly as complicated as a truly sophisticated AI spell-choice code.

Oh, whilst on the subject of battlefield movement, just in case the programmer-guy happens to read this, *please* make light cavalry worthwhile! This would only take a bit of added AI battlefield movement logic. As it is, each unit seems to only move in basically one direction - forward. Unless, of course, it routs. So light cavalry (and this applies to archers of all sorts too, but it's most damaging to light cavalry tactically) moves right up to range, and starts firing, but they never pull back, so they wind up in melee very quickly. Real life light-cavalry armies did a LOT of backward movement, this is what made them effective on the battlefield. They would move up into range, fire, then pull back to avoid melee.

The logic would go something like this:

1. Are we in range of target?
--->A. Yes. Is target within their movement radius of melee range?
------->I. Yes: Is our missile range greater than their movement range?
----------->a. Yes: Retreat to our maximum missile range, or the maximum range we can achieve while still retaining movement points to fire one volley, whichever is less, then fire.
----------->b. No: Stand and fire.
------->II. No: Stand and fire.
--->B. No. Advance our maximum movement, or to our maximum missile range, whichever is least. If movement points are left, fire.

Quick question from your OP: does the trident do anything other than what its stats list? It doesn't make the user immortal or anything, does it? I've noticed that most weapons I give my SCs are better than the trident, so I never figured out why I even care to compete in that silly tournament.

It's actually a fairly good weapon, I think. What are you making that's better? Remember it gives extra attacks. But no, I don't often find it worth entering the tournament for.

Finally, I'll add that I sympathize. I know if it were me, I'd be just as mad and I think you have every justification. I can't believe others aren't being more empathetic themselves. Here you are trying to work your strategy and there seems to be no way out of this stupid trap -- not even a jury-rigged workaround. I believe one person actually suggested you not research an entire branch of magic. :-/ I'm glad you didn't respond to that.

Thank you.

[Frostmourne27]

Somewhat OT, but 50% quickness (AFAIK) gives you 150% movepoints, and two actions each round. I don't THINK you get stat bonuses. It's very similar to what you get from heroic quickness. The quickness (or quickening) spells however, are a little bit different, you get double your move points, and two actions each round, as well as stat boosts. You also get 100 xp from winning the tournament.

[Arker]

Frostmourne27 said:
Somewhat OT, but 50% quickness (AFAIK) gives you 150% movepoints, and two actions each round. I don't THINK you get stat bonuses. It's very similar to what you get from heroic quickness. The quickness (or quickening) spells however, are a little bit different, you get double your move points, and two actions each round, as well as stat boosts. You also get 100 xp from winning the tournament.

IIRC it also raises your defence score. And, again IIRC, the trident has *three* attacks per round, base.

I usually skip the tournament anyway. It takes a high value commander that could usually be doing something else out of play, with a high risk of death. You can't change your script each fight, you have to use one for all the arena matches, which is pretty hugely annoying - for instance you script a bunch of casting to deal with Ermors champion, and as a result your champion stands there casting useless spells while another nations Pretender stomps him. Or you kill the enemy Pretender, thereby starting a war with a neighbor you really didn't want to be at war with, and then Ermors champion kills yours next round anyway

Eh, depends on the game too. I tend to play against AI on large maps with 12 or more enemies, entering the contest is a longshot there. In a smaller game, 3, 4 enemies, it can be a really good thing to do though. You might forge better weapons end-game, but that trident is *mighty* powerful on round 3...

[Frostmourne27]

I dunno about the tridents combat stats, i find there are better weapons for melee, but that its nice for casters. As for quickness and defence, i think you're right, but im not sure. Tournament i nice for death mages and other powerful mage nations. I wouldn't usually send a pretender of SC tho. As a side not, if you have no arms, you don't get the trident, and you aren't stuck doing all the subsequent tournaments, which is can be a bonus.

[Arker]

It may seem a little wierd to reply to myself, but I thought over what I've posted and have a bit to add. Editing the post this long after it's posted would be even wierder.

Arker said:
In fact, this is why I think yanking these spells entirely is probably a better idea than introducing a user interface to ban certain spells. That, I'm afraid, WOULD favour the human over the AI.

I think this stands up, but with some qualification. Simply adding the interface for humans and nothing else would be unbalancing - human players would milk this and the computer players would have no counter. BUT, if the computer players were given the same ability, and the logic to handle it, that would be very different. Trouble is the logic would probably be a LOT more work than the human interface. Bleah.

For some spells the case for removal is better than others, though. BoW obviously is more likely to harm the AI than to help it, but that is probably not true of protection. Heat-radiating units are much more rare than non-cold-immune units. Still, it's just as bloody annoying to the human player when it's cast at the wrong time.

After some thought, I'm not sure the case here actually IS weaker than for BoW. It's true that fire-radiating creatures are relatively rare, but fire magic in general certainly isn't. Protection *might* still be an advantage assuming random opponents, *but* it's very exploitable. I know if I see an army with nature mages in it, I make sure I've got as much fire magic as possible scripted when I attack. So even if it helps the computer players, on balance, when fighting each other, I'd bet it's a net loss for them against human players, which is really what counts.

1. Are we in range of target?
--->A. Yes. Is target within their movement radius of melee range?
------->I. Yes: Is our missile range greater than their movement range?
----------->a. Yes: Retreat to our maximum missile range, or the maximum range we can achieve while still retaining movement points to fire one volley, whichever is less, then fire.
----------->b. No: Stand and fire.
------->II. No: Stand and fire.
--->B. No. Advance our maximum movement, or to our maximum missile range, whichever is least. If movement points are left, fire.

This could even be simplified a bit and still work pretty much as it should. At its simplest, you'd remove all reference to the targets movement abilities, and simply try to stay at maximum range. It could also be made more sophisticated, for instance using an estimated optimum range instead of maximum, aiming to stay as close as possible without being drawn into melee. At any rate, I do think this line of thought is absolutely the key to making light cavalry playable, and it would improve the gameplay and the usefulness of all ranged-attack units. (And of course the AI should NOT be perfectly effective at this - it should definitely screw up sometimes, part of the charm of the game - but as it is it screws up every time, and the units are essentially useless beyond the ability of any modder to fix. This is a real shame, as these units are some of the more interesting in the game, for instance mounted Vanir, T'ien Ch'i cavalry, Centaurs... units that should really be very useful and fun, but aren't, because the combat AI just can't use them properly.)

[KissBlade]

Offtopic but, heh ... might I point out, while the TC cavalry has some parts to be desired, the Vanir and Centaurs are actually incredible units if you know what to do with them.

[Arker]

So what's your strategy then?

[KissBlade]

Duel bless them. Vans are incredible with f9/w9 (or even just w9 actually) and the centaurs are easily blessed to e9/n9 thanks to medusa.

[Arker]

KissBlade said:
Duel bless them. Vans are incredible with f9/w9 (or even just w9 actually) and the centaurs are easily blessed to e9/n9 thanks to medusa.

That's exactly what I thought you would say

What you're doing there, though, is giving up a huge number of creation points to supercharge them magically, and what you get out of it is really some quirky heavy cavalry.

I've played both of them that way, and experimented with the bless strategies, and my honest opinion is that while you can make them work that way, you'll still get your rear handed to you up against someone that spent those points on scales instead, and uses independent heavy cav/knight recruits.

But for the sake of argument, let's say you at least have a fair chance of winning that way. It's still beside the point to me - I'd like to be able to play it in role, that is to say, play them as light cavalry, using their speed advantage to bring those ranged weapons to bear effectively, not converting them into some oddball heavy-cav units.

And of course it's totally inapplicable to non-holy light cavalry, T'ien Ch'i, Arco... and actually not applicable to the Centaurs I was talking about either. You know, the Centaurs, not the White Centaurs, just plain old Centaurs, the ones that should logically by description and theme be the feared and fabled archery section of Pangaeas army, but in reality are totally useless

[Cainehill]

Arker said:

That's exactly what I thought you would say

What you're doing there, though, is giving up a huge number of creation points to supercharge them magically, and what you get out of it is really some quirky heavy cavalry.

I've played both of them that way, and experimented with the bless strategies, and my honest opinion is that while you can make them work that way, you'll still get your rear handed to you up against someone that spent those points on scales instead, and uses independent heavy cav/knight recruits.

But for the sake of argument, let's say you at least have a fair chance of winning that way. It's still beside the point to me - I'd like to be able to play it in role, that is to say, play them as light cavalry, using their speed advantage to bring those ranged weapons to bear effectively, not converting them into some oddball heavy-cav units.

And of course it's totally inapplicable to non-holy light cavalry, T'ien Ch'i, Arco... and actually not applicable to the Centaurs I was talking about either. You know, the Centaurs, not the White Centaurs, just plain old Centaurs, the ones that should logically by description and theme be the feared and fabled archery section of Pangaeas army, but in reality are totally useless

_Sometimes_ the dual bless strategy gets smashed - sometimes it doesn't. That's one of the things that makes Dominions such a great game - no strategy wins all the time.

But : Vans and centaurs (all kinds) actually both have big advantages over other cavalry, even without an effective bless (though I can't think of a reason to skip the bless with them). Vans have mirror image, _and_ glamour : very stealthy, and completely avoiding some early damage. Then all the centaurs : decent HPs, and recuperating : they recover from wounds if they survive the battle.

Even if non-sacred, both would still be viable units, unlike a lot of the other cavalry/chariot units.