The possibility of partnership.

[PvK]

tromper said:
Welp, not that it matters much, but I completely disagree with Pvk, and concur with HoneyBadger.

As a single-player sort, over the course of weeks/months now, on the larger maps sort of guy. And not a moron. I appreciate the depth and the beauty that the designers have brought to the table.

But I don't appreciate finding myself reading a hundred posts about how screwed up Vanheim is. Nor being doinked by that nation, in single player games, time and again, in single player games. I'm not casual by any means, but the hardcore junkets many of you fly should give some ground for us middling folks that want to kick it with some excellent strategic AND MYTHOLOGICAL/HISTORICAL noise now and then.

Stardock's made money. Stardock doesn't rape. Brad's a nice guy. Speak to them and square away the balance and AI for those of us that don't play a bazillion hours per day.

I think you may have misunderstood. I don't see any reason to think that the people who made GalCiv (who chose a hugely simplistic and abstact combat system with pretty generic unit abilities) would have any special ability to improve the AI for Dominions (which has an extremely complex and detailed combat system and an extremely detailed unit database). Seems to me GalCiv has success with AI because they designed a less complex game with very different kinds of things the AI needed to do.

Now, it does seem that IW perhaps hasn't focussed its efforts on improving and tweaking the AI. If IW felt like adding resources rather than do that kind of work, I think a good match would be someone they could work with who is an AI programmer and a fan of Dominions who would be motivated to work on it on the same terms IW is.

But even though I see many ways that an Dom 3 fan AI programmer like myself could probably tweak the AI that would be really nice, on balance I think the AI in Dominions is remarkably good, considering all it has to deal with. And as a Dom player for years who has enjoyed playing single-player as much or more than playing multi-player, AI issues have rarely interfered with my enjoyment of the game in SP mode.

I'm also puzzled by the comment about Vanheim, since I have not seen the AI be so super-powerful as Vanheim. In fact, limitations on the ways the AI thinks prevent it from focusing on taking advantage of Vanheim's strengths. For example, I've played many single-player Dom 3 games and I've only seen Vanheim get particularly strong in one of them (but in that game, Oceania and I (as EA Ulm) were both stronger). And I've seen AI Pangaea dominate the map while AI Vanheim was locked up in a stalemate war.

As for reading hundreds of posts about how X, Y, and Z are atrociously imbalanced and horrendous... well, these Shrapnel Dominions forums have always (since Dom 2) been full of ridiculously exaggerating critics who rant and rave between their avid play sessions.

PvK

[Gandalf Parker]

Actually Brad Wardell has long been considered to be one of the top programmers for AI in games. Or at least one of the most mentioned for well over a decade. He was doing multi-threaded AI on the OS/2 operating system a long tieme ago and any mention of games AI in an ai newsgroup or magazine tended to mention him. WinXP was supposed to be the first Windows that finally caught up to being able to handle his AI programming altho Im not all that impressed with the windows version of his game. But his AI is excellent, and his method for incorporating it into games is as expandable as Dominions Modding.

Getting him to work on the AI for this game would be great (just the AI, and maybe the diplomacy options). But I dont think its likely to happen anymore than Brad would be likely to ask Illwinter to help him improve the balance and challenge in his game.

As for Vanheim, like I said I have never seen a problem. But then that might be because I am likely to play on large maps, with sneak nations. And on MP games with victory points.

Gandalf Parker