What I'd like see AI do in SP play

[QXel]

Yep. Coordonate attacks & a much better appreciation in gain/loose battle ratio will be a good improvement.

For the PD, the fact is that it is annoying because it is continuous. Remember : you don't have much informations if you don't scout/spy the provinces. So, a try or two is acceptable, as would do a human, just to test. But the fact that this particular province as a strong PD must definitively be considered by the AI afterward.

It's seem that the AI just don't remember anything of all the informations that it gains from its actions. That is much strange, because I often see it cast the global spell 'Eyes of the God' as soon as possible ... [and I blind it as soon as I can ;o)]

[Gandalf Parker]

No the game, and the AI, isnt good with "remembering" from one turn to the next. Its part drawback of the pbem (play by email) structure of it. Anything being remembered has to be written out and read back each turn. So the AIs actions are a straight run-thru script which it rethinks each turn. Also, its pretty much just one AI script being applied to all nations so not many of the individual abilities of nations gets used

[QXel]

Well, it explains a lots of AI behaviour ...

It is really dispointing, too, because not all people can afford playing MP games : time, money, schedule, technical limitations, ... Well ...

But it is not just about Dom3 : a LOT of game are very disapointing in AI actions, behaviours and so.
A little number of games can be just considered 'correct', and it is mainly gestion-like games (Stars!, as mentionned early, but also Civilization & Alpha Centaury, Master of orion, ...).
It is a wide subject : people love beautifull games where they win, not ugly ones which beat them everytime ;o)

But just some ameliorations could greatly improve solo enjoyement of Dom3, I really think.
Is this possible or wanted ? Well, in all cases, I'll be dealing with ;o)

[Gandalf Parker]

At the moment there are some MOD projects to create nations which are boosted and make good use of the AI thinking.

As far as the developers... Dom1 was almost entirely a play by email game. Dom2 provided better direct-link multiplayer play. Dom3 vastly improved solo play and the AI. We have seen great improvements within the structure that the game is built on. The devs have hinted that they might consider a "start over from scratch" game next but it might not be a Dominions game if they do that.

[Sombre]

It's not entirely a matter of memory though. I mean the game works out what happens in all battles, involving human players or not, watched or not,... so the AI players could basically calculate in advance whether it will win or not - then having done a single theoretical attack rather than an actual one, it could decide whether to commit or not. Granted this would make turns take a bit longer to process, but if you limited it to SP then I can't see that many players would complain - you'd get a dramatically less idiotic (not actually smarter) AI.

At the moment, I really, REALLY think it should be improved in a patch. I'm not expecting a huge leap in AI, but today the AI attacked a province with 45 PD with,... get this,.. a single sage. Then in the next turn it attacked with another sage and 4 militia. That's NUTS.

[Gandalf Parker]

Actually I culd see "test attacks" being used by the AI as being possible with the game as it is now. But it might lead to complaints about the AI cheating, using knowledge that it shouldnt have. Such as an army of units that cant usually be seen ahead of time such as glamoured units. Or commanders that have special items. It would seem hard to avoid having such things in the "thinking" process but maybe Johan could program the tests to not include items and glamoured units.

I think that the AI does do some thinking. Putting large armies of many units on the border does cause it to think twice about attacking. Part of the problem seems to be in how the AI tries to gauge the worth of its SuperCombatants. I know that there is a point formula since it comes up in balancing pretender designs, and there is plenty of disagreement by players on the results of that formula.

It appears to be an effort by the programmer to get the AI to use things that players use. Not JUST army vs army comparisons, but also equipment, SC's, and panic situations such as the seiging of a castle which seems to cause every nearby army to at least try and do damage.

[Taqwus]

Sombre said:
It's not entirely a matter of memory though. I mean the game works out what happens in all battles, involving human players or not, watched or not,... so the AI players could basically calculate in advance whether it will win or not - then having done a single theoretical attack rather than an actual one, it could decide whether to commit or not.

It's not 'will win', but 'expect to win with certain troop, resource and opportunity cost against an expected opposition'. You'd have to run multiple simulations based on various scenarios (reinforcement, gem allocations, the resolution of army-push-army rules, et al).

Granted this would make turns take a bit longer to process, but if you limited it to SP then I can't see that many players would complain - you'd get a dramatically less idiotic (not actually smarter) AI.

It can only do that calculation if it has perfect information regarding order of battle, resources, commands, and all player's orders for that turn. It doesn't get that. There's no legal in-game way for it to spy on your orders for that turn before it gives its own -- not that this has stopped other game developers like Creative Assembly, of course.

Incidentally, such a thing could also be gamed; if, for instance, I knew that a fairly strong force of mine would almost always deter the AI from attacking because it ran sims based on that army staying there, and if I also knew that a neighboring province of mine would be invaded by the same potential AI army because I'd left that province deliberately tempting, there's an obvious sucker punch to use.

[Loren]

I like the idea of test battles but the AI should only fight against what it knows about. Keep a record of what the AI knows of PD and the abilities of any commander the AI has faced before.