Single Player Rant

[Sombre]

I'm someone who will often say "I have to handicap myself to get a challenge from the AI". It's true. The first game of dom3 I played (I never played Dom2) I set the AI to normal and stomped it pretty easily, while messing about learning the game. The second game I played I set it to impossible and,.. stomped it easily. The problem isn't that the AI isn't that challenging - on impossible it cheats enough that it can give you a challenge if you let it and if you set up the scales, pretender etc for it then turn it AI it fares ok without all the cheating.

The problem is really that the AI isn't that much fun to play against once you realise how stupid it is. Once you get tired of it throwing its armies piecemeal into your strong PD for no reason. At this point, you have to handicap yourself, let it have a head start, don't use PD etc, otherwise there's no sense of pressure and, to me anyway, it becomes more like a chore slowly stomping the AI down.

As for SP as it relates to MP - because of the AIs very random and often nonsensical behaviour, SP doesn't prepare you for MP strat at all. It might teach you how to play the game, but beyond that it's just too different. So you can't really blame experienced MP folk for discounting the opinions that SP people have on MP gameplay issues, such as the balancing of the Vans. If they don't play MP they should just shut up instead of insisting they know something about it because they beat the AI like a red-haired stepchild.

[Archonsod]

Sombre said:
So you can't really blame experienced MP folk for discounting the opinions that SP people have on MP gameplay issues, such as the balancing of the Vans. If they don't play MP they should just shut up instead of insisting they know something about it because they beat the AI like a red-haired stepchild.

Pretty much sums up the kind of attitude that causes the problem to be honest. What makes you think the balance of Vans is unique to multiplayer? Furthermore, why should multiplayer balance be given more priority than single player balance?
The counterpoint to your argument is MP players should quit whining since the host can decide which nations, units and the like to allow, while we have no control over what the AI decides to use or not use. You can't exactly ban the AI for breaking your rules. Obviously, arguing like this can go on ad nauseum and is counter productive to ever actually finding a solution to the problem. If Vans are unbalanced in multiplayer, then they're obviously going to be unbalanced in single player (and vice versa. The AI mightn't know how to fully exploit the unit, but single player games contain at least one human). It's not a question of deciding which is more important, but deciding how to best fix the situation (and the fix needs to apply to both game types equally, otherwise you'll just get complaints that a nation is being restricted rather than rebalanced).

[Gandalf Parker]

Archonsod said:
It's not a question of deciding which is more important, but deciding how to best fix the situation (and the fix needs to apply to both game types equally, otherwise you'll just get complaints that a nation is being restricted rather than rebalanced).

Excellent points.
Part of the problem would be that a challenging nation run by the AI in SP is apparently too much of a problem in MP. And if its balanced for MP then it allows the MPers to laugh at the crappy AI that the SPers have to play with.

Of course the modders could help out by providing more challenging AI playable nations to fill the gaps that would be caused by balancing for MP play.