Well, I'm through with the game

[Edratman]

I am a SP player because I am sure that I would not be able to fulfill my obligations to a MP game.

But I am going to join the ranks of the defenders for the SP game. I enjoy the SP game. The AI whipped my butt for several weeks before I caught on. Now it is faily easy for me, but I still enjoy the games. I've tried the all human start, map modding to give the AI an advantage, scales variations, etc, but it is still beatable. (I must admit that I only start in a corner because I got overwhelmed by 5 neighboring opponents last time I didn't. That tells me the AI has some degree of competance, at least in the early game.)

I limit my play to 100 to 125 province maps and still do not finish games because of the micromanagement. That bothers me only a little bit. The major issue with this is that I quit before I've researched all the spells. (Tried easy research and didn't like it, probably because it changed the rhythm of the game as I learned to play it.)

I read the MP posts and it does seem to be a lot more fun and a much more intricate game. Players are always referring to situations, tactics and combinations that I have never encountered or even had occasion to use.

But the SP game still amuses me after a year. What more can one ask of a game? And as several others have said, what strategy game AI is any better?

[Endoperez]

People still play the demo of Dom:PPP to avoid the turn limit.


Think about that for a while.

Dom:PPP's sprites are half that of DomII/3, and those sprites aren't nearly as well drawn. The maps are pixel-porridge that's nigh unlegible with the base colors of the maps that come with the game. Province info (magic sites, dominion, statistics) takes perhaps 1/3rd of the screen, and commander view (about 9 commanders at once) another third, while gems aren't shown until you go to laboratory. That means that you have less info visible at once, but it takes so much space that only one third of the screen shows the map, at once. I don't think you can zoom the map either. But I recently found a thread named Dominions: Priests, Prophets and Pretenders because the original demo HAS NO TURN LIMITS and wider selection of nations, and thus the poster played it rather than the later demos.

I found the thread from Dwarf Fortress forums, who are used to bad interfaces and not-so-good graphics, but it's still rather amazing.

[lch]

Endoperez said:
People still play the demo of Dom:PPP to avoid the turn limit.

Next thing you're telling me that there's still people playing Conquest of Elysium, too.

Endoperez said:
I found the thread from Dwarf Fortress forums, who are used to bad interfaces and not-so-good graphics, but it's still rather amazing.

Ah, those people. Masochists.

---

The idea of having pre-made pretenders for the AI is interesting. Or at least some templates that can get modified/mixed/mutated like in genetic algorithms. Very often you have problems where the initial task of finding a good/valid solution is very hard (time schedules for example) if you do it by random / trial-and-error, but once you have found a valid solution you can quite easily find other solutions by modifying that one a little, through point mutations (little changes to the initial concept). Other games like Armageddon Empires go as far as having a very good AI, but a collection of some couple dozen premade decks for the AI with some hints how it should use them, something like an AI personality of sorts if you want. If we'd ever see stuff like this in the Dominions series, it would be a major success I'd think.

[Edratman]

One change that (I think) would benefit the AI and is easily accomplished is to hard code the temperature to ideal for each nation and then hard code growth, luck and research to 3 (my preference)for all AI nations. Maybe reduce AI points somewhat, but not entirely, to reflect the scales adjustment.

This would satisfy KO's preference for random deities to give each game a different aspect, yet it would remove the glaring weaknesses of AI random scales selection and give it an edge in decidedly benefical scales.

And hard code Mictlan to an awake pretender so they don't die a dominion death in the first 2/3 turns.

[Rich]

I never play mp. The main reasons I bought this game is that it looks like fun and especially is advertised that it has a "challenging ai."

Haven't had much time to play it yet. Was about to really study the manual and do the tutorial again but now I don't think so.

It would be nice if publishing companies had some honesty in their advertising.

[Sombre]

Challenging AI?

That's a weird thing to advertise dom3 as having.

[lch]

Chicks. He meant he bought it because of the hot chicks. But he was afraid to say that. At least that's where the advertisement is true to the product.