Making Single Player more Exciting

[MaxWilson]

Originally Posted by NKIcan

So what do you all do to a) make the AI more entertaining and more of a challenge and b) to keep from trouncing the AI through them having stupid scales/gods?

All hints welcome

Inspired by Baalz' recent guide on Niefelheim, I just added superskrattir as a recruitable unit for Niefelheim and its descendants.

--experiments
#newmonster 2479
#copystats 1652
#name "Superskratti"
#gcost 700
#magicskill 2 2
#magicskill 7 1
#copyspr 1652
#weapon 101
#weapon 149
#weapon 20
#berserk 3
#prot 18
#attack 13
#defense 13
#end

#selectnation 17
#addrecunit 2479
#addreccom 2479
#end
#selectnation 42
#addrecunit 2479
#addreccom 2479
#end
#selectnation 63
#addrecunit 2479
#addreccom 2479
#end

(For some reason that I'm still trying to work out, the troop versions appear as wolves and not werewolves.)

It's true these guys are slightly too strong--natural prot synergizes with berserk better than armor prot, and these guys get the Quickness bonus to att/def but could actually cast Quickness on top of that. I don't figure that will matter though, against the AI, because he probably won't be fielding nearly as many as a human player would. 700 gold is my wild guess at how much gold you're losing out on by collecting enough blood slaves to forge Baalz's suggested equipment.

I've been looking into Amos' angel nations recently, and Aezael's dragon nations, as opponents. I'd rather do something like this, though, which is within a nation's capabilities even if the AI usually doesn't do it.

-Max

[chrispedersen]

Another thing
When you are playing an SP game - you will get much more challenging results if you simply choose your opponents instead of letting them be random.

For example if you wish to play caelum - choose all your enemies to be fire dominion. Abysia, etc. if you choose nations that are not, make them toughter nations.

Don't choose pushover nations, like jomon or yomi.

[Ironhawk]

I wrote a mod, a long time ago, which added cheap ready-made thug summoning spells. Playing this with the AI made the game a bit more interesting because you would occassionally be fighting against a regular AI army but with 3-4 kitted banes or somesuch. Worked out ok - if you like I could try and dig it up again.

[MaxWilson]

I'd like that mod, Ironhawk. As a human it's trivial to consider such thugs "off-limits" but the AI should have fun with it.

Unlike a real thug, I presume, you can't loot items off the bodies (there's no way to give summons *items* in addition to *effects*). That's probably for the best.

-Max

[K]

I just play against all the nations of an era on huge maps. The nations designed by chance to suck get eaten by the better ones and then the AI has their capitals and their share of provinces.