Well, I'm through with the game

[NTJedi]

jscott said:
Even if the AI doesn't starve its armies, a death scales strategy only works for nations that don't require much gold to produce units. If the AI is randomly picking it, its gutting its own economy and making itself weaker over time (when it should be getting stronger!).

You can't pick the AI pretender. If you start a game as a human player and then set control to the AI, it sets to the normal AI only. The normal AI isn't challenging enough.

I can't use RanDom to create scenario maps, so that's out (there aren't enough maps in the first place that can be used for a long term single player game).

I understood it was a multiplayer game. I probably got close to my money's worth. Its just ridiculous that the designers couldn't take two minutes to make sure the AI was choosing correct scales.

Its not as though you have to make a very hard call on who is going to use death 3 scales. Only 1-2 nations can get by with it!

You can prevent the AI from using death scales via map edit commands. Open the .map file using notepad then place the command preferably at the bottom so it's easy to find. For example adding #scale_death 17 -3 would have the Niefielheim giants start with a growth scale of 3.

Start with just providing the AI with a growth scale and before you giving them other stuff I recommend testing before playing an actual game.

With time you'll see how it's possible to setup the AI opponents as allies, provide the AI with strong pretenders, position a super powerful AI far away to provide huge late game battles, and if you're brave enough you can even provide the AI with it's own very powerful SC's.

If you provide the AI with pretenders you can choose it's blesses. I recommend providing AI opponents with either an immobile pretender or a size 2 or smaller pretender for the AI opponents otherwise they will blindly send them into the arena death match against each other.

The biggest AI weakness is most AI nations lack the units and programming to know how to enter water provinces. So unless you play with specific AI opponents you'll want zero water provinces otherwise the human opponent will have a strong advantage.

[PvK]

I enjoy both SP and MP, but I mainly choose SP, largely because of time limits and the ways I enjoy playing. It's challenging if you know how to enjoy a game by playing it thematically, with creative settings, house rules, mods, roleplaying, etc.

[Agema]

Sure, the AI isn't brilliant. But it's enough to give you a run for your money and have fun exploring the game. You can get more hours out of Dom3 than your average first person shooter, without ever doing MP.

From independent to mass-market strategy, AIs of about human level are in perilously short supply. Your average strategy game is massively more complex than chess, and when you consider how long and how much effort it took to get good chess AIs, expecting it of computer games - especially when they have to code the rest of the game and think about the next title as well - is a MASSIVE ask.

Be thankful that the AI doesn't just gormlessly dribble on you a bit before falling over it's own shoelaces. If it can challenge you in the learning curve and keep you busy when you're reasonably experienced (as Dom3 can), the designers have done enough.

[Aezeal]

Be thankful that the AI doesn't just gormlessly dribble on you a bit before falling over it's own shoelaces --> mictlan

[Sombre]

AI EA or LA Mictlan doesn't dribble on you unless it's by total accident and it's a /very/ small map. It's almost always dead long before it gets the chance.

[lch]

I think this post on the SA forums sums up quite nicely everything there is to say about the Dominions AI:

Bouquet posted:

The AI is not a highlight. It's enough to keep someone like me who doesn't have consistently available time for multiplayer entertained, but there are quite a few strategic nuances that the AI doesn't really understand and can't effectively defend against. The AI tends to be better at massing troops than most humans, though, because most humans don't have the patience to collect troops from every territory.

If you are a king of strategy games and want to be challenged, you will need to play humans eventually. If you just like stomping on thousands of human infantry with your unstoppable horde of angels/devils/zombie gods/zombie woolly mammoths/tarrasques/things man was not meant to see the AI can keep you entertained for years.