Question before buying!

[Gandalf Parker]

Granted. As I said, all AI sucks. No AI is AH (almost human). Im guessing your idea of "actual competent opponent(s)" involve human opponents?

So another way of wording the same thing might be:
if you arent a competitive person who thrills at kill-or-be-killed contests against real humans but is happy with an above-average AI that can keep you entertained for more than a month then this is a good game for it.

[Trumanator]

Dominions does not have an above average AI, no matter how many times you say it. It picks scales and magic paths at random unless you pick them for it, it builds massive numbers of absolutely horrible troops unless you modify them to prevent that, is paralyzed by assassin spam, and is dead scared of PD. Don't go spewing bull**** like this is some great example of AI programming.

[Gandalf Parker]

Im well aware of its limitations. The keyword here is "average". Unless you can give me a list of games with better AIs then my opinion stands. Im not saying its great. Only that for people who prefer to play AIs, this doesnt suck as bad as many others.

This has become a battle of preachers who fail to answer questions rather than to say switch religions.

[Ink]

many games have decent AI because the game world consists of a limited number of state - action pairs (by limited think around only a billion or so).

dominions has so many state action pairs: how many of each kind of troop in what province in what time of the year with how much gold and how many resources available with what level of research with what magic items currently available with what sorts of enemies in the adjacent province... Each change (one extra or one less gold piece or some troop) is a different state. for one province there are probably trillions and trillions of state-action pairs (and additional provinces enter the equation factorially)

games with limited discrete states can enumerate them all: thus why a computer can now pretty much always beat a human opponent at chess if allowed to. It is really possible to enumerate all the possible states of chess, and it is a markov model (history really doesn't matter) so that simplifies things even more, and all it has to do is pick the next move that maximizes its benefit given every possible move which could occur after that.

other games can provide a pretty exhaustive ontology, or just script the AI, and pretty much just tell it what to do given some set of states.

I'd think a learning agent is pretty much out of the question for dominions, I think good AI will only occur from deliberate scripting. I don't know how JK has it programmed right now, but I'd guess its some sort of scripting. But that's still a lot of scripting to do.

For a game like Mount and Blade AI is a non-issue. Sure it pretty much picks troops at random, but it doesn't matter so much. And they pick enemies at random too, but once again its moot. In the battles the scripting is pretty simple:

if have bow:
  if have horse:
    stay away from enemies and shoot arrows
  else: shoot arrows
else: rush at enemy

So the AI doesn't really have a lot of work to do. Not so for Dominions. For a game like Dominions these choices are REALLY important, and so its going to be really intensive to program an accurate AI. This is what makes it fun for MP. But I just don't think (OK its my opinion, and its my tastes, I know) that Dominions is fun at all for SP. I owned the game for years, and had played many many MP games, before I ever actually beat an SP game (and it was on Silent Seas wraparound, the smallest map, and that was just about so boring I couldn't finish it).

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally Posted by Ink

I'd think a learning agent is pretty much out of the question for dominions, I think good AI will only occur from deliberate scripting. I don't know how JK has it programmed right now, but I'd guess its some sort of scripting. But that's still a lot of scripting to do.

Its linear, generic to every nation, and has very few IF's (if this nation, if this unit, etc). You can see quite abit of it in the debug logs if you are interested.

But I just don't think (OK its my opinion, and its my tastes, I know) that Dominions is fun at all for SP. I owned the game for years, and had played many many MP games, before I ever actually beat an SP game (and it was on Silent Seas wraparound, the smallest map, and that was just about so boring I couldn't finish it).

Thank you.

[samoht]

Originally Posted by Spacemutiny

I just saw that there is a digital download available. I've been eyeing this game for quite some time, but before I take the plunge and download it, I wanted to ask long time players a question.

Is it worth it if I only want to play singleplayer? I'm not big on multiplayer, so I don't want to purchase a game that has inadequate AI. So how is the AI in Dominions 3? Will I find it at all challenging?

Thanks for any input!

I bought the game the week it came out and I've been playing SP the whole time.

Yes. Yes it is worth it. I only once ever played a MP game, destroyed my brother in law, and went right back to SP. It is fantastic. Yes, I imagine MP offers a lot of different challenges and experiences and triumphs that you will not normally see in SP, but SP is still incredible. Every game is like a story of empire unfolding right before your eyes.

[rdonj]

I personally think dominions has a pretty tough AI as far as games go. Until you learn all the AI-stomping tricks, you can expect to be beaten... repeatedly. I can think of plenty of games, RTS or TBS with much easier AIs to defeat. Of course when you know how to play, the AI is completely useless.

I still play SP, and have played SP almost every day since before I signed up for the forums . I've probably logged similar hours playing dominions as many people do playing MMORPGs. And I've played in a number of MP games as well. So I think a person can easily get their money's worth just playing dominions SP, though from what I've seen most people who try mp have a lot of trouble going back to SP.

I'm someone who doesn't usually like to play strategy games multiplayer, but I still find myself enjoying dominions in multiplayer. I would sggest that even the most hardcore sp person try it at least once. It's a completely different game.

[Jack_Trowell]

I play the game since dominions 2 and have always played solo.

Multiplayer might interest me, but it would not be exactly the same game for me, as I love trying new strategies against the AI, even if its only response is usually to send hordes against my specialised armies or units, but it is still fun.

It tooks month before I was able to test all nations and spells, and with mods I always come back to the game to test new nations and strategies.

[Bananadine]

Originally Posted by BigDaddy

I agree that MP can get monotonous. Novel approaches don't always pay off in MP (I'm tempted to say rarely pay off, but you can get some done early and mid-game I think). You can successfully use them SP.

One more perspective not yet voiced in this thread: I outgrew the single-player challenge explicitly offered by this game pretty early... but probably not before I'd gotten my $60's worth. I don't happen to be interested in inventing new challenges for myself in single-player Dominions 3 (although I've done that in other games in the past--Battleships Forever, for instance!) so I moved right on to the multiplayer mode.

And... in the multiplayer mode, I do nothing but fun exploration. Or "experimentation", as some might call it. Every few turns I invent some big new strategy for myself, in every multiplayer game I'm in. I've been doing this continually for years, and I still don't entirely know how to play the game. I haven't won a single multiplayer game yet, but I've given my opponents a good challenge, and I almost always have fun. I try to use magic items and spells I haven't used before. There are still dozens of spells whose effects I've never even seen! This game is all about invention and exploration, for me. I see others using strategies they seem to have copied from others. I don't read any guides, I make up my own plans, and as often as not, I win my fights. What happens if you forge and try to effectively use twenty of this rarely-used item? What happens if you pour heavy resources into repeated casting of this obscure spell? What happens if you cast these three powerful, battlefield-wide enchantments at the same time? It is possible to be a player who regularly asks these questions in multiplayer, and gets answers, and has fun doing it, and doesn't totally suck as a result.

In other war games, you usually have to know and practice the "right" way to do things in order to be competitive. In Dominions 3, there is so much complexity even at the most basic level of play that continuous exploration itself seems to be a fundamental part of the "right" way to play, and would be so even if all any player wanted was to win. If everybody was required to attend a full-time, four-year training program to familiarize them with all the basic spells and combinations of spells and so forth before they could enter the multiplayer league, then making up all your own strategies probably wouldn't be a winning... strategy. But I can tell you, the players I've encountered (including me) are not that good at this game. Maybe some players here are, but I think most are not even close. This isn't Starcraft and if you think you know the perfect "build order" for a situation then I would be glad to try to prove you wrong. In multiplayer Dominions 3, there is plenty of room for messing around in the service of victory!

[Knai]

One other. The AI is pretty stupid, and easy enough to take down, but it does take a while to get good. However, multiple people can play on the same computer on any schedule, which is where I play MP, and it is beautiful. I would probably buy it just for Single Player, because Multiplayer is a feasible possibility for the future in many cases. Plus, exploration of the spells and items and such is fun, as are self imposed SP challenges.

That said, there are better strategy games if you only do single player. Battle for Wesnoth for example, or DROD if you want microtactics.