how can I set up humans vs. AI?

[Merry Jolkar]

I'd like to set up a game in which three friends and I play against a major enemy -- as in Lord of the Rings. Where can I learn how to do this? I see from Gandalf's site that he has a WEvsTHEM map, but it's too big for my purpose...

Thanks!
Merry

[Gandalf Parker]

You can just select other nations and choose them to be computer opponent.

If you want them to ally against you then you can edit one of the map files. There is a mapedit.pdf in the dominions2/docs directory.

Choose a map you want to play and find it in the dominions2/maps directory. Lets say you choose the Aran map.

Copy the .map to a new file (such as copy aran.map to OurGame.map)

Open it in Wordpad or some other editor.

Find the line that says "#domtitle Aran"
Change it to something like "#domtitle Our Game"

Now scroll down to where it starts doing things like landname and neighbor and terrain commands. Insert lines for the AIs you want to be in the game.

The easiest thing (if you want allied enemys)is to add "#allied X Y" where X and Y are the numbers of the nations you want allied. Here is a list of them....
0 Abysia
1 Atlantis
2 Pythium
3 Man
4 Ulm
5 Ctis
6 Arcoscephale
7 Caelum
8 Ermor
9 Marignon
10 Pangaea
11 Vanheim
12 Jotun
13 R’lyeh
14 Mictlan
15 T’ien Chi
16 Machaka

[Merry Jolkar]

That is a big help! Thank you.
Merry

[verax]

So could I set something like this in theory?

#allied 1 2 3 4 5 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

And this would allow us (0 6 16) to play against all the AIs, or any subset thereof? IE - if we selected only 4 AIs from the GUI, that they would be allied?

Is it really that easy?

thanks again Gandalf.

Verax

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by verax:
So could I set something like this in theory?

#allied 1 2 3 4 5 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

Nope not quite that easy. Although maybe the devs will see that and think it could be done that way in a patch.

And this would allow us (0 6 16) to play against all the AIs, or any subset thereof? IE - if we selected only 4 AIs from the GUI, that they would be allied?

They only ally 2 at a time.
You need to add lines like
#allied 1 2
but you wont need to do a #allied 2 1 since thats apparently automatic. However....
#allied 1 2
#allied 2 3
does not apparently make 1 and 3 allies.

It also seems that you can set up different Groups of allies. Such as having 1 2 3 4 be an alliance, and 5 7 8 9 10 11 be another, with 12 13 14 15 being a third.

[verax]

Ah, got it, thanks again!

I think it would be a great option to have new functionality to the #allied switch to allow for multiple nations to be specified. Doesn't seem to hard, and would be much easier for the user to add one or two lines instead of adding 196 lines to make a 3 v 14 scenario.

Verax

[Gateway103]

3 v.s. 14 needs only 3 + 105 = 108 lines, not 196. But still very tedious ^_^

One problem with changing that is the game parser will need to be modified to read more than 2 numbers for #allied. Depending on how it's implemented right now, it may or may not be easy. If it's "end of line" style, then it'd be easier, but if it expects fix number of entries, that'd be trickier.

Perhaps it can be done this way, "#allied Number {country IDs}" where Number is the number of country ID entries, which tells the parser how many more number to read, as well as how many internal loops to generate for all the possible non-overlapping pairs to be allied.

Of course, I am a poor example of a programming-know-how person, so perhaps there are lot easier ways. Just ignore me then ^_^

Delirious talks...

-Gateway103

[Gandalf Parker]

I hadnt realized how tedious that was. I tend to programmine. I do have a program which randomly generates AIs. Maybe if I rewrite it to allow some selection it would be a good idea.

Or some other nice programer. (hint, hint)

[Endoperez]

Maybe another "sum-up" command? #allies_sum or something?

Other option is yet another third-party helper.