Suggestions for Improving the AI opponents

[Boron]

if you want a difficult game you should take a small map with 150-200 provinces with all ai opponents and
use some modded nations as opponents especially cohens crusaders because they have supplyproducing leaders and very strong units so the ai doesn't suffer as heavy under starving effects as with almost any other nation expect ermor and carrion woods .
another "solution" for a harder game is using no sc-pretender and playing a heavy magic nation with bad national troops like tien chi s&a under very difficult research .

a good and easy solution would be if for the ai castlebuilding costs are halfed and supplies are multiplied with at least x4 . perhaps the templebuilding script can be used for castles too since the ai builds temples quite often .
it would be a small cheat but i think help the ai a lot .

[NTJedi]

The temple building script could include a random variable where the AI builds a fort instead of a temple for 1 out of 5 temples. Then a new process doesn't even need to be setup.

[tinkthank]

Great ideas!

Some thoughts:

The AI seems to have problems in these fields:

Strategic Planning:
- The AI builds odd pretenders with no real "plan" to do anything with magic paths, e.g. an earth mother with 7 fire who then does nothing but cast fire shield. AI Pretenders get bizarare paths and often don't really know what to do with magic paths once they have them, either.
Since I bet good ideas are very hard to program, an oversimplified solution could be: Cap number of paths spent on new 40+-costing paths at 1, cap path investment at 4, give priority to dominion increase; give priority to positive scales. Might not be too interesting, but more effective.
- The AI often doesn't know which spells will be good for it to cast later: Maybe give a few "goals" to the themes (e.g.: flaming arrows for machaka, then summon XYZ, then magma eruption, etc.). To avoid over-predictability, three or four "schemes" would have to be developed per nation theme.
- The AI often doesn't know what items to forge; I have seen AI Astral-Earth Molochs playing for Caelum with crystal matrixes running about with no communication slaves in sight.
I think there is no easy answer to this, but perhaps one could make a "library" of helpful items matched to the possible Users (e.g. a fire3-earth-2 death-1 Black Sorc might want a PQR, while a fire-2-death-2-earth-2 might want a XYZ). This is probably very time consuming.

Tactical Management:
- The AI often doesn't know which spells could be good to script in battle. See point above for possible solution.
- The AI will often send out either overkill mobs of troops or too few into a battle. I don't know how the AI currently gauges its opponent's strength -- but there could be some kind of "army matchup algorithm" which attempts to reduce suicide attacks and/or shooting flies with cannons.

Strategic Implementation:
- Fort building and Troop building have been covered.
- The AI often seems to shuffle its troops about randomly, as if it had a multiple personality: I want to go *here*, no, I want to go *there*; I don't know what can help here.
- The AI's troops starve too often. Causes include death scales and lack of forts, but also, this doesn't seem to be something the computer checks for. Have it do so and try to remedy this by producing appropriate supply items.

[mlepinski]

Originally posted by tinkthank:
- The AI often seems to shuffle its troops about randomly, as if it had a multiple personality: I want to go *here*, no, I want to go *there*; I don't know what can help here.

I don't see anything wrong with the AI shuffling it's troops at random. I agree that it might be better if the AI "intelligently" determined where to move it's troops, but that type of "intelligence" is tough to implement and random shuffling does keep the Human player guessing.

As a great philosopher once said: "If you can't be smart, be random"

- Matt Lepinski :->

[tinkthank]

Originally posted by mlepinski:

quote:

---

Originally posted by tinkthank:
- The AI often seems to shuffle its troops about randomly, as if it had a multiple personality: I want to go *here*, no, I want to go *there*; I don't know what can help here.

I don't see anything wrong with the AI shuffling it's troops at random. I agree that it might be better if the AI "intelligently" determined where to move it's troops, but that type of "intelligence" is tough to implement and random shuffling does keep the Human player guessing.

As a great philosopher once said: "If you can't be smart, be random"

- Matt Lepinski :->

---

Heheh who said that??
But you are right, I am making a big deal about nothing.
Say, Matt, didnt you say you werent playing dom2 anymore because of time constraints?

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by mlepinski:

quote:

---

Originally posted by tinkthank:
- The AI often seems to shuffle its troops about randomly, as if it had a multiple personality: I want to go *here*, no, I want to go *there*; I don't know what can help here.

I don't see anything wrong with the AI shuffling it's troops at random. I agree that it might be better if the AI "intelligently" determined where to move it's troops, but that type of "intelligence" is tough to implement and random shuffling does keep the Human player guessing.

As a great philosopher once said: "If you can't be smart, be random"

---

It gets pretty crazy. Not only is it hard to do in any game, its majorly hard to do in a game which is basicaly written to not keep track of things over multiple turns.

Also, the smarter an AI gets, the more predictable and beatable it gets. I know that seems wrong but consider as just one example that if an AI always chooses the most efficient path to reach you, then how long before you start baiting and ambushing it? As is often said in the AI newsGroups "There is a difference between artificially intelligent and artificially human". The easiest and simplest way to make an AI more human is to add stupid surprising randoms to its actions.

If you cant be smart then be random? Sounds like one of my sig lines that says
If you cant beat them, then join them.
If you cant beat them or join them
then at least try to surprise them.

[Sandman]

The AI often doesn't support its armies with enough casters and priests; often you'll see a horde of sacred units (sometimes with a good blessing) led by a melee commander.

I tried out Atlantis recently, and was attacked by Pythium, who used battle vestals, indicating that the AI had taken water cult. This was quite good and unexpected. However, does it mean that the AI often takes a generic theme? Does it take restless worshippers, but a low dominion? Does it sometimes take golem cult?

[ July 22, 2004, 17:31: Message edited by: Sandman ]