Any AI mods to make it more challenging?

[PDF]

Alneyan said:
PDF made a mod increasing the cost of poor units *quite* a lot (999 resources actually), to prevent the AI from building some of the weakest troops. The thread in question is available here .

There are also special maps that may fit the bill; for example, Orania Nasty Edition or Gandalf's random maps (Poke in the Eye and Random Opponents). Or perhaps even thrown in a few alliances between the AIs for added fun. Or all of the above.

Alneyan,
Thanks for the ad BTW did you test it and what do you think ?
AS it is this mod makes the weakest units unbuildable, so it's not perfect but I didn't see this as a real problem when playing... As long as AI build algorithm cannot be changed I don't see any other elegant way to fix the problem.
Reading NTJedi's post gave me an idea however for the mod : adding a "supply bonus" to basic commanders. Mod will have to be broken down by nation to *not* give the bonus to player(s), but I think it'll fit the bill about starving.

[Alneyan]

No worries about the ad; please send the scroll of "Bind Succubus" to the usual address. I am looking forward to making business again with you in the future.

I didn't get much of a chance to try your mod yet; I heard about it at the Net4War forums a couple of days ago, and have a hard enough time with the AIs for now. (Though most of my problems are with certain nations, where I cannot expand quickly with Independents 9)

Speaking of which, what kind of settings can be used to help the AI? Wouldn't powerful Independents hinder the AI more than the player? In my Arcoscephale SP game (Indies 9), I have about three times as many provinces as the biggest AI player, and I have lost a few battles due to my silliness. Do hard and very hard research settings help the AI, or cripple it?

[PDF]

Alneyan,
From my not-so-large experience and readings, that's what I suppose about AI behavior :
Low Indy strength results eventually in AI demise, because the AI expands too quickly and send small armies all over the map, that pose no threat to player. OTOH a very high Indy strength makes it difficult for the AI to expand initially, so indy 5-7 is the best AI ally !

AI sucks with magic overall, so I feel that hard research makes things harder for player and not that much for an AI that will never properly use Rituals, Communions or gem-consuming "heavy" battlefield spells. The same goes for site freq - human players can properly manage their income more than an AI.
Another obvious AI helper is the difficult settings that give them more design points and income - unfortunately the AI overloads more than not its pretender and never take great scales, nor does it build much castles (surely 'cause it doesnt spare money to do so..).

My 0.02 € cents

[Gandalf Parker]

How about a mod-on-the-fly?
It wouldnt be much more work to write the individual nations boosts for AI into a program. Let the user select who he wants AI'd and writeout the mod. That way the other nations are left unaffected and larger boosts can be incorporated. Heck its all text files, it could even be done with inster files being copied together overwriting the mod and done with a bat file.

It might be a fun add to the Mohansen site (we really need to come up with a name for that). Perl, Java, just about anything altho I dislike the "you must load this to run this" stuff. I could probably do a basic program and compile it.

[Alneyan]

Gandalf, do you mean having a program make the appropriate mod given the setup of the game?

I didn't thought of going with average Independents; it should work out quite nicely however, although it looks like the AI can handle its own in sheer expansion. In yet another game with Arcoscephale, Independents 9, some of the best AIs are doing quite well in Orania Nasty Edition, even if I am using a SC (Virtue) for training this time. But then, all nations start up being much tougher than on a usual map, so.

I was wondering if making Pretenders dedicated for the AI would help or not. A benevolent user would create a few series of Pretender files for the AI, featuring reasonable designs, and possibly even beefed up Pretenders. Having a few such files for every nation may help the AI, while still allowing for randomness; that is, as long as the crafty player does not look at the AI Pretenders in advance. Thoughts?

[Gandalf Parker]

Alneyan said:
Gandalf, do you mean having a program make the appropriate mod given the setup of the game?

The discussions on "how to build a better AI" I tend to avoid. I dont tend to agree with many of the suggestions.. BUT just for example.. if the person chose Ulm as an AI and the MOD it created removed the cheap units from Ulm.

I was wondering if making Pretenders dedicated for the AI would help or not. A benevolent user would create a few series of Pretender files for the AI, featuring reasonable designs, and possibly even beefed up Pretenders.

It works very well. Actually you can do that with map commands and I have some scenario maps on my site which do that.

Having a few such files for every nation may help the AI, while still allowing for randomness; that is, as long as the crafty player does not look at the AI Pretenders in advance. Thoughts?

Ive suggested the same in various diffrent layouts. Newbie gods, player created opponents (anyone want to play Norfleet the Pretender of Ermor?), and player suggested provinces which could be randomly placed on maps.
www.dom2minions.com

Im sorry, in other words, Yes. There is no reason that wont work very nicely. And I would gladly offer a directories to collect player created opponents. I can add it to my nightly run so that games are created by adding 1 random Ermor file and 1 random Caelum file and 1 random... well you get the idea.

[Arralen]

Here's what I run as AI (copied together from some notes).. I start them as players, then hand them over. (Haven't checked the points with the latest patches, though.) They do quite well - and would do much better if the AI would build castles ...

It's fairly convenient to create those pretenders, then zip up all the .2h - files in the newlords directory, and un-zip them before starting a new game, so the old player pretender gets overwritten.

Would be great to have them created via map commands. Doing a random .map file that adds the AIs (choosing from the precompiled list) would be great.

By the way, did you tweak your randomizer to take care of terrain when placing additional troops?


__Abysia________________________________
Moloch
theme: standard
Fire 4, Blood 4
order 3, prod 3, heat 3, growth 1, luck -1, magic 0
DOM 7
Fortified City 50/100
5 left

__Atlantis______________________________
Son of the Sea
theme: standard
Son of the Sea
water 4, nature 4
order 1, growth 1, magic 1
DOM 6
kelp citadel 40/100 (80pts)
3 left


__Phytium____________________________
Phoenix*
fire 4, air 2
order +3, prod +2, growth +2, illfort +1
Dom 6
Castle 40/100 (80pts)
4 left


__Man_______________________________
Enchantress
Fire2, Air 2, Water 2, Earth 2, Astral 3, Death 2, Nature 2
DOM 3
City 50/100


__Ulm_______________________________
Crone
Ceremonial Faith
Fire 2, Air 2, Water 3, Astral 2, Death 2, Nature 2
Order +3, Prod +3, Growth +1, Luck -1, Magic -3
DOM 5
Fortified City 50/100 (80pts)
0 left


=> Titan°
Titan
Air 9
Order +3, Prod +3, Growth +1, Luck -2, Magic -3
DOM 6
Fortified City 50/100 (80pts)
8 left



__C'tis_____________________________
Father of Serpents
theme: standard
father of serpents
Fire 4, Death 4, Nature 4
order +1, prod 0, heat +1, growth +1, luck 0, magic +1
DOM 5
Castle 40/100 (80pts)


__Arcoscephale______________________
Shedu
standard theme
Astral 5, Earth 4
order +1, prod +2, growth +1
DOM 5
castle 30/150 (60pts)
6 left

__Caelum___________________________
Blue Dragon
standard theme
Water 9
Order +2, Prod +1, Temp -3,Growth +1
DOM 6
Fort.City


# Ermor ###############################
Vampire Queen°
Death 4, Blood 4
Order +3, Prod +3, Growth -1, Luck -3, Magic +3
DOM 6
dark citadel 20/350 (40 pts)


__Marignon_____________________________
standard theme
Baphomet
Fire 4, Astral 4
Order +2, Prod +3, Growth +1, Magic +3
DOM 6
Castle 40/100 (80pts)
6 left

_Pangea_____________________________
theme: standard
Golden Naga*
Fire 4, Water 4, Death 4
Order -3, Prod -3, Growth +3, Luck +3, Magic +1
DOM 5
Castle 40/100 (80pts)



__Vanheim_____________________________
Allfather
Air 4, Water 4, Death 4
Order +2, Prod 0, Temp -1, Growth +1, Luck -1
DOM 7
Castle 30/150 (60pts)


__Jotunheim_________________________
Niefelson
theme: standard
Air 4, Water 5
Order 3, Prod 1, Heat -3, Growth 1, Luck -1, Magic 1
DOM 6
Fort. City

__R'lyeh______________________________
Void Lord ??
Water 3, Astral 6
Order +3, Prod +1, Growth 1, Luck -2, Magic +1
DOM 6
Dark Citadel 20/350 (40pts)



Mictlan



__T'ien Ch'i__________________________
Jade Emporer
Air 2, Water 2, Astral 5
Order 2, Prod 2, Growth 1
DOM 5
Fort City

__Machaka___________________________
Scorpionking
Fire 4, Earth 4
Order 3, prod 2, Heat 2, Growth 1, Magic 1
DOM 6
Fort. City

[Gandalf Parker]

Arralen said:
Here's what I run as AI (copied together from some notes).. I start them as players, then hand them over. (Haven't checked the points with the latest patches, though.) They do quite well - and would do much better if the AI would build castles ...

I have a request in for a change to the way that indeps handle castles. As it is now they run inside which makes it too easy to abuse. If we get a change such as a #patrol command so I can have a group inside and a group outside then it will make it worthwhile to add indep castles to a map. That will give the AI castles along its path that it can capture. Not the best thing but better.

Would be great to have them created via map commands. Doing a random .map file that adds the AIs (choosing from the precompiled list) would be great.

The interesting thing about doing that would be you can turn off cheat-check and create unfair pretenders. Even ones that are not on the usual pretender list (a Harvester pretender, an Aboleth pretender, a Horror pretender)

By the way, did you tweak your randomizer to take care of terrain when placing additional troops?

No Im afraid not. I got the code worked out to recognize the terrains and put a merman in the water of each province and a cavalry in each land. But I never got a database or spreadsheet of all the units that I could select from.

Like many of the projects at dom2minions.com they all ran out of steam from lack of anyone showing any interest in them. One thing I do want to do is change the map generators to use the very nice new VGA quality that Leif gave it.

[NTJedi]

I have a request in for a change to the way that indeps handle castles. As it is now they run inside which makes it too easy to abuse. If we get a change such as a #patrol command so I can have a group inside and a group outside then it will make it worthwhile to add indep castles to a map. That will give the AI castles along its path that it can capture. Not the best thing but better.

The #patrol command is so definitely needed.
Taking it one step further would be adding a #break_siege command which would allow an independent group inside the castle to try breaking a siege each turn.

[Alneyan]

I will be thinking about that AI Pretender idea. A couple of better Pretenders for the AI may also be needed, but that would depend on checking what the AI is good at with her Pretender. For example, a few tests seem to show the AI doesn't use Pretenders in battles, even with an army to back them. But I would expect the AI to use their Pretenders for research at least, where a bonus would likely be welcomed. And so on.

The biggest problem when dealing with the AI is indeed to make it clever rather than powerful. There are not so many ways of making a clever AI for the Users of Dominions, but powerful AIs are very, very easy to make. Since AIs with unbelievable bonuses are unlikely going to be fun, the goal is to strike a balance between "lack of cleverness" and "bonuses to compensate for said lack of cleverness". But I am digressing.

Incidentally, does anyone know of a way to fully spy on the AI? The best I can do is cast a free Eyes of God spell, and put as many Astral Windows on the map as possible (giving yourself a *slightly* increased astral gem income helps obviously; these Astral Windows do not Last long enough otherwise). All these spells are cast by free Mystics, who can in turn summon other Astral mages, and so I can watch an AI play without too much problem.

However, it doesn't tell me how the AI uses her commanders/research, and so my information is still not too accuracte. Is there a better way to spy on the AI, and is it actually useful to know more about how the AI plays?