Single player question/

[ttomm46]

ok thanks..

[alexti]

I don't think that saying that AI in Dom3 bad is correct. It actually plays relatively reasonable (though straightforward strategy). Its main weakness is that it always plays the same strategy, and it differs very little between different AI nations. So after you learn how to counter that strategy, AI will be easy to beat. Somewhat experienced players normally set AI on impossible - this give some design point bonuses to AI, which isn't that much by itself, but it causes cascade effect because you can't keep armies as large as AI, so somebody declares war on you. Even though you're winning that war you suffer attritition which makes you look weaker to other AI and they promptly declare war on you too. Thus you often end up fighting 4-5 AI nations at the same time which increases the challenge

I've also noticed that in poor games with fast research AI tends to be more interesting. It correctly evaluates importance of magic and starts to use mages actively and because mages are different depending on nation, playing against different nations actually leads to somewhat different games. I don't think that AI "thinks" at strategic level in those cases, but sometimes it comes up with cunning battlefield tactics Overall, I'm impressed by improvement in spellcasting AI. After I've started to play poor games with fast research it became quite apparent.

[Ballbarian]

I actually encountered a sneaking AI Yomi army tonight. Yes it was small and ineffective, but I was pleasantly surprised. It almost beat my sad little Lanka monkey province defense.

[NTJedi]

Ballbarian said:
I actually encountered a sneaking AI Yomi army tonight. Yes it was small and ineffective, but I was pleasantly surprised. It almost beat my sad little Lanka monkey province defense.

I've seen late age Man also use sneaking armies, yet it's rare and usually the armies are 30 units are less. Perhaps Dominions_4 will introduce the modding option of a scriptable AI opponent. I recall some very old games AgeofEmpires2 and WarCraft2 provided this feature which allowed gamers to create some very unique/clever AI opponents.

[HoneyBadger]

Maybe we'll even get it in Dom3. We can hope, right?