What I'd like see AI do in SP play

[Sombre]

Well I don't think I'd have it test all the possible places it could attack. Instead I'd have it only test in that one place that it was going to attack, and then decide whether or not it will based on the results. This would require less than twice the length of time that it currently take to calculate. And when I say test I mean actually run the whole battle, as dom3 normally does, only as a test. Yes, this would be 'cheating'. But it isn't like the AI can use all the extra information it would get - the only thing it would effect is stopping armies of 14 people marching to certain death turn after turn. Ok, so they shouldn't really know about glamour armies before attacking - but I honestly don't see why anyone would need the glamour advantage against the AI. I mean right now in order to beat it all you have to do is let it kill itself off against your PD while you build up forces. That removes a lot more strategy than losing the ability to 'trick' it with glamourous defence forces.

Unlike most 'exploits' that you can use versus the AI this lemming weakness that they have isn't something you can choose not to exploit if you prefer a more challenging game. I mean you could choose not to use PD at all against the AI, but that's pretty extreme and you'd still be guarding your provinces and they'd still be suiciding into them. So what can you do, refuse to defend your borders at all?

If it used this form of test before attacking you could basically forget you knew about it and not use it against the AI - it is still deterred by strong PD and armies, but eventually it's going to attack with a much more built up force. Plus the AI would still make mistakes - since the outcome of battles is somewhat based on a series of random numbers there's room for it to get the test wrong. You could also tell it to only perform the test 80% of the time or something.