What is wrong with the AI?

[Edi]

Wikd Thots:

If you're the one who is asking how to go about doing something that is not possible with the vanilla game straight out of the box and then sitting back and saying "Nope, not interested in doing that myself", you're painting a huge bullseye on your arse. So don't be surprised when people take the opportunity to see if they can land a savage kick right in the middle of it.

You want variety, changes, then do the experimenting yourself if there is no mod out there that does what you're looking for. Do NOT expect that somebody will do it for you. The people who do mods and maps already get little enough thanks for their efforts, and most of that comes from other modders who know how important it is to get feedback on what you do.

If you expect others to do your work for you and then get up on a high horse about how you shouldn't need to lift a finger simply because you have offered no criticisms of the game (at least in public) when you get irate answers, you are not going to get any sympathy. In your opening post you said you wanted mods of a specific type, then practically demanded that somebody make them for you. If that's not an invitation to get flamed to a crisp, I don't know what is. It's fairly a miracle the response has been as mild as it has been.

You were already given advice on how to change maps so that they have no indies, thus eliminating the hordes of crap the AI so loves to use. There are a few ready-made NI maps out there, if you want more, take the time to do them.

The bottom line is that given the number of people who post here, or just lurk and read the forums, the people who actually produce mods, maps and documentation are few compared to the whole. They will act on their own priorities first, everything else second unless they see benefit for their own projects in doing something for someone else.

[Gandalf Parker]

Well put Uncle Yee. Personally I dont tend to enjoy MP much either. Im just not much for person-to-person challenges. Its ok but it tends to be for me, what SP is apparently for others. So I agree that the "mp is the answer" makes me wish that the conversation didnt get sidetracked that way.

As to the original questions:
Im not sure if setting the pretender and scales can be done in a mod. But it can in a map.

I can understand not wanting to play with no indepts just to get a different AI action. That would not lead to better game play. You might as well play on the mini-map battle simulator where you make the armies and they meet on the next turn. As far as whether or not thats the important flaw in AI, I dont know.

There might be a mod in the mod subforum that duplicates most of the units of a nation which you can tweak to your desire. Some of the "improved" versions of the present nations might give you a clue on how to remove the "weak" pieces. Then you can start a game with that nation, select the god and scales, and after the first turn set that nation to AI.

[Xietor]

I do want to give my thanks and appreciation for the obvious effort that went into "Black Steel of Ulm" made by arralen.

The worthy heroes mod that gets a ton of praise,i am sure is good, but i have used it as Pangaea, and have not really noticed what it does? My heroes appear to be the same and have the same stats. Shrug. Not sure if they come more often or what?

AI improvement I think should not be a mod. That is a core game value that affects every single person that buys the game, like a bug. Bugs and AI improvements are better done by the makers of the game.

While the AI could stand some tinkering, it is not so bad that it cannot wait until dom IV.

[Wikd Thots]

Thanks gandolf that is the closest thing to an answer that I have seen yet. But it means that if I want to play abbysia against ulm then first I have to learn ulm well enough to build a better ulm to play against. Eventually I might be able to make a kickass abbysia ai mod to offer online. But I do not think I will be able to make better versions of something like pangae.
I understand that YOU would be better to do that?

[Gandalf Parker]

Heehee, nice try.
Well I have written up quite a few Pangaean tips. I think one even made it into the manual. Im not sure if my method of play could be modded to focus the AI to play that way. Maybe, someday, I might take a stab at it. Im not really into mods. More into the maps and the server side of things.

[Arralen]

Maybe the problem is not the game nor the AI, but the players ?!

I have the vague impression, that some SP players try to "beat the game".
Not beat single nations, their adversaries on the gameboard, mind you, but the game engine itself. After a time they succeed, find out which moves the AI uses, which tactics it cannot cope with at all. Then use that knowledge to roll all over it.

Maybe this comes from all those badly designed games out there, be it "strategy" (tactical) games which let the player re-start insanely difficult scenarios until they figured out the only way to win, or RPGs with pre-set pathes to follow .. dunno.. .

However, the effect is, that no AI which could be realised within the constrains of Dominions will ever satisfy them - it would require "thinking" on a human level. Even (e.g.) the best chess AI would be hopelessly inept, because Dominions is so much more complicated.


Actually, I myself do not play (blitz) MP anymore, because I'm thoroughly fed up with the ultra-competitive play this requires: Lots of pretender builds simply do not work then, lots of aspects never get used.

Instead, I play SP. With AI on normal level - I mostly use pre-designed pretenders for the AI. And as I do quite some roleplaying, I get some fun out of it. E.g. at some point my prophet (2nd in HoF) got killed by some string of bad luck. In a competitive game, I would have simple got my a new one as soon as possible. In my SP game, I switched every mage available to research enchantment-7 to get my prophet back as mummy. I'll have to empower some mage, maybe my pretender, too - quite costly, therefore inefficient and suicidal in MP.
But fun.

And sometimes I even get my butt kicked by some AI which had a lucky (head)start for some reason. That's ok.

Therefore - try to make in-game decisions. Not to out-whit the game rules or the game engine itself ...

[Nick_K]

It's not realistic in a turn based strategy game to expect an AI that can seriously challenge an experienced human player without either cheating or being very lucky. "The AI sucks!" is a complaint I've seen on the forums for pretty much every game I visit. Really though, anyone who wants AI of approximately human level will have to wait 20 years or so.

[Gandalf Parker]

Arralen said:
Instead, I play SP. With AI on normal level - I mostly use pre-designed pretenders for the AI. And as I do quite some roleplaying, I get some fun out of it. E.g. at some point my prophet (2nd in HoF) got killed by some string of bad luck. In a competitive game, I would have simple got my a new one as soon as possible. In my SP game, I switched every mage available to research enchantment-7 to get my prophet back as mummy. I'll have to empower some mage, maybe my pretender, too - quite costly, therefore inefficient and suicidal in MP.
But fun.

That sounds like the way I play.

[Wikd Thots]

[censored] I should have had gandolf write the request. It feels like mine pissed everyone off even though they are not disagreeing with me.

I am not a solo player. I am not wanting a human level AI. I just want the people who seem to know how to do a better AI to go ahead and [censored] do it. I see so many threads that trash the game and are full of opinions by people who seem able to mod a fix. I was just trying to get some of them to maybe TRY and prove their point before I get to hate the game as much as they do.

I figured that starting a new thread asking for it was better than jumping into those other threads with a "then just [censored] fix it" comment. But apparently not since all it did was let them jump me with the same crap.

[Actuarian]

@Uncle Yee,

Good post! I generally prefer to play sp too. But then again I'm not complaining about the AI or asking others to mod the AI (which I don't think is really possible anyway).

The only type of multiplayer I play is two-player by email. That would alleviate most of your mp concerns and give you a less predictable opponent. The main problem with this is the slow pace of games, which doesn't really bother me. I can play in single player mode while I'm waiting for turns to fill up my dom3 desires. I can even play the same races and setup in SP to try out strategies.

The AI improvement I'd like to see is in the area of battle resolution, both in terms of the AI overruling scripts and in troops doing something very stupid, like leader launching a suicide assault or casting a completely useless spell.