What is wrong with the AI?

[Wikd Thots]

I have not looked at that mod yet. But I was hoping that it removed the things that the AI "wasted" gold and resources on. And possibly made the "good" units cheaper for it. Maybe added a another site or two that would boost gems or slaves.

[Foodstamp]

The mod sounds like it starts Mictlan with an overpowered Pretender that spawns dominion producing juggernauts, quality troops and SC style special banelords.

It sounds like that mod would go a long ways towards providing a person with a challenging single player game.

That doesn't sound stupid, ridiculous, or like a game breaker to me. It sounds like just the type of mod the original poster was looking for.

[Arralen]

Basically, it lets the AI play a different game than the player. Turns it into a F9W9S9 bless monster that has little similarities with the original nation.

Is it fun for a player to go against nations from a totally different game?
Is that really a "satisfying" challenge?
Is it really fun to play against let's say 5 of those nations, which all swamp you with super-blessed summons and have most of its national units not used at all?

I doubt so.

And if someone really needs the challenge of fighting against impossible numbers - there's an easier way to achieve that:
Start a game with AI set to impossible , set research to easy. Hit "next turn" 10x or so without doing anything.
If you're still alive, play normally, but only recruit mages every other turn and never set more than 34% of your mages to research.

Furthermore, I really doubt the idea that the AI "wastes" gold and ressources on units. If there are units in the game which are really a waste to build, than that is a balance issue, not an AI issue. (Yes, there's a BIG balance issue. Yes, I'm gonna do a mod that corrects that.)
I agree that there are units which are somewhat 'special', which the AI can't really make use of. Those might be tweaked, or the devs asked to do something about the AI in that case.

[Wikd Thots]

Arralen said:
Is it fun for a player to go against nations from a totally different game?
Is that really a "satisfying" challenge?
Is it really fun to play against let's say 5 of those nations, which all swamp you with super-blessed summons and have most of its national units not used at all?

Yes, yes, probably not.

As far as getting the devs to fix it, fine. Somehow I think some modded AIs that duplicate the playing abilities of the better players might take less time.

[Foodstamp]

I think your observations may be a bit off base. I think a lot of players including the original poster would probably enjoy a mod like the one I linked to.

I think the points you bring up are really just a matter of opinion more than anything else. I see the mod to be as viable solution as your solution you suggest about hitting next turn 10 times.

Take a second look at your posts. They really seem to stem from an opinion you have on how single player games should be played rather than an actual argument that the mod hurts a player's experience.

[vfb]

Wikd Thots said:
What part of "NO I do not want to hear that mp is the answer" do you people not understand? I HAVE played MP! I know what it is good for. And I plan to play it much more.

But I want to experiment with tactics and things without quitting an mp game as soon as I figure out that it was a bust. Or hear from the experts here "why did you do that"? I've seen some of the comments here and I don't care to play with some people until I have had a chance to experiment some more. The only alternative seems to be to listen to the trashers and do whatever they say is best.

Sorry to hear you are getting 'trashed' in MP for being noobish. If an expert was to ask me, "Why did you do that?", I wouldn't be offended. The answer is "Because I thought it would work. Did I forget to mention that I'm a noob?"

I've found that the experienced players have been willing to give me good advice. And this is even in a game where I eventually may end up as their opponent. I've also seen experienced players give out strategic advice to other players when a game they are in is being set up.

In my opinion, the AI is already good enough to get an idea whether or not your overall strategy (bless, scales, SC pretender, whatever) is broken or worth a try. And a strategy that is 'worth a try' may still be broken in MP, but there's only one way you are going to find out.

For tactical experiments, I love the Mini_v3.map and have several versions of it now for trying out tactics and simulating battles. You need to play both sides to set up the unit's battle orders correctly, of course. Edi's spreadsheets will give you all the IDs you need to set up any matchup. You can even play a full game hotseat against yourself if there's something you need to test that the Mini map won't do.

When your MP games go 'bust', you might want to just keep playing until you are dead, instead of quitting. The point of the game for me is playing, not winning. If you are expecting to win when you are playing against 8 other human players, then I think you are just setting yourself up to be disappointed.

If there are specific people that you do not have fun playing with, then host your own game. There's nothing wrong with telling someone you'd prefer they did not join your game, if you did not enjoy playing with them in a previous game. Keep looking and I'm sure you will find some people you can have fun playing with!

[llamabeast]

I'd just like to butt in to the discussion, because I got the impression that quite a few players have the impression that most of the MP going on is super-competitive. That isn't my experience at all - I've found there's a lot of role-playing going on, interesting tactics and friendly gaming. Maybe its just a feature of playing the generally larger-and-longer games organised in the forum rather than the blitzes organised in the IRC channel, I don't know.

In any case, I've never felt under pressure to go for a completely optimal game or anything. The variation in player skill, plus diplomacy and role-playing add enough complication to the mix that it's not necessary to go down the min-maxing route.

I would really encourage people who haven't played much MP to join some of the new games organised in the MP forum here, they really are excellent fun and very friendly.

Also the 1-turn-a-day system I find works well, and doesn't take up a lot of time (unless you sign up to multiple games!), although of course it could be difficult for people who have varied schedules, travel a lot etc..

Just to be clear, my point isn't in any way to put down SP or say that everyone should play MP. Just that I wouldn't like everyone to think that all MP games are super-competitive, because that isn't what I've found at all.

[Sombre]

I'm one of the people who has complained about the behaviour of the AI. I feel there are issues with it that should be fixed - I don't think it would take a silly amount of time and it would improve SP for me no ends.

I can mod and have made several mods. I made an AI Mictlan in some random thread but no-one seemed to have any interest in it - it just gave them unlimited bloodslaves basically, since the AI is miserable at blood nations.

The fact of the matter is I can't change the behaviour of the AI by modding. It will still do things seemingly at random, such as throwing 30 assorted troops at a 30 PD province with a missile based army camped there. Result; AI loses 30 or so troops every turn for no gain. That's a matter of behaviour not of the AI needing super troops or extra resources.

Sure if you give all the AI nations insane stats, unlimited resources etc then the game will be harder to play. But for me it wouldn't be any more fun, because the AI would continue to do the same stupid things, it would still send 30 troops against 200, but this time it would win, because the 30 troops would all be seraphs or something insane like that. Or losing 30 troops wouldn't matter at all, since they have 1000 times the gold you do. That to me is not fun.

And no, I don't hate the game. Why would I play and make mods for a game that I hate. I'm just not a fanboy who pretends everything is perfect and constantly moves the discussion away from clear flaws in the game.

On the subject of impossible ai vs normal (with setup by human), I'm now leaning towards the normal human switch ones. Simply because you can give them a thematic setup which is more interesting - they aren't actually stronger, because the AI gets big boosts on impossible, but their behaviour seems better and it's more fun to play against an AI that at least /appears/ to have a coherent plan.

[Gandalf Parker]

Wikd Thots said:
Fine, I will try to quiet down.

battle simulator? is that a mod? It still does not sound like what I want but it might help on just the formations and what orders to give.

Sorry I was slow getting back to this.
The mini-map is at http://www.dom3minions.com/docs/Mini_v3.zip

Create an early era game on the mini-map and join as a human player for Arcoscepphale and human player for Ermor. You will find that they both have an additional army. Set the formations and scripts, then have them both meet in one of the neighboring provinces. Watch the battle. If you want to do it again then just quit that game and start another on the same map. If you want to try different armies then use notepad to edit the Mini_v3.map file. You can select commanders, units, equipment, set experience levels, etc.

Gandalf Parker

[MaxWilson]

Xietor said:
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.

In theory, we have everything we need to be able to create a better AI because of the PBEM architecture. A .trn file contains all the information about the current turn that you'd need to write a .h file giving orders for the next turn. I've peeked at the .h files and seen some patterns--for instance units that aren't moving that turn have "FF" has a destination and <destination province number> otherwise--but to be honest I'm not sure I could decode the .trn files. But in principle we could write an AI that substitutes for a human by generating .h files.

Maybe for Dom IV. Or if I get a lot smarter than I am now.

-Max