Does the AI Boost?

[Sombre]

Never seen it use any boosters to be honest.

[lch]

I sometimes see AI commanders with magic items. But I'm not sure if they forged those themselves or got them from independent defenders in a province. I guess it does forge them but as KO said without involving much of a thought.

[Ironhawk]

Yeah ok. I didnt think that it would be able to plan things in that much detail but I wanted to be sure.

My thought for the AI was to modify some summons to make them "thugs" without any need for equipment. That way if the AI did manage to get around to summonng them, it would not need to equip them (which is super complicated). And perhaps mod a few high level summons to be SCs right out of the box as well. One problem i see of course is still how to incent the AI to try and cast these spells to begin with. I'm not sure the AI programming can even conceptually understand shelling out 20 gems - even 10 gems! - for a single heavy-duty unit.

[jutetrea]

I like the idea.

Any idea how the AI prioritizes rituals or if it does at all? Prioritizes commander purchases?

Possibly make it a research lvl - 0 national spell, muli-path'd to their rarer capital only magic combination and a moderate gem cost (maybe equiv to a lvl 3-4 summons)?

Possibly a high resource/high gold cost commander as well, no leadership, thug stats/abilities.

I'm not sure if the AI:
site searches well
accumulates gems towards goals
alchemizes
boosts
summons "bridge" magic users
summons "diversity" magic users
casts gem producing/beneficial globals
Summons troops effectively

On a random note, can rituals ever cost 2 gem types? Even via mods?

[Kristoffer O]

> On a random note, can rituals ever cost 2 gem types? Even via mods?

Nope

[Edratman]

jutetrea said:


I'm not sure if the AI:
site searches well
accumulates gems towards goals
alchemizes
boosts
summons "bridge" magic users
summons "diversity" magic users
casts gem producing/beneficial globals
Summons troops effectively

?

I think you have summed up the major deficiencies of the AI and why a person can beat the AI once he learns how to play the game.


Despite these shortcoming, the AI kicked my butt for a month or so until I finally quit playing the game like CIV. So I think the AI is pretty impresssive. Because it doesn't perform the items on your list well and I guarantee that your list will be expanded (no Nostradamus points available for the prediction) it is not perfect. I don't know if a perfect AI is achievable.

Look at the time and resources IBM put into making a computer that can beat chess champions. That is the type of effort required to make a near perfect AI. Is it reasonable to expect that from a game company?

Everyone's suggestions are probably helpful to the Dev's and I imagine they evaluate all, or at least most, of them. And the devs probably put a good number into the category of "WOW, good idea, wish I knew how to do that".

[Jazzepi]

Chess is also extremely simple when compared to games like Dominions 3. There is no hidden information, and there are only a certain set of given moves.

Jazzepi

[Folket]

Sure chess is more simple then Dominions but on the other hand good chess players are probably much better at chess then good dominion players are at dominions.

[Gandalf Parker]

jutetrea said:
Any idea how the AI prioritizes rituals or if it does at all? Prioritizes commander purchases?
casts gem producing/beneficial globals
Summons troops effectively

The AI seems to use more of the higher-level national units if there is enough resources.

I have seen it cast gem producing globals quite abit. Unless its the "effectively" that you are making a point of.

I have also seen lots of summons troops. Again, unless you are pointing at the "effectively".

The problem with "effectively" is that it tends to require a lot of "IF nation=xxxxxx" branching in the code. And even then there are variations. The maenad version of Pangaea has different needs than the carrion version.

[Ironhawk]

Yeah those are the really big questions when designing SC/thug summon spells for the AI. Without knowing how it chooses one ritual from another it will be very difficult for me to figure out how to incent the AI to cast this particular spell. My worst fear is that the AI will assess a summon spell based on the number of effects which would pretty much shoot the whole idea in the foot. But then... iirc, I remember the AI using cave and fire drakes occassionally so it must have some understanding of summoning.

My current thought on the topic is to make it a 0-level national spell with 1 gem cost to summon a thug. And then just see how many of them the AI ends up casting. If I am overrun immediately by thugs then I will have my answer. But honestly I'd rather have some more solid data from people who have played a lot of SP games...