A nation the AI could use *well*

Sombre · #1 May 12th, 2008, 03:14 PM

Twan: Fair point. It might still feel like an AI nation though, when you played it. That's something to avoid - the ideal result is a nation much like the existing dom3 ones, but that has been tweaked and altered to hopefully suit the AI well. With careful planning your idea could be good though. Are you sure the AI empowers though?

I understand that the AI has plenty of problems and can't handle the lategame at all, or certain SP tricks,.. but the thread isn't really about that. It's about working with the current AI based on our knowledge of it rather than suggesting changes to it.

LA Ermor and Rlyeh do well with the AI, that's true. Especially with no indies via map or mod. I think LA Ermor might have a special AI though.

Why do we think the AI does well with EA Niefel? It can't use thugs or a bless strat, so it would seem odd it is successful with Niefel, yet it does appear to be. It consistently does well with Jotunheim too.

Ewierl · #2 May 12th, 2008, 04:44 PM

Quote:

Sombre said:LA Ermor and Rlyeh do well with the AI, that's true. Especially with no indies via map or mod. I think LA Ermor might have a special AI though.

I know in SP games, the issue seems to be less "AI does well as Ermor" and more "AI does very badly fighting against Ermor." Therefore, the AI Ermor consumes all its neighbors easily and grows to enormous size.

Quote:

Why do we think the AI does well with EA Niefel? It can't use thugs or a bless strat, so it would seem odd it is successful with Niefel, yet it does appear to be. It consistently does well with Jotunheim too.

AI does well with nations that have big tough troops. Powerful troops like the Jotuns allow a nation to be effective without having to rely on blesses/summons/crazy tactics/crazy combos that the AI does less well. Remember that a higher difficulty setting gives gold bonuses to the AI, which skews its effectiveness even further towards Massive Army Power.

Sombre · #3 May 12th, 2008, 05:11 PM

Yeah but jotuns aren't actually very good base troops. I mean they aren't bad either, but I'd think ermorian or pythian infantry etc would be much more effective.

sector24 · #4 May 12th, 2008, 05:49 PM

The reason it can't play Pythium is due to the gladiators. It recruits 800g worth of units that can only be used in a single fight.

I think if you disabled them Pythium would play a lot better.

I think the AI is good at both fire and death spells. They can skelly spam, and shadow blast, plus use generic fire evocations. They're also decent at air magic. Possibly a nation of N1D1?2 and N1F1?2 mages with ANDF as the random picks, plus low gold mid-resource units that are very tough for their cost (like Alae Legionnaires perhaps).

More importantly, the AI needs to NOT have a lot of things. No gladiators, no horn blowers or standard bearers, no 120 leadership useless commanders that cost a lot, etc. Ideally they'd have a mix of all useful troops where the only difference is a high damage 2-hander, a high damage 1-hander with a shield, or a mid-range 1-hander with a shield. Lots of survival types would help, but a high enough resource cost should prevent the AI from putting 500 of them in the same army and starving to death.

A human player playing the nation would be very powerful with the Air/Fire combo, but the lack of astral would be a big offset. That's just where my line of thinking took me, maybe you have a different idea.

Aezeal · #5 May 12th, 2008, 06:24 PM

Well how about just remove the gladiators from pythium.. it'd not make it less of a player nation and indeed the AI might be able to use the troops and those mages fairly well.

Maybe a nation like pythium with some death magic instead of astral or air (but that seems like ermor

) is AI good with MA ermor?

Cerlin · #6 May 13th, 2008, 03:54 AM

I find any medium infantry nation the AI does great with if it gets a good start. For example Formoria generally mixes well in my games with Giants and lots of firblogs. Also the Jotuns do great generally. I have also found the mod nation of Argus Dis does well as Ai even without the blood economies.
Easier Evocation magic, good national troops, less complex strats seem too be the winning combination. While these may be boring for humans and not great endgame without good pretenders, it still helps a lot.