House Rules against the AI

Humakty · #1 January 29th, 2010, 08:28 AM

Dominions AI isn't much worse than any other (ie : Civ 4 AI), it's the game which offers so many different tricks so quickly. I mean, by year two you'll have around 100 spells available, how to you want an AI to use efficiently all of those ?

The only really bad point dom 3 AI has is the propention not to buy any mages whatsoever, partially cured with NI maps or BI mod. That, and recruiting militia...*sigh*

Gandalf Parker · #2 January 29th, 2010, 10:49 AM

Its also not a bad AI considering how it was created. Dominions was created with a minimal plugged-in AI. And the game has grown in pieces. So even "easy" fixes dont tend to be so easy. Such as "use of lightning should mean use protection against lightning". But there does not seem to be a simplye single variable for lightning in the code. Each item and spell was coded separately without much in the way of categories. So the code would have to maintain a huge list of spells and counter items. Thats why we still find holes where some unit is supposed to be immune to something, or some spell isnt supposed to work. Because each one needs to be noticed and tagged.

We have gathered much info on what the AI does and doesnt do. What pretenders it uses well and which ones it doesnt. Units it uses well enough and which ones to avoid. Spells it prefers to use so we might be able to selectively grant more or less ability to use the ones we feel it uses well. Eventually I will use all of this to give us all a fantastic modded nation designed for no other purpose than to be a bigger better AI for the game. Of course this will be done by me creating some horribly crappy little mod that will instantly spur someone to show me up by doing it much MUCH better.

Lingchih · #3 January 30th, 2010, 02:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Humakty

Dominions AI isn't much worse than any other (ie : Civ 4 AI), it's the game which offers so many different tricks so quickly. I mean, by year two you'll have around 100 spells available, how to you want an AI to use efficiently all of those ?

The only really bad point dom 3 AI has is the propention not to buy any mages whatsoever, partially cured with NI maps or BI mod. That, and recruiting militia...*sigh*

Really, Humakty? Dom AI is about the worst there is. Civ, GalCiv, a dozen other games, beat it by a mile. This game is all about MP.