Question before buying!

[thejeff]

I think most of the resistance to the idea of turning powerful mod nations into AI only nations is that people want to play them not just fight against them. Also a lot of things that would be overpowered in a good player's hands the AI might just flail around with, so a nation could be overpowered but still weak for the AI.

One thought for boosting AI nations is to mod in summons that are the equivalent of fully-geared and buffed thugs and SCs. The AIs real trouble with either is that it doesn't equip them sensibly or cast the useful buffs. So make summons that lack slots and paths, but have built-in gear, resistances etc that mimic at least the common thug gear. I know everything isn't moddable, but many things are. Resistances, MR, luck, ethereal, regen, reinvig, fear, awe, fireshield. I don't think there's a way to get the VineShield effect. If you give them weapons in a mod, I don't think they get the special effects, but most of them you could add in as an extra attack.

Since this would be for the AI to use in SP, balance isn't a great concern. You can just mark the spells as "AI-only" and let the player honor that. Or not. It's SP.

[Stavis_L]

Originally Posted by thejeff

One thought for boosting AI nations is to mod in summons that are the equivalent of fully-geared and buffed thugs and SCs. The AIs real trouble with either is that it doesn't equip them sensibly or cast the useful buffs. So make summons that lack slots and paths, but have built-in gear, resistances etc that mimic at least the common thug gear. I know everything isn't moddable, but many things are. Resistances, MR, luck, ethereal, regen, reinvig, fear, awe, fireshield. I don't think there's a way to get the VineShield effect. If you give them weapons in a mod, I don't think they get the special effects, but most of them you could add in as an extra attack.

Since this would be for the AI to use in SP, balance isn't a great concern. You can just mark the spells as "AI-only" and let the player honor that. Or not. It's SP.

Interestingly, I've been working on just this. The main question I have is how to get the AI to summon the "prebuilt thugs" vs. (for instance) Summon Animals.

Also, the number of units is somewhat problematic since each summon requires a spell slot...

[llamabeast]

Also, the number of units is somewhat problematic since each summon requires a spell slot...

When the new patch comes out we'll have LOADS more spell slots.

[thejeff]

I've been tossing the idea around in the back of my head for awhile, mostly when these discussions come up. I probably saw someone suggest it before. I'd like to use it, but the issue hasn't bothered me enough to work on it myself.

One way to solve both problems would be to replace "Summon Animals" and similar spells. Not sure I'd like that approach. I'd rather not change the human players options and Summon Animals is occasionally useful.

I've got no real idea what the AI bases its ritual casting decisions on. I know I've seen it use modded summons. My assumption is that making the spells cheaper and easier will make them more likely to be used, but beyond that it's hard to say.

How many spell slots are available? I know there have been mods that added quite a few new summons. How many were you planning on?

[rdonj]

Stavis - I saw you asking about what summons the AI likes to use in the other forum. I don't quite think that's appropriate for that thread, but what I see the AI summon most are things like fire snakes, summer lions, spring hawks, fall bears, clockwork horrors, naiad warriors, banes, bane lords, hama dryads, ghosts and shura. I've probably seen other things also, but those are the ones I remember best at present.

[theenemy]

If you like a sandbox environment where you can experiment with different strategies and such then you can probably play around with the game in SP for quite a while.
The gameplay value in SP is however at zero percent.

[thejeff]

That is not true. (I suppose, depending on what you mean by "gameplay value" it could be...)

Plenty of people, including me, play SP and enjoy it.
Impossible AIs, especially with the BetterIndependents mod, can be quite challenging through midgame, if you aren't abusing the AI flaws or playing an early game optimized strategy (awake SC pretender, strong double bless nation, strong recruitable thug/SCs)

It's not as challenging as MP can be, especially as the game goes on and you get more options, which the AI doesn't even try to counter. OTOH, some strategies actually work better in MP than against the AI.

[Gandalf Parker]

Eventually everyone tends to get too familiar and abit unhappy with the vanilla game. For those people there are varieties of game settings, special maps, game mods and nation mods, and even 3rd party programs. All of which are designed to make the game different than vanilla.

That doesnt just apply to MP play. It also applies to Solo play and to upgrading the AI. There are settings, maps, mods, modded nations, and 3rd party programs which take the AI far beyond what you might have played when you were going thru the demo or tutorial.

[JonBrave]

Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker

That doesnt just apply to MP play. It also applies to Solo play and to upgrading the AI. There are settings, maps, mods, modded nations, and 3rd party programs which take the AI far beyond what you might have played when you were going thru the demo or tutorial.

For SP, is there a particualr link/thread to guide to these? For example, I think I read the Balance Mod is not best for AI, where should I start looking? Thanks.

[Stavis_L]

Originally Posted by JonBrave

For SP, is there a particualr link/thread to guide to these? For example, I think I read the Balance Mod is not best for AI, where should I start looking? Thanks.

Some of the more popular ways to improve the SP experience are:

• Edi's Better Independents mod (sets recruit costs for indeps sky high so the AI doesn't create hordes of generic units.)
• Using a no-indep-recruitables (NI) map; Sombre created a few in this thread, and there are more if you dig around. (Uses map editing to remove generic units as poptype recruitables.)
• Ballbarian's SemiRandom program (creates maps from template files that have custom designed provinces/pretenders, so you don't get self-crippling AI opponents as much, and the province defenders are more likely to make sense for the province in question.)
• Specific scenario maps, like Edi's Faerun map (a map with custom designed provinces). There are other scenario maps out there, although not as many as one would like...
• Using "overpowered" mods as AI opponenents; some people put some of Amos' mods in that category, although I haven't tried them personally.