AI Questions

[Wikd Thots]

If you know what the AI does well and does not do well then you should be able to design a AI nation. Take away what it wastes and give it more of what it can use.

A Scene Map like G talks about add to that. I have seen the suggestion that giving non-moving pretenders or non SC pretenders can avoid the arena problem. Or fully equip the SC so that it can live the arena.

The suggestions to change the game settings already work real well. The Scene map could do more and give the AI extra resources at the castle so that it will build more elite units.

And the most dangerous bless strategys should be able to be built into a scene game.

[Valandil]

Of course, you could give the AI a nation with one commander with six in all paths, and recruitable angels of the host as its only troops. Play on a map with no indies, with a W9 E9 pretender.

But what kind of game would that be?

The problem is that the AI doesn't make full use of what it has (as in any game), and thus must be given more to compensate.

[Humakty]

I already stumbled upon 'heim' nations controlled by AI, who mostly used its good national troops. I don't think the recruitment is completely random, as the AI often puts up big groups of one type of troop. I think the problem is that it often seem to have no clue of how to regroup them in larger armies. ie : no mages supporting chaff hordes, or elite sacreds without priests.

[Gandalf Parker]

In a game with low resources and boosted resources at the AIs capital, it definetly uses more of the elite troops and fewer indept troops. So there is some sort of logic at work.

If you built an AI on a map. And gave it the provinces around it. Then boost the resources in the capital and nearby provinces then it should help quite abit. To make sure that the extra resources are used at the capital, you could either remove the recruitable indept from those nearby provs or make sure that they are useable units.

Im not sure about the same sorts of boost for a blessable nation. Does putting temples in those additional starter provs increase the number of holy recruitables at the capital?

[thejeff]

Yes, but the AI is so bad at using sacreds, it's really not worth it.

It'll just recruit more of the expensive sacreds, then send them off to die without sending a priest to bless them.

[Archonsod]

Sombre said:
In regard to equipment, saying 'the AI is there' is pointless. If you had one AI set to build and assign items totally at random and one AI using the current system, could anyone tell the difference?

I've never seen the AI give a useless item to a commander, nearly all of them provide a benefit in some way.

[Nikolai]

Who play with the AI? All players I know use AI to feel a new race. Even for testing stuff, it's better to play both sides as human. AI sucks? Play players!

Evan before we were told about this board, we were playing each other, not AI. If you compstomp to feel good, bad AI is good. If you want to feel better, stomp humans.

I would have developers fix exploits like Vengeance of Dead, battlefield spells after dead/retreat and bugs like undead bless failure and dominion effect loss in early turns. AI? I for one don't mind.

[Gandalf Parker]

thejeff said:
Yes, but the AI is so bad at using sacreds, it's really not worth it.

It'll just recruit more of the expensive sacreds, then send them off to die without sending a priest to bless them.

Arent there nations which make that almost impossible?

[Valandil]

Yes. MA Ulm.

[Frostmourne27]

Archonsod said:

I've never seen the AI give a useless item to a commander, nearly all of them provide a benefit in some way.

AKAIK, there are no 'useless' items. Although you have point, I think Sombre is right. Half of the time, the Ai does stupid things, like equiping non-assassins with skull talismans, or mages with black plate. The other half of the time, they make decent choices, but I've never seen the Ai equip something that looked like an Sc or Thug because of its equipment.

It seems to me that this might actually be easy to remedy. Couldn't we just devise a couple of hundred item 'sets' that the computer would try to follow. E.g. large commanders look up item profiles from a list that includes sets like firebrand, charcoal shield, ring of regen, amulet of resiliance and dragon scale mail.

Of course, that assumes the computer could reach lvl 6 in con, which is often doubtful in short games, so we'de need lots of different lists for different circumstances. But I doubt the community would be unable to come up with a few. It wouldn't be that different from something like the SemiRandomizer, would it?