General Dominions 3 comparison...

[thejeff]

For all the complaints about the AI, it's not really that bad.
It can easily make for a challenging early game, especially on crowded maps. There are some mods that help, mostly by changing the independent troops. Mostly it doesn't handle SCs and thugs well, either building them or defending against them.
Late game gets very complicated and you really need an overall strategy which the AI doesn't have. And the ability to change that strategy to cope with changing opponents.

As for multiplayer, it generally breaks down into 2 types: blitzes, which are played in one sitting for hours at a time . And the regular MP games which usually start at one turn per day and slow even further down later in the game. Early turns only take a few minutes, later ones may take hours of planning. You can do your turn whenever you have time and submit it to the host which usually runs the turn when everyone's ready or at the deadline.

There are usually a dozen or more games running at a time over on the Multiplayer page.

[Endoperez]

llamabeast said:

Have you looked in the Mods & Maps forum? Check out the modlist! There are heaps of exceptionally good mods there. Modding in Dom3 has really been thriving.

Checking the six posts he has posted here, he posted in the "AI pretender design is insane" thread about help with designing maps that give AI predefined pretender or scales.

SemiRandom, a third-party tool, can create better pretenders for AI IIRC. It doesn't change actual AI, it just changes stuff in the map.
Also, if you're still interested in doing it yourself, the commands in question are in mapediting, not modding, pdf. Points 5.13 to 5.15 set pretender type, dominion strength and scales, and 6.5 to 6.11 can be used to give the pretender magic, experience, units, bodyguards, magic items etc. It seems the mapedit manual hasn't been upgraded in patches, so it doesn't list nation numbers of nations added in patches.

[sector24]

I don't think the Dominions 3 AI is that bad. The AI in GC2 has significant weaknesses. When is the last time you captured a planet in GC2 and said, "Wow, the computer is really smart for building 7 embassies and a farm."

The difference between GC2 and Dom3 is that you can set the GC2 AI above Intelligent and it cheats by getting huge resource bonuses. But if you play GC2 with opponents set to Intelligent, (max AI routines, no economic bonus) you can win without thinking too hard.

Besides, the player strategy in GC2 is inevitably some combination of "all factory", "all lab", or "all econ". Every game pretty much plays out the same because the ideal economic strategy is pretty well defined.

There is a certain appeal in playing a game in which you have familiarity, but I feel like Dominions 3 is stronger for the fact that every situation feels unique. Even when playing the same nation twice, the strategy varies greatly depending on your nearest neighbors, random magic sites and indy mages, etc. Deeper strategy, less repetition.

[Sombre]

sector24 said:
The difference between GC2 and Dom3 is that you can set the GC2 AI above Intelligent and it cheats by getting huge resource bonuses. But if you play GC2 with opponents set to Intelligent, (max AI routines, no economic bonus) you can win without thinking too hard.

I'm not following. How is Dom3 different? Set Dom3 AI above normal and it cheats, leave it on normal and you can win without thinking too hard.

Besides which Galciv's AI is far better.

[sector24]

The extra design points are not the equivalent of the bonuses the AI gets in GC2. Dominions 3 has a hard cap on bonuses, for instance you can never take Order 7 and Growth 5. So the "cheating" that the Dom3 AI gets does not significantly increase the difficulty in the way GC2's AI does. If you gave the Dom3 AI an extra 5000g and a Wraith Lord every turn, that might approximate playing GC2 on Suicidal.

If you compare apples to oranges, the GC2 AI is better. This is because Dom3's AI doesn't scale up to the same level of difficulty. But if you compare apples to apples, that is GC2 on intelligent vs Dom3 on Normal, the two AIs are roughly equivalent.

GC2's AI is only good at certain things. When you give it an unlimited cash stream and huge production bonuses it can buy buildings and produce ships very well. But it can't build planets intelligently, its diplomacy model is easily exploitable, etc. Dom3 is the same way, it's very weak in certain areas; SCs and magic. I don't think GC2's AI is significantly better, I think GC2 is a less complicated game. Therefore the AI is more capable of playing it.

[Agrajag]

The Dom3 AI isn't that great, but for the first couple of dozens of hours you won't notice it because you'll be too busy getting stomped by it while you are trying to figure out which strategies work
I think a lot of people forget that Dom3 has a pretty steep and long learning curve, so even though when you are at the top of it, you look down at the AI with contempt and can barely spot him ("He looks like an ant from here!"), you did climb a very long way to get there, and were looked down upon by the AI for quite some time.

[thejeff]

Or just try playing without the things the AI just can't handle: uber-bless strategies and SCs.

Fighting multiple impossible AIs with regular national troops backed up by artillery and buff mages is still hard for me.
(Of course, I may just suck)

Some of the AI nations will make really bad pretender design choices and implode, but other AIs will benefit from that as well as you.

[Folket]

The AI in dominions cheat on higher difficulty levels. On impossible it gets +100% gold and resources.

Also a third thing the AI can't handle is province defence.