House Rules against the AI

[Foodstamp]

Yeah it's been very difficult for me to want to mod Dominions anymore with Elemental on the way. My mod time has gone to learning Python better. I wrote Pong, Hoorah!

[Edi]

Originally Posted by Foodstamp

What about the standard militia event?

To test the resource hang up I am talking about, you only need to take over any AI controlled castle besides their capital. I am pretty sure the AI makes the same decisions in provinces without castles but you just don't see the queue hang up because that bug only allows you to see the queued units when you conquer a castle.

If the AI doesn't do this anymore, I may give it another shot!

The standard militia that appears by event is unmodded in terms of gold cost. It will not cause bankruptcy. It will also be recruitable in the gold cost version from those poptypes that have it (two or three, so you see some of it in the AI armies). Nations that had other crap in their rosters still have them, but as copies. So e.g. if they had light cavalry 26, they now have other units (unused) that had light cav copystatted on them.

If the queued up units don't show outside castles, then yes, that would be a problem for the resource mod. I use the combo or the gold cost version myself most of the time. So the resource version may or may not suffer from that problem.

The only problem with gold cost mod is that enslaving indies via astral magic can be hazardous to your finances, so a look at the mod code and the poptype list in the Dom3 DB is advisable before experimenting.

[Humakty]

@ Lingchih :

Civ 4 AI is all about cheating, and much more so than dom 3 AI. Even on noble difficulty, it gets bonuses, and, mind you, there isn't anything too complicated to do in civ, well nothing as complicated as dom 3 spell system.

Civ 4 AI, at emperor difficulty, has at the very least ten different bonuses, ranging from troop XP to Great People generation, really every kind of bonus you could think about is covered.

So to evaluate Civ 4 AI, you'd have to play on warlord difficulty, were you could realise it is utter crap, not able to do anything consistent, not even by accident.

In conclusion, the only merit of civ 4 AI is to have much more bonuses than dom 3 AI, and I would in no way compare it to Galciv AI, which is able of a somewhat consistent gameplay.

[Makinus]

I recently bought Sins of a Solar Empire (the Trinity pack) and the AI seems to be very good.... i am mostly playing the AIs in Normal difficulty yet, but according to the developers, up to the Hard AI, it does not have any kind of bonuses, only it uses more advanced tactics, only in the difficulties above Hard the AI start gaining bonuses...

Seems to me to be a very good AI design... spceially considering that i still didn´t beat the AI on Normal difficulty yet....

[Humakty]

I only have basic SoaSE game, but I do get regularly kicked over by normal AIs too ( I love playing the cool psychic ones ). I don't play much though, base game is kinda limited, do you think the expansion pack is worth it ?

[Belac]

Actually I think the AI is pretty decent as games go. Much better than the CIV4 AI in that it is willing to attack other AI nations and can master a few basic battlefield strats (even if all that is is artillery+waves of chaff+flanking cavalry, that's something).

My house rules involve massively rich settings and hard research. The time of game when the AI is most challenging is early midgame, when as a player you want to be building forts+mages and racing up the research tree, but instead you have to keep armies around designed to beat waves of chaff. I just give up on reaching the endgame and play like there's nothing above level 6 magic.

[Saarud]

Well I only play SP since I can't be sure to keep up with the turns in a MP game even if I would prefer that. I only have a few houserules I follow and those has already been mentioned earlier in this thread.

My favorite way of playing SP is simply trying to break my own records in winning as fast as possible. While the AI won't challenge me, my earlier win records will. My favorite map are Dawn of Dominions (I think that's the name) where about 10 or so EA nations are preset on a very nice map. The starting locations are not balanced but very thematical placed which makes me more immersed into the game.

[Gandalf Parker]

Ive seen some great advances in the subject of improving the Computer Players in Dominions 3. We still could use a thread specifically listing the settings, maps, mods, and 3rd party programs that are directed toward AI improvement. Possibly sticky, altho we might have to wait until a new regime for that.

Some levels for Indepts above 9 tend to go AI'd, Allied, SemiRand, Chaos, Designed, GameMaster.

Some MODs would be Better Independents or the AI Opponent Balance Mod.

Some MAPs such as the Tower Map seems to help, and the NI (No Independents) maps. And now Im adding another map. Based on the idea that the NI maps help the AI use more elites, and cuts micromanagement, I have created a PI (Partial Independents) map. Approx 1 out of every 10 provinces will allow their usual recruitment of independent units. The others still force you to fight for them but do not allow recruiting (unless a magic site provides something). To keep the locations from getting memorized from continual replay, my server will re-randomize this file daily. Check out the PI version of the Parganos map called Partial_anos on my server.
http://www.dom3minions.com/maps.htm

[JonBrave]

I'm deliberately reviving this thread!

When I first joined this forum, I tried to follow this guy's advice:

Originally Posted by Makinus

I nearly exclusively play single player against the AI and i use some House Rules to give a "fair chance" to the AI, i´ll post my house rules here and i´m curious to other house hules:

3. Only 1 researcher per lab.

And later he confirms:

Originally Posted by Makinus

My major gripe with the AI is that it´s incapable of keeping up in the research curve... it simply does not research fast enough.... thats the reason of my house rule of 1 researcher per lab... it´s the only way for the AI to keep up...

Now I'm still a simpleton a while on, and this is depressing. I don't know who this Makinus is, but has anybody actually tried beating some (Impossible) AIs with restriction of you can only have 1 researcher per lab all game? Because this has haunted me, I certainly couldn't achieve it...

[krpeters]

Originally Posted by JonBrave

I don't know who this Makinus is, but has anybody actually tried beating some (Impossible) AIs with restriction of you can only have 1 researcher per lab all game?

Was his pretender a Great Sage, and was his one mage per lab a Starets?