Underestimate the AI: Reap the consequences.

[Stormbinder]

Originally posted by Alexi:
it wouldn't make sense to program two seperate combat algorythms for the human players and the AI controlled players. Dominions is all about role playing accuracy. And as far as I can see, there's no sense in one army behaving differently then another simply because it's controlled by the computer.

Yeap, that is absolutely correct. The only possible very rare exception is the topic of this very thread, as I said myself earlier. And that had nothing to do with choosing of which spells to cast. Accursing developers of malicious intend to secretly screw the player by forcing him to use "bad" spell-selecting algoritm, while strategic AI got to use the differnt "uber" spell selecting algoritm is very... errr... strange.

[archaeolept]

i've never seen an AI pretender cast more than 5 spells and then go on to attack. If the unit were berserk, of course that could happen, but otherwise no.

[Lex]

" Accursing developers of malicious intend to secretly screw the player by forcing him to use "bad" spell-selecting algoritm, while strategic AI got to use the differnt "uber" spell selecting algoritm is very... errr... strange."

ROFL well, never underestimate the mind of a programmer lol.. maybe the devs got tired of hearing all you veterans kicking the snot out of the AI (which I'm sure they worked very hard on) so they decided to curse all of you (or maybe just Norfleet) with bad algorythms, meanwhile all the newbies got copies of the game with the same combat algorythms as the AI.

[Stormbinder]

Originally posted by archaeolept:
i've never seen an AI pretender cast more than 5 spells and then go on to attack. If the unit were berserk, of course that could happen, but otherwise no.

Yeap. It never happens AFAICT.

[ August 03, 2004, 02:57: Message edited by: Stormbinder ]

[Stormbinder]

Originally posted by Alexi:
" Accursing developers of malicious intend to secretly screw the player by forcing him to use "bad" spell-selecting algoritm, while strategic AI got to use the differnt "uber" spell selecting algoritm is very... errr... strange."

ROFL well, never underestimate the mind of a programmer lol.. maybe the devs got tired of hearing all you veterans kicking the snot out of the AI (which I'm sure they worked very hard on) so they decided to curse all of you (or maybe just Norfleet) with bad algorythms, meanwhile all the newbies got copies of the game with the same combat algorythms as the AI.

LOL. Probably just Norfleet. After he publicly accursed devs of installing spyware on his computer few patches ago, maybe they have decided to throw him another bone, to keep him happy.

[ August 03, 2004, 02:56: Message edited by: Stormbinder ]

[Smauler]

Originally posted by Norfleet:
Note also how, if left up to the AI, your pretender will be allowed to cast spells until it faints from exhaustion....but the AI's pretender won't do this: You can easily witness the AI's pretender casting its spells, and then ATTACKING YOU.

I've seen an AI pretender do this in DM against another AI. I don't remember who vs who, but one cast spells until completely fatigued, the other cast spells, wasn't as fatigued, then just came and whacked them on the head repeatedly with a spoon until they died.

[Norfleet]

There we go, we have a witness. It happens.

[Stormbinder]

Originally posted by Norfleet:
There we go, we have a witness. It happens.

It may be unique to Deathmatch event, which is a special case in several regards, it may be a bug, it may be another ultra-rare legacy artifact from Dom1, it may wrong observation. I've played probably a hundred SP games, and never seen it happen. So even if it exist, it is so rare that it can be disrgarded, just like "attack commander" artifact from Dom1 game.


You can bet your *** that there are no two different algoritms for human mages and for computer mages. If it would be the case, than we all would witness it all the times, not a once-in-a-lifetime observation or anecdotical evidence.

In any case your false logic in general about dinamic AI and strategic AI having "principle advantage" over human player because "computer is always in control of thier troops, unlike human who in control for only 5 turns" just clearly shows that you don't understand what you are talking about. You are just trying to change a topic.

[ August 03, 2004, 05:17: Message edited by: Stormbinder ]

[Wendigo]

Originally posted by Smauler:
I've seen an AI pretender do this in DM against another AI. I don't remember who vs who, but one cast spells until completely fatigued, the other cast spells, wasn't as fatigued, then just came and whacked them on the head repeatedly with a spoon until they died.

When a mage runs out of spell options he is likely to run into combat (say, you have only researched a couple personal buffs and no range offensive spells, and have already cast the first ones on all legal targets), so this certainly doesn't prove anything.

JK doesn't like coding AI, why would he go through the pain of coding 2 different AI rutines when coding just one is a chore for him? Norfleet is just being paranoid.

[ August 03, 2004, 07:26: Message edited by: Wendigo ]

[Wendigo]

Hmm, quoting myself...

Originally posted by Wendigo:
When a mage runs out of spell options he is likely to run into combat...

TO be more precise I believe the mage defaults to 'stay behind troops', yet, if there are no troops to stay behind (as it's very likely in a DM) that results in the seen behaviour.