Is AI ever forging items?

[Borya]

I've played several games and have never seen AI commanders carrying any items, other than gems. Does AI ever create any magic items for their heroes?

[Gandalf Parker]

I think that forging is very low on the list.
To forge and assign items intelligently is very difficult. We finally got an extensive "thinking" routine for the AI casting spells, and one for building castles, and I think abit of recruiting decisions.

Of course its hard to tell if it happens at all since random events can give the AI items to assign also.

[NTJedi]

Borya said:
I've played several games and have never seen AI commanders carrying any items, other than gems. Does AI ever create any magic items for their heroes?



I've seen the AI opponents place items on their commanders/mages... usually the most powerful ones receive the items. Also it usually happens during long games on very large maps. If you're playing several games with small maps then obviously items on AI will rarely appear.

[Borya]

Thanks for the answers.


>We finally got an extensive "thinking" routine for the AI casting spells

Does it mean AI makes suggestions ("scripts") what their mages cast, or you are talking about general spellcasting AI?

[Gandalf Parker]

The AI players. Well our mages too I guess. I can see in the logs the thinking routine and its quite lengthy.

[Borya]

Today I saw 2 AI commanders, each carrying 4 magic items.

[Evil Dave]

Neat! What were they, and what were they carrying?

[Borya]

One was a troll and some of his items said, that "they belonged to him". http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif The other one was a mage.

I played another short game and engaged 5 commanders, carrying about 10 items. From what i can remember, there were bracers, giving protections, ring called Precious, weapons, staves and armor.

[NTJedi]

Borya said:
One was a troll and some of his items said, that "they belonged to him". http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif The other one was a mage.

I played another short game and engaged 5 commanders, carrying about 10 items. From what i can remember, there were bracers, giving protections, ring called Precious, weapons, staves and armor.



Sounds like Bogus and his men... those are independents not AI opponents.

[Arralen]

.. and their equipment is pre-set (hardcoded) by the devs ..

[Borya]

That's sad.

[Jack_Trowell]

In a recent game, I had found my very first AI true Thug : by luck, the AI had managed to fully equip its prophet (LA arco Hoplite commander). The prophet had : lucky (from the sword), fireshield (shield), an armor value of 22 (23 head) from its good armor and as well as Krupps' bracers (armor and defense + reinvigoration), and he add a total defense of 28 (including his heroic ability).

He also add another misc item, but I don't recall what it was.

Most of the time, he was behing his army casting smite and other holy spells, until this great battle when one of his mages cast berserk on him.

This hero died only versus a squad of my sacred units (with F9 blessing and 21 attack value each + fire weapon, even then it took several round to kill him)

[Gandalf Parker]

Borya said:
That's sad.


Grab one of my chaos maps and you will find all kinds of strange units scattered around with magic equipment

[FrankTrollman]

Deleted

[Borya]

Grab one of my chaos maps and you will find all kinds of strange units scattered around with magic equipment


I am afraid, my machine won't be able to handle turns on any map, bigger than small..

[Ballbarian]

The AI definitely forges items. As a matter of fact he loves to put 2 shields on most of his commanders in my games. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif

[NTJedi]

Borya said:
I am afraid, my machine won't be able to handle turns on any map, bigger than small..



Definitely sounds like time to upgrade into a new system.

[Gandalf Parker]

Thats the advantage of playing on a server also. Eventually I will start some mega games. Altho it appears I will not be able to host any 79 nation games since that capability has been "fixed". Now a game can only be one era unless someone wants to make MODs available to change that.