Dominions 2. AI. Suggestions, that how to fix it.

Even on Impossible the AI's follow a standard of "He gave me stuff I won't attack for a few rounds especially if he has nearby provinces at 21 or 11 Provincial defense.

For whatever reason, that works on the AI.

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by Zen:
Chariots, Elephants, Mammoths you would put in the largest Squad with the best Morale and have them shore up the center if they have lower morale.
Hydra's you are just screwed, have them attack archers or rear while putting them quite far on your flank so they have a chance of not running into the main host and actually not killing half your army.
Behemoths with no morale issue on a flank. Others have other orders

Ummm you kindof missed it. Your answers are good ones but I was asking IF they were all treated as the same unit. If we start recommending AI changes based on each dofferent unit for each nation and each situation then we will be looking at turn processing of 30 minutes

I kind of figured that was the case. But couldn't you seperate it into

High_Morale_Big_Unit

and

Low_Morale_Big_Unit

and

Damage_Radius_Big_Unit

?

[Zerger]

Originally posted by LordArioch:
I think the AI's quite difficult...in fact I think I'm going to have to start playing normal AI now. The problem is I like to play games with multiple players, but I'm no match for 3 ai at one time, and inevitably in every game every ai adjacent to me declares war within a few turns, and then cooperate to take over every province I don't have a large army in. There really isn't much I can do at this point...anything I take I lose the turn I move out and trying to take their capitals is complicated by their ultra high level mage pretenders that can defeat whole armies.

Either that or one ai gains in strength and refuses to get weaker even when turn after turn I kill hundreds of his troops at no cost to myself. Ulm did that in one game...I attack a province or two of his, killing hundreds of defenders, and more just flood in and take the province I moved from.

Big map + lot of AIs = hard.
Small or big map + few AIs [1-3] = easy.

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by Zen:
I kind of figured that was the case. But couldn't you seperate it into

High_Morale_Big_Unit
Low_Morale_Big_Unit
Damage_Radius_Big_Unit

As it is we are trying to base our suggestions on such generalities as LI (light infantry), HI (heavy infantry), lite cavalry, hvy cavalry, archers, crossbows, longbows, For each nation there is such variation in those types of units that its hard to come up with general AI rules such as "he should build more HI" (which would mess up a nation such as Pangaea)

[MStavros]

What AI tweaks will be done in the first patch?

[licker]

Originally posted by Gandalf Parker:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Zen:
I kind of figured that was the case. But couldn't you seperate it into

High_Morale_Big_Unit
Low_Morale_Big_Unit
Damage_Radius_Big_Unit

As it is we are trying to base our suggestions on such generalities as LI (light infantry), HI (heavy infantry), lite cavalry, hvy cavalry, archers, crossbows, longbows, For each nation there is such variation in those types of units that its hard to come up with general AI rules such as "he should build more HI" (which would mess up a nation such as Pangaea)

---

I don't quite understand your concern Gandalf. I mean if build more HI is bad for Pan, build more LI is bad for Ulm no? I've said it before, each nation (and probably each theme) needs it own set of build preferences. That can be easilly done using the matricies I've talked about before. I've stopped talking about all this though since it appears that the code is not readilly amenable to the kind of changes I'd like to see, so I'm hoping other people will have good ideas that can work within the exisiting code.

Anyway, my point about the hydras and tramplers was that it appeared that the unit placement was the absolute worst possible, not that I expect the AI to be able to prevent all friendly fire casualties. I don't see the AI use the flanks nearly enough, most all of the orders I can figure out for them are fire closest or attack closest, and everything is grouped toward the middle of their positioning screen.

Anyway, the AI isn't bad overall, just that in 1v1 its hosed, but that's gonna be the case anyway I've lost every game I started with 10+ AIs because at some point I get ganged by 3 or more at once and eventually they wear me down. Part of that is a function of the 'open' maps that I play on, if I could get a map or a situation where I could get appropriate choke points I figure I could handle 3 AIs at once, assuming that I was able to out expand them in the early game. That doesn't mean to brag, just that the AI, if you can get it into a 1v1 match, is going down on any setting. Three AIs with three small fronts may be 1v3, but it might as well be 1v1, 1v1, 1v1... if you catch my drift

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by licker:
Anyway, the AI isn't bad overall, just that in 1v1 its hosed, but that's gonna be the case anyway I've lost every game I started with 10+ AIs because at some point I get ganged by 3 or more at once and eventually they wear me down. Part of that is a function of the 'open' maps that I play on, if I could get a map or a situation where I could get appropriate choke points I figure I could handle 3 AIs at once, assuming that I was able to out expand them in the early game. That doesn't mean to brag, just that the AI, if you can get it into a 1v1 match, is going down on any setting. Three AIs with three small fronts may be 1v3, but it might as well be 1v1, 1v1, 1v1... if you catch my drift [/QB]

Chokepoints are actually defined by the #neighbor lines in the .map file. Maybe a script to randomly knock out #neighbor lines would create an interesting game for you. So that provinces which used to have 5 or 6 neighbors might only have 2 or 3.
Things like mountain ranges and extra thick border lines are just visual prompts to the fact that they didnt put a #nighbor line to go that way.

[ December 11, 2003, 17:04: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

[NTJedi]

AI opponents should use more assassins for assassinations on harder difficulty levels.
Either most or all of the time the AI opponents use only spells for assassinations.