I know that Single Player is kind of the red-headed stepchild of the Dominions community, but I still occasionally like to play a SP game. To make the AI more of a challenge I have been using the SemiRand program to create games with more intelligent AI pretenders. I have had some problems getting it to work the way I want, plus I had ideas for other ways to improve the AI that weren't supported, so I wrote a utility to create SP games that are a little more challenging.
I wanted to guide the AI away from making stupid choices, so I took the idea of the pre-made pretenders from SemiRand and added the ability to create custom mods that can improve the chances of the AI making good choices. I haven't really explored the possibilities very deeply except for modding the AI nations to remove sub-optimal units (to get the nation to concentrate on sacred units when using a bless strategy for instance).
This utility also removes or limits independent units (through either No-Indy maps, Partial-Indy maps or the Better Independents mod) to keep the AI from fielding hordes of useless chaff. Optionally, you can set up random teams of nations allied against you. This will keep the AI nations from killing each other off while you just sit there.
Also, you can limit the magic levels available to 6th, 7th or 8th to help out the AI since it does not use high level magic effectively. When limiting magic you can choose whether or not to use Vanilla or CBM(1.94). If you choose Vanilla, gem gems will get removed. No matter what level or type of magic restriction you use ALL global enchantments will also be removed. The reason for these changes is that the AI can't effectively use gem generators or global enchantments(casting or dispelling). This utility also supports adding mod nations to the mix of allowable nations (though you will have to create at least one pre-made pretender for it if you choose the AI to use it).
The goal of this utility is to create more enjoyable SP games, not to provide a multi-player testbed. The games created will be unbalanced and you will see some crazy stuff. Don't use any skills gained in winning these games in MP games.
To summarize here are the features of this utility:
- Intelligent pretenders/scales for AI opponents.
- Ability to generate No Indy maps (or Partial Indy, or use the Better Independents Mod) to reduce the AI tendency to use hordes of useless chaff.
- Ability to restrict magic to 6th/7th/8th level since the AI does not effective use high level magic.
- If magic is restricted (which I recommend) than ALL Global Enchantments will be removed and all gem generators will be removed.
- Can use CBM along with the restricted magic.
- Create teams of AIs for you to fight so they won't all kill each other off and will instead work together against you.
- Support for mod nations.
- Support for small mods tied to specific nations and pretender builds to give the AI some help or steer it toward a specific strategy.
NOT supported:
- Water nations (the AI has trouble going into and out of the water so water nations seem pointless to a fun SP experience)
There are a limited number of premade pretenders for each nation (most stolen from the excellent SemiRandom utility). It would be great if others could contribute effective builds for the AI and mod snippets that may help them. No need to worry about design points, it's OK for the AI to cheat (you could create a dom10, all 10s in magic perfect scales build). The mod snippets are tied to a specific pretender build so they can be used to support a particular strategy. If anyone has any other ideas for improving the AI let me know.
One thing I have found helpful is to use the --comptrn switch when testing dom3. This will let you see all of the AIs turns so you can see how the AI "thinks".
Here is a screenshot of the application:
Instructions:
First, point to your dom3 executable, then choose whether you want to use an existing map or generate a random map. Look in the settings.txt file for the look-and-feel settings for generated random maps. Next, choose the Era and nation you which to play. the choose the AI nations. You can either select a number of random nations or choose specific nations from a list. You can then choose the difficulty and whether you want there to be teams of allied AI nations. Then choose whether you want there to be no recruitable independents or you want to use the Better Independents mod. (I prefer no independent but if you just can't live without independent commanders use the BI mod). Then you can choose a magic restriction level if you wish.
Just press "Generate Game" and a map and a custom mod (if needed) will be created. You can then directly launch dominions and the correct map and mod will automatically be loaded (or you can launch yourself, just note the names of the map and mod file). Then once Dominions is launched just generate a new game, add the players (just leave at random, they will get set correctly), and choose your nation. You are now good to go.
Here are links to download this utility for Windows/Linux/Mac.
Windows:
http://dom3editor.googlecode.com/files/dom3ai_win.zip
Linux:
http://dom3editor.googlecode.com/fil...i_linux.tar.gz
Mac:
http://dom3editor.googlecode.com/files/dom3ai_mac.zip
The source code for this is open and located at
https://github.com/larzm42/Dom-3-AI (if you are interested).