Huh? AI implodes on turn 5, please tell me why?

[DominionsFan]

PheasantPlucker said:
Thanks for the responses.

This reeks of poor design and feeble testing. This happened in only my second game, and in the first I also noticed one AI exit very early, so I don't believe it is 'rare' at all.

I have a lot of time for this game and the devs, and recommended Dom2 to others. However there is no excuse for an AI that kills itself almost immediately. I've seen many terrible AIs in 20 years of gaming, but a self destructing one is a new low.

Fingers crossed for a fix.

I've mentioned this already in a previous thread. There should be hardcoded fixes for the AI, including that the AI players shouldn't take very bad scales ever, they should use proper magic for the given nation, also the AI shouldn't send his pretender to suicide missions.
These fixes would the most important.

[Meglobob]

With dormant/imprisioned gods, u r losing yr most powerful source of dominion. U only have yr capital + 1 temple at game start, a prophet, 1 or 2 turns later. This is ok for a person, playing Dom 3, u can plan for it, build temples, recruit priests and preach. So no problem from the players point of view.

BUT

The AI needs to be changed, so it can avoid dominion death early on from taking low dominion, using dormant/imprisioned god strategy and taking bad scales. Seen several AI's at normal/difficult level getting nowhere due to lack of domonion and/or poor scales. The AI needs improvement in this area and hopefully the developers will look at it in a future patch.

The AI overall when it gets going is giving me a good challenge, at normal/difficult level. So I am happy with it so far.

[BigJMoney]

I wonder if this is one of the reasons Mictlan was a pushover in DomII, but it was never this extreme because their pretender was at least around to spread a little dominion. I can't say for sure, though. I have no idea how good the AI is at blood sacrifice. It make simply be that Mictlan will never make a good AI opponent. It's like how Ermor makes too good an AI opponent.

=$= Big J Money =$=

[Teraswaerto]

BigJMoney said:
I wonder if this is one of the reasons Mictlan was a pushover in DomII, but it was never this extreme because their pretender was at least around to spread a little dominion.

=$= Big J Money =$=

If Mictlan is anything like in Dom 2 (still have only the demo of Dom3) it would make a poor AI opponent even if they could manage their dominion, since it takes a good blessing strategy, effective use of blood blood magic, or probably both, to do well with Mictlan. The AI doesn't really handle those well (or maybe at all).

[atul]

Teraswaerto said:
If Mictlan is anything like in Dom 2

Well yes and no. In one lets-test-this-pretender-game I played to turn 10 or so I noticed only one AI nation out of six keeping up with me in province count: Mictlan. On the other hand, computer apparently can't handle blood sacrifices since while every other nation's dominion score had increased during the game, Mictlan's had flatlined to the starting dominion of one. Easy pushover unless the god awakens in time.

[Ballbarian]

Mictlan just bit the dust on turn 5 of my game as well.

[PhilD]

Yeah, saw that happen too in one recent game. That was my one game with a "medium random map" and many AIs (since I still have only the demo, I tend to use small maps).

[PvK]

It doesn't always happen. I have an AI Mictlan in one of my games who has a very strong dominion, and just defeated Jotunheim. I imagine it may have much to do with the AI's choice of base dominion strength, and of course the map crowdedness and dominion strength of the neighbors they end up with.

[Arralen]

Sleeping god and getting the prophet killed in turn 3 vs indies ...