designs for best single play experience

[licker]

I still wonder why we can't get some kind of 'automate' commands for mages to search out sites in owned provinces, or priests to build temples, or any kind of repetative thing that will occur over several turns. I'd also like to be able to set travel destinations that require more than one turn and not have to continully tug my slow troops one province by province every friggin turn...

Little things to be sure, but get enough little things right and they make a big thing

As to best SP game... well alot depends on what you are looking for. Certain settings handicap either the player or the AI (as GP pointed out), and setting up 'themed' games, like one human race aginst all the nonhuman races (or vice versa) can be entertaining from a RP point of view. I usually don't play with Ermor active though, since the other AIs just can't seem to handle them, and if I don't start close to them to keep them in check, they tend to just overrun the rest of the map. That can be fun to play against too, but it also gets a bit repetative.

[General Tacticus]

1) Just for the record, Ulm kicked Ermor's *** in my SP game (Impossible AI, World War scenario, indy 9) with no help whatsoever on my part. Of course, I don't know what theme Ermor was playing, if it was Broken Empire it is less impressive.

2) Impossible AIs on a large map with indy 9 do very well. Indy 9 force them to build large armies rather than rush the start and leave themselves wide open, and large map also give them time to collect the return on their research/site searching investment, and not have to worry about an early rush. The opposite, small map and low indy, mean you can gooble an AI or two and rule the game ever after, especially with a SC Pretender. The AI do know how to cast big spell and search for sites, but I don't know how they might handle extreme settings.

3) I'll late you know how good the AI are at late game when I get there. The problem is, the player is usually quite good at it, so the AI would have to be just as good... The AI doesn't seem to pump more research late than early, but it might be enough.

I am not so far impressed with the AI ability to conquer/jump across seas, except of course Atlantis and R'lyeh. Ermor often conquers a few as well, but that's about it. I suspect the AI knows how to use amphibious troops, but is not good enough at building them on its own.

4) Aye, micromanagement is a bore. Try to steer your game toward things that are automatic (blood hunt, monthly rituals, summoning sites) and having a large cash pile so you can order 5 (or 10) turn worth of armies at a time. Build castles near your borders if you can, and go for massive attacks rather than attrition wars. Anything to reduce micromanagement.
I also like to play with luck 3 and use crossbreedings or other random spells, just for the excitement (oh, look, a basilisk ! and a free castle !).
I treat each turn as a mini-game : play one, take a 10 minute break, then come back and don't try to remember what I was doing, but rather what I should do given the situation I now have Sure, I forget things, but then I check a castle and find the big army I had ordered, or a summoning site and discover 50 lamias ready to go...

[Coffeedragon]

Originally posted by Ygramul:
1) AI Race Choices:
2) Map settings:
3) Map Choice:
4) Micromanagement:

My .02:

1) Randomize them, using dice or something. Or invent yourself a storyline, and use the approriate AIs. But you shouldn´t play Ermor, it´s too easy.

2-3): Indeps 5-6, use lots of AIs, some may get lucky. I like one player/7 provinces. (50 province map would have you and 6 AIs.)

4): Use Victory Conditions that end the game, before it gets boring. For example, choose Dominion, with (#towin=#provinces*8).

[Coffeedragon]

Originally posted by General Tacticus:

2) Impossible AIs on a large map with indy 9 do very well.

This may be well be true. I am not yet ready to move up to impossible/large, though.

Playing on small maps with difficult AIs, the one thing they seem to be bad at is fast expansion, that´s why I use lots of AIs, to limit what I am best at (speedy early expansion).

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by licker:
Little things to be sure, but get enough little things right and they make a big thing

I dont think those are such little things for a PBEM game to do. Remember that everything is packaged up and sent to a host for processing (even in a solo game). And there is no real setup for remembering things across turns. I think almost everything is refigured each turn.

[Ygramul]

On a related note:

What is the best water fighting experience you had?
(Map, map settings, AI list etc.)

I tried Ryleh on Aran with 7 opponents including Atlantis. By about turn 25 I control all 11 sea provinces and I can now choose to decimate whichever coastline I want. Used no magic sofar except for Voice of Tiamat and Astral Probing (or whatever) (Mostly normal and difficult AI's, indy=5, magic=50).


Maybe I should try the WorldMap but I fear the game will Last forever then.

Ygramul

P.S. Is Atlantis more fun then Ryleh>

[GavinWheeler]

Originally posted by Gandalf Parker:
And there is no real setup for remembering things across turns. I think almost everything is refigured each turn.

Well, if you can remember that mage X is casting such-and-such a ritual every turn, or that a scout is bloodhunting every turn, then you could presumably remember that commander X is trying to get to province #133 (or whatever) and use that every turn to calculate an automated guess at the next step in the journey.

There would be plenty of opportunities for things to go wrong (automatic pathfinding seems to be one of those tricky things to implement that quickly get complicated with various special cases) but the facility could be provided on a 'caveat emptor' basis - use it at your own risk.

Like the bloodhunting thing. If you could order bloodhunters to bloodhunt until full, then transfer their bloodslaves to the nearest laboratory before returning to their original province to start hunting again, that would eliminate the tedium of micromanaging bloodhunters. Each would simply need to know where it was, that it was on 'automatic bloodhunt in province XYZ' orders and how full of bloodslaves it currently was, and it could work out what its move this turn 'should' be. You would just run the risk that the bloodhunters would wander happily into the midst of a battle or something similair. Your choice - use it or not as you wish.

The problem is that there are so many little things like that which could be added, and only two programmers, if I have understood correctly. Implementing a scripting system like the one in the Baldurs Gate series) might let fans contribute their own 'bloodhunting scripts' or similar items, but it's not as if a scripting system like that would be trivial.