Good game, but....the AI is very bad.

[johan osterman]

Originally posted by Wikd Thots:
WIMPS!
You payed for the game. What diff if its one poor programmer? You can demand anything you want. I want to control units in fights like my other games. I want to save games so I can load if things are crap. I want cheat codes. And I want to play with my friends if we buy one disc.
I want all of that and I want it NOW because it should already be in it like the other games that cost this much!

You got what you paid for. You had every opportunity to check the demo out before you coughed up the money. The things you complain about are design decisions, you might as well demand that your chessmaster game should have a spurts of blood and cute battle sounds, or that you should be able to tactically control a battle that played out whenever two chess pieces enter the same square. There is no law that point by point details what features a game should have. Had dom 2 been marketed as having these things you demand you would have a case, but it doesn't. You can make any demands you like, but unless they are reasonable noone is going to pay attention to them.

[Norfleet]

JO, I hope he was being sarcastic. Because otherwise he needs to be taken out back and given a sound beating.

[johan osterman]

Originally posted by Norfleet:
JO, I hope he was being sarcastic. Because otherwise he needs to be taken out back and given a sound beating.

You might be right. If you check his profile he claims one of his interests is trolling, and his occupation is irritant. I guess I swallowed his hook and bait. Don't click on his hompeage whatever you do though.

[Norfleet]

Ah, yes, his homepage. I've heard about that one before. I take it you clicked on it?

[johan osterman]

Yup

[proteus]

Yes, yes I understand what you say of course.
I never demanded anything imho, I only posted my opinion.
Now a question for the developers: Dont you think that hella LOT of players would be thankful for the AI improvements?? I am totally sure that hella LOT of players are waiting for AI improvements, they just _dont_say_it_ here, and why? Propably because they know the anser from the devs:

Originally posted by Kristoffer O:
Perhaps all the pointless complaining made us pissed.

Is this really pointless??? I am totally sure that this is far from pointles!!

Originally posted by Kristoffer O:

The reason I do not say that there will not be an AI improvement is because we also feel that the AI should be improved.

The devs know that the AI is weak. I am pleased to see that they know this at least.

I guess my first post told you about the AI weaknesses:

1. The AI is massing weak troops. Why? I see hella lot of light infantry and cheap troops. Pointless, they are toast.
2. The AI is making weird strategic decisions. It is moving around with strong commanders without a point, and without a decent army.
3. The AI is not equipping its heroes properly, sometimes not at all.
4. The AI is not protecting its heroes/commanders.
5. The AI isnt using the mid/late game spells very well.
6. The AI wont summon too many "heavyweight monsters". -> I wonder what the heck the AI is doing with its magic income.
7. The AI's battlefield tactics is kinda laughable as well.


I wasnt constructive? I dont think so.

Maybe my tone wasnt right, I am moderating myself now.
Still I am totally sure that everyone know that the AI weakness is a big problem, even if they dont say. And yes the Doms 2. AI is lot weaker than most of the 50$ strategy games.
I know that 2 men cannot make everything, but 6 months wasnt enough to improve the AI? After all those huge old threads about the AI??
This is what I cant understand.

I have seen an old poll about the sp-mp community here, and the poll ended up that we have more singleplayers! I think, that spending time to improve the AI is not a waste, in fact it should have priority on the 'to do list.' .. especially now, because after 4 patches we still wont have AI improvements.

Kris and the devs -> I never wanted to offend you, I wanted to be creative, I posted the bad parts of the AI, what should be improved, so I dont think that this was pointless.

P.

[ May 09, 2004, 11:07: Message edited by: proteus ]

[mr.white]

Personally I think the random fort appearance is a great idea for a higher difficulty level. The biggest problem with the AI is the lack of forts which causes it to use almost nothing but indy troops. Designing a few SC kits for summons like bane lords it could then try to build could also shake things up a bit. It won't take that much to improve it a lot in practice.

By the way, the HOMM3 AI does cheat. It gets bonus resources at the start at higher levels and also a small income in all resources every turn even without mines. Cheating is fine in my opinion. Whatever it takes to make the game interesting.