Artificial stupidity

[Arker]

It may seem a little wierd to reply to myself, but I thought over what I've posted and have a bit to add. Editing the post this long after it's posted would be even wierder.

Arker said:
In fact, this is why I think yanking these spells entirely is probably a better idea than introducing a user interface to ban certain spells. That, I'm afraid, WOULD favour the human over the AI.

I think this stands up, but with some qualification. Simply adding the interface for humans and nothing else would be unbalancing - human players would milk this and the computer players would have no counter. BUT, if the computer players were given the same ability, and the logic to handle it, that would be very different. Trouble is the logic would probably be a LOT more work than the human interface. Bleah.

For some spells the case for removal is better than others, though. BoW obviously is more likely to harm the AI than to help it, but that is probably not true of protection. Heat-radiating units are much more rare than non-cold-immune units. Still, it's just as bloody annoying to the human player when it's cast at the wrong time.

After some thought, I'm not sure the case here actually IS weaker than for BoW. It's true that fire-radiating creatures are relatively rare, but fire magic in general certainly isn't. Protection *might* still be an advantage assuming random opponents, *but* it's very exploitable. I know if I see an army with nature mages in it, I make sure I've got as much fire magic as possible scripted when I attack. So even if it helps the computer players, on balance, when fighting each other, I'd bet it's a net loss for them against human players, which is really what counts.

1. Are we in range of target?
--->A. Yes. Is target within their movement radius of melee range?
------->I. Yes: Is our missile range greater than their movement range?
----------->a. Yes: Retreat to our maximum missile range, or the maximum range we can achieve while still retaining movement points to fire one volley, whichever is less, then fire.
----------->b. No: Stand and fire.
------->II. No: Stand and fire.
--->B. No. Advance our maximum movement, or to our maximum missile range, whichever is least. If movement points are left, fire.

This could even be simplified a bit and still work pretty much as it should. At its simplest, you'd remove all reference to the targets movement abilities, and simply try to stay at maximum range. It could also be made more sophisticated, for instance using an estimated optimum range instead of maximum, aiming to stay as close as possible without being drawn into melee. At any rate, I do think this line of thought is absolutely the key to making light cavalry playable, and it would improve the gameplay and the usefulness of all ranged-attack units. (And of course the AI should NOT be perfectly effective at this - it should definitely screw up sometimes, part of the charm of the game - but as it is it screws up every time, and the units are essentially useless beyond the ability of any modder to fix. This is a real shame, as these units are some of the more interesting in the game, for instance mounted Vanir, T'ien Ch'i cavalry, Centaurs... units that should really be very useful and fun, but aren't, because the combat AI just can't use them properly.)

[KissBlade]

Offtopic but, heh ... might I point out, while the TC cavalry has some parts to be desired, the Vanir and Centaurs are actually incredible units if you know what to do with them.

[Arker]

So what's your strategy then?

[KissBlade]

Duel bless them. Vans are incredible with f9/w9 (or even just w9 actually) and the centaurs are easily blessed to e9/n9 thanks to medusa.

[Arker]

KissBlade said:
Duel bless them. Vans are incredible with f9/w9 (or even just w9 actually) and the centaurs are easily blessed to e9/n9 thanks to medusa.

That's exactly what I thought you would say

What you're doing there, though, is giving up a huge number of creation points to supercharge them magically, and what you get out of it is really some quirky heavy cavalry.

I've played both of them that way, and experimented with the bless strategies, and my honest opinion is that while you can make them work that way, you'll still get your rear handed to you up against someone that spent those points on scales instead, and uses independent heavy cav/knight recruits.

But for the sake of argument, let's say you at least have a fair chance of winning that way. It's still beside the point to me - I'd like to be able to play it in role, that is to say, play them as light cavalry, using their speed advantage to bring those ranged weapons to bear effectively, not converting them into some oddball heavy-cav units.

And of course it's totally inapplicable to non-holy light cavalry, T'ien Ch'i, Arco... and actually not applicable to the Centaurs I was talking about either. You know, the Centaurs, not the White Centaurs, just plain old Centaurs, the ones that should logically by description and theme be the feared and fabled archery section of Pangaeas army, but in reality are totally useless

[Cainehill]

Arker said:

That's exactly what I thought you would say

What you're doing there, though, is giving up a huge number of creation points to supercharge them magically, and what you get out of it is really some quirky heavy cavalry.

I've played both of them that way, and experimented with the bless strategies, and my honest opinion is that while you can make them work that way, you'll still get your rear handed to you up against someone that spent those points on scales instead, and uses independent heavy cav/knight recruits.

But for the sake of argument, let's say you at least have a fair chance of winning that way. It's still beside the point to me - I'd like to be able to play it in role, that is to say, play them as light cavalry, using their speed advantage to bring those ranged weapons to bear effectively, not converting them into some oddball heavy-cav units.

And of course it's totally inapplicable to non-holy light cavalry, T'ien Ch'i, Arco... and actually not applicable to the Centaurs I was talking about either. You know, the Centaurs, not the White Centaurs, just plain old Centaurs, the ones that should logically by description and theme be the feared and fabled archery section of Pangaeas army, but in reality are totally useless

_Sometimes_ the dual bless strategy gets smashed - sometimes it doesn't. That's one of the things that makes Dominions such a great game - no strategy wins all the time.

But : Vans and centaurs (all kinds) actually both have big advantages over other cavalry, even without an effective bless (though I can't think of a reason to skip the bless with them). Vans have mirror image, _and_ glamour : very stealthy, and completely avoiding some early damage. Then all the centaurs : decent HPs, and recuperating : they recover from wounds if they survive the battle.

Even if non-sacred, both would still be viable units, unlike a lot of the other cavalry/chariot units.

[Arker]

Cainehill said:
But : Vans and centaurs (all kinds) actually both have big advantages over other cavalry, even without an effective bless (though I can't think of a reason to skip the bless with them). Vans have mirror image, _and_ glamour : very stealthy, and completely avoiding some early damage. Then all the centaurs : decent HPs, and recuperating : they recover from wounds if they survive the battle.

Even if non-sacred, both would still be viable units, unlike a lot of the other cavalry/chariot units.

I guess anything could be called viable if you want to play it badly enough, but one thing is for sure - you can't get them to use basic light cavalry tactics on the battlefield, it just won't happen.

According to the figures from Sunrays, you can recruit fifty longbowmen, sixty crossbowmen or woodsmen, or seventy four archers or tribal archers for the price of twenty centaur. They're good archers, but they aren't worth the money just for that. (Nor would it make any sense if they were, really. Light cavalry should be a good deal more expensive than foot archers.)

But the only other way the AI knows to play them is as heavy cavalry. As heavy cavalry, they're cheap, but woefully underpowered - they just aren't (and shouldn't be) capable of pulling that role off. The centaur cataphracts, on the other hand, fill that role quite well. Spend the same gold on a mix of centaur cataphracts and independent archers as you would on centaurs and you'll be a lot better off. Sure, the archers won't have recuperation, but they're cheap enough to replace, and most battle wounds don't really reduce their effectiveness anyway.

The Centaur warriors are even worse in this respect. You can get 80 independent light infantry for the same price as 20 centaur warriors, and it's a much better deal, as long as they don't know how to use their movement points.

Vanir have some great advantages, sure, like the centaur warriors their stats would be wonderful if the AI could just pull of basic light cavalry tactics with them. But since it doesn't they wind up being played as heavy cavalry, and they just don't have the punch to pull that role off against a serious opponent. Sure, they can chase down routers, but any unit can do that.

For the price of sixty Vanir, you can recruit seventy independent knights. The Van has thirteen hp, compared to twelve, but thirteen protection, compared to TWENTY. The knights have higher morale, more str and MUCH heavier weapons. Try it and see, the Van get chewed every time. Glamour is nice, but it gets knocked off real quickly when they engage in melee with heavy infantry, let alone knights.

Which is exactly as it should be, to that point. They're light cavalry, after all. Ultra-elite light cavalry, but light cavalry nonetheless. Light cav isn't meant for melee, and it isn't meant for shock charges. It's meant to wheel and dance just outside the enemies reach, while calling them rude names and showering them with volley after volley of projectiles. It's meant to screen the main army, obstructing the enemy but never engaging, keeping them off balance, harrassing them like a swarm of hornets, and in the end, running them down after they break formation and start to flee.

And the Vanir have the stats to do that job wonderfully. If only the AI was programmed to do it.

[Graeme Dice]

Arker said:
I've played both of them that way, and experimented with the bless strategies, and my honest opinion is that while you can make them work that way, you'll still get your rear handed to you up against someone that spent those points on scales instead, and uses independent heavy cav/knight recruits.

I really want to know why people think that a F9W9 Moloch with Order 3, Sloth 3, Cold 1, Death 1, Misfortune 3, balanced magic, and dominion 5 is going to be killed easily by a heavy scales pretender. You make a minor sacrifice of 6% gold for the sloth 3, 2% for the death 1 scale, and will research slightly slower, and get F9W9 blessed Vanii in return.

[Sindai]

Ideally, every single battlefield spell would have a "desirability" function that observes factors about the battlefield situation and tries to gauge the usefulness of each spell. Then just cast the most useful spell.

This would take a lot of coding and testing but is probably not totally unfeasible, mostly because a lot of spells have basically the same behavior. For example, there's scads of projectile spells that all function in basically the same way. There's a lot of spells that hit the whole battlefield. There's a lot of personal protection spells. There's a lot of summoning spells. And so on and so forth.

Of course it's far too late to add this to Dom2 or even 3, but it's a nice pipedream.

[Gandalf Parker]

Thats actually in there already. I just dont understand it. Here is a combat log. It gives me a headache trying to follow what its thinking but it looks good. I know that "com " means commander so this seems to be the "thinking" for one commander named Bellare until the spell as chosen.
Gandalf Parker

Mrlreport (left): good0 broken0 autobreak0 turn0
com Bellare cast spell (favspell Summon Earthpower) (mayusegems 1)
est. choices 27
comp_castspell: eval Fire Flies result -1
comp_castspell: eval Air Shield result -1
spellscore, Freezing Touch score -9999 (boost 102 scorat 0)
Eval: Freezing Touch score 0 (fat 10)
comp_castspell: eval Freezing Touch result 0
best Flying Shards this far, 14 10 (4 pnts)
spellscore, Flying Shards score 13 (boost 83 scorat 0)
Eval: Flying Shards score 12 (fat 15)
comp_castspell: eval Flying Shards result 12
best spell so far Flying Shards (score12)
comp_castspell: eval Twist Fate result -1
comp_castspell: eval Hand of Dust result -1
spellscore, Sleep Touch score -9999 (boost 101 scorat 0)
Eval: Sleep Touch score 0 (fat 10)
comp_castspell: eval Sleep Touch result 0
comp_castspell: eval Bleed result -1
best Banishment this far, 3 6 (0 pnts)
spellscore, Banishment score 0 (boost 119 scorat 0)
Eval: Banishment score 0 (fat 0)
comp_castspell: eval Banishment result 0
best Blessing this far, 3 6 (35 pnts)
spellscore, Blessing score 35 (boost 114 scorat 0)
Eval: Blessing score 38 (fat 0)
comp_castspell: eval Blessing result 38
best spell so far Blessing (score38)
comp_castspell: eval Sermon of Courage result -1
comp_castspell: eval Smite Demon result -1
comp_castspell: eval Holy Avenger result -1
comp_castspell: eval Divine Blessing result -1
comp_castspell: eval Smite result -1
comp_castspell: eval Fanaticism result -1
comp_castspell: eval Word of Power result -1
comp_castspell: eval Burning Hands result -1
comp_castspell: eval Fire Darts result -1
comp_castspell: eval Flame Bolt result -1
comp_castspell: eval Shocking Grasp result -1
best Slime this far, 14 10 (5 pnts)
spellscore, Slime score 5 (boost 105 scorat 0)
Eval: Slime score 4 (fat 20)
comp_castspell: eval Slime result 4
looser spell Slime (score 4)
comp_castspell: eval Cold Bolt result -1
comp_castspell: eval Geyser result -2
comp_castspell: eval Acid Spray result -2
comp_castspell: eval Star Fires result -1
comp_castspell: eval Fire Resistance result -1
comp_castspell: eval Charge Body result -1
comp_castspell: eval Aim result -1
comp_castspell: eval Resist Lightning result -1
comp_castspell: eval False Fetters result -1
spellscore, Cold Resistance score 1 (boost 108 scorat 0)
Eval: Cold Resistance score 1 (fat 5)
comp_castspell: eval Cold Resistance result 1
looser spell Cold Resistance (score 1)
spellscore, Resist Fire score 1 (boost 81 scorat 0)
Eval: Resist Fire score 1 (fat 10)
comp_castspell: eval Resist Fire result 1
looser spell Resist Fire (score 1)
spellscore, Fists of Iron score -9999 (boost 84 scorat 0)
Eval: Fists of Iron score 0 (fat 15)
comp_castspell: eval Fists of Iron result 0
best Earth Grip this far, 14 10 (8 pnts)
spellscore, Earth Grip score 7 (boost 102 scorat 0)
Eval: Earth Grip score 7 (fat 5)
comp_castspell: eval Earth Grip result 7
looser spell Earth Grip (score 7)
best Earth Might this far, 3 6 (27 pnts)
spellscore, Earth Might score 29 (boost 100 scorat 0)
Eval: Earth Might score 26 (fat 20)
comp_castspell: eval Earth Might result 26
looser spell Earth Might (score 26)
comp_castspell: eval Hand of Death result -1
spellscore, Eagle Eyes score 135 (boost 114 scorat 0)
Eval: Eagle Eyes score 142 (fat 5)
comp_castspell: eval Eagle Eyes result 142
best spell so far Eagle Eyes (score142)
spellscore, Poison Touch score -9999 (boost 89 scorat 0)
Eval: Poison Touch score 0 (fat 5)
comp_castspell: eval Poison Touch result 0
spellscore, Resist Poison score 0 (boost 116 scorat 0)
Eval: Resist Poison score 0 (fat 5)
comp_castspell: eval Resist Poison result 0
spellscore, Barkskin score 293 (boost 116 scorat 0)
Eval: Barkskin score 308 (fat 5)
comp_castspell: eval Barkskin result 308
best spell so far Barkskin (score308)
comp_castspell: eval Personal Luck result -1
comp_castspell: eval Combustion result -1
comp_castspell: eval Phantasmal Warrior result -1
comp_castspell: eval Mirror Image result -1
spellscore, Quicken self score 878 (boost 98 scorat 0)
Eval: Quicken self score 798 (fat 20)
comp_castspell: eval Quicken self result 798
best spell so far Quicken self (score798)
spellscore, Stoneskin score 523 (boost 102 scorat 0)
Eval: Stoneskin score 550 (fat 5)
comp_castspell: eval Stoneskin result 550
looser spell Stoneskin (score 550)
best Armor of Achilles this far, 14 10 (5 pnts)
spellscore, Armor of Achilles score 1 (boost 86 scorat 0)
Eval: Armor of Achilles score 1 (fat 20)
comp_castspell: eval Armor of Achilles result 1
looser spell Armor of Achilles (score 1)
best Earth Meld this far, 3 6 (-35 pnts)
best Earth Meld this far, 14 10 (17 pnts)
spellscore, Earth Meld score 21 (boost 105 scorat 0)
Eval: Earth Meld score 12 (fat 80)
comp_castspell: eval Earth Meld result 12
looser spell Earth Meld (score 12)
comp_castspell: eval Immolation result -1
comp_castspell: eval Mistform result -1
comp_castspell: eval Ghost Wolves result -1
comp_castspell: eval Numbness result -1
spellscore, Ironskin score 1003 (boost 98 scorat 0)
Eval: Ironskin score 1003 (fat 10)
comp_castspell: eval Ironskin result 1003
best spell so far Ironskin (score1003)
best Protection this far, 3 6 (256 pnts)
spellscore, Protection score 293 (boost 116 scorat 0)
Eval: Protection score 266 (fat 20)
comp_castspell: eval Protection result 266
looser spell Protection (score 266)
comp_castspell: eval Body Ethereal result -1
comp_castspell: eval Spirit Curse result -1
best Tangle Vines this far, 14 10 (9 pnts)
spellscore, Tangle Vines score 11 (boost 116 scorat 0)
Eval: Tangle Vines score 10 (fat 20)
comp_castspell: eval Tangle Vines result 10
looser spell Tangle Vines (score 10)
comp_castspell: eval Summon Storm Power result -1
comp_castspell: eval Summon Water Power result -6
comp_castspell: eval Phoenix Power result -1
comp_castspell: eval Summon Lesser Fire Elemental result -1
comp_castspell: eval Summon Lesser Air Elemental result -1
Not enough vis for Summon Lesser Water Elemental
comp_castspell: eval Summon Lesser Water Elemental result -3
spellscore, Summon Earthpower score 203 (boost 83 scorat 0)
Eval: Summon Earthpower score 184 (fat 20)
comp_castspell: eval Summon Earthpower result 184
best spell so far Summon Earthpower (score100184)
Not enough vis for Summon Lesser Earth Elemental
comp_castspell: eval Summon Lesser Earth Elemental result -3
comp_castspell: eval Power of the Spheres result -1
comp_castspell: eval Desiccation result -1
comp_castspell: eval Farstrike result -2
comp_castspell: eval Blink result -1
comp_castspell: eval Returning result -1
comp_castspell: eval Communion Master result -1
comp_castspell: eval Communion Slave result -1
comp_castspell: eval Horror Mark result -1
comp_castspell: eval Dust to Dust result -1
comp_castspell: eval Decay result -1
comp_castspell: eval Frighten result -1
comp_castspell: eval Seven Year Fever result -2
comp_castspell: eval Curse result -2
comp_castspell: eval Bonds of Fire result -1
comp_castspell: eval Mind Burn result -1
comp_castspell: eval Berserkers result -1
comp_castspell: eval Sleep result -1
comp_castspell: eval Rage result -1
comp_castspell: eval Sailors' Death result -1
best Iron Will this far, 3 6 (13 pnts)
spellscore, Iron Will score 15 (boost 97 scorat 0)
Eval: Iron Will score 15 (fat 10)
comp_castspell: eval Iron Will result 15
looser spell Iron Will (score 15)
comp_castspell: eval Panic result -1
comp_castspell: eval Arcane Bolt result -1
best Mossbody this far, 3 6 (186 pnts)
spellscore, Mossbody score 160 (boost 85 scorat 0)
Eval: Mossbody score 145 (fat 20)
comp_castspell: eval Mossbody result 145
looser spell Mossbody (score 145)
castspell: cnr113 spl438 (Summon Earthpower) vis0 x3 y6 spldmg4096
vis 0 xvis 0
blastsqr: unr14799 x3 y6 aoe0 dmg4096 eff23 spc8404992 as10192 al9
affectvic vic14799 hv0
hitunit 14799 14799 dmg4096 spec8404992 ba2
battle_incheck