Noob question about AI and diplomacy

[NTJedi]

Zylithan said:
In a game with multiple AI opponents, or with some players and some AIs...

1. Does the AI atack me more if I attack it first?

There's no official peace or truce agreements, right, but I feel like understood truces could exist. So, if I'm playing vs 2 AIs, should I get cheap victories from both, or just one, because taking an easy province from the second would launch me into a bigger war.

I've played lots of games consisting of AI and human opponents. The AI will rarely attack more than one human player, it's fixed personality seems to focus on finishing it's main target and then move to a new target. This might be different when setting the AI personality to aggressive.

Zylithan said:
also...

2. Does the AI target players based on score? In MP I imagine people team up on the "winner".. does the AI do this? If so, what scales are most important? Does it know who is winning even if I turn scores off (players wouldn't, but sometimes AIs have special knowledge).

Thanks in advance!

From my experience the AI usually attacks the weakest province with the juicest magic sites. If at war with one human opponent the AI will not start wars with another human player unless it's been attacked. If it catches a human scout sneaking in it's territory this will be considered an attack.
Unfortunately the AI does not team up against the strongest player in the game... which results in watching the dying AI opponents throw daggers and kick each other as the strongest player swallows them. This is why I setup AI's on teams OR will have all AIs on the same team. The AI never knows who is winning.

[Zylithan]

Thanks for all the replies. I assumed you couldn't have teams (I thought the manual said so... but I always thought, what if gods want to form a pantheon... it doesnt have to be monotheism....) did I miss something, or is the teams thing a mod?

[NTJedi]

Zylithan said:
Thanks for all the replies. I assumed you couldn't have teams (I thought the manual said so... but I always thought, what if gods want to form a pantheon... it doesnt have to be monotheism....) did I miss something, or is the teams thing a mod?

You can setup the AI opponents to be allied with each other using the MAP edit commands. This can be done by reading the map edit PDF and editing the map file.

[sector24]

Sorry for changing the subject slightly, but is there any documentation concerning the difference between easy, normal, mighty, etc? Is the AI always the same and the starting resources change? I'm assuming at normal the player and the AI start on equal footing, what's the bonus at the higher difficulty levels?

[Zylithan]

Sector24 - there's actually a thread about this here

http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...o=&fpart=&vc=1

(if I linked properly)

[sector24]

Thanks for the link, that was a good read. The only thing I can tell you about the AI is that they know when you're weak. I'm curious how many scouts they employ. Actually, I'm curious how many scouts human players employ for that matter.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

If I've got conveniently placed independent scout recruiting points, I churn out scouts nearly nonstop until I've saturated nearby nations. I even find it helpful to place scouts in the lands of trustworthy allies. If they're facing a deep, hostile invasion, it will let me know precisely what I'll be facing if I launch a relief effort, or aim assisting assassinations.
Or, if the invading force moves on without leaving any province defense or troops behind (it happens), I get to mess with their lines of retreat.

[NTJedi]

sector24 said:
The only thing I can tell you about the AI is that they know when you're weak. I'm curious how many scouts they employ.

My view about the AI in Dominions_3:
I seriously doubt the AI knows how to use scouts, and thus shouldn't be buying them. I could write a whole list of improvements needed by the AI, but it's too much for a small company like Illwinter.
For this reason I've been requesting the next version of Dominions provide modding of the AI via scripts. Ideally the next version of Dominions would provide us the following options:
1) Aggressive (currently within Dominions_3)
2) Standard (currently within Dominions_3)
3) Defensive (currently within Dominions_3)
4) Random (currently within Dominions_3)
5) Custom_A (hopefully found in Dominions_4)
6) Custom_B (hopefully found in Dominions_4)
7) Custom_C (hopefully found in Dominions_4)
8) Custom_D (hopefully found in Dominions_4)
9) Custom_E (hopefully found in Dominions_4)

** Custom A thru E are scripts which can be edited by gamers to improve the AI. Thus anytime someone complains about the AI... all the community has to say is "make a better AI via the scripts". As time passes custom AI scripts will continue to improve, the more scripting commands available the greater the opportunity for a powerful AI.

[Aethyr]

NT--

Your comments regarding editing the map file to allow AI sides to team up has given me some ideas. I did not know this could be done, and it would be great for some tests that I have in mind.

Prescisely how I would go about editing the file is not quite intuitive for me, could you elaborate a bit? Thanks for your help.

[llamabeast]

If you mean how to actually edit it - open it in notepad, it's just a text file.

There is guide on map editing in the dominions3/doc folder.