AI Helper Builds

[Sombre]

Fixing the scales manually will NOT even out the difference between normal and impossible AI. The bonus it gets to gold, gems, production; these are greater than the difference between order3 and turmoil3 and so on. Besides which the AI on impossible gets extra points at pretender creation and is therefore more likely to have positive scales anyway.

[Renojustin]

The fix to this would be of course to allow you to set the difficulty of the AI when you turn to AI control. That would go a long way toward making SP more challenging.

Could we expect to see this improvement in a patch sometime soon?

[Edratman]

Sombre said:
Fixing the scales manually will NOT even out the difference between normal and impossible AI. The bonus it gets to gold, gems, production; these are greater than the difference between order3 and turmoil3 and so on. Besides which the AI on impossible gets extra points at pretender creation and is therefore more likely to have positive scales anyway.

This is 100% accurate. I have found that the AI does better (most of the time) on impossible settings than making edited pretenders and scales, even cheating magic and scales. The time required to set a game using map editing of cheated magic and scales then Human start and switching to AI is fairly substantial, and not worth it in my opinion.

Besides, the AI on impossible presents adequate challenge for me. If I need a more substantial challenge I'll try and convince the wife that playing Dom3 is a good use of my spare time and that there is no down side to drinking beer.

[thejeff]

I've never played with it, but I think what llamabeast was saying, is that you can start with Impossible AIs but use map commands to change both the scales and the actual pretender.

Thus they still get the Impossible AI bonuses and intelligent design.

I've never tried, because I agree that impossible AIs provide sufficient challenge in the early/mid game and the micromanagement makes me give up before the late game anyway.

[NTJedi]

thejeff said:
I've never played with it, but I think what llamabeast was saying, is that you can start with Impossible AIs but use map commands to change both the scales and the actual pretender.

Thus they still get the Impossible AI bonuses and intelligent design.

I agree... this works the best for providing a more powerful AI opponent. As mentioned in a different thread it's best if the AI pretenders are immobile or a size 2 otherwise each of them will blindly send their pretenders into the arena death match.

The arena death match could actually be a very fun and interesting event if the prize was improved to provide the winner with gold and gems based on the current game turn. An improved arena prize would increase the interest of all human participants to send a good challenger.

[Aezeal]

Hmm I'd settle for mighty then.. impossible is hard to beat without exploiting every weakness instead of just playing

[NTJedi]

Aezeal said:
Hmm I'd settle for mighty then.. impossible is hard to beat without exploiting every weakness instead of just playing

I help the AI opponents which are far away on my maps by providing them highly equipped SCs, highly equipped assassins, extra gems, immobile powerful spellcasters, extra forts and magic sites.
The end result provides great large battles.

The game still bumps into the commander and unit limitation even without LA Ry'leh and LA Ermor for maps of 650 provinces or more. So I suggest provinces of 600 or less at this time.

[HoneyBadger]

So...all debate over the relative merits of the AI settings aside...does anybody have any actual Pretender builds they'd like to suggest?