Question before buying!

[Gandalf Parker]

Im confused. You say the alternative is free or cheap games. You dont say they are better AIs. Even GalCiv which is famous in Artificial Intelligence forums is something I would only consider barely higher for AI.

[Ink]

Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker

Im confused. You say the alternative is free or cheap games. You dont say they are better AIs. Even GalCiv which is famous in Artificial Intelligence forums is something I would only consider barely higher for AI.

I didn't even mention GalCiv so stop pulling strawmen out of your ***.

I hate GalCiv, for the record.

[Trumanator]

It all comes down to whether you're willing to spend $60 on a game with a very predictable and occasionally suicidal AI. If you're more into sandboxing and fooling around then that's great, this is a good game for it. If you want an actual competent opponent(s) then there are better ways to spend that much money. I personally can't stand playing more than maybe 15 turns of SP anymore, it just has no thrill for me.

[Gandalf Parker]

Granted. As I said, all AI sucks. No AI is AH (almost human). Im guessing your idea of "actual competent opponent(s)" involve human opponents?

So another way of wording the same thing might be:
if you arent a competitive person who thrills at kill-or-be-killed contests against real humans but is happy with an above-average AI that can keep you entertained for more than a month then this is a good game for it.

[Trumanator]

Dominions does not have an above average AI, no matter how many times you say it. It picks scales and magic paths at random unless you pick them for it, it builds massive numbers of absolutely horrible troops unless you modify them to prevent that, is paralyzed by assassin spam, and is dead scared of PD. Don't go spewing bull**** like this is some great example of AI programming.

[Gandalf Parker]

Im well aware of its limitations. The keyword here is "average". Unless you can give me a list of games with better AIs then my opinion stands. Im not saying its great. Only that for people who prefer to play AIs, this doesnt suck as bad as many others.

This has become a battle of preachers who fail to answer questions rather than to say switch religions.

[Ink]

many games have decent AI because the game world consists of a limited number of state - action pairs (by limited think around only a billion or so).

dominions has so many state action pairs: how many of each kind of troop in what province in what time of the year with how much gold and how many resources available with what level of research with what magic items currently available with what sorts of enemies in the adjacent province... Each change (one extra or one less gold piece or some troop) is a different state. for one province there are probably trillions and trillions of state-action pairs (and additional provinces enter the equation factorially)

games with limited discrete states can enumerate them all: thus why a computer can now pretty much always beat a human opponent at chess if allowed to. It is really possible to enumerate all the possible states of chess, and it is a markov model (history really doesn't matter) so that simplifies things even more, and all it has to do is pick the next move that maximizes its benefit given every possible move which could occur after that.

other games can provide a pretty exhaustive ontology, or just script the AI, and pretty much just tell it what to do given some set of states.

I'd think a learning agent is pretty much out of the question for dominions, I think good AI will only occur from deliberate scripting. I don't know how JK has it programmed right now, but I'd guess its some sort of scripting. But that's still a lot of scripting to do.

For a game like Mount and Blade AI is a non-issue. Sure it pretty much picks troops at random, but it doesn't matter so much. And they pick enemies at random too, but once again its moot. In the battles the scripting is pretty simple:

if have bow:
  if have horse:
    stay away from enemies and shoot arrows
  else: shoot arrows
else: rush at enemy

So the AI doesn't really have a lot of work to do. Not so for Dominions. For a game like Dominions these choices are REALLY important, and so its going to be really intensive to program an accurate AI. This is what makes it fun for MP. But I just don't think (OK its my opinion, and its my tastes, I know) that Dominions is fun at all for SP. I owned the game for years, and had played many many MP games, before I ever actually beat an SP game (and it was on Silent Seas wraparound, the smallest map, and that was just about so boring I couldn't finish it).

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally Posted by Ink

I'd think a learning agent is pretty much out of the question for dominions, I think good AI will only occur from deliberate scripting. I don't know how JK has it programmed right now, but I'd guess its some sort of scripting. But that's still a lot of scripting to do.

Its linear, generic to every nation, and has very few IF's (if this nation, if this unit, etc). You can see quite abit of it in the debug logs if you are interested.

But I just don't think (OK its my opinion, and its my tastes, I know) that Dominions is fun at all for SP. I owned the game for years, and had played many many MP games, before I ever actually beat an SP game (and it was on Silent Seas wraparound, the smallest map, and that was just about so boring I couldn't finish it).

Thank you.

[rdonj]

I personally think dominions has a pretty tough AI as far as games go. Until you learn all the AI-stomping tricks, you can expect to be beaten... repeatedly. I can think of plenty of games, RTS or TBS with much easier AIs to defeat. Of course when you know how to play, the AI is completely useless.

I still play SP, and have played SP almost every day since before I signed up for the forums . I've probably logged similar hours playing dominions as many people do playing MMORPGs. And I've played in a number of MP games as well. So I think a person can easily get their money's worth just playing dominions SP, though from what I've seen most people who try mp have a lot of trouble going back to SP.

I'm someone who doesn't usually like to play strategy games multiplayer, but I still find myself enjoying dominions in multiplayer. I would sggest that even the most hardcore sp person try it at least once. It's a completely different game.

[samoht]

Originally Posted by Spacemutiny

I just saw that there is a digital download available. I've been eyeing this game for quite some time, but before I take the plunge and download it, I wanted to ask long time players a question.

Is it worth it if I only want to play singleplayer? I'm not big on multiplayer, so I don't want to purchase a game that has inadequate AI. So how is the AI in Dominions 3? Will I find it at all challenging?

Thanks for any input!

I bought the game the week it came out and I've been playing SP the whole time.

Yes. Yes it is worth it. I only once ever played a MP game, destroyed my brother in law, and went right back to SP. It is fantastic. Yes, I imagine MP offers a lot of different challenges and experiences and triumphs that you will not normally see in SP, but SP is still incredible. Every game is like a story of empire unfolding right before your eyes.