magical summons anyone ?

[Saber Cherry]

Originally posted by HJ:
Again, maybe it's still too early in the game, and it remains to be seen how easy it's going to be to do just that when human player plays Mictlan, but they do remain close to their starting dominion value even after 40 turns when everybody else has their values multiplied manyfold. Maybe this is the way it's supposed to be, I don't know. It's just an observation.

I played one SP game with all races, and Mictlan died on about turn 5 from running out of dominion.

Sorry, that's a little off topic. I also have seen AI blood summons and undead, but no non-demon non-undead summoned units. In Dominions I there were a lot of gem summons in AI armies.

[ November 09, 2003, 08:08: Message edited by: Saber Cherry ]

[Aristoteles]

Originally posted by Pocus:
yes, I saw these blood summons to (fiend of darkness is the name you are seaching for ).

But not a single one magical summon from gems. So something is screwed there IMHO.

I agree, and this is already mentioned in the AI weaknesses list. IE. The AI won't use too much summoned units.
Barely it is using them, but it is quite rare.

[HJ]

I saw a couple of horned serpents and vine men today from Man. Maybe it's too early, and they use the gems they get for other things, like giving them to mages. The kind of gems they get in home province mimics the kind of mages they get from the start, so maybe they're pumping them up. I certainly saw that many times. Furthermore, this early without empowerment they cannot access other kinds of magic/gems, since their national mages can only find sites that will give the same kind of gems they have in the home province. Also, many magical summons require a fair amount of gems (drakes are 11, e.g.). Even if they find a site, it's going to take some time to accumulate the gems, unless they are getting +5 in the home province, so the first few turns might not be very representative. It remains to be seen how it's going to play out later in the game. I hope that both summons and alchemy/empowerment will work fine, and that we'll see nice and diverse AI armies/mages later on.

I was wondering what sort of info do other people notice on the score graphs with regard to the AI gem income? Is low AI gem income a more widespread phenomenon, or are the AIs in my games just unlucky?

[Altus]

I've seen Summer Lions from the Marignon, Shades and Longdead from C'tis and my mystics have summoned Phantasmal Warriors and Lesser Air and Earth Elementals on their own. I've also seen some Lesser Vinemen, don't recall from who.

[ November 09, 2003, 17:23: Message edited by: Altus ]

[Pocus]

I can only say one thing : that in dom1 the Ai fielded many magical summons, far before turn 40, whereas in dom2 I never saw a single one.

[licker]

Interesting observations...

I've seen Marg using Summer Lions by turn 20, two summonings worth. I've seen small amounts of undead in Jotun and Ermor (go figure... ) The tac AI likes to summon during combat though, but that's not really the same issue...

I've also noticed that the AIs seem to have really bad gem incomes (compared to mine anyway). Its a bit difficult to tell how poor they are since mine are often giganitc, and there's no scale to measure against, well I guess its reletive and the bottom is zero... I'm just to lazy to do that math

I've seen some mages in enemy armies, but I've not seen the enemy do alot of searching, though usually when I do hit a province that has sites it has 2 or 3... does the AI cheat at all in knowing where the sites are? (probably not, but it seemed strange to me).

There has been alot of productive discussion about the AI and army composition. Though many of the suggestions may not be workable, I think the key point is that the formulas that control the ratios of units and also commanders should be looked at again. The formulas for fort, lab, and temple building are connected to the AIs ability to field different unit and commander mixes as well, so they need to be taken into consideration.

Really if Illwinter were able to externalize those forumulas so that they could be tweeked by mods I'm certain that the community would quickly create tweeked formulas to give the AI 'better' army composition. I'm also certain that Gandalf would figure out some way to randomize the values in the formulas to make a skitzo AI that might or might not 'whomp ***'

[PvK]

I've seen some Mandragoras from Jotunheim, IIRC. The AI has had better gem income than I have in the few games I played. Of course, there are a lot of other ways it could be using those gems.

BTW, I saw Mictlan evaporate from zero dominions too after I and the other AI's had reduced them to a few provinces for a while.

I sort of thought their standing armies would remain as independent defense forces, at least, but when I marched in, I met no resistance at all. Seems to me it'd be more interesting if the old armies and defense forces had to be overcome.

Also, the other neighboring AI's didn't hurry to gobble up the undefended provinces. Seems like the AI might be wanting a priority tactic to attack any really weak adjacent provinces, especially if an pretender evaporates and this has the effect of leaving completely up-for-grabs provinces.

PvK