Well, I'm through with the game

[jscott]

Another solution would be for the developers to just take a few moments and stop the AI from randomly picking its scales.

That's what they are doing people, they are randomly picking their scales!

That is ridiculous to pass off as AI for a single player game.

I understand that many of you play MP and believe the game is MP only. Why bother posting in a thread like this if that's what you believe? Some of us will never play the multiplayer. That's just a fact. I never will.

What I would like, though, is for the SP to not insult my intelligent by implementing sloppy design that masquerades like its an actual single player opponent. Random decision making is not AI. Its not a single player opponent. Its just a sign of abject laziness. If you are going to do that, then simply don't have a SP component at all and all confusion over this issue will be over.

Random scales!? That's just absurd.

And that's why Dominions 3 ultimately earns a thumbs down from me and why I won't be playing it going forward.

[moderation]

Hmm, as as pretender design goes, I think you could set up your AI opponent as a Human initially, and then design decent scales and a pretender for them, then switch them to AI. However, I don't think the game lets you choose what type of AI you could (which would be a nice feature).

For the hardcore fans, if you could tell the AI to choose from a list of pretender gods that you have designed, this could make things more challenging. Unfortunately, there's no guarantee that they would follow the optimal research paths. If you had an option to set research priorities for them, this could help.

Finally, the option to pop switch an AI player back to a human for a few turns to correct it's mistakes could be interesting. Essentially, you'd be playing against yourself, with the AI filling in some of the time, but it could be a bit more challenging. Does anyone know why there isn't an option to switch an AI back to a human? I know I would find this useful for testing purposes at least, and maybe other people would as well. Well, that's my two gold pieces anyway.

[DonCorazon]

jscott said:

I understand that many of you play MP and believe the game is MP only. Why bother posting in a thread like this if that's what you believe? Some of us will never play the multiplayer. That's just a fact. I never will.

Well I was trying to share my own positive experience with MP since at one time I only bought and played games for SP, thinking that such a perspective might be useful to you. I see that, given your response, I was wasting of my time.

I would also ask, if as you say, you are through with the game, why bother posting here as well?

[Kristoffer O]

The random scales is intentional. The AI is supposed to play a pretending god with an effect on his lands. It is not supposed to be a god trying to maximize the outcome of his subjects lands. So should you if you play SP

I'm not sure, but thought that SP players were less concerned with beating their opponent and more into role-playing. If you are a role-player both you and your enemies should take scales according to your own whim. If the AI is playing with death scales it is your task to rid the world of him. It might also be easier to do than defeat the other pretender, a fertility god that has all his population with him in an orderly and growing nation.

I know that there are players that try to find strategically worthy opponents in SP games, but I believed, perhaps wrongly, that the SP community was more concerned with exploration and roleplaying and less with finding strong and weak strategies and ways to defeat an opponent efficiently.

[Zeldor]

Kristoffer O:

Maybe it is because you made strategy game, not RPG? At least higher difficulty levels should be somewhat challeging for strategy enthusiasts.

[LDiCesare]

I'm probably a poor player, but playing on a 125 provinces wrapparound map against 10 mighty ai's is still a challenge for me. Although it may depend on which nation I pick.

[Twan]

Yes the smaller the map is the harder is the game against AIs (it's for 20+ provinces per nation maps that AIs may need to be boosted more ; on a 10 provinces per nation map I think I lose too against mighties, especially if some are offensive).

[Renojustin]

I'm up to out-finessing 7 Impossible AIs in medium sized random maps, even with relatively weak nations, and without SCs. Yay!

Should I be setting them to Offensive? I just have em set to Random behavior... at least that way most of the talent on the map seems to be making a beeline for me (for some reason) instead of randomly bashing away at their neighbors.

[Twan]

Should I be setting them to Offensive? I just have em set to Random behavior...

I think the sooner AIs attack the best it is for them, as they are mostly bad in the magic area (playing with very difficult research should help them too).

Offensive AIs attack more both other AIs and players.
But if you set ten AIs on offensive on a small map, I think there are good chances that some of them gang against you (especially if you have a better start than most AIs and so have several neighbours fast).

There is also a map command to avoid to see AIs fighting each other (but it may lead to some AIs not succeeding to expand as another AI hold a crucial chokepoint).

[NTJedi]

renojustin said:
I'm up to out-finessing 7 Impossible AIs in medium sized random maps, even with relatively weak nations, and without SCs. Yay!

Should I be setting them to Offensive? I just have em set to Random behavior... at least that way most of the talent on the map seems to be making a beeline for me (for some reason) instead of randomly bashing away at their neighbors.

On your computer browse into the docs folder and read the map edit PDF document. It will allow you to setup one or more AI's as allies, allow you to give the AI's growth scales, and more.