House Rules against the AI - Page 3

thejeff · #21 January 28th, 2010, 07:35 PM

What it really needs to be able to do is adapt, at least marginally. Your enemy's attacking with fire, give fire resistance a higher priority. Astral mages - boost mr, undead build and send more priests.

Some of this, even within the basic combat spellcasting AI would be possible. "Lightning bolts crashing all around me? Hey, I can cast Resist Lightning!" (This would help the mp game as well, if mages could react to the situation.)

Exploitable by a clever player, sure. But far less than it is now.

Some basic guidelines on gearing/buffing thugs would be nice, again modified by what's been killing them lately. Some awareness of blesses, sacred troops and the need to send priests along with them.

Basic attention in pretender design to scales. Heat preference, age of mages, resources needed for troops, etc. Keep it randomized, but weight things that make sense more heavily. Not predetermined weights by nation, but derived from the actual game data.

None of this is the simple "design a script for each nation" strawman, nor is it build a functioning human AI, pass the Turing test, win fame and fortune. It's complicated, it's a lot of work, but it's not fundamentally a hard problem.

Of course, it's not going to happen. Would require a major rewrite and the devs have moved on.

Lingchih · #22 January 29th, 2010, 04:54 AM

My god, is this even a worthy topic? One uses the SP AI to test out strats and summons. Playing a game against it is like playing against a six year old.

Makinus · #23 January 29th, 2010, 07:25 AM

Unfortunatelly a lot of people (myself included) have problems playing MP games because of variable work schedules and SP is the only alternative to playing Dominions... I have months where i can play almost every day, while other times i must stay 2 or 3 weeks without playing... this makes difficult to play MP games...

Humakty · #24 January 29th, 2010, 08:28 AM

Dominions AI isn't much worse than any other (ie : Civ 4 AI), it's the game which offers so many different tricks so quickly. I mean, by year two you'll have around 100 spells available, how to you want an AI to use efficiently all of those ?

The only really bad point dom 3 AI has is the propention not to buy any mages whatsoever, partially cured with NI maps or BI mod. That, and recruiting militia...*sigh*

Gandalf Parker · #25 January 29th, 2010, 10:49 AM

Its also not a bad AI considering how it was created. Dominions was created with a minimal plugged-in AI. And the game has grown in pieces. So even "easy" fixes dont tend to be so easy. Such as "use of lightning should mean use protection against lightning". But there does not seem to be a simplye single variable for lightning in the code. Each item and spell was coded separately without much in the way of categories. So the code would have to maintain a huge list of spells and counter items. Thats why we still find holes where some unit is supposed to be immune to something, or some spell isnt supposed to work. Because each one needs to be noticed and tagged.

We have gathered much info on what the AI does and doesnt do. What pretenders it uses well and which ones it doesnt. Units it uses well enough and which ones to avoid. Spells it prefers to use so we might be able to selectively grant more or less ability to use the ones we feel it uses well. Eventually I will use all of this to give us all a fantastic modded nation designed for no other purpose than to be a bigger better AI for the game. Of course this will be done by me creating some horribly crappy little mod that will instantly spur someone to show me up by doing it much MUCH better.

Tollund · #26 January 29th, 2010, 11:24 AM

You know Gandalf. We're all quite capable of reading this thread and don't really need you to repeat the things that other people have already said in it.

Sombre · #27 January 29th, 2010, 01:49 PM

Gandalf: A mod won't be made that makes the AI a worthwhile opponent. What you're talking about could already be done easily by any number of modders on these boards and you could easily create an AI nation that would destroy even the best players in SP, no problem. But it would still suck to play against because we can't mod the AI. Giving it nothing but the incredibly simple stuff it can actually cope with requires making this stuff ridiculously powerful for it to stand a chance. That is zero fun to play against.

You go on and on about this all over the place, talking about AI mod nations and mods designed to improve the AI and blah blah blah. It's all just wishful thinking. Oh and shill work of course.

Gandalf Parker · #28 January 29th, 2010, 02:16 PM

Well shill is one thing I do well.

But you are probably correct that its not possible to mod a worthwhile AI. Even if we could mod the AI I dont think thats possible. Its not even possible to program a worthwhile AI. Especially not for this game.

But since there are people who play the AI, and there are known features about the AI, then it should be possible to mod a better AI than the random that most people are playing against now. It is likely though that like other projects it wont happen without a shill effort first.

Sombre · #29 January 29th, 2010, 02:18 PM

Good luck with that. How many years have you been talking about it again?

Tollund · #30 January 29th, 2010, 02:23 PM

Of course it would be possible. Just create a nation where the AI can recruit juggernauts as troops and vampire lords as commanders for 1 gold and 1 resource each. It would easily crush any human player then, but still wouldn't be a very interesting opponent.

Anyways, you're still conflating the AI with nation/pretender design. The AI is the decision making engine. It cannot be modified, changed, or affected in any way by the players. One can create better pretenders and cheat in other ways for the AI, but this is _not_ AI modding.