Question before buying!

[Gandalf Parker]

@rdonj Im surprised that we are agreeing on all of this.

Ive often jumped into threads about nation mods when someone jumps on a new modder about their mod being "unbalanced". I try to offer the alternative of forget the balance, go for AI. Some have ignored balance suggestions but not many have openly pursued a mod for AI play.

There are many threads though where people have used the debug and comptrn switches to actually watch what the AI is doing. Yes it tends to surprise people how much thought the AI does actually put into each spell selection and recruiting action. Not enough of course, but its far from brainless. Knowing what it does, and why, can go far toward working WITH it to remove temptations to be stupid.

Just a few examples that have been given...
A) remove flak units from the nation, it doesnt use them very well
B) more resources at the capital
C) a Lore Master or such site at the capital helps the AI keep up with players who burn thru to a particular spell for endgame
D) the AI actually DOES recognize SC vs Rainbow pretenders. To the AI the PURPOSE of an SC is to go to war and participate in arenas. So dont give it SCs. In fact, the safest bet is to give it immobile gods
E) its been noted in other threads which magic the AI does/doesnt use well. Choose accordingly
F) the AI does use some spells well altho getting access to them tends to be undirected and random. National spells can go a long way toward improving this

Unfortunately... my own efforts at improving AI have tended to be more in server or map commands (my areas). Quite abit can be done in map and scenario functions but Id still like to see more mods saying they are based specifically on AI testing.

Also, Im rather random myself. My method of testing is hit-n-miss. I can stumble on surprising things but I wont ever come up with some of the detailed analysis that some people put into pinning down the exact formulas in the game. Id like to see some of their skills put toward the AI spell list, and AI recruitment.

[thejeff]

I think most of the resistance to the idea of turning powerful mod nations into AI only nations is that people want to play them not just fight against them. Also a lot of things that would be overpowered in a good player's hands the AI might just flail around with, so a nation could be overpowered but still weak for the AI.

One thought for boosting AI nations is to mod in summons that are the equivalent of fully-geared and buffed thugs and SCs. The AIs real trouble with either is that it doesn't equip them sensibly or cast the useful buffs. So make summons that lack slots and paths, but have built-in gear, resistances etc that mimic at least the common thug gear. I know everything isn't moddable, but many things are. Resistances, MR, luck, ethereal, regen, reinvig, fear, awe, fireshield. I don't think there's a way to get the VineShield effect. If you give them weapons in a mod, I don't think they get the special effects, but most of them you could add in as an extra attack.

Since this would be for the AI to use in SP, balance isn't a great concern. You can just mark the spells as "AI-only" and let the player honor that. Or not. It's SP.

[Stavis_L]

Originally Posted by thejeff

One thought for boosting AI nations is to mod in summons that are the equivalent of fully-geared and buffed thugs and SCs. The AIs real trouble with either is that it doesn't equip them sensibly or cast the useful buffs. So make summons that lack slots and paths, but have built-in gear, resistances etc that mimic at least the common thug gear. I know everything isn't moddable, but many things are. Resistances, MR, luck, ethereal, regen, reinvig, fear, awe, fireshield. I don't think there's a way to get the VineShield effect. If you give them weapons in a mod, I don't think they get the special effects, but most of them you could add in as an extra attack.

Since this would be for the AI to use in SP, balance isn't a great concern. You can just mark the spells as "AI-only" and let the player honor that. Or not. It's SP.

Interestingly, I've been working on just this. The main question I have is how to get the AI to summon the "prebuilt thugs" vs. (for instance) Summon Animals.

Also, the number of units is somewhat problematic since each summon requires a spell slot...

[rdonj]

Gandalf - Yeah, it's rare for us to agree on much. The AI is one of the few points we can agree on. I've never felt the dominions AI was quite as bad as a lot of players make it out to be. It can challenge you for a while, especially if you don't exploit its weaknesses too much.

Other things that make an AI nation better - good PD. I played an SP game against the Dwarfs with Brettonia once... their tough PD made it *very* hard to raid safely thanks to all the crossbows, and if they have slayers in their armies they can kill some powerful things with just one lucky hit. So tough as nails PD should be on the list... as well as high-attack units that do plenty of damage.

I would go even a step further with the national summons, and do the same thing to their recruitable thugs/SCs. Then take away their magic so they can't cast spells uselessly (or give them plenty of reinvigoration so they can't knock themsleves out). Then reduce their price so the AI is more likely to hire them. Getting the AI to cast national summons could be hard... keeping them cheap is probably the best way to do it, but there's no way to force them to do what you want there as far as I can tell.

Recruitable high-research mages are a must, as Gandalf suggested. The AI doesn't do TOO bad at researching early on, but it tends to get pretty far behind by mid-game. The removal of chaff units, also a must.

Oh, and the vineshield effect actually is moddable

[llamabeast]

Also, the number of units is somewhat problematic since each summon requires a spell slot...

When the new patch comes out we'll have LOADS more spell slots.

[thejeff]

I've been tossing the idea around in the back of my head for awhile, mostly when these discussions come up. I probably saw someone suggest it before. I'd like to use it, but the issue hasn't bothered me enough to work on it myself.

One way to solve both problems would be to replace "Summon Animals" and similar spells. Not sure I'd like that approach. I'd rather not change the human players options and Summon Animals is occasionally useful.

I've got no real idea what the AI bases its ritual casting decisions on. I know I've seen it use modded summons. My assumption is that making the spells cheaper and easier will make them more likely to be used, but beyond that it's hard to say.

How many spell slots are available? I know there have been mods that added quite a few new summons. How many were you planning on?

[rdonj]

Stavis - I saw you asking about what summons the AI likes to use in the other forum. I don't quite think that's appropriate for that thread, but what I see the AI summon most are things like fire snakes, summer lions, spring hawks, fall bears, clockwork horrors, naiad warriors, banes, bane lords, hama dryads, ghosts and shura. I've probably seen other things also, but those are the ones I remember best at present.

[theenemy]

If you like a sandbox environment where you can experiment with different strategies and such then you can probably play around with the game in SP for quite a while.
The gameplay value in SP is however at zero percent.

[thejeff]

That is not true. (I suppose, depending on what you mean by "gameplay value" it could be...)

Plenty of people, including me, play SP and enjoy it.
Impossible AIs, especially with the BetterIndependents mod, can be quite challenging through midgame, if you aren't abusing the AI flaws or playing an early game optimized strategy (awake SC pretender, strong double bless nation, strong recruitable thug/SCs)

It's not as challenging as MP can be, especially as the game goes on and you get more options, which the AI doesn't even try to counter. OTOH, some strategies actually work better in MP than against the AI.

[Gandalf Parker]

Eventually everyone tends to get too familiar and abit unhappy with the vanilla game. For those people there are varieties of game settings, special maps, game mods and nation mods, and even 3rd party programs. All of which are designed to make the game different than vanilla.

That doesnt just apply to MP play. It also applies to Solo play and to upgrading the AI. There are settings, maps, mods, modded nations, and 3rd party programs which take the AI far beyond what you might have played when you were going thru the demo or tutorial.