The AI Improvement Thread

[Renojustin]

This thread is to list the many and sundry things that might be done to improve the AI. I think that the SP experience could use a little more love... or consider being able to add worthy AI opponents to small multiplayer games.

The fact of the matter is that the AI plays like a five year old child and if we're able to focus on the things that it doesn't do well, or properly, or at all, we might be able to home in on what makes the AI so bad against players and rectify it!

I'll start -

A simple-sounding change would be to be able to set the difficulty of the AI when you change from a player to AI. This would allow you to set the scales for a nation to something beneficial to that nation and then have something of a challenge when you change them over to Impossible.

Another thing I've noticed is that the AI doesn't seem to use items properly... they are distributed in what seems to be completely random fashion. Surely the AI would benefit from giving appropriate path-boosting items to mages and combat items to thug and melee chassis instead of the drunken-night-of-looting method that seems to be the current method? Just having path-boosted mages casting rituals and Battlefield Enchantments or even evocations would be a step up.

Let's hear a list of things that the AI can't do, and then possible fixes for each problem.

[llamabeast]

I'm not sure there's much point in going through this, since I don't get the impression that JK is interested in working further on the AI. Most games, of course, get little or no improvements after release, so we are lucky so much gets changed. However, they only tend to work on things they are enthusiastic about, and my impression is that JK is not enthusiastic about making AI changes.

There is a lot of room for improving the AI via map commands and so on, though. For instance you can design the AI's pretenders for it using map commands, and still set them on "Impossible" so they get good bonuses. If you use Edi's Better Independents mod they will recruit far more national troops. Combining these can make the AIs far more fearsome. And of course you can go further my modding individual nations if you want. For instance, you could mod all Mictlan's commanders to #onebattlespell Divine Blessing, so their troops will always be blessed.

[QXel]

llamabeast said:
For instance, you could mod all Mictlan's commanders to #onebattlespell Divine Blessing, so their troops will always be blessed.

Ouch! I never will do this!

Well, Renojustin, if you want challenge in SP, Llamabeast is right, there is really enough ways to improve AI.

Just to see, try a game on Aran map with 9 opponents, just at mighty level ... No map modding, just NI mod (or BI mod, as you wish) ... I'll try it last evening with Agartha, which is new for me, but the game isn't ... Bouh! I was laminated!!!
Just playing in overcrowded maps is a challenge ...

Add some map command to create AI gods & their scales, semi-random it with heavy Indies, set AI to mighty or impossible, and start a game with you and (max player for the chosen map +2 or 4), and then, let me know the result

[Edratman]

One change that might not be too involved is to have a multiplier on the starting troops based on difficulty level for the AI. I think that would be a big expansion advantage to the AI if it gets 2 or 3 times the amount of starting troops.


Changing the troops would be better, but I am pretty sure that would involve using new nation codes, and these numbers are limited.

[llamabeast]

This would also be quite easy to mod. It's just a matter of someone finding the time I guess.

Edit: Sorry, it wouldn't be possible to mod the starting army to depend on the difficulty level. But you could just mod the AI nations to have larger/different starting armies.

[QXel]

IIRC, you can already add whatever troops you want in any province, including starting provinces, with map command.

Well, you haven't the surprise, but whatever, because you're not expecting encounter any neighbour nations before some turns, and if you mod indy prov. as well, the AI would have get some reinforcments to gap loses.

If you also mod gold/resource cost of national troops for AI, the AI would have more troops for the same cost than you. This could be quite challenging!
You just have to pay attention on which troops are accessible as indy, and since they all have been identified in NI or BI mods, no difficulty on this.

Of course, no possibility to mod this dependant of AI level, but this is quite easy nonetheless.

[Gandalf Parker]

In another thread:
monster scenario project
there is an interest in how you would change Middle Age (era 2) nations so that they suddenly display an apparently intelligent change of tactics in mid-game on a large map. Have Arcos shift from expansion to research?
Have Ulm shift from using nationals to using independents?

What would you have the AI do if it found itself losing?
Have Ermor shift from armored units to era 3 undead armies?

What would you have them do if they were winning?
Have them stop filling every space with new castles?

Looking for ideas. For any nation, what did you feel it should have done in mid-game? Ctis? Jotunheim? At the point in the game when the AI should have figured out that you had a plan on how to beat them, what do you think they should have changed?
This could turn into a nice scenario for solo play.

[Edi]

One thing that would be an immense improvement would be if we were able to design AI gods with the pretender creation tool. Choose difficulty, design pretender with the appropriate number of bonus points and it would be saved to an ai_gods folder or something like that, and if game setup had a "Load random predesigned AI pretender", SP would start looking a lot better.

Of course, that's a fairly extensive feature request, so not likely to happen.

[JimMorrison]

If only someone had already designed a program that could be used as a reference point in order to quickly and easily implement such an upgrade to the core game..... >.>

[MaxWilson]

I know, I know. I will make some files for the God maker program... soon.

-Max