SP dominion kills on turn 1

Snacktime · #1 May 4th, 2012, 12:07 AM

Lately when I start SP games, I find multiple AI nations eliminated on turn 1 by dominion kill. I don't understand why that's happening. I mean how is it even possible to lose all dominion on turn 1? These are large enough maps that they should be a few provinces away from any other capital.

Any ideas? It's annoying.

krpeters · #2 May 4th, 2012, 12:19 AM

I've played lots of SP games and never had this happen. What settings are you using? How many provinces per player, what difficulty?

BewareTheBarnacleGoose · #3 May 4th, 2012, 12:28 AM

I've had AIs die on turn 1 when I play on a map with fixed starts but accidentally chose too many AIs. Could that be what happened?

Kelan · #4 May 4th, 2012, 08:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BewareTheBarnacleGoose

I've had AIs die on turn 1 when I play on a map with fixed starts but accidentally chose too many AIs. Could that be what happened?

Yeah, it is more than likely this, imho. I had this problem recently testing a map for MP and had this happen systematically every time (Especially since you say that multiple AIs are killing off). Test it a few times with the same map and same number of players and if this is the problem it will happen every time.

Admiral_Aorta · #5 May 4th, 2012, 03:02 AM

The AI is really dumb and sometimes takes really low dominion on their pretenders. This combined with dominion reducing events and other nations close by can result in a domkill.

Knai · #6 May 4th, 2012, 03:26 AM

I'd also add that the AI is really incompetent with some nations. For instance, Mictlan doesn't get automatic temple checks, and as such tend to die horribly (despite being a domkilling powerhouse nation).

llamabeast · #7 May 4th, 2012, 06:51 AM

Yeah, I'm not surprised if it was Mictlan. Mictlan has a special property whereby their dominion is not spread by temples etc.. This is easy to overcome by blood sacrifice, but the AI won't do that.

Gandalf Parker · #8 May 4th, 2012, 08:59 AM

If you turn on debug it will often tell you what is happening. (also helpful when testing a map for MP)

Im guessing this is vanilla (no mods involved)? There are maps, mods, 3rd party programs to improve AI and soloplay.

Snacktime · #9 May 4th, 2012, 10:41 AM

I'm using CBM 1.92. This happened to me on a couple maps, but yes I believe they are maps I downloaded with fixed starts, so it may be that i added more AI than fixed starts. Still, pretty asinine and I'm still surprised how much I'm seeing it happen. It seems like even if the AI picked stupidly low dominion, he'd still only be dom killed on turn one if you have a very close high-dom neighbor or some unlucky event. In one start like 5 nations died from dom-kill on turn one! I feel like something else must be going on here.

As far as ways to make the AI play less dumbly, I am all ears. Better Independents helps but of course doesn't make their pretender design any less dumb or avoid these turn one dominion kills.

I tried starting with all nations human so I could design their pretenders, but then when I converted to AI control I couldn't figure out how to increase the AI default difficulty, so overall I didn't see how this would help in the long run. Is there a way to set difficulty when you are converting from human to AI?

Calahan · #10 May 5th, 2012, 05:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Snacktime

Still, pretty asinine and I'm still surprised how much I'm seeing it happen.

You can't blame the game if you are using maps that have a specified maximum number of nations, and then trying to start a game with more than the maximum. As that's not the fault of the game, the map, or the map designer/editor. As all of those things are working as designed, and your problem is being caused entirely user error.