Huh? AI implodes on turn 5, please tell me why?

PheasantPlucker · #1 October 9th, 2006, 10:31 PM

Hi guys, I've just had a daft game of Dom3 which I set up to be a fast duel between me and a single AI, first to 25 provinces, so I could experiment with the Yomi. Well, I wanted it to be fast but I never expected that the game would declare me the winner on turn 5!

The AI turned out to be Mictlan, and I got the message that it had no dominion left - therefore it was out and I was the winner.

If you check the map you can see that I was in the North and Mictlan was in the South. My dominion was spreading only very slowly as my pretender was asleep and I had no prophet. I just had one temple to spread the word, and my dominion managed to only move only 2 provinces south.

Now bearing in mind that there were no other AI's around it, how did Mictlan self destruct by having no dominion? Even if (like me) its pretender was asleep it should have at least had a temple.

I'm begining to think that having sleeping pretenders for the AI is screwing it up. Even so, I'd like to know what removed all of its dominion so quickly when there were no outside pressures at all. A deadly random event?

Any thoughts appreciated, what have I missed...

Xendarq · #2 October 9th, 2006, 10:36 PM

Mictlan spreads dominion only by using blood sacrifices or through their god. If god is sleeping then there is no dominion spread without sacrifice ... apparently the computer is not too good at being sure to do some sacrificing.

Daynarr · #3 October 9th, 2006, 11:23 PM

There are also events that can lower your dominion. If he had misfortune, then he may have gotten one of those and coupled with weak dominion, it killed him. I saw this happen even on non-blood nations but its really rare event.

Frostmourne27 · #4 October 9th, 2006, 11:45 PM

Hmmmm... Shouldn't that be fixed? Sort of like how you can no longer get temple/lab destruction evnts right away... It's really unfair to mictlan... since with a sleeping god they are stuck with dominion one untill they can sacrifce, and, as someone pointed out in another thread, sacrificing is weaker now, since all priest levels are reduced. (You sacrifice one less slave with each priest.)

Meglobob · #5 October 10th, 2006, 01:52 AM

Played Agartha, early age, with a imprisioned bless god. Only took dominion 4, my dominion was really low the first 20 or so turns, only 5 candles burning anywhere. Then I started being swamped by enemy dominion. If u take low dominion, with a dormant/imprisioned god u after build temples/preach otherwise u could end up with dominion death. I came close, lucky Agartha has such strong priests, so I could dig myself out of the hole.

I can see why the AI is having problems early on.

DominionsFan · #6 October 10th, 2006, 06:47 PM

Quote:

Daynarr said:
There are also events that can lower your dominion. If he had misfortune, then he may have gotten one of those and coupled with weak dominion, it killed him. I saw this happen even on non-blood nations but its really rare event.

Yeah the AI probably took misfortune and sloth.

B0rsuk · #7 October 10th, 2006, 06:54 PM

I would make a quick and dirty hack and disable Imprisoned pretenders for AI. AI is too stupid and vulnerable to rush for it to work.

PheasantPlucker · #8 October 10th, 2006, 08:53 PM

Thanks for the responses.

This reeks of poor design and feeble testing. This happened in only my second game, and in the first I also noticed one AI exit very early, so I don't believe it is 'rare' at all.

I have a lot of time for this game and the devs, and recommended Dom2 to others. However there is no excuse for an AI that kills itself almost immediately. I've seen many terrible AIs in 20 years of gaming, but a self destructing one is a new low.

Fingers crossed for a fix.

Archonsod · #9 October 10th, 2006, 08:57 PM

Might be better to restrict the occurence or severity of Dominion dropping events. I've seen the "merchants in the temple" event occur around about turn 3, dropping my dominion in the capital to around 1.

Maybe just prevent such events occuring in the capital?

PvK · #10 October 16th, 2006, 04:36 PM

It doesn't always happen. I have an AI Mictlan in one of my games who has a very strong dominion, and just defeated Jotunheim. I imagine it may have much to do with the AI's choice of base dominion strength, and of course the map crowdedness and dominion strength of the neighbors they end up with.