So...the customers wont be cheated this time?

[Edi]

The AI sure as hell will recruit indie mages if there are laboratories present. It just has the same problem with labs as it does with castles: it doesn't build them.

Edi

[MStavros]

Graeme Dice said:


I asked you how many games it took you before you can guarantee that you will win against 16 other AI players on a ~160 province map. If you can't guarantee that win, then the AI is clearly still capable of beating you. As for your ignorance about the difficulties of AI programming, it doesn't just take talent to build an AI capable of defeating humans. It took decades of research effort to build an AI that could defeat humans at Chess, a completely deterministic game with an 8 X 8 movement grid, and 6 individual unit types. Dominions is only has a few dozen orders of magnitude more choices to make.



Are you claiming that Illwinter hasn't supported their game? Do I need to go through the patch list to point out where you are mistaken?



So you are complaining that Illwinter didn't support single player games, while at the same time you never even _used_ the things they did add for single player games?

16 AIs on 160+ province maps. I usually played smaller games, and some bigger games too. I NEVER ever had a hard time to beat the AIs. Hm, as for time, I think after 2-3 weeks of playing I was beating the AI in all games, except in a very few where I had some horrible luck or 4+ AIs were constantly attacking me.
The thing is that if a player can beat 3 AI players 1v3!!!!, what can you say about that AI? Just go and try to beat 3 AIs in Galciv2 on harder settings, you will loose very fast. Yes I know that Galciv2 is a singleplayer game. My _ONLY_ complaint was, that the Illwinter team _NEVER_ fixed the major AI problems at all, like the castle building and the correct use of troops/summonings.
This is why I said that this is a bad support. They supported the MP part, thats pretty good, but they released a SP/MP games, I bought it because I've seen "VERY GOOD AI" on the feature list. Do you understand what I am trying to say now?

Please, drop this idea "how hard is to script AI" topic, if a company cannot do it properly, they shouldnt add a singleplayer part then.
Once again, take Galciv2 as an example. Try the AI on the easiest and on the hardest setting. IF you aint exploiting the AI, and ur using normal tactics, you will barely win against the hardest AIs. It is possible to make a good AI, especially if the company knows about the exploits/ai bugs, and they are fixing it. The Galciv2 team is fixing most of those exploits for patch 1.1 AFAIK.
If you want to say that its a SP game, and that the developer team is much bigger then Illwinter, all I gotta say is that the product prices are the same, thus we deserve support for our money. If I buy the game to play singleplayer, I expect fixes in patches for singleplayer if it is needed.

I tried out the latest Dominions 2 patch btw, and the AI is the same, so I dont know that what singleplayer support are you talking about Graeme. Crapload of months passed, and I havent seen a single fix for the AI in Dominions 2. So yeah, this is why I am gonna wait the Dominions 3 demo, and see how it turns out, I am just very cautious with Illwinter now.

[Graeme Dice]

MStavros said:
16 AIs on 160+ province maps. I usually played smaller games, and some bigger games too. I NEVER ever had a hard time to beat the AIs. Hm, as for time, I think after 2-3 weeks of playing I was beating the AI in all games, except in a very few where I had some horrible luck or 4+ AIs were constantly attacking me.

You got several weeks out of the single player game. That's all any person can realistically expect from an AI even with current state of the art AIs. I still assume that you've never played a game against 16 AIs all allied against you, and I also assume that you deliberately use cheesy tactics to defeat the AI.

The thing is that if a player can beat 3 AI players 1v3!!!!, what can you say about that AI? Just go and try to beat 3 AIs in Galciv2 on harder settings, you will loose very fast.

The Gal Civ 2 AI cheats far, far, more than the Dominions 2 AI on the higher difficulty settings. That's the only way that it is possible for it to have a chance of defeating a human.

Yes I know that Galciv2 is a singleplayer game. My _ONLY_ complaint was, that the Illwinter team _NEVER_ fixed the major AI problems at all, like the castle building and the correct use of troops/summonings.

Those "problems", as you call them, are only noticeable to somebody who has already risen far above the capabilities of the AI.

This is why I said that this is a bad support. They supported the MP part, thats pretty good, but they released a SP/MP games, I bought it because I've seen "VERY GOOD AI" on the feature list. Do you understand what I am trying to say now?

You _got_ a very good AI. It's not my fault that you're whinging about it not being able to defeat a human opponent. There are virtually no AIs that can accomplish that for any games that incorporate even slightly random elements. You'd notice, if you weren't ignorant of the field of AI research, that computers are just barely beginning to be able to play Poker competently against humans. That's another game that's orders of magnitude simpler than Dominions, especially when a computer is capable of determining the exact probability that any given hand will win in a atter of microseconds.

Please, drop this idea "how hard is to script AI" topic, if a company cannot do it properly, they shouldnt add a singleplayer part then.

I'm not going to drop an argument when my opponent is clearly ignorant of the difficulty of the tasks that they are demanding. I assume that you must just be barely out of high school from the immaturity and general lack of information displayed by your arguments.

Once again, take Galciv2 as an example. Try the AI on the easiest and on the hardest setting. IF you aint exploiting the AI, and ur using normal tactics, you will barely win against the hardest AIs.

Of course not, because you don't have the AI's perfect understanding of the rules, and the AI starts with massive information and production advantages over you.

If you want to say that its a SP game, and that the developer team is much bigger then Illwinter, all I gotta say is that the product prices are the same, thus we deserve support for our money. If I buy the game to play singleplayer, I expect fixes in patches for singleplayer if it is needed.

They weren't needed, nor would any fixes provided be capable of providing you an opponent that is the equivalent of a human. If you want to give the computers a chance to beat you, then there are numerous changes that you can make through mods, map starting locations that will give the computer the massive production advantages it needs to be able to defeat a human.

I tried out the latest Dominions 2 patch btw, and the AI is the same, so I dont know that what singleplayer support are you talking about Graeme.

Thanks for admitting that you aren't even interested in taking any of the easily available actions to "fix" your game, if you think that playing with the most current patch is some kind of rarity.

Crapload of months passed, and I havent seen a single fix for the AI in Dominions 2. So yeah, this is why I am gonna wait the Dominions 3 demo, and see how it turns out, I am just very cautious with Illwinter now.

Perhaps you should develop realistic expectations of an AI, rather than complaining that it doesn't reach your impossible requirements for performance.

[Arralen]

Crap, having the AI build castles and labs can't be that difficult.

After all, they havn't recoded Dom3 from scratch. Therefore they have fixed both issues. Or haven't they?

And about AI strength and weakness: give the AI some pre-build castles and labs on the map to conquer. You'll find that it would get at least 50% stronger.

But it didn't take days to notice that the AI does not build castles at all and therefore recruits only indie crap because it lacks the ressources to go for heavy troops.

Obviously, a human player can always find a way to exploit some tactics the AI can't understand. But I might get some fun out of SP (and I bought Dom2 mostly for SP, too) by staying away from such abusive tactics. Therefore, having a unnecessary crippled AI destracts heavily from the fun I can have with the game.

[Kristoffer O]

Hmm. I think this discussion needs to stop before anyone gets annoyed. So I'll round up this with the following.

It is clear that MStavros is unsatisfied with how the single player AI works, and I can't blame him. I do not have any big problems defeating the AI at most levels.

MStavros says that we shouldn't add SP AI if we can't do it properly. Here I disagree. I have had many good and fun games watching my realm grow and heros come and go. There are people who enjoy playing SP games as roleplaying experiences where the empire is the character.

If I'm correct it is not the AI but the lack of improvement that bothers you the most. This is understandable. It is probably a bad desicion (or non-desicion) PR-wise not to improve it.

Unfortunately were not paid to do stuff. We don't have a publisher or lead developer that tells us what we must do and in what time frame. In school I get paid to teach my students this and that before summer etc. If I don't I get fired (or something). As a developer I have few restraints on me and I'm a quitter. If I get frustrated I quit the project and start another one. If I get feedback, from my own work or from players, I work harder. Thus many ideas are started, discarded and eventually restarted. If an improvement doesn't work I give up and do something else. That probably makes me a bad developer.

So, to sum this thread up:
Our skills in AI programming will never make the dominions AI a match for a human player one vs one.
On the other hand there are some issues that if fixed would improve the AI performance to some extent. How much I do not know, but it would perhaps remove some cheesier anti-AI tactics available to the experienced player. Some suggestions on cheezy-fixes have been posted here and earlier on the forum. Some of them might appear, probably not all. One of these fixes are fort-building.

I hope this clears matters a bit. Thanks!

[Daynarr]

Forts are reported as fixed. I expect AI to be significantly stronger as a result.

There is this mod for Orania map (forgot it's exact name) that is basically map file for stock Orania map and gives 5 provinces 2 castles and some special sites to all nations in game. AI performs very, very well there.

If AI can build castles (and labs of course) then there is no reason to believe that AI will be weak.

Which reminds me, that Orania mod/map (called something like Orania hard, but not sure) is one of those mods Graeme is talking about. It's designed primarily for SP and to help AI while keeping things balance. Another mod/map was provided by no other then Gandalf Parker who has random maps generated with random alliances and random bonuses which make AI much more difficult and the game more unpredictable as a result.

Edit: Whoopsie, K.O. beat me to it.

[NTJedi]

Arralen said:
Crap, having the AI build castles and labs can't be that difficult.

Actually if the AI builds castles some heavy extra programming would be needed such as coding the AI to stock and guard its castles... and then code to especially guard those castles on the front lines. And then code the AI to build labs in those castles so the mages can research and cast spells. And then code the AI to focus on building castles with strong magic sites and bottlenecks in the map. Now you'd have to QA test the new AI to verify humans won't be able to exploit a weakness from this building of castles.

Arralen said:
I might get some fun out of SP (and I bought Dom2 mostly for SP, too) by staying away from such abusive tactics. Therefore, having a unnecessary crippled AI destracts heavily from the fun I can have with the game.

Currently there's only two main developers working Dominions_3 and one so so helping. Besides very basic chess games I have yet to see smart AIs for any game.

Ideally the best feature we can hope for is some method where us gamers can modify/adjust the AI via scripting or another method. This will greatly open the door for more challenging AIs.

[MStavros]

Graeme, your words are getting a bit insulting. Yes I dont know anything about scripting, but what the hell is your point? It is my fault that the Dominions 2. AI never been fixed? What are you trying to say? I understand that AI scripting is hard, but is it impossible? Do you know what "game support" means? It means that the game developers are trying to fix the bugs,errors etc. and they keep upgrading the game.
I respect Illwinter, the game is really good, but I cant respect their lack of support for the singleplayer part in Dominions 2.

Secondly, I dont expect any AIs what can beat a human player 1on1...but I expect an AI what is challenging. Beating 3 AIs alone is just annoying, 3 AIs should easily beat a human player. Do you agree? Go and try Galciv2 on the hardest vs. 2-3 AIs, and tell me that it is impossible to script a good AI.

Graeme, you dont get my whole point, and you just keep insulting me with your words. I think I was objective enough, and you call it whining.

Anyways its nice to see that Kristoffer agreed on these, and explained the situation. I hope that Dominions 3. will get singleplayer support too, thats all I can say.

[Gandalf Parker]

First off, giving castles to the AI has been done (by me) and it didnt work. If there is a map command to add defence or patrol then Id consider it fixed.

And MStacros, THATS what your noise is about? That you can beat 3 AI's? Im not one to usually say "then switch to multiplayer" but if all this namecalling is because you want an AI that can challenge you one-on-one without cheating, then thats a human player. Sorry, but its not FAILING on illwinters part if they cant provide a level of AI that hasnt even been invented yet. You need to give up on the noise and switch to asking for improvements

[NTJedi]

Yes forts are said to be fixed... lets hope human players don't find a way to exploit this. I have lots of questions myself about the game, but waiting for the demo which should answer most of them.

Hopefully the death match has been made more worthwhile for attending.


Ideally the best feature we can hope for is some method where us gamers can modify/adjust the AI via scripting or another method. This will greatly open the door for more challenging AIs.