3.10 SP AI using domes?

[Ballbarian]

In my current 3.10 game, I have encountered domes cast by the AI several times and I don't recall ever seeing this before. Have my artillery magi just been incredibly fortunate up until now?

I am assuming that this is a grand new gift from Illwinter, and if so, thank you very much!

[Loren]

I've hit it IIRC in 3.06. I never fired into one but once I took a province and tried to teleport some mages in afterwards--oops, a dome still up.

[NTJedi]

The AI would actually cast domes more often, unfortunately it's not aware how to place magic boosters on mages of the correct path. This is why we sometimes see a water bracelet on an air mage.

[Tichy]

Why is that hard for the AI? I think I get why battle AI in games like this is so difficult to code well, but adding a step in the AI turn process that matches available path boosters with mages that can use them seems like it should be simple. What am I not getting?

[Sombre]

It really seems like the AI item placement is basically random. I've seen old age diseased mages thugged up with two spears and heavy armour. They then cast spells and collapse after about 2 rounds.

But hey, free items.

[NTJedi]

Tichy said:
Why is that hard for the AI? I think I get why battle AI in games like this is so difficult to code well, but adding a step in the AI turn process that matches available path boosters with mages that can use them seems like it should be simple. What am I not getting?

From stories I've heard the coding of AI is one of the toughest pieces when developing a game. Placing magic item boosters with the correct mages would be a strong AI improvement, but since Illwinter only has one of two developers which manages this task it's unlikely we'll see a change. Probably the most important AI improvement would be telling the AI not to send its pretender to the death_match arena. Its so painful watching 50% of AI opponents have their pretenders killed on day_22 because they all sent them to the death_match arena.

From my experience with other games the battle AI for Dominions is above average considering the large variety of spells and actions available with Illwinter having only two developers.

[Lingchih]

I totally agree. Even though the AI does some incredibly stupid things, on the whole it performs nicely. It does pretty well at building armies, and, as Jedi said, if it would just not send it's Pretenders into the Arena, it would do much better.

That seems a fairly simple step to me (not sending Pretenders into the Arena), but then, I didn't code it.

[Loren]

NTJedi said:

From stories I've heard the coding of AI is one of the toughest pieces when developing a game. Placing magic item boosters with the correct mages would be a strong AI improvement, but since Illwinter only has one of two developers which manages this task it's unlikely we'll see a change. Probably the most important AI improvement would be telling the AI not to send its pretender to the death_match arena. Its so painful watching 50% of AI opponents have their pretenders killed on day_22 because they all sent them to the death_match arena.

From my experience with other games the battle AI for Dominions is above average considering the large variety of spells and actions available with Illwinter having only two developers.

While I do agree that writing good AI's is incredibly hard there are some things that would be easy to code. Boosters should only go on a mage that can cast that path. Anyone else that finds themselves with a booster should take it off at the first opportunity.