Good game, but....the AI is very bad.

[Kristoffer O]

Hello MStavros.

I find it rather amusing that you try to influence us with split personalities

Hopefully there will be improvements in the AI, but as before I can't give you any guarantees.

[proteus]

Originally posted by Gandalf Parker:
Now we have Illwinter's PBEM multiplayer game because the AI isnt good enough for decent solo play. Maybe the game description needs touched up.

Correct me if I am wrong, but isnt this supposed to be a singleplayer - multiplayer game, just like many others?
If your argument would be valid, why is there singleplayer at all? I mean if the developers dont care about the singleplayer part, they should totally drop it for dominions 3, OR try to fix the singleplayer bugs/weaknesses.

Than they wont see Posts like this..yes the
game wont sell that good, but at least I wont spend my money than. What do you think?

Yes I feel cheated for my money sorta. The game is great, but its like a half game for me.
Good mp, crap sp.
For 25$ I wouldnt say a word, but for 50, I think the devs should try to do their best!

[ May 08, 2004, 21:00: Message edited by: proteus ]

[proteus]

Originally posted by Kristoffer O:
Hopefully there will be improvements in the AI, but as before I can't give you any guarantees.

Yes we do hope as well. I guess you dont really care about it as I see. Sad..

[proteus]

From the Dominions II. features page:

"Epic turn-based fantasy gameplay. Up to seventeen people can play at once thanks to the simultaneous turn structure. For those who would rather play solo the computer opponents put up fierce competition for those 3 AM gaming sessions"

So Mr. Parker?

I just checked the downloads section as well, and all of the fixes/improvements of the patches.

I havent found a singe improvement in the AI, maybe the spellcasting AI, but thats nothing.

[Norfleet]

There was a mention of the spellcasting AI being improved, but by and large, I think that Illwinter considers the SP strategic AI a secondary concern at best, since even the primary game blurb tends to indicate the game is mainly multiplayer, with single player as a sort of afterthought/training mode.

Writing AI is hard! Computers are inherently stupid, and excel only at doing dumb things quickly. It's hard to make a computer do smart things, except by having it do many dumb things and pick the Last dumb of the options.

[proteus]

Sorry, there was no information that the SP part is totally useless, and that it is for train and practice only, in fact read the features page. I wouldnt buy the game than.

Dont get me wrong, I understand that its hard to write a good AI, but hell, a half year passed since the release of Doms 2..or even more?!!!
Still nothing, and as I understand Kristoffer O. they havent even touched the AI!!!

I cant believe this.

[PDF]

While I agree that fixing the "strategic" AI, or even the combat AI, would be a big endeavour, I'm also pretty confident that the "AI builds crap armies" thing *could* be fixed quite easily, with only changes into the army build routines. The AI should weight its decisions mostly towards "heavy" units and discard light ones after a certain (low) number.
This alone will make the solo games *much* more challenging, at least we'll have to fight "real" armies, rather than an half dozen of worthwhile units lost in an ocean of militias ...

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by proteus:
Dont get me wrong, I understand that its hard to write a good AI, but hell, a half year passed since the release of Doms 2..or even more?!!!

It took most of the Last century to develop an AI that could play chess competently. I highly doubt that even five or six years of work could do the same for a game as complex as Dominions. You are asking the devs to do the impossible, so it's not particularly likely that it will happen.

You might also want to get a new argument MStavros, since changing your alias and using the same text word for word doesn't change your argument.

[ May 08, 2004, 21:33: Message edited by: Graeme Dice ]

[IKerensky]

Hum I think that proteus have several valid points.

And I DO think that there is easy way to improve AI behaviour is THOSES peculiar points.

First thing will be to have AI template built for each nation giving it a "model" ( better several for less randomness ) army it will try to emulate, thoses modesl including battlefield scripting.

Spells have to be classified by types and ranked in value thus the Ai can script the correct chaining.

For the more strategic point... then we get the weakest link of computerised AI and I guess we will have to use a sorta frontline AI, one wich will abstract the battlefield into a series of nodes controled by entities with the AI aiming at expanding his net of nodes favoring direction by calculation ( indies first, 1 foe, Last province lost... ). All of this is pretty complicated.

Pretender/commander equipment should also be scripted for the AI with a selection by level of CONS and kind of commander and/or current foe. Difficult but possible for a full time payed developper to come with.

To sum it all, I guess the shortest way to improve the DOm2 AI is to give it some recipes on how to play and bind it to that. It will be pretty predictable by nation ( but that's not surprising ) but make a far better job at playing one logically.

[st.patrik]

Originally posted by Kristoffer O:
Hello MStavros.

I find it rather amusing that you try to influence us with split personalities

Hopefully there will be improvements in the AI, but as before I can't give you any guarantees.

ah! I wondered from the tone of the Messages if it might be MStavros again.

MStavros/Proteus: wasn't once enough? do we really have to go through all the tired old rants again?