Curious about Dominions? how the AI thinks? which AI is best/worst?

[Gandalf Parker]

Interesting. This latest Late Era test has Caelum the winner with Atlantis second.

[NTJedi]

Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker

Interesting. This latest Late Era test has Caelum the winner with Atlantis second.

Randomly chosen scales by the AIs can play a huge factor determining the winner. Any AI land nations with bad scales and a weak dominion will probably lose 98% of the time verses an AI nation with good scales and a strong dominion.

[Gandalf Parker]

Well if that turns out to be true then we have no problem since thats the desired result. Mictlan showed problems when I did the tests long ago but that seems fixed now.

I was originally worried about Arcos since some minor tests did show a tendency to die early. But it doesnt seem to be every time. Possibly just one age or one AI type.

[VedalkenBear]

GP: I'm not sure what NTJedi meant, but I can say that I would prefer if the AI did not choose scales that would cause it to self-destruct.

That is, if I choose to play a game against 10 AI opponents, I want to play against 10 opponents, not 3 opponents and 7 'never expanded out of home base because they had Misf-3, Turm-3, Death-3, and got locked in'.

It's one of the reasons I don't play the game more.

[Gandalf Parker]

Everything has its pros and cons. The AI has gotten better at not self-destructing. But if taken too far then it becomes predictable.

By the way, the SemiRand program fixes that by assigning semi-random gods and scales to the AIs. With a large enough collection of pre-made gods for each nation we should be able to achieve much more playable games without being predicatable.

[Aezeal]

Gandalf maybe you should use fixed scales and dominion. like O3, L1, M1 P1-2 and Dom at least 6 for most nations and special adaptations for nations with special requirements.

Or you could just use any setup mentioned in a decent guide (should be at least adequate) though guide depending on pretneder magic might not be as succesfull for the AI

[Gandalf Parker]

Once I have a base of the standard data I do want to play around with it abit. Maybe give all of them monolith gods and neutral scales. But Id also like to have a standardized map

[NTJedi]

I like the monolith god and neutral scales test... since scales do play a huge factor.

[VedalkenBear]

GP: Regarding RanDom, I have never been able to get it to work. If someone could help me with that, I'd be appreciative.

And while I agree that you shouldn't make things too predictable, there could be a simple AI to determine how they 'pick' their God.

Something like:

(start with Ermor special case)

(temp scale)
(if preference exists for nation, choose scale 1 higher than needed; else, if nation is cold-blooded, choose heat 1; else, randomly choose between heat-1 and cold-1)

(randomly select other scale to continue)

(order)
(if luck scale >= 0, randomly determine Order scale between -3 and 3)
(if luck scale < 0, randomly determine Order scale between 0 and 3)

etc. etc.

That way, you'd at least have scales that 'go together' actually seen together.

To get the data for the AI, I'd mine the God creation of MP games for correlation.

[Gandalf Parker]

The AI wasnt built to do well with lots of "if" in it. And the code for such would be pretty intensive. For instance, in your example there would be many things to affect the selection of Order so the sequence would have to be well tested.

Personally Id rather see better AI impacting the hosting portion than the setup portion. Hosting lag is easier to live with for some reason.

But it wouldnt be difficult to do if someone wanted to create such an AI. Ive attempted a couple of times and got bored. If someone wants to develop the logic-tree for it then it would be really simple to create a stand-alone program to add it.

Here is an example of a god-build for mid-Pangaea (nation 40) which I did for SemiRand:

#god 40 1026 -- Carrion Dragon
#comname "Komm Poast"
#allies 40 26 -- likes to ally with Oceania if they are both AI
#allies 40 48 -- likes to ally with Oceania if they are both AI
#allies 40 11 -- likes to ally with early_Pangaea if they are both AI
#allies 40 61 -- likes to ally with late_Pangaea if they are both AI
#clearmagic
#mag_death 2 -- needed for Pangea spells and a bless
#mag_nature 3 -- needed for Pangea spells and a bless
#mag_blood 1 -- good combo with the above and a bless
#additem "Treelord's Staff" -- 2 more nature
#additem "Skullface" -- helmet with 1 more death and support
#additem "Armor of Souls" -- armor and 1 more blood
#additem "Boots of Stone" -- he will lose armor boots and staff in shape change
#additem "Brazen Vessel" -- misc slot and 1 more blood
#additem "Ring of Sorcery" -- 1 death and 1 nature and 1 blood
#dominionstr 40 6
#scale_chaos 40 3
#scale_lazy 40 3
#scale_cold 40 -1
#scale_death 40 -3 
#scale_unluck 40 -3
#scale_unmagic 40 -3

This one is more extensive than is needed for an example but I had it laying around. It simply gets appended to the end of the .map file. A program could easily duplicate the .map file, change the name slightly, generate and append the AI god-builds, then start the game.