designing AI for era 1 Mictlan

Gandalf Parker · #1 March 14th, 2007, 05:52 PM

OK lets also try Early Age Mictlan.
This is one of the worst for the AI. Randomly selected scales has had this nation fall out in the first couple turns in many of my solo games. So lets design a Mictlan for us all that can play as a decent AI. Using map commands (mod commands do more but this is simpler). EA-Mictlan is nation 7.

#computerplayer 7 4
#god 7 #
#scale_order nation -3+3
#mag_astral
#dominionstr 7 1-10
#additem
#allies 7 #
#specstart 7 prov
#setland
#fort
#temple
#lab
#startspell 7 "spell name"
#commander
#comname
#bodyguards # monster
#units # monster
#knownfeature
#unrest
#defence
#population

Gandalf Parker · #2 March 14th, 2007, 05:52 PM

So the first line sets Mictlan as AI at difficulty 4.
The next line says Mictlan God should be...... what?
Any pretender in the game, any creature in the game. If you could set its magic and equipment, what would it be?

Personally I love Lord of NIght for Mictlan but I dont think the AI could play the assassin ability well. Maybe the Blood Fountain and fill the 4 misc equip slots with really good items. The AI couldnt send it to arena or into loser battles since its unmoving.

Or maybe "Colossal Head" which has 300 hp. With strong starting dominion it could probably withstand the fluctuations better.

SelfishGene · #3 March 14th, 2007, 08:28 PM

Mictlan needs an awake god with high Dominion to keep from passing out from Dominion kills.

Also, probably needs a high bless (the AI almost never creates a true 9-path bless strategy). Anything more complicated i fear the AI can't handle, since, as far as i can tell, it doesn't actually blood hunt.

Shovah32 · #4 March 14th, 2007, 08:49 PM

The ai cant really work with bless pretenders from what ive seen. An awake, high dom, good scale immobile pretender would probably be best.

Gandalf Parker · #5 March 14th, 2007, 09:31 PM

So lets go with Colossal Head for now? immobile 300 hit points.

So next comes scales. If we are avoiding blood then what scales would be good.

Come to think of it, if we are ignoring blood, will it be worth anything to try and boost mictlan at all?
Maybe we should start a thread for.... R'lyeh?

Nick_K · #6 March 14th, 2007, 10:59 PM

Surely the AI must blood-hunt now. I know it didn't used to in Doms2 but if it still doesn't then any attempt to design a pretender for EA mictlan must ultimately be pointless... I can't imagine it surviving without a decent supply of sacrifices.
Has anyone seen AI mictlan survive until the late game? I don't think they've been in my last few games so I really can't remember.

(edit)
Just had another thought... is it possible to mod new magic sites? If so, then giving mictlan one with a very high blood slave income might give them a boost... and actually allow the human player to confront some properly demonic armies

Gandalf Parker · #7 March 14th, 2007, 11:20 PM

I was hoping to do it with map commands rather than mod.
I think it can be done by mod but someone else would have to tackle that.

I can add magic sites, or replace them. But EA-M starts with 4 national sites. I could replace one of them but it might knock out one of their mages and one of the gem incomes

Sombre · #8 March 14th, 2007, 11:36 PM

You can mod in a high blood supply site, sure.

If people are really interested I can do that tonight, no problem. Actually I can make AI versions of all of the dom3 nations, to be used with map commands sorting out their initial setup. It's really just a matter of editing a couple of sites, maybe making a couple of useless units that the AI uses not suck so much.

I've been thinking recently that the AI might do much better with no indy troops available to recruit. Can this be done with map commands gandalf? I mean you'd make a copy of a map like Aran and just have it so no-one can recruit any non national troops (by removing poptypes maybe?).

The alternative would require someone who has some scripting know-how. You can make a mod which selects all of the indy available troops and commanders (including weird site based ones) and sets their resource cost to 9999 or something. It's too time consuming to do this by hand, so yeah, it would require a script to produce,..

#selectmonster (number of indy)
#rcost 9999
#end

.. for each of the indy monsters. I don't know how to do that, but I'm sure someone here could do it easy.

Ballbarian · #9 March 15th, 2007, 12:10 AM

Quote:

I've been thinking recently that the AI might do much better with no indy troops available to recruit. Can this be done with map commands gandalf? I mean you'd make a copy of a map like Aran and just have it so no-one can recruit any non national troops (by removing poptypes maybe?).

Just assign a poptype > 87 to a province and nothing can be recruited from this province. Do that for all provinces in the map and presto, no more independents to recruit.

I think it was Edi that first pointed this out.

Gandalf Parker · #10 March 15th, 2007, 12:15 AM

The poptypes could possibly be zeroed out. I dont think Id enjoy that much. Personally, I tend to add crazy indepts to the map rather than remove them.

But if someone wants to start a thread in the mod forum on AIs Id be glad to see it there.

Personally, I always thought that the first thing we needed was a library of mods that did nothing other than duplicate the nation. That way it would be a "control" file that new modders could use as a starting point. Not to mention that it would allow some fun games (like making all the nations Ulm so we can find out who plays the best Ulm)