AI challege mod, EA mictlan

[mivayan]

I made a little mod to make playing against EA mictlan more interesting on medium sized maps.

description: Mod intended to be used with an AI playing EA Mictlan, start mictlan as human and then set it to AI. Use the new pretender, the Oracle of the Ancients. Suggestion: awake, dom10 and scales Order3 Sloth3 Heat1 Growth2 Luck3 Magic1

This pretender is similar to the oracle, except it has f9w9s9 magic, and autospawns plenty of Ozelot (from the bind jaguar fiend spell), a Juggernaut each turn to help dominion, and occasionally a new unit with stats identical to an equipped bane lord.

I removed non-sacred national units, made tribal kings holy1, added a holy1 national version of divine blessing to have blessing be common.

It's intended for medium-sized maps, I only tested it on a small map so far.

Edit: In game this mod is named "challengeAI Agartha MA". oops. I wont fix this now.

[Arralen]

This is rediculous.

If you do that for only 1 nation, you can only play 1:1 SP games.

If you do that for every nation, they end up pretty much all the same. And it kills the game, as e.g. F9W9 is seriously unbalanced, but at least normally has to be payed for when creating the pretender. Btw., it would be quite a lot of work ... .

Ok, here some more details:

new pretender, the Oracle of the Ancients. is similar to the oracle,
You know that the AI actually DOES use it's pretender as thug and for site searching. Why take that away by giving all AI players a immobile pretender?

except it has f9w9s9 magic,
Even F9W9 is seriously unbalanced. Adding S9 doesn't make that any better. Only makes sure that any non-blessable troops the AI might get from somewhere become really a waste of gold.
Btw., you forgot to add e4+ to get some reinvigoration...

and autospawns plenty of Ozelot (from the bind jaguar fiend spell),
You know that the Ai DOES use summoning spells if it has the gems?

a Juggernaut each turn to help dominion,
I'm pretty sure this is one of those units the AI does not know how to use. Running around blindly it may help nevertheless - but is the player allowed to hunt them down specifically?

and occasionally a new unit with stats identical to an equipped bane lord.
This seems the only good idea to me so far: Adding units with SC stats which are auto-summoned in low numbers randomly.
Problem: is the player allowed to take them over?

Suggestion: awake
Why? It can't go anywhere, it can't help take indies, it can't search for sites unless the spells are researched. (I'm not even sure the AI uses spells, but I think so)
Concerning dominion spreading, see below ..

dom10
Why? It can't make use of the awe it gets on the pretender anyway?
And between (lets say) 8 and 10 isn't that much of a difference dominion-wise. And the AI loves to build temples anyway, if you're looking for maximum dom strength.
What? Mictlan? Yes, I know.
You want the pretender for early dominion spreading?
Point is - the AI DOES use blood sacrifice.
And the pretender is not going to spread much dominion anyway, sitting in it's starting province forever.
Those times when Mictlan AI gets dominion-killed early is when it gets it prophet killed against indies, the temple destroyed by event or something - and has low dominion to start with.
If you want to help Mictlan to spread dominion early on (and get some more summons), simply mod the national site to supply MUCH more blood slaves per turn. That will not alter the overall "appearance" of the nation, but will help with AI with its supposedly inefficient blood hunting/sacrificing.

scales Order-3 Sloth-3 Heat-1 Growth-2 Luck-3 Magic-1
With the pretender set to "0" cost, you should be able to get better scales than this.



All in all: if you want to make the game more interesting, you should try to make more subtle changes, instead of turning it into something very similar to the common "strategy" games, where the player is constantly drowned in oversized and super-strong AI forces to give some kind of "challenge".

I think it is possible.

[Sheap]

The player can adjust the nation's attributes to suit the desired difficulty level. If you made it too hard you can just leave some points unspent.

If you made similar mods for each nation you could turn them all on except the nation you are playing. This is only one nation but you have to start somewhere.

[llamabeast]

I think that this is an interesting idea and might be good fun. I can see where you're coming from Arralen, and I can understand that you'd want to approach the problem from a different angle, but this mod might still allow for some fun games.

I agree that it'd be best for 1 on 1 games, but I think there's nothing wrong with that.

[Shovah32]

Hahaha this nation is fun. Just to see what it was like i tried it in single player vrs 4 impossible aggressive ai's on the silent seas map.

The result? I won without recruiting a single unit, launching a single attack, casting a single spell or doing anything other than ending the turn and raising the PD. The one juggernaught per turn is pretty insane, by around turn 38-39 i had won the game, having dominion killed all 4 nations of the game .

[mivayan]

Arralen said:
This is rediculous.

Fair enough, didn't think everyone would like it.

I'll explain my thinking. You can play vs many AIs and hope you end up on opposite sides of the map.

You know that the AI actually DOES use it's pretender as thug and for site searching. Why take that away by giving all AI players a immobile pretender?
Yeah, but it'll probably be more challenging if the pretender just researches like crazy. And if it's mobile, it'll be easy to kill for humans, which would stop the silly summoning abilities.

Even F9W9 is seriously unbalanced. Adding S9 doesn't make that any better. Only makes sure that any non-blessable troops the AI might get from somewhere become really a waste of gold.
Btw., you forgot to add e4+ to get some reinvigoration...
I wanted the best mictlan bless you might face in multiplayer, it can be done with late age Mictlan (and awfull scales, the ai gets good scales as handicap). It might be fun to play against for a change, finding counters.

You know that the Ai DOES use summoning spells if it has the gems?
I guess, though it will never summon Ozelots in amounts similar to what humans might. Now no human can summon this many early game, but mid game it's possible.

a Juggernaut each turn to help dominion,
I'm pretty sure this is one of those units the AI does not know how to use. Running around blindly it may help nevertheless - but is the player allowed to hunt them down specifically?
The AI uses them as elephants it seems. Even if player hunts them down, it'll help dominion spread.

and occasionally a new unit with stats identical to an equipped bane lord.
This seems the only good idea to me so far: Adding units with SC stats which are auto-summoned in low numbers randomly.
Problem: is the player allowed to take them over?
Might be a fun strategy. 20 mr, to emulate a bane lord with an antimagic amulet, but it's still possible.

Suggestion: awake
Why?
Because of 29 research per turn, and the autosummed armies.

dom10
Why?
The ai needs all the help it can get with dominion, unless it's way better at blood sacrifice than I thought.

If you want to help Mictlan to spread dominion early on (and get some more summons), simply mod the national site to supply MUCH more blood slaves per turn. That will not alter the overall "appearance" of the nation, but will help with AI with its supposedly inefficient blood hunting/sacrificing.
Ah. good idea. Maybe for another mod, or a later version.

With the pretender set to "0" cost, you should be able to get better scales than this.
Is it unclear that I mean scales +3/-3/+1/+2/+3/+1?

And no, cant afford better, but you can certainly go missfortune 1 in stead of luck3 and increase something else.

All in all: if you want to make the game more interesting, you should try to make more subtle changes, instead of turning it into something very similar to the common "strategy" games, where the player is constantly drowned in oversized and super-strong AI forces to give some kind of "challenge".
I dont think this AI will have nearly as strong armies as a good human in multiplay by turn 30. But might be fun to fight.

If you want to make subtle mods, go for it...

[Shovah32]

Getting a juggernaught a turn they ai dosnt need help with dominion as much as you might think although with only sacred troops dom10 helps a bit(dom summons are better than the recruitables though)

[Gandalf Parker]

Arralen said:
This is rediculous.

If you do that for only 1 nation, you can only play 1:1 SP games.

Well hopefully other AI nations will show up. I had thought I saw some new nations done without an eye toward balance early on but when I asked about them in the mod list I was told there werent any. Glad to see one.

new pretender, the Oracle of the Ancients. is similar to the oracle,
You know that the AI actually DOES use it's pretender as thug and for site searching. Why take that away by giving all AI players a immobile pretender?

I think that was one of the early recommends for an AI nation to keep the AI from marching tow ar with only his pretender, or worse sending it into arenas.

and autospawns plenty of Ozelot (from the bind jaguar fiend spell),
You know that the Ai DOES use summoning spells if it has the gems?

Another early suggestion. Things the AI should summon but never does, make auto-summon. Its along the line of thinking necessary for mods like this. Instead of "the sucky AI doesnt xxxxxxx" figuring out how to force it or fake it.

a Juggernaut each turn to help dominion,
I'm pretty sure this is one of those units the AI does not know how to use. Running around blindly it may help nevertheless - but is the player allowed to hunt them down specifically?

in mega games Ive done, the Mictlan AI tends to die off before anyone can even attack it. This seems like a way to defend it against dominion death.

Point is - the AI DOES use blood sacrifice.
And the pretender is not going to spread much dominion anyway, sitting in it's starting province forever.
Those times when Mictlan AI gets dominion-killed early is when it gets it prophet killed against indies, the temple destroyed by event or something - and has low dominion to start with.
If you want to help Mictlan to spread dominion early on (and get some more summons), simply mod the national site to supply MUCH more blood slaves per turn. That will not alter the overall "appearance" of the nation, but will help with AI with its supposedly inefficient blood hunting/sacrificing.

It does so blood sacrifice? Thats good to know. Does Mictlan max out its sites? Maybe another blood slave site would help.

All in all: if you want to make the game more interesting, you should try to make more subtle changes, instead of turning it into something very similar to the common "strategy" games, where the player is constantly drowned in oversized and super-strong AI forces to give some kind of "challenge".

I think it is possible.

All in all this is a good start. He took one of the weakest AIs in the game (the one that dies on its own) and found ways to fix it. Great job.

On the other hand, if we have interested Arralen in all this then we can expext to see some really intelligent AI mods.

[Gandalf Parker]

Interesting note on the juggernaughts....
200 hit points
20 protection
50 morale
18 magic resistance
size 6 trample
blessable

Getting so many of them really builds up a good front line for battles. Ties up your units pretty nicely trying to take them down.