Salamandre wrote:I don't know if this can give you some ideas, but here is the "Better AI" mod I did for Heroes III. As you can see, all parameters are modulable to fit every player skill and AI income/growth can go up to +1000%.
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If you are interested I can give you a list of all changes and bonuses AI gets, there are dozens of them.
I have never heard about your mod, but it looks very much like I imagined our idea
![smile :)](/forums/images/smilies/smile9.gif)
I see that you already posted all bonuses. Thanks!
Taro wrote:Good to hear you are going to do such thing. I made a remake of "Conquer of Four Lakes".
This is great, thank you!
wimfrits wrote:Dalai wrote:For example, every AI army can triple upon contact with neutrals, and return back to normal after victory. That way AI will not engage in hopeless fights, but will suffer less casualties in fights it actually chooses to engage.
I think this would be excellent! It's not cheating, but merely compensating for AI stupidity. The AI greatly misjudges neutral threat and will easily lose 80% of it's army in encounters a novice player would avoid.
I am glad that you and other people find this idea worthy. To be clear - it's not mine, I read it somewhere here, in forum. I like it too. I raised it again in hope, that if there are some hidden problems - someone would warn us about them.
wimfrits wrote:Also, the AI does not consider threat areas of mobile guards.
This is still a problem, even with bigger AI armies. We want AI to attack neutrals that it can actually win. If big armies will help AI win fights it's not supposed to fight at all - it's hardly a better AI. Or even an imitation of one.
wimfrits wrote:A better AI interface like Salamandre did would be great. I'd want this internally (mapmaker's eyes only) and tweakable for each difficulty level.
Could you elaborate on this some more?
wimfrits wrote:Some other general non-cheating measures:
- give artifacts that can be bought in town to heroes (as AI heroes rarely do)
- increase experience of new AI heroes to compensate for the low priority to visit experience increasing objects
- give skills to new heroes to compensate for not buying skills. Partly randomised logical combinations (tactics + combat, magic + combat, ...) to increase AI hero variety.
All should be dependant on the player's chosen difficulty
That are all good ideas. Let's try to make a next step.
Here is a problem for all mapmakers who have time and desire to solve it:
Suppose we are trying to "
increase experience of new AI heroes to compensate for the low priority to visit experience increasing objects". We can surround every existing Learning Stone (+1000 xp) by placed events giving AI heroes additional 2000 xp. But we want it to work exactly once for each AI hero per Learning Stone.
Essentially, we want each Learning Stone to give each AI hero 2000xp if hero chooses to ignore it and pass by, and 3000xp if he chooses to visit it.
All will be done automatically, so we don't know how many Learning Stones are there on a map.
How would you solve this problem?
wimfrits wrote:But I think you bring up a great idea.
Would it be possible to have a generic ranked artifact table. And then clear each AI heroes' inventory periodically and return each item ordered by the ranked table? So that highest ranked artifacts are returned and equipped first?
If it needs modifying the game code - no promises, sorry. But if it can be solved with scripting - good,
another problem to train scripting skills. Fame and undying gratitude of generations of H-IV players are waiting for someone who solves it
Salamandre wrote:Be careful with tripling AI fight value before battle then return to normal: I already tried it and is headache to keep track of battle loses. I mean, you must have access to also internal battle rounds codes, so you can keep each round track of what died on AI side then consider it when recalculating the "normal size".
For me (and H3) it was more simple to ensure AI has the right skills, spells and creatures so he can't lose that battle. And even if he loses a lot, weekly growth is sufficient crazy to compensate.
I imagined it simple. Let's assume we have an AI army with hero, 2 BDs, 10 efreeti and 50 medusas. When it engages in fight, we triple the army: 6 BDs, 30 efreeti and 150 medusas. AI suffers some losses, for example, he finishes the battle with 4 BDs, 19 efreeti and 122 medusas. We then divide it by 3 and round up: 2 BDs, 7 efreeti and 41 medusas.
In this algorithm losses are smaller than in one proposed by
wimfrits. And it is impossible to win a fight and lose all heroes and creatures in the end.