Better AI for Xtended

[Sephi]

Anyone interested in a Better AI mod for Xtended? I could make one but I could use some info where the AI needs to be better.

 

[Calavente]

sorry, all alone yet.
I'd like some better AI, but ... I rarely play Xtended, and mostly focus my "recent" games around RifA and Magister's.... but every 18 months a random MoM game appears.
most issues are with gameplay I think, and AI is mostly good. (maybe they don't priorize enough the military techs that bring +2str to units)

 

[Sephi]

yes, it seems fine. I played autoplayed like 200 turns and did not see any obvious mistakes done by the AI.But of course there is always a lot of room for improvement

 

[Atethebones]

I really like MoM and also think the ai is mostly good (don't play it often enough to notice anything wrong with ai that comes to mind). Very glad to see its still getting attention.

 

[Ombatur]

Nice to see some activity for this great mod!

Of course, I would like to have better AI. If I could choose between good AI and better AI I would always pick better AI.
But I don't know if the AI can be improved so easily.
One think I noticed is that the AI accumulates a lot of unused settler in its city during the game. This might be due to the fact that the AI tries to expand but fails and then forgets (maybe?) about its previous built units. So it would be nice, if the AI wouldnt forget about unused settlers or, even better, doesnt fail to expand in the first place. I usually play on monarch or emperor difficulty, btw.
I also feel like the AI is bad at judging the strength of its army. Since in MoM (+extended), the strength of ones army doesnt solely depend on raw numbers but on synergies between units, promotions, spells, enchantments etc., it is understandable that the AI is bad at it.
There might also be other things not optimal about the AI, like focusing on not ideal technolgies/guilds/magic research. But it's hard to tell for me from the outside to which degree this is the case..

 

[Atethebones]

This may seem like a small thing but as of now the faeries (Aos Si) have a palace that doesn't give a defense bonus like all the other civilizations (usually palaces give 100% defense bonus), is that something that is supposed to be the case or could that be fixed?

 

[Sephi]

Nice to see some activity for this great mod!

Of course, I would like to have better AI. If I could choose between good AI and better AI I would always pick better AI.
But I don't know if the AI can be improved so easily.
One think I noticed is that the AI accumulates a lot of unused settler in its city during the game. This might be due to the fact that the AI tries to expand but fails and then forgets (maybe?) about its previous built units. So it would be nice, if the AI wouldnt forget about unused settlers or, even better, doesnt fail to expand in the first place. I usually play on monarch or emperor difficulty, btw.
I also feel like the AI is bad at judging the strength of its army. Since in MoM (+extended), the strength of ones army doesnt solely depend on raw numbers but on synergies between units, promotions, spells, enchantments etc., it is understandable that the AI is bad at it.
There might also be other things not optimal about the AI, like focusing on not ideal technolgies/guilds/magic research. But it's hard to tell for me from the outside to which degree this is the case..

thanks for the feedback. I will start with the army strength calculation.

This may seem like a small thing but as of now the faeries (Aos Si) have a palace that doesn't give a defense bonus like all the other civilizations (usually palaces give 100% defense bonus), is that something that is supposed to be the case or could that be fixed?

I'll change it.

 

[Atethebones]

Not sure if this thread is the place to post a wishlist item, but I've always been intrigued by quests (usually triggered by events) which don't normally get much attention and was wondering if those are something that could be included expanded on.

 

[Sephi]

I would love to have a central quest mechanic in Master of Mana, but it is not easy to get there.

It should
- give agency to the player. Decide if you want to take the quest and how. Preferably no boring stuff like "build x buildings" although in rare cases it might fit.
- provides good RPG value, so needs proper lore / story telling
- help to tell a bigger story. Like Hyborem could offer quests related to invading Erebus.
- fit the context. You play the leader of an empire, so you shouldn't get quests that anyone can handle. Hunting down a legendary bandit is fine, hunting a few weak outlaws makes no sense when you could just easily let a few soldiers do the task.

 

[Atethebones]

That does sound like it would be a major addition that would take an extraordinary amount of work, especially how you described it. It sounds a lot like what endless legend has which is maybe its best feature that isn't already done better here. I can only imagine the chain of PrereqEvents that would need to be made for a questline of sorts like this

 

[Vital Brasil]

I wish i could see a better AI for naval units and for some barbarian units, like Orthus, Acheron and the four apocalypse horseman. They aren't a threat anymore and i think this makes the game kinda boring.

Also, i do not like how my settlers and workers can explore the wild freely, without the risk of being ambushed by animals.

 

[Atethebones]

Also I just realized that the epic destiny victory condition kinda lays out what a questline would have been anyways. With that in mind extensive questlines may not necessarily make the most sense to spend time implementing. Could a pseudo randomly generated quest that starts upon a particular civilizations trigger (researching particular technology, defeating x units, accumulate x gold, etc.) be something that could be implemented. The way I'm imagining it would be a consistent lore based description that sets up the quest objective for each civ, then a generated quest objective, then a reward that would grant something useful to the specific civ (e.g. reagents for amurites near capital).

 

[Atethebones]

I wish i could see a better AI for naval units and for some barbarian units, like Orthus, Acheron and the four apocalypse horseman. They aren't a threat anymore and i think this makes the game kinda boring.

Also, i do not like how my settlers and workers can explore the wild freely, without the risk of being ambushed by animals.

I have noticed that the unique barbarian units aren't as aggressive as the standard barbarians and sometimes end up not moving despite being a horseman As far as strategy for the ai civilizations, they do a pretty good job as far as I can tell, they beat me often enough at higher difficulties that's for sure.

 

[Jojo_Fr]

Sephi yes off course we are!

Master of Mana is the best modmod for FFH2. But it's easy to win in Deity.

As Multiplayer guy, I am mainly interested by Balance and Stability in MP, but having stronger A.Is would be great.