Dahurian

Join Date 03/2005

How to Beat the AI

Well Frogboy asked for it, so here is one way to beat the AI on version 1.06.

First, pick a meditative sovereign so that you can always research spells.

Two, ignore all spells other than summoning.

Third, in level 1 spells, summon your critter and then research level 2 spells, so that you can summon the level 2 critter.

Pretty soon, you have a wilding, a fire elemental, a golem, a familiar all in one mobile strike force. Level them all up by beating up Level 1 wilderness beasts and you can basically walk over every other fraction.

In essence, what you are doing is rather than research military tech and building and fielding an army. You can very rapidly summon a magical army that no other kingdom can withstand. This magical army can go in and destroy your opponent's cities. While your magical army is doing this, build up some guard units in your own cities and you have won.

The reason this works is that your golem will almost never take damage and thus, it can attack and move continuously because it never needs to rest.

I'd be interested in hearing from others, how they are beating the AI. My hope is that this will allow the AI to be improved.

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Beating the AI?

-exploit the stickiness of AI targetting by making their armies chase you around in circles while you devour their cities and starve them.

-exploit their excessive eagerness to run up to you and absorb the first shot (I have no archers, why do you not stand fast? Oh, well.)

-exploit their surprisingly slow reactions to your hitting their outlying colonies (hit three or four at once and look to grab their most obvious farm city in the initial grab)

-exploit their relative ignorance of Area of Influence

-exploit the "full army" turn system by always attacking

-On Normal difficulty or below, pretty much do anything (but that may be a feature, not a bug, since Frogboy was pretty clear that the AI isn't meant to stomp faces on lower levels)

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As far as standing fast, if it were smart, it would simply out wait the player. Which isn't fun either. I suppose one way to resolve this is if combat goes on for too long without something happening, it's a draw.

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Quoting ,

quoting post

Well Frogboy asked for it, so here is one way to beat the AI on version 1.06.
First, pick a meditative sovereign so that you can always research spells.

Two, ignore all spells other than summoning.

Third, in level 1 spells, summon your critter and then research level 2 spells, so that you can summon the level 2 critter.

Pretty soon, you have a wilding, a fire elemental, a golem, a familiar all in one mobile strike force. Level them all up by beating up Level 1 wilderness beasts and you can basically walk over every other fraction.

In essence, what you are doing is rather than research military tech and building and fielding an army. You can very rapidly summon a magical army that no other kingdom can withstand. This magical army can go in and destroy your opponent's cities. While your magical army is doing this, build up some guard units in your own cities and you have won.

The reason this works is that your golem will almost never take damage and thus, it can attack and move continuously because it never needs to rest.

I'd be interested in hearing from others, how they are beating the AI. My hope is that this will allow the AI to be improved.

What you bring up is not an issue of poor AI but of poor game balance. The AI can be freaking geniuses, but if you have an army of summons, you'll still roll them.

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Nice. That seems to be the best way to beat the AI.

I usually make a faction with the Master Archer trait. Then research only economy and military until I can support a few squads of archers (no armor needed so they can produce faster). The AI has no ranged units early in the game so thier troops usually die before they can attack.

Its not as good as the magic strategy, but it works.

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My way to beat the AI from a builder / turtler perspective:

Step 1: Colony rush to 4 or so good city sites with a nice mix of resources

Step 2: build some throw away garrison units

Step 3: Continue to build defensive units whenever you have extra resources to spare while you are having fun growing your cities and teching up.

Step 4: Ignore the AI, they will never attack you because you are defending your cities properly and have a bigger army without really trying. Their cities are mostly undefended, their economy is much worse than yours and their army is tiny. Who knows what they were doing all this time.

Step 5: Win by quest mastery, spell mastery or diplomacy whenever you've had enough and start getting bored. Alternatively you could go steamroll them at this stage, but I don't really see the point. It would be like shooting fish in barrel. As the OP has pointed out, really you can go steamroll them any time you feel like it. Don't forget to lure their sovereign out of his territory first so you can get the whole war over with in one fight, it's more efficient that way.

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Step 1: Build a sovereign with 15 strength, dex and constitution, all other stats at 5, no spells, all combat traits and longstrider boots

Step 2: Build your first city anywhere and buy him a club

Step 3: Roll over all civilisations you come across, upgrade you sovereign in the cities you capture, don't even bother with troops, the AI doesn't attack anyway, and all the "monsters" out in the wilds pretty much have to stumble over your cities or won't do anything either. The only thing that can cause you any trouble are those monsters guarding cities of the minor factions. Everything else just rolls over and dies.

Step 4: Conquest victory. Hurrah...

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