The AI

I've seen some weird stuff too. FOr example, they declare war on me, and then simply send pioneers and reinforcements across my territory. THey never actual attack me.

I've been thinking that they might be doing that instead of asking for a non-aggression policy. Maybe their value algorithm is off?

Also, has anyone seen the AI make archers? I've seen some ruffians with bows, but never an enemy.

Yes, I've seen enemy archers... In fact, from what I can tell, the AI seems to rush this tech to some degree.

Hmm...maybe it's just because I'm playing normal. But they always seem to make mace soldiers with a crazy amount of health.

Still, good to know the AI uses them

I just find it easy to stomp the opponent early in the game.  One of my strategies is to just quickly research the "Melting Touch" spell, increase my sovereign's essence while researching it (if I have time), and then just send my sovereign on a rampage through enemy cities. 

I've set the AI to the hardest possible level in hopes of a better challenge, but it's still is too easy.

Yes i had similar problems with version 1.08, i not even tried to rush, just put a small army of heroes together, made them champions and where looking for monsters and treasures so i can level them. Then i found most of the AI cities completely undefended or just one unarmed hero inside. (I tried the "challenging" difficulty)

I understand that Stardock dont want their AI to "cheat" but maybe just placing some defense troops in every city would do some good.

Stardock does want their AI to cheat.  It's already cheating hardcore in ridiculous.  Double resources, 10x starting goods, etc.  Heck, I have mine set to 10x economy and 20x starting goods.  Its just too dumb to put up any resistance.

Your touching on one of my gripes with the AI. The fact that it knows those stupid empty crates are halfway across the map even though it has not scouted the area. This makes line of sight completely pointless except for human players. Age of Wonders had a similar "ALL Knowing" AI that made concealment and the elven city concealment completely pointless.

I hope this gets changed, because I would really like my 2 movement 3 square Line of Sight unit to really have an advantage over the AI's 2 movement 2 square line of sight guy, or vise versa. 

I'm playing a game right now that's around turn 260 and 90% of the map is covered by influence zones. The sovereign of umbar is actually "stuck" in a small 2 square "pocket" zone of influence between me & Tarith (or Tanth, whatever). It hasn't been able to move, or doesn't move, now for over 10 turns & does not seem to use or want to use telport. It's just stuck there encircled by opposing influence zones and does nothing. In fact, I've decided to take advantage of the situation, and have been moving my troops to the border of umbar. I'm going to declare war & force the enemy sovereign to move out onto my territory.

I would be beside myself if I found out the AI used lower /Raise land to create a mtn pass or land bridge to reach an objective and bypass a hurdle.  NOT SEEN IT.  but I do it at least once a game.

I would be beside myself if I started taking over nearby AI cities and all the AI's or at least per faction AI's joined hands against me and actually worked together against me...

I would be beside myself if the AI sovreign would actually defend his last city rather than wait turn after turn for me to waltz in and take it leaving him with no settlers and no towns...  

I would be beside myself if the AI would not blindly trust human players... Not that I am untrustworthy but some of the previous mention strategies need to be countered from the AI's even if they cheat to do so. (at the higher difficulty levels, some cheating is ok, it shows we humans are still better than the machines...) 

I have seen mountains appear in an AI kingdom, but I'm not sure if it was the AI or a bug.

In the same game I've mentioned above, I've been at war with yithril since like turn 10, yet I've never seen one yithril soldier. I finally found the yithril empire to the far north, but there is an unbelievable mountain chain that covers its border from end-to-end. I moved my sovereign & a large army and used lower land to nerf like 5 or 6 different mountains to allow me access to attack. Unfortunately, there seems to be a bug and I could not move in the now non-mountain squares. I also tried the same thing from another, different, portion of the mountain chain, but still the game would not let me cross (nor it seems lets yithril out). After I resumed my game the next day, after saving the previous day, I noticed all the mountain were back in place??? It was as if nothing had deformed the land. I don't know if this is a game bug or if yithril cast "raise" land to purposely cutoff their empire? I just have no idea. They actually have a very high strength rating in this game too, so it makes me wonder?

I can live with slowly improving strategic and tactical AI.

What's driving me batty is how fast the AI chooses to expand. It doesn't make the game hard, it just makes it unflavorful. Nothing ruins the pacing of the game for me on normal than finding the first AI has 4x the number of cities I do, because I build cities for good resource tile combinations, not every single resource tile I see. If the AI is cheating so much already, does it really need 15 cities that early on? Flat resource bonuses are probably worth more than 1/2 their empire.

Influence expands so slowly that it's vastly more efficient to build cities everywhere there's a resource.  Waiting a hundred turns to get that slightly far flung gold mine is burning a few hundred income just for the mine.

The expansionist property is the only thing the ai has down, the mechanics mandate it.

As a note in AoW, it was extremely problematic to make the AI be capable of dealing with concealment in another way. So they could either have the AI always see concealed units or never see them, and the AI in it already qualifies as "Artificial Idiocy".

Why would you want to put a mountain in your own kingdom? Even if it was done by the spell sounds like a bug!

Unless one AI did it to another AI in which case that would be pretty cool... but doubtful, becuase if the AI was doing that to its enemies then surely it would do it to the human player at times.

I figured out a new spell:  Freeze.  Ok, maybe not so much a spell.  Build a city right next to an opponent's soveriegn, and they are stuck next to your city for all eternity (or until you decide to show mercy and kill them).

Then the mechanics need to change, because it's ridiculous. Every non-minor faction AI is an expansionist, and for a game about that's supposed to be about the awesomeness of city building, it looks tacky and broken that an empire has _14_ of them built back to back. It's not fun, it's not interesting, it's not balanced to produce either of those things, and it leaves the AI with a dozen vulnerable cities that the player can steamroll. Maybe players wouldn't be spanking the AI so hard it if wasn't spreading itself so thin. Again, does it even NEED all those resources? It's already cheating its ass off.

It needs to change.

Another thing I noticed about the AI ... seems funny to me, but "every" single AI sovereign actually starts with all 4 four spellbooks, but do they actually use more than a small fraction of those spells? Hell no. Do they even use more than a fraction of the spells from one spellbook? Not from what I see.

I'd rather see the AI sovereigns have less spellbooks from the getgo (dump the additional points into abilities, create more variety with AI sovereigns, give some of them "organized" traits, other adventure, etc, i.e. create *variety*), and have spellbooks that they actually use more than two or three spells from. It would be much more interesting to me to see the sovereign of umbar with just the "earth" magic book (for example), but he actually uses all the spells from that book & has the "organized" trait and lops along at 5/6 squares per turn with a earth elemental that can rain boulders. This should differ from Tanth, for example, who has "Air" spellbook with high charisma and has 5 or 6 champions with longbows that she was able to recruit cheaply due to the extra charisma & she has a longbow herself with high dexterity & attack that can kill your champions at a distance. I'm seeing no difference in AI sovereigns. Are they all scripted the same?

Basically, what I'm saying is: Why does every single AI soverign start with all 4 spellbooks? It is just some artificial attempt to achieve balance? It doesn't work if they don't use the spells from those spellbooks .. and that's what I see from games that I play.

BTW: is it possible to "edit" the AI soverigns pre game? .. this probably wouldn't work anyway because the script they currently use wouldn't take into account the way I have in mind to mod them.

My guess? Scripting AI for using the spells to their fullest was a low priority for Frogboy. They know how to cast their summons. That's the only demonstrable thing I've seen AI Sovereigns do.

At their cores, probably. They have all the spell books so the default empires of the game can offer a full range of challenge. It does make them NOT standout from one another though, and since they don't use those spells anyways......

Make custom sovereigns. The ones that ship with the game are hard coded, and are actually BETTER than any custom sovereign you can make.