We did a lot of work on the AI this week (and by we, I mean Brad) and made some significant changes. I even had to ask Brad to tone down the aggressiveness based on a game where I got dragged down and beat like the Goonie kids, if they'd accidently wandered into the Hellraiser movies*.
But the trouble with testing the AI in a game that contains as many moving parts as FE is that it can be very situational. It also has a lot to do with balance. Some abilites are to good, some are to weak and a human is always better a figuring out how to exploit them than an AI player. Some items may randomly swing the game ot much (if you get a berserkers axe in the first 20 turns, etc).
I can only play a limited amount of games per week, but if I can get feedback from you folks we can start to learn form that experience and figure out what is keeping the AI from being competitive. I would love to get the following from anyone who is interested.
1. General feedback on if you felt the monsters were a threat (were they too strong, too weak, or about right).
2. General feedback on if you felt the AI players were a threat (were they too strong, too weak, or about right).
3. What difficulty did you play on?
4. What faction/sovereign did you play (if you made a custom sovereigns, what traits did you pick)?
5. If you think the AI was too easy, what did you do to lead to your success (did you outfit your soveriegn in leather armor, find a good sword and then single handidly kill everyone, did you start producing an endless stream of spearmen and destroy with your armies, did you learn fireball and use it to destroy the world)?
6. Attach a save game at the point where you believe you have the game beat so we can check it out. A save at the tipping point, where you believe you have the game won and have to play it out is more useful than one where the opponents are all crushed because it allows us to see exactly what is going on when the AI loses. If you get to a point where yo don't feel a threat from the AI anymore thats a good point to get a save.
Thanks,
Derek
* If you weren't born in an era where killing a duck with a three pixel long sword wasn't awesome then please replace the above mixed analogy with "beat like Justin Bieber, if he'd accidently wandered into one of the Saw movies."