A few requests to Demigod

from Stardock Forums

Okay I bought the game, and tried it out. While there are many many good features in the game there are also some that I find very disapointing, and even more so considering it is a stardock title.

So far I have mainly been playing singleplayer to learn the classes and the ropes etc. In the reviews of the game that I read I recall the reviewers saying that the AI in the game would be brutal on the harder difficulties.... Great I thought.. another game with a brilliant stardock AI... sadly no.

I dont know if it is just tournament that is meant to be this way, but the teammate AI's play like they are set to easy or normal when you play on hard or nightmare. If you play a skirmish with them set to nightmare as well... you get a bit more action for ya money.

The list of bad AI programming is long... In general it comes down to bad route descriptions for the AI... it gets stuck all over the map, on maps with multiple crystals, it will always go back to the base one instead of the closest one to heal. If the AI gets hit it will retreat to some far away tower to stand and wait until it it healed instead of going back to a crystal. One of the more annyoing ones is that unless its a fortress battle, then the AI can suddenly just wander off around the map to get to some faraway flag instead of going to where all the enemy AI are doing and all out offensive. I even had an instance of the AI wandered of to a hp regen tower while the citadel was under attack.

The list goes on but I think everyone gets the picture. Now I know this game is meant to be played against human players, and that it is difficult to make decent AI's for this sort of game. And I also wont suggest that the developers spend more time on this then any other area of the game. But I would like to request a few AI updates so that Demigod can be worthy of being a stardock title.

1. Make sure the AI dont get plain stuck. (especially when it plays as the rook)

2. Make sure it dont waste so much time on waiting to heal up instead of just going back to heal up.

3. Look over how the AI uses its skills. Some of the AI like Sedna always play superior to any other AI at almost all stages of the game. So basically just take the Sedna AI and put it into the rest so to speak.

4. Make the AI better at evaluateing situations ... if there are 3 enemy AI's at a given spot.. it should not just attack head on but go to where some of its teammates are.

demigod
6,190 views 8 replies
Reply #1 from Demigod Forums Top


In the reviews of the game that I read I recall the reviewers saying that the AI in the game would be brutal on the harder difficulties.... Great I thought.. another game with a brilliant stardock AI... sadly no.

The game is published by SD.  GPG is the dev and did all the programming, including the ai.

Reply #2 from Demigod Forums Top

but the teammate AI's play like they are set to easy or normal when you play on hard or nightmare.

IIRC the teammate AI players are intentionally weaker on the hardest settings (to make it harder).

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Reply #3 from Demigod Forums Top

Quoting kryo, reply 2

but the teammate AI's play like they are set to easy or normal when you play on hard or nightmare.


IIRC the teammate AI players are intentionally weaker on the hardest settings (to make it harder).
That is only true in Pantheon. In Skirmish you can set the AI difficulties for both sides. But yes, if you play Pantheon on the harder modes your allies will be very stupid. It's part of the challenge.

Also, make sure you have the latest patch, I think they improved the SP AI a little at some point.

Reply #4 from Demigod Forums Top

Hey Aiyen --

There are some other threads out there about AI issues, for example:

http://forums.demigodthegame.com/362706

I think the best thing we, as players, can do now is provide very specific feedback about particular AI issues (Rook pathfinding has been lamented by many).  Hopefully, GPG will continue to support the game and release periodic fixes and updates that increasingly address these issues.  In addition, it might be possible that modders will be able to tackle some of these issues down the line as well.  I'd certainly encourage you to keep posting constructive feedback about AI routines.  My least favorite is watching an AI teammate futilely attack an enemy tower until it dies.

-- NAc

Reply #5 from Demigod Forums Top

my advice, don't hold out on AI getting fixed any time soon, start getting into online games

p.s. your team-mates on tournaments will be set to normal at all times, whilst the enemy team will be hard / nightmare. this requires you to purchase exp + gold upgrades to help your team-mates, and to constantly kill the enemy demigods to keep them weak enough to not slaughter your allies.

Reply #6 from Demigod Forums Top

Also, if your teammate leaves or get a disc; can't you leave the game without getting a loss? Or am I misstaken?

Reply #7 from Demigod Forums Top

correct. unless you are able to concede within 3 minutes of the host hitting "start game".
but this has nothing to do with the OP xD

Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top


I think that our best hope so far would be to wait for a modding community to start up, and hope there are some tools in whatever they might chose to publish that allows modders to do work on the AI.

But I will most likely keep looking out for problems, and hope that others will too. But again I still think that AI upgrades are secondary to stuff like new classes/levels, and skill fixes.

And thanks Kryo for confirming it! I suspected as much, but well I love difficult games, it is just fustrateing that the ally AI is so inferior compared to a nightmare one... I would think it should be enough for the enemy to simply start with more gear/gold would suffice.