A Guide To Single Player (Vs AI)

This guide discusses several strategies that work well in Single Player vs the AI. It discusses which of these are also effective vs humans and which are less so. The goal is to help improve your single player game and aid you in getting rid of some bad single player habits as you transition to multiplayer.

Introduction

The single player game mode is VERY different than the multiplayer mode in dominions.

Main Differences Between Single Player (SP) and Multiplayer (MP):

• Good humans are more efficient in troop use
  Humans employ more diverse and intelligent strategies, they produce troops that counter yours and script troops MUCH better. Better AI's get more gold and production to produce more troops and infrastructure to spam you with more forces. Humans also go for higher quality troops while the AI will often recruit independents. (You can turn this off with a Mod btw - which i recommend you do. Its called "AI No Recruit" - this makes the AI play more thematically to the nation. It makes them a bit harder too!)
  
• Humans tend to pick better pretenders than the AI
  Humans consider things like improving magic diversity, optimal blesses etc. (The AI is starting to do better at this, but is still far inferior to humans)
  
• There is diplomacy with humans, there is essentially no diplomacy vs AI
  With human you can form alliances, declare war, truce, backstab, etc. In fact, dominions has the most amazing diplomacy I have seen in any game. With AI's there is no diplomacy, if you have an undefended border, eventually war will come... from every AI... Humans also may band together if one player gets too far ahead or is going for a victory condition (throne) rush; AI's do no such thing.
  
• Humans use more globals
  Humans cast more globals and dispell other player's globals. AI's tend to ignore globals far far more than humans.
  
• Some tactics that work well vs humans, DON'T work vs the AI
  I.e: Large alpha strikes on the first turn of war and economic wars of attrition are tactics used by advanced players, but they don't work vs high difficulty AI. So, you will have to practice these in single player games, trusting that they work.

The list goes on. That said, this is a very complicated game, and writing AI would be very difficult - So I'm not ranting here - just explaining the difference. Also, multiplayer games are mostly play by email (which means they are slow). So if you want to get good at dominions, you need to practice a good bit and quickly --- and that means playing vs AI.

So that gets us to the purpose of the guide, playing vs the AI is and should be fun. I'm going to lay out several general strategies that are effective vs harder AI's and explain when and if they carry over to multiplayer.

If people read this / give feedback I'll update it. If you have ideas mention them and I'll add. I don't pretend to be an expert but I hope you find it helpful :)

If You Are Really New

This guide is not intended to teach you all of the mechanics for playing dominions. Its intended to address some mechanics that aren't really talked about for fighting the AI.

Never the less since some players reading this are new; I'll make some recommendations. Start by watching a let's play video on youtube. Watch a good bit of a let's play, then see how far you can get in your own game, that will give you a better appreciation for what is going on in the let's play.

Here are some links to a couple:
Maerlande's (a very good player - covering the basics) Tutorial:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfJY6YWpb0M

Nuclear Monkey (a very good player - advanced play) - Marignon Let's Play:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvT6bxD1sSo

Colonial (another good player - advanced play) - Caelum Let's Play
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2_Uc4YVCs0&t=1207s

Guides on building thugs and SC's:
http://dom4.wikia.com/wiki/Building_thugs_and_SCs
http://grogheads.com/forums/index.php?topic=5727.0

Some recommendations on starting your first game.

- Choose a map and put the number of recommended players in it
- Set AI's to the easiest setting (the absolute easiest - its hard to learn game mechanics when you are getting stomped)
- Choose a nation
- Alt tab out and read a guide on the nation. The guide will specify what scales and magic maths you should take on a given 'pretender'. Don't worry about understanding everything yet, for your first game just copy that 'pretender design' from the guide
- Hit 'r' in your first province to recruit an army and then expand with it. Refer to the guide on what troops are good to build to expand.
- After a couple games you can probably beat the easiest AI and you probably have a decent understanding of the mechanics
- Mastery comes much much later :)

The rest of this guide assumes that you know the basic mechanics of the game! (Basically that you can beat the easiest AI, if you follow it you'll start being able to beat impossible AI's - well sometimes anyway)

On Expansion

Strong Initial Expansion

A common thread to both single player and multiplayer is that a strong expasion is key to put you in a position to win.

Indeed, initial expansion is almost identical in single and multiplayer. It is you pitted against the neutral provinces and their defenses.

Year One Then Reload

When I practice for a multiplayer game with a nation, I often don't even bother setting up multiple AI's and just play through year 1 to see how I do on expansion, infrastructure and research goals. Once year one ends, I quit and try something a little different until I'm happy.

Usually, I want to have 2+ forts up, and 12-20 provinces by the end of year one with a fair number of mages researching. These goals depend on the nation i'm playing though. Some nations can recruit key mages and troops without forts, others need them. Some nations need more research than others.

When you are doing this play style, the goal is speed. Do you turns quickly - try to rapidly test 4-5 variants of strategies to see what makes for an effective expansion. Doing this will also give you a good feel for how to handle different indies with your expansion parties and when you should head home to get reinforcements or change scripting.

Keep border low, keep area high

This is the part of intial expansion that is different in single player and multi-player. In multiplayer, diplomacy (how many nations you are at war with and when) will depend upon a great many things (relative strength, who counters who, diplomacy with others, late game threat...). In single player it depends on one: on how many troops / province defense (PD) do you have in your border provinces.

This means that as you expand you want to keep your "perimeter" count low while you keep your "area" count high. What do I mean by this?

If you expand like a starfish, you will have tons of border provinces! So, you will have to put significant PD in all of them to keep the AI from warring you. If you expand in a circle, you will have a minimal border provinces and a large interior. You can use the money from the interior to spend on troops and defense for the border. The bigger your interior to perimeter ratio, the easier to fortify your border. Simple right?

At the begining of expansion, you of course take easy provinces, and plot out efficient expansion loops. Towards the middle / end of expansion, you need to carefully consider your borders. The calculus that I do is: "If I take this next province, how many provinces will it add to my "area", and how many will it add to my "border"?"

If the answer is it will add a one province count to my total provinces and one province counter to my border, then I often won't take it... That would make me "starfish out". If it adds to my area without increasing my border count (i.e: it makes another border province a non border province), then I'm going to snatch it right up.

Humans and AI war tendencies in early expansion phase

Most humans and almost all AI's declare their wars around year two. One thing to beware of is that some humans will rush you. This is because taking an empty province is often easier than fighting neutrals. Also, they are taking income from you - so double win. The AI will ussually wait until year 2 even if you don't have PD up.

AI Diplomacy and Province Defense (PD)

As I have mentioned, AI diplomacy is super basic. Here is my understanding of it.

Rule 1: If you attack them - Its ON.

If you attack an AI owned province it is now full scale war. No whoops / sorries, No negotiating, No end. You are now at war with that AI until the end of the game.

"Bumping" or when you both attack a neutral province doesn't count as an attack, so don't worry about war.

Rule 2: If they attack you - Its ON.

If they decide they want to attack you. They send you a message saying that they declare war on your unholy nation. And yeah - you are now at war until the end of time... Or until you put them out of their sweet misery :)

Rule 3: Weakest Link Border Diplomacy

The AI does not decide to attack you based on your relative strengths or your because they think they counter you as a human might.

Oh no, the logic is like this: If you have a single weak border province near them, then they will attack it and now you are at war. Forever. All from one weak province. Hence the name - weakest link diplomacy.

If they are already at war with another nation or AI, they seem to be much less likely to declare wars, so avoiding war in year 2 may be sufficient to get enemy AI's entangled in their own wars. If you notice this, its nice because you can spend less on Province Defense (PD). If you see troops mounting on your border however... Its best to up PD to avoid an attack.

To avoid these attacks you need PD - unless you can spam troops (i.e: undead). Needing PD is the biggest difference in my opinion in Multiplayer and Singleplayer. If all the impossible AI's declare war on you and you are fighting 1v8, you are going to lose. No if and's or buts.

This means you are going to have to divert SIGNIFICANT economic resources to Province Defense to ensure that you aren't at war with the whole world. I will repeat this again, doing this in multiplayer would be the equivalent of giving up; You will get laughed at in private messages between more experienced players. But, it is critical in single player. Here are some guidelines:

Year 1: PD: 1-10
Year 2: Border provinces: 20-30
Year 3: Border provinces: 30
Year 4: Border provinces: 40

Generally you can keep 20 PD until you see the AI starting to amass an army, then its time to go to 30-40 to prevent a declaration of war.

Also you may find it hard to have the cash to PD up your whole border, so pick a side (aka: the south side) and PD up the borders to nations on the south side. The north side you go to war and fight with conventional armies.

Rule 4: Sometiems Its Random

Sometimes, and AI that hasn't seen you randomly declares war on you. Sometimes an AI declares war on you even though you have fortified borders. Often they don't end up attacking you anytime soon after the war declaration because they hate attacking 30+ PD. These are the exceptions rather than the rule.

Tricks to Fighting AI

On to the fun part. Outplaying silly AI's.

Here are some strategies for fighting the AI.

1. Thugs

Thugs are comanders equiped to take out PD or they can be strong but are expendable
The AI doesn't do well countering thugs. It does better than it did in dominions 3. But a well geared thug can sort its way through lots of enemy chaff. Further you can park your thug behind lots of your own PD while he buffs up -- when the PD is dead your thugs or army can go to work.. and next turn the PD is back to fulll strength. The AI will throw tons of troops wastefully vs this defense.

2. Hold a few borders with thugs / small armies + PD, Drive through with main army.

Versus harder AI's, you wont be able to storm across the enemies borders very often with multiple small armies. They are going to have lots of PD and troops everywhere. (Sometimes this can work, but far less well than vs humans) Instead, I have found it effective to sure up a border with thug reinforced PD or small elite armies reinforcing PD which you hammer through with your main army.

3. Reform border as you go

As your main armies proceed on an invasion, you need to make sure that you reinforce provinces that you took if they can be threatened by the enemy. You don't need to do this as much vs humans because humans dont have access to unlimited hordes (usually). If you don't reform your border with PD / troops, the army that your main group just took will be taken back and filled again with huge ammounts of PD and troops. You will not wear hard AI's down with attrition.

4. Low attrition stategies are better

Elite regenerating troops are far better in SP because they can endure the endless hordes of AI. Highly offensive troops (aka, W9/F9 Bless) may work great against humans and their limited resources -- killing highly valuable troops, but against AI its crap. The goal is survival through the waves.

5. Battlefield wide or large AOE spells are great

These are great in multiplayer too, but they are especially great vs the AI hordes.

6. Super combatants (SC's) don't get countered

SC's are commanders equipped to take out whole armies
You remember that kitted golem you made that was slaughtering armies... You remember how after it killed 2 armies, some golem killing thugs cloud trapesed on it and killed it (all 80 gems worth of it). Yeah that doesn't happen vs the AI. Gogo golem. That said, late game the AI will build big enough armies with enough mages and summons that they can kill your (SC's but not with specific counters).

[mltnschroeder]

One of the nice things about SP is you can play on some of the fun asymmetrical maps you don't see often in MP due to imbalance issues: Aran, Dawn of Dominion, Desert Eye, ect.

The AI doesn't seem to 'get' Thrones, and certainly doesn't use them to any strategic advantage. So instead I like to set SP victory conditions to 'victory by victory points' then add, say, 6x 1pt, 3x 2pt and 1x 3pt plus enable 'one VP per capital'. Then set VPs required to (# nations + #VP provinces)/2+1 (e.g for a 10-nation map with the above listed VP provinces that would be (10+15)/2+1=13 VP required to win). So in effect he who controls just over half the map wins (counting either VP locations or enemy capitals).

[mltnschroeder]

In SP, I've seen the AI effectively 'forget' it previously declared war on me if we get cut off from one another (ie. share no common borders) and my AI opponent gets embroiled in a war with another AI.

While difficult to accomplish, if you are getting hammered early-game by multiple AIs, try and lose provinces such that you lose common borders w/ one or more nations, and thus your diplomacy will those nations will be reset to 'peace' (after x amount of turns, not sure how many).

[精馆长]

thanks ^_^

[MarkofWisdom]

The PD tips/advice is quite nice to see, I knew the numbers were somewhere around ~20 for most provinces that weren't critical to defense like a pivotal chokepoint or a throne province. It's good to see the upper edge of ~40 can actually prevent some early wars vs AI, I know that's been an issue for me in the past. I've been away from the game for a while and stuff like this will help me get back to it, as well as reading the (apparently old now) change of horror marks fading when a unit is dead-this being useful to have a pretender not be eternally screwed by horror marks, and that for some games where I was just having fun and building SC and other super units was an issue that put me off playing some for a while because of the worry of permanently being screwed out of a heavily invested unit like my pretender by a rogue AI mage that threw a horror mark on my province

[Lucid]

PD is province defense. Its a defense that integral to a province - you can't move it from there. Can can invest more and more gold in province defense, but there are diminishing returns in terms of cost. (I put the full name in the guide just now. Any more missing abbreviations?)

[obama]

wwhy is everyone making 'beginner guides' with abbreviations new players would never know

[obama]

whats a pd

[Dr Lily Pad]

thank you ^.^

[Lucid]

Added some guides in the new player section for thugs and sc's

Also added a description under the SP tips for thugs and SC's. Basically thugs are commanders equiped with gear so that they can solo take out province defense.

[Dr Lily Pad]

what do you mean by thugs?