Lots of changes have been put in the past day while I wait in my SWTOR queue (Kaas City, character: Talax, Sith Marauder)…
Anyway…
These are a series of 1 on 1 battles. When the AI is sufficiently challenging on Normal, I’ll test our the harder difficulties and then go to multiple players.
Sufficiently challenging means being able to survive 100 turns consistently against me on a small map.
Game 40: 11:30am, 12.28.11
Result:Victory in 96 turns. Nothing very interesting. Fixed some AI glitches, nerfed constitution bonuses.
Game 41:
Wow. Started with two champions near, green valley with a river.
Unfortunately, monsters killed the NPC. That’s a problem. Will have to fix monster AI since that kind of defeats the purpose.
Aborted to fix.
Game 42:
Found a second champion near by that only required “recruiting” to get. So I b-lined to that.
Foolishly went on a dangerous quest (really need these quests to have labels as I got my clock cleaned).
Heh, found a bug with the Administrator ability which, presently, reduces 25% from training/construction. It stacks.
Everything in 1 turn. I’ll fix it…after this game…
AI is starting to get pretty good at putting together defenses while expanding.
Now to see if I can still steam roll him. Note all the archers. Standing there waiting isn’t an option.
Well not quite a steam roll. Took multiple armies led by champions but the deed is done. That took 360 turns.
Will do one more to see if it was a fluke.
Game 43:
This time I’m playing as Kir-Talax (character I made up) who is Emperor of Magnar. Let’s see how I do as an Empire.
Found Altar fast this time and took his first expansion city.
Relias is pissed. He came right at me.
My sovereign and champion are really weak having just lost a battle to a spider related quest. This may be closer than it seems.
Hmm.
Way closer than it seems. This is where computers have an advantage, they can calculate their odds of victory better than us.
I do have some pretty decent spells and armor early on.
Rematch…
This time he bit off more than he could chew.
Time to go for his capital…
Little pigs, little pigs, let me come in. It’s just me and my apprentice.
…
Casting time…this is how we were able to have really powerful magical spells without debalancing the game completely.
The town is mine but only after losing my Apprentice.
After some back and forth, we’re down to his last town. There is an issue with champions dying too often still.
Curse spell in what might be the final battle.
But I lose. 
On the other hand, there’s something…right about building a Slave Pen in Athica (former capital of Altar).
Lots of very close back and forth for that last city.
I recruit a new apprentice…
Hopefully this time I’ll kill him.
In this game, the big problem the AI is having is he’s now outclassed in weaponry and armor. It’ll be interesting to see the tech difference after this game.
In Fallen Enchantress, metal is a big deal. It’s out there, it’s not “rare” but you gotta have it to build the good stuff.
Yea, that sucker punching him early on did him in. But he held on really well. I’d say it’s time to turn up the juice to…Challenging level AI.
But not until I do some tweaking. Gonna had some new functions for handling sucker punching and delivering them. 
My score: 28 points.
Game 44: 6:30pm CHALLENGING AI
So I’m pumping the computer AI to “challenging”. At this level, he’s identical to the human player still except there’s a few more APIs that get used (a little more CPU gets used). Those APIs largely revolve around recruiting champions more aggressively and more intelligently handling quests. In the XML, these algorithms are based on <AIIntelligenceFactor>1.5</AIIntelligenceFactor> which is my own voodoo I use to determine what functions I’ll use. Go over 1.5 and it might include cheats so for future modders, never go over 1.5 if you don’t want the AI to potentially be “Cheating” (where cheating would include an imbalanced map, getting champions placed in slightly closer to AI starting locations, etc.).
Now, keep in mind that this doesn’t mean the AI is “done”. I’m focusing on algorithms but a lot of the XML isn’t even hooked up. I can’t, for example, really have the AI use spells intelligently yet. When you see Relias hasting himself and others you’ll know it’s starting to get better in that area.
We’ll see how many turns it takes me to win.
Relias must be nearby as he found me (he doesn’t know I’m here, just got lucky).
Fun vs. Bastard: The AI could totally wreck me. My sovereign is out exploring and his champion and armed units is 2 tiles away from my capital. This is the kind of thing that game AI coding has to take into account. Post-release, I can do what I did with GalCiv and let modders add in “Bastard AI” but there’s no way I’ll get to it prior to release. Or probably not anyway. And besides, would that be fun? Most people would just reload the game. What’s the point?
It isn’t until turn 125 that I feel confident in attacking him with 2 high level champions and my sovereign as my main force.
This could be interesting. We win, but only my sovereign survives. The champions do survive too (they’re revived) but they’re now injured.
Nevertheless I take my army to Relias.
Relias casts Haste. Yay, good sign. It’s looking like it’ll just be he and I by the time we kill off all of each other’s units.
Victory in 160 turns.
Score: 18.
You can see where the AI is blowing it in this graph. Ridiculously sloppy use of magic means that when he needs it, he doesn’t have it.
Time to tweak.
That’s all for tonight.
