Larian Studios Forums Dragon Commander Dragon Commander - Beta Anybody want to try pvp?/A.I. flaws (difficulty)

So, anybody want to try a pvp match? I would like to see how the Dragon VS Dragon combat goes.

I have played against the A.I quite a bit and it has been fun, but even on insane, its getting really easy. I notice little difference between easy and insane. Somehow the A.I. seemed more challenging before the update. Maybe one of the main reasons the A.I. seems so easy is that the player has access to the dragon, where the A.I. (at least at this time) does not. I notice that the A.I seems to spend a lot of time camping in his base instead of aggressively expanding his territory most of the time. It sends a few attacks, occasionally strong ones,but they are slow and spend a lot of time being idle. Before the update it seemed that the A.I. did what I had hoped, seems to have more recruits and builds A LOT faster then I do. (still won though. but seemed like it was a bit of work to do so.) Most of the time I notice that the A.I on Emerald Mountains usually goes to one expansion JUST for the recruiting citadel. then they leave.
The A.I. in the multiplayer campaign is stronger and smarter on higher difficulties though. they seem to expand quickly and constantly and sometimes they gather forces in a country next to yours BEFORE jumping in to attack. That is good. Still, the A.I. isn't very tough, but Still fun practice. Hopefully they improve the A.I. in another update.

So, anyway, anybody want to play a match? would be interesting to go up against another dragon.

Trip Report: Zephyr Dragon versus Mountain Dragon in skirmish mode: Zephyr Dragon gets completely and utterly owned in seconds, every time.

Yes, the AI needs to be improved quite a bit.

Given the state of the ground AI, I don't think that there will ever be any Dragon AI. The manual also specifically mentions that things are strong or weak against the Player Dragon, and that specific wording seems to preclude the possibility of an AI Dragon.

The AI seems to vary on how well it does based on difficulty. It is pretty aggressive on the Default difficulty. I'll have to try adjusting the Campaign difficulty again to see if it gets better at higher levels, because Default isn't that great on the campaign map.

I can imagine an A.I. dragon would be difficult to implement, at least at this time. I have played against the default A.I. and it does seem a little more aggressive. taken a long time for them to send a decent attack though. It had a bunch of hunters, grenadiers, devastators and a few other units but by the time they sent the attack I had an excellent counter force. . . 3 of them. The insane difficulty a.i. did not seem as aggressive. I am guessing that the default is (at least intended) supposed to "adapt" and get stronger and smarter the more you play. I did notice before the update that when I built a lot of units, it tried to build alot MORE. When I used the dragon often, it started building a ton of grenadiers and hunters with the "bird in a hand" upgrade.

The pace has slowed and I think I am starting to like it, but the A.I is now painfully slow. A few tweeks could hopefully improve the speed of the A.I.

Otherwise. I am thoroughly enjoying the game, I am looking forward to seeing the full finished game. Its an impressive and fun concept.

Oh, and the Zephyr dragon, yea it might not be very strong on its own, but It is definitely primarily focused on supporting your units. Pillar of restoration to give healing to all friendly units, healing breath, shields, a charm ability, and several other support powers. So, to counter a dragon with the Zephyr dragon, it would be best to get a ton of anti air. Grenadiers, Hunters with Bird-in-the-hand, fighters, Warlocks and Anti air guns. The dragons are powerful but with a bunch of anti air the dragon gets ripped to pieces.

That's how it's supposed to be. Zephyr dragons are support oriented and need to be bejing an army to be affective. It might improve by moving the Dragon Shield skill from Sabre Dragons to them.

Sabre Dragons get shield, mass heal and no fireball downtime. If they had Pillar of Fire/Heal they'd be the best unit evarrrrrrrr.

Call of Valour is a massive buff too, my favourite one.

Yes, yes. That's how it's supposed to be, and that's fine. I'm just letting people know what that matchup is like, since he asked about Dragon PvP. He zipped around, shredding me with armour-piercing rounds, wasting my troops with pillar of flame and eye of the Patriarch.

Changes coming guys

Me thinks me will try Hard after this campaign map is done (currently been doing Default runs pre and post-patch), but I will agree with Alastar and Stabbey that the AI (on Default) needs work. Nowadays I see it just... not doing much with its units, even if they have something like 15+ hunters/grenadiers/troopers with zeppelins and fighters, other than sitting in base. They will send three or five "scout" units to establish bases, but this happens way too slowly, in one direction and they tend to get clobbered by Hunter rushes.

On the campaign map itself, the AI is all aggressive and good - it caught me by surprise in the early game by taking away one of my "core" territories through amphibious assault *and* immediately building a factory on it afterwards to rushbuy units (attacked my capital to delay any response I could muster in the meantime). I thought that was a particularly pleasant touch, but come the mid and lategame, unless you are like attacking their capitals, the AI rarely sends more than 8-10 units. It will repeatedly send in 1 or 3 unit on suicide missions to my lands guarded by 10+ units. AI's threat calculation here needs a bit of work in this regard. They also definitely need to be building more naval warships (Dreadnoughts and Ironclads) for mounting naval invasions - they will use Cards to get those ships in play, but I have never seen the AI actually build them on the Risk Map, let alone Skirmish.

I have my fingers crossed for better AI (and double-crossed for revised maps that make Ironclads useful in 1v1).

Oh cool! Looking forward to the update.

Also, I just played a 1v1 a little while ago and I think a couple things could be done to balance the dragon.

1. Add a respawn time. Maybe somewhere between 5-10 seconds.
in our match I was gathering my forces and then he summons his dragon and attacks, I intercepted and killed him. he killed a couple light units.
He immediately respawns, kills a couple units, I kill him, he respawns, kills a couple units, I kill him. It repeats about 4 or 5 times before He kills me but before the last time I was looking at my army. . . or lack there of. I DID have a bunch grenadiers and warlocks in the army but apparently didn't help much. I have also noticed a common "missile tracking error." I attack a base with an anti air gun, the missile launches at me, I don't avoid it but it still basically "sticks" to my dragon, but it either does nothing or the explosion is delayed. (most of the time it works but it still seems to happen a little too often.)

2. The other dragon was spamming the right click and the jet pack recharge allowed him to evade almost everything. (except for my eye of the patriarch, HAHA!) He was able to jump around absurdly fast constantly while he was spamming the jet pack and never running out of charge because of how he timed his boosts. maybe add a 1 1/2 or 2 second delay after using the jet pack before it starts to recharge.I can see that being a problem, especially for people who prefer to use their army and just use the Zephyr dragon for support for example.

Also, the patch notes said the "Friends with benefits" skill works properly now, but the tool tip in multiplayer campaign still says "hits inflicted heal you for a total %0 of the damage done."

Yes, I think a 10-15 second respawn delay penalty for dying as a Dragon is a good idea, so killing an enemy Dragon is more rewarding. 5 seconds is too low since you can spawn anywhere you have forces. A 1.5-2 second delay in jetpack recharging sounds good as well.

I think the AI is there already but needs a lot of tweaking. If you remember past KS about DC, one of the last seconds of the video made the dragon move back and forth like an idiot.

The only thing I'm concerned when the AI has the dragon form is when they could build the units. I do hope they couldn't build units because it is very disadvantageous for the player if he can't build while the AI can in dragon form.

I would like to try pvp with players online but seems everyone i meet in the lobby seems content against AI opponents lately.

9 out of 10 lobbies i try to join i typically get kicked off in favor of all AI opponents.

ill do an only dragon battle with you. i have actually been wanting to do one lately. my steam name is Hunter, please message me when you get a game up

about the dragon's timer after a death and a boost, i think that 5 - 10 seconds after death would be good, but after a boost I would say .5 - .75
this may seem small but it should be enough to get hit by at least some of the things homing in on the dragon

Which hunter? I see on steam multiple hunters as a profile name...

Only one that i found that had a inkling to being from texas was a private profile that had texas in its hyperlink.

steam url:
http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198036609515