Larian Studios Forums Dragon Commander Dragon Commander - Beta Can the AI get a dragon?

Hey guys,

I was just wondering, is there any way to play against an AI that has its own dragon? It always feels like a stomp using the dragon powers against an enemy who can't do anything like that in retaliation. Does anyone whether AI with dragons is available somehow, or even planned for the full game at all?

Thanks for any replies

There are no AI dragons currently available, and no plans have been mentioned for them. Presumably the AI would need to be much more elaborate than troop AI.


Welcome to the forum.

The manual also describes units as specifically good/weak against Player Dragons, not just Dragons, and the story suggests that only the player faction of single-player has a Dragon.

I don't think there's any AI Dragon that could match a player in skill.

Thats quite a waste as what made the game fun is because of the dragons but the AI doesnt use it at all. This made single player skirmishes less fun since the AI is handicapped heavily because they dont use dragons while the player can obliterate them easily.

The AI dragon doesnt have to match a player in skill, it just has to be decently competent. Not everyone is keen to play a multiplayer game to see their opponents using dragons, thats why a good skirmish AI is essential to a strategy game. Instead, some people just want to play alone or just in comp stomps. Other RTS studios like GPG, Iron Clad, Blizzard and Relic realised that needs among some players and they had given their games decent skirmish AI. It doesnt have to world class AI that will beat most players but a reasonably competent one that will use all the options the game has, which includes AI dragons spawning.

I sincerely hope Larian Studios will patch in AI dragons at one point.

he speaks the truth, i comp stomp more than PvP, hopefully a decent, even if slightly questionable a.i dragon was included. would spicen things up, and make me worry for my troops.

The problem is making an AI Dragon which can move like a player can without being too hard to hit or too easy to hit, without being too accurate nor too inaccurate. I haven't done a lot of Dragon versus Dragon myself, but what I've seen does not make me think that it's possible to make a good AI dragon.

I agree on all of these points. The dragon would be no where near as good as a player dragon. However I thought that the story was a battle between dragon knights. Also since there is only one dragon where did all the other dragons come from?

The story has changed greatly. At one point, you used to be fighting against the forces of the One God religion, led by the evil Aurora. Now, there's no mention of that religion, and Aurora was your mother who was murdered.

I'm sure that there probably were plans to have AI Dragons, but I suspect Larian realized how difficult it would be to try and get them to work.

And to your other question, in Divinity 2 there is only one dragon left in Rivellon, but Dragon Commander is set thousands of years before then.

Dragon spawning is a feature in the game, so why is the AI being left out from using it while people get to fight with dragons in multiplayer? I hope this is not Larian saying that comp stompers and single player skirmishers have to be left with a less complete game. Not everyone is keen on playing multiplayer games, to be honest, where even highly competitive games like Starcraft 2 found out that people actually like to have decent AI opponents which is patched in later on in the expansion.

I would like to point to games like Freelancer, Galaxy on Fire or any 3D space flight games where they have AI could drive ships in 3D space. Galaxy on Fire is developed by a small studio to begin with. Even Homeworld's AI can deal with 3D space reasonably. Sure you do not have to make the dragons flies as good as space sims, but the feature should be present in some ways to accommodate all players. The dragons doesnt have to fly in some complex patterns but it has to be functional and present as at the moment, skirmish felt incredibly underwhelming because the lack of AI dragons made it felt unfinished. No doubt I can ignore the use of dragon spawning so that i'll be on even ground but then, whats the point of playing a RTS/Flight hybrid called Dragon Commander? At the same time, I could play any other RTS that I currently own.

Also, what happens if you have a 2v2 multiplayer where there are only 3 human players? Does the person who is the only human player on the team has to be handicapped heavily because the fairly competent RTS AI couldnt use dragons? Sure, you can open a game to public, but then, what happens if it is a private game between friends who doesnt want to mess with random strangers?

I felt that the AI should use dragons at some point of the game's development, which I think it is perfectly fine if this feature is patched in after release but the main point is, some assurance that the dragons will be used by AI from the developers would be greatly appreciated.

I would imagine that people freaking out thinking that this game will be "Incomplete" is not really helping the situation. Think of the complexity involved with writing an AI script so they use the dragon in a fair way, or even the level of multi tasking it would require for the AI to decide when to use dragon form or when to stay in RTS mode. I am sure by the time the game is released they will have written a code to include the AI in the dragon fun because playing the campaign as the only dragon commander would be dull. So hold your horses folks, it's coming.

Or, maybe will they implement "bosses" in the different Capitals we will crush in our thrust of power, like a giant dark priest who cast fireballs like hell, meaning we HAVE to use our Draconic form to kill it... Or wait and see your armie being destroyed... We have to wait and see, and this gonna be awesome

I think there needs to be some additional balancing agent in place to work around this such as an increased initial spawn cost in game or a gold requirement to play the dragon on the campaign but fundamentally I feel like this is a good thing in many ways. The Dragon is a play element that is fun to play with, but frustrating to play against. Playing with a Dragon but against superior forces or against an AI with a card bonus creates interesting asymmetries.

I completely agree. It sounds like from what I've gleaned from preview videos that the player is at a disadvantage in the story mode's strategic map (I might be wrong though as this is all based on seeing a few videos). It looks like the player has to use his/her dragon in the RTS map to turn the tides of a losing battle on the strategic map which would be quite fun. Taking on an outnumbering and higher tech army and using your dragon powers to turn the tide sounds awesome to me even without an AI dragon. That said multi-player comp stomps would suffer unless you put the AI on a harder difficulty to compromise.

I'll go one step further; if you listen to the introductory theme for DC; exactly one person should have a dragon (at least in the campaign). In fact one could argue that there is something amiss that more than one person (in the campaign or skrimish - person or ai) has a dragon...

It's not said what happened to Aurora in the intro though, perhaps we will meet her, and what'll be her stance in the assassination of her husband?. Perhaps she's the one who set the plot! *dumdumdumduuuuuuuuuuuum*

It's only 3 "dum"s, not 4.

An AI dragon is doable, but would require its own programming, separate from the RTS and campaign AI. A pretty difficult inclusion that may appear in a later, post-launch patch, if not already included (and it doesn't seem to be already included).

What else is there to say? We want it, but it's not going to happen overnight.

the one im thinking of is 4

Beethoven's 5th symphony - First Movement

According to the manual the Architect murdered Aurora, which caused Sigurd, the emperor to become depressed which allowed his children to murder him. The only one not to take part was the PC who was sent to Maxos. At least that's what I gathered from the story so far.

Perhaps I should read the background in the manual.... But are you sure you don't mean the Engineer? I had not expected him to have anywhere near the amount of power required to kill a dragon