inquisitor's 39 AI challenge turn 39:



There are two major competitors, Bronze on the East, and Sea Green on the West. Both have approximately the same income as I do, perhaps more. My strategy is to keep the big AIs' stacks relatively isolated, while I swarm around them and into their bonus territory. Meanwhile, I'm steam-rolling into the weaker AIs' bonuses to gain income. The AI is very predictable, and this allows me to use just-enough defenders to keep my territories, with just-enough surviving attackers left over (after delay moves) to steal neighbouring AIs' territories. It's a bit tedious, but it's also pretty much inevitable to win.

At this point, I'm steam-rolling my way South to complete Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana, at which point I should be in a good enough position to start beating back the big competitors.

I play a ton of Real-Time games. They are my favorite to play, but I always see more Multi-Day games on the front page. I'm not the best at WarLight, so I like to play more experienced players, to get practice and become better at the game. If there is never anyone to play, then how do I practice and get better?

join the real time ladder and play 1v1 auto games

well done man!good job

My favourite way to increase AIs' strength (if you want it to be 1-on-1):

* Start each player with a Sanctions card, and set the duration to something very long (e.g. 500 turns). The AI doesn't use them; you will play your own on yourself. Now that AI has a significant production advantage against you and is a serious opponent.

You can also:

* Make Reinforcement cards very common. However, make a rule for yourself to never use them. (So only the AI has the advantage.)

I decided to end inquisitor's 39 AI challenge when it became clear that the two big competitors were no longer able to grow or defend themselves from my encroachment. Here's the link again so you can see for yourself: https://www.warlight.net/MultiPlayer?GameID=9690458

Final turn (51):


Income history:


The end-game gets exceedingly tedious, especially on such a large map, but you just essentially have to wear the big competitors down, while keeping their big stacks isolated and constantly shrinking. For a sanity check, the last several turns took about an hour and a half to complete each one. In the 50-ish total turns, I made 11,650 orders (233 per turn on average): about 4250 deploys, 4087 transfers (incl. delay moves), and only 3313 attacks. The two big competitors only made a grand total of 5,364 and 3,876 orders each, about half as much or less than mine.

And, as it turns out, I screwed up the first of Riryo's games by getting booted (forgot it wasn't single-player and was focused on finishing inquisitor's first). I think I'll let that one count as a loss, and not bother to start a new one, since Riryo said 2 out of 3 would be sufficient. I might have been able to win it in the long run, but as you can see how tedious these games can get, it would probably have taken a great deal of time to dig myself out of that income disadvantage. Here's the link: https://www.warlight.net/MultiPlayer?GameID=9683128

(In that game, there was a budding competitor on the East coast, who would have eventually made contact with the big competitor on the West. If I were able to survive that initial wave from the East, I would have been able to let those two duke it out while I steal away their territories bit by bit until my income got up to their levels. At that point, I would have been able to win. But again, it looks like that game would have taken several days of tedious play to get there. I think I'll be satisfied with just a 2 out of 3 record.)

One thing you can do to eliminate the end-game tediousness is to play with an AI team-mate, and once you have dominated the income, like the two games above, you let your AI team-mate grow until it's safe enough for you to surrender and let your team-mate take over to 'clean up' the end-game. You can help this along with gift cards so that before you surrender you can give your team-mate a head start in gobbling up your territories, to ensure some other AI doesn't get them first.

If you want to keep the difficulty even, then play in teams of 2. If you want to increase difficulty, keep your team at 2, but increase the size of the other teams: 3, 4, 5, etc.

One nice thing about this is that you'll learn how the AI works when it's playing as part of a team. It can be really frustrating until you figure out its quirks, but once you've figured it out, it's pretty straightforward.

Well done, wct.

I can see how tedious it can be to play with AIs in such a very big map.

Personally I don't think it is joyful to match against AIs. They are far too stupid. They are very predictable if you take some time to observe their behavior. Then you can exploit their stupidity and make full use of it.

One thing you can do to eliminate the end-game tediousness is to play with an AI team-mate, and once you have dominated the income, like the two games above, you let your AI team-mate grow until it's safe enough for you to surrender and let your team-mate take over to 'clean up' the end-game. You can help this along with gift cards so that before you surrender you can give your team-mate a head start in gobbling up your territories, to ensure some other AI doesn't get them first.

Do NOT do this. If you surrender the AI will VTE. (Exception, in a tourney a rnd winner is picked)
You can however give your land to your AI, and commit "blank" turns were you only deploy. But you need to be alive. {This applies to multiplayer}

Oh, and good job wct. I have done a similar challenge before and lost my patience way earlier.

Edited 10/27/2015 19:10:35

Do NOT do this. If you surrender the AI will VTE. (Exception, in a tourney a rnd winner is picked)

I think that may only be the case with multi-player games. In single-player, you definitely can have AIs playing against AIs until the end, as I've done it many times. Just play around with the settings until it works the way you want. It is definitely workable.

There are some maps which are better than others for this kind of game. I used to play Land of Kalador (https://www.warlight.net/Map/9071-Land-Kalador) quite a bit because different areas on the map are structured differently, so the game-play keeps changing as you move from one area to the next. Also, with random starting positions, you can find yourself with different challenges in the opening-game each time you play. Issander's Huge World (https://www.warlight.net/Map/6496-Issanders-Huge-World) is also good like that.