plan to apply SCS's AI to SoA/ToB?

[Lemernis]

David, this mod is remarkable. I think it's truly a landmark mod, and probably destined to be the most influential of any written to date. You've improved the game vastly from what the developers gave us. I don't think that I will ever again play the game in its original state after experiencing it in the SCS form.

 

Once you've stomped all the bugs and polished and refined the AI, do you have any plans to apply the same scripts to SoA/ToB? Is there a Lands of Intrigue Stratagems in the future?

[DavidW]

David, this mod is remarkable. I think it's truly a landmark mod, and probably destined to be the most influential of any written to date. You've improved the game vastly from what the developers gave us. I don't think that I will ever again play the game in its original state after experiencing it in the SCS form.

 

Well, it's very kind of you to say so, though I think you're exaggerating!

 

Once you've stomped all the bugs and polished and refined the AI, do you have any plans to apply the same scripts to SoA/ToB? Is there a Lands of Intrigue Stratagems in the future?

 

Since you ask: yes, I will produce something similar for BG2 at some point (I have home versions of a lot of it already) though it probably won't be on the same scale as SCS. And I don't have any sort of timescale (it being term time and all...)

[Lemernis]

Lol! Heh, well I may be overstating it just a little. Still, at the risk of sounding fawning, personally I do find the difference to be almost that dramatic. Enemies are now finally behaving as devoted fans for years have always imagined they really should. It's quite a leap. At least tactically speaking, you've very nearly given us a brand new game to play. Or refreshed that experience nearly to that point.

 

There's a relatively easy method to defeat most opponents in vanilla BG2 based on the AI limitations. For example, to defeat a liche just use scrolls of magic protection. To defeat virtually any monster at all--be it a liche, dragon, Bhaalspawn, Melissan, et al--just lay down eight spike traps. Maybe Tactics and Ascension addresses that (I've yet to try them), but I look forward to whatever you devise to fix those exploits.

 

To witness SoA and ToB mages, with their much higher level spell selections and HLAs, behaving as the SCS mages do ought to be really something. Glad to hear it's in the works!

[sturmvogel]

I do think that the enemy behavoir is much better in SCS than it was before, but the improvements seem to be mostly with the spellcasters and, to a lesser degree, missile-equipped enemies. Ordinary melee combat seems to be about the same. I can still send my tank forward and the monsters will all focus their attacks on him while the rest of the party slaughters them with impunity with missiles. My leading killer in the party is Kivan as an Archer with about 40% of all kills.

 

I'd recommend looking at the AI section of BP as that's the best I've seen yet. The monsters focus on penetrating past my frontline fighters and attack the people with my weakest armor classes, which totally disrupts my normal combat routines. My mages and thieves are running to avoid the damn trolls after their stoneskins are stripped and everybody has to focus on containing the closest monsters rather than the most dangerous.

 

I only played a little with Improved Anvil, not really enough to get a feel for his AI improvements, but I was more concerned with surviving the battle in the Copper Coronet as he'd improved the guards there far more than I was expecting. Unfortunately I had to dump the game because of some install-related oddities and I've been more focused on other mods of late.

[SimDing0]

I'm intrigued that nobody every draws comparisons with Quest Pack's AI. Maybe it's so bad you can't tell the difference.

[DavidW]

I'm intrigued that nobody every draws comparisons with Quest Pack's AI. Maybe it's so bad you can't tell the difference.

 

Actually I think SCS and the QuestPack AI have quite a lot in common (though QP came out after my last run-through of BG2 so I'm going on the code rather than in-game experience). I interpret the philosophy of QP AI to be: make the monsters as intelligent as they ought to be - that is, for most of them given the limitations of the IE, make them as intelligent as possible. So QP doesn't seriously muck with the abilities of creatures but it goes in for loooong scripts that actually get the targetting done intelligently.

 

There seems to be a divide between tactics mods that mostly work by AI intelligence and those that mostly work by enhanced abilities. The divide goes roughly through the middle of Tactics; SCS and QP are on one side along with things like Smarter Mages and Smarter Mind Flayers from Tactics; IA and Grey Clan are on the other along with things like Improved Kangaxx. That's not particularly a comment on what's better, although obviously my own preference is for the former!