ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

The AI in Lords of Midnight is actually very basic. This is not surprising considering the machines that is was written for and the time. Things have changed an awful lot in computers terms over the years and to consider calling Doomdark's rules "AI" is probably stretching it a little. However, as simple as they are, they do achieve their goal extremely well and make Lords of Midnight a very playable game.

Route Nodes
Route nodes are in essence the small thing that makes LOM's AI different than DDR's. In my opinion it is also the thing that makes LOM better. There are about 112 specially marked locations that are designated route nodes. 102 of these are the keeps and citadels, the remaining are;

See Strategic Locations for full list.

Each one of these route nodes points to two other route nodes. In general they point down the map and culminate at the Citadel of Xajorkith. They essentially allow Doomdark to walk down the map and make his attack on Xajorkith in a controlled and interesting manor.

Regiments of the witchking
Doomdark has to his disposal, 128 roaming regiments. These armies are given set goals to achieve and they can freely wander the map trying to achieve these goals.

Movements in the night
The regiment is given 6 turns in one night. Each action they take will cost them various amounts on their turns. Warriors movement uses double that of the riders. Moving into a location costs 1 turn. However moving into a mountain or forest location uses 4 turns. ( Warriors 2 and 8 respectively )
On a night by night basis the regiment will firstly consider the location they are in. If there is something interesting about the location then they will stay there and forgo all their remaining turns for the night. They then consider all the surrounding adjacent locations, should something be of interest in any of these they will attempt to move into that location and forgo their remaining turns.

(The interesting flag is only set when one of the lords are there etc.)

Only after nothing interesting is surrounding them do they consider their goals.

Goals to achieve
The goal types are simply; goto, follow, wander and route.

GOTO
The regiment will go to a given route node only while something interesting is there. As soon as the interesting flag is reset then the regiment goes about its business as usual. This can affectively stop a regiment in its tracks. Eg. A regiment is heading toward the Tower of the Moon at the beginning of the game. As soon as all lords have left that location then the regiment stops heading toward it. The regiment will then stay at its current location unless something interesting occurs around them. If a lord should enter the Tower of the Moon at a later stage, the regiment will resume its goal of heading toward the tower.

FOLLOW
The regiment will follow and attack their given target lord. As soon as this lord is dead they follow Luxor, if he is dead they go onto Morkin.

WANDER
The regiment wanders aimlessly. Each turn they pick a random direction and as long as it is not frozen wastes they move into it. If the location is frozen wastes they pick another random direction.

ROUTE
The regiment goes to the given route node. When they arrive at the node they randomly pick which of the two optional route nodes this node points to and make this their new target.

The Initial Campaign 
In the beginning Doomdark's regiments have their goals split.

10 Regiments (10,000 riders) are set to follow Luxor.
3 Regiments ( 3,000 riders ) are set to follow Morkin.
21 Regiments ( 21,000 riders ) are set to follow other Lords.
The lords not being followed are;
Whispers, Lothoril, Korinel, Utarg, Fawkrin, Lorgrim and Farflame.
All these regiments start at the Citadel of Ushgarak.

8 Regiments ( 9,600 riders ) start at Usgarak and route from there.
4 Regiments ( 4,800 warriors ) start at Vorgath and route from there.
4 Regiments ( 4,800 warriors ) start at Grarg and route from there.
22 Regiments ( 9,600 riders, 16,800 warriors ) start and route at Kor.
20 Regiments ( 4,800 riders, 19,200 warriors ) start and route at Korkith..
12 Regiments ( 6,000 riders, 6,000 warriors ) start with the wander command – most of these are north except 1,000 warriors who start at the Lith of Ashimar.
4 Regiments ( 4,800 warriors ) start at Ushgarak and goto Ushgarak – affectively bringing them back there should they move away caused by someone coming very close.

The rest are in the keeps and citadels around Ushgarak with goto commands making them home back to Ushgarak or the other citadels should they be attacked.
See Doomdark's Regiments for full list.

The Battle Algorithm
Battle ensues as soon as Doomdark's army is at the same location as a Lord of the free.

The order is...
All characters armies are split into riders and warriors and added to the battle separately.

1. All the characters get first initiative.
Their strength is used as their number of hits and their energy ( +128 ) is used as success chance per attack. character and army Energies are in the range of 0-127. Thus lords are given an advantage.

Skirmish
for every hit a random number between 0 and 255 is picked. If this is less than their success then they have made a successful attack. A random army is then picked from the list of foes. A random number between 0 and 255 is picked, and if this is greater than the foes success then 5 soldiers are killed. If the soldiers for this army reach 0 then it is removed from the list.

2. All the Free armies get second initiative.
The total number of soldiers are divided by five and used as the number of hits. Their strength is used as the success chance. The skirmish is then the same as the character.

3. All Doomdark's armies get final initiative.
The calc is the same as for the free. Their success chance is based on the ice fear and will be slightly higher for riders.  The higher the ice fear the better success chance they have. Doomdark's armies also get a benefit from battles at a citadel.

So their can never be a draw because of the order. The free would always have the advantage of first blood with small number of soldiers in both friend and foes.

Your country needs you! - Recruitment
Unlike DDR, recruitment in LOM is fixed and thus very simple.
Each Lord has a recruiting mask and a recruited mask. To see if a recruit succeeds; for the Lord who is approaching , his recruiting mask is anded over the other Lord's recruited mask. If any bits remain then recruiting is successful.

Because this is fixed, it can be displayed in a table. See Recruitment.

Lord of Death
Should a Lord lose a battle or fight against Dragons etc. First, there is a 50/50 chance he will lose his horse. Then a random number is picked and compared against his Base Life Status + ((current energy/2)-64)

If it is bigger then the Lord dies. During battle if the lord loses he is randomly misplaced into another location near by.

Fighting Dragons, Wolves, Giants and Skulkrin
Fighting any of these enemies is calculated to see if the lord dies. If the Lord survives then the enemy is dead. Dragons are automatically slayed by the sword dragonslayer and Wolves by the sword wolfslayer.