strange AI behavior

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heya,

i just finished a games on tough level, huge galaxy, other options default, yor-race with industrialist government.

I started the game, quickly researching some weapons and first ship i bought was a 1 weapon fast engines fighter.
I managed to destroy all colony ships of my human neighbour. Then the first strange thing happend. The human protected
his planets with ship which had NO weapon or defence at all, just empty hulls.
I think the AI should be able to save resources for research some weapons before producing ships. Those defenders were
useless anyway, it wasnt too hard to guess that in this early stage i couldnt have researched planetary invasion. Anyway humans were history some turns l8ta.
Their neighbours, the Thalan Empire, was even behaviong strange, once my little armada cleared off any orbiting ships, it was only a matter of some turns to spam enough invasion troops.
Hmm, capturing their planets, i found them building entertainment networks nearly all over the place... At least they were happy to be conquered. So why does the AI on its hardest AI level such nonsense? The Thalan could have been able to
counter my attack, if resources wouldnt have been used more wisely...
The Drengin was the most powerful race long time, their military light years away from my all-out nearly no research low level ship spam. But when i came to war with them, the dregin left most of their ships orbiting planets, only some planets had orbital defences. Most of them could be cleared 1by1. Instead of moving those ships outta orbit to form a devastating strike force, the dregin preferred to die like a sitting duck. There were some attempts, to spam unprotected colony ships, and he managed to capture 2 planets back... but that was really all before they sacrificed their way better ships to mine.
The Torians made the best deal: they were last to be ion galaxy and i was able to offer them enough to get all their planets,
rofl .

Conclusion: I think AI should be able to make more useful decision compared to the situation the NPC race is in. It would have been easy for the NPC Races to stop my all out low level crusade with that resources they had in their hands.
Dont take me wrong, i dont demand the AI to be unbeatable and unstoppable machine, but at least it shouldnt do such dump things on highest possbile AI level (if i understood that right, tough = highest AI without boni).

my 2 cents,

greets
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5,798 views 5 replies
Reply #1 Top
Yeah, the AI still makes some blunders.

Recently, the AI has been doing the exact opposite of what the Thalans did in your game. They build tons of farms, but few morale buildings. My guess is that this is an attempt to counter my soldiering advantage, but it doesn't really work because it just means low morale + Info warfare = easy victory for me.

The empty hulls is presumably meant to counter militarisation before the AI itself has weapons. It isn't ENTIRELY stupid, but perhaps they should have concentrated more on making guns of their own... To be honest, and empty hull isn't that expensive so they probably didn't cripple themselves that much.

The problem is, the AI isn't good at intercepting fleets. This means that it has to concentrate on defending each planet with ships in orbit. This isn't great even with an Orbital Fleet manager but without... Maybe in that case they should only put one combat ship in orbit to stop the troop transports?
Reply #2 Top
Hi!
The empty hulls is presumably meant to counter militarisation before the AI itself has weapons.

The main problem with current AI is it designs its ships only once in a year. So when their design turn passes, it will use the ships it designed through the following year no matter what you do. That's how I've beaten suicidal Drengin in a duel in tiny map. They got everything (but pop) triple of mine, but NO WARSHIPS. I won with 5 tiny hull ships with 1 engine and 1 cheapest weapon.

BR, Iztok
Reply #3 Top
I played tough for quite a while too with the same argument (why should the AI get bonuses when I don't) until I realized that an experienced player in fact gets massive boni from his human capacity to learn. For instance, the player usually gets the majority of wonders and trade goods, knows how to use economy starbases effectively and so on.

Try painful or crippling difficulty. There is some difference, but not such a huge one it's no longer possible to win.
Reply #4 Top
with each version... I think the AI gets better...

only thing I do not understand is..

WHY DO THEY NOT RESEARCH THE DIPLOMACY TECHS???


they are always trying to trade me for it... even towards the end of the game where is would be really easy for them to research it.. we are on par in weapons and defense research.... when I trade it to them, they ally like crazy and have galactic wars, but if not.. they usually just fight one another until a truely weak opponenet surfaces and then everyone jumps in and a free for all begins...


Oh yea... I have very, very fast troop transports... so I wait for the comp to clean up a sector and remove defenses and then I jump in and steal the planet


the Ai could do it too, but they would need to make their ships incredibly fast.. which it normally isn't.
Reply #5 Top
the Ai could do it too, but they would need to make their ships incredibly fast.. which it normally isn't.


I regularly see ships with 9, 14 and 16 movement from the AI. Scares the s**t out of me sometimes. They are rarely used to their advantage though, maybe they cant see far enough to truely appreciate that speed whereas you and I can just roam around a look for targets of oppertunity.