AI dumber in v1.2?

A game on Crippling difficulty

from GalCiv2 Forums
I had recently download the 1.2 patch and began playing a game on Crippling difficulty. After my intial exploration and colonization of the galaxy, I noticed that mainly the evil civilizations did not colonize any planets, ones that were very close to their home world.

It wasn't until the midgame that other civs colonized them and the evil civs still just sat there. Figuring it was just a glitch, I quicksaved and restarted the game hoping it would fix itself even though they were going to be doomed anyways.

After the game started up again, I started talking with the evil civs and went to see how much money they had and they had each over 20k! This led me to believe that either they were insanely thrifty with their cash, or they simply did not use it. I looked down to see what ships they had available, but they both had a substantial amount of ships. I didn't know what was going on.

It wasn't too long before the Altarians came along with their zealous dogma to destory all evil and wiped both the Drengin and the Yor out easily. The only other civ leaning towards evil (other than myself, I can't help but not to pass up those planet quality events) was the Korx, who were also struggling with their one planet. Knowing that I was next in line for a war with the Altarians, I becasme chums with the Korx and traded some tech and ships to them to bolster them up with the intentions of using them as decoys, giving myself more time to bolster up my military.

Doing just what I had hoped for, the Korx declared war on the Altarians after they declared war on me. The Korx disptached the ships I gave them while I held off still researchingtechs and upgrading my ships. The Korx preformed well and while the Altarians pushed through their defenses, I positioned my military and began to take the Altarian worlds all the way to their capitol which fell easily. I again tarded more ships to the Korx and they used them to finish off the Altarians remaining fleets. It was only after this did the Korx build any troop transports and taking other planets. And after the Altarians surrendered to me, the Korx began building their own ships and taking other planets and wiping out other civs.

The alliance between the Korx and I lasted the rest of the game and we dominated the other civs. I would really like to know how the events in the beginning took place and why they did. The AI should've have been able to explore and colonize other worlds and at least build up their military forces to defend well against other opponents. Has anyone else come across something similiar to this?
9,740 views 17 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I was surprised after 1.2 to see civs not colonizing, even on "Masochistic" in some of my games. I turned off "Randomize AI intelligence" and never had the problem again. I suppose these civs were randomly assigned zero intelligence.
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
While that may be true, I didn't have that option turned on...
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Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I have only played one game under 1.2 so far but I had a similar problem. The Yor would colonize no problem but they never seemed to build more than a couple of ships. I built tons of troop transports and walked all over their undefended planets. It was really wierd. They never attacked me once in the entire game and only a VERY small percent of planets had any ships defending them.

Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I just finished a game under 1.2 and everyone colonized pretty well. Most races had 7 or 8 planets in a medium galaxy. While I did prevail, the Drengin in particular gave me a good run for my money.

However, once my espionage was good, it still looks like the other races just aren't developing their planets very well. Yes, they now put the right things on the right tiles, but to still have many empty tiles late in the game is pretty unexcusable. Also it appears that the AI should have either the ability to move it's capitols to another planet or at least be programmed to wait until it is finished colonizing before building any of them. To have a planet with a 700% research tile and not have their research capitol on that planet is pretty dumb, particularly when the planet it was on only had 1 research tile developed.
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I played a game where I put the overall difficulty on masochistic, with 6 random opponents (but NOT randomized intelligences), and in the game two races were doing next to nothing. I was confused until I checked their intelligence (Check the races intelligence in the stats tab, under miscellaneous) and noticed they were somehow set to subnormal.

something similar has probably happened with you. Try clicking on each race in the screen where you choose your opponents and making sure each is on whatever level you want them on before you start, dont just rely on the overall difficult slider, I think it might have some issues on occasion.
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Well, I have already started a new game and have saved over the previous one with that problem. If a problem similiar to this occurs again, I'll check on that.

A theory I think may have been a cause is the inital installation of the 1.2 patch had set all options to default, but said differently on the game setup menus. Any ideas?
Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
When it happened to me it was a fresh install (on a laptop) updated straight away to 1.2 before playing. It happened the first game I played on that install. I didnt touch the individual intelligences at all, just the overall slider to masochistic, and somehow ended up with 4 incredible races (what they should all have been) and two subnormal races.

cant even have been random intellegences set without me noticing (i'm sure it wasnt anyway), because that only changes each intelligence by a small random amount (i remember reading that in one of the dev journals)

so, no idea at all what went wrong.
Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I have the same problem, in any game, some civs are siting on their buts doing absolutely nothing. From game to game its different which civs are hit by this "problem".

Reply #9 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Sounds like they have a modulus arithmetic error where its checking the random value against the mod of the max intel level, and when they are equal it evaluates to 0 (ie. 2 mod 2 == 0;), so civs that should be at the highest INT level are being reset to 0 by mod'ing against the wrong value (prob should be rndIntValue mod (MaxIntVal + 1) or something).

probably need a patch to fix it too...

Cheers,
Reaver
Reply #10 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I have had that happen twice. The other civilizations did not colonize any planets, they just sat there. Very frustrating since I had found some good planets to develop, too. They did send out the occasional scout ship, but that was it.
Reply #11 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Yep exactly the same thing happening here in multiple games. I did a fresh install and updated it to 1.2 . Still happening
Reply #12 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I do see this a little. I will start a new game tonight and check that every civ's intelligence is on the highest one possible. I shall report back tomorrow.
Reply #13 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
This thread needs to be renamed and moved to the bug forum.
Reply #14 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Something like this happened to mee too, but only for the arceans out of 6 races on a medium challenging map (with randomized intellignece). It was weird, the arceans colonized 4 planets, but didn't build any attack or defense ships, only tons of constructors and freighters!
Reply #15 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
The AI in my games has begun (as of 1.2) to build huge swarms of freighters. Huge. As in, I have 5 different freighters hitting my front planets every turn, LONG after all the civs' trade routes are totally full, and they're all sending that many to all other civs.

Also, they seem to be glitchy on starbases. They build mining bases okay, even fortifying them sometimes, but they don't defend military bases (they put on support modules but not attacks or defenses). They build economy bases all over the place but far from their own planets or trade routes, then upgrade them with trade modules. They build swarms of influence bases but never, ever upgrade them, at all.

Still, they're a lot smarter while at war. I'm surprised they ever make it that far, but I guess it's an improvement.

(I usually play on Tough.)
Reply #16 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
This has happend to me too. while playin battle of the gods mode the yor dregin and korx dont do anything but colonize a few worlds and build medium class ships the torians altarins iconniacs and arkanins come and kick their butts then gang up on me the only evil civ left This has happend 5 times so far and i am using the cpu intensive option for ai and on tough lvl
Reply #17 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
bump