AI sluggish/passive in colonizing?

Perhaps the AI forgot your were the human player?!>? (usually the AI loves to rush planets in range of human players and then takes a 'rest' once your fenced in).

I'm having a similar problem. I started a game on Windows Vista, and the game kept crashing. So I took the QuickSave, put it on a stick drive, and loaded it onto my old Windows XP computer. Now I got a spy on turn 15 and I'm looking at my opponents, and they have pretty crappy production. They haven't built one single structure. It's pretty obvious I'm going to win this game--and it's turn freakin' 15.

Where do I look in the debug.err file to see if the AI's are set to Fool?

edit: actually, I'll be happy just to find out for sure if they're Fools, however you do it. I just did a New Game and found the AI settings. It seems the AI settings don't appear in the debug.err file at all if you do a Load Game. Only New Game dumps the settings.

I don't know. The Altarians and Thalans have a pretty decent setup. Could be just luck of the draw.

@ Mystikmind: The AI doesn't have any indication of which player is the human, so they don't treat you differently.

While in game go to the Foreign Policy screen , stats tab and look under misc. It will show you the AIs intelligence.

Thanks DethAdder. Yep, the AI is set to fool. Changing OS's on my savegame did it. Shoot.

No problem. Since that has become an issue it is one of the first things I check after meeting the AIs in game. I personally have only had trouble with the Terran AI reseting and only a time or two at that. Guess I'm just lucky.   

Thats just what they want you to think!! lol

But seriously, i have seen allot of things that seem to indicate the AI is doing preferential targeting of planets closer to the human player. Usually a good indication of this is Mars getting claimed when there are better worlds yet unclaimed closer to their homeworld!

Also i will often find unclaimed planets of good quality some time after i thought the colony rush was over! Often in perplexing geographical circumstances when the location of AI homeworlds is taken into account!! It definately strongly indicates the AI is targeting planets near the human player.

A little further into the game - ive discovered several class 10 + planets uncolonized, some fairly close to AI colonies. The AI has taken several low class planets i skipped, but they kinda ignored systems that are towards the edge of the map... All in all, now that most planets are colonized, i have at least 3 times more colonies than the next AI, almost all of them above class 8. AI seems to have done horrible job with colonizing, not putting enough effort into it and not enough colony ships, and getting lots of low class planets while ignoring high class ones a little further out of the way...

Hi!

What would you expect from "fool" settings? AFAIK at fool they don't get just most of ther brains taken out, but also get only 10% of "standard" econ output. If you're already familiar with the game mechanics, I'd suggest you to restart the game, but don't do CTRL-N. You may get another fool AI.

BR. Iztok

Hey! I use the same tactics against AI Players! I mean the "bordering". Does it mean I am fool?

I just wish the AI would expand out methodically from it's homeworld so that the galaxy would end up with reasonably coherent boarders. I hate having AI planets diffused throughout my empire and each others empires, it is quite idiotic.

Why idiotic? It is certainly something that I would consider doing in a multiplayer game, in some cercumstances, to limit my opponents opportunities and to be generally disruptive. Especially if I thought that I could pick up the closer to home planets fairly easily later.

Note that I don't believe that the AI knows how many opponents there are until its faction encounters the others, so in the very early stages of expansion it is exploring/ expanding as if there were no opponents, or at most assumes the potential for 1.

drrider

Yes if that is the style of play you happen to feel like doing at the time. But it is idiotic if you want a more realistic expansion. If you take into account the expansion of various tribes on Earth... the typical goal has always been to secure relatively coherant, easy to manage boarders around ones empire. Did the french ever try to run agross Germany and build a settlement in Russia at any point in history? no of course not, because it would have been 'idiotic'.

That happens all the time on civ 3 world maps.

YES! it most certainly does, and it is most annoying when the AI rams a city so deep up your xxxxx you feel like going for some rape councelling!

If someone has a planet deep in your territory, he has a base from where he can send ships to your territory without any need of a live support. And it is a good thing. I like that. No live support = more space for weapons.

They still need Life Support:

1. If the planet is not an industrial planet and warships must be brought in from their main territory.

2. If they actually want to get those ships out of those 'staging base' influence bubbles.

Alternatively, they can just send a Constructor and build an influence starbase. Chances are they'll have to build influence starbases anyway if they want to hold on to that planet.

Unless your building influence starbases, it is very unlikely a powerful AI will have to worry about your influence. It is often funny to see how rediculously much territory a powerful race is given, sometimes their territory even extends around and behind mine, and they dont even have any planets near there!!

Without influence starbases, i have never seen a powerful AI loose a planet, not until after i have started kicking their ass in a war, only then do they start loosing planets to influence.