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AI in need of a tune up, or a boot to the head?

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AI in need of a tune up, or a boot to the head?

from GalCiv2 Forums
"Sophisticated diplomatic engine makes sure politics takes a center stage as well."

Never has a dirtier lie been told. There is nothing sophisticated about it. Its a place for the basic trading of technology and resources. You can't colaberate on laws you vote on, you can't wage limited wars for set bits of land, you can't form a block to deal with a particular enemy.

And the AI's idea of diplomacy is random war. Completely random war. Like, "But wait, your a good aligned civ, and we have hundreds of billions in trade, and have been at peace for like, ever!" "Yeah but your military is smaller then ours" random war.

Speaking of military, is there a reason EVERY civilization in a 7 player game has ONLY ship tech? Miniturization, Logistics, Beam weapons, and Shields (They rarely use mass drivers and NEVER use missiles).

Also... all of their planets, with their basic teir 1 factories seem fully capable of chruning out ships faster then my Manufacturing plants (Ok, its on Suicidal, I guess that makes sense) and that's all they do. All day long. Every turn from the word go. They just churn out more and more warships. And then hurle them at you like a monkey throwing its feeces at a zoo goer.

And one of the races that did that? Just lost over half its planets to me. AND STILL WILL NOT END THE WAR. Because their military, though weaker on a ship per ship basis, and highly spread out, is still statisticly stronger then mine.

THEY LOST HALF THEIR PLANETS AND THEY WAN'T ME TO SURENDER. Sophisticated diplomacy... right.
15,088 views 33 replies
Reply #26 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
How about the AI of Europe Universalis 3 / diplomocy etc.. such kind of games? Are those games better at these things?
Reply #27 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
How about the AI of Europe Universalis 3 / diplomocy etc.. such kind of games? Are those games better at these things?
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I play a lot EU, and I still beat the crap out of the computer. It is not nearly aggressive ennough. I played France in my last game, and I felt perfectly safe leaving my entire homeland free of soldiers (save 15 cavalry regiments to crush rebellions) while I conquer South and Central America totally

And I do say, totally. France now owns all of it, from Brazil & Peru up to Louisiana & Mississipi.

Not counting the whole of Italy, save Rome.
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Reply #28 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I can't answer whether the AI could be programmed for better diplomacy but as to the tech choices, AI in any game is based on attrition, attrition and attrition and in this game that means war. It is natural for the AI to research ship tech.

(BTW they often choose missiles in my games)
Reply #29 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
The Civ 4 AI is not only benefited by easier mechanics, i.e. how cities are conquered, but cheats like hell at the very early levels


True. But that is the design choice of GC2. They decided to have a completely open game that the AI was supposed to be able to handle. If you're going to make ship design so powerfull, you'd better do a good job of programming the AIs to use it.

Also I believe the modding flexibility has hurt the base game. It's a great feature, but because of it the AIs need to be immensely more complex.

Again, that is a design choice GC2 took. Personally I think they bit off more than they could chew, and with TA it looks like they're taking an even bigger bite. I would think people would want better AI over what's in TA, but people are dumb...
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My point was that there is a tradeoff..do you want better mechanics or a better ai? a computer could play tic tac to better than it can civ 4 or galciv, but somehow i doubt you would find that enjoyable. So where do you draw the line. Please consider before you write stuff like this. Your threshold of 'good enough' might be different than that of many, and calling them 'dumb' because of their priorities makes you look like a jerk at best.


And as I've also said before, the galciv ai is fine. just as good as civ 4's in my mind with harder mechanics. if you prefer the mechanics of gal civ, its the better game.
Reply #30 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I'd just like to see the AI to have a plan ready before it declares war. Scout out what planets the enemy has, what PQ they are. How many defenders? How strong? What Attack? What Defense? What kind of important resources are nearby and are owned by the enemy? If they are, prefer morale and military resources(they increase both the chance of winning fleet to fleet, and ground battles)as first targets.

Target important trade worlds(just check how many trade routes each one has) to collapse economy, or to force the enemy to lower his spending, or even cause relations with other races to collapse to the brink of war. Check if he has allies, and check if those allies are allied with you as well, if not then check how close that ally is, and determine the earliest point of counterattack by the ally. Keep strong guard on the border he is likely to attack from. Basically the AI should have a list of important targets, and important choke points to defend. And check for allies, and the point which they will most likely attack from before declaring war.

Currently, usually the AI succeeds if it manages to pick on a weaker civ, but later game when there are quite extensive ally networks, it picks on a weaker but gets decimated by an alliance that is overall stronger than he, and his allies are. But sometimes it keeps declaring war without gaining any territory, while loosing much itself. Sometimes it declares war when it already is loosing three different wars, and makes no attempt at my territory cause it cannot spare any ships nearby.

It should also consider attacks which don't always necessitate gain of territory, but gain it galactic resources or other advantages it can utilize later, or right away. If some race has abundant military resources, why not grab a few from them to keep them from becoming too powerful?
Reply #31 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
You also have to take production capabilities into account. So what if the AI lost 9/10 of the battles? That doesn't necessarily mean you never lost any ships in those battles. If AI can rebuild its fleets faster than they are getting destroyed, and you can't, then it's winning the war.
I also wish the AI was better at handling strategic aspect of the wars. If it was something easy to program, I'm sure it would have been done ages ago by countless other games.
Hopefully one day AI will actually make a plan of operations before going to wars, but i am being an realist about it, but I'm also sure AI will get upgraded many times in the future patches.
Reply #32 from GalCiv2 Forums Top


And the AI's idea of diplomacy is random war. Completely random war. Like, "But wait, your a good aligned civ, and we have hundreds of billions in trade, and have been at peace for like, ever!" "Yeah but your military is smaller then ours" random war.

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I've also been bothered by the opposite - AI being too reluctant to declare war, no matter how close to victory I am. "Sure, this civilisation almost acheived technology victory, but we REALLY like them and also, they sell stuff to us. So let's leave them alone!"

Reply #33 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Do you people even know how difficult, expensive, and gigantic of a file a kind of AI your complaining about? Programming an AI is a difficult venturer. Back in the day programming pong's AI was difficult, now of course it's not. Obviously you did something to your AI's cpu usage because my AI resemble nothing of what you are saying. Besides, making (this is what you basically want) an entire brain and near conciense mind kind of can't be done. and with space GalCiv takes up about, what, 5GB, to get what you want go buy a Terabyte hard drive, and whoop-de-doo, you just filled up 500GBs just for an AI. So really I don't get what your saying I'm on beginner and my AI is more complicated than what your complaning about, and if you really think it needs fixed, e-mail Stardock.