Tactical AI too basic
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Stardock Forums
Stardock Forums
I know this has been covered before, but I just have to bring up again that the combat AI (even at high levels) in GalCiv far too basic. The only trick it seems to know is to have each of it's ships head to the closest enemy unit/world. Which of course leaves it wide open to many exploits: impaling the AI on heavy fortifications, luring away whole battle groups with sensor drones, picking off (the consistently) unescorted non-com ships.
A couple of simple suggestions that hopefully shouldn't be too hard to implement:
1) Evaluate target planets with a simple forumla (i.e. avg distance from your worlds / defender strength) instead of heading bee-line to the closest
2) Escort and/or muster Troop transports
3) Assign ships proportional to the threat they deal with (send corvettes, not battleships after drones)
And I understand that adding rules to a complex system can have unpredictable results. But at the very least, suggestions #1 and #2 should be relatively straightforward and provide for a much more interesting tactical challenge for the player.
A couple of simple suggestions that hopefully shouldn't be too hard to implement:
1) Evaluate target planets with a simple forumla (i.e. avg distance from your worlds / defender strength) instead of heading bee-line to the closest
2) Escort and/or muster Troop transports
3) Assign ships proportional to the threat they deal with (send corvettes, not battleships after drones)
And I understand that adding rules to a complex system can have unpredictable results. But at the very least, suggestions #1 and #2 should be relatively straightforward and provide for a much more interesting tactical challenge for the player.
build an armada and then attack in force or pick a sector and defend in force. the AI likes to send one ship at a time to attack. this makes killing it and the fleeing to safety very easy. if the AI had an algorithm to determine staging points (perhaps important locations that need to be well defended) and then sent out attack squads from there, this would dramatically increase the AI's effectiveness.