Does 1.03 Patch make AI tougher??

What I'm wondering if got changed was it seemed there just wasn't much of an enemy to fight. There would be some off the top but then really just nothing formidable at all. They never tried to take over any of my planets that were exposed to them etc.

Still on Hard the AI isn't that much of a challenge, you can engage is weird or dumb tactics and still beat it handily.

From my experience though, the Unfair AI added to 1.03 can sometimes do better. I played a Vasari one recently (I think an Aggressor) who began admirably fierce, Assailant heavy attacks on one of my worlds fairly early (granted, it was a Desert world that slowed my progress considerably while it had Asteroids, but still). The Unfair seems pretty good at amassing decent sized early fleets in not too much time, and does seem to tech to more useful things at a decent, if not impressive, rate.

The AI still heavily suffers from it's cowardice. It is still very willing to abandon strategically important worlds (and even it's Homeworld until you begin to bombard it). So ultimately all you often need is a slightly bigger fleet and you can have the AI run from you at every turn without having to waste units to battle losses. You take it's worlds without battle, capitalize on your new income, and further expand your fleet until, even if once the AI was a significant hurdle to your fleet, it no longer is.

Hopefully this will be fixed. It's nice that the AI isn't stupidly suicidal like most AI's out there. If the AI is attacking and a big defense fleet shows up, it would be wise to run rather than throw a fleet away, but the current one seems to have no concept of defense either and will not stand and fight, regardless of what's at stake.

So far, coming back once you start bombing the homeworld is the only major difference I've seen consistently. Before the patch, the AI would generally just run with its fleet, even when you were taking down its homeworld, until it had nowhere left to go.

Ultimately, it still seems to run for the hills whenever I get anywhere near it so, no. I don't think it's changed much in terms of being more challenging.

I played a few games over the weekend. Mixed results on the chicken AI.

Sometimes it will ping pong back and forth, back and forth. Other times it will stay to the last. not sure what the conditions are for it to stay and fight or flee. Seems that if it flees, it will flee nonstop.

One thing i did notice, that i carved a path of destruction straight to his home world. I outnumbered him about 3 to 1. Long Long battle. All the meanwhile he called in reinforcements from neighboring systems. DUring the 10 minute fight, the AI had four reinforcement fleets come in to defend his home planet.

I like the threat response for calling in support.

Wouldn't this help explain why he runs instead of throwing his ships to imminent doom without being able to inflict any significant damage?

Well if that is the case why not try defeating it with a smaller force. any body can amass a huge fleet and win but if you are that good do the same with a small number of ships.

The AI retreat logic *is* based on a relative strength comparison of his fleet vs yours, as well of the strategic value of the battle location (this is a little more ambiguous and I don't have hard numbers, but for example he'll be more prone to running earlier from attacking a hostile planet, than defending his own). The current threshold for the strength comparison is 75% - so if your fleet is 75% "stronger" than his, and assuming the other stuff isn't a major factor, that's when he'll start running.

The weeble-wobbliness that people describe is the "other stuff" that's taken into account in addition to relative fleet strength.

There's nothing mystical and "I guess" about it, just pretty hard numbers It runs from steamrollers, stays and fights on fairer grounds - wouldn't you do the same?

I've had some awesome evenly-matched fights that I didn't always win, but the AI pretty much always stuck it out to the bitter end if he was losing.

It was on a different fight/fleet that he fled from me.. actually, i think i outnumbered him by a small margin. perhaps 40%.


On the other battle at his home planet, even though i outnumbered him 3 to 1, he stayed and fought to the last and brought in reinforcements.

2 seperate battles at different locations with totally opposite AI response.

Yesterday, le dimanche de Pâques, I was playing TEC against 3 non-allied "hard" comps. A hard/aggressive A.I.'s Vasari homeworld was only 2 jumps away from mine.

Early on, I took the asteroid located (to the "west"), between his homeworld and mine, and positioned a Kol battleship with a few frigates, building-up the asteroid's defenses with a repair building + hangars.

The "hard" & "aggressive" A.I. never tried to assault this open backdoor to his homeworld : « he » only scouted the position once and awhile.

He did not even try to sneak-attack my homeworld by its other lane (also separated from him by an asteroid, to my "north") ! I had no fleet at my capital, but a lot of hangars.

Instead, while I was piling-up ships at the western asteroid, near his open backdoor, he sent his main fleet to the other (northern) asteroid, skirmishing against the two other comps for the control of that central asteroid (which had a lot of connecting lanes).

Eventually, my main fleet assaulted his vasari HW, which was totally empty of any defensive structure & defense fleet !

With 3 Kol battleships in the lead, I first destroyed all his structures, including his two shipbuilding facilities.

When the Kols started to bombard the HW planet itself, his main fleet did come back to defend. I retreated to my asteroid, to minimize losses.

I eventually came back with 6 Kols and finished the job : that time, his main fleet had gone to « defend » his new (much weaker) capital, far away from my HW.

I colonized his starting position, which became a very rich colony, and which gave me a second door to the crucial central asteroid (where a lot of A.I. skirmishing had occured).

The "hard" comps seemed to have a great time fighting against each other in the centre. NONE of them ever tried to assault my HW when they saw the huge amount of hangars I had there. They allowed me all the time required to build a fleet of 6 Kols, escorted by 24 LRMs.

Never felt any pressure from those "hard" comps, even though I had a bad starting location and could only colonize ONE asteroid for a long time.

And believe me : I play like a sophomore noobette.   

But I'm not a masochist : I refuse to add teams of allied comps just to augment the pressure.

The 1.03 enhanced "hard" A.I. should be a quality A.I. that does not require quantity to compensate.

The AI is weak...( hard and insane level)

Even 5 against 1.... I still win

They need to beef up the AI.....

Sometimes the enemy does the most inane things...

I have found the AI very random in 1.3. A few games, it runs constantly, a few others, it stayed and fought, but it rarely seemed to matter what the odds were.

My guess is, the AI only takes into account your fleet vs his fleet; not the value of the planet it is defending/attacking; not the defences around the planet; not the number of planets it has left; not the possible reinforcements it may have near; I even wonder if it takes into account "counters".

I also think it has a built in "human handicap", in that I mean the AI knows a human with an equal fleet will beat it via micro and other human stratagies an AI can never understand, so if it's not REALLY got the advantage, it seems to say "I can't win this one battle, against this one fleet, in this one place, so retreat".

The AI's not going to ever be able to outplay you by skill, it was possible in GalCivII were there were multiple variables to manage and that it could do on the fly planetary adjustments in pass quantities while a human player would just laze through them-

That's not possible here. There's nearly no minutia that would give the AI an advantage over a human player. It's fighting on even terms, and therefore will lose, because AI is dumb.