Is the AI really that smart?

Try all AIs on Genius (tiny or small maps is best for a challenge...don't use Huge or Gigantic maps since that makes the game too easy, IMO).

What I've seen is that the AI has 100 turns or so in which it has a good shot at leveraging itself against you, but if you manage to keep even close in tech and military, you can start AIs wars against each other, generally stay out of trouble, and eventually overtake the AI in all categories that matter ... at which point, the AIs lack of strategic military thinking ends the game (or I should say that by this point you're going to win at least by attrition alone but certainly by also being smarter).

All this is to say that the small bonus the AI gets on Genius is probably a good thing if you want to give it a chance. Smaller maps mean that the AI can throw stuff at you much sooner (during that crucial window when it is outproducing you in the early mid-game). And by facing such issues early, you'll be forced to spend more time and money on defense instead of pure build up, which will leave the AI to view you as weaker than normal, which will in turn cause the AI to more readily form alliances against you, etc., thereby making a tough (and much more fun, IMO) game.

Also try to set planets to sparse habitation and spread out. The AI just can't compete with a human when lots of good planets are easily had. It is *much* better, though, when great planets are much harder to colonize...

Just some thoughts.

Paguma your stratgy is basicly the same as mine asfar as the exspand fast and leave them hehind technologicaly but i micromanage every one of my systems to and i can sometimes loose at even normal i think you find it easy cause you don't waste money and time thinking about the other things so you generaly only have 1 or 2 things to worry about so you have a clear sight of you goal i guess that since the AI consentrates on everything you have the advantage. I beat it if consentrated more on approvel rateing, moral, and social improvments it would make your turns last longer than "5 seconds and maby last 5 minutes" that the AI would level out with you.

I had a legion of filled, unguarded transports flying through Arcean space on the way to invade the Torians.

Should be no problem because I had always been at peace with the Arceans.

All of the sudden, Arceans go to war and wipe out billions of humans.

Only reason I can see is that there were too many juicy transports nearby... seen it once more on a smaller scale.

Tell me that ain't impressive.

Miguel
Going to war to attack an unguarded transport is not impressive; do you initiate wars for that reason? It would have been better to let you and the Torians weaken each other first, and then get involved.

What would be impressive is if the Torians saw your transports and bribed the Arcaens to go to war against you.

Maybe the Arceans thought you were doing a sneak attack on them, and decided to get you first.

The Arceans are very touchy about forces in their neighborhood.

~SDC~

Maybe they formed a handy alliance with the Torians and thought that would a be a nice time to implement it. LOL


fleabitfox

Paguma, after 4 games, I agree. Even in my very first game, most of the challenge came from Spacesharks and such, and they seem to have been toned down.

Ai weaknesses (at Intelligent):

-They are not too good with Transports.
-They usually seem not to recognize a threat early enough.
-They *should* be aware that the Human Player is more intelligent than they are -it would be legitimate if, everything else equal, they view the Human as more of a threat than each other.
-Their combat tactics seem very random.
-They don´t culture-bomb aggressively.
-Generally, they focus on being a pain in the ass -*but not on winning*. Particularly the Torians and Arceans seem not to have a Winning Strategy at all. I always ask myself "What winning condition are they going for?", and the answer usually is "None".

And these are just the weaknesses that are obvious. (:(

thongor

I might have done the same thing... it never makes a big dent on population, but probably my favorite thing is to take out a fully loaded enemy transport.

If I had seen a couple dozen of them passing through my space on the way to wipe somebody out... yeah, I might have considered doing the exact same thing. Start a war, kill them all, sue for peace after maybe.

I don't know about other people, but generally I win or lose all my games in the early game. That might be due to my style though. Either the computer detects I am weak early in the game, and goes for the quick kill, or I quickly leave him behind in every category and march to an unchallenged victory. I eventually become so strong, none of them want to mess with me, especially when their incomes are so closely entertwined with me.

On Genius however, they are detecting my early weakness quite well and stopping me before I pass that hump. On Intelligent they were lousy at stopping me early, and then they can't later.

Although it is frustrating when all them attack me early in the game out of the blue. Almost feels just like the type of AI the game designers were trying to avoid. Only difference is, instead of all ganging up on me because I'm the strongest, they're all ganging up on me because I'm the weakest. Even though I was good business for them, and gave them gifts...

Oh well... I will adjust.

Coffeedragon: The last game I finished, it was obvious what the Torians and Arceans were going for. The Torians were way out ahead of everyone on the military chart, and the Arceans were way out ahead of everyone on the influence chart. If they hadn't gone after each other, I would have lost, I'm just not sure to whom. Probably the Torians, as I can defend against culture pushes better than brute force.

Hm, I have never seen the Arceans start a culture war, yet. Maybe because they never grew strong enough.

As to the Torians, yes, they sometimes grow strong, but, given they can´t invade, what´s the point?

When you say the Torians CAN'T invade, I assume you mean they are less likely to invade? I was playing yesterday, and in the early game, when I'm at my weakest, the Torians invaded and captured two of my planets. This was on Genius level.

Yeah, to be more precise, they *have a very hard time* invading. I have seen them capture a planet once or twice, but it is rare, and they seem themselves surprised when they finally (after years) manage to do it.

#1 by Citizen -=YIN=- - 5/12/2003 9:45:05 AM
"Try all AIs on Genius (tiny or small maps is best for a challenge...don't use Huge or Gigantic maps since that makes the game too easy, IMO)."

Hmm...are the small maps really tougher??? I played the small maps when I was a beginner because I thought it was easier, there's alot less focus on range and expansion. I just get the stellar map, send out a few colony ships, and WHAM... In a bigger map, I could spend hours just expanding while everybody else is researching and building trade goods.

Now I'm not sure which is the harder map to play on.

I kind of agreee. I mean sometimes I will have war declared on me by someone extremely far away. They (the ai) don't ever seem to colonize planets for strategic value (i.e a low pq planet) and worst of all they never seem to catch on to a little trick: say I really want that fabulous desperately needed economic resource 2 sectors away from my space, but the drengin have already scooped it up. Lucky for me they are at war with the alterians so all I have to do is put a constructor near it AND a battleship or better in an ajoining square, give the war ship to the alterians let them destroy it and move my constructor to harvest the resource. Without diplomatic penalty. Maybe none of these things happen at the higher difficulty settings though. And maybe they do catch on but I just don't realize it.

Michael does that trick work for you?

I tried it once, gave a dreadnought to the patsy AI, right next to the juicy starbase.

AI flew AROUND the starbase towards the enemy homeworlds instead of blowing it up for me.

The AI's weakness is battle tactics. Even the Drengin, who love to build a massive military, don't know how to use it. I started in a corner with AI on Genius, large (12x12) map. The AI got way ahead of me quickly, in every area of the game. When I got battlehammers, they had battleships already.

The Torians smelled my weakness and attacked. I wiped them out even though they were much stronger militarily. They didn't bother to protect their transports and failed to attack my transports. Being behind technologically, I had to use waves and waves of transports to eventually wear down his planets but eventually I did it, one by one.

Hordes of battleships didn't help him a bit, because the AI fails to realize that wars are all about transports. The war is won or lost based on whether transports are protected or not, and the AI fails miserably at this. You can't take a planet with 20 battleships, and if the AI's battleships are all off chasing down one star fighter, its transports are vulnerable to attack. If the AI is roaming his battleships unopposed in my territory, I don't worry because all I need to do is have faster ships, outmaneuver him and take out his vulnerable transports while my planets are building transports, (which I protect of course).

So, no matter how far behind you get in a game, you can always win simply by going to war and using tricks to make the AI squander his military power and leave his planets exposed to your transports.

The AI knows how to win a peaceful game, but doesn't know how to win a conquest game, which is ironic since the AI loves to declare war so much.

Answering a few points here:
Small maps are definitely harder than big maps. You can't build up enough to become a strong trade partner the same you can on big maps, the ai contacts you when you are still weak (particularly the Drengins). Plus you have less room for maneuvering, so your transports are more likely to be attacked by opponent ships.
Torians are clearly pitiful with transports in late game. The ai is generally pitiful when it thinks a single transport can take a planet and in fact more are needed. You can always field some defense and shoot half of their transports and thus stay immune to the ai attacks.