AI Allies

When their heart just isn't in it anymore

from Sins Forums

I'm playing single player on a large map, 10 factions. 3 hard AIs, the rest are all normal. I've divided everyone into 4 teams, put a hard AI and myself on each team, and let the rest of the Normals fill up random spots. My team consists of Myself and one Normal AI. 

At the beginning of the game my ally unfortunately started off with a Hard AI neighbor, and from what i've seen he seems to be set as an Aggressor type.  For the first hour or so these two were fighting, but eventually things settled down into a stalemate where my ally controlled a mere 2 planets: his Terran Homeworld and an Asteroid. He managed to fortify enough with a Starbase and mines long enough for the Hard AI get bored and move onto bigger fights. My empire started off too far away to help him at all, but i was able to expand in my own region and now am pretty strong. 

So now the situation is this: I have a powerful fleet and have destroyed all the Hard AIs holdings within my teams' solar system, including the planets around my ally's homeworld. I have deliberately NOT colonised these planets, leaving him 7 or so worlds on which he can colonise at his leisure so that he can get an economy going and get back in the game. I'm hoping that later on he can help me take on all the other teams (there are still 5 more star systems to fight over). Unfortunately, he's just not colonising anything. There is no opposition at these worlds anymore, he has a couple of Colony frigates just hanging around, and now he has no enemies in the immiediate area because i've already wiped the floor with them. He also has NOT surrendered or anything. He's still in the fight. 

Is there anyway to coax my Ally to get moving again? It's like he's just depressed or something, tired of losing so many capital ships early game. I've tried telling him to attack these worlds, and he does, but once all the enemy structures are destroyed he just moves on, doesn't try colonising. 

 

strategy
5,836 views 10 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

Try selecting one of his planets/ships and set an uninhabited planet as attack target. He might colonize it then, no guarantee though. At least he'll send a fleet there.

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

Try giving him some money. The algorithm may be telling him he doesn't have a big enough bankroll to expand.

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Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

Try selcting his colonizing frigate and order it to defend the planet you want him to colonize.  Assuming his colonizing frigate is set to auto colonize, he should be unable not to to colonize the world, assuming he accepts.

I had a similar problem recently where I asked my ai allie to move his fleet to the near bye star.  There were no enemy there but I thought he could at least serve as a distraction.  The ai responded that the area I had requested him to go to was "unexplored" and he refused to move there.  He never sent a scout so he just sat in his little corner of his home system for the whole game.  He quickly became the weakest and then became the sole target of the other non aligned ais.  Too bad for him.

Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top

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Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top

I thought the AI's resources had nothing to do with colonising. Atleast in vanilla Sins it doesn't. I played a full game on The Aerolian Sector, and one of my allies had been almost destroyed. It didn't control any planets, but it still had structures over its home planet,including a frigate factory and one extractor. It had no ships left either. This particular had gotten off to a terrible start, and was quickly trapped with its homeworld and an asteroid. I took pity on it from the beginning, and made sure I help it as soon as I could. When I arrived, it was being seiged by two fleets, but I still destroyed them. The AI still had what was necessary to re-expand, but just stopped.

So, perhaps there is a point where an AI can "die" early. This could have been what happened to your AI.

Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top

I didn't think about that. Opponent AIs can certainly surrender, so it makes sense that an allied one could as well. However, that mechanism isn't really useful, so I wonder why the devs would keep it in. More likely it's an oversight, if this is indeed what's happening.

Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top

I think under no circumstance should any ai should surrender. AI should be programmed to fight to the death

Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top

Ye Gods no. The surrender option is almost solely there so that you don't have to hunt down every single units the AI has left at the end of the game. Just think of searching through every single sector on a huge random map for that one light frigate (or other unit, HC being the worst) that ran away. You'd be on for hours if it was a stronger unit since you couldn't just scout spam it to death.

Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top

Ehhh I kinda like the balance theyv'e got, it feels like the AI rage quits when there is literally no chance of making a comeback.