ScrivenerOfLight

Join Date 02/2007

+34

Beta 6.2 Opt-In AI Major Step Back

I'm playing on an insane map with all the major factions and abundant minors. The AI difficulty setting is Gifted. I'm 100 turns in and have met two majors: the Altarians have 38246 credits with a power rating of 220 (compared to my 137); the Thalan have 12498 with a power rating of 36.

Since I was curious, I cleared the FOW and checked the other majors. Here is the breakdown.

The Krynn 295 power 16509 credits

Altarians 220 power 38246 credits

Iconians 160 power 33072 credits

Yor 157 power 79060 credits

Drengin 139 power 22431 credits

Me (custom) 137 power 2483 credits

Terrans 83 power 26484 credits

Iridium 79 power 13957 credits

Thalan 36 power 12498 credits

Are they getting cheated economies? Altarians, for example, have the most colonies (31, I am second with 25--many have fewer than 10 at 100 turns!) All but about 3 or 4 colonies have an economic deficit, some in the 4-6 credit per turn range. yet they must be making tons of credits somewhere else... I see no trade routes on the map at all, and they don't seem to have tourism enabled (since I can trade them the tourism tech.)

Also, the AI on gifted are not colonizing or building in some cases... in fact, I'm not sure what they are doing. I have more colonies, ships, tradable techs, and starbases than most of the other factions with a few exceptions.

The Thalans, for example, have 2 colonies at turn 108!! They have no colony ships, they have 1 shipyard. They have 8 starbases... I don't understand what's going on. They have more than 12000 credits and no colony ships. Their homeworld population is 14.4, which I assume is maxed. They are running an economic stimulus. I'd understand if there weren't any available planets, but they have about a dozen planets in or around their ZOC (within about 15 hexes).

I could go on. Something changed drastically and seems to have broken the AI. Submitting ticket with save...

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I have noted the same behavior from the AI. They seem to have loads of money and it just keep piling on while not doing much... some AI expand a little some not at all and the Krynn expand like crazy on my insane maps.

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Yea I am noticing the same thing. I am on a huge map right now on turn 60 and the AI has 20-80k each. I have noticed that the vast army of colony ships has been replaced by constructors.

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I just played an AI only game where I sort of got lucky and the Terrans I watch got into a death spiral mode that I think some empire do.

The Terrans build a few scouts and started scouting, it then built a few constructors. The Terrans managed to build one mining base near Earth and settled Mars.

Now, the problem was that they sent their constructor to a rally point near the shipyard and unfortunately pirates patrolled that area and repeatedly destroyed the constructors, the AI could have just moved the constructors away and saved them but never did. This continued for a while with Earth building more constructors that got destroyed.

Suddenly Earth just gave up and turned all their resources into Science and the next constructor was due like 46 turns later.

46 turns later, now about 120 turns into the game they built this one and managed to establish a second mining base and started building a new colony ship which would take them 292 turns.

The Terrans were pretty much out of the game by this point.

There are several other races that had the same problem on that map with about 30 AI in an insane map. The Yor seem to have big problem expanding for some reasons as well, all except one (four Yor like races in the game).

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I am also curious to know what has changed to cause the AI to have such massive bank accounts a few turns into the game. On the bright side, the AI is definitely doing a lot better at the early game rush, I'm even considering turning down the difficulty a notch for the first time ever.

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Illauna

Join Date 09/2006

+84

I posted about last night. The AI is building nothing but constructors and making a ton of starbases. Probably to bloat their military power. I'm going to take a guess this broke when SD fixed military power. I'm about 130 turns in and some of the AIs have 50+ constructors, 10-15 starbases maxed on modules and very few if any defenders. In fact, the only defenders I've seen is the survey ship, the malevolent frigate and their starting scout. What impresses me is I haven't been able to find any pirates recently. Although, in my how to play I noticed the Pirate shipyard may not have been producing more units.

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The Thalans, Yor, and Drengin are always near last place in my games in terms of power ranking.

The Thalans seemed to expand slower than others due to low population increase.

The Yor have trouble after a while, they need to build population in their home world, I've seen their home world population reach 1-2.

The Altarians and Kyrnn always seem to be on the top of rankings.

I'm having the same problem with the AI not building military ships, on turn 150 version 0.95. They kept building constructors with 1-2 small ships as military turn 150!

There is probably a glitch somewhere that it thinks the constructors are military ships.

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I think the AI right now is playing really poorly. I've played several games now on tough (second hardest) medium map, and by turn >130 the AI's power is really low compared to mine, and I'm not even trying to maximize it. It seems like they have very few warships, and low tier weapons. For example; large hulls with less than 20 attack... My defenders have more firepower, and I can crank those out in 1 turn easily.

I'll try one on the hardest setting tonight. Last time I tried I got invaded within 60 turns though, so its hard to say if the suicidal AI would actually research better weapon tech later in the game.

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