"Intelligent" AI

Were those worlds ones that the Drengin had captured from Minors? I've noticed minors have some sort of initial delay in building, so if I take over their worlds, they are very low on actually built tiles. Takes forever to turn that into something useful without rush buying.

Or were those worlds late colonized? If you colonize worlds after you've discovered factories or enhanced factories, it's very difficult to get them up to speed because it takes so long to build the current factory tech. Again, rush buying helps, but it can still take a very long time to develop even after rush buying the first couple of factories.

Subspace Rebounder (shield)
Dynamic Shielding (shield)
Arnorian Battle Armor (armor)
Telepathic Defense (point defense)

Is it possible that structures-in-progress don't show up when looking at enemy planets? Perhaps the Drengin didn't have extra cash laying around and couldn't jumpstart the building.

I did notice a fair amount of unescorted transports, though occasionally they would be escorted. I suppose it's pretty difficult to make an AI actually consider its overall situation an figure out whether or not a transport will be safe... especially if you decimate their fleet, something they can't always predict. I ran into combat ships that weren't in fleets much more rarely, it seemed to always stick them in full fleets when I was playing on normal difficulty.

I usually build a tiny ship with some engines, 1p beam attack and the rest is sensors. Send it into enemy space to pick of unguarded constructors and transports. Fast enough to avoid contact with enemy fighters - the computer seldom seems to build fast ships. You can cause a lot of damage with this 1 p beam attack.
Yeah, the AI has definitly gotten better since GC1 - but there is still a lot of room for improvement. I'm looking forward to the next updates.

As far as the unfleeted fighters go, its always seemed (to me) that the AI is using those early on in a war to try and raid my trade routes, contructors, and what not to gain XP -- usually by the time *I* get to smack them down (I play a research game, so I'm not very good on the tech curve) they're a pretty major threat, and often fleeted.

I noticed similar things in my game at that difficulty, now I'm playing on one of the higher ends my experiance is very differant. Where as before I was also light years ahead now I struggle to keep 8th place in a galaxy that for the most part hates me (currently 4 races have declared war on me and I am the arceans would you believe!!) transports are almost never left unguarded and the AI is smart in its attack patterns.

The korx knowing they could not beat me alone paid off the yor to join the fight.

My advice to anyone who sees weaknesses in the AI is this: Play on one of the harder levels and you will weep openly at how good the AI can be (and its alot more fun too )

I too have seen cases where the AI doesn't seem to be building up its planets as fast as they should.  I will be keeping an eye out for that.

My problem is that the AI always over-estimates it's power. I may be last on the military rating page, but that's because I have a few top-notch fleets while the AI throws at me armadas upon armadas of tiny fighters with one mass driver put on them. In my first game on intelligent, the only ship that was an effective counter to mine was only seen when the Yor had but a few worlds left, some turns before they surrendered. The other civilizations, while richer, had worse fleets still. The worse part was, I was the one seriously lagging in technology. They should have been able to produce fleets of ships much stronger then my own, but they seemed content with armadas of suck : 8 fighters, 16 mass drivers against four frigates, 48 beams and 16 amor. Aren't they supposed to notice that their strategy isn't working?

"My advice to anyone who sees weaknesses in the AI is this: Play on one of the harder levels and you will weep openly at how good the AI can be (and its alot more fun too )"

My understanding has always been that AIs settings above "Intelligent" are identical except for an increasingly large economic/production bonus. So any algorithmic AI weaknesses would still be present at higher settings. But you don't notice it as you're constantly trying to keep up with their supercharged economies.



Nope. The world was approx. 1 sector from their homeworld. Colonized fairly early.



This is very true. I had hoped they would react faster when said decimation occured.



This would make sense. However, the unfleeted ships started appearing after war had been declared. In the AI's defense, I guess it's hard to differentiate between sending a single fighter ASAP to reinforce existing fleets vs. building up a fleet and sending it to the front. I would prefer the AI erred on the side of caution.

Anyway, thanks for all the intelligent replies.

Cheers

h








EDIT: there were supposed to be quotes in that post...

What I am thinking happens is that something is preventing the AI from even getting to look at its planets.

That is, some specific set of cirumcustances occur where the AI thinks the planet is building something but isn't.

If someone wants to shoot me a saved game where they are seeing this, I'll happily check it out (amek sure you email me with a description).  bwardell@stardock.com

 

My advice to anyone who sees weaknesses in the AI is this: Play on one of the harder levels and you will weep openly at how good the AI can be (and its alot more fun too

I'm playing on "tough" where the AIs are "intelligent" and I don't think they get any smarter (by definition) on higher difficulty levels - they just start to get resource types of bonuses.

So, at "tough" I would hope to see less AI blunders with transports, planet development, ignoring gifted ships, failing to assess defenses (AI will send transports or ships to attempt to attack backline undefended planets ignoring the 30 ships in between and get massacred).

I'll take risks with transports sometimes - or not have them directly escorted but in the vacinity of my other ships (mostly due to nonstop glitches with grouping and movement). Taking calculated risks is one thing. The AI sending totally undefended tranports at my planets when I have large quantities of ships able to intercept from a variety of locations is another - that's not a calculated risk, that's getting rid of excess population via suicide!

I'm also tired of AIs surrending to avoid assimilation - it's to the point where I try to simultaneously take all the planets of an AI at once (within reason) to avoid this because it happens so much. It'd be nice this happening were more random (as in sometimes the cowards fight it out instead). This isn't a glitch, per se, it's just highly annoying.

Try taking a planet from the AI and then leave it undefended. Station a few fighters near and sit back and enjoy while you pick off the constant stream of unescorted transports coming to take the "defenseless" planet. I'm in learning mode, played a few games on normal, will bump up the AI next game, so that might make a difference.

I found that picking off transports and knocking out a planet's measly defense force is a decent way to build up a fleet's experience levels.

Did the other worlds have any or better bonus tiles?The fact that later worlds are more built up may mean they need more time to get up to speed.What size galaxy were you in?Normal tech rate?Were there any morally good races close to them that they would feel threatened by or hostile to who may have gotten better planets than them?

I noticed on Intelligent level they bought a constructor instead of a defender when I was attacking their planet with my fighter.

I've noticed on my normal games that the AI does build up (it depends on which AI and what the situation is) and does adapt if they have the tech and money to do so.

However while they might put together an effective and finacialy effiecient fleet that would take out my ships one on one and sometimes a fleet. They definately don't seem to be taking into account thier surrounding or the fact that my DeathStar of a space station is giving mega bonuses to my little ships.

The Ai should prioritize its known targets and adapt accordingly as it can afford too. Also the AI would be much more effective if it could target a spot and "see" several parsecs around the target parsec to determine what to do. This way it can make a choice balanced against the 8 surrounding parsecs or so. It may already do this...if so then I suppose some teaking is in order.

I noticed on Intelligent level they bought a constructor instead of a defender when I was attacking their planet with my fighter.

Yeah I've seen that too. I parked a 1 beam tiny ship above an AI planet and it kept just producing constuctor after constructor for me to kill.

Also, the AI(at intelligent) seems to have trouble adapting to fast transports since I found at least 1/4 of there planets undefended and were able to strike any of these planets from any of my planets within two turns. Losing that many planets in a turn and taking only one or two back basically lead them to being unable to oppose me military wise. This occured through three seperate wars with the Terrans. Also, putting in 50bc/week into espionage on them I was able to steal 36 techs while reasearching 48. This seems rather unbalanced and I was able to pretty much pull out of research and concentrate on military for the last war.

At the very least they should have even a basic vessel so you can't just walk in from halfway across the galaxy. (Save game available if needed).


Edit: Link to the fast transpo

On an unrelated note...where are the 'Good alignment' armor improvements? they seem to have not been added to the game or to Brad's known issues list. The evil weapons are spiffy though.

There's a bug that prevents Subspace Rebounder, Dynamic Shielding, and Telepathic Defense from working in the current release. The Devs are aware of the issue and it should be fixed "soon". Maybe for this Thursday's update.


Hah! Brad just posted a News item that addresses exactly this and it will be in Thursday's update.