Is the AI dumb?

What difficulty level are you on? Up to Tough, the AI will keep getting better, after that it's all economic bonuses and they can begin to see past their sensor range.

It isn't perfect, and it certainly isn't as good as a human, but it doesn't embarass itself. Don't forget that it's not necessarily always a good idea to switch your defenses over, they might be better off shifting those resources into other areas.

The problem isn't that the AI in general is dumb. If you play as evil you will see that the races that generally ally with good players always do well in any game. If i'm playing an evil races ALL the races that ally with me besides the Arceans are horribly bad and I have to give them tons of tech for them to be competative.

The thing is, it seems, that the Torians, Altarians, and Arceans are blessed with good AIs while al other races are either average or crippled as far as an AI goes. So since you are playing as good those 3 races are usually allied with you, and all your enemies are practically cripped to start due to their ai.

I'm talking on intelligent difficulty BTW. You should play on that if they are too easy, they are much better than on normal but still not that great. I just finished a game on that diffulty but it was beta "cheat flagged", annoying bug.

Hi!

I'm talking on intelligent difficulty BTW.

Ah, here's the catch. Intelligent still doesn't apply all AI algorythms. You need to play on though to get full AI.

Besides, the AI I'm warry off the most is Drengin. In my games (if they start at least moderately good) they build good military quite early, attack with it, and win. Takes 2 other averagely spread-out AIs just to contain them, tree to wear them down. Get them full intelligence and wait until they come after you.

BR, Iztok

Challenging is still a relatively new player setting.

Ah, here's the catch. Intelligent still doesn't apply all AI algorythms. You need to play on though to get full AI.

Are you SURE? I always heard that intelligent was the highest.

Anyways it doesn't matter. On the lower difficulties they should all still be even as far as AI goes. Their shouldn't ALWAYS be 2 or 3 races only that do good.

On Tough difficulty, the AI get the Intelligent AI. The two things are one and the same. It is slightly confusing, but the AI settings and the general settings have different names for the same thing.

I've set the "Difficulty" level to challanging which is one level above NORMAL. I'm playing Altarians and the Torians and Arceans have been relentless in making war on me. I have not used diplomacy to make allies. Is it better to set the Intelligence level rather than over ride the AI with the "difficuly' level? I'm expecting an opponet that will react to my ship building strategy. But your right there is more to this game than ship building and they may be pursuing other strategies that will end my reign of terror.

I've been playing Altarian on challenging and the AI seems like its locked in a box. All three empires that are attacking me just deploy mass driver type weapons and I've traded and researched for some killer armor protection. I'm cutting through them with Plasma and Harpoons and they are very slow to come up with a shield defense or ECM. They are ganging up on me because they think I'm too aggressive but they are bleeding more then me because of their dumb ship building strategy. Does the AI improve on higher levels and make more intelligent choices?

Try the tough difficulty setting. You should also try to select a different title for your post next time. At first I thought you were just another flaming troll.

Thanks for the advise. I will try Tough next time and watch the titles of my posts. I love playing this game and think its the best 4x to come out since MOO2.

No problem. Just wanted to remind you that it sounded rather inflamatory

On Tough difficulty, the AI get the Intelligent AI. The two things are one and the same. It is slightly confusing, but the AI settings and the general settings have different names for the same thing.

I see what your saying, i set the ais difficulty individually so i was talkign about tough. I ment intelligent by THEIR difficulty, not the games.

I love playing this game and think its the best 4x to come out since MOO2.

And the only one besides Firaxis games since then that had a real effort by a company put into a 4x game.

By the way: "Tough" difficulty = AIs on "Intelligent" (on average).

The AI is not dumb, it is that as the name suggests, Artificial. Don't expect it to play like an experienced player with all the tricks. It's fairly good, especially compared to other games but there isn't a small tiny human locked up in the code trying to play the game....