AI is terrible (Hard, 1.02)

from Sins Forums
Get up, get up get up get down, this AI is a joke in your town.

Okay, I did participate in the beta, but still a lot of things changed from beta to release and I already am beating the AI quite handily. Play multiplayer? Well SOASE games take a long time and also my internet speed is acting up  :( 

Games I've played:
4 player FFA Medium/Hard Flashpoint and Tempest Maps.
3 Hard Teamed AIs vs me Tempest/Flashpoint Maps
1v1 on Cynosian Rift Hard
1v1 on Gaian Crescent Hard
Fast speed. Games are taking 1:30 for a 1v1 up to 3-4 hours for a FFA so the AI has plenty of time.

Played TEC,Vasari and Advent, winning vs hard with each (prefer vasari by far)

All my games seem to go the same:
-Build up small force, level up capital ship while grabbing as many planets as possible
-Start raiding AI
-Pirates get on me, so go home to defend.
-Second capital comes online as well as 2nd fleet upgrade. Now can attack at 2 places at once.
-AI runs away from main fleet, his planets get bombed and taken. Note that everytime the AI runs he loses a few frigates or a capital gets heavily damaged.
-20 minutes of my 2 fleets taking care of pirates or AI sending 7-9 bombing ships, yawnage.
-First AI capital system falls, the AI will do a last stand at his home planet but by this time I have research and fleet superiority so it is far too late and his fleet gets wiped easily. Spend next 20 minutes rebombing planets he has recolonized and putting up my own colonies (it gets somewhat tiresome as he uses all siege fleets and colony ships which don't hurt me but are a royal pain to track down and kill)
-Kill more pirates.
-Resource domination, fleet domination, capital ship level domination.
-Other AIs fall.

Main AI problems:
-Does not research military techs. All of my post game reports me researching 40+ military techs and the AI maybe grabbing 5. This breaks the AI as he never gets cruisers or improves his fleet.
-Does not attack. The AI uses the siege frigate spam, but unless that is against my capital planet I hardly care. I rarely if at all see him use his Capital ships and fleet offensively.
-Does not build stationary defenses. Running away is great for the AI to do...but you need to retreat to either your fortified center and hang your fleet there or fall back and build up defenses there.
-Does not use abilities the best way. Most of the abilities on my ships I don't set on auto-cast, I would *love* to set them on auto-cast but the AI never uses them well.


I hope it won't take 3-6 months to get the AI competitive like it took GC2, I wonder if I should go back to GC2, the AI is probably real good now.

Suggestions on maps and settings for best play experience are appreciated. A list of good non-pirate maps might be good as the pirates may be hurting the AI much more than they hurt me.
55,807 views 51 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
I'm finding similar problems with the AI... It just seems to stop researching once it gets to a certain number of techs. It also stops upgrading fleet logistics, so it's stuck with an outnumbered navy after a few hours of gameplay. I thought this would be limited to the easy AI, but I've observed it with medium AI as well. Combine that with the post above and you get an under performing AI all around, which is disappointing.

That being said, the game is still insanely fun and I often find my hands full midgame against fleets from 3 different AIs... It's just that once I advance past a certain point I simply dominate without much competition at all.
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
i just finished my first game in the full game (i played beta 4) and i got absolutely outnumbered by both pirates and the enemey attacking at once, but i do notice that the AI don't seem to upgrade their techs well, i noticed this on medium. but the AI is much well improved since beta 4
Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
Haven't been playing long but already I've noticed this too. Played a great game with a friend coop, medium diff, medium map, us vs 2 AI + pirates and it started out fun but the AI runs a lot, even on its inner worlds and even the aggressive AI isn't very aggressive. Couple that with them rapidly getting out classed (no defenses on inner worlds, not amassing fleets, little tech growth, etc) and the game quickly goes from fun to yawn.

Awesome game and I see it getting a lot of play time specially with multi-player as stable as it seems to be but better AI would make a huge difference.
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
The AI will keep getting improved ;)
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
From fun to yawn...I like that. Looks like you guys might have to play multi for the time being, shame really.
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
I've noticed that the AI likes to rely on siege frigate and cobalt/skirmisher/disciple spam for quite awhile, we're talking by the time I have carrier cruisers and several capital ships.
Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top
Yea they love the low unit spam. I got into a pretty intresting brawl with a Fort Ai though. Its home planet had no less then 6 hanger bays and he had a ton of those cruiser carriers (i can count 9 from the screenshot i have), and 2 capital carriers, it was like holy crap fighter bomber spam when i warped into his home planet.

So they do build defense, just..it seems only the Fort AI does it. Man that fight was hella fun though, dozens of fighter/bomber wings on both sides while the big ships fight it out inbetween, it looked awesome.

Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top
Fortification AI tends to be more aggressive, I've felt, at least in siege frigate blitzes. Aggression AI tends to really withdraw. A lot.
Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top
I'm finding similar problems with the AI... It just seems to stop researching once it gets to a certain number of techs. It also stops upgrading fleet logistics, so it's stuck with an outnumbered navy after a few hours of gameplay. I thought this would be limited to the easy AI, but I've observed it with medium AI as well. Combine that with the post above and you get an under performing AI all around, which is disappointing.


I think those observations are spot on. And they are true for "hard" ai as well - in the beginning they put up a good fight, but past to midgame balance of power just shifts more and more to my side. After analyzing the end game charts I found that all AI severely lagged behind in research and especially in military research. Their world development was also lacking.

Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top
maybe they run low on cash because they are building all those dang lowbie frigates.. =P.

I actually had the AI get another AI capital ship down to 11 hitpoints left, and then a colony ship warped it, and they ALL turned away from the capital ship and went after the colony ship on the other side of the gravity well, the 11 hitpoint ship slinked away to fight another day....i was like ouch..i hope they fix that someday. Shouldnt be too hard...just add a few lines saying if the ship is under so and so % hull, keep it as top priority.
Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top
I don't know.....I just got finished playing a particularly long game...something like 6-7 hours, three systems and 8 ai players set on ffa, all easy AI. They teched right up and at around 3rd hour, after the first couple were dead, they all posed a serious threat to me. I had a couple close calls where they'd have my fleet split across my empire, and then the one attacking would drop a larger fleet to support a probing fleet and seriously out-number/out-gun my hot-spot defense fleet. Ive even seen the AI use tactical retreat intelligently during that game. I dunno, maybe it's just me.
Reply #12 from Sins Forums Top
I find the AI is a late bloomer. After a couple hours it gets really good. only reason I win so easily against it then is because I'm very good at keeping them fighting each other eve when I'm on their last colonies.
Reply #13 from Sins Forums Top
I've been playing a Huge map against 9 AIs on normal (yeah, I'll admit I'm not that good yet), and after I had taken about half of the first system, they would commonly send fleets with 3-5 caps at me, and use most of the hardware their faction has. However, they do seem to enjoy the basic frigates and seiges more than one would expect, but still, having 150 of them plus 5 capital ships warp in from 3 seperate empires each can make an...interesting bloodbath.

Edit: Just remember, TEC AI seems to love the robotics cruisers, have seen fleets where they make up 1/3 of the entire force.
Reply #14 from Sins Forums Top

I've been playing a Huge map against 9 AIs on normal (yeah, I'll admit I'm not that good yet), and after I had taken about half of the first system, they would commonly send fleets with 3-5 caps at me, and use most of the hardware their faction has. However, they do seem to enjoy the basic frigates and seiges more than one would expect, but still, having 150 of them plus 5 capital ships warp in from 3 seperate empires each can make an...interesting bloodbath.

Edit: Just remember, TEC AI seems to love the robotics cruisers, have seen fleets where they make up 1/3 of the entire force.


come to think of it, I also remembered that the tec ai in my last game loved the pec-carrier cruisers. i counted something like 30 of them in a fleet.
Reply #15 from Sins Forums Top
I just finished the 3v3 map where its 3 allys vs 3 and that was my best game yet, AI was still terribly lacking though. I learned of the attack and defend flare buttons after I already won the game so those would really help because the AI in the middle did jack squat all game, haha.

I did see an AI build defenses so that must have been the Fort AI, but I wouldn't consider the defenses built a fort, a fort is when you get a 25 or 35 tactical unit base, not 3-4 guns and maybe 1 hangar.

The problem I see is that sure the AI gets better with time (I've seen the 50 cobalt + 20 hosiko fleet) but by this time I have a capital ship nearing maximum level + maybe 5-6 other capitals plus I have researched almost every tech and a gigantic blob of ships that can kill an enemy capital in roughly 20-30 seconds, the AI is simply not keeping up.

I hope it is just a couple of tweaks and then the AI won't feel outnumbered and then be aggressive, I know the game will get better and all PC game releases aren't perfect, but this game is pretty much a single-player game and releasing it with a shoddy AI is not acceptable and should be pretty high priority to be fixed. Or maybe some crafty modders can improve the AI  :d 

fake edit: changes to siege frigates and pirates are not very noticeable. I especially hate dead asteroid planets with only 2000 max hp with emergency structure, those are just undefendable vs siege. Oh and can you reduce the population nuked when you have emergency infrastructure up, I have like 5k/6k planet hp and almost 0 population, grrrr.
Reply #16 from Sins Forums Top
Did you try the AI "templates": Hard Aggressor - Hard Researcher etc or just Hard Random?. they seem to behave differently or try a game against 9 hard AI's all set on Hard Aggressor the new meaning of "siege frigate raid" ;P.

Hard Fortifier template seems to be "broken" however, it's not doing much defenses if it's supposed to. In general i've noticed that sometimes they dont research planetary upgrades or place turrets. Most of the time the "random" chooces "economist" for them they try to save their ships if all possible. At least based on my observations.

If we can mod AI that'd be great. HAL 90000000 here we come :P. I think the biggest flaw in the AI is that we can "scare" it to run away "i'm outta here!". If the fleets are equal sized it shouldn't flee until it has lost a great percentage of it's fleet and call in reinforcements. Keep on fighting. Perhaps the AI doesn't understand fleet support and what it can do, it just count's them as "ships" vs players.
Reply #17 from Sins Forums Top
Ive noticed in most of my Games the AI just uses the Same Strat and once i have 2 capital ships.. i win.. only once have i been beaten playing against 3 normal all random i beat down the first one i was allied to another by the time it took me to kill the first enemy.. the one that had been left alone had a MASS of ships at its home base.. so it actually pwned my fleet... which is really sad T.T but yah this Player did Practically nothing the whole game.. until the end when i tried to beat them.
Reply #18 from Sins Forums Top
I think I might try editing one of the maps to give the AIs a large amount of resources to play with, and see whether that will help it tech up consistently and create more (and more varied) fleets. Because from what I can tell the AI likes to upgrade it's Civic tech to the detriment of its military. whilst building vast numbers of low end ships which inevitably get destroyed when I go hunting, thus depriving them of the resources required to tech up effectively.

I also agree that it would be more fun if the AI wasn't so timid sometimes, though I can understand why it is thus, as a lot of the time it knows it can't win. I'd just like it to have the option to fight tooth and nail for it's important planets. And possibly have it written in so that on harder difficulties it uses some more sneaky battle tactics like concentrating fire on a single ship from time to time.
Reply #19 from Sins Forums Top
Keep playing eBay with the AI ;)
Or stay on their friendly terms with missions, I find they stay out of my way a majority of the time.
Reply #20 from Sins Forums Top
The AI is fine. It can always be improved but realistically there is no AI that can compete with a competent player. SINS AI puts up a pretty decent fight. Though given the game's skirmish focus, I think it would be nice if there were cheating AI modes.

Reply #21 from Sins Forums Top
 :d I never like AI cheating, so AI is not fine, they need to impover and more input! Clever like a clever human!
Reply #22 from Sins Forums Top
LOL. I'm playing against easy AI and finding that quite hard. I think I'll have lots of gameplay to go. :D
Reply #23 from Sins Forums Top
I actually had the AI get another AI capital ship down to 11 hitpoints left, and then a colony ship warped it, and they ALL turned away from the capital ship and went after the colony ship on the other side of the gravity well, the 11 hitpoint ship slinked away to fight another day....i was like ouch..i hope they fix that someday. Shouldnt be too hard...just add a few lines saying if the ship is under so and so % hull, keep it as top priority.

I don't see why colony ships should have such high importance in the first place - it seems like it's always more useful to destroy a few frigates or deal significant damage to a capital ship, than destroy one colony ship.

I haven't played many games yet but I get the sense that the AI gives too much importance to stockpiling its resources - it won't use them for research as much as it should. It ends up with a lot of cash but under-performing fleets.

Reply #24 from Sins Forums Top
The AI seems to be really terrible at attacking TBH.

I've time and time again seen the AI flee from my capital ships. They can outnumber me 2 to 1 but they won't ever stand and fight if I have a capital ship in the system.

It's getting silly in my current game, as the second to last AI player had a much bigger fleet than me, but he just runs away every time he meets one of my fleets, meaning that he slowly but surely bleeds capitals and cruisers to the point where he barely has a fighting force left, yet if he'd stood and fought to begin with I would have had a lot of trouble locking down his planets.

He also seems to be obsessed with parading his entire fleet between his home world and some manufacturing colonies. I took his home world and most of his colonies because he just moved the fleet round all the time and didn't even try and stop me! Usually they make a last (always futile) stand at their homeworld, but this one just kep of patrolling his fleet like it was all part of the parade.

As said the AI should retreat if it is advantageous to do so, i.e. a max level capital ship is going down or they're outnumbered and need to go back to a heavily defended sector, but it seems to flee at the first sign of a capital ship no matter what.

As of the latest patch they don't seem to do the frigate spam anymore which although was damn annoying, it meant that I had to actually scramble my fleets from time to time. At the moment I merrily trounce the AI's sectors with no opposition at all. I don't really even need much of a defence.

I've also noticed the priority it assigns to a colony ship - warp one in with your fleet and you can keep the AI on a merry little cross sector chase while you grind them into dust. Although TBH, I'd be surprised it you managed to even get them to stand an d fight the colony ship with a battleship in the sector.
Reply #25 from Sins Forums Top
I wish I had your guys' problem in this game. If I don't Lock Teams, I tend to get raped, badly. In my current game, for example, I'm playing on a Medium map, with 5 (normal-random) AIs. I've managed to get two on very friendly terms with me (all agreements), but I'm getting pounded left and right by the other 2 AIs, who have to go through my allies' territory to get to me -- which isn't a problem because two of them are allied to my allies (they loiter in their gravity wells before invading my planets, and they never attack one another..), and the remaining AI is getting pounded by my allies. Worst part is.. I have the best territory (4 planets [two ice, terran homeworld, asteroid). Everyone else has 2-3. I just can't keep up.

Every small map I play without locking teams generally goes along these lines of concentrated attacks on me. If I lock teams, even with no allies of my own, I mop the AI up.

Ironically.. I've also yet to get hit by siege spam. Only reason why I don't lose my planets..

Maybe we should swap AIs. Or I suck still *grin*.