Ive posted previously about how poorly the AI performed in this game. Took a break for a while to see how things have improved. Now that 1.4 and 1.5 are out ive given the game another pass. Turn 500, Genius difficulty:
- So the AI now properly makes money/production/research worlds. This is fantastic and a huge improvement from before. However ive yet to see a single Ideology structure. Does the AI still not pursue Ideology points? Not doing so makes it heavily handicapped in late game
- AI now makes properly sized fleets, but not always. I still get attacked by 1-2 ships. Furthermore in the process of grouping the ships the AI creates a nice long string of ships heading to their grouping point. All one has to do is pick the ships off one by one. This is fine if its far away from its frontier in safe territory, but if there are hostile ships nearby the AI shouldnt be grouping up this close to the border. Group the fleets up further away so the individual ships cant get picked off so easily!
- AI still doesnt respect borders. Unless youre on good enough terms with them (so you can tell them to leave your space, which only works for a few turns and then they come back) they still blatantly cross your border and position their ships in a first strike scenario around starbases and what not. This is just blatantly bad behavior that ive never seen done in any other game as it makes zero sense. The player knows the AI is hostile but hasnt declared war yet and can just shadow their ships and declare war first, wiping out their tresspassing fleets in one turn
- AI still doesnt do a proper job of putting engines on their ships. While some fleets have proper 20+ moves, most are stuck in 4-6. This is pathetic for Huge ships on turn 500!
- AI still doesnt understand what a defeated fleet means. If they attack me (or get attacked) and I take zero losses and zero damage, that should set off some flag that I have general superiority. Sending more ships to the EXACT same spot turn after turn, each time causing me zero damage, is beyond pointless. At no point does the AI regroup and try something else like another attack vector.
- AI used to grab all the resources in the galaxy. Now it mostly ignores them all. Either it doesnt use the resources (which means its not designing ships properly to use them) or something is now broken. Starbases on rarer resources like Antimatter should also be defended, and they arent.