I'm enjoying the new AI. The pirates are supposed to be much tougher, so I've been playing FFA, vs unfairs, with pirates on. But I'm about ready to turn them off again. Why? Because I'm the DEFAULT receiver of pirate attacks. I get an attack if no bounty has been placed on anyone. Furthermore, the AI never tries to outbid each other, only increase the bounty on me. Basically, unless I micro the bounty (and spend loads of cash), I will get an attack. And because FFA AI's (whom are not allied in any way) seem to love unloading the bounty on me, I have the first 15 minutes of the game to get up a starbase, or else use my fleet's precious time (while it should be expanding) to drive off the obligatory pirate raid.
I am the only one who get bounty placed on me, EVERY SINGLE TIME. The pirates kill repair platforms like they're dust (and always targets them first), so unless I have a starbase, I have to use my fleet. And if I've been expanding rapidly during this time, then it isn't even that big. If I try to place bounty on another AI defensively, then the AI's seem to collectively outbid me (again, this is FFA), making the pirate raid even bigger, taking that much longer to kill.
I've noticed this too and it's very frustrating. I did an 8 player 3 star FFA and I noticed that the 4 AI's that didn't share a star with me didn't spend a penny on bounties, while every AI on my star did. That makes me wonder if the AI's do gang up on the human (or at least don't recognize each other) - surely that other star had some rivalries going on that pirates could have helped with?
I'm playing another game, and I can verify 100% that the AI will only place bounty on a human player. If I am the first one to place bounty for a round, and I place a bunch on another player, I am outbid right away. None of the other AI's recieve bounty. And I am not the best player in this game by a long shot, not that they would know particularly well.
You are playing ffa (vs. locked teams), choosing to use pirates, and playing with an unfair setting to boot, and then you are complaining when things are... unfair?
No, the teams are unlocked.
And it is assumed that the AI cheats ONLY with resources.
Placing a bounty on one AI usually had this effect - he bountied you back with more money. Now you are one of the two favorites again.
Solution - you have to make MORE favorites for a bounty.
Try bountying three different AIs for 500-750 credits before you have any bounty on yourself. That usually forced them to start placing bounty on each other, at least in all my games I was safe for 2-3 raids after doing that until all the accumulated bounty dispersed.
Try that and tell us how it went.
That's what I said. You are playing ffa, instead of locked teams, so it's sort of difficult to take you seriously when you then complain that you are getting ganged up on, especially with an unfair setting.
i've noticed this problem ... try putting bounty on 2 or 3 ai players at once.. seems to fix this for me
The problem is, the AI shouldn't even know who placed the bounty on him. And I've tried placing bounty on 4 AI's at once. It doesn't work. The AI's never outbid each other. Only me.
And Kharma, the AI's do not have any pacts or truces with each other. None of them even like each other. This should not be happening. The Diplomacy XP was supposed to make the AI's not automatically gang up on the human player with unlocked teams. And yet it is doing it with bounty.
I can't speak to unfair AI, but on Easy (I am starting slow on Diplomacy), the AI were more likely to target each other with bounty than me.
Along those lines, it seems that whenver there is zero bounty on everyone, the human player is always picked. It should be randomly chosen between all players, AI and human alike.
In a similar vein, why do pirates attack me when I've hired them? Shouldn't there be a 'cease fire' for the duration of the raid? It's rather annoying to have paid for pirates, be jumping through a gravity well where they are attacking and watch them stop what they are doing and come after me. Humans should not be treated diffrently than the AI in these situations, IMO.
Just did a quick game to test out AI bidding under well controlled conditions.
It was me and 5 hard AI (I'm assuming hard doesn't cheat?), LOCKED teams (yes, the AI are all on separate teams) and this was the first pirate raid.
Here's what happenned:
Pirate raid alarm goes off, and by the time I look at the bounty display there's already 250 on my head. My average ranking is ~3. No bids on anyone else... time to fix that.
500 on AI 1, 750 on AI 2, 1000 on AI 3.
The AI replies by... yes! Putting down an additional 1250 on me, to get me up to a nice round 1500.
I haven't verified this... but it's quite a suggestive amount. Guess what happens when you divide 1250 by 5? That's right, you get 250... exactly one bid for each AI.
I'll repeat this with 2, 3 and 4 hard AIs to verify, but it very much looks like the AIs collude with each other.
Update:
Well, colour me surprised. I made a few new games and sat on my ass for the first 14 minutes, waiting for the first pirate raid. This time the AI not bother to bid against me... apparently having two scouts to my name put me beneath their notice.
In fact, none of them could be bothered to bid AT ALL. I could play with the bounties to my heart's content, and there was not a single attempt by any of the AIs to intervene. If I'm no threat, suddenly their own skins are no longer worth saving!
bidding against 3 AIs at the same time with very little of bounty difference won't work; try bidding on 2 AIs with lets say by the time u get 250 on urself make them like 2000-2500 >>> if this doesn't work well its a clear BUG
Just for the sake of argument, I tried your suggestion... I put around 2000 bounty on 2 AIs just before bidding started. I end up with 2500 on me.
However, thanks to that large lump sum, I was able to easily verify who put it on me. It was a 3rd AI that had zero bounty on them! And he cashed in a pile of resources to make that bounty, too.
This is a definite bug, then. I might just email the devs about this. Anyone got their email?
And I have been observing some of the same activity as you guys.
I'll second this observation - I did a 4 way FFA, 240 bid was placed on me so I did 250 on everyone. I went to 500, so I raised one to 1000.
Me 490AI 1000AI 500AI 500
The AI let this stick?
I'm so confused right now as to how the bounty mechanic works for the AI ...
ive noticed this too and it sucks, if i play vs hards im bored if i play vs unfairs im the subject of every single pirate raid, kinda lame,
I wanted to bump this thread, as it sure is annoying.
Noticing the same, takes a little fun from the game this.
Small correction/observation. I played a game were I intentionally didn't bid and the pirates did default to me the first time, but then seemed to round robin between players as long as there wasn't a bid. The game only made it for a few rounds before bidding happened, but that seemed to be the algorithm.
Another bump to the thread.
From my observations, no matter what are the AI's standings with the other AI's, the human player is always preferred as the default target of the raid, or the first receiver of the bounty bidding in case some ai is the current target when everyone is on zero bounty.
In my opinion, it would be a good idea to make the raid bidding work based on relationships too, as the other custom pirate missions.
OP is right, the AIs do not seem to put bounty on each other anymore. Back in Entrenchment, AIs used to focus on their 'main enemy'. If someone bid on you, you could throw bounty on one of the distant AIs and they'd usually get pissed at their neighbor instead of you. Now throwing bounty of any of the AIs will always get them to throw it back on you. With this and other issues, might just be best to wait for another round of patch changes before turning the pirates on again.
I've played 2 FFA's with diplomacy (and always with 2 or greater hard AIs) and I've also noticed that 1)The AI never increase bounties on other AI's and 2)The AI's seem to know that I was the one who placed the bounties (OR the AI default to placing bounties on the human player). Obviously I haven't done any specific testing of this, but I can at least suggest what the OP said is correct.
Second that!
2000 don't work?tell me the AIs difficulty level and the game time when this happens for not worked out.in my case its worked out for the very first pirate raid .if ur fighting over 2 hours a 30k usually works LOL
I have been noticing this too. And it pissed me off that if I placed bits of bounty on each AI they would automatically outbid me together. Having given it some thought, I think this is intended on higher diffculty levels.
Spraying bits of bounty in FFA games was always an easy way to avoid pirates. In a 3 player FFA for example you could place 250 on each of your opponents and watch them outbid each other. Now, you end up with 500 on your head. This seems unfair because placing bounty against AI is no longer "anonymous", BUT it forces you to concentrate bounty on one opponent in order to avoid a pirate raid. As a result you have to pay more regular attention and invest more credits.
Placing bounty on several AI will ALWAYS backfire. You can no longer cheaply avoid pirates by doing so. Your best chance is to place bounty on one of them. This will start a duel between the two of you (since other AI seems to stay passive) leaving the AI better chances, since pirates are much more devastating now.
SO, to tell a long story short, when it comes to pirate attaks, it's human player against AI as a whole! It takes a while to get used to, but after having figuered this out, I think I like the greater challenge. I would welcome a different solution in the future... but for now: "Bring it on!"
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