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.
The problem is, if you do nothing the AI will put bounty on you. Before it was possible for the AI to start with putting bounty on anothe AI, and you could sit that raid out. Now you always have to bid, or the AIs will send a neverending stream of pirates at your for 250 credits a raid. While it's not too bad with 3 or 4 players, in a game with 7 AIs it becomes completely stupid that the AIs will but bounty on you on the other end of the galaxy, rather than their neighbors.
You need to look at it differently to be able to understand the intention:
At current settings, it is either you or one of the AI being raided. Period. Since, as you stated correctly, you HAVE to place bounty anyway in order to avoid being targeted, it is up to you to choose which of the AI players you would like to get it. If the human player ends up being raided, in the end it doesn't really matter where it came from. Am I right?
Or plain and simple: It's up to the human player to initiate pirate attacks on high difficulty. The AI player you choose will be the one to respond to that. The others will simply stay passive.
As a result "anonymous" bounty placing only works for multiplayer. Singleplayer becomes harder on higher difficulty levels that way, since pirate activities are no longer independent from the players intervention.
Sorry, but this is a bug, plain and simple.
The point of AI in any game is to be as humanlike as possible. If one cannot tell the difference between an AI, and a human, that AI has succeeded.
Diplomacy was supposed to stop the AI's ganging up on the human player ONCE AND FOR ALL. And yet here is the AI doing it again. I play on higher difficulty levels because I want a more humanlike opponent experience. Not because I simply want it "harder". And yet that's exactly what Diplomacy is doing.
I understand you are voting for more realistic AI behaviour. Yet by definition it's only a bug if it's not intended. As I said, I agree, that pirates are still not right in recent state, but it looks like the devs tried to find quick work arounds to some pirate issues and will hopefully come up with better solutions soon...
Trust me, if you do as I told, only place minimum amounts of bounty on a single opponent at a time the AI will NOT gang up on you... just for those having trouble. I agree that this needs adjustment though!
*delete this post plz*
the problem is that if you play against the new difficulty levels its impossible to outbid them since they make 4 or 5 times the amount of cash. What happens is I use up all resources and money to outbid and still lose so I get attacked and no longer have anything to replenish my fleet and planet after or during the pirate raid making for a quick defeat of me.
Cause that's exactly what you shouldn't do. Here is what I do:
I place 250 on just one of them. He places 500 on me. I place 750... and so on until he staggers. That way I have a 75% percent chance of not being raided. Works for me... that's all I can say.
Have we had any response on this yet?
This, coupled with the retarded power of the Pirates in Diplomacy, is why I just turn them off these days. This expansion kind of sucks, frankly... I just hope IC lives up to their usual reputation of constantly improving their products so that Diplomacy can be salvaged before the year is out.
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