I recently picked up TA, and decided to replay all of the campaigns from the beginning. I don't know if you're still doing patches for this game, but here are some issues I've found:
1) The DL scenarios have the asteroid mining and hostile planet colonization techs from TA available for research, but those techs have no function in a DL scenario, and could cause new players to waste effort researching them.
2) Computer players appear to be able to observe events that should not be within their field of view. For example, if I build a starbase near my homeworld, the Dread Lords immediately dispatch ships to destroy it, even though they have no ship anywhere nearby that could have seen it.
3) When one of my ships is destroyed, the fog of war usually (though not always) does not return to the area it was seeing when it died. I've been able to exploit this bug by building a small ship with a huge sensor radius, flying it into a strategic area, and letting it be destroyed.
Edit: This also seems to also happen when I destroy an enemy ship. Essentially, having a ship battle of any sort seems to permanently remove the fog from the area of battle. I am using full battles, if it makes a difference.
4) After trading some race-exclusive tech to a computer player, it later tried to trade that same tech back to me. I was playing a customized race based off the Terrans.
Edit: Further testing shows this happening even without race-exclusive techs. Perhaps the AI doesn't know that I already have the tech they're offering, and thus tries to trade it to me?
5) The Military/Social/Research allocation sliders do not move smoothly. With one slider locked, moving either unlocked slider should cause the other to move in an equal and opposite manner. Also, IMHO, locking a slider when one is already locked should unlock the prior one, since there's no point in ever having two sliders locked (but that's a minor nit).
This may be a silly question, but how do you do this? I've wanted to test some things in my game before (like testing a custom ship style to make sure the AI uses it properly) and I didn't know if there was a way to advance the game that many turns to see what happens, or do you actually have to play through that many?
I played them out. It doesn't take that long when it's a 2-race scenario in a tiny galaxy, and neither race is doing anything.
21) Another AI issue: I'm playing Drengin, fighting a war with the Terrans, when they slip a constructor into my territory and build an... economic starbase? Why would it build an economic starbase in the middle of enemy space? There were no trade routes in that area, and the only planets around were mine, so an econ starbase did them no good except as a range extender, and a military or influence starbase could do that, and have more potential uses in the war.
They're trying to sell you cheaper hyperdrive insurance.
Possibly, because the Terrans think a military/influence starbase would bother you more.
When building range-extender starbases that are in an AI race's territory, I usually make them economy bases unless I'm planning to attack/culture-bomb that AI later. Otherwise, the starbase will just draw pointless complaints and drag relations down. I believe the AI is coded to behave in a similiar fashion. Of course, it's still a bug as they should realize that the possibility of degrading your relations is a little besides the point when you're at war.
22) When playing campaign missions, the AI opponents accuse you of "making peace only to attack again", when you did no such thing. I realize that this is an assumption built into the "permanent war" status, but it's inaccurate nonetheless.
Hello all!
Please advise on a serious bugs with my AI.
There are two major problems I have again and again.
a - Several races (Iconians, Korx, Arceans to name a few) are advancing very slowly all the time and often freeze in their status. They do the colony rush either very poorly or not doing it at all. Then they find themselves with 3-6 planets against empires with 30+ planets and easily become prey for them. Is there any known fix to this?
b - Sometime (too often for any comfort) races that choose to begin building their fleets with defenders instead of fighters build those ships without any components installed. As the result they have 0 military rating while other races have a large standing armies ready to crush them. Can this be fixed?
PS Would be grateful for any help. Such a great game is ruined so badly in ToA. Gets me frustrated
There's always going to be winners and losers in the colony rush.
Any race which doesn't have an advantage (like the Thalan's inherent social/military bonus) that allows them to crank colony ships out faster or move colony ships faster than other races is going to get boxed in. However, colony rushers get to pay through the nose for all their colonies which don't produce much tax to begin with.
However the reality is that the rushers are always ahead in the tech race because every colony produces research. As soon as their economy recovers to the point where they can run the production slider at 100%, just that amount is enough to make things very grim for a smaller race.
In theory, a race with just six colonies could get started on Planetary Invasion real quickly and then gobble up bloated empires before they know what's happening.
Now for a human, it's simple to appreciate just how slim this particular window of opportunity is. An early war to grab planets from your upstart neighbour is a great idea, but it can backfire if your enemy researches Planetary Invasion and Space Weapons and starts sending transports and fighters to claim back the worlds you've plundered.
The AI can't appreciate the potential rewards or risks in this strategy, so it usually does not have its pieces in position. A small empire under control of the AI usually falls behind unless a mega event turns things around for them, or the human player intervenes (gifted ships, planets, techs) or they just get lucky and happen to grab some planets during a dogpile war.
MarvinKosh, thank you for the quick reply.
However here is the topic https://forums.galciv2.com/363497/page/2/#replies Check this out to see that it proves my point -- described problems are a serious flaws in the AI coding.
There is a fix for tech trees of all races a guy made in some other topic here which makes them look more like DL style tech trees. He says it helps a lot and I will be testing for a few days. I can report back the result if you're interested.
Commenting your post:
Before coming to this forum I've made a motherload of test games and the bugs mentioned were presented every time (which clearly eliminates all the fun)
The military strategies you mentioned as to rush research for bigger hulls and guns I use myself but AI doesn't. This is proven by the motherload of defenders they build and that supposed to be their "military force". But those ships don't have any components installed even if the appropriate techs are researched.
Anyway read through the topic I listed above to see what I mean
I agree with you, but I'm not convinced that a given AI can always avoid being boxed in, unless there is a routine added for those big expanders to slow down and let their economies breathe, or there is a shocking abundance of habitable worlds,
Where I have found a particular AI personality to be lacking, I have tried using the generic or Terran personalities instead. You can accomplish the same by clicking the Edit Race button and checking the Personality tab. As well as altering base personalities, I tend to have a mixture of peaceful and militant races as well, so there is usually someone who has ships and wants to go to war with someone who doesn't.
I don't know if that will help, but it's something to try if you haven't done so already.
I should also add that sometimes, it's the personality that holds the AI back, and sometimes it's heir tech tree. A custom race using the Generic personality and the Terran tech tree will be a little bit predictable (Phasors on stunned) but at least they won't get stuck the way some of the stock races do.
I finished testing the maklar mod.
It did help a lot. With the tech trees returned to the DL style all the stock races began expanding a lot better and built a military a lot better. However they still behaive strange (they never build a trade routes or try to trade techs with me for example). After al I decided to go back to the Dark Avatar. If the testing of it's AI will satisfy me I will not be playing ToA untill a proper patch is released (And I guess it won't happen any time soon) and will play DA instead
Try maklar mod anyway see how it changes things a lot.
If I may - one minor bug I found in TA campaign recently:
23) Playing in ToA DL campaign, humans race have -10% military production penalty ability declared - but during the game (at least during first mission) when I check race stats it's only -1% (?). All other stats seems to be correct.
24) "Destroy Colony" should not render the planet uninhabitable.
I made a "strategic withdrawal" from a planet with a +700% production to prevent it from being taken by the Dread Lords, and was very unpleasantly surprised to discover that the planet was permanently dead.
Having read another thread on this topic, I know this is by design, to prevent repeated recolonization event farming, but it really seems like there's a better way: Generate the colonization event code for all planets when the map is first created. Then when the event occurs, adjust the planet's stats per the result, and zero out the event code so that recolonizations will never get an event. Even in the biggest galaxy, it shouldn't add more than a few kB to the save file size, and as a side bonus, it foils attempts to savescum for good colonization events.
25) In Dark Avatar Campaign mission #5, the "Trade" technology is visible in the tech tree, but can never be researched.
Opinion, not a bug. I happen to agree with your idea, but it belongs in another thread.
26) When a ship is "locked on" and following another ship, it should lose the lock if the target ship goes out of sensor range, or goes through a wormhole.
There is a problem with implementing 26 in that it is possible for the target ship to not be out of sensor range of another of the AI's ships, but there's no way to know that without iterating through every ship within 15 pc of the target ship. If we are strict and say that each ship or fleet must use its own guidance systems and not rely on position reporting from other ships or fleets, then it's do-able, but you could argue that it would be easy to run rings around AI ships which would effectively be blind.
But I agree that if a ship you're pursuing jumps in a wormhole, there's no way you should set a course for the other side of the galaxy just to chase them. By the time you get there, they could have jumped through another wormhole anyway.
It seems like something like this would be necessary to implement a fog-of-war map for the AIs anyway (see bug #2).
Such a map isn't all that big; a 512x512pc map (bigger than immense) would have 256k squares, Use 1 byte per race per square for an observer count, and when a ship moves, update its race's observer count for the squares that went in/out of its view. Seems like the whole thing would fit inside 8MB or so, even without any fancy tricks.
Sensor coverage isn't a guaranteed thing for a human player right now, a ship moving into the same square as a sensor boat or starbase with good sensor coverage can nullify the benefit of those sensors, at least until you click the ship/base again afterwards. Then there's the bug where the sensor coverage stays even when the ship providing it has been destroyed. If you're going to give the AI a sensor map it has to not be prone to those sorts of problems.
I would suggest that the AI keep a list of enemy sensor contacts. In other words, where and when a given ship or fleet was last seen, and how fast it is capable of moving. If a contact is confirmed visible, then an intercepting ship or fleet moves to a likely interception point (in other words it doesn't simply blow all its moves trying to get as close as possible, it attempts to veer into the path the enemy fleet is travelling, if intel level 2 has been reached). If a contact is not confirmed, then any fleets searching for the enemy do not simply proceed to the last known co-ordinates but patrol between there and any likely target, bearing in mind how far the ship or fleet may have been able to travel since contact was lost. When an enemy contact is capable of moving faster than the current ship, do not attempt to re-acquire the contact if it could already be beyond the range of moves+sensors. It's better to stand ground and wait to see if it turns around.
27) (Maybe): I'm playing Dark Avatar Campaign mission #6 (Death of the Korx), and very early on I got several messages about the Dread Lords completing wonders, including the Artificial Slave Center and the Hyperion Logistics System. I'd never seen the DLs build wonders before. Are Dread Lords supposed to be able to build Wonders?
Edit: This also happens in TA Campaign #4. Perhaps the Dread Lords are using the wrong AI in these scenarios?
28) The map editor does not properly color resource icons when zoomed out.
29) Attempting to start a scenario instead of sandbox mode still causes a CTD.
30) Stars should be unfogged on the main map from the beginning.
31) AI Miners are a bit overzealous. They're mining asteroids near my planets, such that within a few turns of them finishing a mining base, it flips to my ownership. Not that I mind, really, but it's rather poor strategy.
32) Dread lords appear to spot and immediately approach and attack any colonies with ships stationed on them. This is very easy to game; I just park my garrison ships in an adjacent space. Generally, I've found that the key to beating the Dread Lords is to not garrison ships and not build starbases, either of which draw the DLs like flies to honey. While this works, it feels like I'm winning by exploiting the AI's weaknesses, which is less than completely satisfying.
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