Okay - need some help here from the more experienced players.
I normally play between normal and hard settings and since the last update the AI (on normal) can't seem to cope with the planetary militia and can't seem to build any frigates or planetary defences.
I played a 3 FFA with each faction on loyalists, and me as TEC - on a 16 planet map. I played the pirates against each faction so they were both weakened. I expanded quickly as usual.
I then started to build up my fleet and built a Titan before attacking the Advent AI. This was about three hours in and the AI had not attacked once. Advent had 3 planets and a empty asteroid outside its borders (which it had not colonized).
When I reached its home world it had no fleet - an undamaged planet, two labs and no resource asteroids were built.
So - my point is, is normal working as intended? It seems to me that the AI is so starved of resources it cannot manage any kind of fight at all, which would make the difficulty level pointless.
TL:DR - is normal working as intended as its really, really weak now.
Try a game without pirates, see if it makes a difference...the pirates may have beaten the poor buggers to death....
I'm thinking this is the most common reason why the AI seems to not do anything anymore. Maybe it's time for the Devs to put some real effort in redoing the pirates?
Thanks for the input guys - had a feeling the Pirates might have had a hand in it, it's too easy to pay the pirates to attack other factions (even more so playing as TEC!) it was too tempting to resist.
One other thing though - the Vasari had managed to build a Titan and a Capital Ship while I was busy attacking the Advent, but never used it, even though there was a lone weak star base (used as a trade port) in a asteroid field next to it. I think that was more my issue, I was never really attacked by the AI, even though it had a Titan.
It had scouted though - so it should have known what was about.
Anyway - I'll try turning the Pirates off, or just simply play on Hard or higher - I should not be playing on normal anyway!
Thx for the input.
Hm. The changes in the AI are among other things that it now save for stuff that costs much. Maybe the AI was saving for a big fleet, combination of capital ships or something else before it was ready to attack?
I had a inebriated thought, it is friday after all, about Pirates, which is also fitting.
What do Pirates want? BOOTY! Where do you usually find much Booty? With merchants!
So why not keep the timer and Pirates, have them attack the system that generate the most income with Trade Ports and scale the Pirates strength to the amount of the Trade Ports income? The bigger Trade Port hub you have the more you have to defend the planet from Pirates. Makes sense to me.
The irony is that trade ports are currently the best defense against pirates....they spend so much time chasing the poor trade ships that they never get around to attacked the plane...
They have to get reprogrammed then! Pirates don't go for small ships when there's Big Booty to be had in the harbour!
Devs. Go do some magic on the Pirates and make them more Arr, matey, thar be ye booty! .
Well, technically the pirates are doing what you are asking....they are going after the booty (and nothing else)...
As I said in my previous post every Pirate worth their salt knows that the Big Treaaye isn't on the ships it's in the harbour! Where do the Shiny things come from that's on the ships? The motherload is waiting in the harbour and the doubloons producing lands around it. Arr
That is the Trade Port and the planet. If you wanna go boring speak and hava no fun grog talk no more.
A man had just moved into a new city and decided to try a local barber shop...the first morning he could, he went to the barber and got his hair cut...like all barber shops, there was much gossip, jokes, and stories to tell, and right before he left the barber pulled the man aside and whispered to him, "See that boy over there? He's the stupidest lad there ever was....watch!"
The barber went up to the boy and put out his hands. "Now young lad," he boomed so everyone could hear, "in my right hand I have a dollar and in my left I have 2 quarters...now which would you rather have?" "Well the 2 quarters, of course!" replied the lad. Everyone in the barber shop laughed at the boy's apparent stupidity, but the man was intrigued and decided to follow the boy out of the barber shop.
As he followed, he watched the boy buy a 50 cent ice cream cone and sit done at a nearby park bench...the man caught up to him and asked, "Boy, don't you know a dollar is worth more than 50 cents?" The boy looked at him and replied, "As soon as I take the dollar, the game is over..."
And the moral of the story is...why kill the planet or trade ports when you can just keep raiding the trade ships?
Arr matey no!
You have to think about the life expectancy of an ordinary Pirate, which is less than the ordinary Pirate Captain and plan ahead! Ahoy! One big Loot Badaboom Bazonka and then you can settle down.
There's a reason Ye Olde Pirate was always going for the Big Phat Pile o Loot, BPPoL from now on. They knew their kind of life was killing them so they was always looking for the BPPoL. And the BPPoL in Sins is the Trade Port and the Planet. Raid that and you can settle back on a comfortable asteroid somewhere with all the comforts that wealth and reputation can get you while being out of the way of the deranged antics of a couple of maniacal groups of genocidal killers of FUN. Why do they always want to kill fun? And Grog. Especially Grog. They keep this up The Pirates will rise!
Well, All I can say about this new 1.52 patch is that it totally wrecked the AI and how tough they were on the hardest settings. I play this game with a friend constantly using two AI on the hardest settings. and now, the AI is a push over on the hardest settings. and no we do not use pirates.
The AI used to come with a force from hell, now they trickle in iis small waves. just great IC, thank you community for all the bitching about how hard the AI was. give me a fricking break you cry babies, use the difficulty scales to your liking, just because some of you cant beat the AI on the hardest setting does not warrant the AI b\being dumbed down. Thanks a lot!!!!!
Got some advise for you whiners about the AI. If you cant take the heat, get the hell out. Stop strying to destroy a great game.
this does make a good case for having a wider range of difficulty levels with a smoother gradient to satisfy most players. I had seen some discussion regarding the Hard level but I don't believe changing anything above that was discussed or asked for (unless I missed it).
Concur...jumps from normal to hard and from hard to unfair are too big...of course, some think normal AI is broken now so I honestly would focus on fixing that first, smoothing out the difficulty jumps later...
AI saves money for research now and keeps it for a while. At one moment it spends all money and resources for researching some stuff. I couldn' t get out for what AI is waiting for this act.
It has some check point now and I am not sure did it become better - harder or easier to play against AI.
But it is stupid to keep money of 50 000 and alot of resources of course. In this time ai doesn't produce any ships.
I think they have to change it again. I would tell it became worse.
I think the AI is waiting for building Titan. I reported it in the bug thread some time ago: https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/445394 as "AI Titan craving".
The AI is probably not intentional saving money for research. It is more like the AI has Titan stuck at the head of build queue, so it refuses to build any other ships, while the surplus money then get spent on researches. Once the Titan is out, build queue will be free, and the AI will suddenly fleet up. This is probably the reason why some people described their game as being quiet, quiet, quiet, then AI attacked in waves.
I am playing SoA2 and in this mod there is no titans. Not all ai npcs are keeping money. It depends I think also which type of AI you have. aggressive, defensive, resaarch or economic. Some of them have this bug.
I am not sure that it is cause of titan.
They crushed their own game really now. I like to play small maps and when AI is keeping their money and do nothing no research, not buildiing ships etc. I can get all planets and resources. For me this game became not playable. I am using steam and don't have any possibility to play with version 1.51 again. I don't have any possibility to change ai cause it is hard coded.
It can be also that they cannot correct it anymore. All your effort for mods and the time you spent for this was useless.
What I can only do now to start to play another strategy game.
If mods are involved then it is harder to say.
However, you can try to observe under dev.exe to see what is on the AI's build queues. The symptoms I described should apply to anything that the AI want to build but unable to do so. For example, when I removed the starbase research subject without removing the StarbaseInfo and starbase constructor from a race, eventually the starbase constructor will show up and stuck at the top of the AI build queue, preventing that AI from building other frigates. I think The AI type can play a role because it affects what kind of units the AI wants to build.
"
How I can do this?
Create another mod directory "Mods-Rebellion v1.52 Dev" and put SOA2 into it.
In the game program directory, alongside the normal "Sins of a Solar Empire Rebellion.exe", there is another "Sins of a Solar Empire Rebellion Dev.exe". You can execute that dev.exe, and it should detect any mods you placed in "Mods-Rebellion v1.52 Dev".
For the features available in dev.exe, see the thread https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/410160
The particular tools in question are "show build list" and maybe "show research". Once these are enabled, when you select a player's unit/planet, the build list and research list will be displayed.
dev.exe is even more fun than the real game IMO.
Thanks.
I will check it out.
There is something AI cannot build and this should be removed then.
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