Hello Stardock
Brad: This is GiskardUK from Twitter, this is the full report.
Excuse the title type... should have said Ship spammering, not spam spamming.
I was told the AI for GalCiv does not cheat so I am making this report because it sure looks like its cheating to me.
I have seen this in a few games since release now, 1 race usually suddenly starts spamming ships like crazy.
It ends up with so many ships that the only way it could possibly produce them in the numbers it does is if it can produce 1 large ship per ship yard, per turn.
Mean while it takes me 9 turns to do produce a similar ship from my best ship yard and that is with 5 planets helping, even with a large empire that is doing pretty well, I cannot keep up with the AI's ship building at all.
I get by, by building a bigger fleet and researching logistics, then just using the larger fleet to destroy as many of the AIs fleets per turn as I possibly can. Typically I destroy between 6 and 8 ships per turn with each fleet in an area being targeted by the AI, 1 to 3 in areas that are not being targeted by the AI. I have to do this every turn or the AI just floods the entire map with ships.
I have seen the AI flooding other AIs territory with ships then when I destroy a star base, they flood in to my area to regroup near a planet I own. So I just put a massive fleet there and have them destroy all incoming ships as fast as possible. Other ships from the AIs fleet do not move, even after a planet is lost, they stay still until destroyed.
This has been going on now for I think 100 turns in my current game, also war is constant, council votes to end wars do not end any of the wars but diplomatic measures do work.
This completely takes over the game when it happens, it stops being about doing other things and starts being about destroying as many ships as possible. Also the AI whilst a threat, tends to run out of transports quickly, it does not spam those for reason. So it does not gain much ground this way, it just takes cover the game and stops anything else from being done.
Last issue, I have seen the AI affected by this totally ignoring ship ranges to send its fleets deep in to my territory when it should not have been able too. There is chance they had a starbase some place that I could not see, but I would but that chance at about 20% because everything it would build on, has been built on by me already and I have scouts that have been roaming around looking for enemy units.
Here are some stats from my current game.Difficulty = Normal for the current game.
Iridium Corporation4th Population3rd Economy1st Military Power7th Approval2nd Tourism5 Treasury3rd Influence2nd Social ManufacturingPlayer1st Population1st Economy2nd Military Power8th Approval1st Tourism1st Treasury1st Influence1st Social Manufacturing
PS notice social manufacturing does not seem to have any effect on approval with large empires.
Hmm, well, you're less angry than I was, at the time.We'll see how many people shout at you, because you're "wrong".
I have not experience your direct problems in any of my games on Normal but I the AI do get bonuses to range and all sort of help on harder difficulties. These bonuses will diminish as the AI get smarter, I'm sure of that.
An AI that starts spamming ships are typically a military inclined race that focus allot in"Manufacturing" and "Military Manufacturing" in particular. You can often view that on the power graphs.
All in all it is not all too difficult to produce a colony ship per turn if you really try hard to do so, you just need to focus more on manufacturing on a couple of planets. If you really focus you can quite early get a planet that could in theory produce two colony ships per turn if you really wish., especially on you home world.
I can't really comment on your experience on range, but I never experienced the AI being capable to send ships further then their range on Normal difficulty so far. You might want to save your game and use the console and look at the AI and how they are doing and if their ships really are cheating.
I also hope AI tactical battle logic get a bit smarter in the future, especially how to build fleets and when the need to expand their logistical skill to keep up with an opponent or their fleets are just crushed over and over.
Well I just loaded my game and retired to see what the stats said and these are stats.
Battles won 264 (mostly since the ship spamming started)
Battles lost 22
Enemy ships destroyed 577 (mostly since the ship spamming started and mostly large ones)
Approval 73% but that puts me in 8th place for Approval.
Ships built 222 (this is me going flat out to build ships, usually large ones)
Most credits 23,000 (1st)
Also there is a clear spot in the graph where the AI spamming shits sky rockets in to the lead militarily and drops when i start killing his ships. Looks like somebody pressed the "SUPER AI" button and he went in to turbo charged mode. None of the others change so dramatically.
I saw an AI make a surprise win on ascension the same way in a previous game, they just suddenly went from nobodies to winners, I have lost every game I have played so far on normal and beginner because of these surprise turn arounds.
Look at the graph. You can generally get an idea what is happening. If it's the YOR it's because the AI was just taught how to use it's abilities. The devs are ware they are a bit OP right now. Iridium could be buying ships outright. On the graph you can see their military spending as well as their current income. They may have dropped a ton of credits. The AI also builds 1 shipyard per planet so they can genrally knock out ships fairly quickly. Save your game hit the tilda key and type fow. YOu now can watch the AI, this does flag you as a cheater so load back your previous game later.
Thanks Illauna for the advice, I'll do that.
I am AI modder as well as other types of modding so that tip will be very useful.
Also on the Twitch channel to night, I mentioned this and got some replies from others that have the same problem and feel the same way.
The only "cheat" right now is at higher difficulties it can see the map (maybe, I thought this was changed in a patch). This was actually for performance reasons.
Other than that the higher difficulties gives the AI a handicap. Just like you would give yourself a handicap when you are playing your little siblings so they have a chance of winning...although I'm terribly competitive and take great pleasure in destroying my 8 year old niece in Disney Infinity. Sorry, Miranda is my girl and I'm not getting destroyed by an Elsa....umm excuse me Disney Infinity is serious business. Anyways, the higher difficulties is for players that want the challenge.
Anyways, these handicaps do add up. Also, the AI is able to almost instantly modify is Govern queue for everyone of it's planets and can build whatever it wants almost on demand. The player can do this as well but can take it's a much bigger investment. So, if it's current state is war prep it's going to invest everything and will appear to be cheating.
Illauna:
ROTFL.. Competitive and destroying 8 year old nieces
Anyway back on topic....
I used your tip and turned of FOW and found AI, despite its stats saying otherwise, had taken over a large portion of the map that I could not see. It's empire was larger than mine. So lots of ships could be explainable. However the range of the ships could not explained, there was no way it should have been able to even attack me but it still managed it.
I would say there is a problem with larger maps, it causes large empires to send all their ships to 1 location that creates the ship spamming effect. I saw the issue on a much smaller map but its 1000x worse on large maps. I think more AIs are needed in larger maps to balance this out.
I see no way the ai doesn't cheat, even at a 'normal' game.
I like the big spread out maps, and while I could see every once in a while a race getting lucky and making it to a planet without searching much.. its like they bee line it to every one, while i have to stumble around and find mine with the fow. And while they are pumping out colony ships like crazy I am trying to make ships to defend AND a few colony ships for when I stumble across a planet. But somehow they STILL manage to pump out combat ships like mad. And when I make first contact and see what tech we can exchange.. wow, the ai sure has no problem shooting ahead with the tech either.
Mow speaking of diplo.. how can I be first to third in most categories but still get negative standing from other races because i am 'weak' or 'ripe to conquest' lol
And why does differing philosophies weigh so heavily against you. One of my games I was about 70/30 pragmatic/benevolent and one of the more peaceful races that I had establish trade with, and made several tech trades and treaties with in a matter of a few turns (because you get NO notification of when your treaty runs out.. god forbid you forget to look).. declares war on me.
Look.. I'm not saying I don't enjoy the game.. but this is still not very fleshed out at all and should probably still be in development like hearts of iron is (thankfully, now that i have played this some lol). I have played some games from the opt-in patches as well and it is not much different, as far as the ai/diplo goes anyways. Hoping they continue to fix things, because it is kinda cool.
Look.... if they are cheating, they are cheating ridiculously sneakily. I have never been able to catch them in the act I've never seen them overstepping on ship moves/ranges/logistics/mass, the planets I capture from them are generally legit, and even ridiculous credit in the bank are actually spent when they mobilize for war. The only times where I was a little bit concerned were when I had a long-range sensor ship which enemy war ships could somehow sniff out. But quite frankly, that's not the end of the world. In comparison with some other modern 4X games (I'm looking at 2014's big fantasy 4X releases...) where capturing an enemy city revealed the massive amount of cheating going on, or allying with an AI early on showed you how they popped out units out of magic hats, GalCiv 3 is either remarkably sneaky or just extremely good AI.
In most of my games (challenging, on Large/Huge) one or two of the AI players become big adversaries, and the rest trail behind. And every time this happened, there was enough reasonable doubt that the leading AI players were able to do well because they were a) left alone for too long, had enough space to expand properly, and c) conquered a bunch of enemy worlds. In my last game, I was fighting a massive Drengin menace. Myself and the Drengin were the only superpowers in the game, and we were tied for score. I convinced my significantly weaker Thalan ally to declare war on the Drengin, and literally watched how the Thalan became stronger and stronger. They were building many more ships, although initially quite slowly, until they became as much as a manufacturing power house as the Drengin. I fought of the Thalan's enemies so they were left alone, and it worked just as an actual player would play. And, to add some additional evidence that they were not cheating visibly, their science output (which was close to mine) started to decrease, which meant that they had to take away some of their research resources and dump it into ship production.
I actually just think Stardock made another very excellent AI in this game. Any "unbelievably powerful AI" I've encountered could've just been a lucky as well as skilled human player in MP. That said, in one of the betas just before release, the AI could exploit some bugs which I wasn't even really aware of, such as the Krynn growing exponentially an the Yor with practically limitless populations. I haven't encountered these recently.
Hmm an old post, on the off chance the OP is still reading, I'd love to look at your save game because I've not found any evidence of the so called "cheating" you are mentioning on normal difficulty. I've run lots of soaks and I investigate/test a lot (much more so than actually play the game).
When at war, the AI increase their military production and reduce research. The ships they churn out cost maintenance, which they respond to by increasing their economy (again this reduces their research). It is very detrimental to their progress technologically, infact having the AI at war permanently is a very valid strategy for beating them as long as you can keep the upper hand in battles won.
R
In 1.1, just launch with cheat option (pun well intended), go to debug console and go to god mode. Watch the AI and see what it does. Now with the tooltips, you should be able to clearly and easily determine if the AI is getting any bonuses that you do not. At highest difficulty, I would expect the AI to get bonuses that I don't. At normal, I wouldnt think so. Regardless, with god mode, you can verify if the AI is cheating, or learn some strategies with planet management which the AI may be doing better than you.
Oh, I think you may have to use the command local, to assume control of that race to look at the planet details. I havent done it, but know its certainly possible if you want to check.
Well, It is clear the AI is cheating.., at least, It is able to see all the map so it can colonize faster and pick weak spots to attack.. so unless you play agresively at the begining you will run out of suitable planets in about 40 turns
The devs "have a goal" to eliminate no-FOW for the AI, but IMO they have by far bigger fish to fry. Try Normal, if the AI's no-FOW advantage for the first 40 turns is killing you. Or if you want to mod the difficulty levels yourself, they are in the "Galactic Civilizations III/data/Game/GalCiv3AIDefs.xml" file. FOW isnt in there, I believe its hard coded, above normal difficulty. Hence, if you want to give the AI bonuses, but no FOW, you will have to mod the normal difficulty object, copying over bonuses from higher levels.
Producing 1 large ship per shipyard per turn is not too hard, especially mid to late game. In my current game I am producing huge ships every 3 turns per yard and that is 1 ship class larger. I would have no problem getting it down to 1 if I thought it was necessary, but it never is. That is not to say I think you are wrong about it cheating, although if it is cheating I can't imagine how easy it would be to beat if you took that away. Even on Incredible difficulty the AI isn't that hard.
So, no fow its only above normal difficulty? If that is true I will mode normal to be harder without having to rush to every planet I found at the start..
The AI does cheat. I've suspected it for some time, but it was not until recently I become certain. Because the AI is completely disregarding the sensory range.
I'm at war with the Snathi Revenge, and I popped out of a wormhole into non-occupied space, 9 tiles away from a Snathi fleet. They have a sensory range at 2. I have, with my survey ship, a sensory range of 13. So they are well inside my range, but I'm far outside their. And what happens then? Well, their fleet goes directly for my survey ship.
I've also tried to catch them cheating by luring them with a survey ship towards my own fleets. And just to be sure that they were cheating, I again placed myself outside their sensory range, but inside my own sensory range. I did take course changes to see if they were following me, and they did. And when my fleet had finished of their fleet, I turned my survey ship around to see if they had something spotting behind their main fleet... which they did not have. And since they were far away from any Snathi starbases or planets, there were no way they could have spotted and followed my survey ship.
So the AI is definitely cheating.
I'm playing on beginner settings.
It sometimes feels like the AI is cheating with ship production to me, as well. I decided to do an experiment lately and I used the modcredits cheat to give myself tons of credits so I could Rush Colony Ship production at the start of a game. I went around colonizing the hell out of tons of planets, but lo and behold, several civs somehow have even MORE planets colonized. I cheated like crazy to get those planets, how does an AI produce all those colony ships on Normal difficulty? They also had tons of military ships, as most AI civs somehow do.
Another issue I have is how AI's try to take things from you purely because they can through "Diplomacy" and I use the term loosely. It never, ever has anything to do with the AI actually needing anything, it's all about the AI taking as much from the player as they can to make the game harder for them. For example, they always, ALWAYS ask for a percentage of what you have. If I had 10 Darkmatter, they'd ask for 2-5 Darkmatter, if I had 100 Darkmatter, they'd ask for 20-30 Darkmatter. If I had 1000 credits, they'd ask for 150 credits, if I had 10,000 credits, they'd ask for 1000 credits. I often feel entirely justified in cheating when I choose to do it, because the AI seems to be doing it and it feels the AI is not acting like a "Galactic Civilization" but a programmed AI trying to defeat the player. Even your allies are trying to make things harder for you because they're an AI programmed to make the player lose, and everyone is always asking the player to go to war with other civs for no real reason purely to make you be at war with as many civs as possible. It's artificial difficulty. The AI isn't playing to win, they're playing to make you lose.
Unfortunately, that's what strategy games are. YOU aren't playing like an actual civ leader either, why do you expect an AI to do so?
If you want an actual simulation, go play distant worlds. It's just what you ask for. All AI civs behave like actual galaxy-spanning political organizations. Yes, some as completely evil and want to eat your brains but there are others whose "win state" is outbreeding everybody else without declaring war.
Not sure about you, but I do act like the Civilization of Technological, Mental and Spiritual Enlightenment I am playing as.
So you sometimes declare war on people for no reason other than their opposing ideology?
No. Why would you think I'd do that? I tend to stay neutral for as long as possible, and rarely declare war on anyone unless someone like the Snathi or the Drengin or the Daleks or Space Orks are on a total warpath across the whole Galaxy, at which point rally as many races together as a sort of resistance force. The pseudo role-playing is part of the fun for me. Even the race traits I chose reflect my civilization on more than a gameplay level(that is, I don't choose them just because they will make things easier and make me stronger), for example, my civilization has rank2 Gentle because they don't want to hurt innocents during planetary invasion.
I also choose my ideology traits and select the outcomes to ideological events(like colonizing worlds) in a way that makes sense for my civ, usually it's Banevolent choices, but sometimes Pragmatic, even if the one I choose grants the least reward. If I wasn't focusing on Benevolent and Pragmatic, I'd get the Awe Ideology tree to represent how scary the advanced looking technology my civ has is, but the opportunity just does not occur for me to get Malevolent Ideology points because most of the things I'd have to do to get them while colonizing worlds early game just don't make sense for my civilization. I think the one I did choose was a precursor world which let me choose how to use the precursor technology I found on that world, and I chose to enhance my weaponry.
You're complaining that the AI does the same thing as you, but that it doesn't do so as intelligently. Everyone is aware of this.
You're not even making sense any more. Looks like you're back peddling from an argument, and even tried to twist what I said in the second from last post you made. What does what you just said have to do with the post above it? Your posts are are just coming off as exceedingly antagonistic.
Yes-Men and Fanboys are agents of stagnation and self-destruction. If there is a problem you should tell those concerned(in this case Stardock) about it, not pretend everything is perfect.
I get annoyed by this too... I expand rapidly early game, colonizing everything in sight. I build lots of ships early and place them in orbit around these planets/shipyards/starbases. I have specialized planets pumping out tons of production. I have 17 planets now and a descent Faction Power score. That is until I run across the Iridium who have nearly QUADRUPLE my Faction Power score with LESS planets than me. All of my planets have 95% approval or higher yet I'm listed as 3rd in Approval??? Yet I have the most planets. Ummmkay! No matter how hard I try I cannot get my score higher than the AI. Just when I think I'm doing good then BAM I meet a civ with QUADruple my score with less resources and planets. Then they pick a war with me because I'm "WEAK" or "Ripe for conquest." HUH?????? Then I look at the trade screen and the AI has twice as many ships as me. So now war takes over the game and the AI refuses peace. Here we go, war again. ugh. This is on normal mode and it happened on gifted difficulty as well. Putting it on "easy" is laughable so there's no happy medium, Easy mode is too easy, normal and gifted modes you get killed in Faction Power no matter what you do. Please stop the madness and balance the game Stardock!
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
