I just wanted to make an appreciated thread to say how pleased I am with the recent work on the AI.
1.01 has fixed the expanding issues we saw in 1.0, they are expanding at a similar rate to me playing on Tough (Rush building colony ships I was).On a large map, the main 3-4 AI opponents all have similar size empires to me, it's fantastic.
They no longer send dozens of lone ships at you - they always seem to keep them in decent size fleets.I've just had the Thalan declare war - what's the first thing I see coming at my border? 3 fleets filled with 7 ships each. Awesome!My fleets are also made up of 7 ships - a pretty even match.Also no more lone troop transports, they get escorted nicely too.
The last straw and what made me post this, was the fact that those 3 fleets consisted of MY designs from a previous game when I played as the Thalan!They were improvements over the stock ships, but I was shocked to see the AI making use of that fact.
Sure there are still minor niggles, but overall I'm extremely impressed and look forward to more AI improvements to come
Yeah its moving in the right direction.
AI still needs to juggle approval better though.
I am also really enjoying the game.
My main issues with the AI are pretty minor but..
They like to demand tribute from you when you're obviously vastly superior.
Their opinions of each other seems bugged. Myself and another faction were trading buddies for years, the Terran started conquering them but when I saved them and took the Terrans stuff my trading buddy was - to me for "you conquered our friend". Their friend? They were conquering them! haha it was funny and I enjoyed it but that probably needs to be changed =]
Other than that stuff the game is amazing and very detailed.
Hmmm, okay so they made the AI do fewer stupid things, that's great! It's still super easy to crush them.
What difficulity are you playing on?
For me:
Challenging = NOT
Tough = Definitely tough but doable
suicidal = yup suicidal haven't won a game with more that 2 AI races set at this level
I'm currently getting crushed in my "tough" game. Everyone is declaring war at me but nobody declares war to the other AI! Bad luck!
Yup, this started in 1.01 (AFAIK) and it definitely makes it TOUGH. Here is a trick, use the pragmatic trait where no one can declare war for on you for 50 turns. Get enough points and wait to unlock it Either save scum and reload right before they go to war (guilty, done this a time or two ) or watch closely how angry the race are with you and unlock when it gets close to war.
I crushed the level above normal. Already at that point the AI is cheating some. I'm sure there is some level that will give a challenge, but only after the AI is getting significant cheating bonuses. At normal it is already using its full bag of tricks. I seem to recall one of the big selling points of GCII was that the AI put up a good fight without cheating. I guess I have to just accept that the AI in GCIII will not be able to play better than me any time soon, that the game is just too complex for it, and it will only be able to beat me with cheats for now.
The AI does the same thing in all the games I've started:
1) rush to low/mid level military tech
2) build shipyards on every single planet
3) build huge amounts of warships
4) goes bankrupt
5) drops all research funds to be able to pay maintenance for a hundred warships
6) loose very badly once I get to the higher level tech stuff
The biggest issue with the AI right now is morale. It is not managing morale well. This accounts for their super slow expansion in some cases. I made a mod that gives the AI a flat +4 morale boost on challenging, and gameplay changed completely.
Normally I am running away with the game by 150 turns.
First big change. The AI is not sending constructors halfway across the galaxy to claim resources, why? It's actually building colonizers and grabbing territory. From here it snowballs.
I ended up in my last game only getting 7 planets, which was about average for all the nearby AI's, I was on the low side of average.
I then ended up at war from 4 directions by turn 70~ from the Krynn, the Meklar (MOO race of cybors, think Yor), the Yor and another MOO inspired custom race. I held off the Krynn, smashed them back and probably could have pressed them even harder, but the Meklar started making moves, so I peaced out with the Krynn and sent my fleets north. I pushed the Meklar back but couldn't get peace. Then the Yor hit through the backdoor. Before I could get any react down to where the Yor were hitting, I lost 3 starbases and 2 planets, one of which was my second primary production hub. Not to mention they were running fleets much stronger than I could.
That is from a boost of 4 morale.
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