Greetings!
I've created a new sub-forum here dedicated to talking about GalCiv III AI. Because of our forum system, active posts here will float up to the top so you can see this post from the main forum too.
A big welcome to GalCiv III fans or future AI game developers!
## AI Background ##
GalCiv III is the first of the GalCiv games where I didn't write the initial AI for. This has turned out to be a good thing, something that we will all benefit from for years. But in this section, we'll talk about what this means.
Unlike the previous GalCiv AI's, this one is data driven. That means most of its intelligence is derived from XML files in the game directory. The team implemented the AI as a huge library of APIs that use this data and make very simple decisions with it. Because the game is 64-bit and because each AI player gets its own thread, there is a huge amount of built in potential to do some amazing stuff.
In late March of 2015, I finished up my main work on Sorcerer King and began to look at the AI for GalCiv III. The primary strengths in the AI are what I just described. However, it has some weaknesses too which revolve mostly around not being very good at PLAYING the game.
To use the Chess metaphor, the GalCiv III AI at the 0.80 level (March 2015) knew how to play the game. It just didn't know how to play it well yet. That's where I came in. My pre-release work consisted on making the AI more skilled in playing actual humans.
If I were to rate the GalCiv AIs over the years, and this rating changes a bit based on how I"m feeling that day I'd rate them as follows where 1 is brain dead and 10 is the absolute best AI a game can have.
GalCiv OS/2: 8
GalCiv I for Windows: 7
GalCiv II: Dread Lords: 6
GalCiv II: Dark Avatar: 8
GalCiv II: Twilight 7
GalCiv III: 1.0: 6
## AI Expectations ##
Anyone who has had to deal with me on forums knows that I have very limited patience for arm-chair AI designers. I'm old and cranky. If you're participating in these discussions, here are a few ground rules you need to understand:
1. Nearly all players play at either beginner or easy. And by nearly all, I mean 90%. This has always been the case and will always be the case. So feedback or suggestions that involve affecting those players negatively or spending a vastly disproportional sum of money and time on some AI idea just isn't helpful
2. Unless you've programmed AI, feedback suggesting new APIs isn't really helpful. Every AI discussion always has people suggesting things like "The AI should be able to detect threats" or "The AI needs to build better fleets" or "The AI should reinforce planets that are endangered" as if these features weren't in the game before I showed up. That's the most basic stuff. The aI fails to do those things because something else happened and our job is to figure out what happened that kept it from doing those things.
3. Extreme exploits aren't going to be fixed. Most people who win the game are taking advantage of some level of exploit. That is fine and we can, on a case by case basis, determine which ones we should address. I tend to fix exploits that are too tempting to ignore. If the AI is making bad trades, for instance, that's something that should be fixed. But if someone has figured out that they can kite some unit in tactical battle for 45 minutes doing 1 damage per turn until the monster is dead I"m not going to fix that kind of thing. Kite away, my friend.
4. My near time objective is to get the GalCiv III AI up to a 7 and later an 8. It is extremely unlikely I'll be able to get it to a 9 on my arbitrary scale because it's not commercially viable and I've never seen a game reach anywhere close to a 9 and only one commercial strategy game has reached an 8 besides Dark Avatar. Most PC strategy games are less than a 6 and provide their challenge through actual cheating AI which is much cheaper and often more fun for players anyway.
5. Understand what cheating really is. If you get a handicap at bowling or golf you are not cheating. If you get to walk up and kick down the pins you are. People throw around the term "Cheating" so lazily now that it's having a negative impact on the incentive to actually make good AI. The AI in GalCiv does't cheat with 1 exception: On the higher difficulties it doesn't have FOW (and even that is something I'm looking to get rid of). Giving an AI a handicap (i.e. every credit it makes is matched by another 0.25 credits) is not cheating, it's a handicap. If the community ever reached a consensus that giving the AI a handicap is cheating AND felt the AI was dumb then it would make more sense to just have the AI actually cheat (i.e. just give the AI whatever units, weapons, techs, etc. it needed based on the difficulty level, much easier to code).
## AI Weaknesses in 1.0 ##
The biggest problem I'm dealing with in the 0.80 to 1.03 AI of GalCiv III is that all its thinking is empire wide. I cannot control spending on a per planet basis. I do not have access the shipyard building a ship. I am making decisions for an empire without any local knowledge. As a result, the bigger the map, the weaker the AI gets.
The second biggest issue is related and has to do with the ships. The AI doesn't currently have access to the ships in a way that lets me work with them based on on their location. I've alw2ays written the AIs in GalCiv as a gamer and less as a programmer. So, in my mind, I always thought of fleets as having a geographical duty. That isn't the case in GalCiv. As a reuslt, it has a lot tougher time coordinating ships into coherent local "Stuff. The bigger the map, the worse it gets.
Now, before someone says "How can you have crazy sized maps and an AI that can't 'handle' it" I'll bring you back to expectation #1. The AI handles it just fine for nearly all players. It's for people who are really good at strategy games that can overcome this and it's not an all or nothing thing (The AI, with enough handicaps, can overcome this weakness).
Nearly every weakness in the 1.0 AI boils down to a lack of local awareness (that is, letting planets, ships, shipyards, think locally instead of globally). The AI would do great as a federal politician...
## Rolling up our sleeves ##
I have a bunch of low hanging fruit that I intend to address in GalCiv 1.1, 1.2, and 1.3. Let's talk about those first:
1. Eliminate the AI's all seeing FOW vision. This will actually make the AI substantially smarter on bigger maps. This seems counter intuitive until you see the weaknesses I pointed out. It's better for the AI to only "see" stuff that actually matters so that it's not sending ships across the map or building starbases where it has no business doing so.
2. Making the AI more aware of ZOC. Remember, the AI gets annoyed when units and starbases are in its ZOC. The AI makes no distinction between meat and silicon. As a result, the AI often ends up with war with each other because of this which reduces the AI's focused strength.
3. Pre-war build up. This is something I'll be working with the Civ IV and Civ V AI developers on. This is something they're good at that I haven't done as much on. So I'll be implementing some of those systems (not source code of course, I'm just going to talk to them about it) into the AI.
4. Localized tactics. This will be a major bit of work but we will start dividing up the galaxy into theaters and have the AI start thinking of its empire and strategically vital interests as theaters rather than the current system which defines 2 theaters: Theater of focus (where it is concentrating its forces) and everything else.
## How you can help ##
Helpful: Telling me dumb things you saw the AI do that made you able to beat it is helpful. Very helpful in fact. Any mistake that would allow you to win regardless of the handicap.
Not helpful: Things that could be addressed just as easily with a handicap. The AI doesn't build up its planets well. This is on our list. But it's actually not that important since that can be addressed with handicaps.
Really helpful: Saved LATE games with descriptions of what you are seeing. Maybe the AI isn't defending its planets well. Maybe it's sending out crappy fleets. Maybe its fallen way behind militarily. Maybe its ships are crappy. These are things that I'm interested in.
Thanks all and cheers!
You know what? I'm buying Galciv3 now. And it's because of this thread.
This game has the potential to be a lot.
Unfortunately, it's not there yet. WHICH IS WHY I'M ANGRY.
The AI should have some hidden diplomatic thing to PUNISH MIN-MAXERS.
For example, if I get too many planets in the early game, the AI should secretly band together and PLAN TO TAKE ME DOWN. This can't be that hard to program, can it? For example:
IF Player X gets this many planets by turn Y (and X and Y are scalable and variable values), ALL AIs secretly hate Player X and will plan to knock him down a notch or two. It'll be a conditional event (so it won't effect the more normal AI behavior) but at the same time very realistic.
That's what humans would do.
Among other things, such an event would be VERY EMOTIONALLY SATISFYING for the developers, who are probably at this point a little annoyed at the whining coming from people like me.
Imagine if I acted like this in an actual game against HUMAN opponents, where I managed to get 87 colonies by turn 48 and I'm trash talking everyone ABOUT HOW THEY SUCK AND HOW I'M BETTER THAN THEM, AND HOW THEY'RE DUMB PIECES OF CRAP.
WHAT DO YOU THINK THE HUMANS WOULD DO?
I'm very demanding, and if it's too much to program I understand. But I want an AI that can work collectively to take down a dominant opponent. THAT would make the game revolutionary.
Because in every other 4x game, the moment you get into a dominant position, the game is effectively over. The rest is just a formality.
And this would apply not just to min-maxers, but to everyone else as well. EVERYONE here has been in a dominating position and feel like, "the game is effectively over now because I'm dominating, but I need to make more turns to finish the game."
I believe this is the single biggest change you could make to the AI to make the game more fun for EVERYONE.
If you can get the AI to PUNISH ME when I BEHAVE BADLY, then you don't need to fix details like "Colonizer" or "the human player using these exploits expand too quickly."
Do you understand? The problem is you're trying to play whack-a-mole with the min-maxers and that's never a good idea because once you whack one mole, another one will pop up. There are many of us, and very few of us behave well in games. I'm only a single example of this breed.
Instead let the Min-Maxers min-max, and then later have all of the AI secretly go after him because he got too powerful too quickly. That would be very much in the spirit of the game. Not only will this solve your min-max problem, but it'll also solve the much more important problem:
"HELP I'M IN A DOMINATING POSITION AND THERE'S NO WAY I'M GOING TO LOSE. THE REST IS JUST A FORMALITY" problem that ALL 4x games have.
Thanks Frogboy and GalCiv team! Threads like this are a big reason people will always support Stardock and GalCiv.
Don't have much to add yet as I just started playing the game recently, but the AI really shouldn't offer peace 1 turn after declaring war.
Keep up the good work, I'll add more suggestions as I play more.
No, no, no, no, no. Don't compliment them!
If you do that, they'll get lazy. They're SMART people, and if you compliment smart people, they get LAZY. I KNOW from experience. They probably know it too.
Look, be as critical as you like, but please do not insult the developers, not even in jest. They are not lazy. I do not know what your experience is, but I do not think it is representative of the people at Stardock. Please attempt to keep this and all other threads polite, even if controversial. Not everyone in this world has the same experience you do. Many of us know decent likable smart people who are dedicated to what they are doing. You should try cultivating acquaintances like that. It would do your attitude a world of good. In the meantime, try assuming the people at Stardock are actually people, not stooges for you to make fun of.
I have no idea if you understand the courtesy relationship of guest and host. Stardock is gracious enough to give us the forum space. Try not to continually poke them in the eye for their troubles. I get it that you don't mind being thought of as rude, but you sound smart enough to know when discourtesy to the host is just plain wrong.
But I'm NOT being discourteous. This is how I act when I LIKE someone and I feel like they're tough enough to take it. Personally I think they did a fine job with the resources they were given.
If I didn't like them, I'd just smile and PRETEND TO BE NICE, compliment them to make them feel good about themselves, and then ignore them. There's no point in pushing dumb people to do better. The only reason I'm posting things like this is because I believe they can do better. If I didn't believe that, then there's NO POINT in being discourteous, in which case I'll just be courteous and make sure everyone is smiling and happy.
Good god marigoldran take a deep breadth and a zanx or 2. Everyone including Brad knows improvements are needed, There will always be a need and ways to improve the game. Don't you think he and all the SD developers deserve some credit for not only acknowledging that fact but also soliciting feedback. It sounds like you have some good ideas and suggestions but people tune you out when they just appear to be angry impolite ramblings. Be as critical as you like but as erischild said; it is just plain wrong to show discourtesy to the host when he takes the time and effort to have a dialog on improvements with the playing community,
Personally I think the best compliment and courtesy I can give to the game developers is to SPEND TIME ON THE GAME AND SHOW PASSION FOR IT. It means they made a good game.
Everything else is secondary. Words, after all, are mostly empty.
If they can't separate the content of the thoughts from the emotional tone of these thoughts, then that's too bad. NOT ALL GOOD ADVICE COME IN PLEASANT LANGUAGE.
On the other hand, if this is too much I apologize and I can always switch to robot mode. I'm perfectly fine functioning in that mode too.
@marigoldran: Yes we get it, you have some problems. We don't need you to express them in all caps every post. Please reread the OP and structure your responses around that. You do not need to reiterate the same point again and again. Screaming louder does not help.
"Those who cannot hear an angry shout may strain to hear a whisper." ~Riker
Programmer and developers did a good job with the game. However, they focus too much on specific tactics of the AI. Much more important to improve the AI's strategic thinking. I believe Frogboy is focusing on the wrong issues and won't really fix the problems with games like this. Instead of playing whack a mole, there are more intelligent ways of dealing with the issues. Analysis:
Basic problem of 4x games: at some point in the game you know you've won because you're number 1 on certain statistics. The rest of the game becomes a chore.
This is a BIG problem and the reason why people quit. Once they figure out how to game the system and gain the advantage, there's no point in playing it out anymore.
Consequently, developers should THINK of ways to make the AI more responsive to dominant human players. In other words, the AI should BAND TOGETHER AGAINST A COMMON ENEMY when faced with a situation like this. Not only will this challenge the min-maxers, but it'll also challenge the players on a lower difficulty setting (because they too get bored at a certain point in their games).
Also, the AI NEEDS TO BE MORE UNPREDICTABLE and SHOW LESS OF THEIR CARDS, thereby surprising the human with deep strategic choices and thus making the game memorable and awesome. In other words, the AI needs to act more like an asshole. Currently the AI is too naive and unrealistic- in other words, not human enough. For example, if you meet another member of your species, will you immediately tell him how many houses you own and how much money is in your bank account? No, right? So why does an interstellar species from across the galaxy do that the moment they meet you in THEIR diplomacy screen? Why do they tell you HOW MANY COLONIES THEY HAVE? Isn't this dangerous information to give to potential enemies, especially those of a different species?
I understand the diplomacy screen is STANDARD for 4x games. Very well. But just because everyone else does it, doesn't mean YOU should do it too, right? After all the goal is to make a game that BEATS the competition, instead of merely copying them.
I believe it's possible to program the AI to be a manipulative, evil bastard. It is not that hard. Make the AI lie on its diplomacy screen and add HIDDEN FEATURES that allow the AI to communicate with one another independent of the human player such that the AI RESPONDS to human min-maxing and over expansion. This will kill two birds with one stone. Not only are you dealing with the min maxers, but you're also dealing with the "I've already won this game, why do I need to continue to the boring end?" problem.
If you can do that, and if the AI is SMART enough to beat a human in a dominant position, THEN you've made a special 4x game, worthy of greater commemoration. Humans regularly find ways to beat other humans when they're in a disadvantageous position. AI should be able to do the same. Currently what most 4x developers and programmers focus on is PREVENTING the human from getting a dominant position. This is silly because min maxers will find a way, and if they can't the game becomes boring because most of the fun features would have been removed or replaced by non-fun features.
Are these reasonable points stated in a correct and courteous method? I personally don't particularly care which tone I take. The goal is to get the message across. If one method (the unpleasant one, as you pointed out) doesn't work, then I'll try another more courteous method. In which case I also apologize for choosing an incorrect method to send my message.
Judge me by the accuracy of the message, not the tone. If you cannot do that, well... I believe YOU are the one with issues. Really confident people recognize good advice REGARDLESS of the form it takes.
I indeed DO lie to the AI in my games. For example, have a pleasant conversation, grabbing the techs that I want from the AI, and then in the same turn declaring war, because he is my neighbor and next on my traget list. However, I think these "lying" tactics should only be implemented at higher difficulty settings, and would frustrate more casual players.
At some point, a sort of espionage system should perhaps be implemented. Diplomatic options should increase as awareness of the other empire increases. Right now one indeed does get too much information. As a human, one can abuse it (i.e. built point defense ships BEFORE declaring war), but it is also limiting when you have to wait another 15 or so turns before being able to take a look at it again.
Its good when the AI becomes more locally aware, because I myself am also thinking locally. "Ah, that planet is at the border of the map with no enemies around, this can be a research or economy planet." or "This planet is only class 8, but it is the one most strategically at the Drengin border, so I HAVE to built a shipyard there and max out production, just to pump more reinforcements to the border quickly."
I guess when the FOW gets turned on for the AI, it will also help the AIs Starbase ressource spam in player territory. The only thing I found that helps a little is to only make open border treaties once you've secured your own claim.
"AI realism" should be an option players are allowed to choose. I agree. Not everyone can handle it. In fact most probably won't be able to initially (WHY THE HELL DID THE AI LIE TO ME, RAWWWWWR. I HATE THIS GAME. I NEVER WANT TO SEE IT AGAIN. RAWWWWWWWR).
And then after they complain, they'll probably go back and play it more BECAUSE IT WOULD MAKE THE GAME FREAKING ADDICTIVE. People love plot twists, even when it kills off their favorite character. And the next time they play it, they'll be a lot more paranoid, and thus a lot more interested (is this AI actually my friend?). Challenge is what drives people to play 4x games. This is true of both the more casual player and the min maxers. It's just that the min maxers take it further.
If this is too much to program, I understand. After all, everyone has a limited amount of time and a limited amount of programming ability. The people at Stardock have already made a good game, and if they are content with what they have, then I completely and absolutely respect that decision.
It seems AI on the same team do not share or trade tech with each other. As a human player I can turn a easy tech profit by take one team races tech and trade it to the partner Team AI. That just doesn't seem right.
The problem with Gal Civ III is that it has so many features and... things that it becomes hard to focus on what's really important: challenging the player through intelligent AI design.
The game has a lot of glitter, which is important for marketing and selling the game. But... the core mechanics for a 4x game is probably just a little above average, I'd say. It's AI is close to civ IV's AI. It works ok on normal conditions, but the moment you add in special conditions like a min-max human it fails. The basic issue is that on the broader strategic level the AI is simply incompetent. It doesn't know how to deceive and lie, the hallmark of every socially competent human, even the little children.
On the other hand, as a counterargument, marketing and glitter is important too. That's how you sell the game to many people.
On the other, other hand, a challenge: CAN you program Gal Civ's AI to deceive and lie? Can you get a human to have that "oh shi-" moment when they thought they were manipulating the AI but they were in fact being manipulated? If you can do that, then you would have done something that no other 4x programmers have done.
Of course in the process you may also have made GlaDoS, in which case you have doomed humanity and IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT.
Also, I would like to point out one of the biggest selling points of the Portal expansion is GlaDoS, the evil manipulative AI mastermind of the game. If you can make a GlaDoS equivalent in a 4x game, it could very possibly make the game revolutionary like Portal.
It can't be that hard to program, right? All you need to do is to find a way to make the AI mass fleets for an attack (even the Civ IV AIs managed that, though they did it rather obviously), and for the AI to present INCORRECT information on the diplomacy screen (such as who it likes, who it's actually at war with and how many ships and colonies it has).
The moment people realize the diplomacy screen is a BIG GIANT LIE (not hard to program) will make the diplomacy aspect suddenly a lot more interesting. The game would become even more interesting if there are BAD consequences for the human of falling for that lie. Am I correct?
I think in GalCiv3, a Friend should be an Enemy who hasn't (for whatever reason) declared war on you yet. It could end up like, you know, the real world, where we spy on the people who are - officially, anyhow - our Friends. And we even spy on those we're in Alliances with. As our Allies and Friends do to us, of course...
That would make Espionage and Diplomacy damn murky...
You'd watch for UP decisions more, to see how a Race voted - Even if that vote didn't affect you. Why did the Yor vote for that thing, did they do that do annoy the Drengin who we all know they're Furious with? Did they vote on that UP decision to inconvenience the Alterians who we could have sworn they were Close to...Hmmmmmmm...
Should you kill the Alterian Spy found on your home planet, given that you are Allied with them and of course that'd be a bit hard to get over, or do you feed him lies? And if so, precisely what lies? And what if the Alterians found out it was all lies?
Frogboy bangs head against table...."What he's asking is impossible/would piss too many people off/AAAAAAAHHHHHHH...."
I think one key in this is being able to give the AI the Capacity to surprise, without overt cheating.The diplomacy section is one area where it would be possible to add in the element of surprise and deception for some races (while other races could be honest.)Another area where surprised could be added was to create stealth option / tech which helps hide ships. One thing in reading old GCII comments an area where people gave good praise is when the AI surprised them. In this case I imagine surprised came in the fact the AI knew tricks which the player didn't realize yet.
I think generally there's a few things you could do.
Firstly, the idea that the AI runs everything on a galaxy-wide scale makes a lot of sense given what Im seeing today. Just fixing this will probably make a huge difference. Running each planet individually (governers) will improve their economic management 10x. Even with a load of handicaps, I still think it will be better longterm to have a more economically intelligent AI.
Secondly, races of the same ideology should team up more often. As someone already mentioned, if there's a benevolent race with 80+ planets after 40 turns, the malevolent AI's should be thinking that they look pretty tasty!
Finally, nerf carriers! Many players abuse these since they are so outrageous right now. One idea would be to introduce a "carrier" defense weapon. Something that does lowish damage to lots of targets at the same time, or has an AoE.
Three things that can be added quickly:
1. A holistic approach- i.e. a holistic stat. This stat is triggered when someone or some race is dominating the game (they have too many colonies, for example). It makes all the other AI want to secretly work together against that force. It won't show up in diplomatic modifiers (-12 relations: YOU ARE TOO POWERFUL, which is really clunky and warns the human immediately to PREPARE FOR WAR). Instead it'll show up secretly behind the scenes. The AI will communicate with the player normally AS IF THEY WERE FRIENDS (this is the truly evil part- the AI has TWO diplomacy states, one public and one private- and unless your espionage is good you'll only see the public one). Then suddenly, WHAM you get attacked by 3-4 or possibly even 5 AI in multiple directions, including some "friends." Then when you've been cut down to scale, the AI is more likely to make peace with you and tell you the truth (of course by then you should be paranoid as hell).
2. Negative Diplomatic modifiers like "we think you're a wussy and you have no military to speak of and we want to attack you" should be hidden. HOWEVER, THESE MODIFIERS SHOULD STILL EXIST AT THE HIGHER SETTINGS and AFFECT AI BEHAVIOR. What idiotic diplomat goes up to other countries and tells them "Our country wants to attack yours within a year or two?" The only race that are stupid enough to do that should be the Drengin, which adds flavor to the game. Everyone else is a lying bastard. ESPECIALLY the Krynn and the Yor.
3. Diplomatic trading and diplomatic screen should display INCORRECT or MISSING info. The Yor appears to have 6 colonies. The Power graph shows they have no production. Is that accurate? Consequently there should be an espionage thing where the more points you put into espionage, the less likely your info is lies, lies, and damn lies. That whole "who is in first place" ranking system is stupid. Include it, but make the information FALSE or MISLEADING unless the player puts points into espionage. Similarly, the AI should be MUCH MORE CAREFUL about giving away their techs to the human player. Also, the AI should be much more willing to trade AI weaker races, and much less willing to trade tech with stronger races.
None of this should be that difficult to program, right? The espionage part might be difficult, but that can be left off for now. The more difficult part is programming the AI to secretly prepare for war. You need to find a better approach than the Civ IV one where the AI masses a giant army next to your borders (too freaking obvious- gee I wonder that army is for). Instead, the AI should mass their ships on different worlds, and then 2-3 turns before declaration of war, all those ships show up in one place near your border (or if you're smart have the AI attack in MULTIPLE locations- but that might be difficult to do- a better idea would instead be to get multiple AI to secretly prepare and attack you simultaneously).
Also, YES, if the AI is more economically intelligent, it means for larger empires I can delegate the task of micromanaging my worlds to them. Set a couple of guidelines and let them do it. That would be nice. It would make the larger maps playable.
FINALLY consider adding a planetary bombardment option from deep space. Consequently the AI DOESN'T HAVE TO BUILD TROOP TRANSPORTS to cut you down to size. Instead, they can instead dominate your space AND MAKE YOU SUFFER. That way the AI doesn't even have MAKE troop transports to win a war against you. They could for example destroy all your shipyards and completely dominate space, destroying any new shipyards you try to build and DEMAND THAT YOU GIVE THEM HALF YOUR COLONIES LIKE THE PATHETIC LOSER THAT YOU ARE before they'll let you off the hook. Finally, make the AI try to send in small squads of fast moving fighters (but not many- it can get expensive) into your space during war to TRY AND SHOOT DOWN YOUR SHIPYARDS AND STARBASES. If they manage to blow up your shipyards, you're fuked, right?
Really, 90% play BELOW normal? Or is that how many of those that finished a game? Are those the folks that have 200+ games in their inventory and only play about 30 hours and move on?
As to changes that would effect lower levels, make certain subroutines only kick in at normal or whatever level you deem it to be.
That the AI doesn't have local focus explains a lot about why it is doing some weird things. That alone would go a long way. However, as you said, that is the hardest.
Right now from watching soaks, the AI sets too many rally points. It rarely seems to remove them. The AIs were battling over 1 planet and it swapped hands several times. There was a rally point next to that planet, so when the enemy took it, the ships were being fed one at a time into it. In the meantime there were several 2 ship fleets in the area and there was plenty of logistics to make them larger. It looks like were essentially sentry/guarding the area. I was thinking if I were controlling my faction, I would have combined those mini-fleets and wiped out the area. Then after invading the planet moved forward.
Does the AI only have one target location when at war?
Personally, I rarely guard transports. I secure the area around the planets, move my transport to a position at its maximum distance it can reach the planet in one turn. Then invade the next turn. My transports don't have sensors and I only have enough range to get where I want to go. Everything else goes to engines. I can often just speed my way out if there is trouble.
May I suggest that ships are give a "global" target goal of take "planet X" or whatever, but as the ships move to that area, they combine with nearby ships/fleets as logistics allow. Also, they will look nearby before they move to see if there is an enemy. If there is, then THAT becomes their temporary goal before continuing on.
Something like
If enemy fleet < x hexes and (my fleet strength/enemy fleet strength) > .8 then attack enemy fleet. This would need to take account if it can reach that fleet in this turn or has more speed than the enemy fleet, otherwise it would chase it for no good reason. Also attack fleets with transports whenever possible.
AI ships need more priority on speed of the ships and as was mentioned take speed into account when assembling fleets.
Glad to see you are looking at getting the AI to prepare for war first. This is my usual MO.
I almost always scout an enemy before I declare war. That way I know where their ships are, what type of ships and where they are the weakest. I then target 2-3 juicy targets, move my fleets and transports up close, but not in their LOS. I have a couple of scouts to inform me if something is coming that might see my fleets. After assembly, I move into position. If they get angry, who cares? THEN I DoW and start rolling them. Ideally losing some good planets will make their cash per turn negative, hurt approval and thus affect manufacturing and research. All within a few turns.
As marigoldran said (although waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much. Multiple posts saying essentially the same thing is annoying) the AI needs to be be sneaky. Hidden modifiers and false information on the +/- relations would help. Caesar in CIV V was never to be trusted. The problem was, I never know when he has troops coming by my border if he is going around or going to try a sneak attack. That forces me to tie down troops by him just in case.
The AI needs to take a "crabs in a bucket" approach. By that I mean if a faction is starting to pull away, they gang up and drag that faction back down. This has to be carefully balanced or perhaps an option in the game setup. Those who want to have a peaceful build and make alliances, etc. might not like it. Perhaps some factions will do this only to certain ideologies. I think that is some of the idea of ideologies, but pragmatic and especially malevolent should only be a temporary thing. When it comes to "You are weak" and right next to me, you are dead.
Really the diplomacy screen gives the player way too much information. You should only know what you have seen. I shouldn't know all their planets, ships, star bases, etc. unless my scouting shows it at some point. Knowing ship composition (weapons,defense, etc) let's me know what kind of ships I need to wipe them out. That gives the player a huge leg up.
Agreed. As to ship design I usually make different variants for each border if the factions specialize in different weapons. Then I name them based on who they are going to counter.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
