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!
In other words, the reason VERY FEW is capable of posting late-game super-sized map games to the finish through conquest is because it's pretty difficult to get there. Two major problems:
1. Most people KNOW they've won halfway in (they're in a dominating position) at which point the rest of it becomes a chore.
2. Empire management with 100+ colonies quickly becomes busywork. At immense, where it's quite easy to get 200+ colonies halfway through the game, each turn would take 20+ minutes.
The basic problem is the inability to delegate responsibility, and so the player has to MICROMANAGE everything. As a result the game bogs down. Furthermore, the AI is incapable of taking down a human who already is in a dominating position. The human knows that: as a result the game becomes a chore.
I have made valid points. It sounds to me like you're trying to shoot the messenger. I'm sorry if the message is not what you want to hear, but shooting the messenger will NOT solve your problems.
Also, I might point out that the diplomacy screen is indeed a giant troll-fest against the AI. There are many people who are exploiting the AI such as offering them 10,000 credits/turn for all of their tech and then declaring war on them the next turn. That's one of the nastier exploits, but there are many, many others. There are some major issues there, and I am not the only one who has pointed it out.
According to Frogboy himself:
This is actually a problem which isn't only limited to GC3 (it's pretty much the same in any type of 4x game), and it's been brought up before, but the AI is really poor at making the decision to go to war.
I'm fairly sure that each unit is given a certain numeric value, and that's what the AI bases its decision to go to war on (i.e., if the AI has a unit ratings of 100 and me 20, then the AI thinks it can win a potential war and will thusly declare). The problem with this-- and I've seen this far too many times-- is that there's absolutely no regard to the tech situation. Most human players, without much forethought, would NOT declare war an AI who is far ahead techwise. The AI has no such qualms.
Even if you're able to build the best ship possible in one turn, and the AI has only prototype ships available, it will attack you if it deems the current situation winnable, even if it isn't. It makes for some laughable war situations.
The basic fundamental problem of ALL 4x strategy games is the AI isn't very strategic.
Instead what they do is to nerf the player and buff the AI with handicaps and what-not to make it APPEAR strategic. It would not be a problem if the appearances can hold, but the point is most of these appearances collapse pretty quickly. The moment you start negotiating with the AI you immediately start to realize that it's a total pushover. And that it can be exploited in many different ways. Personally I'm coming around to the idea that the very CONCEPT of the diplomacy screen as it exists in 4x games is flawed. Diplomacy screens shouldn't tell the truth (which is what most 4x games do). Diplomacy screens should instead be BIG GIGANTIC TISSUES OF LIES, which is what happens in real life. This would help even the playing field there because when a human negotiates with the AI he's lying 99% of the time.
The goal of most 4x games apparently is to beat some long odds with HUMAN ingenuity against AI dumbness (but the AI starts with more production and more stuff early on). But doing this over and over again gets BORING. ALL 4x games have this issue, which is why I'm annoyed.
I totally agree though: this is not an issue only with GC III.
Posting to pretty much agree with and re-state the three main points made already:
1) Thanks for making this thread Frogboy! While its possible you may take things in a different direction from what's discussed in this thread entirely, being open to the idea that the players might actually have useful input is quiet nice.
2) The Trade imbalances that even "beginner" players can take advantage of need to be addressed somehow. Particularly the "trade strategic resources for tech, and declare war one turn later to get them all back". Unfortunately I've limited suggestions on how to code that... backstabbing is a legitimate tactic, so you don't want to remove it completely from the game. One idea would be for that strategy to cause a galaxy-wide penalty to diplomatic relations for the player the first time its used (and have the negative effect increase exponentially each time thereafter).
3) The AI needs to not declare war when its not in a position to execute it. You mentioned you were going to speak to the Civ guys on this, so I'm sure you understand the issue. From the player's side it looks like the AI will declare based on military strength (a measurable number, which is good fro ma coding standpoint) but not based on where those forces might be. ie. It always seems to take the AI so many turn to arrive with its main force that by then the player can build up the necessary counter force with ease.
The one time I had difficulty with the AI, I was playing the Iconians. I had a moderate fleet and had a global power score of like 130, putting me in 4th place out of 10 Civs. The Drengin in 1st place somehow had a massive power score of 300+, and even with no shared borders eventually went to war with me (though it plowed through another civ to make one). It got its ships to me surprisingly quickly and while I was able to deal 3:1 casualties, it still ground me down to the point where I made a trade massively in the AI's favor to get it to stop. Even here though-- while its fleets out-classed mine, and it eventually swept me from the stars, it didn't bring any invasion transports. I made my peace on the assumption that the AI would eventually figure that out, plus after it got 5 fleets into my territory things started getting old. Interestingly it then went to war with another civ, but left its fleets in my territory (as Drengin "peacekeepers" no doubt). I think I still have the save if you want it.
@Everyone: question for you:
In the situation described above, would you rather have the AI:
A] finish you off like the pathetic insect that you are, or
B] juggle you a bit and let you go (like above)
?
This gets into a "fun" issue for some people and AI development needs to take that into consideration. Some players would appreciate the challenge of having the AI really try to demolish you. Others like the thrill of a "near miss" and fighting back to victory, even if the computer was purposefully kept unchallenging. Thoughts?
PS: I vote (A)
I am already tired of the 'Oh my Survey ship fell through a wormhole next to you and I declare war on you even though you are on the other side of the galaxy and I will never, ever, ever accept any sort of peace unless you destroy every ship and invade every planet.'
That, and the 'Oh so-and-so declared war on you so I will to. And so will they. And them...' All in the same turn.
It should be consistent IMHO. If it tries to crash you, it should try hard. If it tries to do more diplomacy and role playing, it should have enough tools to do so. Meaning that diplomacy oriented AI should have enough tools to express some sort of "personality" and base it's war and piece choices on that. I.e. Altarians are super moralist, if they are played according to their role model, then the choice to crash someone or leave them be should be based on how un-moral the other civ is. Good example of this kind of play is Civ 4.
Or if AI goes at you no matter what, then it should be told how to do the job properly. I.e. using all logistics, constructing good ships from technologies available, bring enough transports, research Bio Warfare and use it, etc. Not so good example of that kind of play is Civ 5, where AI tries to win the game using wars, but it has no idea how to manage it's units.
Or better still AI could behave "diplomatically" in the peaceful times and be adept of military strategy at war (not sure if we are going to get both though). I could imagine that making militaristic AI tough is easier, since to support diplomatic AI it has to have more tools and options. Something as below (copying from one of my previous posts):
1. Currently resources in the game play secondary role. They are not needed to win the game. They are not even needed to make your empire stronger. What if resurces were the essential components to build the ships and starbases? Then all the sudden you uncover a very important strategic and diplomacy layer. Now you will have to do these resources trading treaties. You will have to visit diplomacy screen often to see who has what you need. And either trade with them or go to war with them, which will be dangerous since they have that critical resource and you don't. People are pointing out that you can strongly increase the strength of your ships currently by using these resources, but the issue is that I can win without doing so. In my game for Altarians I've used pre-build designs all the time and it worked just well against Tough AI.
2. Trade routes. Make freighters to execute specific trade treaties. If you agreed to trade something in eexchange to something else, then you need to say 5 freighters constantly working on the trade routes for resources or cash to be delivered to your empire. If pirates or other hostiles kill the freighter, then you loose the delivery.make each delivery a persantage of overall deal.
3. Empire bboundaries need to start working. Currently, open boarders do not have any meaning. And any faction can fly freely through your space.
4. The like/ dislike option needs to work better and as was suggested on this forum take in account how far you are on the particular root through ideology. I personally would consider restricting your ideology to one or two options insyead of giving freedom to select all 3. That would make possible to outline AI personalities better. AI would prefer some ideology combinatons to others.
5 Consider adding additional race specific features, I.e. the way they run economy, what planets they live on , etc. That will make playing them more unique experience and might and should affect diplomacy as well.
To fantasise a bit) - consider having 5-6 ideologies instead of 3. And let player and AI to choose only 2. Each combination of 2 fully covered ideologies will will give that race some superability Of course, diplomacy will take these new combinations in to account as per 4.
Ok I'm done. I'm not interested in reading this thread anymore, because of marigoldran. It's too bad. This thread had great potential, sadly it's devolved to a flame war.
I might point out that it's possible to station troop transports next to the most important AI worlds and the AI would ignore it.
Then when everything is set up, you declare war and, um, win on turn 1. If you can wipe out all of the AI's shipyards, or conquer all of the worlds near the AI's shipyards, you've effectively won....
This is especially true early game when the AI doesn't build any defensive units. Malevolence level III gives 5 fully loaded transports....
Yes, you can. Use the GC2DarkAvatar.exe under SteamApps\Common\Galactic Civilizations II - Ultimate Edition\DarkAvatar in your Steam-folder. Just be aware that Dark Avatar plays quite differently than Twilight of the Arnor.
I'd vote A with the caveat that it should depend on the AIs war-objective. E.g., if the AI only wanted to get some of my resources, planets, etc., then it should be willing to negotiate a peace-treaty after it acquired them.
Nice, keep those observations coming. Beneath all the hoopla there are some good ideas in this thread.
100 colonies half midgame through that's a quite reasonable setup. Such a mediocre game should, at least, take 2 weeks to finish off. Back in DA I remember colonizing up to 1400 planets, one particular game had me produce over 95.000 ships (set out for 100.000 but the game would cross 2GB and became unsaveable) and had them fly under a MSBA, at the heights of it the turn processing time took 8 hours alone, so I played effectively 1 turn each day, and it took 2 months to complete and about 1 month to rehearse beforeahead. Back in those days we called that fun, and I'm happy that the game allows for such epicness
I'm also totally against all automation for the player IF AND ESPECIALLY when it comes to take thinking and consideration or careful planing away from the player, like, eg. optimally building up my worlds.... This is NOT what a strategy game should do. If you want to have optimal results, you'll need to micro! But for any tasks that don't require thoughts just repeated keystrokes use AHK
Without wanting to upset anyone, it would probably be helpful to Brad if we tried to keep this thread focussed on AI issues, and discussed the problems with controlling very large empires in another thread?(I appreciate there is perhaps some overlap, but UI improvements and better automation are not really what this thread is supposed to be about.)
Just yesterday Marigoldran admitted he had never attacked a shipyard. He likes to set up large games with abundant everything, relatively few factions, and no pirates, then spam colony ships until he is in the lead, then quit. All of his observations about how trivial the game is stem from this style of game. Last time he talked about it, he had never been in a war in GC3.
i guess it's just as likely that he meant "beginner or normal" - considering that there isn't even an "easy" difficulty setting
Great to see such interesting info on how AI works in the game and how you plan on `fixing` it, frogboy. Informative. Good stuff.
Although I never play on Easy or Very easy, always Medium (forgot what you call it). It`s how I`ve always started and played games. That said the AI is still beating me. I`m holding my own in this present game so far (1.3). I probably should have been wiped out by now since my score is about 300 and the Yor are around 800! Yet, their attacks are sporadic. However, they are at war with at least one other Civ, so I assumed that must be keeping them busy.
Thank you for this post. I haven't played since 1.01 and I am unlikely to do so until mid-summer, so I can't give feedback right now. But when I'm back to it, I have a few questions, to eliminate confusion, and avoid wasting your time:
#1: I never play at easy. No game ever have I played at easy. How am I supposed to know, when suggesting some AI strategy that it will hurt beginners? I'm not an expert, but I don't play "easy"? When I say "the AI should build its planets better", I mean that it should use the bonus the tiles provides, and the adjacency bonus. Will that make the AI too hard for the 90% of people playing on easy? Imho, the AI should be as smart as you can make it, and than give the player bonus, or handiccap the AI for the lower levels.
#2: Yes, but how do we, non programmers, suggests things to you so that they can be useful? A trade exploit is easy to see. If a race is agressive enough or not, I have no idea. I've submitted many times that the Iconians didn't seem to do much, in most games I've played, past the colonization phase. How exactly do I phrase, describe that, so that is useful to you, to let you check if it's WAD or if it's a bug? As of 1.01, all games seemed the same to me: survive the 1st wave of attacks by an agressive AI, than go on a roll to conquer the galaxy. Maybe that has changed (there has been two huge patch, so I'm not commenting on what I haven't played), but what am I expected to do? Is a save where I'm winning the wars by crushing all AIs in my path because I've outrun them research wise useful to you? Is there more I can do to pinpoint what would be the problem?
#4: I'm curious, wich game other than Dark Avatar was at 8?
See, I know your time is precious, mine is too. I want the game to be better, but I'm still confused as to what you need to make it better. So far I have focused mostly on easy exploits and crash bugs in my reports, but when I'm back to playing the game, I really want the AI to become smarter. But I still don't know what you consider "easy that can be adressed with an handicapp", because in my mind, a handicapp gives an edge to the AI when it starts the game, not when it finishes it. And if all AI as mostly at the same level, the most agressive one wins.
See one thing I mentionned, in 1.01 games, is the AI tendancy to declare war to far away nations. If you make ally teams, each ally's FOW is shared. The Drengin will see me, they can't reach me until the next 4-500 turns, but they declare war on me, try to adapt to my research to counter my weapons, leaving themselves vulnerable to the Altarians next door. This, I've seen often with various races. And I've been told there is supposedly something in the AI code to prevent this, but it doesn't seem to always work. So how do I know what is supposed to be there but not working correctly and what should be there but is not because you forgot/did not think of it?
Again, thanks for your time.
I've been hesitant to say much about the AI because I believe that Frogboy and the SD team have a handle on it and will get the issues resolved. I also have enough patience to wait for them to do their job. Having said that, here are some anecdotes from my current "fun" game. Immense, around 12 AI's all "Gifted", uncommon x 3, common minors, uncommon resources, rare black holes, uncommon anomalies, slow game pacing, very slow tech, no pirates, no tech trading.
First, the AI's are doing reasonably well, especially the custom ones that I gave patriotic to. By the time the colony rush was over, the majors seemed to all have about 12 -20 planets each. AI doesn't seem to prioritize the precursor resources instead of yet another Durantium mining starbase in the middle of my territory. It also seems to leave entirely too many artifact and capsule anomalies laying about. I even saw it run a survey ship right up to one I was racing it for when it stopped and took off a new direction.
Here is an example of something that seems like potential bad AI, but the reality is that it isn't. This in turn might lead around to what it really needs.
Seems the AI is good at picking off fleets(or ships) that it greatly outnumbers. If it sees a juicy target, like a Transport but with no people, sitting in range but unguarded, it will send a ship to turn it into ashes. However, it also seems to ignore that if they move into range of the bait, they will then be in range of my real ambush fleet. (Potential Bad AI)
I set up these honey pots sometimes to lure the AI across the range border so I can piece meal them. Seemingly this would be a bad move for the AI, however, IF they don't have the sensor range to see my ambush waiting then how could they know? In the context of what the AI knows, it looks like an easy kill. We would all complain if it didn't take the easy kills.
This makes sense the first couple of times, but a human player would soon catch on to being ambushed and no longer take the bait or would move with great force to take the bait or counter ambush.
As I think Brad has already indicated, he is working on the FOW issues. Most of those seem to be related to planets and resources. I also seem to recall either hearing or reading something about the AI API having a "check danger" routine that it uses (at least in the context I recall) for avoiding pirates. Assuming that the AI puts a reasonable number of sensors on their ships or learns to also build sensor boats, then one would think that "check danger" would also alert it to my pending ambush. If it's not, then that would be an area to look at.
It seems to have particular trouble with "over the horizon" type of attacks. This is understandable, but also exactly what the AI needs to do back to us. And if we get up a sensor net to see it coming, then clearly the AI needs to do the same.
I would think the AI could try to reverse the process. Instead of super guarding every transport by putting it into a fleet, hereby diminishing Fleet firepower, it could leave the transport out of the fleet but be ready with a counterattack if you take the bait.
Finally, I don't know about everyone else, but I rarely station ships in orbit to defend a world. If I can get to the threat, then I take my ships TO them rather than waiting for them to come to me. If I don't have enough movement this turn to get there, then I might orbit for a turn and then reform the fleet and attack the threat. And yes, during all of this I am check and counting hexes to see just who can get how far and by when. For sure, GC3 is much better than GC2 about not having the AI waste resources and time on building five defenders on every planet. We don't know what all is in the API. I know that I heard, and have seen, that the AI responds to the threat of invasion by stationing ships in orbit of the "threatened" worlds. My recollection and observation is that it seems to be a state machine type of system. Something like, "If invasion threat to planet, then station ships" and "If they have invasion tech, then build defenses on worlds closest to enemy".
What I noticed (by watching with long range sensor ships) is that when the threat abated the stationed ships moved off in the opposite direction of the one the threat retreated. Once that happened, I quickly attacked with very quick moving transports from well outside their sensor range and took the unguarded planet. Which brings up: No matter how many AI planets I took with the help of Biological weapons, they never developed the cure.
Which brings up my last finally, finally. As far as counter measures to invasion tactics, I should not be limited to just one. I could understand that each one isn't available to research until it's used against me or I develop the tactic myself, but if I counter Bio-Weapons, I shouldn't be prevented from building firewalls.
Regards and I'm a very happy customer at this point. Looking forward to the future.
Pretty happy with my first full game. I'm dissatisfied with 2 things from the outcome.
The AI did not use Durantium in its ships for durantium drivers like I did. This made it a no contest. Especially once I added enough shields/Point/Armor to not take any damage from them. I did spend all of my pragmatic points on buffing my mines/constructors/starbases, it just seems that Durantium Drivers are a bit too OP, considering they cannot be matched until you finish the military tech tree. Elerium Beams and Anti-Matter Missiles were just non-existant, because Durantium is by far the overwhelming resource.
Another thing, which might affect the AI, but it affected me, was that it stated that I was in 4 of 6th place for a tech victory. This caused me to eventually shift tactics to tech rush to win. Now I slowed the Alterians down big time by warring with them, but I didnt take over #1 rank in Tech Victory outcome until I literally had enough techs to begin Ascension research. Looking back at my save games (during game, I never bothered with brokering peace, to peek at their tech lists), before I even started my research tech rush, I had 46 techs the Alterians did not, and they only had 14. Definite bug on the Tech Victory Ranking list.
The AI is currently not capable of using its Strategic Resources on the advanced/prototype versions of its Medium and larger ships, because the blueprints can't be activated. They can only use them at all once they get to Ascension level auxilary weapon tech and Large ships, for 1/3 of the intended Enhanced designs.
It's caused by some mistakes in the ComponentClassDefs.XML file as opposed to the ShipComponentDefs.XML - looks like weapon augmentations got re-done at some point, but no one remembered how that interacted with the Blueprint componenttype system. The same issue is what stops the AI/autodesign system from ever using EscortCarriermodules.
Support ticket: #LGK-861-93154
Actually, the AI can't use Durantium until it gets Huge ships, because all Large ships which use KineticAugment3 (the only one they can currently use) have a wrong blueprint reference, and build as missile ships instead.
Support ticket: #BTB-329-42580
Similarly, due to XML errors the AI cannot build medium missile ships.
Support ticket: #FKU-565-64241 - this one has been closed, and Gear told me it reached the devs, but sadly it wasn't fixed in 1.03.
I've fixed the latter two issues in a little mini-patch/mod here: https://forums.galciv3.com/467065/page/1/
But I only figured out the AuxWeapon thing an hour or so ago and it's kinda late, so I'm gonna leave that for tomorrow.
Edit: it was bugging me, so I fixed this one too. Same link as above, or direct link to fixed mod-format files here:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/45479330/GalCiv3%20Ranger%20PatchMod/000_MediumMissileBoatFix.rar
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/45479330/GalCiv3%20Ranger%20PatchMod/000_WeaponAugmentFix.rar
Well done. I think this was a problem in previous games IIRC. The AI builds, especially early, ships with weapons and defense (usually the same as the weapon) but no sensor ships, little engines and plays a defensive game. Look, I am not arguing that if you are losing, you build heavy weapon ships and hell with the engines if it is a narrow front and you are down to a handful of planets. You need all the firepower you can get when you are outnumbered. However, I feel the AI does this too much, so it cannot respond tactically. They are just too slow. See pirates as an example. They have all the early advantages, but no engines. If they had engines and 1 small weapon, oh the devastation they could do!
I haven't had time to verify, but if that is true, great job!
Thanks
To verify just start a game with any faction and use the Unlock All console command. That should make all designs available to you, but you'll notice there are no L or P variant designs in your list - that's because these all have [weapon]Augment1 or 2, and those blueprints don't resolve. You'll also see the BattleShipD is a missile ship, instead of kinetic as it should be.
Also this 'medium' missile ship:
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