Hypothetically speaking.
Would you:
1. Attack the fleets with your existing ships in the area and lose them piecemeal while doing little or no damage the maxed out fleets.
2. Retreat all ships in the vicinity to the worlds and take advantage of planetary defenses.
3. Retreat some ships in the vicinity to protect the worlds and slow the advance down, and retreat most of the ships further in so you can ball up and create fleets that can challenge those fleets?
Which strategic choice is the best?
I'd wonder how in the hell I managed to get into a war when I quit every game at turn 50 from teh tedium.
Well, yes, as I said it's a hypothetical.
In other words it's something YOU have to think about. I structure my games so I never have to worry about issues like this (I try to get into a winning position long before that happens).
My philosophy is that the best strategy is to win the game before the AI can actually hurt you. And fights are a lot easier to win WHEN YOU CAN STAB THE OTHER PERSON IN THE BACK. And if you can't do that, bribe the AI to attack each other. THEN STAB THEM IN THE BACK.
The trick is to win without direct confrontation. All those bonuses the AI gets in God-Like DON'T MATTER if the AI is focusing it ON THE WRONG THINGS.
Violence is the first and last resort of the stupid. (I think that's a Foundation Series quote)
This is probably why your grasp of tactics is so weak, then. Which isn't a criticism, tbh - I generally prefer to win my wars before a shot is fired too.
You have, for example, failed to include:
4. Concentrate all ships in the area around only 1 or 2 worlds, leaving the less strategically important ones to burn. This allows you to build up a group of mutually-supportive fleets in a relatively safe area within the theatre, and then you can using multiple fleets attacking 1 target to defeat the opponent in detail.
And also:
5. Don't lose space superiority, since it's only 5 fleets, and most players have more than that lying around within a couple of turns rush-in distance by turn 75.
And finally:
6. Move your ships back to where there's more, since if these invaders are truly 'maxed out' attack fleets then they have no transports and can't hurt the planets anyway. I'll lose some shipyards, but I can just divert the production back to the second line. And if any transports do show up, well, I'll pick those off while avoiding the big fleets. I might lose a few ships, but hey, it's worth it to burn the transports.
Incidentally, this question also isn't relevant to your AI ideas, since your AI never attempts to gain local space superiority, and never uses maxed out fleets. Ever.
The problem is that in fleet combat with maxed out fleets it doesn't matter if you have 10 fleets vs 1. ONLY ONE OF THEM CAN ATTACK AT A SINGLE TIME. Regardless of the final outcome, even the winner will come out heavily damaged.
Put it this way: if the human catches the AI off guard and has superiority at the beginning of the war, the AI is dead anyways regardless of how you program it.
My strategy is designed for the AI to mass its ships BEFORE declaring war and to use those ships in the most effective method possible. In other words, if the AI did it right, you WON'T HAVE local fleet superiority in the first place because you'll start the war outnumbered 3 to 1 or 4 to 1.
In that case, as long as the AI sends its fleets at you in maxed out balls, you won't stand a chance unless you think of something really creative. This is a MUCH BETTER STRATEGY than what the AI is currently doing, which is sending thousands of small fleets piecemeal that get wiped out by your one LARGE fleet. If the AI took those thousands of small fleets and made a couple of MAXED OUT FLEETS the human is doomed if it remains a war of attrition.
Then maybe the game isn't for you, personally I love the game and don't find it tedious in the slightest.
Now as far as the point of the post I would do my best to match fire with fire, trying to counter his fleets with defenses on his strengths and hit him with his weakness. Possibly attempt to split his defenses by attempting to coax others to declare war on that player. Overall, "Never give up, never surrender" (Galaxy Quest 1999).
Otherwise as others said don't allow yourself to get into that situation, if I know a player is matching my power or going to give me problems later on, I'll find a way to strengthen my position before war comes or eliminate the threat early on before they can stack your border with the best fleets in the game.
No, I understand what you want your AI to do. That's not my issue with it. My issue is that you have completely screwed the pooch on setting out the logic required to do what you want it to do. You keep mentioning MAXED OUT FLEETS, but your AI would never build a maxed out fleet. You have included a cast-iron rule to prevent it doing so. Your AI will never gain local superiority in your space, because you have given it a cast-iron rule to ignore everything aside from the planet it has headed to.
The intention behind your AI is fine. Your attempt to achieve that behaviour from simple rules is a complete failure.
id say ok another area mopped up time to invade the planets and move on
Then maybe the game isn't for you, personally I love the game and don't find it tedious in the slightest. Now as far as the point of the post I would do my best to match fire with fire, trying to counter his fleets with defenses on his strengths and hit him with his weakness. Possibly attempt to split his defenses by attempting to coax others to declare war on that player. Overall, "Never give up, never surrender" (Galaxy Quest 1999).Otherwise as others said don't allow yourself to get into that situation, if I know a player is matching my power or going to give me problems later on, I'll find a way to strengthen my position before war comes or eliminate the threat early on before they can stack your border with the best fleets in the game.
If things get tough, run way as quickly as possible and hope for the best. Dead people can't fight back.
Never get in a fair fight. The best fights are always the ones where you have an overwhelming advantage or the element of surprise.
Obviously we have differing philosophies towards war.
No, I understand what you want your AI to do. That's not my issue with it. My issue is that you have completely screwed the pooch on setting out the logic required to do what you want it to do. You keep mentioning MAXED OUT FLEETS, but your AI would never build a maxed out fleet. You have included a cast-iron rule to prevent it doing so. Your AI will never gain local superiority in your space, because you have given it a cast-iron rule to ignore everything aside from the planet it has headed to. The intention behind your AI is fine. Your attempt to achieve that behaviour from simple rules is a complete failure.
Actually it's quite easy. While you're busy bopping one AI, the other AI is quietly maxing out his fleets to attack you.
Otherwise and error in your post, the way you play will dictate "maxed out fleets" as it all has to do w/ bonuses you get from resources or ideology choices throughout the game, even if you hit the end of the tech tree. Therefore one player may have 1000 points to build huge ship while another player may have 1200 points. Plus maxed out fleets could be heavy laser weapons or missile weapons or the third, plus do they have defenses and if so what are they focused on, do they have fleet modifiers or no. There are so many possible options that "maxed out fleet" may not be strong at all, especially to someone who counters it correctly.
Either way "maxed out fleets" aren't as deadly as you make it up to be, and it's done that way on purpose, once again you make the game what you want it to be
Is it better than the AI we have now?
I'm not saying my idea will allow an AI to beat the human. I am however arguing that it IS BETTER THAN THE AI WE HAVE NOW and that it is relatively easy to program.
Think of the AI you're facing now, versus the AI from my idea. Which would be an easier opponent if they can both mass the same number of ships overall?
Have you ever had a game where you're thinking: "well if the AI sent those ships at me in ONE BIG MASSIVE FLEET" instead of as a hundred individual ships I'd be dead?
Having the ships appear from no where, No that AI is not better than we have now.
Having the AI build up ships like that over time then put them into a fleet is the AI we have now...
Yeah, except the ships are getting destroyed in transit to their rally points.
Once again: Have you ever had a game where you're thinking: "well if the AI sent those ships at me in ONE BIG MASSIVE FLEET" instead of as a hundred individual ships I'd be dead?
One of my major points is the rally points for fleet assembly should be set much closer to home than what the AI is currently doing. The problem is if you try to make the AI smart, it might backfire and make it dumber. Rally points to create fleets should be set MUCH closer to the shipyard from which they're being built.
Nope, seeing the AI put together fleets just fine in my games, then again I play with 70+ AI players so I only start with 10 or so colonies. Then it takes a while to get to age of war and get planetary invasion. It's all how you lay out your game... Maybe it's like that with large AI empires with only 8 or so on an insane map but, I never play that way. I get a challenge and may loose some games, you like a cake walk where you can colony rush your way to victory.
What single point are you trying to make because I am having the hardest time trying to make sense of what you are saying?
To your original question how do you counter 5 top tier attack fleets If you can match them, match them, if you can't then envelope them and attack where they are not, cripple the opposing empire by attacking the infrastructure that keeps those units viable. It isn't genius it is strategy. You have to hit them wherever you can and will win. If you can't engage directly then you have to target many places indirectly. The only time you should engage directly is if you have 7 of those same top tier fleets and all of them being equal the 5vs5 cancel them out.
You can look at WW2 in the Pacific as an example. All American battleships are out of the war on day one, carriers are still alive, and the submarine fleet which is arguably comparable to lots of smaller weaker forces in many places is effective attacking in many places. The war in the Pacific is a war of attrition and by the end of the war the USA has over 100 carriers in the Pacific to very few surviving for Japan. One big massive fleet isn't the end of the game certainly not Gal Civ 3.
In a word, no.
You have spectacularly failed to produce rules for a working AI. It is more dependent on bonuses than the existing AI; it is less competent tactically than the existing AI; and it is more predictable than the existing AI. It is an awesomely poor idea. It is so bad, that for centuries to come it will be legendary amongst AIs for its immense rubbishness. It's really that bad. It is mechanically broken, conceptually lazy, logically inconsistent, astoundingly unconvincing, and totally predictable. It is inferior to the existing AI in almost every single important metric, and the existing AI is pretty bad. I strongly advise you to just drop it and move on rather than starting extra threads to draw more attention to what a stupid idea it is.
Marigoldran, it's becoming increasingly clear that you simply don't have much experience in fighting a war in this game. I wouldn't be remotely surprised if you've never actually tried. Oh, you've gamed your way into an early transport fleet, then moved them all to defenceless worlds and invaded them, but you've never continued playing long enough to see the AI actually using fleets. You've declared victory by turn 100 and stopped playing, at about the point where the AI has maybe 50 ships. This leaves you singularly unqualified to pass judgement over how the AI operates in a war.
I suspect many people reading this are somewhat nonplussed by your apparent belief that 5 fleets represents a major invasion, tbh, since I usually have more than that hanging around on the quiet stretches of my border by the time the AI has finished colonizing; there's never a point where the appearance of 5 fleets on my border couldn't be matched by an equal-or-greater force within 2-3 turns. It's not exactly hard when most industry worlds can generate enough production for a fully-equipped huge ship every turn.
You also seem to be labouring under some fairly massive mis-conceptions about how warfare works. For example, a fleet is not a concentration of units. A fleet is ONE unit. A tactical combat is what happens when one unit attacks one other unit. A battle is what happens when many units gather and fight multiple tactical combats until one side or the other is dead. If doomstacks were in this game (and, in fact, they are, it's just the AI doesn't use them), then they would be made up of stacks of fleets, not stacks of individual ships. Ships are really just equipment slots for a fleet. An actual concentration of force is where multiple fleets are gathered and work together to achieve an objective, which is exactly not what your AI has been ordered to do. You are, in fact, sending units at the player one at a time. Those units are full-logistic fleets, but if my units are also full-logistics fleets then you are still just sending lots of scattered individual units at me, to be annihilated by my own. This is incredibly basic stuff that you don't seem to have figure out yet.
I've only won on Challenging, in a game in which I only ever really had to fight some Yor fleets that were my equal, but I actually enjoy combat and some micromanagement. My comment was a bit of a jab at marigoldran who has repeatedly insisted that he doesn't bother to fight wars because he picks settings that allow him to colony spam a hundred planets and then quits.
What did curk do? The kobiashi Maroo or whatever its called. Gotta take one for the team I guess and slow your enemy down. Was a valid strategy in the art of war as well, and you can get some diplomacy aid/ rush buy and buy ships. All would not be lost...apart from the battle fodder that got destroyed and some theoretical starbases. (starbases come in handy for times like this.)
Okay Darca,
I think you me James T. Kirk from Star Trek and the Kobayashi Maru and, I'd be right there along with him attempting to overcome the unobtainable victory . There is always a way to win, it may be extremely difficult and the solution may evade our small minds but, we will prevail
Okay Darca,I think you me James T. Kirk from Star Trek and the Kobayashi Maru and, I'd be right there along with him attempting to overcome the unobtainable victory . There is always a way to win, it may be extremely difficult and the solution may evade our small minds but, we will prevail
If you believe the JJ Abrams lore, all you have to do is sneak onto the enemy ships, all 5 fleet megadeath stacks, and swap a few circuits, and then when the battle happens the next day, bite into an apple and order to fire all the weapons and watch the Carnage. Thanks JJ, and can we get a few more lights shining into the camera for the next scene. LOL.
I've now been jabbed.
Nooooooooooooo.
(P.S. I like these emoticons).
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