AI Lvl, or bug, or just the Demo?

Published on April 24, 2006 By Krantos In Game Talk

Ok so I went to war with the Drengin on "normal" lvl on the Demo. The war went really well bcuz they had maybe five ships all together (all heavy fighters beam weapons 3) I had six (4 fighters beam 2; 2 Medium size beam 4 shield 2).
Anyway I easily cut their forces down to size, and blockaded Drengia and Kona with the Medium ships, just marking time until I had researched Planetary invasion and bombardment.

Here's the problem:
They kept building heavy fighters and sending them up against me (one at a time) even though the combined stats of the two ships (in a fleet) were 10beam 4shield 2Armor 2Pd (I had a military starbase set up). These fighters could do NOTHING against me except allow my ships level up. I eventually had them both at lvl 30 and over 70hp.

My question is: Is this a bug, something the developers missed, the Demo, or is it just the dificulty setting I had it on? I would like to think that it was the latter but I don't know.

Also I've found that the AI doesn't consider production when assesing relative strength. I've had the drengin trying to bully me around when i had no standing army, but within 2 months I had the largest military in the galaxy and conquered the Drengin before the end of the Year (again on Normal) please tell me this is the difficulty setting.

Comments

WarEagle

on Apr 24, 2006

The AI has been improved very much with the current betaversion, I cannot say if they would do the same thing, but think about the point you have an advantage when attacking. If the Drengin would put the ship in orbit you could attack it and YOU would fire with all ships before he could fire back. So by attacking you he can do damage, he'll loose the ship in both ways.

Morberis

on Apr 24, 2006

I can confirm that in beta the AI tends to build up its fleets, not that it does them anygood by that point though.

Apheirox

on Apr 24, 2006

I hate to say it but yes, this is not just a problem with the demo. I'm finding that the AI does equally incredibly moronic things in the newest beta (1.1 4B). For example, in my game yesterday the Arceans built only troop transports and no combat vessels at all, allowing me to easily destroy their entire fleet with a few basic fighters.

If things like this bothers you (and I fail to see how it could not) I would recommend thinking very carefully about buying the game because you are bound to find lots and lots more of the same kind of issues. This game is reeking of potential but unfortunately it is far from finished.

*prepares to get flamed by the fanboy horde*

Apheirox

on Apr 24, 2006

I should add that you should at least play on 'tough' difficulty or the AI won't be doing its best. Still, don't expect it to offer much resistance.

Vandenburg

on Apr 24, 2006

*prepares to get flamed by the fanboy horde*

This comment by strategist should give you enough info to ignore him. He's sadly nothing more then a Civ IV troll.

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Ty playing the game at the "tough" difficulty. Several AI algorithms are deactivated on "normal" difficulty. That said, I don't know if the AI then handles your attacks better, since if you have once destroyed his ships it's quite hard to regroup, imho, even if you would fight against a human player.

Crusafier

on Apr 24, 2006

im surprised the AI does anything in the demo for you, my copy of the game hasnt arrived yet and im finding the demo is way to short, the ai only gets a couple of scouts built

Soulcatcher

on Apr 24, 2006

No, I think this is a legit problem and hopefully it can be addressed eventually.

I've fought wars on the largest maps and my opponents only come up with 4-5 warships that aren't planetary defenders and literally hundreds of unescorted transports that they send in waves. That's a standard tactic for the AI, it seems: I've seen it done by Iconian, Torian, Arcean and Korx all in the same game. And, as was said above, it only takes a small force of fast, lightly armed fighters to basically wipe out their whole transport fleet, costing them all that production from so many planets. It really doesn't make sense...if they had put even half of that production into warships, they would have had enough power to bring the galaxy to its knees. In fact, if they had brought their ships out of orbit and fleeted them up, they would probably have had enough strength to kick me out of their space, but those ships never moved.

I know the AI can't be perfect, but if this is something that could be looked into I think it would be a help to the game.

Krantos

on Apr 25, 2006

the ai only gets a couple of scouts built

Increase the difficulty. That's all they did with me too on begginer but then once you up the odds to normal they'll actually start playing a lot smarter.
Here's a couple things that the AI does well:
Trading (Begginner you can get weapon tech from them pretty easy, Normal- good luck)
Response They actually do react on higher levels. Eg. I was building up a invasion force to take out the Arceans and they build military starbases right on our borders (or tried, my 9pc/wk ships took them out b4 the could upgrade)
Also, the AI will keep an eye on what you're researching. I found out that the Drengin were using beam weapons so I started researching shields, only to have them turn around and start researching mass drivers.

So the AI is good as long as you take it off easy, but there are still some things that they just can't quite pull off.

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