Weak Drengin AI? » Forum Post by carrot564

I'd say it's partly because of the difficult level you're on. "Normal" still limits the AI economy and strategies, and definitely hurts militaristic races like the Drengin a lot more because, well, economy directly affects how many good ships you can get out there. Try playing with all AI opponents on Bright or Intelligent, you'll see the Drengin become quite powerful.

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play it past normal.HaaHaaa! haaaa!Then come and tell us what pansies the Drengin are.Bwahahahaha!

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Drengin had 1080 military power (which is a relative number, 100 being average or such) in my first Normal game. Only thing that killed them was my convincing the good races to attack them, and paying the other races 2000bc each to do so.

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most of my games in normal have the peacenik Altarians turning the Drengin into their biatches...
So yeah, them Drengin seem to have some wierd deal... even the Yor...

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I think there are just a lot of factors in play in any given game. I have also had this same experience - the Drengin *never* amount to anything more than a minor race..... at any level I've played at. They always have the fewest planets, the weakest economy and the lowest tech..... but they do always have a decent military rating. I am looking forward to the day when they get a decent start and become the number one tyrant of the galaxy with all us good races banding together to fight off their advance. The race that fills this role in my experience is the Yor who seem to outexpand me whatever I do.

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The Drengin usually dominate my "tough" games. I'm guessing the AI are less agressive on the lower difficulties, and this obviously affects the races that rely on pure agression the most.

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Yeah, I'll try turning the difficulty up a knoch.

Let's hope the galactic tryants acutally do something

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Alstein

Join Date 07/2004

+55

Bumping them up to Bright makes a big difference- they've already knocked off the Torians in my game, and helped to knock off the Altarians. Dealt with the HUmans myself (they got a real crap start). Now all I gotta do is keep the Drengins from turning on me...

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I'm still new to the game, learing the ropes and playing on sub-normal and in both my games the Drengin were the first to go.
They surrendered to me in the first game without me even attempting to apply pressure to them.
And in the second game they didn't colonise a single other star system even though they were on their own in the corner of the galaxy with a class 15 planet very close to their start.
All other civilizations seem to be playing well, it's just the Drengin. I'm even starting to feel sorry for them!

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That is not true, I've thought this as well. Always saying poor derengin getting ganked by all the good races. Then in one game 3 good races were fighting the two evil ones. I thought drengin were toast for sure... then what happens? I DONT KNOW but they wtfpwned two of the races and the 3rd was begging me for help!

So don't discount the Drengin, yes they have problems sometimes because more good races means they are handicapped. BUT they can come out very much on top in a war. Most of the time when the drengin have problems, it's actually the player's fault! YES YOU! You are the guy who sells tech to the humans for 120 BC and same tech to the Drengin for 400! You are to blame!

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In my current game (intelligent AI) the Drengin is the most powerful race in the galaxy. Multiple major races (including me: the mighty Yor) have paid tribute to them to avoid war. They are currently slaughtering billions of Torians and conquering their worlds.

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One of my last games, and my toughest yet, was my fourth on intelligent. I was playing my evil custom race, and shared a lot of tech with the Drengin, then (when it was them, me, the yor, the Terrnas and the Thalans) remembered that alliance was off. So i remembered why to play neutral, free planet upgrades, more money faster.
At one point, they must have had 90% of the Galaxy, Terrans had given up, and I used the yor to distract them long enough to research the required defence techs to beat their army. Still took about 7 game years to get rid of them from where I was. I REALLY envy you that get easy Drengin

This must be the 5th thread on which I've told this drengin battle story. Moral?
FEAR THE DRENGIN!

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I concur when you are playing on or at genius the Drengin are a freaking PITA. Keeping them closeted with the other civs and keeping a buffer between you and them is necessary especially if your playing a lilly white goodie goodie tuitty fruitty race.

mwhahahahahahaha.

W/R
Suralle Straykat
Kat Lord @ Large

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I concur when you are playing on or at genius the Drengin are a freaking PITA. Keeping them closeted with the other civs and keeping a buffer between you and them is necessary especially if your playing a lilly white goodie goodie tuitty fruitty race.

mwhahahahahahaha.

W/R
Suralle Straykat
Kat Lord @ Large

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Did you notice the orignal post wasnt playing on such a hard difficulty as you were? It really burns me up.. I know its not even my place... but people moan about the AI being dumb and they're not even playing on a hard level... that means crank up the difficulty if it was too easy for you.

Sorry had to vent.

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Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2419

It does make it discouraging to have put in the time to write explicitly dumb AI strategies so taht the lower levels actually feel like they're playing against poor skilled humans when people automatically think that somehow the only difference in diff levels money or something.

At normal, the AI is not able to make use of the main strategic algorithms.

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I just started a few Human-Drengin wars scenarios on Painful and Crippling, on a couple of different maps. It does seem in some cases as though there is this really odd delay before the AI starts playing. I don't know if it sends its scouts in the wrong direction, or what.

For instance, I started up a map in the H-D wars, large, pretty sparse stars, a reasonable chance of a habitable each star. There was basically a trail of stars between Earth and the Drengin home system. The scenario difficulty was Crippling. I was lucky, in that I got a +300% research square on earth, so I spent the first 5 turns or so research up to impulse drives. Then more time building factories to be able to produce ships at reasonable rate. So anyway, there was a reasonable delay before I even started sending fast scouts and colony ships outside the Solar system.

Not counting Earth and Mars, I had 7 planets in 4 systems before the AI colonized it's first planet outside it's home system (the closest star, and only 1 sector away!). That's not right.

I've seen this behavoir many times, in different settings, and different AI levels. For instance, in the other game I started today, playing the ideological war scenario at Painful, again I had grabbed most of 'my' planets before the Drengin expanded at all, and it wasn't for lack of available habitables. Once they did start expanding, they seemed to go at a fairly good pace though.

I just find these 'navel-gazing' starts on the part of some AIs totally baffling. It's not like it isn't capable of rapid expansion, as other times I've been hard-pressed to keep up.

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I've noticed that on challenging difficulty, the Torians and Altarians are always the two powers that manage to whup everyone's butts, especially the Drengin. The Drengin are practically a multi-planet minor race on anything less than Tough, which is a damn shame. Same goes for the Terrans.

Even then I find it damn strange that the supposedly "peaceful" Torians and Altarians are the hyperexpansionists.

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My first game on painful, the drengin were craaaaazy.

I mean, for three years I fight them with all I got, I have to put 100% in military production, and landing crafts are so few that I use mass drivers on every invasion. It takes two wars to push them back, destroy their fleets uttterly, have them beaten.

So then, in the first time in three years, with twice as much planets now, I can spend money on my economy and my research. The rest of their planets is too far away to be a bother, they got them from the Korx who decided to surrender because they were getting beaten by the altarians, who were twice as high as the next powerful military rating.

I get involved in a war against the Arceans, while the exceedingly weakened drengins get attacked by the Altarians. Here I think that the drengins, with no ships left, are gonna get wiped by the strongest force out there. Wrong. By the time I finish with the Arcarians, I notice that the drengins and the altarians switched places on the military graph, and that the altarians lost 6 systems and are begging me for aid. The Drengins had completely re-speced their fleets, and they had even more powerful ships then me (!!).

Of course, with the full fources of an empire that conquered three others, I was able to take care of them rather easily in end-game, but it's still incredible how they got back from the brink of death to take out the strongest player.

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My first game on painful, the drengin were craaaaazy.

I mean, for three years I fight them with all I got, I have to put 100% in military production, and landing crafts are so few that I use mass drivers on every invasion. It takes two wars to push them back, destroy their fleets uttterly, have them beaten.

So then, in the first time in three years, with twice as much planets now, I can spend money on my economy and my research. The rest of their planets is too far away to be a bother, they got them from the Korx who decided to surrender because they were getting beaten by the altarians, who were twice as high as the next powerful military rating.

I get involved in a war against the Arceans, while the exceedingly weakened drengins get attacked by the Altarians. Here I think that the drengins, with no ships left, are gonna get wiped by the strongest force out there. Wrong. By the time I finish with the Arcarians, I notice that the drengins and the altarians switched places on the military graph, and that the altarians lost 6 systems and are begging me for aid. The Drengins had completely re-speced their fleets, and they had even more powerful ships then me (!!).

Of course, with the full forces of an empire that conquered three others, I was able to take care of them rather easily in end-game, but it's still incredible how they got back from the brink of death to take out the strongest player.

On another note, I think the reason altarians and torians do better on lower levels is simple : when the AI is running at 25% of economy, and one race has +15% to economy, it makes a much bigger impact going from 25% to 40% (nearly doubles) then from 100% to 115%. What do you think?

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Ug. Buggy browser. Sorry.

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I've seen every race play well and play bad over many games. It often depends on where they start. I've seen the torians wipe the floor with everyone, I've seen the altarians wipe the floor, I've seen the Thalans wipe the floor, and I've sure as hell seen the Yor, Drengins, Draths wipe the floor. (only ones I haven't seen is the terrans because I'm always playing them

)

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Actually, I finished a game with my custom race on Normal last night. I had the Dregin AI pretty much act in such a weak way it was ridiculous. Anyway, I sort of just corned myself in and rushed for a tech victory. The Terran Alliance pretty much dominated them.

Now, loaded up a Iconian game on Bright and noticed that the Dregins, while not having the largest empire, are pretty much a power house of an Empire. On the flip side, the Terrans have such a pathetic little Empire at my border that I think I am just going to go in and crush them.

Now, I don't think it is the fault of the Terrans, it is just that I expanded like mad and took all the planets close to them

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In the past few Tough games I've played the Torians have bloody well dominated the galaxy. My current game the Dren were wiped out early by me, then I spent the next ice age defending off the Drath and the Acreans. I've finally with my diplomacy gotten everyone to make nice and keep to themselves but these Torians have expanded like mad. With a combination of culture and and military they have taken half the "huge" map. No idea how I'm going to beat them. No other race, even my allies, will attack them not even with a massive bribe. The Tor's hate me so I can't win diplomatic, and I turned off the tech victories :/

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On Normal difficulty games, I've also found the Drengin to be pretty weak. They're always lagging behind in economy, industry, and research; everything but military in fact. Then they foolishly start wars that can't win, often with everyone on the map at once. The Yor and Thalan are also fairly pathetic and never seem to get off to a strong start.

The Altarians, Korx, Drath and Iconians (?) usually perform pretty well, assuming they don't get outcolonized. The Torrians, however, are invariably the race to beat whenever I include them in a game.

I haven't played enough higher difficulty games to make any judgements about the races there.

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