| I find that players that find the game "easy" are usually playing on very specific map conditions using a very specific strategy. |
Thanks for the reply. I've read through all of the posts in this thread, and I've taken some of the suggestions. For example, I've been told that the mid-level difficulty levels are not all that difficult at all. In my defense, in the initial post, I was trying to find a way to challenge myself through cunning, intelligent AI, rather than cheesy bonuses applied to the AI. Yes, increasing the difficulty level is a quite viable strategy for increasing the amount of challenge. However, I find that a game's AI doesn't play any better of a game once it has all these bonuses applied; rather, once you know the AI's weaknesses, you can quite easily exploit these weaknesses despite the added bonuses. For example, if you can win on Tough, then it's almost guaranteed that you can win on the next two or three difficulty levels. The AI doesn't play substantially better. It still enters into wars without any kind of plan, and it still suicides its fleets against mine, when any human player would know not to waste an entire army like that.
I wish that I had taken specific notes about the AI's behavior, now that I potientally have the attention of the company. As I mentioned above, in my initial post, I have tried many different strategies, many different galaxies, and many different races. I don't always go towards a political victory, but my victories do lean towards political victories, because I want to wrap up the game (killing every single race gets tedious for me, when I KNOW that I'm going to win).
That's another problem that I have: at a certain point, I essentially KNOW that I'm going to win. There are, of course, random events, which can change the balance of power. However, these happen so rarely that they hardly factor into my games. I've gone entire games without getting any random events (or, at least, random events that affect me or visibly affect my race). In rare cases, I've gone two full games without any random events.
My latest victories have been on Crippling difficulty. I plan to move on to Masochistic and Suicidal before long. My initial plan was to skip directly to Suicidal, but I figured that toying around with each difficulty level would be better; that way, I'd be able to say what I found lacking or exciting about each difficulty level, rather than simply stating that the game is too easy.
My biggest problems with the AI behavior:
1) It can't wage war. I'm fairly good with both strategy and tactics, but I can't really be bothered to apply myself and think too far ahead. The AI should be able to take advantage of my mental laziness. Let's say, for example, that I declare war on a race, without much thought to how I'm going to conquer them. I don't have enough troop transports, my worlds are not populated enough to sustain the continual drain of sending colonists to war, and my ship designs are not state-of-the-art. You'd expect to be utterly destroyed. However, this is quite often how the AI wages war, and, when I'm caught totally unprepared for war, I find it simplistic to muster up a few fleets of state-of-the-art ships, grow my worlds to a point at which they can sustain the war effort, and pump out enough troop transports to take half the enemy's planets. After this humiliating defeat, the AI will often give up a few more planets for peace, then surrender to an ally. All because THEY declared war on ME. Crazy, man. They shouldn't be declaring war on me, unless they have a PLAN. I sure as hell will take advantage of the AIs shortcomings; however, when I declare war on the AI without a plan (or get caught up unprepared in a war), I find it very, very easy to walk all over the AI. The AI will send out unprotected troop transports, even on the higher difficulty settings, like Crippling. The AI will have only one defender on its home planet, even on Crippling. The AI will make ships with lasers when my entire army is equipped with very high level Shields defense. I don't get it. Why do people lose wars with the AI, when it can't even make a decent ship design? And, yes, this is on v1.2, with all the AIs set to Genius, with "intensive AI" checked. And it still sends out unescorted troop transports. This is a genius? I think not.
2) The worlds, when I spy on them, are not put to use to the best of their ability. I understand that it must be difficult to write algorithms to do so, but the AI is held up as a defining feature of this game. Often, the worlds seem haphazardly built-up, like a player just learning how to play the game had plopped down a few factories, then randomly selected from the remaining choices. Maybe this is why I consistently win against the AI: my worlds have specific purposes, and I'm not afraid to decommission old buildings and build new structures, if I think a planet could be used better as an economy, research, manufacturing, military, cultural, or galactic wonder planet. Or some combination of them.
3) The AI players hardly ever trade tech amongst themselves. Why do they constantly have no current tech, 4000 credits, and good relations with other civilizations? This shouldn't happen! The AI players should be constantly checking to see what trades are possible. I do. I always end up having the most tech and the most money in the game, even when I supposedly only do a miniscule amount of research. Some people have suggested that, in order to create a more challenging game, I don't build any research structures. Fair enough. Having done so, I was still leading in tech. Why? I knew that the AI would never make enough trades with each other. I became the "tech broker", as many Civ players call this strategy.
4) Why are the AI players so scared of the following design?
Cargo Hull
5 lasers
no engine
no life support
no sensors
no defense
1 total hit point
That's crazy. I build one of these ships, and the AI players are scared to death of me for the next 50-75 turns. I'm sorry, but that's just plain stupid. It's not what I'd call a "genius". The AI obviously values nothing but how many total points of weaponry that I've loaded onto the hull. Whether it can actually stray from my planets, how many hit points it has, and how abysmally slow it is do not matter. A human player would laugh at such a design. However, the AI treats me like I just discovered some ancient Precursor battleship. The AI routines were designed sloppily and quickly, with no real thought to strategy or tactics.
5) The tech victory is supposed to be difficult. I've found it to be anything but. Apparently, I'm supposed to fortify myself in my corner of the galaxy, hope that nobody will declare war on me, and then research at maximum for a few dozen turns. Well, for me, what happens is that I simply press enter many, many more times than seems fun. Nothing else happens, really. No wars, no threats from AI players who sense my sharp emphasis on tech (and, as a consequence, my meager social engineering and military production), no consortiums hastily founded, in order to retard my staggering research -- nothing! Just a boring gameplay experience where I'm holding down enter for fifteen minutes.
6) Why don't the other players ever try to win a political victory? I mean, all you really need to do is donate a dozen old techs to someone, and you're now his best friend. I've gotten political victories within a few dozen turns. I was actually hoping to get a crazy score out of that, given that I won so quickly. However, my score was disappointingly small, driving me to find other ways to win the game at a delayed pace. Since then, my scores have increased, but I'm still having some trouble breaking the top 25, seeing as how I'm too lazy to get a conquest victory.
7) Does the AI ever make alliances? I'm not sure it does. Usually, when I declare war on someone, I can do so with impudence. When the AI players declare war on me, they end up facing the rest of the galaxy. Not smart. They should consider whether they really want to fight a war on six or seven different fronts, before they pick a fight with a diplomat.
I think that's probably enough for now. Maybe after I take some notes, I'll be able to compose a longer message. Seriously, for someone who's bipolar and has lots of time on his hands, this is a short essay.
