Won without building 1 combat ship and not trying (On tough difficulty)

Title says it all

Something is definitely went wrong in that game with the AI.

I made a HUGE game with 9 opponents. Tough intelligence. Forcing the AI to use the extra "cpu" (I have a dual core). Technology trading was off. I was the altaran resistance with its super-ability. When I got ethics, I went good.

I spawned at the top-left corner of the map. I got a total of 4 planets (crappy ones), which I kept the entire game. I also got 2 mining starbases (research and economy). Thats it. I started off by doing a econ/research treaty with the Dregin, researched things, set up trade routes...and just researched some more. I did not build ONE combat ship the entire game (I just made colony ships and constructors for those starbases).

I had one moment of excitement the whole game. The krynn, which were at the bottom-right (as far as possible from me anyone could be) declared war on me. Immediately, my super-ability went into overdrive and 3-4 races declared war on the Krynn. Since they were kinda far from me and were getting owned, I did not worry and built no warships.

Over the course of the war, most races kept giving me ships! Enough ships that I was roughly "middle" in the military graphs (over 100 in military rating). I found this funny =p. Finally the krynn gave up and begged for peace with me...

All I did with all those free ships was put them in my worlds (I even had to decommission a good number so I woudn't waste research cash no upkeep!!!).

So yeah, I won with a technology victory. Nobody else was even CLOSE to dominating the galaxy and I was never touched. Oh yeah, I had 3 spies land on my planets once and I immediately nullified them..woopie =p.

Winning on tough difficulty without trying, sad...Seems to me the AI isn't even CLOSE to what it used to be before DA. Maybe the "force AI to use all CPU" "advanced algorithms" aren't helping? I dunno.

Oh yeah, I also "edited" all the AI races before the game began, in the personality tab and set it to use 100% of cpu (I hadn't seen the "force AI to use it all" in the options menu).

-Drexion

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Sounds about right to me. I've won games before without building a single combat ship by either a diplo or tech victory. The AI is designed to play the game. This means it treats the player just as another empire and not something special. Depending on their initial setups I've had games where the AI spent probably 80% or better of the game fighting amongst themselves. If they don't see you as a threat they don't bother with you.

By making those early treaties with the Drengin you eliminated the most aggressive AI in the game. Typically if you are trading with them they are less likely to attack you since it will remove a good portion of their income. This is doublely so if you started those trade routes really early in the game. The AI isn't dumb

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By turning off tech trading you also hinder the AI to a degree.

So yes you were trying. Just not trying to conquer through force.

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