I play on Crippling difficulty, or whatever the highest difficulty is where AI is fully maxed out, but not cheating yet. It is no exaggeration to say, in all my games, from release to version 1.4, Ive never had an enemy troop transport land on one of my planets (except in rare cases of sneaking up on me when my sensor networks werent in place).


The enemy simply never escorts or arms their transports that I can see. This weakness is so pronounced, I figured out thats its counter productive to keep expensive defensive fleets in orbit (unless Im protecting a starbase),risking damage. Transports (the only kind of ship thats a threat to a planet) are easily destroyed by a single quick (and not cheesy-quick) tiny hulled ship with a 1 attack playing a game of "wack-a-mole" with transports as they come up, while outmanuvering attack fleets. I guard my starbases, but leave my planets unguarded, save for one or two cheap troop killers patrolling borders. I dont believe this is as intended.


When you think about it, it kind of breaks the game, as enemy civs are really only a threat to your ships and starbases, but they can never take a world from you unless you let them...really eliminating any sort of real risk or aprehension over an invasion. I recall hearing talk in previous patches that the AI would start escoting their transports, but Ive never seen it happen, or happen competently enough that the trasport wasnt vulnerable at some point before threatening a world.


In DA, can I look forward to the AI finally doing a competent job of protecting trasports, either by escort or ship design, so the AI can actually threaten planets?


thanks!