Were those worlds ones that the Drengin had captured from Minors? I've noticed minors have some sort of initial delay in building, so if I take over their worlds, they are very low on actually built tiles. Takes forever to turn that into something useful without rush buying.

Or were those worlds late colonized? If you colonize worlds after you've discovered factories or enhanced factories, it's very difficult to get them up to speed because it takes so long to build the current factory tech. Again, rush buying helps, but it can still take a very long time to develop even after rush buying the first couple of factories.

Is it possible that structures-in-progress don't show up when looking at enemy planets? Perhaps the Drengin didn't have extra cash laying around and couldn't jumpstart the building.

I did notice a fair amount of unescorted transports, though occasionally they would be escorted. I suppose it's pretty difficult to make an AI actually consider its overall situation an figure out whether or not a transport will be safe... especially if you decimate their fleet, something they can't always predict. I ran into combat ships that weren't in fleets much more rarely, it seemed to always stick them in full fleets when I was playing on normal difficulty.

As far as the unfleeted fighters go, its always seemed (to me) that the AI is using those early on in a war to try and raid my trade routes, contructors, and what not to gain XP -- usually by the time *I* get to smack them down (I play a research game, so I'm not very good on the tech curve) they're a pretty major threat, and often fleeted.

I too have seen cases where the AI doesn't seem to be building up its planets as fast as they should.  I will be keeping an eye out for that.

"My advice to anyone who sees weaknesses in the AI is this: Play on one of the harder levels and you will weep openly at how good the AI can be (and its alot more fun too )"

My understanding has always been that AIs settings above "Intelligent" are identical except for an increasingly large economic/production bonus. So any algorithmic AI weaknesses would still be present at higher settings. But you don't notice it as you're constantly trying to keep up with their supercharged economies.

"Were those worlds ones that the Drengin had captured from Minors?"

Nope. The world was approx. 1 sector from their homeworld. Colonized fairly early.

"I suppose it's pretty difficult to make an AI actually consider its overall situation an figure out whether or not a transport will be safe...... especially if you decimate their fleet, something they can't always predict. "

This is very true. I had hoped they would react faster when said decimation occured.

"As far as the unfleeted fighters go, its always seemed (to me) that the AI is using those early on in a war to try and raid my trade routes, contructors, and what not to gain XP -- usually by the time *I* get to smack them down (I play a research game, so I'm not very good on the tech curve) they're a pretty major threat, and often fleeted. "

This would make sense. However, the unfleeted ships started appearing after war had been declared. In the AI's defense, I guess it's hard to differentiate between sending a single fighter ASAP to reinforce existing fleets vs. building up a fleet and sending it to the front. I would prefer the AI erred on the side of caution.

Anyway, thanks for all the intelligent replies.

Cheers

h








EDIT: there were supposed to be quotes in that post...

My advice to anyone who sees weaknesses in the AI is this: Play on one of the harder levels and you will weep openly at how good the AI can be (and its alot more fun too

I'm playing on "tough" where the AIs are "intelligent" and I don't think they get any smarter (by definition) on higher difficulty levels - they just start to get resource types of bonuses.

So, at "tough" I would hope to see less AI blunders with transports, planet development, ignoring gifted ships, failing to assess defenses (AI will send transports or ships to attempt to attack backline undefended planets ignoring the 30 ships in between and get massacred).

I'll take risks with transports sometimes - or not have them directly escorted but in the vacinity of my other ships (mostly due to nonstop glitches with grouping and movement). Taking calculated risks is one thing. The AI sending totally undefended tranports at my planets when I have large quantities of ships able to intercept from a variety of locations is another - that's not a calculated risk, that's getting rid of excess population via suicide!

I'm also tired of AIs surrending to avoid assimilation - it's to the point where I try to simultaneously take all the planets of an AI at once (within reason) to avoid this because it happens so much. It'd be nice this happening were more random (as in sometimes the cowards fight it out instead). This isn't a glitch, per se, it's just highly annoying.

Did the other worlds have any or better bonus tiles?The fact that later worlds are more built up may mean they need more time to get up to speed.What size galaxy were you in?Normal tech rate?Were there any morally good races close to them that they would feel threatened by or hostile to who may have gotten better planets than them?

I've noticed on my normal games that the AI does build up (it depends on which AI and what the situation is) and does adapt if they have the tech and money to do so.

However while they might put together an effective and finacialy effiecient fleet that would take out my ships one on one and sometimes a fleet. They definately don't seem to be taking into account thier surrounding or the fact that my DeathStar of a space station is giving mega bonuses to my little ships.

The Ai should prioritize its known targets and adapt accordingly as it can afford too. Also the AI would be much more effective if it could target a spot and "see" several parsecs around the target parsec to determine what to do. This way it can make a choice balanced against the 8 surrounding parsecs or so. It may already do this...if so then I suppose some teaking is in order.

Also, the AI(at intelligent) seems to have trouble adapting to fast transports since I found at least 1/4 of there planets undefended and were able to strike any of these planets from any of my planets within two turns. Losing that many planets in a turn and taking only one or two back basically lead them to being unable to oppose me military wise. This occured through three seperate wars with the Terrans. Also, putting in 50bc/week into espionage on them I was able to steal 36 techs while reasearching 48. This seems rather unbalanced and I was able to pretty much pull out of research and concentrate on military for the last war.

At the very least they should have even a basic vessel so you can't just walk in from halfway across the galaxy. (Save game available if needed).


Edit: Link to the fast transpo