AI issue

from GalCiv2 Forums
It seems that the AI (on "intelligent" setting) is absolutely hopeless at developping its economy. In my last game, I think that it did not build a single farm (in a medium galaxy, and even though I let it live foor seven years), which resulted in my pop dwarfing everybody else's even before I began conquering colonies and my production being something like twice that of the six other players combined when I had maybe one quarter of the territory (in good part because my production slider was nearly always at 100% which was certainly not the case for the AIs with their pitiful economies). This is quite an issue because it allows the human player to crush the AI without making real use of its traditional advantages (global strategy and warfare), especially combined with the strange passivity sometimes exhibited even by supposedly aggressive races (I had the drengin and yor as neighbours, did not build a single military ship or starbase for an AWFUL long time, and they never attacked me. When I finally decided it was time to begin aggressive extension, I just put all my ressources into producing ships and my military rating jumped to over 100 in six turns or something). I don't doubt the game would be very challenging for me on the highest difficulty settings, but I think there is a lot of room for tweaks (some of them easy) to make the AI challenging even without special "advantages", and I was wondering how high improving its handling of economy ranked in the list of improvements to the AI which will be coming with version 1.1.
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Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I agree, I also had 3 games where I focused entirely on economics and pop growth and build no single military ship.
The AI never attacked me because of my "potential military might". In the end my industrial capacities were overpowered. Conclusion: AI must become more agressive when you have no military, especially in the early to mid game phase.
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Duno they tend to attack me...
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Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
They won't attack you if you have a larger economy, if they attacked you it is because you were weak (probably in both military and economy). They ignore industrial capacity though which is dumb. Once I had 3 planets that outproduced any 10 worlds added together that belonged to the AI, since I could not afford to run them fully the AI would threaten me, I cranked it up and sold the ships to anyone who would buy them to keep the machine running but 3 worlds at 2000+ military production, I could sell the ship from one or two and keep 1 or two each turn. Alternating who was able to purchase my very nice vessals I became the galactic power who could not afford to maintain his military, it didn't matter though I just kept selling ships to keep afloat. So many buyers, all burning them up as fast as I sold them, sometimes they never left the ajacent square because I had sold to an enemy who still had his ships next to my planet. It is good when consumers consume so fast!
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
What you are saying is absolutely wrong. True during your games, that I am sure of, but this isn't a general attitude the AI has.

In all games I played, I was the player with the highest population, the most number of colonies, and had an economic rating superior to 100 (and usually as well, a tech rating well close to 100). And I was close to be the most productive.

And the computer-played races did threaten me a lot, request money and techs for me in exchange for them not to eradicate me. The only ones that did not threaten were those already busy in other wars or most of all, with no neighborhood with me or close-aligned with me, or those really not powerful enough.

Remember other things are factors to their agressivity:

¤ the potential threat you are to THEIR power (that is, do you have cultural influence on their worlds, common frontiers with them, are you already in a war (and so an easy prey), do you counterbalance an opponent they have in common with you...)... if you do not have cultural influence on their territory, they really tend to forget you, they have some other business

¤ the alignment you are leaning to...

¤ and so on


Having no military ship IS a great agressivity factor regarding the AIs, they do not leave me at peace for so long... in 4 games they always declared war on me because of that, and 2 to 3 AIs together most of the time. I always wondered why they were still sending ships after me while seeing their fleets being turned to pieces one by one, but well, as long as do not have enough ships, you do not have respect from them...

Side note: When an AI says "your 'potential' military power is just as it is, potential" it means that you do have absolutely no military power and they are laughing at it. It is some Yor Collective joke I believe

I still wonder how you escaped being declared war upon.
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
The problem is that you need a strong enconomy in order to feed your industrial capacity for extended periods of time. It's pretty amazing just how much money a strong manufacturing capital can sap when it starts building ships.
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
OUCH !

Silly me, forgot one thing : Diplomacy. The main thing that counts is your Diplomacy score. I almost say, unfortunately, because it must be the thing you put on in order to control the AI agressiveness. Isn't it ?

Then are you saying it is too easy not to be attacked when having no military ship and a good Diplomacy value ? To easy to control the AI this way ? Because this is a very different idea than the one I understood first when I read your posts.
Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I dunno. Currently, I've made a bad(ish) start to my game, with only 2 planets in midgame. It's a pain, because I was surrounded by systems with no usable planets (Rare habitable is more fun IMO)
Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Concerning the passivity of the AIs : yes I had a great diplomatic ability, but still... Plus it's not only passivity towards the human player : in one of my first games (AIs on intelligent too) I made quite a few mistakes in the early game which resulted in slow development ; as a result I could not tackle the leading AIs, but I just took over the weakest ones, one after the other, with the big boys basically watching on until I became too strong for them. One of the things which could be done to improve this is to increase the diplomatic penalties for being overly aggressive (in Alpha Centauri or CivIII / IV, you think twice before you declare one on a weak neighbour, because he usually has a few friends who won't forget or forgive easily). The economy problem is no doubt more complicated, though it seems that bumping up the priority of income producing buildings might be a start.