Severe Dreadlord AI bug

I have the GalCiv2_110_beta_032406.exe beta. Don't know if that's the latest or not.

The Dread Lords AI needs a serious tune up (on the Dread Lords on Parade scenario).

On beginner level, they never leave Amalda, except to scout. Years and years went by until finally everyone had so much tech that they couldn't possibly have beaten anybody.

That was boring, so I restarted with it set to "Normal". Major, big time difference. Suddenly there's hundreds of DL warships all over the entire galaxy. For crying out loud, have something in between.

Anyway, here's the bug. The Dread Lords become obsessed with starbases, to the exclusion of everything else. I mean literally, their only goal galaxywide is to destroy a starbase.

I managed to get a little corner of the galaxy all to myself, with three other planets + Mars/Earth. And T W O precursor mines. So I lucked out there.

About twenty or thirty turns into it, DreadLord warships appear out of nowhere and smash two of my mining bases, conquer the Iconians AND the Thalans. I mean seriously in the same turn. The Altarians were wiped out three turns later, then Arceans two turns after that.

So clearly, they're active. The other races are dropping like flies. I designed a crappy little fighter and threw it into production on all five planets. Stingers and lasers and with no protection at all. Meat for the grinder I thought.

Everything goes quiet for a while. I have time to put together 7 fleets of fighters before they came after me. Five per fleet. When they came, they came IN FORCE. Massive, colossal wave after wave after wave. I figured I was going to go out in a blaze of glory and start a new map a few turns later.

They ignored my fighers. They ignored my planets. They even ignored my freighters. Every single one of them was making a direct, unswerving beeline toward an economy starbase I'd built. They had endless opportunities to attack first and wipe the floor with my little fighters, but they just zoomed on past.

So I attacked. and I attacked. and I attacked. And I absolutely slaughtered them. I had *just enough* firepower to take out a frigate in one pass (most of the time) and they weren't attacking my fighers at all, so my losses were nearly zero. The fighters ended up with insane experience and bonus hit points. It got to where just one of my fighers could have taken on a whole fleet of pirates by itself.

They were so frantically obsessed with that starbase that they kept impaling themselves on my defense line. A neverending tsunami of warships. Huge stacks of a dozen or more ships, but none of them in a fleet. I just absolutely slaughtered them. And they kept ignoring me and making a direct beeline for that starbase.

Then it suddenly ended. No more enemy ships. Everything went quiet. Five turns later, they were conquered by the Drengin. The idiots were so obsessed with that one starbase that they sent every single warship they had after it. The end game summary showed that I had over 600 friggin kills for a loss of 13.

So.. ummm...... I think you need to tweak that AI just a little bit.
6,178 views 5 replies
Reply #1 Top
Thats a thing of beauty right there....

I dunno, I played it on normal and I lost Earth 9th turn and they completely ignored little 'ol Mars. Still playing that game, well into the 70's maybe low 80's in turn count. See how it ends.
Reply #2 Top
No, they don't need to tweak it. You can't say anything needs tweaking until tough, when the AI works properly. Beginner, it's got code written saying "Be stupid". At normal, it has code saying "Be weird". At tough, it has code saying "I laugh at your pathetic fighters. Please die, it saves us the effort"
And trust me, it's extremely fun. The other races REALLY put up a show. Especially those beautiful speeches about honour, valour, and saving the universe. To which you may reply "That's all well and good, but face it, the DL just screwed you, extremely hard. I was watching. You got owned"
But, as you say, the tech thing is a downer. I expanded rapidly, had about 8 systems to myself, (a nice lot of planets), expanded more, wonder when the bug ugly ships would show...
oh. Damn. I'd just colonised the system next to them. Oh look, they're waving and saying Hi.
WAIT A MINUTE! That's not a wave, that's a omegalolyougotnuked5000 missile! that's not Hi, that's "Death to human scum!"

Course, by that time I had so many research planets I cleaned the floor with their puny bugs.
Reply #3 Top
Reminds me of one of those "Power" scenarios where you play as the Drengin. At the measly begginer diffuculty, the dreadlords owned everyone except for me with no problem while I cramped my entire remaining fleet of two fighters next to my last planet. It took too long for them to kill me. I swear, they sent ships in with huge delays. Eventually they sent this huge fleet at me and annihilated all of my fighters. I warded off their first invasion of 12 men, leaving me with a few million people left on the planet. Their second invasion annihilated me and they won. When I switched to the beta, that all changed. Now I love my starbases.
Reply #4 Top
That reminds me, another thing. The AI value starbases more than ships: I don't think they can tell if it's a plain old run of the mill expansion aide, or some souped up, 80 attack and defence flying platform of death that turns the most meagre fighter into killing machine.
Reply #5 Top
I massacre the Dreadlords.

Even on the highest difficulty levels they have the repeated flaw I take rampant advantage of. They nail starbases, they aggressively hunt players, they conquer planets, etc..

But as long as you have a cargo ship or two with a single laser and a bunch of engines you can just outrun everything aggressive they throw at you and shoot down all their transports until you tech up to a ship that can beat theirs. They can't do ANYTHING at all to you if you kill those transports. They just chase your 1 laser ship around and sit on their thumbs.