Beta-3 All AI:s use same weapons & defence

from GalCiv2 Forums
good beta-patch.

Though IMO a severe fun-killing bug is still hiding in the code somewhere making all the races specialise in the same weapon and defense at the same time.

Here comes a detailed look at the AI designs in my first and current beta-3-game:

Designs M0-4
Drengin Heavy Fighter Missile
Korx Defender Missile
Terran Defender Missile
Designs M0-6
Arcean Fighter Beam
Drengin Defender Beam
Torian Fighter Beam
Designs M0-9
Altarian Defender Beam
Altarian Fighter Beam
Torian Defender Beam
Torian Fighter Beam
Designs M0-10
Altarian Defender Beam
Designs M0-12
Drengin Heavy Fighter Beam
Thalan Defender Beam
Thalan Heavy Fighter Beam
Designs M1-1
Thalan Defender Beam
Designs M1-8
Altarian Escort Beam
Altarian Fighter Beam
Arcean Defender Beam
Arcean Escort Beam
Arcean Fighter Beam
Drengin Defender Beam
Iconian Defender Beam
Iconian Heavy Fighter Beam
Terran Heavy Fighter Beam
Thalan Defender Beam
Designs M2-1
Altarian Defender Gun Shield
Drengin Defender Gun Shield
Drengin Escort Gun
Drengin Heavy Fighter Gun
Terran Defender Gun Shield
Thalan Defender Gun Shield
Torian Cruiser Gun Shield
Torian Defender Gun Shield
Torian Fighter Gun
Torian Heavy Fighter Gun

Okay, as you can see, every race began specialising in Missiles but not many of the actually built combat ships at this time. May or Jun first year had every race switch to beams. Finally somewhere between Sep second year and Jan third year, every race switched to massdrivers and shields.
Things to take note of: Drath hasn't built one single combat ship yet. Korx has only one really old missile design.

Some might say that this is coincidence and begin rambling about probabilities. To that I have to ask, how likely is it for this to happen in all my beta games so far (~6) unless there is a bug involved? Not very likely no.
And then there is the fact that others have reported the same thing.

This cripples the AI:s because of the following reasons:
1) They can't adapt to the player or each other.
2) Most of the AI:s will be forced to adapt even though there is no need for it.

Example: Torian in my game had the biggest military, economy, industry, everything. He had a big border towards me who was using massdrivers. He had lots of beam ships. Now a while before he went to war against me, he had to switch to massdrivers even though I had no defense against beams (none of the AI:s had it either, even though there was some Shield research, they were probably all specialising in shields). Suddenly they begin building massdrivers ships which are much worse than their previous beam ships, because they had to begin their weapons research from the beginning.

I am hopeful that you will be able to fix this before the 1.1-beta is over.
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Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Just a thought, but did you start developing point defense? If you did, that would explain why they switched off missiles. It doesn't fully explain why they *all* went with them in the first place, though.
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Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
When I played last night I noticed that everyone had beam weapons. I think it has to do with tech trading. My guess is that one race went up the beam tech and then started trading it away, and the AI switched to that tech because it was further along than the other trees. When I turn tech trading off, I find more variety.

Also, since everyone had beams, i researched shields until the 5 defense shield you get with good alignment (rebounder?). Made my medium hull ships almost invinciple for a while. I noticed the Yor, who I was at war with, starting switching to missiles pretty quickly. Nobody researched another weapon tech until war broke out. After that I'm not sure if just the Yor did and traded it or if all races started researcing missles.

Question about defense (yes, I'm topic stealing). If I have 5 shields and 5 armor, what is my defense against missles? Is it square root of 10 (total) or of 5 (my highest)?
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I haven't yet researched any defence.

And I don't play with tech trading.
I did in a previous beta-game but it made no difference, they were all using the same weapons and defence anyway.

I have a request. Everyone that comments AI weapons & defence from their own games, please tell whether you are using the beta or not.
I think that this was broken in the first beta-version. Before that, I saw lots of variety between the races.
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Question about defense (yes, I'm topic stealing). If I have 5 shields and 5 armor, what is my defense against missles? Is it square root of 10 (total) or of 5 (my highest)?


I think it is sqrt(5) + sqrt(5) = 4.47 round down to 4
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
i've posted about this before. the "officia" stardock response is that this happens because of tech trading. If you want to test this, turn off tech trading and try it out.
Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
In all versions of the Beta, I have observed the computer responding to my ship designs. If I leave a missile/sheild ship hanging around, I will see the computer start to field gun/chaff ships. If I switch to beam/armor ships, and leave them hanging around, I will start to see beam/sheild ships opposing me.

Of course, this is limited by the amount of money the computer has to upgrade and how much time I give it. If I'm out for blood, I try to give the computer as little time as possible to respond to my designs before I attack.
Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Hmm I usually go with beam myself. That's because I think it is the most efficient and productive weapon in the long haul. Missiles of course are initially stronger but not as good in the long run.

I tend to think it is the AI makein good decisions
Reply #9 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
i've posted about this before. the "officia" stardock response is that this happens because of tech trading. If you want to test this, turn off tech trading and try it out.

I'm playing my current game without tech trading.

And it's a bug, I can assure you and everyone else of that. All the AI:s went from (at the time) good weapons, beam ships with maybe 4 damage, to gun ships with 1-2 damage, at the exact same time. The reason all their ships got worse were because they all had much lesser research in the massdriver field.
Now if it's only happening to a very few players including me or everyone, that's a whole other question. But it has happened every time so far for me in all the beta versions. And I would like to see it fixed because it makes the game much easier than it should be and therefor less fun.

Reply #10 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I loaded my saved game from yesterday. I should say that this is of course on tough difficulty, I have also disabled techtrading and minors and I use blind exploration.

Let's now take a look at the new M2-6 designs. Note that I'm at war with the Torians now so I cannot look at all their new ships in the trade window.

Drengin Defender NO WEAPONS + Shield
Drengin Escort Beam
Drengin Heavy Fighter Beam
Terran Defender NO WEAPONS + Shield
Iconian Defender NO WEAPONS + Shield
Iconian Heavy Fighter Beam
Thalan Defender NO WEAPONS + Shield
Thalan Fighter Beam
Thalan Heavy Fighter Beam
Torian Cruiser Mass + Shields + Armor

Let's ignore the Torian Cruiser for now because there are a couple more bugs at work here.
All the races (except Torian) have once again switched back to beams.

Bug 2: All of their M2-6 designs use PARTICLE BEAM 1, even though all of them has Lasers 2 or 3.

Bug 3: None of the defenders has any weapons at all making them useless. Essentially, they have downgraded their whole defense. I don't even dare to think that they might upgrade their older defenders with weapons into these new worthless defenders.

As for the no-diversity-bug, all of them (except Torians) continue to use the exact same weapons and defense.
The Torians has succesfully broken from the mold and has built a cruiser that is specifically meant to defend against me. And it will probably do a pretty god job at it. So far I have only seen one of these on one of his planets. Could the fact that it's a cruiser and nobody else builds these yet have something to do with him adapting individually?
I have no idea.
Reply #11 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Sadly my guess was correct. The only torian ship that is adapted to my weapons seems to be his medium ships and he is the only AI that currently uses them.
His other M2-6-designs, his defender and Heavy Fighter, were identical to the other races designs. His defender hadn't any weapons and his Heavy Fighter had one Particle Beam.