The AI is hopeless

Yeah, there are some serious problems with the AI.

Most of the time, it starts sending troop transports if and only if it sees a planet undefended (sometimes there seem to be exceptions to this, but its a solid general trend). This is rather ineffective as it takes the transports so long to get there that htey usually get destroyed easily when they actually show.

The deal where they declare war and then do nothing for a couple of months is pretty bad.

I dont see them attacking fleets with fighters much at all. Also, if they only have 1 weapons tree going, it does make more sense to keep going up that one instead of starting over in another towards the end of the game.

That said, the civ4 AI can hardly be considered much better. Although it is better about attacking right away, it gets into a lot of absolutely horrible fights (attacking fortified units in cities that are much much better happens all the time). Those bad fights make a lot of games winnable that really shouldnt have been close if the AI wasnt horrible.

OK, have fun fortifying your axemen in a forest outside an enemy city and watching them send an endless stream of single "city defense" archers out to graciously increase your xp.

Oh, yeah, it doesn't matter what diff level you do that on, because the AI is the same at any level - you just get xp faster at higher levels due to the obscene AI cheating.

Unfortunately, and for the forseable future, any AI won't be able to cope with a savvy player (chess excepted), as there are way too many variables and humans can be quite devious

That said, the AI in this game is actually quite good compared to other games that have preceeded it: Ascendancy (worst AI in history), Space Empires IV, all of the MOOs, and BotF.

While I don't think future patches will make it brilliant, I do think it will get slightly more refined and avoid things like the lonely transports or lack of sneak attacks.

Hmmm, I've been seeing many more escorted transports in Beta 4a then I did in Beta3. Since going to Beta4, the Drengin have been sending in waves of fleets consisting of 3 small hulled ships and 1 transport. I've been playing on Challenging since Beta 3, so not sure what it's like on Tough.

In Beta 3, I was getting swarmed with piles of unescorted transports. The Torians were sending 6+ transports a turn into my territory trying to get to an undefended PQ26 that I had deep inside my zone of control. I was able to just sit there and pick them off with my "sensor bots" (1 weapon, 1 engine, tons of sensors) that were scattered all over the place.

But as I said, this behavior seems to have stopped with Beta 4. If it's still continuing in Beta 4 on Tough, than I really hope it gets fixed. It was silly-easy to take out the Torians because they were losing 6 billion+ population a turn and their planets were stripped bare of defenders by the time I started invading.

While I don't think future patches will make it brilliant, I do think it will get slightly more refined and avoid things like the lonely transports or lack of sneak attacks.

At least we know there will be future patches that refine the AI and improve gameplay - unlike certain other high profile TBS games.

The AI in complex games like this suck, and I guess it will remain so for many years to come. I bought this game due to the reviews it got about the AI, but was disapointed. I am not saying there are any games that have better AI, but the games reviews highlighted it. Anyway it is still a good game.

Well, I have to say that I don't think the AI is too bad. As an example, take the graphics in Age of Empire 2. Anyone at the time could clearly see how fake the graphics looked - they were all sprites, identical animation for moving, attacking, and dying no matter what, and not even 3d! And yet it was acclaimed for having good graphics! My God, what fools those reviewers were!

When a game has "good AI" or "good graphics" you have to realize that it is in comparison to other games. Compared to other strategy games of equal breadth, this game is a God, so indeed it does have quite good AI, as many people maintain. The developers, I believe, should not be held accountable for your unrealistic expectations.

I need a copy of CitizenStrategist's version. I'm in a game now where the Drengin have declared war on me 3 times. The first time I stomped their fleets and took a planet or two, and about half the transports I encountered were unescorted. The second time I was superior but not overwhelming (we were both upgrading stuff) most of his transports were escorted. The only time I see unescorted transports or single fighters is when it's pretty clear the AI is trying to be sneaky... And they are. On more than one occasion I've had my land combat screen pop up out of nowhere because he's managed to worm a transport in somewhere I didn't think he could. This third fight? He's kicking my ass, because he adjusted to my weapons better than I adjusted to his. I'm playing challenging level (bright drengin, among other things)

What it's taught me is that even if I'm smaller, don't go for peace or accept a treaty from the bastard. Keep going until he's toast or I'm exhausted, even though the war is wiping out my trade (because the Drengin is stompping my freighters outside my sphere of influence) and running up my debt. Enjoy Civ 4! You've spent enough time on the forums talking it up and GalCiv 2 down... Based on the volume of complaints you've made I don't know why you've stuck around this long.

I am so for disappointed in the AI, i have just played through the campaign on 1.02.x. On the 9th scenario, starting on normal level and raising the levels to currently Masochistic level. I have noticed little to no improvement in AI when it comes to combat. I have won all scenario's 1st attempt, the drengin and Yor are very disappointing, never really attacking me, just defending there own planets with very slow speed 2 fleets which i can destroy with ease. The only real challenge was the dreadlords on apocalpse on painful level, that was really only cause of the huge numbers and power of there ships. It became a real slugging match but they still made alot of silly moves like not attacking me when they should, just sitting around most of the time in huge stacks of 30 single frigates etc....

I hope the 1.1 finished version is more testing, i want the AI to kick my butt, or at least hurt me some

GC 2 is still a great game, been playing non-stop for 3 weeks now!

Civ and civ 2 are 2 of my all time favourite games but give up on them with all the clones, remakes and rehashing of old ideas. Got sick of paying for the same old thing over and over again....... civ test of time, call to power etc.....

Here's to hoping the AI gets improved in beta 5.

Strategist, it's improved in 4a. Which is currently out.

See ya... don't let the door smack ya on the way out.

Seriously these AI posts crack me up. Frogboy even admits that the AI still has a long way to go in terms of it's military strategies. But it has certainly improved from what I've seen over the last few beta versions of 1.1.

We are not talking HAL9000 here people which it sounds like a lot of folks went into this thinking they were getting. I guess we need to stop saying the AI is good and be much more specific.

This AI is good because (a few of these are based on the latest beta):
a) it plays the same game as I do i.e. no cheating.
it counters the weapons on your ships and builds ships to attempt to subvert your defenses.
c) it treats the human no different from the other AIs.
d) it seems to grasp when something is a threat and attempts to compensate.
e) there are NINE versions of the AI.
f) it is continuing to be worked on.

Now if you can look us in the proverbial eye and with a straight face say all 6 of those things are true about the AI in Civ4 then I will go out and buy the game right now. If not... well then you know what to do with yourself .

Turn up the difficulty then. 

While the AI can be further improved, the amount it can be improved without it taking a LOT of time between turns is at this point well into diminishing returns.

Even as-is, some people are saying on huge galaxies that there are half minute waits if things get really harry.  That's the cost of more AI analysis.

The best solution is to simply turn up the difficulty level until it's challenging.

I really want to like this game, but I give up on it until they do something about the AI. Back to civ 4 for me.

I'm curious about this statement. What AI level you playing Civ 4 in? You do know that any level above Noble the AI is getting significant bonuses right?

 

Turn up your difficulty. An intelligent AI won't do that. An easy one would.

@Frogboy, I'm guessing we're talking to a "Chieftan" here.

Frogboy,

First off I love this game, great work.

When you say the AI improvement is going to hit diminishing returns does that mean that there will be few/minimal AI improvements after 1.1? Could these improvements be linked to an option for those with high end PCs? Would there be benefits (or lessons learned) for a sequel/expansion by making these improvements anyway?
(Note- I haven't ramped up to intelligent yet, but I was just curious).

Are you and Draginol (from the AI improvement journal) the same person?

Finally, I don't think Strategist is very rational; he's been whining a lot. "Why not discuss it with the madmen? Because they're bloody madmen! If you'll not use the sense you were born with then there's not much hope fer ye." (I probably butchered this quote.)

Cheers.

Finally, I don't think Strategist is very rational; he's been whining a lot. "Why not discuss it with the madmen? Because they're bloody madmen! If you'll not use the sense you were born with then there's not much hope fer ye." (I probably butchered this quote.)

Yes, he's been busy promoting civ4s AI (A total of 16 posts in 13 days). Which leads me to think he's either a) paid to do so or an idiot. Civ4 just doesn't compare.

Oh, and Frogboy is the company name and Draginol is the gaming name (so he says on poweruser, but the amount of free updates stardock does makes me wonder if he has clones...)

Draginol is my JoeUser handle.

Regarding the AI -- I plan to keep updating the AI over time. The issue is that in terms of the challenge level of the AI just can't increase very much without it taking orders of magnitude more CPU time.  And even then, it still wouldn't like be THAT much better than what we have in 1.1

Players who have gotten to the level where "tough" isn't tough need to graduate to higher difficulty levels.

I have seen Strategist say (repeatedly) how great the Civ IV AI is.  I think the Civ IV AI is quite good.  But I would also argue that the percentage of players who can beat "Noble" (its equivalenet to "Tough") is a lot higher than the % of players who can beat Tough in GalCiv II.

I'm curious about this statement. What AI level you playing Civ 4 in? You do know that any level above Noble the AI is getting significant bonuses right?

I wouldn't talk about the cheating AI in other games anymore, Frogboy, you are adding in MORE CHEATS to the AI at higher levels. Not less cheats, MORE CHEATS. And don't give me this, it's a bonus not a cheat junk: if I got a big econ boost in addition to my normal stats, you'd flag my metaverse game for cheating.

Oh yeah and all your Civ4 bashers, Strategist never said the AI in Civ4 was better, he just he's going back to Civ4. I don't know which AI is actually better, but you can easily say that Civ4 is the more balanced game and since it is so balanced, it is extremely hard to overcome AI bonuses. GC2 on the hand hand has massive exploits (like evil weapons and good armor, I mean they are working as intended, but I am just godly when I use them properly)

Btw, I just got an Influence victory yesterday on Crippling beta4 on a medium sized galaxy in just 2 years and a few months. I culturally overtook the freaking Yor, I lost 0 ships and fought 0 wars and traded 0 techs and built 0 influence starbases had a lousy starting position. So yeah, I am still not impressed with the AI.

Nice touch, Frogboy, just making up a statistic out of thin air. Hey I can do it too: More people like apples than they do strawberries. Fun, huh!

P.S. Yeah I do try to piss people off so they will get so mad at me that they'll say "F this guy, I'm gonna make an AI that'll crush him!"

GC2 on the hand hand has massive exploits (like evil weapons and good armor, I mean they are working as intended, but I am just godly when I use them properly)

The AI uses them too. What's your problem with them? and as for what strategist said, he was moaning about the AI, then said he would go back to civ4, which is worse. And as I said, 16 posts very similar to trolling in 13 days, I wish he would just bloody hurry up and leave already.

And as for cheats, nothing like civ4. They get an econ bonus, nothing else.

And finally, inluence victories are a soft option really. The top players all say they turn it off so the game isn't rapidly ended. Beat military in 2 years, then feel free to come back and say you aren't impressed.

P.S. Yeah I do try to piss people off so they will get so mad at me that they'll say "F this guy, I'm gonna make an AI that'll crush him!"

Fuck this guy, I'll add him to my killfile....

What? No killfile on this forum? No ignore list? Well, that sucks.

You know what? Being a unfriendly flaming person on this forum won't get you anything, so please, don't try it. The only thing it does is to annoy people. (Especially to annoy fanboys like me )

As for strategist, the only thing he has done since he joined here was whining about how much GalCiv2 sucks and how godly Civ IV is. Well, I also like Civ IV, but there's no need to being trollish. Civ IV got it's strengths (the AI not being one of it, but being well polished for example) and GalCiv2 got it's strengths (and it has the best AI of all turn strategy games ever created, it's not perfect, but compared to other AIs in other games it just rocks the galaxie ).

I read where people are complaining about Civ4 AI at CFC forums. some people you will never make happy not matter what you do. I wouldn't mind if there was a tougher AI option that does use more CPU who has faster CPU (dual-core) and don't mind waiting a minute or two between turns.

I can't believe you actually took the time to make a post like that xFlukex. Why bother if that's all you have to say?

Fluke, if you'll actually read, you'll see that Frogboy is essentially saying that he believes "tough" in GalCiv2 is harder than the Civ4 equivelant. Because both of those are measurable, or at least comparable values, it is indeed a perfectly valid statement. Hiding your insults behind "don't worry, its for a good cause!" endears you to no one.

And I must say, I wrote down Strategists complaints and played a bit of a game, and took note about the AI (I play a notch below Intelligent, so pay attention):

When I started rampaging and attacking races in succession, others banded against me. When I declared war, non-combatant ships moved out of the line of fire, including transports. The AI used fleets (to my great dismay, I lost a good many ships before I could turn the tide), and even used transports in fleets. They sent in battlefleets to clear my defenders before they brought transports to bear (my Tir-Quan saved the day, I believe).

The Terrans in particular scouted my territory, and then declared war, something most admirable. Just as I concluded to myself that a current war was at a stalemate, lo and behold the AI offers a peace, saying much the same.

I'm not strategic genius (my opening game in particular has lackings), but I know how to play the game, and I know when the AI is making good decisions. Perhaps you should try the latest beta before casting judgement, I say to all who are quick to cast judgement.

Edit: I don't type well, fixed some mispellings.

I just want to point out that constructive criticism ultimately benefits us all as TBS gamers: we will get better AI in future releases, and thus will have more fun. I view computer game AI as a work in progress.

In my opinion, the GalCiv2 devs are not being braggarts about their AI, they are just proud of what it can accomplish on the middling difficulties, without bonuses. Compared other similar titles and with respect to the "average" gamer, I think they have definitely made a step forward. But there's still a lot to improve upon, of course.

Regarding AI bonuses on the higher difficulties, which would you rather have: a game that's too easy on the hardest difficulty level, or a game that offers a challenge but compensates for the AI's shortcomings? I'll pick the latter in a heartbeat. AI bonuses are a very cost-effective way of giving the more hardcore gamers a reason to play the game. Meanwhile the AI gets better.

GalCiv2 and Civ4 each have major flaws with respect to tactical combat and strategic warfare. Take the "undefended asset" problem: should that AI always beeling for defenseless planets or poorly-upgraded starbases? On the one hand, not doing so seems stupid - it's there for the taking! On the other hand, the human player could be setting a trap, or have hidden strength - how to detect this?

Two possible solutions are: bring backup, or be very sneaky (or both!). Sadly, when the GalCiv2 AI escorts it's Transports, it only brings enough support for defense, not offense as well. If you look at human players (in PBEM games against other players) their "escorts" are often a sizeable portion of their standing army. As for being sneaky, the GalCiv2 AI could improve here as well (question: does it really take my sensor range into account?). But then again I have seen human players trying (badly) to be sneaky, yet I never faulted their intelligence for failing in the attempt. Until the AI gets much better at this, I would recommend that Eyes of the Universe and other such abilities be toned down or removed: the AI is so much worse without the fog of war to protect it.

Looking at the same problem from another perspective, how well should the AI defend its own assets? If it adopts a "better safe than sorry" attitude, it needs to put a fleet or two on each planet, which as a player I would never do, even against human opponents - it's wasteful. Then again, if it's defenses are thin, players will complain that it's too easy to sneak attack the AI (players like me).

I'm not offering any solutions, just pointing out that same of the criticisms we level at the AI are in fact not easily solvable problems; when playing against humans, we wrestle with these problems ourselves.

Ok, long post. In short: be constructive!