Skelton42

Join Date 03/2006

1.1 Beta 4b AI's & Influence Starbases

While I posted an observation about the Thalan's here, Link , I wanted to make a broader comment, including all the races.

Game settings: Metaverse, Challenging, everything common except abundant anomalies, tight clusters, very slow researching, gigantic galaxy, 5 random AI's (Korx, Arcean, Terran, Thalan, Altarian), blind exploration with tech victory disabled.

In the above link I noticed the Thalans were using economic SB's to extend range, but would then establish an influence SB right next to it ...and never upgrade the ISB.

Now that the game is nearing its end (I spammed the galaxy with dozens of constructors to make several maxed out ISB's of my own, I've noticed the following:

1) not a single AI EVER added anything to an ISB after the initial build.
2) There is still an Arcean world with 3 ISB's. They were built to counter a couple of ISB's from the Jessuins (SP? minor race). Neither the minor race, or the Arceans ever upgraded the ISBs. I mention this because through time, a world I took from the Thalans grew in influence until it overtook the same Arcean world. They could easily have added a few constructors to their existing ISBs, but never did.
3) After setting up my own ISB's in the Terran and Altarian systems (simultaneously), there was no effort made in thwarting the loss of their worlds. Neither AI attempted to build competing ISB's and neither tried to protect their worlds by destroying my ISB's (they were only maxed out on influence mods, no weapons at all).
4) The Jessuins started spamming most of the main races with un-upgraded ISB's. They would populate a sector with 3, or 4 ISB's and never upgrade them.

After the Altarians lost 4 worlds to my ISB's they send a message about one I had just build by their homeworld...something similar to, "It appears you have an influence starbase in sector 5-14. We are starting to feel its effects. Are you starting a culture war?" They still did nothing.

The Terrans have one stubborn colony left (Earth fell within 20 turns) as do the Altarians, though I have only flipped 1 of the 4 Korx worlds and am going to overlap multiple ISB's to convert the others.

The Arceans will soon be the only AI left.

MISC NOTES:
The Altarians conquered the Snathi, but despite several attacks by other AI's, the Jessuins and Adarians (SP?) were never conquered by an AI player.

"Challenging" is now easier than the old "Normal."

Kudos to the Altarians for early game sprawl. They had a good starting setup and had the largest empire, by far, until I started spamming ISB's. Unfortunately, once their borders reached other AI's, they stopped.

The Terrans started near the Altarians and barely grew beyond their initial system. They had the same opportunities as the Altarians and squandered them.

At one point I gave 60 medium fighters to the Terrans (they asked for help against the Altarians). While the Terrans simply put the gift ships into orbit around their worlds (and continued to build substandard defenders....the Terrans never asked for any military technology), the Altarians did take notice of the design of those ships and started building ships with the appropriate defenses.

I'll get around to finishing the game later today and will post some of the end game summaries.

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whismerhill

Join Date 03/2006

+19

hum I don't understand :
what is the point you are trying to show exactly ?
(unless it's not intentional this appears in bug reports ?)

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Franco fx

Join Date 04/2003

+59

I think what he is saying is....

"Challenging" is now easier than the old "Normal."

I think he may be right and based on some dev comments, that may be at least partly intentional

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They said they were going to make the harder levels harder, and the easier levels easier.

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what is the point you are trying to show exactly ?

I'm going to show the Ai's don't know how to use, or respond to, Influence Star Bases. The current Beta (4b) is supposed to be able to identify and respond to an agressor trying to take out the other civs 1 at a time and respond against him. They don't recognize ISB's as a threat, which would have something to do with why a couple of the AI's like to "spam" them across the map... ie: they don't realize others might take it as a threat because they don't recognize it themselves. The problem is enhanced by the fact that (game calendar 2236) not one single AI ever upgraded an ISB.

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But to be sure, don't you think you should try it on tough level or higher. The AI isn't playing it's best on challenging.

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But to be sure, don't you think you should try it on tough level or higher. The AI isn't playing it's best on challenging.

You have a point, but the AI should at least attempt to protect itself from an influence attack. I wouldn't be posting if the AI made a somewhat clumsy attempt at saving itself. Even on Challenging, AI's will protect themselves if you send a fighter and attack them. An ISB is no less a threat to their survival....it's just a slow death.

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I have noticed that the AI's don't know how to use a ship gifted to them either. I have done it several times, and very few actually use them. Maybe they are trying to reverse engineer them first or something.

The Terrans are always very slow to colonize for some reason. They have to be way out in the open and have a lot of time before they make a real push outward. But I have seen them take a quarter of a huge galaxy if given time and not too much competition.

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While I haven't had a chance to actually finish the game I do have a few screen shots that will illustrate a few things:

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This is the area where my 3 former Thalan worlds influence have grown to overlap the Arcean worlds.

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Florin IV is a perfect example to show the general response I've seen from all of the AI's to combatting influence. Notice no farms at all; they have gone to strictly influence bases and factories.

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This is an example of an Arcean world, not involved in an influence takeover. Note the extra green tiles. At this stage of the game I can't understand why virtually every AI world has undeveloped improvment tiles.

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http://img220.imageshack.us/img220/8126/darkyoriii4ss.jpg

I forgot about the Dark Yor. This is a Korx world I conquered a couple turns previously that they had taken from the Dark Yor. Again, it's a perfect example of the AI's response to influence. Instead of population and influence buildings, they committed suicide by destroying their population in lieu of more influence buildings and never used the soil enhancement/terraform tiles.

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This is an Altarian world that is resisting multiple maxed out ISB's. Notice they have 100% approval rating, yet are in revolt. The citizen response on another of the Altarian resistance worlds mentions how low the taxes are. This tells me the Altarians dropped their tax rate to nil to keep people happy while at the same time they replaced farms with influence buildings. Suicide.

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This image is from my Civ Management screen. Notice the 75% towards culture victory? Just a few turns earlier the quarterly report said I had 85% of the galaxy. Not sure why the report gives a different number than the "victory" screen.

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The Arcean homeworld; located a couple sectors NE of the other Arcean planets I've shown. They have good defenses. My point is I had already started my influence conquest of them before I built an ISB here. They knew I was "attacking" them yet did nothing to prevent losing their world....let alone any of their worlds.

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I'm showing this one because I find it amusing the Altarians had a "cool" disposition before I started my ISB conquest. I would think their couple remaining resistance worlds would be "up in arms" about their conquest. Instead, they like me now. An influence attack is no different than a troop transport attack, just slower.

That's all I have at the moment. If there's anything else anyone would like to see, let me know and I'll get it posted here

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Post notes:

Finished the game this morning. The message popped up that I reached the culture conquest threshold and needed to keep it for 10 turns. I had to laugh when 2 minor races showed up out of nowhere to extend the game. The last ditch effort of the AI races to resist cultural domination (news flash item) was a nice touch.

I did notice the Vegans (one of the two races showing up late game) was trying to build a manufacturing center as their first tile improvement without any infrastructure. I don't remember how long it was going to take them, but it was a looooong time. If a minor race is going to show up 17 years into the game, it's nice they have comparable technology but there's no point to it if they can't use the technology due to inability to build anything.

While the Altarians finally succumbed to my culture, the Terrans and Korx each had a dinky 5pq planet that refused to flip. Not a complaint...I mention it because it's kind of nice that some planets just refuse to give up. The Arceans also had a 13pq planet that resisted 3 maxed out ISB's.

Looking at the end game stats, 3 of the AI civ's operated under a negative average economy. That would be because they destroyed their tax base for culture centers in an attempt to combat maxed ISBs. Also because those three races kept every single ship in operation. They were actually deactivating resource SB's instead of their "ships of the line" to save money.

It'll be a few days, but next will have to up the difficulty level and redo. Still an enjoyable game.

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Forum won't let me edit the longer post, so appologies for additional entry.

Notice the 75% towards culture victory? Just a few turns earlier the quarterly report said I had 85% of the galaxy. Not sure why the report gives a different number than the "victory" screen.

Just wanted to add that taking into account the territory I still had to conquer by game's end, the Civ Manager "victory status" screen gave a more accurate number than the quarterly report. If the quarterly report had been accurate, the game would have been over before I took some of the screen shots in that post.

Edit: "I'm showing this one because I find it amusing the Altarians had a "cool" disposition before I started my ISB conquest. I would think their couple remaining resistance worlds would be "up in arms" about their conquest. Instead, they like me now."

Forgot to mention that the turn before the Altarian's last world fell to my ISB's, they had a "close" diplomatic alignment with my civ.

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This may be wrong but I swear I remember reading something earlier that races with similiar ethical alignment don't "mind" being taken over culturally, or at least don't react to it as a threat. Not sure if that was true, but it was mentioned.

Also, the two screens show two different things (I can't see your screen shots so this might not be what you're talking about). One shows your relative value and the other your absolute value. So if you need 75% to win an influence victory, one screen will show your % influence in the galaxy --- say 50%. The victory conditions screen will show your progress towards your 75% goal, so would say 67%, as you're 2/3 of the way to getting 75% of the galaxy under your control. This is to keep it in line with the other victory conditions --- e.g. 50% towards a research victory.

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Interesting post Skelton42 which was clearly argued and demonstrated effectively!

I am at a loss as to what you are seeing, as in my last game the Torians were:

1) Clearly going down the Cultural Conquest Tech Tree.
2) They were upgrading the ISB's, just not to the max that could have, but that might have been down to cost issues as they were waging several wars as the galactic superpower.
3) They were doing the cultural war (Mid game) to me because I beleive, I was the last significant race left preventing a cultural victory and I had nearly maxxed out MSB's defending my homeworlds.
4) They nearly pulled it off when I went from within 15 turns from me preventing their cultural victory to my 'Cultural Bureau advising me that our culture was slipping away...' and it took a guerilla war of 3 years to turn my vastly inferior postion; worse economics, military and influence to win the game outright (It all hinged on the fact that I had sacrificed those key points to research the exact counter to their ships attack and defences, a gamble that paid of magnificently; I had 2 sets of Zero Point Armor and 3 Photon Torpedos on each of my ships).
5) This was on Normal on Beta 4B.

This is just my experience from my last game. Maybe the Torians are more tweaked for it I don't know. But it was a pleasant surprise to see me my miltarily strong defensive postion make the Torians deploy ISB's against me instead and almost wipe me culturally from 'the face of space!'

I will be interested in anymore observations you have.

Have a good day.

AR

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Yes, but what difficulty level did you play on? It strikes me from this example that the Bright AI is obviously limited in how it's allowed to respond to a cultural threat. Bright was also made easier in 1.1.

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Here's the rub:
Alienrider

5) This was on Normal on Beta 4B.

Skelton42

Game settings: Metaverse, Challenging

This post was played on Challenging, also beta 4b. Yes, reading the change logs, both were made a little easier, but I still can't fathom how his "normal" game played better than my "challenging" game.

Maybe the Torians are more tweaked for it I don't know.

I'd bet that's the case, but it still bugs me that 5 races did nothing to protect themselves on a higher setting than your game.

SO. I've started a new 1.1 final metaverse game using the same settings and same races. ON TOUGH. Since I only get to play a couple hours a night, it's going to be a week before I have a more definitive answer. I'll probably post my findings in a new thread since it is no longer a beta test.

Unless, of course, a game developer happens to read this thread and is willing to inform us if anything has been done between 1.1 4b and final that might have made a difference?

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In my beta 4B "tough" difficulty game, I'm playing neutral Terrans, 2nd largest map size (huge?). My main borders are with the Arceans and Altarians.

On the Arcean border, I started building embassies on my planets when he started colonizing worlds inside my borders and have flipped 5-6 so far and 4-5 more on the edge. On the Altarian border, I've done the same and have flipped 2-3 so far with 2-3 more on the edge.

Altarian relations have gone from warm to neutral (despite some gifting on my part to get it back up to warm) and shows a - for "our alarming influence". My espionage is maxed out, so I can see their worlds and have noted they have built some embassies to combat my influence (I haven't looked to closely to see how many they are building, though)

Arcean relations have gone from warm to friendly and don't show any concerns about alarming influence. The few times I checked their worlds, I saw that they aren't building any embassies to combat the influence.

I'm thinking that if I played a good race, possibly both the arceans and the altarians wouldn't mind, since supposedly now the game was changed to make neutrals like the good races. So playing good might be the way to go for a culture win.

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