torfbolt

Join Date 04/2006

Observations about the patch

I just tried out the new patch. In general, I think much has been improved a lot, but a couple of things did nag at me. To see how the AI would play with the changes, I made a game with gigantic galaxy, lots of planets, rather slow research, no tech trade.

I played the Thalans (computer players at intelligent), but I just observed really... uncovered fog of war and then stuck with a single planet so I wouldn't get in the way of the AI's and let them fight it out.

My observations:

- the Terrans and Drath did rather poorly in colonization phase... they didn't build colony ships sometimes for long periods of time when there were still plenty of planets in their vicinity unsettled. Also, I saw both of these races discover a resource and then send 5-6 constructors to it when they should have built colony ships

- Drengin and Yor also seemed a little slow in colonizing, but definitely better than Terrans and Drath

- the Arceans and Torians are really very good at colonizing now, but combined with the other races' problems there, they now seem to dominate most games... I kind of hoped for a level playing field among the AI controlled races

- I once saw the Arceans build huge numbers of Transports... they were in a war alright, but they didn't have space superiority in their enemy's territory, and just parked all of them

- A disproportionate number of the AI players seem to research the beam weapon line... only now and then an AI players goes for missiles or mass drivers

A lot of thing look very good about the patch (like the AI ship designs and research efforts for example), but I think there are still some problems that should be looked into

Thanks @ Stardock for your efforts into improving this great game!

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Well I started a game this evening, 5 races, medium galaxy and every single race has gone for mass drivers, not beam. I think one (Thaleans) has gone for missiles.

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I am about to update my game... we shall see.

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- A disproportionate number of the AI players seem to research the beam weapon line... only now and then an AI players goes for missiles or mass drivers

In my game, with 9 other opponents, they do seem to be using missiles, I haven't met them all as yet but at least 4 of them are. Whilst it means it will be a little easier to build a common defensive system against their weapons it would be more interesting if they had each chosen a different weapons path.

BTW - I do wish Stardock would place a big sticky notice to let people know that bumping their post will not make it appear. There is a delay between positng and then it showing up in the forums, a 'bump' does zippo.

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Franco fx

Join Date 04/2003

+59

Yeah, I think one game does not tell the tale on the AI weapons preferences. I agree on the colonization proclivity of the Arceans and the Torian but thank goodness the rest are different.

In the late versions of GC1 all the AI races colonized so fast at higher difficulty I was constantly overwhelmed (not sure if they were cheating). I am glad this game is different and I can deal with a couple of races being more competitive in the planet grab.

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The weapons thing is Disturbing. I take it tech trading is off?

The weapon thing might be a little off though, since i'm sure the game has not been long enough to Have big wars where the AI will Use its Adaptive Thing to counter other races Ships. Im sure by Midway gamtime they will have all sort of weird Weapons tech going everywhere. LOL.

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Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2410

Beam weapon specialization initially is rand()%3.

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Hehe, in my gigantic (masocistic) game I had 7 races go mass driver, and 2 go missile. I also went missile. No one went beam. I would say it is pretty random. Armor is going to be very helpful to me in my game, I hate when 3 races get each weapon, then I feel bad research defense techs since they are only 1/3 helpful (instread of 3/4 like in my game

)

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What I find more scary than the fact that the AI all choose the same weapon is that, more often that not, its also the one I have also chosen

(tech trading always off...)

We must all have a common random number generator or something

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Beam weapon specialization initially is rand()%3.

Two things.

1: I hope you're using a real rand() implementation and not the standard library one. It has crappy random properties, particularly in the low bits that you are using.

2: As has been pointed out to me, weapons research is strategic. Beam weapons are the weapon for the early game. They have low tech costs, so you get more bang for your tech buck. But they're get really big when they go into large ships. So, in the early game that is dominated by small and mid-sized ships, lasers are a good idea. In the long game, missiles dominate. If you're relying on huge hulled ships, missiles are your weapon of choice, since they don't get as big. But they take forever to research. That's easier in the late game (where RP are plentiful) and less so in the early game.

Guns are more expensive than beams, but they have the Nano Ripper halfway up, which makes them worthwhile as a good mid-game weapon.

As such, the AI should not just pick one out of a hat. Instead, it should think about whether it's going to get into an early war or a later one. If it's going to rely on keeping everyone busy until they become a juggernaut, missiles are the way to go. It it wants to blitzkrieg early when nobody's expecting it, spend 12 turns to get Laser 5 and go kill stuff.

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- the Terrans and Drath did rather poorly in colonization phase... they didn't build colony ships sometimes for long periods of time when there were still plenty of planets in their vicinity unsettled. Also, I saw both of these races discover a resource and then send 5-6 constructors to it when they should have built colony ships

In 1.1 the speed of pop growth has been lowered quite a bit. I guess the AI is supposed to colonize a bit slower now, since it slows your eco if you send out too many colony ships in the first phase of a game.
The Torians got their pop growth rate increased, so it would only be logical that they settle faster than the others - don't know about the Arceans though.

About the constructors part:
Actually I try to make use of the resources as fast as possible, too. Especially if there's an eco resource or even better morale. These will boost your early game stronger than having lots of planets with low pop. At least that's my observation / or maybe the strategy I found to work best for me.
But you are right, 5-6 constructors is a bit much after all and if the planets near them are HQ planets, then they should get them first.

Oh well, I think one game played is still too little to begin reporting.
I'm back to observation...

edit: 5 hour game and no crash at all... - actually the game crashed after 10 turns, but it was my fault. I forgot to turn off the OC of my vid card. After that everything went smoothly.

To the Stardock Team:
Thanks heaps for putting that much effort in improving an already amazing game. It's worth every € I paid for it.

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If you only played one game, why would you say that a disproportionate amount of Comps use beams?

Fisrt game I played, I thought that maybe it was missles, next game is was drivers. I also thought that the Torians were mege strong now due to thier colonizing, because one game it got out of control. My last game I wanted to complain about how disproportionately strong the Dregnin were, but it was only disproportionate for that one game.

I have seen the AI make lots of useless transports before, but more often than that they dont. Ive done this before, and I opted to park them as opposed to use them. Its rather impressive to me that the AI does make similar mistakes to my own.

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Ive been playing a medium galaxy 5 AI on crippling/genius? i think or gifted Torians and Iconians colonized rapidly, espesially the Iconians, they had like 9 planets during the opening turns. Yor and Dregnin colonised slower, but made up for it by pwning the Terrans and Torians later on, accually had to intervine to keep the torians from being compleatly conquered, and my buffer zone dissapearing. What Im saying is they may not colonize as fast, but they make up for it. All comps in this game researched beams.... tech trading was on though

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Two things.

1: I hope you're using a real rand() implementation and not the standard library one. It has crappy random properties, particularly in the low bits that you are using.

Yep, it doesn't seem to work correctly. Dunno if this is the reason or something elsewhere in the code.
I have reported before that not once in all of my beta games, have all three different weapons been chosen by nine computer players. The probability for that must be miniscule. I have always seen the majority using the same weapon and the minority using a second one.

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Well, before updating to beta4b everyone seemed to go for beams and low beam defence.
In my current game most civs go for mass drivers while the terrrans go for missiles.
Rarely in earlier games did I see medium ships with lasers AND mass drivers.
But almost NO ships the AI built so far in ANY game had much defe (more than one point) implemented.

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But almost NO ships the AI built so far in ANY game had much defe (more than one point) implemented.

The Terrans had massive defense in my previous game, was beta4. They had researched every armor technology except the last since I was using massdrivers and on a quest to unite the galaxy under my rule.
I was kinda glad that they were on the opposite side of the galaxy.
The other AI-races seemed to research defences quite well too.

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I noticed alittle annoying feature, now that unused social gets put into military which is great by the way. If I go to build anything on a planet it says under time Never, until I try to build it when it comes up with the actual time needed, it's just annoying imo.

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i started a new game, and after I hit the turn button for the first round, came a GNN breaking news, that the Drengin has built a Manufacturing Capital, w00t!

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i started a new game, and after I hit the turn button for the first round, came a GNN breaking news, that the Drengin has built a Manufacturing Capital, w00t!

Do Drengin start with the tech to build these (am away from my home PC, so can't check right now)? If so, they just purchased it on their first turn...

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2: As has been pointed out to me, weapons research is strategic. Beam weapons are the weapon for the early game. They have low tech costs, so you get more bang for your tech buck. But they're get really big when they go into large ships. So, in the early game that is dominated by small and mid-sized ships, lasers are a good idea. In the long game, missiles dominate. If you're relying on huge hulled ships, missiles are your weapon of choice, since they don't get as big. But they take forever to research. That's easier in the late game (where RP are plentiful) and less so in the early game.

Well, he did say "initially".

My belief is that each race determines its intial weapons randomly, as Frogboy says. However, as different races develop at different rates (and research different techs), I suspect that if a race encounters another with more advanced weapons of a different type, they'll happily trade for them then switch to that line.

Later in the game, I've certainly seen races switch their defenses to better counter my weapons, and I've also seen them switch weapons to counter my defenses.

Also, while I agree with your analysis of the different weapons timing, I always think it's much more important to be using a weapon and defence that matches your opponent. I don't really care if Beams are cheaper at the start, if all the races I'm close to are using shields - I'll be better off using guns or missiles. And so on.

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i started a new game, and after I hit the turn button for the first round, came a GNN breaking news, that the Drengin has built a Manufacturing Capital, w00t!

Yeah, had that happening too once.

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mmhhh.. I think we all have an idea what we think the AI should do, but reading all the posts here, it seems the AI is doing fine with certain weakness/strengths at different times of the game (except maybe for all races choosing the same weapon thing).

The real question is how do they play throughout the entire game, that picking up little things. Maybe their strategies do work during that period.

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I did some more testing, and I'll concede that the weapon type specialization seems to work better than I thought at first... in two games most AI's went for beam, but in the third it was pretty well distributed. I guess the first two were just chance after all.

But another thing I just noticed: In one of these games where I had the AI's battle it out, in the end first the Iconians and then the Torians successfully researched Technology victory, however there was no defeat triggered for me. To make sure I hadn't accidentally deactivated Tech victory, I researched it myself at that point, and Tech victory was triggered for me.

Did anyone EVER suffer a tech defeat of the people here? Because it seemed at least a bit to me like there was a bug with Tech victory triggering for the computer

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in the end first the Iconians and then the Torians successfully researched Technology victory, however there was no defeat triggered for me

Sounds like a bug! Maybe because in 1.0X AI won by influence and military victory most of the time. Alliance victory is a joint winner option.

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