talkingrain

Join Date 03/2006

v1.1 Difficulty/Computer Intellegence Level Bug?

Anyone else had this problem on Campaign missions?

I had just finshed the first Campaign mission on version 1.1Beta4 when the 1.1 upgrade came out. I upgraded, then started the 2nd Campaign mission where you're at war with the Drengin in a one-in-one small map. I chose a difficulty of Painful. Now after many turns, it seems as if the Drengin intelligence level is at "Fool" level or slightly better. He's researched all the way up to Phasers, for example, but has not built any ships that even have weapons! He only builds the small Defenders with no weapons/defenses. And what's worse, he scraps them from time to time for no apparent reason. He's also done things like build an econ starbase off in the corner of the map where there's no planets (and obviously no trade routes in this campaign mission).

Anyone know what could be up with this? Anyone else had this happen with a Campaign game?

In a possibly related note, the following happens when I go to start a sandbox game. When I first get to the "Select Opponents" screen, there are I think 2 opponents by default. Then if select a difficulty level of Painful before increasing the # of opponents up from 2, there is a problem: the opponents are added at the Fool level of intelligence. I can obviously go and fix this by changing the intelligence of each race individually, or I can change the difficulty level up then back down and it will reset all the races to the proper intel level (Gifted, I think, for the Painful level)

Thanks...

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No idea but I'm having a similar problem with the AI in a custom game I'm playing. I selected random number of opponents, with all AIs set to intelligent and drew the Arcaens and Dominion of Korx. Neither of these races have built anything other than colony ships so far, despite having researched quite high up the space warfare tree.

When I invaded the Dominion's homeworld I found only a few of the tiles had been built on and they were building a technology capital despite not having any research buildings on it at all. Invading another of their 'core' worlds revealed a similar travesty with almost nothing being built on the planet at all.

While I haven't invaded the Arcaeans yet, it looks like they've done something similar, pumping out an endless supply of colony ships and colonising like mad but leaving themselves bankrupt and completely defenseless in the process.

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i read a post about this in the campaign this morning. since it seemed isolated, it seemed more related to this person's choice of normal difficulty. but if this happens on painful... well, it's not happening on regular games to me, at least

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When playing a random game on challenging difficulty i found that the drath legions had a ship on every one of their planets... that ship? A defender without weapons or armor. Naturally i found it frustrating that i built a few fleets to combat this "menacing" threat. any way to get this fixed pronto?

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The anarmed ship tactic is intentional, it's the best way to counter the unescorted transport tactic.

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Actually I always place an Tiny un-armed ship on my planets to just block transport raids. Since opeing a planet up triggers the AI into sending a crap load of them.

And since 1.1 (Betas too) The AI seems to ignore any kind of military production until around 75% or so of the galaxy has been colonized. They also don't seem to build up planets until the colo phase is nearly over. Which as you know on a Huge or Gig map, that can be a while.

If you go heavy research and are nearby you can have a decent army and troop trans and wipe out races BEFORE they even *Attempt* to go military. That is if you can do well with only like 10 tech/econ heavy planets and just mainly buy your army for a bit. *Shrug*

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To those of you who say, "Unarmed ships in orbit is a tactic!"

Yes, Yes, YES, we KNOW that.

We have no problem with that. Our problem is with the AI in the campaign scenarios NEVER building ANY armed ships:
Even when all their worlds are already covered with unarmed ships
Even when they've researched past laser 2
Even on "challenging" difficulty and above

We also understand that everyone says, "Doesn't happen to me on normal games." That's not what we're complaining about.

I apologize if I sound a bit bitter – I’m really not, though I am a bit frustrated. I appreciate people’s replies. It’s just that most of them aren’t really addressing the fairly specific bug we’ve been complaining about.

I wish a few people who have a few minutes on their hands would go start a campaign, play the first mission on any difficulty they desire, get things to the point where the game is in hand and then just monitor enemy planets and hit “next turn” until 2227 or so – plenty of time for the enemy AI to develop weapon techs, even on “normal” difficulty – then destroy the unarmed ships and see what they build. If we could get half a dozen, “I tried it and me too!” replies, then this would get attention sooner rather than later. And if people can’t repro it, maybe there’s some other cause – For example, before I updated to 1.1, I ran the downloads from the galciv site to install and then unlock the collectors edition content, and maybe this problem is only happening to people who did that. (I admit I doubt this – just grasping at straws.)

Thanks,

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Franco fx

Join Date 04/2003

+59

There has never been a thread so FOS

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I tried it and me too! I posted earlier on having this issue as well.

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I posted this several days ago as part of a thread on issues with 1.1 beta 4 and the campaign but in the general game talk category.

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I think the problem is that the AI makes new designs to seldom.
He makes 0/0-design when he hasn't got any weapons which I can understand. Then he researches lots of weapon techs but it takes a long time until he actually makes a new design that he can build.

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I've been seeing a similar problem. I've got influence over litterally 40% or so of a gigantic map. I'm doing over 70% of the research in the galaxy, with prolly 50% of the population. The best example of AI doing nothing is the Terrans. I first encountered them when the Drengin handed over 7 planets to them in the middle of my territory. I've since captured half of them culturally. They keep threatening me for being so close to their planets, but they only have the lightest of defenses and are only building constructors. I just noticed however that the only planet that they've actually colonized is Mars. The rest were given by the Drengin. This is like 3 years into the game . The next most powerful civ is the Altarians who have prolly 15-20 planets. But they stopped expanding a long time ago, despite being surrounded by high quality planets.

I should also mention that the Drengin surrendered after declaring war on me, but not building any attack ships and only building, very slowly, a couple transports.

Also, I should note that I set the intelligences to random, though that doens't sound like a constant with this issue.

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The first campaign mission, april 15th 2230. It took me giving them medium hull building and waiting forever and a day to see them build a frigate, but they did indeed build one. I was curious so i decided to see if I could make them build something with weapons on it. This does not happen in sandbox games, just the campaign(and i havent checked past the first mission, i have a headache now from hitting the turn button so many times.)

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I am seeing similar things to Eternalcowboy22 having played two sandbox games (one on normal and one on the difficulty above). Before 1.1 it would be a real race to colonise decent planets. Now I have colonised around a third of the galaxy in both games (which is a huge amount of planets say ~ 30-40 because I like playing bigger maps). Most of the AI races have around 5 or so planets colonised even though there are large numbers of high quality planets near them and just don't seem interested in getting more

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I don't know. I beat the campaign games in 1.0x, and unless something special happened, I have been playing snadbox only. It takes me a while to ramp up my research, but once it is in full gear, the AI is already properly defended and ready to duke it out, I play in Painful or harder modes, and I haven't seen this problem.

What I have seen is that the Altarians and the Torians, tend to be powerful and kick ass, and I usually have to come to the Drengins and Yor's aid... but that is okay, they are funny when they ask fir my help.

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Normal behaviour on sandbox game with difficulty suicidal.

Debug Message: Creating Civs
Debug Message: Terran Alliance: Intellence -> 128
Debug Message: Altarian Republic: Intellence -> 128
Debug Message: Arcean Empire: Intellence -> 128
Debug Message: Torian Confederation: Intellence -> 128
Debug Message: Yor Collective: Intellence -> 128
Debug Message: Dominion of Korx: Intellence -> 128
Debug Message: Drath Legion: Intellence -> 128
Debug Message: Thalan Empire: Intellence -> 128
Debug Message: Iconian Refuge: Intellence -> 128
Debug Message: Creating Civs... Done

What the game does on campaign mode (mission darkness rising). Also difficulty suicidal.

Debug Message: Drengin Empire: Intellence -> 42
Debug Message: Altarian Republic: Intellence -> 65

This is on tough difficulty.

Debug Message: Drengin Empire: Intellence -> 80
Debug Message: Altarian Republic: Intellence -> 80

As you can see, something is not right here.

The following is the full list of difficulties on the campaing mode.

Suicidal

Debug Message: Drengin Empire: Intellence -> 42
Debug Message: Altarian Republic: Intellence -> 65

Obscene

Debug Message: Drengin Empire: Intellence -> 42
Debug Message: Altarian Republic: Intellence -> 65

Masochistic

Debug Message: Drengin Empire: Intellence -> 128
Debug Message: Altarian Republic: Intellence -> 128

Crippling

Debug Message: Drengin Empire: Intellence -> 90
Debug Message: Altarian Republic: Intellence -> 90

Painful

Debug Message: Drengin Empire: Intellence -> 85
Debug Message: Altarian Republic: Intellence -> 85

Tough

Debug Message: Drengin Empire: Intellence -> 80
Debug Message: Altarian Republic: Intellence -> 80

Challenging

Debug Message: Drengin Empire: Intellence -> 65
Debug Message: Altarian Republic: Intellence -> 65

Normal

Debug Message: Drengin Empire: Intellence -> 42
Debug Message: Altarian Republic: Intellence -> 65

Beginner

Debug Message: Drengin Empire: Intellence -> 30
Debug Message: Altarian Republic: Intellence -> 65

Simple

Debug Message: Drengin Empire: Intellence -> 20
Debug Message: Altarian Republic: Intellence -> 65

Easy
[quoteDebug Message: Drengin Empire: Intellence -> 20
Debug Message: Altarian Republic: Intellence -> 80]

Cakewalk

Debug Message: Drengin Empire: Intellence -> 10
Debug Message: Altarian Republic: Intellence -> 80]

As this list easily shows, playing on the two hardest difficulties is quite easy. And with an intelligence of 42 it's no wonder they build nothing...

That would have been one possibility. So I've set the difficulty to Masochistic for the strongest enemy. Still doesn't build a single ship with weapons. But it builds defenders, one after the others. And those defenders have shields.

And they even had better defender designs as they researched better shields. M0-2 defender had 9 defense, M0-12 generation defender had 23 defense. But the AI still refuses to include weapons into its ships, despite the fact that I've given it the whole beam weapon tree plus some 50k credits to get it's ship production going... nothing happend.

Suddenly this happened:

Debug Message: Destroying ship Drengin Constructor M0-6 148. Orbiting: 0
Debug Message: Random Event: Begin
Debug Message: Random Event: End
Debug Message: Yearly Status Dialog
Debug Message: Yearly Status Dialog 5
Debug Message: Yearly Status Dialog 5d
Debug Message: Drengin Empire (1): Researching: Advanced Miniaturization
Debug Message: Destroying ship Drengin Colony Ship M0-1 11. Orbiting: 1
Debug Message: Was Orbiting: Karion
Debug Message: Destroying ship Drengin Scout Ship M0-1 25. Orbiting: 1
Debug Message: Was Orbiting: Karion
Debug Message: Destroying ship Drengin Defender M0-12 140. Orbiting: 1
Debug Message: Was Orbiting: Markus I
Debug Message: Destroying ship Drengin Defender M0-12 142. Orbiting: 1
Debug Message: Was Orbiting: Markus I
Debug Message: Destroying ship Drengin Defender M0-12 147. Orbiting: 1
Debug Message: Was Orbiting: Markus I
Debug Message: Destroying ship Scout Ship M0-1 5. Orbiting: 1
Debug Message: Was Orbiting: Martzia I
Debug Message: Destroying ship Altarian Colony Ship M0-1 10. Orbiting: 1
Debug Message: Was Orbiting: Martzia I
Debug Message: Destroying ship Altarian Colony Ship M0-1 12. Orbiting: 1
Debug Message: Was Orbiting: Martzia I
Debug Message: Destroying ship Scout Ship M0-1 14. Orbiting: 1
Debug Message: Was Orbiting: Martzia I
Debug Message: Random Event: Begin

The Drengin startet scrapping all its old ships and started building battleships and fighters.

The new M1-2 defender (first revision after a five years?!?) then had 47 attack and 160 defense..

Well, after that they went crazy building attacking, escorts and other ships and overrun me. (I hadn't built any military, so not to change him in his descision (although I've made the same test with military. Same result.)

Debug Message: Random Event: Begin
Debug Message: Random Event: End
Debug Message: Random Event: Begin
Debug Message: Random Event: End
Debug Message: Random Event: Begin
Debug Message: Random Event: End
Debug Message: Destroying ship Altarian Constructor M0-12 156. Orbiting: 0
Debug Message: Random Event: Begin
Debug Message: Random Event: End
Debug Message: Random Event: Begin
Debug Message: Random Event: End
Debug Message: Random Event: Begin
Debug Message: Random Event: End

On a slightly unrelated note: The same time every turn a random event seems to be happening. Although I don't see anything of it.

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Vandenburg - thank you so much for taking the time to do this test and post this information! Hopefully it will help lead to rapid resolution of the issue.

I wonder if maybe the random event is something like this: Each turn there's a small percentage chance that the race will redesign their ships. Maybe intelligence even impacts this chance. Maybe nobody did the math to figure out how many turns it would take, on average to hit that redesign event. That, combined with the intelligence bug you documented, could produce what we're seeing. Of course this is just random speculation...

... But let's say your goal was a 50% chance of ship redesign every 20 turns, on average, but have a chance that it could happen on any given turn so clever players couldn't attack right before a ship-redesign turn. Then you could set a 3.4 percent chance of a redesign and check every turn. This would then give you a 50% chance that at least one redesign would occur by turn 20 and an 82% chance that it would occur within 50 turns. But if you multiplied this base chance by intelligence and turned that 3.4 percent * .42 (stupid) into 1.43 percent, then you only have a 25% chance of a redesign in 20 turns, on average it would come around turn 48 and it wouldn't be unheard of (nearly 1 chance in 10) for it take 100 turns!

I'm sure the specifics are different, but if they're using a mechanic like this, it could be the source of the problem. Of course I'm just guessing - you produced hard data. Thanks.

Does anybody else have trouble seeing the post after #15 by Vandenburg, or else the end of that post? I've tried two browsers and there's a big blank space...

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