"Crippled" AI opponent - researched 1 tech in 7 years?

from GalCiv2 Forums
On the positive side, reviews I trust say GalCiv2 is great – and it seems to have potential. And it's run fine on my system from the beginning. On the down side I’ve had "AI problems" from the beginning as well.

I’m running the most recent update – the released 1.1. I signed onto the Metaverse and played a small game against two opponents – just normal difficulty – to try things out. One opponent – the Drengin seemed to do fine. They colonized several worlds and discovered a variety of technologies. (Though I’m not sure they ever built an armed ship, though they had the technology – another concern of mine.)

The other opponent – the Yor – did manage to colonize one other world, but all game long their research pace was a flat line at the bottom of the screen. At the end of the game the report said that they had researched ONE technology all game long.

There was no war all game – no one held back the progress of the Yor. There were even other worlds left to colonize at the end of the game due to the "abundant" habitable planets setting. With two worlds even just the basic colony with no research labs would give them enough research points to discover several techs by the end of the game. But they did no research – and didn’t seem to build much else, either.

I dominated the game with over a dozen colonies and won in January of 2227 with an influence victory, but the Drengin managed to research various technologies. What was wrong with the Yor? I have saves available if someone wants to check one.
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Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Not sure, but what difficulty?

Did you randomize intelligence?


Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Do you know how I can double-check that from a saved game?

I CAN say that I have never deliberately selected "randomize intelligence." I have selected "randomize races" - and did so in this case - but not intelligence. Unless randomizing races also randomizes intelligence without showing that box as checked (or being mentioned in the docs). The manual claims that the overall game difficulty setting overrides individual race intelligence settings (although if that's the case, why have them at all?) I have not yet checked the notes released with 1.1.

I have noticed that the game seems to preserve and reset settings in a manner I don't completley understand. Maybe when I opened that metaverse game the Yor were set to some low intelligence? Right now everyone appears to be set to bright.

That's a good suggestion, though. Is that what the lowest setting does to the AI? Make them incapable of doing anything in less than a decade? Seems pretty extreme.
Sins of a Solar Empire II
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I noticed that in my current game, the Yor in a large VERY abundant galaxy with usually 3 nice planets per system only colonised about 5 planets in 4 years till they gave up to the Drengin.

They had built NOTHING but military and their research was flatlined forever... their worlds which I took off the Drengin were pretty much empty before Tidal Bombardment. What the hell were they doing for 4 years????

They and the Insectoids both did f* all all game, and intell is set to Crippling difficulty. No randoms either.

-J
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
If the difficulty is below intelligent then the AI will be handicapped economically and/or strategically. When they talk about that overall difficulty slider overriding your intelligence settings, that means when you change that slider then it will adjust all the difficulties of the individual races. You can still fine-tune each race's intelligence if you want by selecting them and picking an intelligence level.