A Growing Lack of Fun

Designing a chess AI that can beat 99.9% of all people was relatively easy. Chess has a set number of pieces that can make only very specific moves. Once computers were fast enough to analyze all the potential moves and counter moves for several turns ahead, people didn't stand a chance.

Instead of repeating myself, here ya go.
Check out the link, reply to AI cheating...

Link

Like Eirikr says...its like comparing a vw bug with the space shuttle...
They both take you places, but there are lots more to calculate in a space shuttle than a bug.

you should quit and go play something else

I've totally become disenchanted with GalCiv2. I do not like AIs that obviously cheat - such as when you spot 8 suns with awesome potential and then within 3 rounds, a single civ owns them all with colony ships that move 8 times faster than anything you can build.

If this is the nature of your complaint, it really seems to me that the problem may be that you just don't understand the game very well... there are problems, but the AI "cheating" is an illusion (at least, on Tough and below, as documented).

Let's define AI cheating as when the AI does something, or knows something, that an identical human player could not do or know. That doesn't happen in GalCiv2. (There were some early bugs that gave AI players more inforamation but these have been fixed for awhile, iirc?) There are a few big design decisions that Stardock nailed when putting together GC2, and this "no cheating" is one of them.

Most of the problems with the AI, as I see them, are of the opposite nature: The player can do things that the AI can't or won't. For example, the AIs make poor use of diplomacy in many respects; the AIs are restricted in how frequently they can design new ships; the AIs will never use ships tasked for orbital defense for any other purpose (like counter-attacking invading fleets).

I hate to say this, because I normally wouldn't care.... but since you're needlessly (and incorrectly) ripping on the designers:

(a) Maybe you just suck at this game
(b) Maybe you need to play at lower levels until you get better
(c) Maybe you should have your mommy buy you a new, easier game

p.s. - I don't claim to be all that good at this game, but my colony ships almost always move faster than the other civs'

within 3 rounds, a single civ owns them all with colony ships that move 8 times faster than anything you can build.

Maybe you need to play at lower levels until you get better

As far as I know, "Cakewalk" is the lowest level - haven't seen one called "Donkey"!

good tips at the start.. buy manufacturing facilities so they can build your colony ships faster
research right away for new engine drives
design your colony ships to move faster than them
research for research facilities.. and off you go

oh yes, i found out you can equip more than one engine to your hull, that thought didnt occur to me after a few more games.

Comparing Galciv 2 to chess is comparing apples to oranges, AIs can own humans in chess because there are a fixed number of moves/fixed number of peices, you move a piece to the best location, applying logic to deternine the players next moves. Chess AI does not have to design its pieces using current techology, use diplomacy, balance an economy, develop planets, reserch different techs, or battle up to 9 other players.

The AIs colonyships move to fast? deal with it, your a sentiant (sp?) being.

Mr Neural Jizz is soooo overtly ignorant & unfair, concerning GC2, that I cannot understand why you guys have taken the time & trouble to answer his obvious provocation.

or are you putting eggs into the "multiplayer" basket because "That's what other game designers do?"

my god this is probalby the worst complaint and the stupidest one i have ever heard on these forums and ive hear alot

let me make this perfectly crystal clear to you THERE IS NO MULTIPLAYER THIS GAME IS DESIGNED FOR A SINGLE PLAYER GAME! now with that fact firmly put into place lets look at you statment and we c that there is a contridiction i mean how can developers put all there eggs into multiplayer when they dont even have any multiplayer on their game? you know its funny becasue its simple becasue they cant so r u sure that your complaining bout the same game? and when is the ai being better than u cheating? last time i checked you want the ai to give you a challenge and beat you some of the time. now maybe youve been playing gmaes where the ai is so poor that it neevr stands up to you but with this game its different the ai dosnt cheat untill you go above level tough so unless your playing on suicide or somehting your complaint again is false and if you are playing on suicide then you shouldnt be complaining bout ai cheating cause suicide is built so that those who want an extremely tough chalenge or those who want to c their empire crumble and go sucide can do what they want

plz try to be smart when you complain and try to make your complaints more constructive

Probably some RTS'er who's use to pwning those brain-dead AI's with 'Mighty Mouse'...

HA! Your mouse is no match for my mind kung fu!

Chess AI also has the distinct advantage of being studied for decades... When they started the best AI were at best club level players or worse. They are now having similar growing pains with Go....

And btw at tough, i have no problems out colonising the AI....

Actually, if the blind "Let's defend this game no matter what the logic!" people would care to cut through the loaded language of the OP, the core issue is "the AI knows too much about the galaxy when the game starts and thus it knows exactly where the good planets are to colonize".

This contrasts with the human player who must scout out stars, often fruitlessly, whilst trying desperately to build colony ships to grab the empty planets whilst they last.

I've noticed this issue. I've referred to it in the past as possibly being "The AI is not restricted by the fog of war". I don't know whether it was looked at in either 1.1 or 1.1.1, but I still do get very suspicious in the early part of a game where suddenly the AIs have captured 90% of the map... gah!

It's called the Stellar Cartography technology. It's quite good, humans don't start with it. If you were to play some other race though, you could have it.

Stellar Cartogtafy only shows location of planets.
And that hardly useful for anyone, since you don't know are there conolizable planets, so it's pretty same as knowing where stars are.

What I do is to instead of looking for annomalies at start I use my Flagship to quickly scout neighbouring stars, and if there is some habitable planet there, I use my first colony ship for that.

Btw, blind exploration option is so cool, I wonder why it's not a default.

My only issue is I think the Torians spread too quickly in the v1.1 betas. Before the Betas on Normal difficulty and below I had no problem dominating the AIs by mid game. In the Betas the Torians spread like a plague, none of the other races where colonizing near as fast. Normally I don't get aggressive with the AI's until late in the game because I like to get as close to completing the tech tree as possible first. But the last few games I've played I had to get aggressive with the Torians early on just so I could catch up. None of the other races were even a challenge. I admit I haven't played v1.11 yet because I'm waiting to get the latest Kryo Mod first, so the unbalanced AI might have been fixed already.

I do know the AI has improved alot since I first bought the game. Whenever I play a game for the first time I always use the easiest setting first to learn the game mechanics and figure out how challenging the game will be. I downloaded GC2 shortly after the release and beat it within 24 hours. I don't think I could do that now. By the way I always play Gigantic with everything abundant and max races. My only real issue with the AI is it surrenders way too easy.

The GC2 AI is like the French Border Guards at the German border. Everytime they see a German they shout we're being invaded and quickly change flags. Other than that it just needs have the quirks worked out on the way it handles resources and I think it will be about as good as it can get.

i'm going with happyhazzard reply, it says it all

Maybe he hasn't found the ship designer yet, or perhaps he didn't rush buy his colony ships?

Torian spreading is their weakness. I always conquer 2-3 planets from them befor they even get ship defenders.

Yeah, Torians (even with a +70% growth) don't grow as fast as I can set the Drengin on them.

Skin for all!

Oh, and OP: Bull. I can make speed 8 colony ships pretty much from the go too. It's called the "ship designer". It's what was touted as a big part of this game.

And I always blind with fast colony ships. Click on a planet, and you can see if it's any good by the star. If it's purple, just set all your colony ships in the area onto all the planet icons by the star. Don't even need to see more than one planet, I know the other 4 are there, I also know they're good.

The AI got whipped on colonising even in galciv1, when it actually DID know where everything was.