AI Weapons preferances

from GalCiv2 Forums
This is just a short post to see if anyone else has noticed this -

The AI in all my games seems to be greatly favoring missile weapons. In the past three games, each with nine civilizations, I've only seen the use of non-missile weapons three times. Twice the Drengin use beams, and once the Altarians used mass drivers.

In addition, I've been forced into using beams or missiles myself. The AI seems to research only armors in the early game. This happens every time. Later, apparently to counter the massive use of missiles, they begin researching missile defenses. I haven't seen a beam defense rating of over 1 in five games. As you might suspect, this means I end up using beams in most games. That's okay. Beams are pretty. But it makes my game easier because I don't have to worry about what defense an enemy might be using, or what attack. I already have a pretty good idea.

Why? Am I alone in this? I suspect it may be that missile weapons look somehow more attractive than other types of weapons to the AI. At least intially I think I can agree. Missiles start off cheap to research go up quickly in firepower. Only problem is their space, of course.
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Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
When 9 AIs are running the weapons code doesn't work like intended. Try about 4 AIs, and it becomes much more varied. Of course, they still tend to ignore some techs (completely ignored the Beam tech line all game, alowing me to monopolise defences against them, and I had the only beam techs, or beam defence, so not very difficult win), but they do it a bit better.

In 1.11 there do appear some AI bugs, like not initialising and so forth. I hope this is one of them, as beams are small and not that expensive, allowing them to really be used well in tight corners.
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Well, in my last game with 7 races they were using mainly beams and some missles.
So I went wth beams (yup, 'cause they look good) and mass drivers.
Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
In my last game with 4 AI opponents everyone went Beams+Shield... When I teched Missiles+Shields a bit, a military victory was inevitable. Once my war machine got going, nothing could stand against me. Eventually they did start researching anti-missile stuff, but it took them a long time to produce some ships with defense against my weapons, and by then it was both too late and too little.

I don't think it was really a bug though... Compared to the other races I had a weak military, so I guess they considered each other bigger threats, and to them that 'biggest threat' was using beams. It didn't occur to them that even though I didn't have a huge number of ships, one of my ships could easily beat any three of theirs because the missiles didn't get stopped by their shields...
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
The AI in all my games seems to be greatly favoring missile weapons.


I tend to prefer missles too. They pack more punch faster than the other weapons. They seem to have a better damage to space ration than the other weapons, especially in the early techs. So all things being equal, I like missles as a first choice. I'm not surprised the computer favors them.

Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
The other thing I have heard is that disabling "Tech Sharing" might help with this issue.

The assumption is that one or two military AIs develop a weapon, then share it with the other AIs through trade. Once all of the AIs are started down a weapons tree, they keep specializing in that weapon until they see a need to switch.

Consequently, as long as there is no significant combat, AIs keep developing the same weapon tech until they are so far down the tree that switching to another tree makes little sense - unless they are absolutely forced to switch because another "new" enemy appears using defenses designed for their weapons and weapons that their defenses can't defend against.

By that time, the pesky Human player has all but wiped them off the map...
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I turn tech trading off and I see a wide variety to weapon techs. My current game has 6 other races -- 3 beams, 2 missles and 1 mass driver.
Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
It seems like in my game, the drengin set the pace. They had the most powerful military (supposedly) and were projectile and armor heavy, so everyone else went for armor defense. my beam/missle boats are eating everything for breakfast.

I think there may be some kind of bug in the military strength calculator. The game I'm playing has the drengin as the strongest military even though every ship I have has higher attack and defense ratings, I have more ships, I have more starbases (with fortifications too), and I'm tooling around drengin space with a doom fleet smashing everything in sight while I'm building up transports and constructors for a full scale invasion.

Maybe it's the star bases throwing off weapons choice? I don't think that starbases should come into a weapons research calculation since they tend to have an even spread of the attacks and defenses, and they can't assault you.
Only the computer will attack a starbase that may actually win against their fleet.
Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I used to see this problem. However since 1.1, I see that a lot of civs have the same weapon techs as me, since they steal them in espianage (or at least I think they did.) But I didn't have the problem of all the AI's choosing the same weapons in my last 1.1 game, they had Missiles, Mass Drivers, and Beam weapons, with missile defense, armor, and shields. It was the first time I had seen all of the races use different weapon and defense types.
Reply #9 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
In my last crippling game with 9 opponents they all went lasers. Instead of focusing on weapons I went almost pure defense. My ships would have like 20 shields and 2 missile (mid game, on a medium hull), and I would win with 1 ship vs their fleets. It was funny, but dumb. The only race that was a callenge were the Fundamentalists that formed because they had missiles, but then they were really a threat being a minor race and all.

Reply #10 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Glad I read this post because that explains alot of what I see in my games with 9 players. I also tried a 9 player game with tech trading off and there is much more variety. So from now on I will disable tech trading
A cakewalk is no fun and when you are the only person with a particular weapon or defense the game is way too easy