What is the goal of the AI players?

self bump

Gotta respect you for being able to beat a computer 2 levels above tough. The truth is, you're probably the only one out of 1 million to find that painful level so easy. Maybe you're one of those super prodigy guy with an IQ of 200+, I don't know, but a lot of people are getting massacred on tough, let alone, 2 levels above tough.

I find the AI to be fine as it is. I'm barely beating it on Tough.

I guess I'll go ahead and post my build & strategy since it may be important to the results I've seen.

Race Build:
Technologist (this is the best political party point-wise, please nerf it)
+50% Military Production (better than splitting between social and military since you save a point this way)
+10% Morale (for 1 point, this is a steal)
+X% Economy (forgot the number I pick, but I think there's one that's a "best deal")
Rest of the points don't matter as much, spend as desired

Strategy:
1) Start by researching engines to get a better colony ship (throughout the game, all your ships should be notably faster than the computers). Lower taxes so as to get a population growth bonus. Set spending to 100% and favor research spending while disfavoring military spending. Set your flagship to auto-survery. Buy colony ships until there are no likely worlds to be able to colonize, then switch to constructors. [BTW- if your flagship finds a BC cache, you've pretty much already won the game, no need to continue playing]
2) Buy a factory on each world you colonize (if you have extra money) and research money techs + diplomacy techs (toward the Government upgrade). Your deficits will grow each turn, but you have a huge starting cushin. Taxes must remain low, preferably all your new colonies will have 100% approval. Your homeworld and any tiny worlds you colonized will be making all the money for your entire empire at this point (your homeworld doubles as a shipbuildings planet at this point). Other worlds should be building toward either factory states or factory/research states.
3) Eventually you will need to lower spending to about 80% and trade techs making sure to equalize your trades with money from the computers- you don't want to stay in debt long because it will screw up your morale which will screw up your population growth. Other players will threaten you because you have a weak military, but that doesn't matter because you are about to beat the crap out of their "superior" military. You should have the Stock Market tech before reaching step 4.
4) Once other players start sending you freighters, you should raise your taxes to balance your budget, get Interstellar Republic, and gradually increase your spending back to 100%.
5) Once your economy is starting to stabilize, research Planetary Invasion. Also design a ship out of whatever weaponry you managed to trade for (you may want Medium sized hulls). Start killing other players.
6) You now have your option of any victory condition, and no computer player will offer any threat for the next 2-3 years.

edit:
No I am not a prodigy, I just checked through some of the stats on things that aren't provided in game, and unfortunately those are some of the most important stats (like build costs for the type of building you are researching). If you are unlucky, for instance, and stop on Galactic Bank Exchanges without upgrading to Stock Market, the game doesn't tell you that the Stock Market is approximately 5 times better than the Bank Exchange (factoring build cost into it), it just lets you suffer at the Galactic Bank Exchange. Knowing things like that make the game a lot easier, I suppose.

FIVE TIMES?! Well, I didn't know it's that much better... And I guess it shouldn't be. But that's my opinion.

before reading it all, i play at crippled and the drenging sometimes takes over 50% of the map, only one that can stop him is me.
if i didn't fought him hard he would have won.

bluebeholder, get ready to get roasted.

I've already been here, done that and all I got was hole lotta ripped-and-torn.

guys here are fanatically loyal to the developers. fanboys really. you'll find a few balanced opinions. not enough though.

friendly advise? discuss the AI anywhere but here and, try to downsize your map. apparently, the AI is more competent and aggressive when you play on MEDIUM galaxy setting.

good luck.

Hi!

So far I have not seen a single game where any AI player has established a competant strategy.

I've seen most of what you've written, but in earlier versions of the game. In my recent games with 1.11 there's significantly less if events you described. What's your game version?

BR, Iztok

1.11 is definately better as far as planetary planning goes. I'm so far behind in tech and military on my current non-tech trading masochistic game I think I just may lose. I am Yor and have no friends save a warm relationship with the Drengin whom I paid not to attack me. Surrounded by all the good races I seeded the galaxy with, I'm starting to wonder what I was smoking when I set the game up.

I don't know if they will ever stop building a space port on every planet though. It's not entirely a bad idea, though I don't practice it myself. Afterall you can always rush buy and you won't waste any military production hammers.

I don't think the AI is able to specialize planets yet either which is an obvious weakness at least when capitals are concerned, but I understand that programming an AI to be able to do so without it ending up in disaster could be tough. They need to be able to evaluate if they have enough planets to fully specialize some of them and which planets to choose including bonus tiles, seen potential terraforming tiles available, location in the galaxy, possible locations of boosting starbases, etc, etc.

The AI's war strats also need work, though I find my enemies have been faster at adapting to my weapon systems recently and with the soon to be introduce first-strike nerf, I expect the AI will be far more formittable soon.

Yeah. I'm disappointed that the developers have put such a low priority on getting the AI better. Mr. Wardell has said he's only working on this "a few hours a week" plus whatever time he feels like on weekends. He's said that the AI seems good enough to him, that it's finished, etc. We're given every sign that we shouldn't expect anything major and should be grateful for anything more we get. And yet... Well, there are plenty of lists of things that aren't right, there's another good one here in the OP.

The AI just doesn't try to win the game; there isn't even a good evaluation, or scoring, mechanism. You should be able to pit a few AIs up against each other, get the scores, make small adjustments to the AIs, and repeat. The scoring system is key; it should be able to effectively rank the players in a way that rewards things like surrendering instead of being obliterated by force. The scoring system is then the "evaluation function" in an optimization routine. This is one method for fine-tuning AI, and I bring it up to highlight the weakness of the current scoring system--you just can't do stuff like this right now.

But that hasn't hindered the AI developers, because they appear to have sided with an AI that feels good over an AI that is as competitive as possible. Well, I bought this game on the promise that the AI would perform "every known human tactic" (so false--once a ship year designing (!), inabilty to tactically calculate ship movement (what players do when "counting squares"), building three capitals on one planet, terrible handling of troop transports, terrible planet defense (the defenders never move!), some starbase problems, list goes on...).

I don't know. I doubt how well Mr. Wardell knows the limits of his own game. I find his statement that "the AI at higher than tough difficulties will cream me. My view is that anyone being 1.2 at anything higher than tough consistently is probably doing some sort of exploit" [source] to be... well, shocking. I mean, I don't hate GC2. Obviously. I've posted like 20 times on these forums and spent a fair amount of my time playing GC2 or looking closely at how it works. But that statement is just shocking. I beat the game consistently on Suicidal without reloading save games, hitting ctrl-n for good starts, tech trading, or other cheese. I've played Yor with Evil alignment, medium map 9 opponents, starting in the dead middle, going to war with everyone, and winning in a few years. I've tried tech victories and political victories. And it's all dead easy. Here are the "exploits" I use:
-I know which weapons, defenes, techs, buildings, etc. are overpowered, and I go in with a plan for what I'm going to use and what tech path I'm going to take. Neutrality Learning Centers, Psyonic Beam, Stock Markets...
-I know how the economic system works, and work it better than the AI (100% approval, for example), and micromanae the heck out of it when I have to
-I make heavy use of fast armed cargo hulls
-I work very hard to get the first attack, which 1.2 will change
-I choose planetary improvements and wonders better than the AI (it doesn't know what's useless)
-I concentrate force WAY better than the AI
-I coordinate troop transports and invading fleets much more effectively than the AI
-I "bait and lure" dangerous enemy fleets using fast (or disposable) ships... the ship destinations provided by low espionage (parity-breaking, incidentally) comes in handy for this
I beat the game by gettng a better return out of my resources (ships, constructors, credits, planet tiles, etc) than the AI does. Exploits indeed.

I gotta admit the building levels leave me confused sometimes, your example of the Bank v's Stock market is an extreme one but not the only one. When I first played I just went up the techs a bit at a time and didnt really pay attention to the bulding stats. You're right blubeholder, a bit of knowledge here can drastically alter your game.

I only (?) play Tough at the moment, 6 AI on a medium map usually. I just lost my last 2 games but I let everyone build up. I see alot of the AI improvements in my games that people still complain are problems on bigger galaxies so i guess the map size is important. I see the occasional planet with only Entertainment or Farms or Embassies too but I also see really well balanced planets, fleets with 16 moves, defences for the weapon I use etc. Bizzarre.

There are some points in your email I want to try out since my own start is slow and needs work. I assume you lower taxes to get 100% approval all through the start, do you also build the Entertainment Centers early on?

Bluebeholder - As you have become adept at understanding some of the mechanics of how the game functions, including optimal build choices, you now realise that the AI doesn't play with a strategy that is comparable to your own. Along with no apparent overall focus on any particular winning objective it then becomes reasonably easy to counter.
A suggestion might be that you will need to ‘dumb’ down some of the options that you are making with your initial setup. Whilst I do understand this will not make the AI choices more ‘intelligent’ it will hamper your strategy a little and might make the game a little more challenging..?

However Precursor10 has, like he noted, made some pretty good points about some of the limitations and shortcomings about this game. Just reading his initial post about these issues suggested to me that he spent a great amount of time and put a lot of thought in what he had written, as well as coming up with some suggestions, which may not have been practical, possible or desirable to implement. However some of the responses to the ‘tone’ that could have been interpreted from his post, which lacked a little sugar coating, meant that the focus of thread got sidetracked, which I hope that yours doesn’t.

I am hopeful that the 1.2 patch, as well as the proposed 1.3 one, will address some of these issues. I think that Brad’s post…
https://forums.galciv2.com/?ForumID=164&AID=118239#911170
... gives more than an indication of the love and passion that he and his team feel for this game, which can be both good and not so good. Good as they will try their very best with the resources, work schedules and other priorities that they have got to address as much as they can with those constraints, and others no doubt, to make this the very best game that they possibly can. But not so good as it is more than evident from Brad’s post they really do feel and care when people post criticisms (mainly the mindless rant type) about their game. Take a look at many other game forums and you can almost write what you want about their game without getting as much of an acknowledgment from the creators, not so here.

I do try and remember though that at times I need to compare this game against others on the market and how little it cost me as well as how much is still being invested in its development. When I put it in that context then I do tend to focus more on what the game gives rather than what it is missing. That doesn’t infer that posts like yours aren't useful to encourage Brad and his team to strive to make improvements.

The other things it does research, it stops on the wrong levels. Examples: It stops on Research Academies which are worse than the tech below them (due to exorbitant build costs on the Academy and almost no boost to efficiency), it actually upgrades the farm techs, and on economy it stops on banking centers (which should NEVER be built under ANY circumstance, since the next tech up is the stock market which costs a third as much and is about twice as powerful all mods told). Etc.

I bet this is because it waits for all the upgrades to be built and those upgrades take forever. You can fool the humans with this for a while, but it will fool the computer forever.

3) Eventually you will need to lower spending to about 80% and trade techs making sure to equalize your trades with money from the computers- you don't want to stay in debt long because it will screw up your morale which will screw up your population growth. Other players will threaten you because you have a weak military, but that doesn't matter because you are about to beat the crap out of their "superior" military.

What do you think about building freighters to add some money and improve your relations at the same time?

What do you think about just building fewer factories so you don't drop down and have to lower your spend rate?

Anyone else have thoughts on this matter?

If you are patient enough, you can build an AI player that follows everything you planned. e.g. AIValue in the techtree.. etc.
But trust me, you will lose any interest to match with that player again.

-I "bait and lure" dangerous enemy fleets using fast (or disposable) ships...

Sorry, but I consider that to be quite exploitive. It's just a situation where the AI is foolish enough to fall for something that no self-respecting human player would. Taking one of their few, big, offensive fleets that was on a mission to attack a resource starbase or planet to go chasing after a ship it can't possibly catch or a broken down hunk of junk that doesn't pose any kind of threat, and it will do so consistently when presented with such a target. I'm not saying I never do it, when push comes to shove it's like "This is for that huge economic bonus you have!", but I always feel guilty afterwards.

As for building and tech planning, sure the AI should make use of optimal techs and buildings, but at the same time it shouldn't be predictable in it's advancement either. I think it would be better for them to simply close the gaps on some of the techs / buildings so that the advancement and bonuses are more even and balanced. Use a subspace blaster why? Although this is a problem area, in general the AI's bonuses more than make up for their planet planning and building, but the AI loses anyway because of it's lack of abililty to properly wage war.

I am very interested to see what happens when simultaneous fire is introduced. Taking first-strike away from players will be a very big step towards making the AI harder to beat, given it's short commings. I guess it is a bit of a cheap way to level the playing field more, but I don't think the AI would ever be quite as crafty as a person in fleet movement without some really intense computational times. First strike wasn't quite what I would call an exploit per se, but definately a huge advantage that players have enjoyed. Besides, it doesn't really make sense that an attacking fleet would have that advantage over defenders who knew they were comming.

-I "bait and lure" dangerous enemy fleets using fast (or disposable) ships...

In GalCiv I you could do this too. It was one of the few areas where the AI played dumb like this. But in that one, at higher difficulty levels, they would have enough saturation of ships and were good enough at moving them that this strategy would only take the least bit of pressure off for a couple turns. The AI just seemed more robust against exploitation in that game.

If the AI doesn't try to win, it's probably because the game won't allow it to win. The AI can't win a tech or alliance victory even if it fulfills the requirements. So the AI gets discouraged.

Gotta respect you for being able to beat a computer 2 levels above tough. The truth is, you're probably the only one out of 1 million to find that painful level so easy. Maybe you're one of those super prodigy guy with an IQ of 200+, I don't know,

Hmm 2 levels above tough is crippling isn't it? I guess after my last game victory, I'm one of those prodigies.

but a lot of people are getting massacred on tough, let alone, 2 levels above tough.

I think 'a lot' and 'massacred' is too strong. There are people who can't win tough, but most are newbies playing their first few games. I think you will be hard pressed to find someone who has played a bit say 5-10 games and still can't win at tough.

I find the AI to be fine as it is. I'm barely beating it on Tough.

That makes you one of the top 5% galciv players according to the developers then since you can beat tough.

Vanir wrote:

If the AI doesn't try to win, it's probably because the game won't allow it to win. The AI can't win a tech or alliance victory even if it fulfills the requirements. So the AI gets discouraged.

You'd think fixing this would be a priority...

I haven't read through all of the replies, but I have to say that I see the same things as you. The game is far easier than the original, because the computer doesn't seem to research well, build ships well, or build planetary improvements well. I don't really mean this as a blanket statement, since it probably could do well against a specific kind of map or strategy, but I wouldn't know what it is since I don't use that strategy. I have posted one other time that it would be nice if different races used different strategies in respect to the three things I mentioned, and maybe one of them would do well against my usual strategies.

I am sorry that I don't have time to proof read this, or elaborate further, but I just wanted you to know that you aren't alone. It is a fun game, and Stardock did exceed my expectations in most areas, but I too was disappointed in the amount of challenge that I got out of it.

(!), inabilty to tactically calculate ship movement (what players do when "counting squares")

Partly compensated with the removal of first strike.

once a ship year designing

Hopefully with the new 'intensive AI' switch, they will do this more upon.

, building three capitals on one planet,

They need special code to handle colonies with capitals! Better rules for choosing colonies to build capital! I've seen them do pretty stupid stuff like building them in stupid places, building them so early (on a colony with 2 factories only) , etc.

This shouldn't be that hard compared to all the tactical stuff honestly.

terrible handling of troop transports,

They tried to fix this quite a bit. But it never works out. I can see why this is hard for the AI though.

terrible planet defense (the defenders never move!),

Since the developers have the exact combat model, they should be able to caclulate the odds better, so I'm guessing, either (1) This is too computionally expensive or (2) The AI has wrong priorities.


Another thing I notice is that they never ever seem to use focus, while i use it a lot, I'm not sure if it's because I suck at managing the sliders though. But then again...

If the AI doesn't try to win, it's probably because the game won't allow it to win. The AI can't win a tech or alliance victory even if it fulfills the requirements. So the AI gets discouraged.

Has it got a little corner to sulk in or does it just pretend not to listen.

MD

Yeah, I pretty much agree with the original poster. I play on the same difficulty level as the poster and have the same problems. The biggest issue is the tech tree one. The computer doesnt build its planets up very well because it jumps up too quickly on the research techs, meaning that it spends forever building research academies or invention matrices instead of building a ton of Xeno Labs and upgrading like any half decent human will. The net result is that they cripple themselves early on in tech and cant catch up.

The other comment I have is on world specialization. The computer needs to have better algorithms for building capitols especially. Specifically, very rarely will you build your tech and manu. caps on the same world. I'd say just not allow the computer to do that. It should also build a minimum of say the equivalent of 8 manufacturing squares on the manu cap world.

Precursor: Notice something here. The original poster has said basically the same things you have been saying, but is not getting flamed and is indeed getting a lot of support. You might want to think about why this is. He supports his points, and is polite about his criticisms. You do neither very well. I suggest that in future posts you act more like him rather than how you have been acting as his method words a lot better.

From where I sit, the AI seems to prioritize defending its planets surviving and gaining influence. I do wish those victory options were open for the AI.

The top 5% remark, I find hard to believe. There are a ton of experienced 4x game players out there that cut their teeth ten years ago. GC2 is not that different from those earlier games. Any of those veterans can wipe the floor at crippling and above. I am not one of the top players (in tourneys etc.) and I can beat suicidal the majority of the time. The top players would walk over me, just as easily as I usually walk over the AI.

I have suggested several things that would the game more interesting. Have some AIs bent on war from day one, no tribute, no gifts will sway them, only the sword and their bloodlust only satiated after one race is eliminated from the game (hopefully not the human). Have some AIs prefer fast ships, at least one engine on every design from day one, and increasing as the game progresses, with an average of 40% of ship space going to engines. The Yor with their miniaturation advantage would be extra scary if this flag flips for them. Have some AIs prefer resources to colonizing planets and build one early constructor for every colony ship. This would spice up the early colony rush. Would a race with five resources mined to the max early, and four planets do better in the long run than a race with eight planets and one resource? Would be interesting to see how that would play out in the long run?

Attach these preferences to different races, but not every game. Have a chance that these flags get activated at certain game times. Maybe 50% chance at the start of the game, or else they play normally. The unpredictability would add a lot to the game.

On the highest levels, a human player might see a computer AI crush another AI early, 10 move lightly armed military ships before turn 50. The unpredictability would be the spice, a human could not count on certain strategies always working (eg gifting to maintain peace for easy diplomatic victories, always having faster ships than the AI and all that entails).

And it's all dead easy. Here are the "exploits" I use:

The definition of exploit is to use or manipulate a system to one's own advantage. You have studied the weaknesses in the AI, and are exploiting them through tactics. You have taken what should be a fair system and manipulated it to give yourself the upper hand, and thus can declare that the AI is weak. That is not the fault of the AI that humans can 'cheat' the system to beat it, that is the fault of the game system itself by having these issues in the first place for people to take advantage of. Lets look at the problems in order:

-I know which weapons, defenes, techs, buildings, etc. are overpowered, and I go in with a plan for what I'm going to use and what tech path I'm going to take. Neutrality Learning Centers, Psyonic Beam, Stock Markets...

Not an AI problem, it's a problem with the overpowered techs. There should not be a 'best' route to go to win, it should consist of a variety of choices to suit your playstyle.

-I know how the economic system works, and work it better than the AI (100% approval, for example), and micromanae the heck out of it when I have to

That is a fault with the AI, computers should beat you senseless when it comes to micromanaging, the fact that they don't implies that their economic 'thinking' needs adjusting.

-I make heavy use of fast armed cargo hulls -I work very hard to get the first attack, which 1.2 will change

These two link together because you are 'exploiting' the fact that combat works on a first-strike basis to allow these very weak ships to do huge amounts of damage.

-I choose planetary improvements and wonders better than the AI (it doesn't know what's useless)

Not a fault of the AI, there should not be any useless improvements or wonders.

-I concentrate force WAY better than the AI

AI fault, lack of focus.

-I coordinate troop transports and invading fleets much more effectively than the AI

That's the same thing again, repeating an error does not make it any more important

-I "bait and lure" dangerous enemy fleets using fast (or disposable) ships... the ship destinations provided by low espionage (parity-breaking, incidentally) comes in handy for this

AI fault, lack of seeing the 'big picture'.

Seems to me you've picked apart the AI, worked out where you can exploit the system, and beat it using this. Then declare the AI weak and useless, when were you not to use the above you'd much more likely to lose. It is hard to let go of the metagame however, you know which things can help you to win, which things are best, so you use them. This is not poor AI entirely however, it's a failing in the game system by having these loopholes, a failing on the part of the player for exploiting them and a failing on the AI for not exploiting them. There will always be min-max-ers in a game, who will take the game mechanics apart to gain that extra 1% advantage that lets them win, it is exceedingly hard to stop this. So declaring the AI 'weak' when you've sat down specifically to find out where it is weak and exploit this, seems a little ridiculous. It's a bit like calling a brick house 'flimsy' because you work out if you knock out the foundations by burrowing under them you collapse the house. Well duh.

This is a very interesting topic, and makes me glad that I'm not very good at this game. I can play on challenging difficulty, and generally win, but it's not always easy. I can panic if there's an empire bigger than mine, because I don't know the tactics or exploits to have a certainty that I'll beat the AI if they get nasty when I'm unprepared. But like I said, generally I will win, yet I'll have had a decent fight or some competition to get there.
Perhaps there should be a checklist of additional bonuses that players can tick to offer the AI, e.g. research, economic or military bonuses etc so advanced players can improve the AI where they see it fails. So if it doesn't fight well enough, they can boost the AI's military stats. It's not an elegant solution, but it should be a quick fix until the AI itself is improved. I think anyway, I don't know how complex it might be to actually add...