self bump

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

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.

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

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).

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...