The AI is building factories in 1.12 Yippee!!

I was playing at Obscene level and I took out the Drath as first victim. There planets were filled with .......tada ....... factories!!!!!

Thank you Frogboy, thank you thank you thank you....

Even on a Size 4 world the Drath AI placed 2 factories, the colony and a starport and was busy cranking out heavy missile 12 fighters to wear me down. Didn't work but they died well. A worthy adversary.

Hmm, the AI is building factories, but obviously no market centers on their economic capital ...

Nevertheless I think stardock did a great job with 1.2 and I can't wait to try it myself.

I think it rush bought those factories in response to my invasion of its empire. I swear it actually reacted to my aggression and built up its fleet to defend itself. It sure seemed that way...

Other worlds I captured also had factories or a diverse rational placement of buildings. Not like it had done previously under Maso level in 1.10.029 where it built waaaaaaaaaay to many farms morale and embassies.

Thanks for the heads up kosty!

Sounds great! I'm looking forward to try it out myself tomorrow.

Frogboy , hope you see this after your weekend

I think 1.2 also removed the cheats lol

I don't think market center is important at wolrd with economic capital at all.
Economic capital modifies base income gained from planet, so it's good to be a planet with lots of population.
Economic centers do the same, but they don't really modify each other.

Economic capital modifies base income gained from planet, so it's good to be a planet with lots of population. Economic centers do the same, but they don't really modify each other.

Exactly: All bonuses are additive, not multiplicative.
It still might be a good idea to build additional economic buildings on the planet with the economic capital, but it doesn't have more effect than on other planets with the same population count.

As I havve continued my game, I can see that the other AI's have continued steady progression of their planets. The AI planet management is dramatically improved, at least on teh higher difficulty (1 above maso) and large map.

The AI is definately more competitive.

you got any more pics costy - I want to see a few more research centres.

I noticed that sometimes the AI even builds too many factories now: I worried a bit about their research and PQ 5 planets with 3 factories and a shipyard are arguable. I usually put a bunch of stock markets and/or research facilities on the very small planets, replacing the factories when all other buildings are done and upgraded. Many factories are much better than the infamous gazillion embassies or farms though.
And they didn't seem to be interested in building the Hyperion Logistics Centre or the Hyperion Shrinker in my test game. It might be that I simply killed them too soon, but I thought they should have built it at the time.

On the other hand I also noticed that some AIs seem to rarely build farms, I think it was the Altarians in my last game.

On a general note, I think a rule "do not build a wonder on a special tile" wouldn't hurt. (Replace another building with it instead if necessary.)

In general, I agree that AI planetary building has been improved a lot. The risk for eye cancer because of total embassy ownage is at an all time low.


My main concerns about the current AI are the following:

(1) It is way too cheap to buy techs for money, especially when having good diplomacy values (so there might be two different aspects involved). I researched maybe one or two dozen techs myself in my last game and bought the rest, the tech tree was finished within 4 years (at very fast speed though). And I think the AI should care more for bad or undecided relations when deciding about tech trading.

(2) The tactical AI astonishes me regularly: It seems to forget to move some ships every once in a while - I definitely look forward to an implementation of the "give the AI all the time it needs" option.

(3) The AI (or some of them) should be more aggressive against races with very little or no military. It's astonishing how long you can survive with some bribes and no military at all. Sometimes the first ship I build has blackhole eruptors.

The planetary buildup problem is mostly out of the way, time to face the next battle!

Played game at Obscene. AI had no problem with tech.

Built worlds with 1 or 2 research per world with rest factories mostly. Tech and Manuf bonus squares were used properly.

Generally rational placemnet. Dramatically improved management.

Factories built pretty much as I would have built them for a conquest victory.

Thalen did build a lot of morale on one world, but was a rational decision on a border world with a zillion population.

Did see AI conquering other AI races. Great. The Drengin took ot the Torian and the Korx took out the Arcean.

AI was very competitive.

The AI also seemed to place its fleets in much more effective order now and was much more aggressive about building up one level of the tech tree. The Drengin particular researched high above me on missile tech and their smaller fleet did damage on my larger fleet when I conquered them.

I saw their tech advantage during trading and I altered my plan of conquest to take them out earlier.

If I had let them build up a fleet, I don't think I could have conquered them.

Maybe I am seeing to much and it is a coincidence that I see so much AI improvement, but it sures seems dramatically improved.

The 1.2b AI is definitely much harder and more clever.

The Altarians went berzerk in one match where they were in the middle and they ended up declaring war on everyone. The military came in first with attack ships and then with fleets of troop transports following closely behind. They even figured they'd need two fleets of troopers to take on my homeworld and had them ready.

Very, very hard to counter when you've not bothered to research much military. Needless to say, I got wiped out

hmm, interesssting....