Hey guys. The OP was only pointing out that the AI doesn't behave all that well in this particular situation. I think if you read the original post, he was inoffensive and actually made a point that Stardock should (and hopefully will) take seriously. I mean we all want smarter AI, and that is what he was driving for. Perhaps he didn't verbalize it in the manner most of you would have, and unfortunately a flame war ensued, because he post was misunderstood, and now you have a thread enchroaching on assasinating the guy's character!

If you re-read his first post, I think you will all agree that he isn't saying "hey check out this cool way I found to beat up the AI!" but rather he is saying "Hey developers, this is kind of cheesy AI behavior that is easy to exploit, how about taking a look here."

I hope they take Nova's point seriously as well. I don't want them to completely eliminate the possibility of a Trojan Horse gambit but they need to teach the AI how to manage expenses better.

The AI just needs to be smart enough to sell off ships that exceed its budget or ships that are obsolete to it. Give them ships to ruin their economy, they instantly sell several, exploit (of sorts) backfires.

Or worse. They put nice weapons on them.

The AI can design ships but does the AI upgrade pieces of its existing fleet?

How can you expect respect when you can't even spell?

There's such things as typos; or typing to fast to get 100% accuracy. And If you want to throw flame-barrells as well be my guest. I'm here to have a great time and nothing you say or do will ever change it Infact I find you kids/adults [whatever] amusing.

Special?
Contrary to "popular" belief,,most participants in the Special Olympics suffers from *physical* handicaps,,not mental ones.

10 years per game? All good on every game?

That would depend on the style of play,,would it not?
Myself,,I run huge galaxies without cheesing the starting positions.
That means I challenge my ability to adapt when getting stuck in the same corner as two other AI rather than hitting Ctrl-N to get a better position.
(Which was what happend in my first ever Metaverse game lol)

How can you expect respect when you can't even spell?

Being a Swede,,my knowledge of English naturally is poorer than my ability to write properly in Swedish. Does that mean I cannot gain respect?
If so,I shall immediatly revert to Swedish. It may be a bit hard for you to understand,,but at least I will be respected since I will avoid all language errors.

And if you'r both so upset about a AI being able to manage an economy then bloody-well come out with a sollution; because I too am all up for the game improving. Thanks.

Now,,in order to provide a solution,,one has to indentify the problem first.
(Unless of course you prefer the Bush/Cheeney/Rumfeld solution; making yourself a HUGE problem without correcting the one you set out to deal with).

nnullvfourkfournthree got troubled over a certain issue.
(AI accepting gifts that ruins the AI's economy)

That issue turned out to be caused by something completely different.
(The AI's inability to properly determin when the maintence costs becomes a problem and then take action)

The faulty thought of nnullvfourkfournthree was

pss. The whole point is i wanted this exploit removed

.
To THAT request,,I find Frogboy's reply

It's your game. If you want to ruin your enjoyment by doing that, that's certainly your right.

perfectly adequat.

However,,that does not imply that the topic never should have been brought up in the first place,,nor that the matured content and conclusions of the thread should be ignored by Stardock as an attempt to "diss" them.
(Regarding "diss",,or spelled out,,"disrespect": Everyone wants respect. Not everyone knows what that means.)

To sum up my personal thoughts:
* The AI could use a better routine for handling the expences.

* Too many whiners here.

* Those of you who want to flame,,go buy yourselves a can of petrol and a lighter.
You'll probably impress me more setting yourselves ablaze than with your imbecil and futile attempts of wittiness and insults.

Note to the Swede: Diving into American politics on a forum about non-political issues is a bad idea.

Duly noted (albeit it's International politics rather than just American).
Perhaps you can provide with a better example that is as well known yet less infected?

(Unless of course you prefer the Bush/Cheeney/Rumfeld solution; making yourself a HUGE problem without correcting the one you set out to deal with).

As much as I dislike the Bush Administration, their insane tactics and rational are _very_ useful against my opponents in GC2.

You Europeans are weak (That's right, the entire continent.) Believe it or not, some people are pretty good at the flame game.

their insane tactics and rational are _very_ useful against my opponents in GC2.

Going for the wrong target,,for the wrong reasons,,in order to ensure massive support for the *real* target,,while making dayly life less safe and generally complicate people's lives (ever tried to fly commercal recent days:p) a useful strategy?
Sorry,,but my weak European mind fails to see the sense of that.

Believe it or not, some people are pretty good at the flame game.

Unfortunatly,,you are not one of them.
Any idiot can throw curses around,,but it takes some degree of skill to actually insult someone.

Unfortunatly,,you are not one of them.

Are you sure about that? Are you asking for a fight? I just want to make sure so I have an ample defense when kryo and CariElf come looking for people to ban.

Any idiot can throw curses around,,but it takes some degree of skill to actually insult someone.

I thought you were an ok guy. I was warning you to stay on GC2 instead of American politics just to keep things clean.

I keep _wanting_ to believe that Europeans aren't a bunch of passive-aggressive headcases but they keep proving me wrong.

What curse did I throw at you? That you're weak? If that's a curse, maybe you are weak.

Only looked around,,noticing your reputation and what grounds it might have.
Things like "illiterate fraktard" and "loser" are not *that* uncommon.
None of them towards me,,which is the reason I kept the statment about flaming general rather than going against a specific person.

As for your view of Europeans,,I should point out that it makes as much sense bunching us all together into a homogene group as regarding everything from the polar escimoos down to the Latino states as a single entity.

Anyway,,while I do tend to be arrogant,,dominant,,knit-picking and not seldom far out in the blue,,I'm not passive-agressive (headcase? not sure... still waiting on the evaluation results from my psychiatrist) and was far as weaknesses are concerned,,they are directed towards women,,chocolate and computer hardware in that order.

truly amazing

As for your view of Europeans,,I should point out that it makes as much sense bunching us all together into a homogene group as regarding everything from the polar escimoos down to the Latino states as a single entity.

You do it for Americans period end of sentence

-nnullvfourkfournthree roflcopter

Only regarding wasps
Dont think most people here belive the gangstahoods and Chinatowns have any more in common with eachother than with dr Frasier in Boston.

Seriously though,,the European countries are far more diversed in both language and culture than the states of USA.
Simple truth is that a New Yorker have more in common with a Califorian than a Finn have with a French.

While correcting misconceptions,,the foremost one would be that those protesting against USA foregin policies have something against americans per se.
Prime example would be the invasion of Iraq,,where most people here saw the WMD-reasons for what they were; poorly underbuilt excuses to cover the real issues.
When Bush/Blair then proceeded to invade a soverign country,,against international treaties raticifed by the invading countries,,under false pretext that naturally caused a mistrust and general suspision.
That does NOT mean that avg. Joe is being blamed for anything (apart from electing an idiot perhaps) unless Joe starts to argument for what the administration has done.
Even so,,least here in the Nordic countries,,there is a separation of issue and person meaning that you can like a person while totally disagreeing with that person's belief and the other way around.

Now,,can we get back to the AI's incapabillity to handle it's maintence costs?

Now,,can we get back to the AI's incapabillity to handle it's maintence costs?

I can.

I sense that the AI will collapse at some point on my current gigantic map. Never played gigantic before. With all anomalies gone and my two remaining opponents at war with each other, I don't see how either will recover. If I give them a large or massive ship, it will end it for them.

Does the AI upgrade existing ships?

From my "Trojan" tests, no, it has not upgraded those. However, i was spamming them with massive amounts of ships, so it is possible they couldn't afford even the cheapest of upgrades.

Cool. What sizes?

Do you think it's better to spam lots of small ships or a few big ones.

I'm thinking a few big ones but I'd have to look at the purchase and maintenance relationships.

The AI could do a simple check to see if the maintenance for those gift ships would give them a negative balance sheet.

The AI could do a simple check to see if the maintenance for those gift ships would give them a negative balance sheet.

After a bunch of thought on this one in broken thought patterns/english (see my post responding to frogboy), I decided that it shouldn't decline the trade. As a few others have pointed out, the AI being capable of scrapping worthless ships for cash when having maintenance issues would be a better solution. This is especially true in the case where I was supplying a dying ally with ships when they are at war with a civ I have made peace with. I'm sure there are other legitimate cases where the AI would need to take an economic hurting to survive, so rejecting these trades flat out would be bad.

Cool. What sizes?

It's usually large or massive depending on what my miniaturization is at. Since I load them up with the weakest laser (researched by space weapons), they all build relatively fast. Faster than even tiny ships that are equipped to actually do battle.
I suppose you would produce slightly faster if you went with smaller models, but I like to be nice to my overclocked CPU seeing as it's already being pretty stressed out by this strategy in general.

Does the AI upgrade existing ships?

In other situations (i.e. when not bankrupt by ship maintenance) the AI definitely does upgrade existing ships, though it can take some time for them to do it.

Often an AI will have a mixture of weapon and defense types on it's ships. If you build a bunch of ships, all with the same type of weapon and defense, the AI will gradually change what it builds as well as update it's current ships to counteract your build. I use this as a strategy in most of my games. Once I have the AI with his ships in a single category of weapon and defense, I spend the few hundred thousand bc's needed to upgrade all my ships to counteract his weapons and defense in a single turn and then attack. The AI really has no chance.