Spore Ship AI weakness

Yeah the AI should treat them as troopships as they have the same effect on the defender (loss of colony).

Actually, they should be MORE jumpy about it than troopships. Troop ships can be occasionally unsuccessful, and usually ARE (unless the player has a vast advantage in troop quality), but spore ships WILL crush an undefended planet. when they see a spore ship, especially when unescorted, they should be scrambling whatever they have to hit it in time. If, for example, a planet has two defenders or more, it could scramble one of the defenders to hit the spore ship. Maybe even build planet based interceptors, with engines to allow them to hit transports and spore ships that would normally be sitting just out of their move range to keep them safe from such attacks...

Speaking of defenders, why does the AI even bother anymore? They should just defend their planets with normal combat ships, as warships don't have engines very often anymore... the prime difference between them and defenders!

Yes Actually they are a lot more dangerous than Troop Transports.You control a planet and make it toxic, at the beginning it is really powerful.
I don't know if it depends from the fact that AI just think too much expanding, but now Spore Ships is just a huge military advantage.

What diffiuclty and map size are you playing on?

If you play on smaller maps, the AI can't really do anything about a spore rush no matter how high it is set (the case is same in pretty much any game where rushing is possible).

The idea that the AI can rush-buy a cheap tiny ship when it sees an approaching invasion holds true regardless of map size or whether you have spore. That's what a human would do. Although, a human would recognize if such a move is pointless as well (i.e. you have several nearby undefended planets and you can't rush-buy ships for ALL of them, or the other guy has a strong ship nearby that would only take your ship out as soon as you bought it).

Lets not forget the turn delay in seeing that ship in orbit. If you see the spore ship only once it's within a single weeks range of the colony ship, all you'll do is give a free tiny hull to the invaders.

An empty hull is no deterrent to spore rushing, and many users complained about the AI doing it to begin with (thinking it was a bug that the AI deployed unarmed defenders), so the AI no longer does it.

I can have armed spore ships with 4 or 5 speed ready to go around the 12th week of the game anyway, so it doesn't make much difference--unless they have armed ships in time they can't stop it.

Another weakness I have seen in the AI using Spore ships is that it tends to rely to heavily on them ... i.e. it grabs a whole bunch of planets with spore ships but doesn't follow them up with actual transports. So the AI winds up with a bunch of planets all with zero population.

Dano

That's odd. I'm in a game with the Korath now and I'm not sure it has ever used one. The Altarians are their neighbors so they may have used one or two early on, but the few worlds that changed hands that I know of were the Altarians taking Korath planets. The Korath declared war on the Altarians early, and I got the popup asking if I wanted to declare war on the Korath since I was playing good. That was kind of the plan in the game setup--me and the Altarians working against the Korath and Korx. So, I've been pounding the hell out of them for about a hundred turns, but haven't seen a single spore ship.

If those low population planets were the entirety of your opposition, thats kind of a moot point, ain't it?

Also, I've seen the Torians build colony ships to "rienforce" a low population planet under foreign influence, though I don't know if other civs also do this.

I'm playing on a Large Map at Tough Difficulty.

IMO at this point the best solution isn't to make AI better understanding Spore Ships, but making Spore Weapons Tech a lot more costly.
At the beginning i was able to research Spore Weapons in 35 turns and i'm sure a lot of people have done better than me, so i was free to gasate all my unarmed neighbours.
The tech is probably the most powerful in the game so why not making its cost 5-6 times higher? Based on my early DA experience Spore Ships are unbalanced it's like having a weaker Terror Star at the beginning of the game, while in the middle-end game they are perfectly balanced and a really good feature.Personally also in the middle-end game i preferred building Spore Ships than Transports considering that this weapons make my planets more populated,my economy slightly better and all planet toxics.Spore Weapons are a tech more for mid game than early game where they can be counterbalanced and Ai should be better able to defend from them.

Does Spore Weapons tech have any prerequisites? I would prefer to give it more prerequisites than to just radically increase it's cost. Maybe hang it somewhere off the planetary invasion line?

Spore is supposed to be the Korath's super ability. If you nerf it too much w/ cost or prerequisites, it'll no longer be super. It's supposed to be powerful, just like the others' super abilities. Like if you spore the Altarians, you are now at war with every good civilization in the game.

I do think the AI could improve Spore defense to be more human-like, but the AI *does* already create defenders with 0 weapons, even in DA Gold. I'm dealing with that right now. Like if you saw a move-3 Spore ship and it was 4 parsecs away, alone, you would rush-buy a tiny hull, weapons or not.

Spore Weapons are a powerful Super-Ability also in end game.The simple fact that you can make toxic worlds and erase the entire population of a planet without losing a single soldier is simply huge.
Since GC2 was released rush strategies have been always a winning strategy because AI doesn't build too much armed ships in initial stages, now with Korath it is simply easy to erase entire civilizations.In my first game with this civ i had destroyed 2 big civs in 100 turns, building just some armed ships and only Spore Weapons.
Based on my experience they aren't game breaking when other civs have some ships to defend themselves but at the beginning it is too cheesy as Korath to destroy other civs with Spores.Spore Weapons is a tech so powerful that its more fit for a mid game at the beginning it's just like having Terror Stars of GC1 which are not available to the other civs.

In the end game I'm usually able to invade with few losses anyway. I just get all the soldiering techs and build 3-billion-troop advanced transports, and use info warfare. Often I actually gain population from invading.

One drawback of Spore rush is that it can wreck your economy, though, although not nearly as bad as Planetary Invasion rush. I am a bit disturbed, though, how it can completely nullify the Drengin's soldiering advantage.

What I would propose is to make Spore an invasion tactic (maybe an evil-only one). It is, after all, a form of Gas Warfare. You invade with a transport, take no losses, the world becomes toxic. But that just doesn't strike me as a Super Ability--although that would still be much better than Super Spy.

Super ability or no,like it or no, sporeships are nerf-bait. Its essentially an end-game ability availiable far too soon.( does anyone think that being able to crank out planet-killing/planet-converting spore ships, independant of population 12 turns into a sandbox game sounds quite right?). Personally, Id bury it under a lot more pre-req techs in the tech tree, to ensure by the time anyone gets it, theyre still going to have to fight their way to a planet.(beyond slapping a single beam on a sporeship to kill any "placeholder" ships). It seems to me, that thematically, it should be availiable at the end of the planetary invasion tree (after shock troops), or at some point earlier as a branch, if that is too severe.

And yes, sporeships should have a big red "Kill me NOW!" target painted on them by the AI, as should troop ships, as the two most dangerous ship types in the game....to the extent of ignoring enemy fleets to get to them. If this is already the case in the game, I have not yet seen it. Im still sniping far too many unescorted lone troop/spore ships in the game as well, although the AI has shown some improvement in this area.

Just a couple of specific gripes, overall DA is awesome!


Thanks!

Actually, maybe a better idea would be to seperate the sporeship abilites into achievable milestones, so as to nerf, but remain fair in relation to some of the other races passive, "always on" bonuses.


Maybe the first milstone could just be the ability to convert any planet into the eco-type friendly to your race with a cheap, spammable, ship module...forcing opposing civ to reseach the colony tech you start the game with to expand, or reducing their production on occupied plaents to zero if they dont have it. Maybe you even start the game with it.

And then the military application of it that 1 shot kills occupied planets without concern for reducing population, but also lets you instantly claim the planet as a troop module would, could be the second milestone...perhaps as an offshoot somewhere in the planetary invasion tree.


Just thinking out loud. All super abilites are not created equal, to be sure, but Im tired of hearing Kryo talk about beating maps in 20 turns or so with Spore cheese.

Like it's actually something good.
This other game I played years ago had a Virus tech that would affect not only civilian pop, but also any teleports made to and from that planet, spreading the virus. There are no teleports in this game obviously, but maybe it could be a way to quarantine planets instead of outright "conquering" them. Also, that game had a level based techtree, and if you attacked a planet with level X Virus, the owner of the planet would have to research that same level to nullify the attack. It was a potent weapon against low pop growth races.
Maybe a quarantined planet could become an independent planet or something, and could only be conquered again by someone with an appropriate "spore" tech.

Slow it down with some pre-reqs (even just make them basic stuff that is generally researched anyway) to buy time for the AI to put up a minimal defence.

(Never played DA yet, getting it tommorow though )
From what I hear, it seems a little too powerful to completely wipe out a planet. My opinion is that it should be changed to something less powerful but still useful, maybe like poisoning the planet, and instead of killing off the entire population, kill off a percent each turn for a certain amount of turns (maybe 5 or so) and then the toxins are removed from the air. This could make it less powerful early game which is where I hear the most complaints, and make it more useful late game because not only does it make invasion easier without losing your own troops, but you could also try to target planets you aren't going to take yet so they could make less money.

Compared to other superabilities Spore Ships are not overpowered; for example playing as Altarians everytime someone attacked me i had Torians and Drath helping me due to Super Organizer Super Ability, when a Drath is in one of my game i always have someone declaring war on me because Drath wanted to.
What is bad of Spore Ship SA is that you can gasate planets with AI unable to defend itself, simply research Spore Weapons then maximize your military production and you have Spore Ships ready to give you all your neighboring planets, the only limit is your economy!
When AIs in mid game have a good quantity of Ships ,the Spore Ships remain really powerful but at least gasating planets isn't just a formality.

I find spore ships interesting, but certainly not overpowering. You still need space-superiority to use them, and when was the last time you lost a war when you had space-superiority? All they allow you to do is eat an empire quickly, once its defenses have been stripped.

To me, the most overpowered ability is Super Diplomacy, at least when I use it. The game is not difficult at all. Before I had Super Diplomacy I could barely win on two levels below 'Intelligent'. Now I am slaughtering the AI on 'Intelligent'.
This is not a complaint, just an observation. Its damn fun playing the ultimate puppetmaster.

Dano

I think the Spore Ship AI problem isn't so much that the AI doesn't adequately defend against it, it's that the Korath AI doesn't adequately take advantage of it.

Each super ability can be used as "cheese" depending on your play style. Well maybe not super spy but anyway.



Like Entropy suggested, what about adding a lower cost prereq ability for the early game and make the current ability more time consuming to research. How about have the early tech reduce the soldiering ability of the planet and/or reduce the population by 50%. It that isn't useful enough in the early game it could reduce or stop population growth and/or production for a set amount of turns.