I agree with this. Range, like diplomacy, is too cheap as it stands.

@ Jasamcarl

Again, I'm not talking about any changes to tactical control. I'm talking about some fairly simple strategic changes (which the AI may already be doing to some extent) and the removal of a rather trivial handicap that is giving the human player an unnecessary advantage.

For example:
If a player wants to move a ship to point x, he right clicks on the location and the ship immediately makes a move, setting a waypoint as well.
If an AI wants to do the same thing, they set a waypoint, but only MOVE the next turn.

If the player just lets his ship move along the waypoint from that point on, him and the AI will arrive at the same time, but there's a crucial advantage: the player moves/attacks on the first turn. This makes a huge difference in short range manuevers.

Worse yet, if the player selects the fleet and right clicks on the target every turn, his ship will get there a turn FASTER than the AI ship will.

The problem seems quite trivial, and its really a no brainer to fix this. Its a cheap way to get rid of a number of tactical exploits.

I understand that the AI is "supposed" to make mistakes at lower levels, so maybe that's the problem. But maybe the people complaining about the AI are just the best players.

I only play at tough or higher myself. I'm not one of the people who goes and tries to win games at masochistic, but I'm never playing on difficulty levels where the AI is hobbled in any way.

Really, diplomacy and tech trade make this game's difficulty a joke. I'd recommend never trading for tech if you want an actual challenge.

Another weak point.

I dont agree that the AI would need humanlike intuition for this to work.

If the AI is not your ally and if the AI detects a fleet of X strength (including atleast one transport) at distance Y, or closer, inside his space (influence colors) then the AI will warn you and start to move some ships towards his affected planets.

Next turn if they are still at distance Y, or closer, war is declared and the fleet is intercepted. Since it was you as a player who violated his space then it is you who get a diplomatic penalty hit for this aggression.

This is already partly in the game as the AI will declare war if you have transports close enough to his planets. So what this would do is just expanding that so it works more effectively.

This system is not perfect as it can still be abused if you are allied with the targeted AI empire but that is already the case for the transport war declaration so thats not different from how it currently is. And this is just a base idea that you can build on.

For example since the AI doesnt seem to bother with sensors and patrols he would probably never see your fleet coming, so maybe an addition would be to change the AI behaviour so it does use sensors and patrols. The AI as a whole doesnt seem to have a defensive strategy at all so maybe its time to start implement some basic strategies such as patrols and a portion of his fleet set to protects its space around his planets.

The more I read posts about fixing the AI to deal with surprise attacks, the more I like CivIV's borders. Of course, with with high ship speed you can do a lot of damage without crossing the border before declaring war. The AI almost seems to play as if this was a rule anyway. An who cares if there are "no borders in space". This is hardly a realistic game. The ideas about various penalties are interesting, but making the game even a little more complicated is just going to make things harder for the AI in the end.

My biggest grip with the AI's strategy in DL is how the AI is so passive in defense its territory. From what I have been reading in this thread it doesn't improve in this regard.

I usually play on tough, and my strategy is actually a little different. Note that I don't plan on taking over the AI in a timely fashion, or an agressive players, however it's easy to keep the AI off balance:

+ The AI doesn't seem to have the concept of intercepting (or rarely) neither it know how to post guard and patrol. Like someone already said, it seems there is a waypoint system for the AI's ship, once it leaves the planet it seems to have a set destination/target in mind and do very little improvising.


+ This makes attacking their planet is an extremely easy task. The number of ships in orbit is limited so usually it's a no brainer who is going to win an orbital fight. The only way for a defending force to match an attacking force is to have multiple fleets doing intercepting, or at least, patrol the territory.


+ My playing style is with limited number, highly sotisphicated fleets ... and techniquelly, I'm not very good at budget management. So in term of financial - expansion I'm usually behind the tough AI. However like I said, it's fairly easy to throw the AI off balance. You don't need to conquer and HOLD planets to win. After I conquer the planet, I either ransom it back or trade it to other factions for money or tech (planets are valuable merchandise ) AFTER I destroyed all the infractructure that I can.


--> So I don't have to strecht my force to defend, have a nice bounty, leave the mess to whoever received the planet to clean up, and just imagine the cost and time it will take to rebuild a fairly high advance planet. Not to mention it's quite a bit hit to the AI economy as well, just 4 or 5 planets take over like that can easily put a damper on its budget. It's something like just wait for the AI to earn the money then go in and steal it. If they decide to chase then I just fall back to my border and with the defense line of Military base, their loss is usually around 1:5 or 1:10 ratio.



ANd like I said, all of this is so easy to do because the AI's incompetency at defending their world.

Another thing that someone already mentioned a ways back... human players will tend to go from one generation of ship design to the next in spurts of technology, sometimes even totally turning off production in order to rapidly research new weapon, defense, miniturization, engine, and hull techs. This means that a human will rapidly catch up if he finds himself under attack by a technologically superior opponent, and will pull ahead if he was even with them. The basic strategy is:

1)Research a whole bunch of warship oriented techs at once, as fast as possible
2)Design new warship
3)Switch spending to all military and watch the fireworks