Poor AI - am SO dissapointed!!!!!

Greyfeather resists the urge to point out spelling and grammar mistakes.

All strategy games are easy on the fair level if you know what you're doing. Play Masochistic or higher, the AI looks a lot smarter when it actually has enough resources to compete.

I usually play on challenging and the AI is very smart when I play. There are almost always 3 ships escorting a transport. Granted they are usually smaller ships, but I cannot just hit them with any ship. They also react to my new ship changes within about 4 turns.

One thing that I am disappointed about in DA is that the AI seems to ignore extra engines. So far all ships have only had a move of 2.

Also, learn about grammar. Much much more smarter makes my head hurt.

admittedly the AI could be allot more potent if it escorted it's transports with powerful fleets, provided it has plenty of other fleets around. Otherwise the logistics penalty for a transport in a fleet would be a serious weakness.

Dude, play on a higher setting than challenging, try choosing only good and evil races (ai) to play against and play on a medium map.

or maybe you need a new CPU  

Make sure to check the "Force Max CPU" option. The AI performes much better with that set. If you have a dual core machine, it's a free feature. Otherwise, you'll just have a bit more time between turns.

Also, I've seen plenty of aggressive AIs (the drath in particular are fantastic at causing chaos), and I've been the victim of an absolutely brutal surprise attack by the Yor, where they decided to move about 20 fleets right into the middle of my fortifications prior to declaring war. Subtle? No. Effective? Yes.

I've never seen an unescorted transport in DA on "intelligent," period. I do play with "force max CPU usage," which may be why I suppose. If you find the AI too passive (which I do, on default settings) turn up "aggression" and it will cease to be.

Interestingly enough, I never noticed if the AI is escorting transports are not... my own strategy is not to escort them, and just keep them safe with speed and proximity to my war fleets. All those times that the AI sticks those crappy, entirely useless escorts alongside their transports, I wonder what the rational is, as they really aren't worth the trouble, unless I was attacking with similarily gimped ships.

I also don't escort my transports, they're too fast for a warship to catch anyway.

In my most recent game the Korath had a bunch of single un-escorted transports around that I shot down. This was on challenging level and max CPU usage. However, they did escort their spore ships, I hate those things.

Except when I'm Korath, in which case they are really cool.

I play on PAINFUL and set all the races to WARY with me at the start and play on medium map, common habitable planets, occassional planets per star and abundant stars, occassional anomolies. If you want a challenging and fair game this one will do it. You might be lucky to get 4-10 planets most, depends on your start area and what initial techs you take. I play a custom build and I still find the AI very challenging. Also use the enhanced CPU feature turned on.

You can't just play ONE or TWO games and automatically determine the AI suks. EVERY game is different and unique to that game and map and races. No two games are alike and the AI doesn't play the same way in every game. So, once you've played like 100 games then come back and tell us the AI suks cause of such n such.

100 games?? ah, ok just let me pick up the fone and ask Bill Murray if i can borrow his groundhog day for a couple of years, and then i'll give it back to him tomorrow!

Hey I can play 100 games. Why can't you?   

Probably because he has a job!   

Hi!

And life.

BR,  Iztok

I would be honored if you could point my grammar and spelling mistakes. English in not my native language so you would help me a lot in improving my english.

In any game the AI will "look smart" if it gets massive bonuses, thats not anything new.

About AI. I have enabled all AI options to make it smarter. Well I will try to enhance the agression of AI.
But it is annoying to change AI agression level in each race separatly. Whe Stardock can't make special button to change ALL AI agression level. It is true. When this is on 50 (default) game is boring, nothing happenes...

The post placed by Livonya at the start of this thread just about sums up his opinion of the AI quite well.....

Link to other thread

...not much different to what Orion66 has noted here.

BTW - I am often humbled when people post in English and then write that it is not their native language. Humbled in the context of me being soooo lazy in not bothering to have any other linguistic skills, and not being particularly good in the only one that I do use....!!!!

It was gratifying that Brad had noted in the above linked thread that there are aspects of the AI that will be addressed, I wish him the best of luck.

It is invaluable for the progression of this game that people like the Orion and Livonya continue to give Brad challenges to keep tweaking to make it even better.

common habitable planets, occassional planets per star and abundant stars, occassional anomolies

https://forums.galciv2.com/?aid=143692#1124430

Sweet. Would you pop in this thread and write your experience? I think that's just the kind of setting I was looking for!

Funny how he only plays on "INTELLIGENT" and whines.

I play mostly on Intelligent difficulty and think AI could be improved also. Am I a whiner too?

I think the AI would benefit if it incorporated the concept of an offensive task force. That is, it doesn't need to escort its transports, it just needs to make sure they end their turn on the same tile as a friendly battle fleet.

A possible composition for an offensive task force:

- 1 to 4 full-logistics battle fleets (enough to certainly defeat at least two full-logistics enemy fleets).

- 3 to 8 high-speed interceptors

- 12-20,0000 troops formed into maximum-logistics transport fleets

- 1 fast sensor ship

- 3 normal-speed sensor ships

- 1 constructors and 1 additional interceptor if distance to target planet exceeds fleet range.


Once formed, the task force moves as a single stack toward the target planet. The transports do not need specific escorts, because the entire fleet is an escort.

Each turn, the fast sensor ship moves first. It uses half it's movement in 'explore' mode. It uses the rest of it's movement to reform with the task force at the end of the turn.

Once the sensor ship has moved, the interceptors decide if there are any unarmed or very lightly armed targets within a single turn's movement. The interceptors will take out such targets of opportunity, but their main goal is to stick with the task force.

If there are some heavily-armed targets within 1 turn's movement of the taskforce, the battle fleets may engage them, provided that they will win and that this diversion won't delay their arrival at the target planet by more than 1 turn (moving directly away from your intended path would delay you 2 turns). This particular task force is for taking planets, so they don't chase anything they can't reach in one turn.

In any case, the battle fleets move and the transports and sensors end their turn on the same square as the battle fleets.

Upon arrival at the target planet, the battle fleets destroy any orbiting craft, then transports invade in maximum-logistics fleets. Battle fleets and transports attack from the same square.

Once the planet is captured, the task force detaches an interceptor and a normal-speed sensor ship to guard the planet. It may also detach a single combat fleet to guard the area, if the next planet is more than 10 or 12 squares away.

Once the fleet runs out of transports or its combat fleets are too depleted, it switches to guarding it's new aquisitions until a reinforcement task force of replacement combat ships, interceptors, sensors and loaded transports arrives.

It's not a subtle or creative strategy, but it will be hard to stop them from taking some of your planets unless you can take out the combat fleets.The AI's current strategy of using individual combat fleets to establish space superiority then sending transport takes a long time and is vulnerable to a low-powered but fairly agile fleet taking out the transports, whether escorted or not. The alternative practice of including a transport in a full-on combat fleet weakens the combat fleet, and a single transport is often not enough to take a planet.

These AI threads crack me up at times. No one ever accounts for the fact that while the human opponent gets better with every game they play the AI has to start from basically scratch every time. There is a reason there are a dozen difficulty settings in this game. Also I'd say pat yourself on the back for being able to beat the game on Tough. There are a lot of players on this forum that can't even do that on a regular basis. I know if I get a rough starting placement I'm hard pressed to beat the game on Tough and I consider myself to be pretty darn good at it.

I personally do not put transports into my combat fleets. I just make sure the enemy has no fleets that can intercept them as I move to attack. So I guess you can say I don't escort my transports either. Guess I'm as dumb as the AI .

Remember the AI only reacts to what it can *see*. It uses fog of war to great effect. If you don't believe me don't build the EoU and watch to see when a transport or enemy fleet pops out of no where and attacks your least defended planet. Also the AI tends, unless you changes its aggressive setting, to only pick fights it thinks it can win. If by the time the AI is really ready to start knocking heads you are so far out in front of it then it will not attack you. Sounds pretty smart to me.

Also each of the AIs plays the game differently. Some are more passive then others just by design. Try setting up a game where you are the only evil empire amongst all good AIs and see how aggressive they get.

Now do I think there is room for improvement? You bet. But knowing what I do about computer AI in general I'd say that the AI in GCII is far beyond what you get in most games.

That doesnt neccesary means the AI is good since the AI in other games are pretty dreadful. The AI in this game got some pretty huge holes, specially in managing its fleets during war.

If the devs somehow could fix those deficencies then the AI would be a really good opponent since it already is pretty good at economy/research. But for now, the only way I would lose a war against an AI is if he outnumbers me atleast two to one. And defeating someone when you has half military you have is not excactly a great achievment.

For what it's worth I agree there ought to be an across-the-board aggression setting available.