AI Turns into the Town Drooling Idiot?

Just finished a really disappointing game. It didnt take to long because the AI just didnt seem to kick in and I kept playing just to see if it ever would.

My settings were Huge/Abundant Everything/Painfull with no restrictions on the AI intel/No Tech Trading/Max AI and Minor Races/Normal Research

I had a good initial setup and progressed quickly through the colony rush stage. I noticed that the AI just was not expanding. I kept playing but it was obvious that something was not kicking in. Occasionally you will find that one AI or another doesnt seem to do much but this was pretty much all the AI's were sitting on their thumbs

They were not generating ships for expansion or doing any but the very basic builds on planets.

Just for kicks I did a econ treaty with one of the AI's and checked it later on. It was storing all the profits from what I could tell. It had a bankroll of close to 200000 but yet didnt have more then one or two ships. No combat just a couple mining ships.

I kept playing just to see what would happen rolling through the turns without really doing that much except sending out colony ships. Even when I started attacking the various AI's they would not make the first fighter to combat me. After a year or so I finally saw the AI produce a defender that had 0's straigh across the board. To give you an idea I was already with black hole technology, max warp, logistics, etc.

I doublechecked my settings as I was thinking I might have set it up for cakewalk by mistake but its at painfull.

Anyone else see this sort of effect?





5,515 views 6 replies
Reply #1 Top
Check on the Stats page in the Foreign Policy screen, and see what it says the AIs' intelligences are.
Reply #2 Top
yes it does sound like the ai's came up rather stupid
Reply #3 Top
I read in another post that the AI doesn't seem to operate right with tech trading off. I haven't tried it myself yet.
Reply #4 Top
I remember there used to be a problem with the AI's not initializing. They would just sit there. Is that still happening to anyone or could this be what happened?
Reply #5 Top
I had the same problem when playing on Painful: some of the AIs didn't expand, stockpiled cash, didn't improve their planets. Brad helpfully mentioned that the AI probably wasn't what I thought it was. When I checked the non-expanding AI it turned out (surprise!) that he was right - it was set to Fool.

It seems that I had fiddled with the AI settings and that these changes had stuck when I set up the next game.

As has already been mentioned, go to Diplomacy and check under Report. You might be as surprised as I was...

Hydro
Reply #6 Top
Well, I´m an newbie to GalCiv II (played a lot of GalCiv I, though) so cannot say that much but even with my limited experience I have to say that I´m quite dissapointed in how A.I is handling matters. Expecially warfare.

Me too play with no tech-trading. (as I think that tech-trading only ends up with extreme micromanagement were I have to check available techs from possibly A.I-trading partners every turn so that no other races gets the benefit of trading the techs witch I also might have available for trading. Like tech-wh*ring in the civilization-game series - exept for the fact that it seem to be a million time worse in Galciv II because there is a million time more techs to trade)

Anyhow,
I play at Though-level and my biggest problem seems to be the A.I stupid warfare.
Why does the A.I put weapons on Transports, constructors etc. and then even attack my warships with those when they could easily run away from me!
Then there of course is the matter of that A.I don´t seem to try to achieve anything when fighting. It may declare war but then sends seemingly random ships at random destinations whitout really even trying to achieve anything. 

While there are so many enjoyable moments when playing this great game, at times though I tend to get a chill down my neck ... like if something is reminding me of the nightmare of MOO3 ... the universe that played itself whitout really needing any human input at all.. If the A.I cannot attack correctly, then there really is no game at all much like in MOO3.



This far, thus, the A.I has not impressed me.
It did so in GC I but not how it stands now in this game.
Need to play some more, though, in order to evaluate the A.I more accurately.