Strong and Weak AI players: A Survey

From what I've seen, I'd divide them like this, in roughly this order:


Very Strong:

Drengin
Krynn
Terrans


Strong:

Thalans
Korath


Solid:

Yor
Torians
Iconians
Arceans*


McDrengin Happy Meals:

Altarians
Drath
Korx



*Note: The Arceans have always been spectacularly unimpressive when they've been in a game - even worse than the Altarians, in some ways - but REALLY good at surviving. Any AI as weak as them gets beaten up by their super ability, while any of the major powers have bigger, more threatening fish to fry.

It's interesting to see how many differences there are in our respective lists. Maybe if enough folks post I can generate some kind of averaged consensus at the end, it might even constitute useful feedback to SD.

Very Strong:
Krynn
Mandalorians (Using Korath AI)
Altarians

Strong:
Terran Alliance
Iconian Refuge

Unimpressive:
Arceans
Yor

Early Loosers:
Drengin

For whatever reason, the Drengin in my games always end up on the losing end of the stick. In the game before my current one, the Drengin were the first civ to fall. In my current game they've kept up but only because I haven't gone to war with them, and oddly, the Drengin haven't started any wars I haven't paid them to. Even when I haven't gone to war with them myself, it seems they other civs beat up on them until they're so weak they're easy pickings. I guess being evil doesn't always work out.

i've found how well different AIs do depends a great deal on a number of factors. i'll add those in the end, but here's my list:

very strong:
Drengin
Altarians
Krynn

good, not great:
Torians
Korath
Yor

mediocre/ hit-or-miss
Arceans
Drath
Thalans

usually pretty bad:
Korx
Iconians

i don't know about the Terrans because i haven't played against them more than once. based on that game i'd rank them as good, not great. i've found in some cases i get the best results when i pick their bonus abilities for them. i've played games where i give the Korx and/or Iconians a +20% or +30% boost to their economic resources, and they still do poorly. they might establish large empires, but they turn quickly to, ahem, a "McDrengin happy meal" (nice line Legacy).

the Arceans do very well with a mild boost to their economy and their aggression turned up just a bit. the Thalans seem able to establish a large empire early on, but it's hit-or-miss as to whether they manage it well or not. the Altarians seem to do well because of their super ability; i'd be interested to see how well they'd do with a different one, or with fewer good players.

the Krynn seem very good to me. they tend to play similarly to me: they wait patiently while they establish their civilization across the board.

i can't really tell much difference between the drengin and korath AIs, except that the korath are a little more war-hungry.

as i mentioned, some of the AIs seem to do a lot better if i pick their bonuses for them. the torians do well if i buy them the +20% planet quality bonus.

i'd be very interested to see how the different AIs would play in more controlled circumstances. i did several test games on this for DL, controling and regularizing number of planets, boarders, etc.

Yeah, I'd love to be able to correlate AI performance to the various environmental variables as well, but there's so damn many. I'm just trying to get a rough survey with this thread, in the hopes that maybe all those variables will roughly average out across the player base. Even if not, any clear trends that may turn up here probably have at least some grain truth behind them.

I'm going to agree with your assessment so far. Believe me, I wanted to prove you wrong but couldn't!   

In the current game I'm playing:

Strong:
Thalans (flipping the whole damn universe with unfluence, have largest military, but crappy tech)
Korx (Surprising, but there you have it)
Korath (Second strongest military)
Arceans

Solid:
Drengin (Handled themselves well, but got a nasty influence/military combo from the Thalans
Altarians (Crappy military handling, but damn nice tech... too bad for them that my inferior ships rolled them over)

Weak:
Torians
Drath (dear god... at the time of their destruction, they were still using particle beams while everyone else was hammering them with phasors)

Starstriker: Have you played enough games to give us a sort of overall, general feel for how the enemy AI's do in your game? Not that your current experience (especially a strong Dominion of Korx) isn't interesting.

My experience is somewhat limited but I'll add what I can if it helps any (or not ).

The Korath and Krynn are at the top tier in my games.
The Drath and Krox in the middle.

I don't have a good feel for the rest so I won't add them.

Sincerely
Kelly

The strongest AI players varry, depending on who has the closest borders to me, however, as a general rule, the Arceans and Dregins (yes Dregins) usually fall early to other AI players before I'm ready to go on the offensive

Here are my experiences:

Altarians: game dominating if they win the colony rush. They seem to hold up well most times even if they are the smallest civ.

Drengin: always seem to be strong in my games. The are good at the colony rush and if they end up in a dominating position, you are in for a very exciting game.

Korath: seem to be more or less similar to Drengin, but I need more experience with them.

Arcean: they seem to come up short on the colony rush more often than not, but if they take the lead, they are almost unstoppable. I had one game where they had so much influence they were flipping Yor planets left and right.

Yor: middle of the road. Never dominating or never terrible in my experience.

Terrans: again middle of the road, but probably more upwardly mobile than the Yor.

Korx: pushovers even if they do win the colony rush. Their military never seems to be very good.

Iconians: sort of like the Korx, only not quite as bad across the board.

Torians: they can and probably will win the colony rush unless they get a lousy starting position. Still, not much competition even if they are the biggest.

Drath: my last game with them they went all the way to the mid game without building a single offensive ship. They would build empty hulls with nothing on them, but there wasn't a single weapon that could do damage anywhere. I quit that game at about that point.

Krynn: no experience yet

this is true; i found the best way to deal with it was through custom maps. but that's one thing i really need a GUI for, and no map editors, AFAIK, have been updated for DA (the only additions are asteroids and planet environments).

To be honest I find that its mainly based on proximity to my starting position that determines AI survivablity. The closer the AI is to me the quicker it seems to get wiped out (go figure). I am not much for research or culture games. Like most I prefer a good toe to toe battle.

For midgame type stats (before I really get rolling on attacks) I find that there is no particular race that seems dominant. Survivablity seems more dependent on position then a race specific advantage. The race that has a better start position with respect to habitable planets and placement of other AI's will last longer.

A human player might be able to overcome a poor start position by changing the style of his play but the AI is not that adaptable.

Here is my 2 cents - I am relying on my GAL Civ 2 experience since I always use custom opponents in DA

Superstars
* Altarian
* Arcrean

Has a Shot
* Thalan
* Iconian
* Torian

Thanks for coming out
* Terran
* Drath

Wet Noodle
* Dregin
* Yor
* Korx

I have noticed that generally the Evil races usually get gutted pretty quickly, usually becuase they just can't stand each other enough to form alliances.

Dano

To those of you that use a lot of custom opponents, do you notice any trends associated with the specific race AI you're using? For that matter, how does the "generic" one compare?

Thanks to everyone for all the feedback, this is interesting stuff.

Brad said he is going to write some documentation explaining briefly the differences between the different AIs. I have tried to keep the aggressive personalities in line with Superwarrior, and the crafty ones in line with Super Diplomat and Manipulator, but I haven't really seen a trend. Again, even with Custom races my evil creations tend to get stomped, and the good races do very well due their tendency to hug each other and forge alliances. Of course I always try to make sure that there are a decent number of Good, Evil and Neutral races. If there was only one Good race I am sure they would get slaughtered as well.

Dano

i didn't even realize there's a generic one... oh man, there goes my weekend.



i'm more of a backseat player most of the time. i agree that evil does worse when it's evenly matched with good players, especially normal tech settings. slower tech settings tend to help the evil players more, because the goody-goodies often haven't even researched alliances by the time the first wars break out. disabling surrenders seems to balance this out somewhat.

Wow, I sudennly love this post.

I decided to keep track on my last game:
I generally run medium sized galaxies (little time)
I play a custom race.

Strongest:

Drengin
Korath

I've never had Drengin and Korath in the same game. It's either one or the other and they dominate.

Strong:

Kyrnn
Yor (I was pretty involved with them, might have upped their strength.)

Oddly, the Krynn usually have get the crap beat out of them in many of my games. Ususally by the Korath or Drengin. I rate them strong because they are never wiped out. Never surrendered, Never completely taken over. Usually down to a system or two, and somehow, they hold. It's really odd.

Medium: (Survived to end game, but still not a big player)
Terran

Weakest:
Korx (early surrender)
Drath (wiped out by me + Yor)
Thalan (taken over by Korath)

I have to say, in memory, the Torians and Thalans tend to be the causalties in my games.

Wild cards:

Altarians
Iconians

I haven't had enough games with them (random oppenents)to really notice a trend. They seem to either do really well or to do really bad.

In most games I've played, if the Terrans have a reasonable start, they are a serious threat. The Terrans and the Drengin seem to be the strongest from my point of view.

I concur. The Mandalorians I created I figured would be perfect for an alliance with the Drengin...but it never happens. While they seldom declare war on each other, they can't seem to stop themselves from declaring war on everyone else (although in my current game, the Drengin didn't declare war an any but minor civs until I paid them to go after the Altarians and Terrans).

And...the Mandalorians just might have won the current game without the galactic plague hitting them. They just withered away down to nothing, and tried to invade worlds with less than 100b troops per troop ship--needless to say, they didn't capture many worlds.

The other big problem they ran into was they over extended themselves. They had a superpowered navy, but couldn't afford to replace the losses, while the other civs were churning out cheap low tech ships and slowly but surely wearing them down. Capturing a planet just for the tech steal was critical in getting tech that had pairity with theirs.

I tried to fix thier economy problem by taking lower levels of some of the military abilities and putting it into economy and morale ability bonuses, but it didn't seem to make a difference. When I captured their planets, it was obvious they just didn't have the infrastructure to support the advanced tech on their ships. I wonder if they didn't start those wars out of desperation because they were running out of money? Granted they did take alot of worlds, and very fast, and if not for that plague....

Very intresting thread. Glad to see I'm not the only one with (oddly) wimpy Drengin.

I'II break it down old school for youes:

Strong:
Altarians (Break Alliance mega event toppers)
Arcanan (Really good invaders)
Yor (If they get there foot in)
Talan (Ditto)
Torian (Super breeders)

Soild:
Icadonian (Allies early with the Darth and becomes strong though the allaince)
Darth (Ditto)

Rag Dolls:
Knox (Everyone gangs up on them early in the game)
Drengin (Econamy crashes early in the game, never really gets back up)
Terren (Doesn't expand enough)
Yor (If they don't get there foot in)
Talan (Ditto)

I'm only on my 3rd game of Dread Lords, but so far I have to say:

Torian - Strong simply they multiply faster than rabbits. They were in two of my three games.

Drengin - Extremely weak. They may start off building a strong fleet, but their weak economy eventually becomes thier downfall. In the two games the Dregin were in their empire simply became a non-factor by the middle of the game. At that point I befriended them even though my alignment is good so that when they surrender, they would surrender to me.

Altarians - Okay. They can hold their own and maybe expand a little bit, but they haven't been a serious threat.

Thalan - Mediocre. No a serious threat at all and peaceful towards most races except the Drengin.

Arcean - Weak military and weak economy.

Iconian - Mediocre. Same as Thalan.

------------

All my games are played on a huge map with abundant habitable planets and 5 random races. 1st game was set to normal difficulty. Afterwards I set the diffculty to challanging.

Vinraith, you'll love this:

did another game:
medium galaxy, few planets (pretty much just home systems), 6 races (and then me)

Strongest:
Korx

Middle:
Torian
Yor
Drengin

Weakest:
Me
Altarian
Thalan


The availability of resources really made a huge difference, I think. With few planets, the Korx could use thier trade techs to outclass everybody economically The trading the Korx with with me was 4 times what my colonies were netting.

That's just trippy denyasis. I'm beginning to wonder if there really is any pattern to be pulled out of this, or whether it's strictly a matter of setup and environmental variables.

Of course this is further confused by the fact that it may be the racial abilities, rather than the AI, that's resulting in great performance under certain circumstances.

Ah to have the time to study this properly.

to be honest, I think the major variable is Galaxy compsoition. You could prolly generalize it down to galaxy size as many people seem to have more abundant resources selected. Staring location is the most random, and will probably fall out as you get more data from players. Trying to separate the AI personality from the race I think would be too difficult, but general rankings of the how the different races perform per galaxy size, is probably possible.

In my last post, I had a medium galaxy that was starved for resources. I believe the korx were able to dominate because all the races were limited to two or three planets. In early game, With my two planets I was netting around 10bc a turn. The rest of my money came from trade with the korx, 44bc a turn. Same with the other races. If you wanted to expand, finance a war, defend your empire, you had to be in with the korx. Trade was the economy.

Now, the Korx advantage was diminished severely as teh game progressed, as I and other races researched trade techs. We weren't dependant on teh korx trading with us anymore. But, that inital econ advantage was enough for the Korx to grab a planet from the Thalan and Torian and cause a few asteroids to flip.