In my current game as the Dominion of Korx the AI players keep trying to invade and bully me because my military is weak and my economy is strong and they think I'm easy pickings. They keep forgetting that I am allied with the Drengin, whose military is strongest. The Drengin love me. I provide a large portion of their income through trade and economic treaties. My research labs are superior to their own, and every weapon tech I research goes straight to them. Finally, the reason my military is so weak is because I'm selling my highly advanced warships to the green monkeys. They are the Luca Brasi to my Don Corleone.

So far, my Sicilain enforcers have taught the Iconians the error of their ways, and the Krynn are next. The Arceans are starting to gear up to attack me, so once the Krynn war winds down, I think I'll thumb my nose at those big scaly neanderthals by trade embargoing their 12-foot-tall asses.

Stupidest thing the AI does?

They try to beat me!!! Muahahahahahaha!

Other than that foolish disconnect from reality, I have seen the AI start wars many times and do absolutely nothing for months. Even when declaring war on a minor, the AI will sometimes take more than a year to just line up a small warfleet to take out the defenders and pull in a few transports to take over the planet.

It doesn't seem to prepare for war by building up an invasion force beforehand, and it doesn't understand the principle of concentration of force at all.




Spore. When you absolutely, positively got to kill every motherfrakker in the galaxy. Accept no substitutes.

I'd have to say that the place the AIs seem weakest is in their war declarations, where they tend to be ill prepared to end the war fast or pick a fight with an opponent they can't realistically destroy.

In fact, the only AIs I've seen pull off effective military manuevers are the Yor and Arceans (though I've heard that the Korath are pretty good at following their fleets with spore ships). The Arceans concentrate their fleets well, and the Yor are the only ones I've seen pull a sneak attack. Even so, the places they excel at are often negated by what they aren't bothering with.

One of the most common things is the "sleeping giant" scenario mentioned above, where they'll attack a civ but give them months to do research and start pumping out ships that turn the war into a very one sided affair. Between quick buying necessary warships (if you're swimming in cash) or simply putting every tax dollar into building a navy, an empire can build up a defense long before the first shot is fired. Thats just poor strategy on the AI's part. If they are going to invade, they need to be taking planets QUICKLY and putting the pressure on their opponent.

The other flaw I often see is a poor choice in who they declare war on! Sometimes it's declaring war on a civ thats on the other side of the galaxy from them, where they'll never get an invasion force in time. Other times, they're biting off more than they can chew and fighting on more fronts than they should based on the fact that their military power is higher than any one opponents. The worst offense is declaring war on civilisations with powerful friends, and inadvertantly sending the galaxy into a world war 1 esque clash of alliances (which really sours things up if one of the civs you have to declare war on is a major trading partner or at the other end of a treaty).

There are also instances where the AI doesn't use war when it would benefit them. For instance, if the Drengin have the highest military power yet is fighting too many opponents to survive against, that would be an ideal time for the weaker civs to band together and maybe get a slice of the Drengin empire. Instead, though, they look at comparative military strength WITHOUT taking the fact that the Drengin are on the run into account. This also happens when a civilisations military is all focused into defenders and military starbases... sure, they'd be tough to attack, but why would you FEAR a military power that can't project itself beyond it's own borders?

The military ratings (and the AI reliance on those numbers) is mostly at fault. Those numbers don't tell you much, since a swarm of tiny, weak ships (like super dominator corvettes) can usually just be plowed through by stronger ships that have armour, yet they might boost a rating HIGHER than the ships that would destroy them. The rating doesn't take transport capacity into account, or the types of weapons/defenses being used, or how much of that power can be negated simply by taking out a feew choice starbases.

Yep, thats another area where the AI ignores alliances. Having a super organizer in the game always brings tons of chaos in. The AIs aren't very savvy with the political aspect.

The worst thing I ever saw it do:

In the beggining of the game, the Iconians and I (Terrans) were buddies in a corner of the galaxy. They had some of the best worlds around, but I had managed to grab most of them.

They had mars, since I didn't bothered with it.

They had a massive fleet amassed near Mars (about 30 fighters), and it was obvious war would be declared soon. I was gathering my little fleet, seeing that the beautiful 15 fighters composing my fleet wasn't going to cut it against their Mars fleet and the other 30 they had at their homeworld.

I had the technological edge, however. And began the construction of the first Medium-sized combat vessel in the Galaxy. It had powerful defences against their fighters, but it was, like, 70 turns away.

Here is the stupidity:

The computer upgraded ALL their Martian fleet at the same time! 3 Turns they were sitting duck!! I sold all my techs to everybody in the galaxy, got ennough money out of it to buy 4 Corvette, and managed to wipe them all in a single turn, 2 weeks later.

Turning the whole competition into a stupid showdown of 1-hitpoints fleets VS Heavy shielded corvette..

Yeah, I think we're all in consensus; The AI's military strategy is simply lacking, and downright stupid sometimes. AI needs to:

A/ Rethink ship design, balancing firepower and speed/effective range

B/ Do a more complete evaluation of other civs before they go to war, including economic and manufacturing strength, soldiering and invasion capacity, as well as alliances and the possibility of multiple fronts.

C/ Send ships in advance before declaring war, being swift and decisive.

in DL when a planet the AI is attacking gets conquored or garrisoned, transports that were in transit to that planet get stuck in space and wait to be destroyed.

Does that still happen in DA?

In my current game, the Drath have about 10 planets. All their starports have 9 miners and 1 troop transport. They're up to something.

Wow, so many responses.

I played so more, and yes the A.I. does a bad bad job about declaring wars. I was playing as the Thalans and the Earth decided that I looked too weak, and for once I was tempted to agree.

A few Battleships gave me that impression while I was still muddling with Frigates.

But here's the stupid part (apart for the no blitz action). The Corruption mega-event had stroke a few weeks earlier (didn't came off during the rest of the game). For those who don't know what that do, it lower tax returns by 25% and give a bonus to trade cash flow.

So I was a little shaken already since I usually don't invest too much into trade, another reason why I feared the Terrans.

Thing is, when the Terran decleared war, their whole economy came crashing down, hard. Their whole production and research rating went down to zero flat and they were broke.

I simply walked over them while, avoiding those few battleships, and was well on the way to crush them when jagged knife hit the fan and went off with 11 of my worlds.

Asked and got peace then.

Didn't look at their sources of income before deciding to attack it seem.

Arguably the first point is actually desparate, and I think exists to keep the game from being over too quick. Figure that they see you winning, don't like you, and figure it's now or never, knock me out.

Number 3 is just begging for scripting yet another sarcastic post to the AI. Like "Human, you must think me an idiot AI in a computer game to fall for such a simple trick. I have my eyes on you now...."

Sometimes I think this kind of thing is the game mechanics trying to move things along a little. On a good number of occasions I get the feeling that some events / wars are taking place merely to "mark time" waiting for me to get on with it - because in those instances I look back and realise I could have attacked them earlier with less pain. ie the war forced on me was one I should have had earlier had I spotted the opportunity.

Cant really adequately describe it - but if you look at many events / instances from the point of view of game balance and keeping the game moving, its surprising what you turn up. Now, when I see what seems to be a silly event I tend to immediately think "ok, what did I miss"; sure enough, its sitting there staring me in the face.

Another example - the pop up most have seen - minor civ has nicked all techs from (whoever) and will trade for a star system. Tried trading? not a chance, you could offer multiple star systems, - no go. However, get in there and take the minor civ, the techs along with it. Lets not disect that one too much, the point is I believe many instances are game mechanics, and often help you along/point out what you should have spotted earlier.

There's a danger of falling into a trap of "conspiracy theory gone mad" of course, and its certainly not true in all cases, but enough to make me suspicious and thoughtfull from a different direction/mindset when a daft event/action/instance occurs.

Regards
Zy

Another example of the behaviour I described in reply 21. Its very possible its the game mechanics waiting / hinting you should be doing something. Whether or not thats correct thinking I dont know, but I found when I looked at that kind of thing with a different mindset (aka post 21), I realised I had missed many opportunities in the past, and my game improved immeasurably because of it.

Regards
Zy

Oh, I've got a new one:

Frittering away a substantial technological advantage by placing that cheap, bulky armour onto your ships. A drengin frigate with photon torpedoes and that generation 0 armour is comical.

In general, when given technologies from different weapon types that they want to switch to, the AIs will make exceedingly bad choices as to which components to put on. I'm sorry, but even if your opponents are fielding zero point armour, replacing a couple of your black hole guns with particles beams is an exceedingly bad idea...