How about this one. The AI in my last game had 4 fleets in an enemy system, 3 fully loaded with war ships and one with a single escort (attack 2) and several unarmed transports. All of the enemy fleets and ships were destroyed except for a single military starbase with medium defenses. My jaw dropped when the AI attacked the starbase with the transport fleet, and was, of course, wiped out.

Oh yeah, and apparently the "spin control center" wonder, which makes ships around the hosting planet seem more powerful, is apparently so effective it even convinces the owning civilization that it's more powerful, encouraging aggression. Now that's some good PR.

it was over a year ago, and on either challenging or tough, but a race i was at war with kept a fleet parked next to one of my fully mined out resouces with zero combat ability. it was either weapons or econ or morale because if they'd taken it out, it would have made the war much harder.

later on (either on a higher difficulty or after a patch,) i was counting on a race doing the same thing. but, the bad guys ended up taking out like 7 of my stacked econ bases in two turns heh.

Just yesterday, early in game, me and the Iconians started in a section of space with much fewer stars then other civs, so i wanted to conquer them.

acouple fighters, 2 beam attack 0 defense, V fighters with 2 missle attack 1 beam defense.

They just sat at the planet, while my fleet was UPGRADING, and after they were done i wiped out new Iconia

Well, this was in Gal Civ II with no expansions, A minor declared war on EVERYONE. Needless to say, it got completely crushed. Well, I guess not everyone, it declared war with one person, and we all had alliances with one another, so, yeah.

Yea, hehe, minors are cannon fodder. I laugh when they declare war on me. Stupidist thing in my current game, Thalans declared war on me for no apparent reason while my military was about 10 times stronger. I wiped them out in about 3 turns. It's funny when they say they'll crush me like a bug with ships of 2 hit points halfway accross the map. I've also seen the AI put things like stock markets on 800% manufacturing bonus tiles, but as stated in the OP, this thread is not supposed to be about how they build planets.

In my current game I decided I wanted the Drath to attack the Korx. So I pay them to do just that. What I didn't realize is that there is this old generation Korx frigate sitting all alone half the galaxy from any other Korx ship or planet that must be a dire threat to the Drath's existance. They have sent every fleet they have on an intercept course for that frigate ignoring the entire rest of the Korx Civilization.   

In my first run-through of GalCiv2, the Korx declared war on me because I had no military. I was playing human, had great diplomacy, and had been focusing on research so I bought a peace treaty with a few techs. Later in the game, they colonized a planet that I wanted badly and that was too close to my other worlds for my liking. They refused to trade it at any cost, so I went to war long enough to take that world and made peace as that was all I wanted. They started accusing me of a tactic (which I am guilty of in GC1) of declaring war and making peace only long enough to reload my weapons.

It would be nice if the AI's could better understand what was going on in border skirmishes like this one. I don't generally like to go into all-out war with another civ, but I don't mind small military skirmishes over dearly wanted resources.

You can't really expect the AI to be understanding about your desire to just prune a little bit of their empire for your gain. Sorry Mr. AI, I just want a planet or two of yours, but I don't really want to FIGHT anyone, you know.

A lot of AI war declarations seem to be due to other AI manipulations, since it's not just players who can bribe AIs into stupid wars. The AIs are often bad about declaring, but it's not always due to AI faults. In my current game, on a medium map, it's obvious that AIs, especially the Drath, are instigating lots of war. It's pretty cool to see even if it is beyond annoying most of the time.

Even after all this time, the AIs will still send out unguarded suicidal transports right next to enemy ships. It's something that's been mentioned over and over. If they are guarded, the escort ships are usually instant fodder anyways. The AIs seem to totally ignore enemy ships when sending out transports.

Playing with tech trading disabled can be hit or miss. I had one such game where none of the 5 (tough) AIs on a large map ever researched factory techs, so none of them had more than basic factories, which severely stunted them, as I discovered once I started rolling over them. This was fairly late in the game where I had researched well beyond industrial sector level techs.

While I basically agree with the above there are some planet build combinations that just really don't make sense.

In my current DL v1.4x game I found a PQ3 (Wisp) with an Initial Colony and two Industrial Sectors but no Starport. In the same game I found a PQ5 with a Farm (on a 100% bonus tile no less) along with a VRC, the Initial Colony building, a Starport and a single Industrial Sector. The PQ5 cannot grow its pop beyond 4.5B so the farm and VRC were pretty useless unless the AI was intending to bus pop in from other planets. I suppose this intent was a possibility but at the time I captured the planet its pop was only 2.5B.

To me, neither of these makes any sense at all regardless of your perspective.

I also agree that the silly things an AI will occasionally do are not indicative of overall AI performance, which I think in this case is comparatively excellent.

The BIGGEST issue with the AI's is their inability to recognize a player's actual threat level as opposed to their military strength. I've had AI's laugh at me and threaten to crush me when I have twice the number of worlds, master trade and maxed trade routes, plus a large treasury. They need to recognize that economy and production lead to military strength.

What if the game calculated two new values like or similar to this:

[Threat Score] = ([Military]+[Economy]+[Production]+[Treasury)/4
[Allied Score] = [Target Race's Threat Score]+[Threat Score of Direct Allies]

What does everyone think of this? Would it help?

And in response...


I guess not, though it isn't so much the intention of pruning as of "why is there an influence starbase next to Earth?" or "did you actually expect to get away with colonizing Mars? MINE!"

The issue of contested territory is a classic problem that leads to warfare. If I own Martzia I and the Yor owns Martzia II when Martzia is right on our border, I think the AI should have a desire to take Martzia I and expect me to attack Martzia II. The level of those desires and expectations ought to be based on the value of those worlds. Or if the Yor own a world that is obviously in my territory, unless it is vital to them they should think of it as more acceptable for trade.

The Stupidest thing I have seen it do is with war. It doesnt look to see if i can invade a planet yet. That and it makes war and doesnt do ANY THING at ALL!

Oh yeah and that they make fun of me when I am the MOST powerful races. And also the smartest is when they worship me like a god. Just sayin'.

Oh, this human player has the highest research of all races, the best economy, the best industry and he's on the opposite corner of the map. But he has no military, let's declare war.

Yea, on a gigantic map, if a race from the other side declares war on you, it can be pretty much ignored. By the time they get any ships over to your side, you can easily bargain a peace treaty with them. Not a real threat.

I think it should be weighted something like this:

{[(military x 3) + (production x 2) + (economy) + (treasury)]/7} + [similarly calculated strength of allies]

Military strength would still be the most important single factor, but would also take other things into account.

Sentient species taste better...

Really? I'd prefer that they ignored those graphs entirely, since even in the best of situations it's misleading. At the very least, other factors like range, proximity of ships, offense vs defense capacity in both your militaries and the situation with military starbases/resources need to be considered, and if the AI goes to war based on a specific weakness, it needs to exploit that weakness ASAP!

Not sure if these would be the stupidest, but :

1) not bothering to build factories to get a planet developed.
2) completely terraforming a planet, and then just letting it rot.
3) forgetting to move ships.
4) attacking into certain death, when they could attack a massive transport fleet.
5) sending transports deep into my territory, when their battle fleets are being massacred.

Actually, these don't seem stupid anymore. They would only be stupid if the AI occasionally got them right. Probably the stupidest thing would be :

1) using rally points, and then trusting "auto attack", to plan a strategic strike on a human player...

Hey, I use auto-attack all the time!

I can't say I ever notice the AI doing absolutely moronic things, but I agree with many of the points in this thread about its inefficiency.

Although the Korath never building a single spore ship or transport during an entire game with super abilities on and them getting into several wars is probably one of the worst (or from my perspective, best)

They did it again, declaring war on me when my when my military is vastly stronger. This time it was the Arceans. They got all fired up about transports too close to their space. After I hammered on them for a few turns, they surrendered. I guess the AI doesn't value its life much.

The second week of a war (against me and no one else, DL), the Altarians removed their military resource starbase.
Thanks for the help guys!

Oh and bulding manufacturing sectors on Wisp but nothing else. Why does it do THAT. A starport might be of use

Very interesting thread. I wish more other games were critically analyzed like this. Too many forums succumb to the fallacy that criticism and complaints are evil...

Overall, I am very impressed with the AI. This is the best AI I've ever seen. In fact, it is one of the reasons I think GalCiv2 is one of the few truly innovative games (unlike the so-called "next-gen" titles).

However, the overall intelligence make the occasional flaws even more obvious. Much of what have been pointed out above is very true. Here are my additions:

1) Arceans went to war with me. Sent 3 fleets. I killed 1, but had to retreat. The remaining 2 reached an asteroid field with my unprotected mining bases... and turned back. I guess they were scared of my newly built military base, which was gadzillion miles away.

2) Erratic behavior in declaring wars. My best buddies, Korath, were in a distant corner of the map with a huge empty space between them and the rest of galaxy. They were constantly at war with at least 3 races. What the point, especially if the use super-slow ships? Also, sometimes they made peace with someone, and then went to war with the same empire (or the empire with them).

3) Not everyone liked Arceans. When I wen to war with them 2nd time, Drath and someone else gave me a couple of ships. The idea is nice, but those ships were SLOW, and they were on the other side of the map. Arrived just in time for my 3d war, thought. But that was way later.

4) Suicide attacks on economy star bases with fleets that could easily wipe my entire military out.

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Some suggestions. They would be quite difficult to implement, but I'll give the anyway.

1) Make AI to distinguish between different types of fleets. Some fleets should be fast. Other fleets should not. The lack of fast attack forces is definitely a big minus to AI strategy.

2) Make AI to distinguish between different types of wars. A war should be waged with some goal in mind, and that goal should be pursued continuously until it's no longer viable, or AI does not have any more resources.

a) Territory war. AI should try to capture and secure some conrete (i.e. useful to the AI) planets of the enemy empire. It should not try to wage wars on other planets, star bases or fleets.
Crippling war (when AI wants to retaliate). AI should target enemy's strategic points and easy targets. It should employ fast attack forces and avoid collision with major fleets or heavily defended star bases. It should destroy weak fleets, mines, unprotected bases. Capture/spore unprotected planet.
c) Total conquest war. AI wants to destroy the empire. Brings out all it can muster, engages in direct collisions with major fleets and star bases, tries to capture everything it can.
d) Reactive war. AI wants to keep other races from harming it's empire. Targets influence points and mines if influence is the problem. Targets military if it thinks someone is preparing for invasion. Makes appropriate demands in exchange for peace treaties. (I.e. give me this star base, or I'll destroy it anyway and do other bad stuff. Move away your fleet, or else. Destroy your star base...)
e) Support war. AI acts to help allies.

4) When AI has no goal or can't realistically complete it, it should not go to pointless wars across the galaxy.

Are you sure that someone else did not raid them, and kill it? Pirates, maybe? I have never seen an AI remove a resource SB for any reason (that did not involve trying to collect active incoming quantum warheads).

drrider

If any SB is armed, the AI counts it in its force calculations and planning as part of your military.

Its a great defensive tactic to make a resource SB that is on your fringe but sort of on a vector to a potential aggressor (