Hi!

It's not just that simple. Empire-wide 21% approval can mean some planets at 30%, some planets at 15%. Not all planets have the same morale bonuses and maluses.

BR, Iztok

Izto, that is why I wrote 21%-minimum. That meant that every planet should have at least 21%. I wanted to write it Matlab-code-like, but that would have been more confusing than what I wrote.

Pff. Transports have to land on your worlds to use information warfare. When was the last time an AI managed to land a trasnport on one of your worlds, and if so, what are you doing wrong?

To this day, all the way from DL 1.0, the single biggest factor that renders the AI's a non-threat in invasions, is that they don't reliably escort their transports.

What I wouldn't give for code that would tell the AI to, I dunno, even just fleet the damn transports with an escort ship or two.

If the AI has a better military than you, you can still in 90% of cases get a small ship with one gun and a bunch of engines and have it dodge enemy ships and blast thier transports.

Don't forget that the higher your approval rating the more influence power you can wield(ie larger border, and the respect of other cultures)

Morning,

I'm still on 1.51 and I notice the AIs doing this ALL the time.... so ???? to why you haven't seen it. Hell, late game, they really start getting smart about it - using Med hulled ships to protect their transports/etc.

I'm with Neural. By the time wars and invasions become the norm in my games (I work the diplomacy to delay them as long as possible), it is almost impossible to find an enemy transport that is not fleeted, usually with 2-3 of the enemy's current 2nd strongest ship. The Thanlans love to escort with friggin' battleships!

Now, many times (though not always) that force will show an icon of a transport, even when it is fairly heavily escorted.

drrider

I too see AI transports escorted, not too well but at least they try. My games dont seem to last long enough for the AI 's to get better ships for escort duty or have enough ships to spare for it. One day i'll move beyond large galaxies and then maybe i'll see it.

In fact im usually very bad at escorting them. But i dont really build/launch until the area is secure and i havea few ships in the area. Especially to take out the ship the AI builds just as mmy transport gets there. One reason is that i sometimes have much btter engines on my transposrts since theres extra hull space and the escorts will just slow them down.

Back on topic, i'm so glad that i read this thread. i've been trying to keep my moral at like 50% or higher. I didn't realize that i could go down to 41%. All the cash i've lost...

At what moral level will you get that red sad face? and when will your planet revolt, if thats what doe happen?

I am in the same poor state myself. To me, this is total cheese! But once learned...

Can someone tell me if this is truely the case, tha t a counter espionage center with its 40% morale boost will utilize a moral bonus tile if thats where its placed?


And if so, will a stock exchange use an influence bonus tile if its build on one?

As far as I know, yes.

Population growth rate to tax rate should scale evenly and not "step wise". I.E., your pop growth rate improves by 1% for every 1% lowered tax rate rather than forcing you to get to a magic tax rate to then get a sudden population growth bonus. When trying to double my pop growth rate, I find it rediculous that there is such a jump from 99% to 100% approval rate in terms of population growth.

That is a humerous game inconsistency: That the 1% difference between 99% approval and 100% approval, would result in twice as much sex or tourism or "whatever happens in the galciv 2 world with the term "population growth".

Yes, although a Counter-Espionage Center only gives a 20% morale boost; it's not as good morale-wise as a virtual reality center. The Stock Exchange does also get the influence bonus if you put it on the corresponding tile.

I'm jealous. I wish I was playing with your version of the game and actually had to be afraid of enemy invasion by a technoligically superior force, and wasn't just "wack a moling" transports as they came in unescorted and defenseless, all game long. Maybe I just beat my large maps too soon before this "magical" period when the AI all of a sudden gets smart about it. Maybe something about my gamestyle keeps them from doing it. It may just be that the AI isn't smart enough to build sensor ships like players do, and cant make good advance decisions about ship movements.

I'm not saying Ive never seen it happen, I just said theyre not reliable(almost never) about doing it, and the few(rare) times Ive seen it happen, its seemed more accidental than deliberate (they were grouped for one turn, the next turn they split up when the fleet found something to attack).


[Edit] One qualifier I'll state here, is that maybe this has been completely fixed in 1.8. I haven't played 1.8, and likely won't with TotA on the horizon. The last games I played were in 1.7 beta, which had some broken AI issues, which perhaps didn't give me an accurate picture of the game. Up through version 1.6 of the game, the AI never landed on my worlds.


I currently see no reason to ever be afraid of the AI in a war. They are not smart enough to take your planets. In the last 20 games Ive played, over the last year, they have never once managed to land an invasion force on one of my worlds, and I seldom bother to even guard my worlds...most(90-95%) I leave defensless, with a single token outdated ship somewhere in the system to kill transports. They can only kill ships, and if you dont give them any ships to kill, they cant do anything but make faces at you from orbit. I play on large maps with abundant worlds, masochistic mostly, occasionally obscene, always conquest, so it's not like they don't have a chance...


I see it as the single biggest flaw in the game( the otherwise great game), and feel like it reduces us to "pretending" the AI can ever really be a threat, and playing on the top 3 difficulty settings where the AI can simply overwhelm us with bonuses, or attack us before we have any ships capable of defending. The AI, quite simply, is a "paper tiger", and any AI tweaks that dont go to solving this issue first, seem sort of pointless after a while.


The only thing the AI can possibly do to you (unless you let them do something else), is blow up replaceable starbases (if you consider them useful enough to build them, but that is for another thread) or attack tradeships(if you consider them useful enough to build, but that is for another thread). Your fleets can be kept out of harms way, and they can't do anything to a planet without transports. Sooner or later theyll simply get bored and you can get a treaty. On the highest difficulties, they could potentially build trasports so fast(engine wise) they get around your defender I suppose, or invade you before you get your sensor ships up and "sneak" up on you ( I had this happen to me once in Dread Lords), but generally, early game diplomacy keeps this from happening.


It may be that this issue is simply more difficult to address than it would seem. What do I know about programming? I'm sure Stardock are all very smart individuals, and they would do something about it if they could. In which case I would say the current invasion system needs scrapped, and some system where enemy fleets can be a direct threat to planets, brought in (orbital bombardment, anyone?)

Come to think of it, maybe it's the fact that I leave my worlds unguarded that keeps the AI from sending their transports with fleets to my worlds. Maybe they don't see any need to send a fleet to a "defenseless" world, and therefore send their invasion force off there to get jacked by my roving defensive ships.

Could it be that simple?

I would add one more. On larger maps, the AI doesn't build anywhere near enough transports in the first place. Once you take out the first wave, all you will see is one here and there. Also, I've seen them put 200+ attack on a transport, which is completely wasteful...You can't build many transports when they are that expensive. I have, occasionally, seen the AI build 12+ move transports though. Those do have a chance of hitting one of my worlds.

Isn't the AI just a series of If-Then statements? Once you learn all of the exact If-then statements the AI is playing under, you can win!!

Example:
If human player is using transport unescorted then attack with nearest small frigate.

If the AI always does this, then you can trick it by forcing the ship to come to your transport, then you can assualt the planet unimpeded.

I know this is a gross over-simplification, but is AI just a whole crap load of If-Then statments such that it makes "decisions" (if you can call it that), but is ultimately bound to its programming?

Are we just hyper-advanced AI ourselves? Do we just have a near infintie series of If-then statements (our genetic code) programmed into us? Are we mere robots of nature?

AI doesn't get bored. It doesn't need rest. It doesn't need "fun". The AI will not stiop until you or it is dead (most likely it)!!!   

If a war goes on long enough without much action, you can pick up a treaty pretty easy. I've actually "fallen out of war" back up to "cool" relations without even signing a treaty on a particulalry long, stagnant war.

You're discussing philosophy, but you're not accurately describing the game at hand.

Again another If-then statement:

If war goes beyond X weeks then offer cease fire if (human player) gives 200 BC and difficulty < masochistic.

I think it is indeed that simple, because I almost never waste time leaving planets defended, and I find it very easy to pick off un escorted transports also.

Well i guess you can say its ALL a bunch of if-then staements in a way, but with each "then" comes another long list of "if's". And its not always the same, sometimes the AI will ask for peace and sometimes they will stick around yuntil they are dead and other times they'll surrender. SO theres more to it then just figuring out how the AI will respond to every "if". The variables are too many to ever do that.


NBow do humans respond to if-then statement too. In a way we do. If i do this i'll be in trouble.. etc. Except that we have the ability to do what is not logiocal and what can give us an undesireable "then".

In the interests of fairness, I would to revisit my point about defenseless troop carriers. IN the game of 1.8b I'm playing now, attacking a developed civilization, the AI is indeed "escorting" transports far more often against me than they were. 1.7's broken AI must have convinced me that it hadn't been addressed to any significant degree.

However, they still come in unescorted frequently, and when they are escorted its by those largely ineffectual "escort" craft (probably specifically designated to be their escorts), which are so gimpy, they might as well be unescorted.

Unless an AI is so fast that they can get by your sensor nets and to your planet in a single turn, they will never be a threat to take away a player's planet if they don’t come in as part of a full attack fleet of the AI's best ships.


If getting the Transports to come in fleets is too tough from an AI programming perspective (which at this point in the game's development, we have to assume is the case) the whole system should probably be scrapped so that troops can be transported on non-disposable regular attack craft, or that regular capitol ships can be a direct threat to planetary population (orbital bombardment). It's the only way the AI is ever going to be a real threat in a military situation.

I love when i see those "escorts" with attack values of ZERO.

Should the guidelines of 21% 41% and 100% approval still be followed in the latest version of DA?