AI Flaws spoiling my experience

Heh. Last night, while I was playing the Dread Lords campaign in Dark Avatar, the Altairians kept building influence starbases next to my capital.

It's always the small issues we notice, isn't it?

I think one of the major flaws right now (especially with all the new and often incompatable improvements in TA) is that AIs never revisit their planet construction, even after having conquered another world.

I do agree on the improvements. I was noticing a lot of underused planets last night - like a PQ 15 Yor world with three manufacturing improvements, a spaceport, and no research... and staying that way for a couple of game-years.

One (and I suspect rare) problem I had with the AI on a recent game was the pirate mega event occuring in the early phase (just after the colony rush, still low level weapons tech generally around in a huge gal with max no. of races). The pirates weapon tech was much higher than all the other races and the pirates were very numerous and widespread. Pirates attacked all ships and bases (but not planets) and within a relatively few turns they had pretty much wiped out all the ships from all the races in the game. I maxed out on research to develop some seious wepons tech to take on the pirates.

However, various race AIs continued to build ships which were promptly wiped out by the pirates. After a short period various healthy races started surrending (seemingly for no reason) so that I was soon left with less than half the number of races I had started with - diminishing a potentially interesting poliical dimension to a game with lots of opponents.

Why? Well as far as I can tell the AI needs to be tweaked if possible for this special situation. Some of the races were at war at the time of the mega event and whilst the state of war continued after the event there was no fighting or invading as the pirates wiped out any ships or fleets before they could act. The various races' planets were not under direct threat (the pirates didn't invade). I can therefore only deduce that the AI alogorithms 'tripped' into surrender because they were at war, had no navy and had lost a number of recent battles (to pirates, whenever they built a new ship). I also suspect that because all the races had so few ships that any race that was able to build a few more ships would appear 'relatively' strong to the AI that it pushed it over the numerical value required for the race to surrender.

Anyway, overall it is a mildly annoying quirk triggered by a specific early mega event. It certainly won't stop me playing!

Gee... That sounds eerily like DL or DA. Why can't the AI revisit it's planets?

Funny thing is i always seem to have more spies than the AI. I guess it depends on your economic ability.

I find that the AI does a pretty good job at using the bonus tiles. But since this thread is going the way of mentioning AI short comings I thought i'd add something in the name of constructive criticism. I see many times that the AI will build a research coordinatiopn center where there are no research buldings. And i cant stand conquoring a planet that has like 4 morale buildings on it. good-grief i have to tear them all down.

Could be worse, I tend to influence-flip planets with 4 farms - last game I flipped a planet that had TWO maxed farms on 300% bonus tiles! That planet shortly suffered some inforced population control   

They also like to build power plants without factories.

I share your frustration and I coded the AI.

It's some sort of bug as the AI literlaly has all kinds of checks to prevent it from doing precisely what you ran into.  And yet, we still get these reports. Drives me crazy.

Yeah frogboy can't code

No really - the AI is amazing but like all things - the more code you throw at it the harder it is to get the AI to do what you want.

Perhaps one cannot have AI without AS (Artificial Stupidity)? Just the nature of the universe. :NOTSURE: 

Galciv is great but...
*crying*

Some very annoying things in DA/TA no one mentioned here:

- useless AI Invasion with 0-100 people instead of 1000.

- useless attacks with 1 small ship against fleets/huge ship. Even if the ai has bigger fleets nearby. --> Recycling old ships?!

- poorly secured starbases

- Suicide attacks with many fleets on one starbase. AI is losing planets but still will attack my poor starbase.

only TA(?), small maps:
- The ai builds x miners until planet orbit is full.
--> Than they declare war on me, and cant build ships on most planets... good work!

on huge/gigantic maps:
- AI has ships on all planets but doesnt use them. My fleet is smaller then AI's but he's losing ships one by one on his planets...
But the AI still thinks that i will lose and won't give up.
They should think about which planet is *safe* and which is a planet at front. Someone has to tell the Ai that ships in orbits arent that usefull if i have no transports nearby ...

- declaring war without any big fleet/invasion transports ready for attack. --> 20+ weeks war without any ship flying.
Just because i had no ships and he had some few... awww
Sometimes they declare war and i lose a planet each week, but sometimes nothing happens...ZzzZzzZzzZzZZ

Since TA:
AI builds foreign (bad) factories, even if they have their own, better factories, they wont upgrade them. Slave Pits instead of advanced factories or industrialsectors...awwwww

...
!I LOVE GOOGLE TRANSLATE!
...

Could there be a side issue causing these sort of problems? (like it's making good decisions, but just not executing them and/or losing track somehow?)

To me, bad planetary builds are very very common. Could you consider adding more debug code so this could get wrung out?

Sorry for going OT, but Juy you wouldent happen to be german? I used to play another online game with a nice german chap named Juy you see.

You may need some hardcoded rules for the AI. I know you hate doing those, it's against your philosophy- but, certain things that make absolutely zero chance should not happen.

lol, yea it's me. Everything concerning turn based sci-fi strategy you will run into me i am afraid.

i just want to say that my all time favorite was an AI planet with about 8 manufacturing centers, the initial colony building, and thats it... not even a starbase, and no unused tiles left. so all those factories were building ... nothing...

EDIT: nm got it sorted.

Well bonus tiles can be a hinderence. Yes, they supply a nice bonus to you, but the upkeep costs are also amplified...that has killed me many times before, so maybe it isn't economically viable for the AI to build the select building on that tile yet, and is using something it can sustain in the meantime.

Since the AI doesn't tear down and rebuild improvements at all, I severely doubt that's the case.

Ya, the AI may not have the money to utilize those tiles but they should build the correct improvement anyway on them. I am assuming the AI knows how to turn up and down production compacity.

Sorry for OT but;

My first computer was an 800XL with 64K. ($300)

My first 4X game was "Millenium 2.2". I still play that once in a while. (Which has a remake BTW. http://public.twistedgem.com/download/Millennium.zip)

Just thought I'd share.

I'm fairly new with a few tough+ gigantic games behind me. It seems the AI does ok when it has the upper hand militarily or technologically. As soon as you go against the top dog and defeat them all other galcivs seem to just roll over and play dead the rest of the game. Off the top of my head without knowing whats under the hood it seems;

-Don't hand over techs on capture of planets but decrease reseach time of that tech by a certain percentage.

-Population growth should be much slower overall thereby creating a greater timeframe for other galcivs to counteract/collude against any given galcivs rapid domination.

-Science, military, social production rates of a planet should be limited proportionaly to its population and not just buildings and overall financing.

-Similarly aligned galcivs should be more readily available to actively collude in warfare to prevent domination. I've seem many times where others pop onto the viewer saying we should provide assistance when the dominant galciv is at war yet I never see AI warships being offered to others even when the AI suggesting the idea has many fleets of ships sitting around.

-Ships created, depending on your conceptual understanding, should be protected from attack. Either they are created on the planetary surface or material if ferried to the starport. 'Launch Ship' should put the ship into orbit, outside of the starport or manufacturing facility on planet surface therby capable of being attacked as it is now. This way fleets could be prepared for launch. One huge hull with speed 25+ is sufficient to deprive many planets of their production as the AI seems to think small fighters in orbit are what it needs.

Overall fun game until you reach the break even point, then it all falls into tedium or whether somehow metaverse strokes you the right way in wanting to build thousands of unecessary ships for a "score".