Is it the AI or is it me?

AI tweaks or not

from GalCiv2 Forums

Played 4 games in ToA so far. Since I hadnt checked out the betas and had read so much about improved AI, I  decided to stick to Normal level to get familiar with the game mechanics. Played 3 on Medium maps and one on Large (Thalan, Drath, Altarian and Terran respectively).

I usually leave AI intelligence at random. Played the first 3 games on Medium with 5 others and then tried out the Large with 9 so that all of different AI types could be represented. The surprising thing is that I won all of these games easily. I cant recall winning so easily playing DA even on Normal. Just followed a simple formula of focusing heavily on research initially to get all the key econ/speed/few otherparts done quickly. Completely ignored any interaction with other AIs to begin with. Built lots of econ stuff to ensure that I stayed in the green. Then shifted to social/military stuff when others started to significantly militarise. By this time I found that I could be up with the best on military in a few turns. Nothing new or different. But the games turned out pretty easy. Am now going to raise the difficulty bar next game.

Have others found it different? Did I just get lucky? How does one figure if the AI has really been tweaked to make it more tough? Or is it that it has been tweaked to make it more 'fun' but not necessarily more hard to win against?

Would love to hear the views of the more experienced gamers and stardock on this.

4,621 views 3 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I usually leave AI intelligence at random.
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You may have gotten unlucky and they all rolled cakewalk in those games (or at least enough to let you get into the lead. Instead of putting them random, let them all play on Intelligent and see how the game feels.
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Hi!
I decided to stick to Normal level to get familiar with the game mechanics.
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I know what you've been thinking. I too stepped down one level of difficulty when I got DA. But it was not necessary. After you've played and won a game on "tough" or higher, is "normal" simply too easy, regardless of changes in game mechanics, because at "normal" AI doesn't use some of its "higher brain functions", and it also operates only at 75% of its capability (at least in DL it was so, I never bothered to recheck those lower levels for DA).

So go ahead with the difficulty level!

BR, Iztok
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Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I cant recall winning so easily playing DA even on Normal.
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One thing you might want to check is whether you played DA with "AIs use max CPU" turned on, and left it at the default setting (off) in TotA. Not sure whether this could make such a difference, but I won my first game rather easily too, and now I wonder whether this was due to me continuously overlooking the max CPU setting in TotA, which I had always set in DA.

Also, I agree with the others, playing with AI intelligence set to random is kind of an awkward testbed for AI strength. To get meaningful comparisons, you'd want to minimize random factors.