HydroAC

Join Date 05/2003

What? No military?

I’ve played a number games with ToA, mostly at Painful level. ToA is great, but one item in particular is puzzling: why do some of the AI’s refuse to build a military? In essentially all of the 6 games I’ve taken to the end one or more of the AIs has either build no military or did so very late (and when they were already dead). The key offenders here I’ve noticed are the Drath and Altarians, and sometimes the Thalian.

Now, this isn’t because they’re small or have no research. In my last game the Thalians out colonized me and got a juicy PQ26 world at the start. Their research was impressive, as was their manufacturing and economy. But they had NO military by 2231, and after that they build a few ships with only defense and no offense. Their neighbors the Korath and Drengin declared war (I took them out for my buddies), and later the Yor swarmed in and sliced the Thalians apart.

In the two games the Drath have been present they’ve expanded poorly, had no military, and I put them out of my misery. The Altarians expand OK and have a good research rate, but not having a military means they get eaten alive.

Am I alone in noticing this?

Hydro

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it might have to do with the AI value of the techs. If there are too many non-military techs that have a high AI value and not enough military techs with high AI value, then the AI will keep on researching non-military techs...so maybe it's a balancing issue in those tech trees.

-Dave

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You are not alone in noticing this at all. It was awesome the first time I fought an opponent with shields but no weapon. I could not believe it

Not sure if they'll fix it, but chances are low since 1.95 has just come out. Just play games against races besides Altarians Drath, etc. I noticed the terrans do it too though. Another option if you have tech trading turned on is to gift or trade techs to the races with no military in the interest of good game play. Sadly, I play with tech trading off so I have just had to restart a few games

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Mistralok1

Join Date 05/2006

+22

What version are you playing? Up through 1.91 there was an incorrect research cost penalty modifier. As you (or the AI) made your way up the tree, the research costs would balloon to an unreasonable rate. The AI was never able to compensate for this.

In the games that I have played, I noticed that as long as the galaxy was at peace, the AI(s) tended not to focus too much on military. If this went on long enough for the tech costs to increase, then by the time they got around to researching the military techs in earnest it was too late. They could no longer keep up. Perhaps this is what you are noticing.

This issue was addressed in the 1.92 Alpha patch, or now the 1.95 if you prefer. Patch your game up and see what happens. You should be pleased.

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I've experienced the lack of military well before the tech balloon. And to have shields but no weapon tech is pretty unlikely since the early weapons are so cheap. I believe at times they even had weapon techs just didn't build any ships. And it's not like I invaded with DoomRay ships and they had Laser I ships, they had NO ships at all. Or, the one time the Terrans I think had small hull ships with only defenses.

So I doubt very much a revamping to the tech rate will make them build a military but we never know.

The easiest thing to do is to just gift the AI some techs and ships. Or try customizing several races and their tech trees to play against. Or, roll the dice and hope for some good enemies.

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Thalans need planets, then they will become a war machine fielding massive fleets. Drath have been militarized in my games. Korx and Altarians are consistently exposed, and Terrans militarize too late; they put up fake defenders first.

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I have had no problem yet with demilitarized AI. So far, not a single race has skipped the armed development stage. And the Terrans are actually quite potent in comparison to many of the other races... I've seen this complaint around the forum though, so I'm sure you're not alone.

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I noticed that some of the AI refuses to colonize, but it is so random.

The arceans in my game in an IMMENSE MAP, had 1 colony only after 3 years. They simply were doing nothing till some of the big races declared war on them, and they surrendered.

The drenging seems to be very conversative with expanding too, and some races just blatently refuse to colonize sometimes.

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I've experienced the lack of military well before the tech balloon.

I've had games (pre-1.95) where some AIs didn't have a military, as well, so I don't doubt the existence of your problem, but the OP, at least, is not "experiencing the lack of military well before the tech balloon."

He said that he was having problems with non-military AI by the year 2231.

When BoogieBac was studying the problems with tech inflation, I sent him saves of the only two games I had ever played of GalCiv. Both were at year 2234, and one had seen a tech cost increase of 684%, and the other by 927%!!!

So you see, the inflation kicked in early on, and went up FAST.

So far I haven't seen the same passive AI problems with 1.95 (and the alpha), so hopefully that's an end to the problem.

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I'm playing on 1.95 also, and the Altarians still outright refuse to build a military. I can't figure out why either.

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Just found this old topic.

I noticed this same problem in almost every game in TA 2.02 I've played.

One of the AIs, strangely often the one with the most research/influence/population just seems to totaly neglect weapons in the first year or so.

Then, all of a sudden their military rating explodes.

Often this race (so far mostly Altarians and Thalans) have advanced very far into the planetary invasion tree and seem to try and wage their wars simply by sending transports to enemy worlds.

I'm playing only on average difficulty (yes I'm a noob ), so thats probably the reason why they don't get torn to pieces by the other races.

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