Gifted AI

Ericridge

Join Date 02/2012

+27

Gifted AI

So, I recently moved up from Normal to Gifted. Which is just a increase in one difficulty level.

No matter what I do, It feels like the AI can build their basic factories in 2-3 turns to my default 8 turns. This has consequence of them building fleets before the human player can. They're also farting out medium ships way before I can fart them out. This is hurting my economy. This results into all the AI around me except for pacifists ones, dowing on me. Just because I simply can't build infrastructure as quickly as they can. I will provide screenshots of my planets if you need to.

And then, I suspect they're cheating like hell on vision. I watch a 5 movement 1 Sensor range fleet of warships chase after my Survey with 4 movement and 8 vision deep inside my territory with my ideology that reduces vision/sensor of enemies inside my territory by 25%. By all accounts the enemy fleets chasing my fleets should be completely blind. This has proven to be not the case. I watched their incredible beeline so I am forced to conclude that they have vision of entire map.

I'm fine with the AI cheating, but, um, this is kind of overkill and embarrassing to see such obvious cheats. Not even mentioning that it isn't really fun at all to not have any fleets ready to go when the AI is ready to go. I don't like playing catchup. And I don't want to drop down back to normal because Normal AI don't have any fleets for me to have fun exploding.

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erischild

Join Date 01/2012

+136

Quoting Lord_of_Void,

reply 24

You can still have "difficulty" levels for the AI, but the highest difficulty should be the plain AI performing at its best. Giving bonuses to the enemy should really be a whole other option and this would really prevent the discussions about cheating AI altogether as well as result in endless options for AI difficulty.

We do not have the software technology to do this and you do not own the hardware technology it would take to make it happen. You can want it all for all you are worth, and many of us do, but it just doesn't work that way yet. The best that can be done is to cleverly simulate that effect. Developers should really never tell users about handicaps for either players or AI, just silently implement them as needed. People are going to kvetch about it anyway no matter what, even if there were no handicaps and they were shown the source code. Your problem is not that the AI gets bonuses; your problem is that you know that it is happening. That makes it a much less meaningful problem for others who understand and accept the concept of handicapping We obsess and complain about different things.

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Quoting erischild,

reply 22

As far as I know, this has been officially removed at all difficulty levels. I believe it is credited with actually optimizing the AI processing because the AI was trying to evaluate everything it saw all the time.

No, not really. That is what Frogboy said, but that is not what is happening.

There is a cheat command that allows you to see objects through the Fog of War, and this is what I think the AI is using. That would explain why at times it seems blind (no invasion unless in direct line of sight) and other times where you can see the AI make a B-line toward a good planet bypassing all other crap planets surrounded by the fow. Same goes for the anomalies. It knows where they are without the need to explore.

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erischild

Join Date 01/2012

+136

Quoting Falkoner,

reply 27

No, not really. That is what Frogboy said, but that is not what is happening.

Well if you know better than the Frog what the AI is actually doing, I certainly can't argue with that, can I? I know that people often find patterns in actions where the patterns don't really exist, just because we are wired that way. Obviously, that must not be the way things work in your case. However, I do believe that when you turn off the fog of war with the cheat command, you may be affecting all players. I see that as a possible explanation for the behavior you observe. Then again, you would know more about that than I do. Good luck convincing said Frog, though.

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Larsenex

Join Date 04/2009

+212

I would like to see the post from Frog stating that the ai plays on the same field regarding FOW. I am sure they have no FOW on Gifted and above.

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Quoting Larsenex,

reply 29

I would like to see the post from Frog stating that the ai plays on the same field regarding FOW. I am sure they have no FOW on Gifted and above.

Agree on both points. FrogBoy?

Also a note of the FOW console command:

** not 100% sure it still works this way, but it used to:

If you use it, the AI sees everything also. If you wanted to use it to check out the map and NOT benefit the AI you need to:

save> FOW cheat on> (look) > FOW cheat off> reload your save

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The only way I can compete on godlike is by timing the pragmatic ideology trait perfectly. You want to hit it at bout turn 50. That's about as far as I can normally push it before drengins or yor declare war. Spend the next 30 turns minimum just smashing out tech and economy. At turn 30 of enforced peace, start researching military tech. At turn 40-45, swap to building out the biggest military you can get at the tech level you have achieved by roughly turn 90. You really shouldn't build a single military ship before turn 90 using this strat.

That should give you about 10-15 turns of fleet building before an inevitable DoW and maybe 20-25 before their ships arrive. That should be enough to win.

If you get DoW'd before turn 50 then... That sucks

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