GalCiv AI: Beta 3E - how is it feeling?

from Stardock Forums
One of the quieter changes in beta 3E which you may have noticed based on looking at the stats is that the AI is playing the exact same game you are. I.e. it's not cheating (other than the plot dictated planetary exploration which is counter balanced by not having the AI build colony ships via the purchase mechanism on lower AI settings).

Obviously, the first question is - are you being challenged? The Drengin AI is currently the only one of the major AIs with the updated AI engine and it does need tweaks still as..well it's based on my strategy and I'm finding flaws in my own strategy. ;)

I'm hoping to do a few things in the next builds:
1) Put some data into the technology tree so that it is more intelligent in what it chooses.

2) Make sure it researches the techs in the right path (i.e. it's not researching communication theory for instance).

Now, I hope you guys understand one of the downsides of having a non-cheating AI - that there are sometimes when even a very intelligent AI will lose given the right circumstances. Even the best of players will lose if things are stacked against him or her. The Drengin don't always win since they might get stuck in a corner surrounded by other AI players.

The AI also has one thing it still needs to handle - it doesn't handle those random events you get (i.e. it just doesn't get events). I'll be trying to get that into beta 4.

Hopefully the diplomacy along with the AI's general foreign policy has gotten somewhat cleaner. I am...worried that one of the imposed restrictions on them - they dont' get to war as early may make things a bit too easy on humans. I also have intentionally had it not go after transports over other ships.

Next week the multiple AI personalities will start going in so in beta 4 each one will have its own style of play. Then we can have them play each other and see which strategies work out the best.

The AI still has quite a bit more work to be done on it before we ship but hopefully at this point you find the AI as good if not better than most shipping strategy games. The next step is to make sure the AI is better than any other strategy game currently available. Where we define better not as being harder but playing more intelligently -- more like a human. Obviously we could make the AI beat any human player in 5 minutes, just give them 10X the resources you get. ;)

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Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
In my last 2 games (Beta's 3D and E) I have managed to avoid conflict by being isolationist and poweful, focussing initially on pop and ecomomic growth and then a big navy and planetary defenses which puts them right of attacking me :d .
After that I can pick and choose my time to attack (or not). In the meantime they war with each other and pitch in their lot with each other. In my one almost full game with 3E the Drengin were at war with the Altarians for a long time and were almost anhialated.
I think what made the difference was that the Altarians gained a massive number of planets as two majors and several minors surrendered to them meekly. I assume races have a preference to fall in with teh Altarians than the Drengins?

I am just about to attempt to finish off a couple of Drengin planets before the Altarians grab em' as I think I would get squashed by the Altarians if I went for them at this stage.
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
By the way Brad - what are those 'flagships' in the AI fleetlists??
Siege of Centauri
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
In the game right now the Drenigin empire is not very aggressive against me, even though it had it's chances...
I think the evil biased AI should be a little more aggressive.
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
BTW
I noticed the there are multiple owners of the ships in same grid location.
When attacking these stacks of ships (so far 20 highest) my ship will keep firing, even though it has no moves left. A warning may pop-up warning me if I want to attack other AI ships in stack. I select 'no', and if my ship isn't destroyed, the pile is reduced from 20 to 5, the 5 is just the 2nd AI ships.
My own ships stack with AI ships when on autopilot. Very annoying if I use auto to attack. I must now use keypad.
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
There is at last 1 minor race that use a Tech tree other then the player is using.
The Minor Races are extremly anoinig/deadly (especial for beginner) in theyr curent state (spreading across the galaxy as fast as it is posible).
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
It is difficult to get a feeling for 3E with the Minor Races filling the galaxy. Essentially, they are the major races, but you don't get the UP, the intelligence on their fleet size, etc.
Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top
In 2 last games before game crashed, game essentiall over because of cultural victory .. i.e. races surrendering to others based on this. Don't know about others but to me is annoying as once starts game is effectively over. Creates one large pwer block (in one case me other AI). wish this feature was toned down, like it but seems to easy.

jms
Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top
Strange talk about the minors... they stay pretty minor to me... In the game I just played today, all the major races were doing really well, beating down the minors like the flies they are...
Reply #10 from Stardock Forums Top
In all the games I have played the AI's have one severe blind spot, diplomacy. With the inclusion of more minor races this has only become worse. Each minor race seems to start off with ~5000bc, however they are horrible at researching techs. So what I have been doing is building scouts like mad in the early game to find the minor races. I then trade all the theory techs for ~150bc each month for 10 months. After the theory techs I trade non weapon techs for even more cash. With just two minor races found I can put my expenditure to 100% by the first year or two of the game. By doing this the game is effectively over even against genius AI's. In my last game (3E) the yearly report rated my military at ~1000 and economy at 98 by the tenth year. This was on a huge map with common planets and all genius AI's. Before the addition of more minor races I would do this same trick to the major races, but it was a lot harder to do for two reasons. One the major races don't have that sort of cash early in the game and two they research tech fairly well. So first off I would suggest not letting the minor races have that much money or make them spend it on social improvements. Second, the AI's need to be aware of the sort of deals you are engaged in with other races. So, how about expanding espionage. Instead of just getting a report on the stats of another empire let both the player and AI learn what deals another empire is engaged in. Third, if possible, make the AI aware that it’s being slighted. For example if my empire is clear across the map and I engage in my tech for cash trade with the Bradians. However, the Bradians share sectors with the Drengins. This deal between the Bradians and I is not to the Drengins advantage. So shouldn't the Drengins be able to intimidate the Bradians into breaking their deal with me. After all my warships are on the other side of the map.
Reply #11 from Stardock Forums Top
The Cultural Victory seems to be too overwhelming right now. I have played several games where I haven't fired a shot and won entirely by culture. It would be interesting to have an AI personality that reacted in fear toward a dominant culture.

The AI seems to build way to many ships that they don't ever seem to use. I go by planets and see a colony ship underneath almost every one of their planets. AI should decomission colony ships if X% of the planets are colonized.

The amount of freighters and warships they build needs to be adjusted a little lower.

AI should be able to recognize which paths to victory are open to them and adjust their empire accordingly. They seem to give up to easily in certain situations if the way they want to win is not open to them.

Perhaps on the higher levels you could take away the early attack restriction.

I would also like to see alliances against the human player more often.

AI's need to go more aggressively for the resources. This above everything could make the biggest difference.

I would like to be able to have spies to destroy social and military projects on specific worlds. Or invest money over X turns to create a third column to mess with the enemy empire. Or send money to the pirates to attack X empire. I would like to see the AI invest in stuff like this.

Several groups of Pirates/raiders/Sects in the game that are like minor races would be nice to have to do your dirty work for you.


Reply #12 from Stardock Forums Top
With this latest build I can't seem to figure out how to hold on to my planets. They keep jumping ship to the most powerfull race. I get a message that the people of planet XYZ are starting to admire Race ABC and that I should look in to it. Ok, I've tried everything that I can think of and they still keep jumping over. I even lost Sol to this and that ended the game. Not Fun, anyone got any suggestions???
Reply #13 from Stardock Forums Top
The ship autopilot code seems to be much more solid. I have not had a problem with it on build 3E.

I have encountered two different crashes (reported in appropirate threads), but both times the game restarted without repeating the crash.
Reply #14 from Stardock Forums Top
Hmmm.....my Drengins just surrendered to the pirates!

And when I attacked the now-pirate world with a transport, the game crashed.

Reply #15 from Stardock Forums Top
I don't think I am able to get a true feel for 3E because space combat is not possible so far in every game I've tried. (see - Ships Occupy Same Space Bug - thread)

I do like the additions that I've seen so far. I do feel though that more should/could/can happen on United Planet front.

I am curious as to why you do not have the AI go after transport ships? It only seems reasonable that if you are trying to protect your planet you'd do everything possible to stop it from being over run by troops. Which would mean taking out the transport ships.

So what if might make it more difficult for the human player. The only difficulty it adds is making sure your transports have escorts. I was already doing this in my games until I read in another post that the AI doesn't target transport specifically. It seems too easy to get those transport ships up to an enemy planet without an escort. In any other type of "war", transports are always escorted.

I build fighters as transport destroyers, and it would be cool to see the AI do the same thing. I don't see why the AI shouldn't take advantage of an unescorted transport ship.
Reply #16 from Stardock Forums Top
I had something similar to DaveO. In my case it was a minor race feeling that they couldn't compete and giving themselves over to the Pirates. While I like the Pirates and the havoc they can wreck, I don't think they should be able to get planets. They're pirates after all...pillage and destroy not colonize and grow. But I may be wrong ;)
Reply #17 from Stardock Forums Top
Dawn,

Don't even pirates have to have a base of operatons?

Also, the bug on the space monster was reported to be due to the space monster not having a planet to call home, so I guess it is easier to code if the pirates have a home planet.
Reply #18 from Stardock Forums Top
They say a good part of England was "colonized" by vikings (mostly northern England).
Reply #19 from Stardock Forums Top
I seen then same bug DaveO reported and I also reported the bug somewhere else. I try to invade a pirate world the game crashed.

This BETA is the most stable one I played yet. The game I just finshed only crashed once and that once again came after a news report about pirates.
Reply #20 from Stardock Forums Top
I don't know if anyone has seen this, or if this is the bug Lucky was talking about. In my last game I got a space shark (a.k.a. Space monster ) in it. I am not sure how, but I think one of the minor race's planet switched over to one of the other major races. But When I came across that planet it had a space shark symbol on it. But the solar system text would say it was part of the major race. I was able to take over the planet without going to war with the other race. After a while the rest of the minor races planets conceded to the other major race and they too changed to the space shark symbol. Eventually they concided to me, and every thing was back to normal at that point. Weird... :)

( FYI: I have a few of the save files that show this backed up if somebody at stardock wants to look at them. I hope the just what is in the data "test" directory is what you need for a saved game, because that is all I backed up.. )
Reply #21 from Stardock Forums Top
'But When I came across that planet it had a space shark symbol on it. But the solar system text would say it was part of the major race.'

The monsters and pirates are both implimented as extra races.

In the case of the monsters, last time I looked at a save game in a hex editor, the monster's civ file was marked as being the last Major Race whose files were saved. If they somehow got planets, they would report incorrectly as being that race.
Reply #22 from Stardock Forums Top
A couple of things...
1. A workaround for the "can't attack ships" bug (at least with the mouse) is to right click one space behind the ship(s) your trying to attack. Worked for me anyways.
2. A possible bug...when I invaded a planet, whatever they were building at the time of takeover the continued building...wether or not I had researched that particular item. For example, I took over a minor races planet that was building a battleship, and I hadn't researched that far yet, but it built it and kept building it. I appreciated the ships, but it wasn't exactly fair. :)
Reply #23 from Stardock Forums Top
What does it take for a cultural victory in 3E? I controlled 120 out of 121 sectors. I would have thought that was enough!
Reply #24 from Stardock Forums Top
Kyle said "I appreciated the ships, but it wasn't exactly fair."

I don't see why it isn't fair. After all, had this have happened during the Roman era the Romans would have learned the tech from their captives and exploited it.

One of the promised, but as yet unseen, features of GC/Win is the acquisition of techs via conquest or espionage.
Reply #25 from Stardock Forums Top
As to the Pirates. I agree history wise, I guess I'm thinking more of the shiver-me-timbers pirates. I likethe idea that Stars! Supernova Genesis uses, have a base on an asteroid or something. Granted their's is far more complicated, basically through blackmail. But you guys are right ;)