AI Advantages?

at the begining the best way to evit war is to build an economic empire making trade with nearby and powerful races so they are more unwilling to trade... then with money you get you can pay them what they want to make peace with you... after that you've to wait you research turbo phasers or shield and begining to build a large amount of ships on your planets...

for ai advantages sure they get some to have all those things but whiwh one i dunno...

According to Brad in many posts on this forum, the AI for major races does not get any real advantages.

1). The AI gets the same starting resources as you do, including the same chances on a high class home planet as you do.

2). The AI gets the advantage of the best of the strategies posted to the Metaverse, that is, Brad takes winning strategies and adds them to the AI.

Ideas and tactics:

1). Expand and build your empire as fast as you can without causing your treasury to tank. Use scouts to scout out potential colonies and build and sent colony ships directly to them. Try to find and colonize them before the other races do. You may have to colonize some systems close to home just to increase the rate at which you complete your colony ships.

2). Try to expand your range as fast as you can, primarily by colonization. Since you can see where all the stars are you can predict with some degree of confidence when you are going to need to research "controlled gravity" to be able to reach more stars with your colony ships. Another way of making these jumps is to build a star base in a sector at boarder of your empire's range.

3). The speed of your colony ships can be very important.

4). When you see evidence of where another race is, try to create a restriction to their expansion by colonizing all planets class 15 and up for at least 3 sectors from its nearest colonized star.

5). When you have expanded your empire's range as far as you can and have the other races contained, fill in by colonizing the rest of the class 15 and up planets in your empire.

6). Go after the space resources as quickly as you can.

7). If needed, use star bases to extend your range to get to those pockets that sometimes have been left alone by the other races.

8). Now, find some way to balance all of the above for effectiveness, and add in more tricks and techniques.

9). Play plenty of games to find out what works and what doesn't, building your own unique strategy.

--- The above is only a beggining guidline for early game strategies, on which to build your own preferences. This is the neat thing about this game. There are sooooo many strategies that can be made to work.

On Smart level the AI starts doing things that no human would really do. And no we won't automate those things for human players.

What sorts of things? Like optimizing their spend rates based on what projects rae getting completed. We humans with a constructor being built on a planet with 40 military production per turn will not change our spending rates even though the constructor might only need 10 more IUs to be built. The computer player will look at all their planets each turn and figure out what is the optimal spending rate. This can make a difference that we humans won't do.

They are also much more efficient at trading. They will check, EVERY turn to see if they can trade tech with their friends.

There are still some GLARING AI Problems that need to be worked out. For example, AI ships don't do multipl,e attacks on a star system. If they have 10 turns and attack a ship in orbit, they won't attack again that turn. I don't know why yet. It's not in my code. So the AI will actually become considerably more lethal.

Now, on the HARDEST level the AI is given more abilities. That is, you know how you get 10 points to distribute? On average, they get 10 points. On smart they get 12 points and on genius they get 15 points. So they do get an advantage there.

If you can beat the AI on average, you're doing pretty well. Though because of the difficlty of average we may move it up some. But we want to keep genius level very very difficult.

Noted that in a lot of cases in the mid game don't handle their colonizers all that well .. have a system with 16 colonizers parked around it from an AI player. Keeps sending them even though i've already colonized. Have seen this with freighters also?? seem to build with no check on ability to use. hope this code gets optomized somewhat.

I am able to win at average in a gigantic galaxy fairly easily now if all the AIs are the same (evil or good) as I am. I like the cultural attack and victory! The AIs didn't seem to be able to do much about it at this level or did not know how. But what is posted above is key...you must get a good base of planets and it's better if you are not surrounded by everyone. The same goes for the above in a tiny galaxy (on Beta 3B).

I also like the evil and good mood / setting changes...

Is there a file that describes AI behavior? I would like to make suggestions. I always play genius AI, and it is good early in the game, but it doesn't take advantage of its power so I always catch up with them by midgame, and then it's not hard to beat them, it just takes a long time.

Here's some general advice to AI that plays the big maps:
1) do not attack stronger ships with weaker ones, unless the stronger ship is badly damaged.
2) before declaring war, amass several fleets, including loaded transports, near enemy territory. Move as a group.
3) don't trade loaded transports so cheaply
4) sell technology to minor races for money, use the surplus to increase government spending
5) Once survey ship has about 15 attack and defense, start using it as primary military ship
6) escort transports
7) cut social spending to 0 in begining of game and during war
8) build galactic trade goods sooner
9) Don't negotiate with the player. I know you don't like it, but it's just too easy to cheat the AI thru diplomacy, there's no way of making this work right. Genius AI shouldn't accept any deals proposed by the player! that includes minor races, they part with their money too easily.
10) If AI starts in remote location and can't colonize at least 25 planets given its current range technology. Make it focus on researching range technology. Also, while it doesn't have the technology, make it move colony ships as far as possible toward other planets. So when the range tech is finally researched, the colony ships already made 75% of the journey
11) Take over minor races quickly, preferably taking all their money first.
12) In begining of the game, focus on diplomacy tech first, get Republic and trade, then get Warp drive, then the other stuff. On large maps, it's usually a mistake to go for military research early in the game
13) if there is an excess number of Constructors, start building bases in sectors with best colonies of other races, focus on military bonuses.

It seems most of your strategy here involves taking advantage of bugs in the diplomacy screen.