Strategies the AI could use and counter in war

from GalCiv2 Forums
I'm just putting together a list of tactics the AI could use to increase it's effectiveness in warfare, as well as the counters to those tactics, in hopes that Frogboy might implement them into the AI in some fashion. Feel free to add on to it!

These may often stray into the obvious, but I've never seen the AI do any of them.

*Use of defenders. Especially when there isn't an orbital fleet manager, the AI should be forming those ships into fleets the moment a target comes in range of the planet and hitting them, especially if it's a transport. If there's an orbital fleet manager, they'll be better off holding the enemy back from orbit, but they should still break out to hit transports if they pose a threat (ie, they have enough soldiers to make an impact)
COUNTER: The AI should keep its transports and other vulnerable craft far enough away from the planet that the fastest ship there cannot reach them. Basically, every planet forms a (2x + 1, 2x + 1) square where vulnerable transports shouldn't venture, where x is the speed of the fastest defender.

*Defenders as combat craft. As of Dark Avatar, the difference between a defender and the comparable heavy fighter is about nill, since the AI usually doesn't put engines on their attack ships. It may be a good idea to simply have them treated the same, with them switching rolls as required. Additionally, planet defenders should be the toughest ship the civ is capable of fielding. Using corvettes to defend when your opponent is using dreadnoughts is just filling up slots in orbit.

*Use of scouts in warfare. There are two major ways to do this: stick a tiny hulled scout into a fleet to fill up space (you generally want more logistics for this) or use a cargo hull loaded with sensors and enough engines to stay safe. The latter is generally more effective. Knowledge is power!

*Use of distance in combat craft. If a ship wants to hit a vulnerable target like a transport that is being protected by seperate fleets of warships, when it IS such a vulnerable target, OR you are fighting as or against a super warrior, they should keep x + 1 distance between themselves and the nearby enemy ships, where x is the speed of that ship. With a super warrior, this guarantees first strike or denies it to your opponent. If a super warrior and his victim were to follow this strategy, the one with the faster speed would put the other in perpetual retreat. If they had the same speed, it would be a stalemate.

*Using planets as slingshots. With DA, you can set the exit point of a ship to the other side of a planet. Using a planet to traverse space faster, then, is like adding 2 extra points to your movement for free. This can get nuts if you have two planets with only one square between them, as you can move between them for 0 movement points.

*Alternate ships strategies. Okay, so this isn't a tactic, but it'd be nice if the different empires didn't build their militaries in such a cookie cutter fashion. Why not occasionally have a civ that rushes to large hulls instead of going on weapon and defense research? Or a civ that IGNORES that tech and relies on having fleets of smaller, technically advanced fighter craft? As it is now, they all seem to build all sorts of ships, whenever, which isn't all that interesting. It might not increase their effectiveness to rely on, say, huge fleets of tiny hulls, but it would make their military functionally different, requiring different approaches and adding more flavour to the game. Maybe it could be race dependent, maybe they decide it on a whim... but it'd be nice, anyways.

Anyone else?
4,922 views 17 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Hi!
Or a civ that IGNORES that tech and relies on having fleets of smaller, technically advanced fighter craft?

Hrmmmmm, that's the description of most mid-game evil fleets I usually see. In my recent maso game I have a look at yor's heavy fighter with beam attack 22 (6 phasors 3), their biggest fleet has beam attack 118. My best weapons tech is Graviton 3, and it is stolen from conquered Korath - my researched tech is Harpoon 2.

BR, Iztok
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I think the AI should build up its military very slowly, have hundreds of transports all built up, then RUSH the player in order to do a 'steamroller' technique if the AI beleives the player isnt able to defend itself.
The Political Machine 2024
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Or maybe a "rush" strat involving getting transports as early as possible an taking their less populated planets, or eliminating the population of heavily colonized worlds by... no wait, the Korath already do that with spore ships  
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Another thing to add:

*blockades of starbases and planets. If you have 8 ships to spare, you can completely surround a planet and make it impossible to reach. This has more than a couple uses. If there's a resource you want to ensure you get but you don't have a transport nearby, you can surround it with ships. If someone you want to protect is under attack by forces they can't fight, you can surround their planets to protect them without going to war. You can also stop a starbase from recieving additional constructors with this strategy...
COUNTER: Declare war on a civ doing this and the problem disappears. The AI would need to be able to tell when someone was doing this stuff to them, and judge whether the target is worth the war.
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
As of Dark Avatar, the difference between a defender and the comparable heavy fighter is about nill, since the AI usually doesn't put engines on their attack ships.

Well, then wouldn't an obvoius change be to actually PUT engines on ships intended to be attack craft? The slower the AIs ships are, the easier they are to beat. No matter how much attack a ship has, it doesn't much matter if you "kite" it all over the battlefield. I do that constantly. Why? I'm always faster.

The single biggest strategy change needed is to be able to attack and defend a planet all in one turn, by the AI. This requires speed, something the AI doesn't have. If it has a superior fleet - include in that fleet transports without weapons (otherwise they are targetted first) - and after all the defenders are knocked out have the whole fleet attack again to invade. THEN, move the remaining set of the fleet on the planet in the same turn to set up a temporary defense. So:
AI builds attack fleet 1. Fleet one has 2 battleships and 2 transports, all moving together. Fleet 1 comes upon a planet with 10 defenders, and has four moves. Turn 1, all four moves are used to destroy defenders. Turn 2, all four moves are used to destroy defenders. Turn 3, moves 1 and 2 are used to destroy defenders, move 3 is used for the transports to invade, and turn 4 is used to move the battleships into orbit on the planet. This method does not require the AI to figure out how to do a lot of creating/disbanding of fleets, and is only sligtly less efficient than how a player would attack. Worlds with OFMs are even easier to conquer.

Second - the AI needs to stop building cargo hull transports with weapons. I know there are large hull transports, the so called "Combat Transports", and by all means load those up for battle. But when the Yor throw 600 beam attack on a cargo transport they do several things:
1 - it takes them too long to build those transports
2 - they will all be destroyed anyway, due to the 1 hp
3 - they take up space better used on troop modules and engines with weapons

I don't know if the AI just doesn't have an advanced ship building algorithim that seperates transports from other combat craft after the first few modules have been placed or what. Even if you want to throw guns on your transport to knock out the weenine one gun tinies people sometimes use to defend, you don't need to PACK your transport with weapons, that is just a waste of money. The Drengin and Yor are particularily bad at this, IME.

Just some ideas,
- Wyndstar
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
As of Dark Avatar, the difference between a defender and the comparable heavy fighter is about nill, since the AI usually doesn't put engines on their attack ships.

Well, then wouldn't an obvoius change be to actually PUT engines on ships intended to be attack craft? The slower the AIs ships are, the easier they are to beat. No matter how much attack a ship has, it doesn't much matter if you "kite" it all over the battlefield. I do that constantly. Why? I'm always faster.


I still have to disagree there. At least on low miniturization levels you can get awesome mileage out of engineless ships. Its a flaw in the AI that they keep chasing down the ships they can't catch. If you ignore the ships that are running form you (beyond simply forcing them away from your vulnerable areas like transports and planets) you can use them as the battering rams they're meant to be. Use them to hit the targets you need to to win the war (defenders and starbases) and those fast ships will generally be incapable of taking out those fleets because they won't have the firepower to do serious damage to the more heavily armed ships... basically, wherever you have those powerful fleets, the faster fleets can't usually go.

Thats not to say that the faster ones don't have their purposes. They're ideal for hitting soft targets (transports, freighters, undefended starbases) and the faster rate at which they reach their targets can help keep the pace of invasions up... they can match the speed of the transports. They have to pick and choose their battles, however.

This all, of course, assumes fairly similar tech levels. If you outclass your enemy enough, then even the fast warships will outgun their engineless ones. At that point, they are usually screwed anyways.


The single biggest strategy change needed is to be able to attack and defend a planet all in one turn, by the AI. This requires speed, something the AI doesn't have. If it has a superior fleet - include in that fleet transports without weapons (otherwise they are targetted first) - and after all the defenders are knocked out have the whole fleet attack again to invade. THEN, move the remaining set of the fleet on the planet in the same turn to set up a temporary defense. So:


I'd extend that to their handling of sneak attacks. Whenever they have ships sitting around prior to an attack, there's a space of a turn where they aren't doing anything. Likewise, preemptive strikes are of limited use because they don't ATTACK those transports that are sitting in range of their planets... they wait until the next turn, at which point they've already gotten their ass kicked by a human player. The AIs need to get rid of that turn delay in getting their starships going. I suspect (though I'm not sure) that the cause is that they set WAYPOINTS for their ships, instead of immediately forcing a move like the player does.

Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
The aI targeting routine needs to be tweaked.

For example, I can 'blockade' an aI ship/fleet if it targets a starbase, planet or fleet - you just put a line of 6 or so empty hulled ships in it's path so it cannot go around them in one turn - it will try to go around anyway - then you just move your line a few squares to block it again - the aI will go back the other way to try to get around - do this ad naseum and the aI will never get to the starbase. (I can 'herd' a fleet doing this until it is so far away from it's target it is no longer a real threat)...

...a human player would just blast their way through the line of defenseless ships - the aI will not attack them.
Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Generally I think defenders on planets is deeply flawed strat .Ai needs to stop wasting their fleets around orbits - and concentrate them in strike forces.

Concentrated strikes is a rule of all warfare and thats where AI lacks in fleet combat. -They generally have slower ships than human, much poorer location and maneuver them badly as well.
I mean even with much weaker fleets you can circle around AI , strike on weaker targets and retreat. They will have their fleets orbiting while your lone escorts demolish their freighters, mines and starbases .etc.

One of the most glaring flaws of AI is its use of transport- he puts them at 5-6 speed and expect them to make to my planets ,when I have raider ships dedicated specifically to take them out with 15-16 speed. And my transports always have at least 4 points speed advantage over AI vessels so I can safely hang them around in space within striking distance of their world
Reply #9 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Something that I don't like is how the AI doesn't usually make transports that can actually hold a good amount of troops. I am making "7 Billion troop"-transports and take pretty much anything I want. I use my smaller transport classes to move around populations and keep my large transport planets producing those huge transports at full capacity. I have 2 sitting on my homeworld ready to be launched. And they are now required, due to a UP decision, to have 5/5/5 attack. And with over 100 base HP, they just dont die. Even with the smaller class transports, I have 2.5 Billion troops on each one, and the most I have seen the AI do is 1.5; Am I just not playing far enough into the game? Or should I up the difficulty? Cuz this isn't hard anymore, not in the least. Or at least not when I am playing my way and not to entertain via AAR. They need to make proper usage of their populations so that they can actually ship out and then survive invasions...

GalenEvil
Reply #10 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Thats a very different transport strategy... typically, I find that smaller 1-3 billion person transports do the job nicely so long as your soldiering abilities are well established, and will have the speed to be more generally useful to boot. I'd personally be a bit cautious myself about using huge hulls as my typical transport... that'd make invasions pretty expensive.

Still, off the beaten path strategies like that would be neat to see from the AI to keep us all guessing. Less cookie cutter and more experimental... even if only certain races decide to use combat transports, or sensor laden cargo hulls, or what have you, that'll make their militaries that much more interesting.
Reply #11 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Yeah, it is pretty different. I just call my huge transporters Epics, cuz it is rare that I make one and they are used for homeworld invasions only. Also, in my game, I have huge hulls while the nearest opponent has Mediums I think, no larges to counter my huge advantage. And apparently I assassinated pretty much every major leader, so I'm at war with the galaxy and kicking but with 6 Huge ships against some 400 Small / Medium ships and about 300 more Super Dominators...:: shudders:: i knew i shouldn't have given everybody that stupid ability. The Iconians are the only ones without it...haha.

Okay, a strategy that I would like to see is the AI, when they see a huge ship coming, either 1) Run like they have something really important to do, or 2) Research the next hull size immediately and try to counter my advantage. It might just be my difficulty level, but it is annoying to be a superpower with 6 ships with 8 speed each going against large AI empires with 50-100 ships each that dont even dent the shields my ships use. I am sooooo going to re-up the difficulty on this and try again, I am about to go on an annihilation spree with a lot of transports!

I will talk to yawl latah, hopefully my Drengin empire will be able to not be crushed by the vastness of the space around them and the force of boredom as they conquer the known sectors...

GalenEvil
Reply #12 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I wish the AI would build military differently. I want an enemy that has hordes of ships and its sole tactic is to bum rush your much stronger ships with hundreds of cheap, low-tech, and weak ships.

I'd like to see the Dreadlords be defeated by droves of Thalan ships. They are like ants, so why wouldn't they use overwhelming numbers to defeat their enemies? One ant is easy to kill, but a million ants is much harder to kill!
Reply #13 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
@ Galen:

I find that two more extreme strategies I'll use is to either rush up the hull tree early, and have correspondingly powerful single ships but low individual component techs, or I'll completely ignore the expensive hull tech line and go right for the heavy weapons that will allow my heavy fighters to rip through bigger ships. Maybe the hull techs are a bit too cheap to allow the latter strategy to really flourish, but it's sure satisfying to roll over the universe with either technological expertise... not to say the massive war cruisers aren't fun, either!

I think the issue you're seeing is less that the AI isn't using hull techs enough, and more that it just isn't at your tech level at all, which is a seperate issue.
Reply #14 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
@Starstriker1

Yer prolly right on that last thing. Though they are actually being competetive. A custom race just created a Battleship with 100 Beam Attack. Too bad my best ship (buy outright for 33 TB) has 108 Beam Defense. The Dark Yor, suprisingly, created a 200+ Beam Attack fleet with a respectable defense. Haven't ever seen that before. Them actually putting up a fight.

They even took one of my planets cuz i didn't expect it...and they used Tidal Disruption on me.

It is very satisfying to just roll over your opponents, my influence is literally 90+% of the map, so I'm really just waiting for them to either surrender to me or wait for me to just destroy them. They should get better at countering stuff though, definitely.

GalenEvil
Reply #15 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Hearing you guys talk about thrashing the enemy's buttocks one way and the other doesn't make me feel so good about the fact that, in my current game, the Krynn and I are locked in a stalemate that the Krynn are slowly winning with superior numbers, to the point that I'm considering refocusing to research and running for a Tech Victory. Either that or see if I can flip my weapons tech over to Beam Weapons fast enough to survive the coming onslaught of Battleships against my poor Frigates.
Reply #16 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Get up a hull size and see how things go. If you can boost your military production anyway or get a few constructors out to the battlesites and make some suped up military starbases, you might be able to work them over.

In my current game at the start of it, the Krynn declared war on me when they had like 100x the military I did. This was pretty bad for me, but I just did hull-size jumps on them and totally owned them with 2 ships. Using the planets I got from them, I got about triple the population and started making better troop transports and used my vast research abilities to finish the tech-tree. I dont have tech victory on, only 100% domination will work. This one actually would have made a pretty good AAR, with how things went back and forth for a little bit. I ended up going to war with everyone at once and blitzing them with my Huge ships, and they keep surrendering to me and it is p***ing me off because I like to force them into submission, not let them have a choice about it!

Well, my last opponent, a custom race named the Torren, are the only ones that got up to Large hulls with their dinky Battleships of 100 Beam attack. I have a nicely made Huge with 350 Missile and 100 Beam Defense....the battleship kinda doesn't win.

They only have 3 planets left anyways, I dont want to milk this though, gonna finish it up in about an hour and hopefully be able to post to the metaverse...then gonna update DA to the newest beta version! W007!

Thermocaw: What difficulty are you playing on? I am playing on the one just below Challenging because it is for the Tournament of Losers and at the time the Drengin had 0 pts. haha.

If you are playing at a higher difficulty then me, which i think is true, that is prolly the reason for the difficulty you are having in winning against the Krynn. I hope things go well for you though...

GalenEvil
Reply #17 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Hmm. Come to think of it, jumping hull sizes might be a bit too much of a dominant strategy, since these new hulls almost invariably fill all the roles that the smaller ones used to. Sure, they're more expensive, but they're a more efficient use of your money anyways!

Now, just tossing ideas out here as ways to make all types viable at all times:
*Ship range could scale up as ships got bigger. Probably does this already, but it should be more dramatic! Tiny hulls aren't going to the other side of the galaxy without supplies.
*Engine sizemods should be more dramatic. This would make the tiny ships really good for short range, highly dynamic manuevers, and make the bigger hulls more unwieldy. Considering that the size of the warp bubble needs to increase dramatically each time the ship size increases, it should become less and less efficient to increase the speed of those ships. It also works nicely for balance.
*The engine speed boosts that you get with the tech should be reconsidered... it becomes too profitable just to ignore putting engines on...
*The cost/benefit ratio of larger hulls should increase, not decrease! You are getting ships that are much more effective, but you need to protect that investment because it really cost you!
*The logistics costs... well, those are actually pretty good. A fleet full of large ships should beat a fleet of tiny ones... the tiny ones get their own advantages!

Come to think of it, all this stuff is moddable. I might just have to mess around with this sometime, and see how it works with these really dramatic costs and benefits.