Drengin AI floored me.

I am not sure if this was supposed to happen or what, but the Drengin totally suprised me last night.
I have never played another game where the AI sucessfully changed its strategy IN RESPONSE to me and actually did a good job of it.

I did very well in the land grab, and I started selling good techs to the good civs and the minor races to raise cash to keep my %s high.
The drengin were doing their typical bully routine on the other civs, but I was a bit to big to hassle with so they left me alone.

The started getting big, but falling behind me in tech. They were spending a lot of time at war with the other AI.
Meanwhile I was continuing to build and burn through tech, selling the prime pieces off to the good guys. This helped blunt the Drengin's effectiveness at taking over other worlds because I selectively sold military upgrades to civs they were at war with >:)

The arceans got brave and attacked me, so I decided to take a sector from them and teach them a lesson. After I absorbed my new vacation planets, I went to do a round of tech haggling again and noticed the drengin were still behind me militarily but suddenly they had a bunch of trade type techs I didn't have.
Scratching my head I checked and sure enough they weren't at war with anyone, and they had 8000 credits in the bank!

Then a few years later I notice other AI's planets culture flipping to the drengin.

Now I am trying to figure out best to cope with their complete about face, it is much harder for me to prevent them from culturally flippling other AI than it is for me to help militarily. Giving the arceans some dreadnaughts isn't going to do a darned thing when McDrengins is selling space burgers all over the galaxy.

Clearly the AI has a sense of humor because near the end of the night the Drengin send me a little tribute out of the blue. A whopping 10 gold with a nice statement of how powerful I was.
667 views 6 replies
Reply #1 Top
LoL I love stuff like this! I have been surprised by AI actions like this as well. But...we humans are still far more clever. ;) Fly 6 constructors into the "good" sectors, load a starbase up on culture units and then give or sell it to them (make sure this is all in one turn so you don't take their planets, unless you think that would be funny). This instantly gives them enough backbone to outlast any Drengin culture storm.
Reply #2 Top
Gordeleth, I've tried that, and it doesn't seem to work. Then again, I was trying to keep a minor race from being assimilated, and that may work differently. The funny thing was that both the minor race and the Drengin systems in that system were having unrest problems. They were both red, so I couldn't tell who owned the system, but eventually the minor race flipped over to the Drengin, and the Drengin system flipped over to *ME*. So I took out all but one of the Drengin planets with a culture bomb, and continued goose-stepping through the Arceans, Torians, and Altarians (very strange game where you're good and the only race you're not at war with is the Drengins).
Reply #3 Top
If you want to help another race which is being annihilated by culture, send about 10 constructors to a system where they are in danger, build a starbase with good defenses and all the culture improvements (Ok, it takes more than 10 if you've got a lot of tech), and then give them the starbase
Reply #6 Top
As for me I was really impressed by the AI on my first game : Yors were cornered, I besieged their HW while waiting for the sloooow transports to arrive, had a def SB installed ... and just before I could attack those damned b*st*rds surrendered to the Drengins, who were as usual the big nasty guys of the galaxy !! LOL

This was very smart to them : surrendering to other races won't have helped them (I mean the planet inhabitants ;) ) very much, those were either far away, weak or already at war with me. Drengs, OTOH, were a force to reckon with and I was at peace with'em..
Really clever move :)