AI land grabs and cheating in early game. (still)

from GalCiv3 Forums

Here we are in 2020(almost), and one of galcivs least enduring features is a still thing. The AI swarming and filling the galaxy in record time.

This is, for me, still the most irritating feature of the Galciv series. In the early game, the AI can basically fills the entire galaxy while the player, is often relegated to marginal worlds, and perhaps a handful of semi-decent planets , but only if the RNG is kind and they are placed relatively close to your homeworld. 

 

The obscene advantages (cheats) the AI is given, means they spam colony ships  with no real penalty or downsides to contend with.

The other problem, related to the AI cheating, is how the AI knows exactly where to send its colony ships, whereas you, have to build slow moving explorer ships to get some kind of handle on where you actually need to go. A lot of the times, finding viable worlds to settle is like stumbling around in the dark. Which is fine and realistic, except the AI does labor under anything like these handicaps and not only cheats on the production side, but, it knows exactly where it has to send its ships, and never has to worry about wasting time and resources 'exploring'. 

 

Somewhat related to this, is the means, that there are never any 'new' worlds to settle later on, random events excluded, since the its a frenetic AI driven land-grab that is  usually over in the early hours of the game. 

 

 The extremely rapid pace of early settlement, is to my mind, a real problem for the series. There is nothing resembling the careful, measured and slower pace of expansion into the galaxy in this game. Well, actually there is, but its all on the human side. The 'AI' expands like yeast in a bottle and I feel that is a problem. Its not a new problem, but, here in 2019 and an entirely new GC, I still find as annoying as ever. If there is one thing that keeps me from the playing the game a lot more than I do currently, it is this.

FWiW.

45,131 views 16 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

They tried to design in extreme worlds and administration to avoid that.  Usually I only found AI rapid expansion a problem on Incredible AI.   And at that level it's kind of supposed to be.   Actually, I exploit it:   Precursor Archive bulb Planetary Invasion, pack a bunch of Prototype Hyperdrive on a single transport, and the AI can expand first all he wants as far as I'm concerned.

Reply #2 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

You're right, the extreme worlds do help with this, (somewhat). However, I ran a test, one opponent, difficulty - normal, pacing normal. Map - Gigantic to see what would happen. The AI had no trouble filling the other 90%+ of the map within a little more than an hour or so of play. I was making decent progress on my northern cluster, and was doing very well with starbases and whanot, but the AI still managed to completely dominate the map well below Incredible.  If there had been the full set of opponents, I would have even less to work with than the modest cluster I was able to settle w/o any problems. Then, the AI decided to attack and that was pretty much that.

 

The only way I found to get around this, was massive maps with long travel times and tight clusters. Im limited to Gggantic maps, which despite the name, I dont find all that 'gigantic'.

Elemental: Reforged
Reply #3 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I found this to be a problem until I increased the galaxy size and decreased the Number of AI. Immense is a bit to small and ludicrous is a bit to big so I go with ludicrous and 7 AI the exploration phase is about 70 to 150 turns so this is a long game but I’ll play the same game for a month and not mind. The only problem with low AI is less trade partners for missing resources.

 

Reply #4 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I've only played with all expansions up until intrigue. The game is not balanced for different map sizes and settings. Things like speed, range, sensor range, the bazaar ships and governments seem to work a lot better on bigger maps. On a medium map with fewer planets everything will be claimed within the first 30 turns or so. On smaller maps it's really difficult to match the ai because it knows where everything is, range isn't really a problem. On those maps governments can sometimes be largely ignored because you can't even get to the planet limit for the first one you pick. On top of this, does the ai ever make commonwealths? I've seen the terran alliance go over their colony limit with 8 planets and it didn't seem to result in morale problems for them.

I think exploration could be a lot more fun if it was a bit like Master of Orion. In those games every planet can be colonized but for most it will take a long time before they will be profitable. When you are boxed in, you can shift your strategy to either try to conquer some systems or to improve what you have. What if terraforming was a planetery project that could be done as many times as you want but had an increasing cost every time you use it? Maybe the difficulty of the tiles could locked behind techs. And wouldn't it be fun if races like the Torians could in time change worlds to aquatic worlds or the Yor change worlds to barren worlds.

Reply #5 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

No the AI does not make Commonwealths, its a Player only feature, as stated by the great Frogboy himself.

Reply #6 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I think commonwealths were meant to improve micro.   And micro doesn't really apply to AI.

Reply #7 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I like the idea of unlimited terriforming with the last terriform tech. How many ais were on gigantic. 7 ais on ludicrous is insane I just cut down my ais from 60+ to 41 because I got tired of there not being enough planets. I usually play ludicrous. My guess you play gigantic because of multiplayer. if your only playing 7 ais excessive would be fine if you want a a smaller map . The recommended number  of opponents seem to work if you don't want to many opponents. I disagree the ais are just keeping up with my expansion. I would like to get back 2,000 habital planets on insane which is now ludicrous on abundant back that used to be in the game. If you are right, and the ai don't need to explore to find planets that needs to change. I'm not talking about being able to see where all the star systems are on the main map, because you can see that. That is what all those white dots are.

Reply #8 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I doubt the AI cheat when it comes to finding planets.  I've seen AI colony ships pass up class 18+ planets on their way to colonize a class 6 before.  I got scared when I saw their ship, but I still got to it first.

Reply #9 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I dont know if the AI cheat on find planets ... but ....

what i know is, the aI is VERY dumb on colonize planets that are already in strong influence of other races ...

practicaly all time the planet swap after one or last two rounds to the other race .... so i realy dont can estimate IF the ai is cheating,if he get an big bonus from this at the end.....

would be nice if the ai dont cheat on planet finding - and better understand the mechanic of influence and dont colonize planets where is ZERO chance to hold it ..... :D

Reply #10 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting R-TEAM, reply 9

I dont know if the AI cheat on find planets ... but ....

what i know is, the aI is VERY dumb on colonize planets that are already in strong influence of other races ...

practicaly all time the planet swap after one or last two rounds to the other race .... so i realy dont can estimate IF the ai is cheating,if he get an big bonus from this at the end.....

would be nice if the ai dont cheat on planet finding - and better understand the mechanic of influence and dont colonize planets where is ZERO chance to hold it .....
End of R-TEAM's quote

The AI doesn't cheat (except at the highest levels) on the planet grabbing.

Internally (for v3.9) we've updated the AI to take influence into account before grabbing a planet.  So if you get a planet in your area of influence, it may not colonize it at all or, at the very least, is less likely to colonize.

Reply #11 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

As i have wrote .... the AI should "know" if it make sense to colonize this planet - if the new colo is swaped after one or two rounds, it have maked realy no sense - except an free colo for the race where the planet swaped ... and this should not happen.

Sure it can be "bad luck" and lost an colony - but not colonize an planet where is no chance to stay here ..

Reply #12 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

John Falkenberg,  

You complain about how the game cheats and how the game gets all the planets, and when I give 10 different options to get around the problem, you complain to me. If you didnt want any solutions to your problem, I suggest you do not complain.

You say my modifications to the xml files is cheating, well I have some very sad news for you John Falkenberg,  every time stardock releases a new version of the game they have modified 10's/100's if not 1000's of lines in the xml files. 

They call it tweaking, according to you, every new release is just cheating.  Well you can call it cheating.  I call it personalizing the game so that the individual gets the maximum enjoyment. Thats why stardock made it soooo easy to modify the game experience.  Which I happen to think is fantastic, and if you want to call it cheating, you are entitled to your opinion.

Why dont you go back to running version 1 of galciv and tell those nasty startdock cheaters if they modify your xml's one more time you will log on as an admin and delete their entire web site.

Dirty rotten cheaters.

 

Reply #13 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

@DaveyMcman

 

I really fail to see what your long rambling post has to do with the substance of what I was trying to get across here. If you want to give advice on how to run cheat configs or........whatever it is you are trying to say, please start your own topics in the future, ok?

 

If I had admin powers in this thread, your comment would be deleted in a second.

Reply #14 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

AFAIK, the problem is only on the two highest difficulty levels, when the AI gets ludicrous bonuses to ship speed. It could be fixed easily, if these bonuses were halved.

Also, the AI ships' range appears to be greatly increased - if so, it might also be worth reducing this; in fact, leaving range alone (i. e. independent of difficulty setting) could already help.

Another option would be to introduce some kind of penalty for planets that are far from the home world. This penalty would be decreased over time, e. g. dependent on empire population. However, this approach would require the AIs to learn avoiding this penalty. One idea towards that would be that instead of a colony capital you set up a support link to one of your planets (chosen manually or automatic) which feeds the build-up of your colony. The output you'd get would be reduced by distance.

Reply #15 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

@DaveyMcman

Knock some sense in yourself and get down from your high horse. Tweaking and modding the game is subjective since you changing the game to fit your own taste, experience, and preference. It is like opinions. You can have one and that doesn't mean anyone would agree with you. We as the players are more incline about Dev changing and rebalancing their game because they're the developer. They made this product for the mass market so it is their job to do their best to change thing around to fit with the feedback or general experience as a whole. Learn to agree to disagree. John didn't agree with your XML edit and you should accept that then be on your way. Not everyone want to fiddle with modding thing around. They have their reasons.

Reply #16 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Wow so Mars is no longer going to give you a free colony.It's like a GC tradition.