Just finished my latest game of 3v3 with all five AI's set to Hard. In fact this was my first Hard difficulty game, as I had previously played with Medium difficulty AIs.
The immediate things that stands out is the length of the game, as it took me at least ~4-5 hours longer to play then my last 3v3 with medium AI's. Though it could have been completed considerably faster by adopting a more aggressive approach. The game ended after 12 hours and 10 minutes.
Something else that was different this time around was that I was NOT the #1 bounty throughout most of the game.
Overall the AIs didn't start purchasing bounty until just before mid way through the game. And it ended at 960k just before the game ended. I had 600k on me, one and allies had 0 and 37. The opposing AI's had 450k and 880k, and 6100 respectively.
Other things to note is that it was one of my allied AI that purchased the most bounty 1.145.250 credits spent. With the other allied AI surpassing me right at the end of the game by 1000 credits at 664k.
Note: I could have spent countless more, as money wasn't an issue. The two factors that held me back where the lack of effect from increased bounty purchases (pointless), and the lack of way to considerably dump a ton of credits (shift + left click isn't sufficient). The same goes for donating credits or resources to allied.
The opposing AI's purchased 500k, 350k, and 38k respectively.
Other statistics, credit income, Taxes
Me: 1.297.000, Allied AI's 1.185.000 and 785K (had the least planets by a fair margin)
Other AI Team: 924K, 1.231.000, 400K.
Trade ships income:
I by far dominated this, as I had a trade port at EVERY planet I owned. And a resource refinery at every Desert/Terran/Ice planet I owned. (There were only 1 volcanic planet in the game)
I had 400k generated from trade ships, and the AI had 111K, 11K, 90K, 149K and 50K respectively, in order of allied to enemy as above.
Research Levels: Only my self and one allied AI maxed out, the others were at 109, 107, 136 and 107. Given the duration of the game that's inadequate on the AI's behalf.
Note: Research is something which the AI needs to be more aggressive about, especially when set to Hard.
All the AI's are very culture aggressive as by the charts, something I think might need to be reduced a bit. It stalls the games progression a fair while when you can conquer three planets ahead or more before the culture dissipates enough / your own advances to the point which you can colonize one of the planets without risk of it revolting. Or values tweaked regarding how fast it fades once the culture centers are removed.
Capital ships - The AI took some heavy losses, as did I at around the same time frame, but the AI never seemed to recover from it.
Aside from statistics there were other things that I found as a bug or something I'd like to see added/altered.
It would be nice if the Capital ships would display the damage of their special abilities in the tooltip or elsewhere. It comes down to number crunching on how they fare vs other ships.
The AI clumps and builds Gauss turrets at the "wrong" lanes, sometimes pointing towards allied Planets instead of towards the lanes that are adjacent to hostile planets.
There's several redundant messages: Such as when hostile scouts arrive, friendly ships at any of your planets, and the AI messages.
Flak frigates needs to be better at countering Fighter/Bomber squadrons, and needs their targeting priority tuned.
Overall trade ships needs far lower priority to any combat ship.
Overall ship traveling seems an itty bit too slow. Perhaps an increased travel speed in Phase lanes.
The death of an empire should release the remaining bounty to the player that destroys the remaining planet of said empire.
If you have a large amount of ship, then there's problems in getting them to Phase jump simultaneously, they keep saying "waiting for formation" while one ship is inching in place.
Air superiority dominates, ie. Bombers. They might need a reduction in offense. And the AI used far more carriers then any other type of ship. As did I.
The Sova capital ship seems to be slower the other ships by quite a bit.
I'd like to see the fleet capacity perhaps reduced a bit, and have the capital ships made more expensive capital ships. I think it's too possible to be viable with Capital ships and little else in the fleet. More focus on combined arms.
I also think they should be researched similar to the Frigates.
The performance suffers greatly late game with 5 hard AIs and the multitude of ships in battle at once or simply the amount of things going on late game. Auto-save took upwards 12 seconds late game.
The AI is too quick to colonize recently conquered planets, where culture is still heavily in effect.
(Bug) The Kol beam attack extends out in through Phase space if it is attacking a ship that Phase Jumps out of the gravity well.
(Bug) Bombers sometimes "warp" around the gravity well.
(Bug) If I right click to move Ships in the gravity well from too high up a zoom level, the destination ends up being an adjacent planet instead of inside the gravity well.
(Bug) The AI forgets to colonize sometimes. It seemed as if the AI had problems with the 1 Asteroid everyone always gets adjacent to the home world. And or an issue with the AI not producing Scout ships at some point. Mid/Late game still had pirates around some planets. Though they might have been insurgents but the AI had no excuse not to have defeated said pirates. Perhaps because it sends too few ships to destroy them.
