Thoughts on AI after latest update

from Sins Forums
I played a 2v2, Medium Galaxy, Average difficulty AI yesterday and just finished a 2v2 Hard AI, small galaxy. First game lasted about three hours and the second about 4 and half. Both however could have ended earlier by adopting a more aggressive playstyle but that's beyond the point of this thread.

Some things I took notice too however was the immediate increased use of Capital Ships for the AI, which is a good thing. But overall I think it may be worse off at attacking then prior to the last update.

Prior to the update I used to see massive Light frigate or Carrier attacks with Hard AI's (20-30+ of just one type of ship), and battles around a planet would draw out quite a bit. However post update it might be a little more varied in the selection, with more capital ships tossed in to the mix, but with far lesser amounts of regular ships overall. At least that's the impression I got.

Looking at the post-game reports after the last game, I noticed the AI doesn't spend any credits at all on increasing the Capital Ships experience level, which is an invaluable utility. Add on the advanced crew research and you can increase a ship straight out of the factory to level 5. I believe if the AI used this feature that it'd, hopefully, lose less of it's Capital ships needlessly to assaults that are clearly not in it's favor.

Another area I find the AI lacking in, is in building up a proper infrastructure that supports the high cost of research, ship building, and planetary infrastructure. Late game of my second game I had to pump my allied AI with a considerable amount of credits, simply because it's fleet was pathetic in size, and it had almost no resources or credits to spend.
A greater focus on Trade Ports and Taxes is something the AI badly needs, in my opinion. It also seems it's using culture at lot less then pre-patch games. On the other hand, from the post-game reports, I like that the AI spends a fair bit on exploration of the it's planets at least. Especially given some of the bonuses you can acquire from the exploration.

Last but not least, I believe the AI needs to be more aggressive, especially on Hard, in it's defense of it's planets at the border to other players/AI's. As well as ceasing to send one-five ship fleets and instead build up a more threating force to assault with.
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Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
Wait, your AI is spending a lot of money on exploration? I'm 2 hours into a game with 9 AIs, and none of them have spent a cent on exploration.
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
I misread the charts at the end of the game, it's simply the amount of planets explored by ship as opposed to planets explored through Planet Development.
Galactic Civilizations IV
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
Addendum to the original post.

I played another game of 2v2 with Hard AI's that ended just a hair short of 7 hours. I read through the post-game charts at the end, and noticed that the AI ends up selling a lot of it's resources on the black market, where as it should instead focus more on trade ports and taxes to generate credits.

AI should also spend more on combat research, it doesn't appear to be spending much beyond researching the Cruisers it seems. It needs a higher focus on combat research overall, but most importantly on increasing Hulls, Shields and Damage output.
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
yea i agree with all the points made but i was playing 9 hard players and i was being attacked by 2 ais with fleets with about 10 ight carriers 3 lev 3-5 cap ships and lots of diffrent frigates i wasen perpared so the owned my defensis till my fleet could arrive and destroy them. but they dont spend any money on trade ports which is annoying when u want to trade with them. And they still dont spen any where near the ammount of money on reaserch as i dowhich is a flaw with them.
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
I just finished a game with 5 AIs on hard difficulty (no teams). Near the middle of the game one of the AIs would send a fleet to attack my planet but when it arrived it would turn around and retreat. It was caught in "ping pong" mode. It must have repeated this 12 times or more till I stationed a fleet of light carriers with bombers to destroy them when they popped in.
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
I just finished a game with 5 AIs on hard difficulty (no teams). Near the middle of the game one of the AIs would send a fleet to attack my planet but when it arrived it would turn around and retreat. It was caught in "ping pong" mode. It must have repeated this 12 times or more till I stationed a fleet of light carriers with bombers to destroy them when they popped in.


I notice the ping pong mode too. infact im kinda exploting it too easily atm. If the AI send a large fleet to my planet , I can send a token small fleet to theirs, and they start ping ponging , giving me enough time to mass up my own main fleet in preperation.
Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top
I just finished a game with 5 AIs on hard difficulty (no teams). Near the middle of the game one of the AIs would send a fleet to attack my planet but when it arrived it would turn around and retreat. It was caught in "ping pong" mode. It must have repeated this 12 times or more till I stationed a fleet of light carriers with bombers to destroy them when they popped in.


I notice the ping pong mode too. infact im kinda exploting it too easily atm. If the AI send a large fleet to my planet , I can send a token small fleet to theirs, and they start ping ponging , giving me enough time to mass up my own main fleet in preperation.


So are you saying this is caused by the AI being caught between defending its planets and attacking yours? That it does not have 2 fleets, 1 it can attack with and 1 it can defend with?

If that is the case that is indeed a major flaw.

Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top
Yes the AI definitely ping pongs even more if you attack their planet while they're attacking you. I also split their attention (was doing co-ordinated assaults on 2 fronts, one of which was large attack on their home planet) but instead of defending their home planet they just warped back and forth like they were confused about what to do. "We're under attack oh my what should we do?!?"
Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top
Another thing to note, is the Trade ships from Trade Ports travels through hostile territory instead of taking a slightly longer route through safe and friendly territory. The pilots fly to their doom, which is a bit silly.
Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top

Another thing to note, is the Trade ships from Trade Ports travels through hostile territory instead of taking a slightly longer route through safe and friendly territory. The pilots fly to their doom, which is a bit silly.


Yeah
Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top

I just finished a game with 5 AIs on hard difficulty (no teams). Near the middle of the game one of the AIs would send a fleet to attack my planet but when it arrived it would turn around and retreat. It was caught in "ping pong" mode. It must have repeated this 12 times or more till I stationed a fleet of light carriers with bombers to destroy them when they popped in.



A phase jump inhibitor would fix that in a heart beat. Forcing them to fight or die.
I'm sometimes glad they retreat, specially when you start yanking ships out of the yard or building more defenses as I was not prepared, but I do tend to check where they were going and hunt them down.

A harder AI on research and ship upgrades will make playing against a medium AI even harder but will sure add value to the whole thing, but it my put off some others. I bet this game will truly shine online, but playing a game for 4 hrs will be really a great task online.

cheers
Reply #12 from Sins Forums Top

A phase jump inhibitor would fix that in a heart beat.


As of the latest patch the Phase Jump Inhibitor only blocks travel to other planets under your control. So the AI would still have been able to jump back in the above scenario. Unless it came from one of your other controlled planets.

In other words, the PJI doesn't do much for borderline fighting at the edge of controlled space.

Reply #13 from Sins Forums Top
I don't know if I like care for the changes to the PJI. I thought it was a bug and wasn't working at first. /shurg

Reply #14 from Sins Forums Top
I don't know if I like care for the changes to the PJI.


Eh, it makes sense from a gameplay standpoint.
Reply #15 from Sins Forums Top
Sounds to me like the ai needs major tweaking on the retreat code. Bailing needs to be more than a function of relative power. Expected losses from retreating should be weighed against the chance of success and the relative strength of the sides. You shouldn't be retreating from a battle where the odds of immediate success are worse than your odds of surviving to old age. As it is now, the ai is a self destroying entity that removes itself from play by retreating till dead instead of bludgeoning your attack world after world until it stops you. Retreats should also never account for troops not actually present. It seems that the ai knows I'm coming and bails out of an attack just because I start a move from a distant planet. I've had sides request peace under the same conditions, an enemy fleet can be rampaging in my homeworld and start retreating while requesting an alliance when my fleet three jumps away starts moving back. I had one resume the attack after I stopped moving back too.

The old phase jump inhibitors were nice in that they forced you to scout, but that was a severe stalemate problem in the making. You'd need to bring your entire force on the attack against a place with a well defended phase gate or risk destruction. Even with scouting, which was mandatory, you could still get gangbanged from fleets in the neighboring planets that see your incoming fleet and might even beat you there. It would have made come from behind wins through smart guerilla warfare completely impossible.