A testament to the AI...

from Sins Forums

So, I had been working on a custom multi-star map (4 stars, 75 planets) I created for a few hours the other day...It was a locked teams, 2v2v2v2 (normal AI) scenario that I had about 4 hours worth of playing in. The second day I fired up the saved game and was chugging along expanding into the system my ally and I shared.

Here's where it got interesting...I had to step away from the game (left it running) for a minute, then ended up leaving my house totally forgetting I left it on! LOL!  That next morning I checked my computer and saw that my empire was still working smoothly and I had a TON of resources. I didn't lose any planets or ships (all my queued up ships were built and were doing their thing). Talk about the ultimate turtling or in this case, a good AI taking care of business. Kudos to you guys. In any other game, if you did that, you'd come back to a screen that said, "Congratulations loser, your empire is toast!" hehe!  ;-p

Now I'm 20 hours into this game (9 of which I was personally in front of the PC...hehe!) and I'm doing quite well. I do however notice a few things I thought I'd bring up here. When I set a rally point for my ally to attack, he sends a good portion of his fleet to my aid, but then leaves himself vulnerable to attack from the Rebel fleets. I constantly have to go save his ass and if I wanted to run his empire, I'd just overthrow him (hey, that gives me another idea for a new thread!) 

The other thing is why can't the AI "learn" to follow my lead? Like leaving a small detail of defending craft and build good defenses (any at all in some cases), as I do? I repeatedly find the AI with unprotected bases...AND he's supposed to be guarding my back! I never leave my planets in a postion to get taken over by 3-6 mixed Rebel ships, and so shouldn't the AI! He's down 4 planets now (one of which I colonized by accident...oops) and if I stop babysitting, he won't be around much longer!

Lastly, does an already fired Novalith cannon shot damage yourself? For example, you capture and colonize a enemy planet your NC happened to targeted and fired upon prior to you getting it. I also noticed, my NCs seemed to continue to fire upon the same planets many times after I colonized them...that is annoying as those shots would could have been put to better use hiitting the ENEMY instead!  ;-p

11,490 views 2 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
normal AI
End of quote


That's why. Normal AI won't attack in large enough numbers (at least in my experience) to overcome a well laid out defense. Ex: I was playing against the normal AI today in a small, random, no pirates map to testplay the Vasari (I hadn't yet played as them) and while my main fleet was off shutting down their homeworld, they counterattacked with a consistently-reinforced fleet against a planet with several hangars and turrets around a central repair station. It took thirty minutes for them to finally retreat, but I got out of it without a single loss. On the other hand, if the Hard AI attacked that planet, they would have shut it down.
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
I would personally gauge AI like this, if I were to develop it:

Easy = For the beginners...enemies do as CMcMahon descibes above. No fancy tactics, smaller, hodge-podge fleets, leaving own worlds unprotected, not well organized in diplomacy, trade, etc...

Normal = For the average/experienced...enemies play more consistently with average sized fleets and a better mixture of ship types than above, use some basic tactics, and are fairly smart with their economy and diplomacy.

Hard = For the experts...enemies continually have the upper-hand, i.e. use flanking (advanced) maneuvers, create diversions, etc...with large, well balanced fleets. They also can win economically or with diplomacy only, not just militarily.

Now I know there are differing game-play styles you can assign the AI (I leave them random), but a turtling normal AI should have all their planets well defensed, the same as an aggressor AI should! Just because normal aggressor AIs are war-mongers, they should have the sense to protect their infrastructure to feed their war machine, if they don't they'll have a short-lived warring campaign! ;-p

I guess I can switch a saved game to hard AI and see how much it changes the game from the way it is now. I'm by no means an expert yet and find playing expert mode in most games as playing against cheaters with game hacks/cheats enabled though! That's not much fun IMO! Even with the few quirks I mentioned above here or in the OP, the game still rocks and sucks up a lot of my time! ;-p
Siege of Centauri