You want to know what your problem is? You've played for 40 minutes and you have TWO worlds. That's your problem. Expand more quickly and fortify your border planets.

You could also try a different map that doesn't give the AI so many back doors to your early worlds, or try starting off with an AI ally on unlocked teams (so you'll have an ally that will eventually become an enemy, but early help nonetheless). Also, missions are BS (in my opinion) until later in the game when you have established yourself and you want to stem the tide of attacks from some of your AI opponents so you can focus on just one. You should not be worried about doing missions early in the game, especially resource giving missions, which are tempting to gain favor, but slow your progress significantly early when your income is low. If your TEC, you could also try getting skilled diplomats so it takes 2 missions to get you into "ally level" (the percentage level at which the AI will ally with you) and 1 mission to reach "cease fire level."

Of course once you figure this out, your going to be suffering from the same problems as many of us. That being, once you've established a nice little empire, the AI will scatter like cockroaches from your fleets, and you'll go from being frustrated at being overwhelmed to being frustrated that you can't get a fight out of your opponent any longer. Such is the problem with this game. Once you get to this point, you should start playing online, something I can't do because of time constraints unfortunately.



No, mostly 1.03 did nothing at all to fix that problem, although Stardock falsely states that it does. Only very, very minor changes were made to the AI, none of which fixed the running away issue. It is still a large problem, and if people say that it's fixed, then Stardock will not have any reason to fix it. It is not fixed, so don't give them reason to neglect this issue even more than they have by saying it's fixed, please. No offense.

I agree!!! I watched my little cousin(noobsauce extraordinare) play a game and get completly ganged up by the AI on easy. As soon as I sat in to save him I quickly ammased a large fleet, and solid infrastructure. I noticed about an hour later that I hadn't been attacked by the AI after expanding. It turned out that they were fighting with each other!!! Since I strongly think that the AI does indeed gang up on the weakest link, I have to say that the system is good as it is. I mean, it totally gives humans incentives to become better players. It also makes the game harder which comon now... it's alot funner when you're not sure if you can win. Also try playing with your opponents set as defenders instead of agressors. Or researchers instead of economic developers. These will help you transition to harder AI characteristics and difficulty levels. Good luck man,

Are you serious? I had an enemy Kortul Devastator stand toe to toe against my two Kol Battleships until he popped. We were also at the very esgeof the gravity well the whole time. He could have easily escaped... but he didn't. Of course it still runs, but definetly not as much as before. And if you're expecting it to always stay and fight then that's just absurd. No one will consiously stay to get beat everytime. I havn't seen it surrender yet, but if they did add the surrender option to the AI then hopefully it would surrender before reaching the point of constant retreat. I think the surrender ability may need improvement intstead of the reatreating AI.

Thanks captain obvious. See how there are 2 more planets listed at the bottom of the screenshot entity inventory? There's no way those could have just been overtaken and destroyed by the 3 fleet magic AI alliance. No. Of course I must be some kind of retard.

Thanks!

Not sure if this matters or not, but did you do any of the early diplomacy missions?

I had a game like this, where all 3 of my AI opponents ganged up on me about an 1 hr into the game. Not willing to drag things out, I surrendered and then watched the replay to see what exactly happened.

It turns out that all 3 AIs signed cease-fires with each other, leaving only one target (me). After trying another game in which I did a few of the early diplomacy missions, I didn't have this problem. Maybe trying to make friends early on helps them from universally hating you.

On another note, do the AIs have diplomacy missions that take place between themselves?

The thing is, the AI realizes it can't win and that's why it retreats. If you tell it "Here's some pills, and trust me you'll win this battle!" it'll end up losing pretty badly, but laughing the whole time through.

The AI has much much better management skills; it sometimes doesn't have the greatest fleet.

That is on a very small scale, however. The problem with the AI running happens in mostly large scale engagements. You can't defend the fact the AI will spend X amount of money and Y amount of crystal/metal on a planet, then just abandon it as soon as an enemy fleet that even slightly outnumbers it jumps in (I mean, that's just silly. They just wasted all those resources if they won't defend it). Shouldn't a hard AI be able to use his planets defenses/extra fighter squads to his advantage, and at least draw a fight out long enough to bring reinforcements? Either that or retreat and come back with more ships? Maybe try to assassinate one of my capitol ships, like my colony cap ship, and run? No, that never happens, instead they just run, and then sit at the next planet for 20 minutes while you nuke and colonize his valuable planet. Then, you can repeat the process, because the AI won't rally forces to face you (until you nuke his home planet).

Maybe the problem could be corrected if the computer could actually assemble a decent fleet late in games? It seems they forget how important capitol ships are, and think that spamming support cruisers and light frigates are the keys to victory.




Did you even read the rest of my post? Whatever.

I guess I'll keep being captain obvious, because you obviously didn't do those things: expand quickly and fortify your exterior planets, otherwise you wouldn't be in that position. It's not like those AI fleets where very formidable, there's only one capitol ship and some light frigates. That's what wiped your planets out? The AI gangs up on me too sometimes but I don't come to the the forums and complain because it's not that hard to handle. And this is not new to 1.03, it happened to me the very first game I played on release day.

Maybe your problem is your using the Vasari, which kind of took a hit in economic power with this patch, and therefor might be tougher for less experienced players to be successful with.

I made a post that had legitimate suggestions, and you give me sarcastic bullshit. If you don't want suggestions then don't make posts like this.

Instead you come to snipe and jump to conclusions. Nice work. Your entire response is based on a quick assumption which doesn't even take really do a good job of analyzing the screen shot.



You don't get to take the high road here. You're not friendly tech support. You're just a forum troll with a torch. You're really just proving the internet ****wad theory. You just happen to be doing it with good grammar, spelling and a lack of cussing.

Since you're totally into hasty conclusions here's my hasty conclusion for you:

You need to stop playing on small maps with locked teams and only 1 or 2 AI players with easy settings.





Yes, but after the easy 1st mission (resource gifts) the AI then demands some kind of combat mission, usually against a foe that is out of range in a large galaxy. The end result is that it's fairly difficult to get the reputation up to a point where you can actually sign a ceasefire without opening your territory up to easy attack by the 2-3 other AI players that are amassing forces.

Well at least you appreciate my spelling, but nothing I had said before now would really qualify as trolling, even though I was critical. If you wanted friendly pats on the back and sunshine blown up your ass an internet forum isn't the greatest place in the world to go. What do you want people to say when you come whining to the forums saying the nasty, mean AI ganged up on you and you want to complain about it.

Just because you can't win against easy AI's doesn't mean you have to accuse me of doing the same. I have been playing against unfair AI's with the teams unlocked since 1.03. I haven't played an AI below hard or with locked teams or an ally even since the third game I played. Nice try though, I guess I just pulled all those suggestions out of my ass...how about you making hasty conclusions and thinking I'm a newb for some reason?

Since you don't want to hear anything I say, how about this: your strategy sucks, get better and you'll win.

I'm most of the way through a huge map with 9 normal AIs and was able to keep up 2-3 alliances and another 1-2 ceasefires throughout the game, making the game very simple.

The trick seems to be to get the AIs to fight eachother early. You don't have to do missions for all of them, but if you complete one or two for specific AIs, it seems that you drop down lower on their list and they'll go harass other AIs instead. This prevents them from all forming cease-fires, due to ship losses lowering their diplomacy scores towards eachother.

If you ignore the early missions, the AIs do seem to pick on you, though I haven't tried this in 1.03 yet.

I think CyrussIII (and others who posted similarly) is right. I'm playing a large random map with eight other ai's. I didn't initially complete the missions that were given to me, and I paid the price. My home world was attacked by two TEC ai's simultaneously (4 cap ships). My navy was nearly destroyed. I pulled out to two surrounding systems to rebuild while I held off the ai's by continually building cheap tactical units (the ai likes to destroy these first- you can run the fleet in circles if they don't have siege units). I eventually made a comeback and drove them away. But not before sustaining a lot of damage to my planet.

Now I'm turtling up (I'm Advent), and completing as many of those missions as possible. I have cease fire agreements with three ai's, and I'm hoping to get one from on of the two menacing TEC ai's who are just building ships to run me over. Doing the missions is key!

I'm playing on all hard. This is challenging. I'll consider it a win if I am able to get a draw.

First of all let me say that this is an excellent game and I am new to space combat but have played C&C titles. I would have to agree with the original post. How are some of you NOT finding that when there is more than 2 AI's, that you don't get ganged up on? It's ridiculous and spoils the game. You can bang on about treaties but at what point do you get to do that whilst you are building up your forces yourself let alone hopping round the galaxy trying to gain favour with other fleets!

I always play the game against normal,random AI's and unlocked teams. When I played WITH locked teams it was a walkover and I kicked alien butt!

I think the ally model rewards aggressive play. If you attack an enemy colony during the lab grab phase, somebody (probably all of the others) will start liking you. Thats what usually happens for me. If you turtle, nobody likes you. I usually try to fight over a good planet or two during the land grab phase.

Oh, I will say though that I played a game with LOCKED teams the other day where I gave myself an ally. Things were all well and good until I had just about won and then my ally decided to reneg on me. Found that a little odd. I whopped up on the traitor but was still scratching my head as to how that could happen.

I think there's a bug in 1.03 that if you load a save game and don't open the "game options" screen to reconfirm your settings, it will revert to the defaults, including unlocked teams.

I presume you were playing 1.03 and saved and loaded the game at least once?
In 1.03, when you load the game, you have to reconfirm the options before starting, otherwise they default to normal fleet size and unlocked teams.

edit: Cyrus beat me to the punch

On the diplomacy note. I find the whole concept of missions very unnerving. It doesn't feel real at all. I usually just play with locked teams.

I'm just about done taking my first solar system on a huge map against 9 hard AI. OK, I'm lying, I'm only about half done and allied with the other half. The AI is MUCH more aggressive on hard though, and it's taken me a good 15 hours just to eke out the territory I do have. Most of the time I've had a fleet or two of combined enemy forces attacking at least one of my three main chokepoint systems; and I've had to make 3 smaller fleets to play hopscotch helping out each other as each chokepoint gets contested. Now that I've managed to form a treaty with all but three of the AI's I'm able to focus more on expansion, but I have to say that the AI's made me work for it. There was a short period when I was sure that I was going to have to give it up, but I stuck with it and ended up focusing more on diplomatic missions and making as many friends as I could whilst battling on three fronts. The AI is also much smarter about taking out repair bays before concentrating on other planetary defenses though, which keeps me on my toes checking my various fights for fear of coming back to a system devoid of orbital platforms.

So, as to the OP's concerns; no I do not think the AI gangs up on human players. I think it does gang up on whomever it deems the weakest link; whether it be weighted by diplomacy, defenses, or fleet size I cannot determine. It certainly appears from the screenshot that you were a bit behind the curve keeping up with the AI from a military, diplomatic, and expansion perspective though.

I have played several 3xUnfair unlocked games and have yet to see anything other than FFA.

(I also ignore ALL diplomacy requests, so you would think I would be more vulnerable to getting ganged up on).

Not seeing the same results here.

What size map? Maybe it's a map thing.

I've suspected the same thing. Especially if the stock maps have any hidden special settings that might affect Diplomacy.

I'm playing on the huge multi-star random map. Only mod I have loaded is Uzii's Sins Plus, but that shouldn't affect the AI behavior. The only special planet I managed to grab before the AI started attacking was an industrial planet, and I ended up losing it and getting it back twice before I got my borders secured.

I'm sorry if my first post was misleading however I figured everyone understood that there are multiple factors that convince the AI to attack you. Being the weakest link plays a part in that role however if you simply ignore all their missions they will come for you with a vengeance also. Forming an alliance early with one or more AI early in the game will keep the heat off of you. Good diplomacy choices combined with a strong fleet will easily prevent the 'gang up' result. I found this out early on however I was weak and not completing missions so yeah, they attacked me. Duh.

Balance your diplomacy and fleet strength and you won't have that problem. However if your 30% or so without a ceasefire, don't expect them to ignore you either. Until you get that ceasefire your still fair game for their expansion.

This is not true. When the AI is unlocked he makes and breaks alliances just like human players. Without knowing more about the game specifics (AI personalities, economic differences, threat factors, who you made angry at you etc) it looks like orange and cyan decided you were easy pickings so they allied to take you out (i.e you weren't doing every well and could be easily eliminated thus giving them more resources to take on pink and purple and eliminating the chances of a second front).

However, in the majority of cases, the #1 reason the AI will gang up on you is if you are way more powerful than everyone else. Once they've brought you down to size, they will usually break up their alliances and go back to trying to maintain the balance of power or going for their own personal power grab.