retreat

whats your current game version? until v1.05 the AI retreated very fast, but in v1.05 the AI try to fight until the situation looks too bad. so if your game version is lower than v1.05, go patching...

my version is that beta thing you could get from impulse but still they retreat way to fast i think

IF you play 2 to 4 hours before having big battles, you should expect the computer to retreat. Why?

It is simple.

Your game galaxy has been developed. The computer will attack but you probably have well defended systems. So, why would the computer want to let his whole fleet be destroyed in an offensive strike?

Second, if you attack his forward positions, the AI again probably would rather lose them and keep some of his fleet to defend more important secondary ones.

Think about it. Retreating is often the smart choice.

If you want big fleet battles, you have to chase! And risk losing your fleet in the AI's territory. Or, keep pushing the AI until there is no where left to run or the stakes are so high that retreating is no longer an option.

Of course, there are certain ships, abilities and buildings that can slow retreating fleets, too.

Just my 2 cents.

I almost forgot, one more thing. Alliances.

Diplomacy works.

There is nothing better than having an AI ally show up and help you smash an enemy fleet.

On the other hand, it is exciting to see an enemy fleet have it's ally show up in your system to help them try and defeat you. If you can take on the combined fleet (alone or with your ally showing up, too), then you have experienced a great battle.

thx everyone for the help never thought about it like that but it would be nice if there came a "no retreat"mod

I don't think the modders can change that.

it would be nice to have such a mod because the on of the reasons i bought this game was for the huge ass space battles (yay i love space warfare)

The AI only stays with his fleet when his home planet is being attack if it is any where else he will retreat very quick

you're right way to quick we want SPACE BATTLES (btw ik ben lkkr ouder)

You could stop playing against easy or normal AI then. Jump up to unfair they are sometimes willing to stay and fight battles that normal would have ran from.

I just finished my 4rth game vs the 1.09 AI last night, and I must admit, the AI seems to retreat a lot more often than 1.05.  I thought it was just me the first couple games, but now I'm sure.  The AI only stayed and fought when I got to it's home planet.  It pretty much let me roll over all it's other planets (which is funny, because of it's defences on some planets, I was going to retreat back to my planet, but since it ran away, I always stayed and attacked).

Odd in my 1.09 unfair ai only does that when I take out their capital ships. I will admit I tend to exploit this fact by taking out all the missle cruisers and stuff they have and when my losses start becoming more then 8% of my fleet I wipe out their caps. Then as they run away I slice and dice the fleeing fools.

In responce to the guy complaining about them running away. Simple solution if you want your big epic space battle. Take it to their home planet, they will stay and fight till almost wiped out.

you're right dragoskani but if i take it to their homeplanet the problem is that their fleet doesn't come as one fleet but ship by ship

This happens alot to me.  The AI becomes afraid of it own shadow and retreat from every battle.  You may say that retreating is the correct tatic from them but I just don't see it.  They will abandon every planet except their home to me without me loosing a single ship I crush their whole empire sans the home planet.  By the time I get to their home planet they dont have the resources to compete.  I would expect the AI to fight to the last and wear down my fleet some, sure it will still loose the battle but it would have the resource base to fight another day.  And AI aside looking at the story, do the races think so little of their own people that they won't defend them?  The AI trades defeat in a singel battle for loosing the war.  I'm betting if I take their whole empire execpt their home the maintance cost of the fleet alone will cripple them.  The only serious fights seem to be with the pirates.  I love that you can mod this game but I feel it is a real faiure that the AI cannot be modified.  As it is even on harder settings its a whimp.  Sure it gets good resources to start out, but if I can fend off their initial attacks, when I go on the offensive they never stand a chance.  And don't even get me started on their build priorities, its seem a little better in the beta but most every AI fleet consists of tons of the cheapest ship for a race, a cap or 2 and maybe a handfull of other ships.  The game looks great, play is or could be very run but the AI is beyond sub par.

It sounds like you have gotten there friend. You need to play more mp.

ruby i agree with you totally have the same things except for pirates cause i allways dissable them

I think one of the reasons the AI is so unwilling to risk large fleet engagements where the outcome is not certain is that by the time of large fleets it takes too long to replace destroyed fleets (even with the massive resource hoarding of the ai).  I think that with each fleet supply upgrade ship build times should be decreased 10-20% so that eventually ships pop out instantly*.  Making the replacement of a lost fleet the matter of a moment.  And then fix the AI -the unfair one at any rate- to treat fleets as disposable (excepting high level caps).

Of course this would make the tec research for faster ship production useless so change it to faster ship speed (better engines). Maybe OP but would be interesting to play.

The unfair ai hordes resources so even without any fixes to the game the unfair AI still should be willing to lose massive fleet engagements as it has the resources to continously replace lost ships.  So why doesn't it.  I look at the end game stats and the unfair ai has so much unspent resource I cannot see how they lost.

*this obviously fits in with the backstory explanation of fleet supply.

I agree geniun but there should be a simple way to deselect this for those who want a sereus game instead of just sending a wall of ships to kill another wall of ships