Poll question regarding AI intelligence

I created a very similar Thread yesterday but nobody posted in it.

So now I am going to quote myself here:

"I am really uncertain about what I shall select in the "In general I find GalCiv's computer players to be.."-poll

I have not yet played Genius or Increadible, so I cannot select option 1.

I also do not feel it to be right. For that it should be a bit harder on Intelligent. I shall lose 4/5th of my games on intelligent for it to feel right but it's only 1/2...

But I definetly do not feel it to bee too hard! That would only be so, if I would also loose on the easier settings. Whoever finds it too hard just has to play against lower enemies! And I think winning on the fool-level shall be doable for almost everybody.

Please tell me what you'd choose in my situation and what you chose and maybe what your situation was."

Why should *you* lose 4/5 of *your* games on Int for the difficulty to be right? That seems like an extremely arbitrary way of measuring game difficulty. There's a reason why there's two levels above Int, and why there's a third being added in the expansion - if you don't feel a given level is challenging enough for you, push it up a notch.

For me, Int matches my comfort zone of keeping me thinking but not turning the game into work - that to me is a good difficulty. I win most of my games nowadays, and may eventually play around with bumping it up to Genius and see how I like that, but for now, Intelligent keeps me entertained and that's fine by me. The only way you can say the AI is too easy is if you're one of these people complaining at how trivial it is to beat all Incredible AIs on any map size with any star density.

-----

Regarding Joe's comments on the ease of manipulation: this is something of an issue, but it's more the quirk of it being an AI. For instance, I'd feel worse about being able to hold the AI off with a fleet composed mostly of star fighters if that same AI didn't start demanding tribute and cutting off my trade routes the second it has its own largely ineffective fleet of star fighters. Many of the manipulations, although they feel artificial to us wiley humans, amount to a somewhat balanced strategy against an AI that has the equivalent of lingering head injury when it comes to some aspects of the game. If and when Stardock improves the way the AI evaluates military strength, benefits of declaring war versus keeping the peace, etc., I hope they'll smooth out or eliminate many of these manipulations. Until then, I chalk them up to simulated quirks of playing a slightly demented opponent

I answered adequate, but I think I'm on my way to consistently beat the ai at maso. At least, I've got a repeateable strat that works on tiny maps, worked on medium map, and gigantic is easier.
Still, the big problem is the playing against one another. I win by trading and telling the ai to go at war against their neighbours, pickign up the weakest races around if I can. I have NEVER seen an unallied ai ask me to attack some race in exchange for something like a trade good.

Overall I think the AI is fantastic.

It's got a few shortcomings, the biggest one seems to be Diplomacy.

You can sue an ally for peace every round and they'll declare war the next round.

There's no consequence whatsoever to breaking a peace treaty (Moo's Cease Fire option would be good, diplo penalties for invading on round 1 of peacetime).

I was just about to start a thread on this. To me it seems silly. If I play with the comps on normal it seems easy. If I play with them all set on intelligent, I lose.
Perhaps this poll should only be for people who play with Genius level AIs all the time.

One thing I would say though, is that the Yor seem to have a real problem at normal level. I don't know about at harder levels, and from what I remember they seemed to do OK on the lower levels, but they can barely compete if I have them at intelligent and everyone else at normal.

Maybe its just me.

...it's ironic, cause I just answered the poll, and struggled on which selection to choose, then I saw this thread

I am playing my first intelligent game right now, and seem to be doing "okay"... have been progressing up the AI difficulty ladder with seemingly no problems.

Because I have not tried the hardest levels of the computer I selected "very challenging" as my vote <- assuming the computer will kick my butt on the higher levels.
Although I was tempted to choose "too easy" because I've had no problems to date...

The way I interpreted the poll is 'does the AI at any difficulty give *you* a good game and challenge?' It would be impossible for them to have some magic AI formula such that everybody feels that Normal is 'just right'. There are people such as yourself who find Subnormal the limits of your current playstyle. OTOH, I see people post about how they find all Genius to be to easy but Incredible to be too hard. It is good that there is such a range of AI *difficulties* and that it appears that there is only a very small number of people who find even the hardest level to be too easy. I've played too many games where even on the hardest level the AI was moronic and it was only by brute force and ignorance that it provided any sort of challenge at all.

MojoJojoUK

I'm wondering about the Yor.
I can't remember a game where they were not in pathetic shape and probably the first AI to vanish.

(I play with all AIs set at same level, used default alignment for 85% of my games so far).

I'm thinking of cranking the Yor AI way above everybody else to see if they can even survive.

What is the difference between intelligence levels?Does the ai start with more cash?Can someone tell me the details plz.

The rough explanation (it's been covered in detail elsewhere):
Below Intelligent, the AIs are penalized economically relative to you (i.e. if a given planet would yield 30 BC for you, they would get, say, 24B BC from that same planet on Normal). At Intelligent, you & the AI are equal economically. Above Intelligent, the situation is reversed and the AIs make more than you.

Additionally, as you increase the AI, they use more sophisticated AI routines for diplomacy, noticing ships in their sectors, etc.