My single player wishlist

Above all else it needs to stop wasting its cash on starbases; I can't tell you the number of AI's I've steamrolled because they spent all their cash on one big expensive starbase and don't have a fleet, so I steamroll them with ease.  This makes the AI unfun to play, because I've got to break through a big huge starbase to win, but aside from that it offers no real resistance because it hobbled its fleet to get those defenses.

What are you doing running into weapons range of a heavily upgraded TEC or Advent starbase?  They can't move, so sit back and let bombers wipe it out, or build your own starbase to finish the job.

The AI is an absolute idiot in this regard, and that needs to change, but a player under most circumstances will never charge a heavily upgraded starbase.

Oh yeah, the AI is exceptionally bad about suiciding on starbases.  It's always had a problem knowing how to use decisive force and how to fight a competent battle, but it's really bad about starbases.

I've also noted some suspicious AI behavior regarding resource stockpiling and lack of research.  I've also reviewed replays and seen them buying superfluous research while ignoring very useful ones.  In general it neglects the tech tree, regardless of what its AI settings are.

The problem is that the AI is so inconsistant.  I've seen AI's surrender even while they still control entire solar systems.  On the other hand, I've seen AI's who refuse to surrender even though they've been soundly beaten but it will take another fifteen minutes for me to bombard all their 6000 hp planets (no fleet or frigate factories and I destroy every constructor that spawns in).

As others have mentioned "an enemy starbase is being built at a friendly planet" would be a far more useful prompt regarding a far more dangerous event.  I don't see any need for a "starbase is under attack" message, as we already have "planet is under attack", which should alert you to the problem whether or not a starbase is there.

i would say the Darvin3 made a very good comment about your post.

Just an addition, i believe people/gamer nowadays are more of playing in multiplayer rather than single player. it allows them to interact much more and even build camaredery and the likes. no wonder why mmorpg games have been that popular for the past years right?

Thanks Darvin3

With regard to starbases I guess we are talking two different approaches to playing single player - I like a long game on a large map with multiple systems and am not into rushing the AIs - I don't know if such an approach would work on a huge maps with four hard AI's - I can't rush them all at once.

  With 4 hard AI's on a 5+ system map with lots of planets neutrals etc economies tend to ramp up quite fast so the cost of starbases is not so much of an issue. The AI seems to build decent sized fleets which it promptly suicides against one of my starbases somewhere. Over and over. Endlessly. However I am free to take control of stars, wormholes, enemy neutrals etc and chop the AI territory into pieces with much smaller fleets than the AI's because the AI never ever builds starbases away from its planets. After that the AI is unable to move around the map and its only a matter of time until I win. Which sucks especially when the AI is sitting on a million+ credits and doing nothing with it.

Depending on the map layout I seldom actually build many SB's at planets - most often choke points at stars/worm holes are far more useful and essentially stop AI fleets getting at my planets or severely whittling them down if they try is more effective.  Of course a human would just bypass all the static defenses but the AI never does. I care much more if one of my blocking SB's is being attacked especially since the AI NEVER EVER EVER has attempted to build a SB at one of my planets. I really wish it would, hell I might even be so surprised that I would rush to click the "Surrender" button from the shock.

To me the AI wrt SB's seems to have been left out or poorly thought out when Entrenchment was released which seems odd beacuse vanilla SINS against hard AI's is a much much harder fight.

Yes lots of people like multiplayer.  Thats great. I have no issue with MP and love reading all the posts re balance issue, how to counter a scout rush, carrier spam, lrm spam etc. If thats whats fun to you then great - go for it.

If most people like MP why has this game sold so many copies and there are so few MP players? Is it just the balance issues? Or are there more people out there who, like me, just want to come home from work, deal with family life etc then get an hour or two or maybe only 30 minutes before bed where they can resume their epic struggle to take out those damn Advent invaders from that green star over there. And watch their damn ships explode. It beats watching TV.  

All I was doing was making a few suggestions how *I* would like the AI to improve for the sorts of games *I* like to play. For a lot of people the AI is the only opponent they will ever have so why not make it as good as it could be within the limits of the technology?

Excellent posts, both hdaboy and Darvin3. Now how to tell IC so they'll fix these issues.

It is always important to remember that a majority of customers of most any computer game never even use the online feature (think Galactic Cvilizations). As such, if any company has to put its resources into something in a computer game, they should be directed toward SP first, because SP is what draws most players, while multiplayer will just keep some of them around much longer.

I myself play a lot of LAN AI crushers, and echo most everything said so far about the AI, particularly in regard to starbases. The AI also does not know how to build a carrier task force with an emphasis on bombers, and wipe out your star base from long range. It incessantly loves seige frigates, and will take every opportunity it can to throw some at your planets. And yet Siege frigates currently are an utter waste of both resources and fleet slots. And unless LRM frigates are rebalanced, the AI simply does not put enough emphasis on them. The AI also cannot look at a current battle and decide whether it it losing or winning, and if it should really retreat or stay, often doing the opposite of what it should (a fleet retreats when it is winning, and stays when it is losing with anoying frequency).

I would be just fine with some balance changes. They are evident in SP and LAN as well as multiplayer. However, don't forget about the SP as well. I would happily pay $20 for an expansion that simply fixed these AI issues listed in this topic, and all and all made the AI play much better. IC seriously needs to read this thread.

I've seen a number of people ask whether or not they should purchase Entrenchment, and, in light of this thread, I'm kind of wondering if single players might be better off not getting Entrenchment simply because it might put the AI at a greater disadvantage as a result of the increased complexity.  HdaBoy, have you considered just not playing Entrenchment and playing it in Regular Sins and perhaps trying out community mods for variety?  Have you considered playing it in the Seven Deadly Sins mods?  Might there also be some mods out there that improve the AI?

Not aware of any mods that improve AI. And no Entrenchment? Are you crazy? The new stuff seriously is fun.

Everything depends on the map layout.  In the case of massive maps, you can swap out "hobbling its fleet" with "hobbling its economic expansion".  The end result is that the player is far more developed than the AI and will cream it at some point in the future.  I personally have never played a game that's ran past the 7-hour mark; I find these quite pointless against the AI since it doesn't build superweapons, so invariably reaching the late game is an automatic win for the player (if the AI hasn't defeated you by now, it's never going to).

The fact remains that a starbase on its own is a speedbump, not a bulwark.  It will slow down an enemy's advance, it will not stop him.  The AI is the worst of both worlds, running headfirst (foolishly) into a starbase's guns, and placing starbases as if it expects you to do the same.  If you don't oblige it, those starbases will mostly end up being wasted cash.  They will slow you down, but not nearly by enough to merit the huge amount of cash the AI spends in their construction.

This has more to do with AI stupidity than anything else.  The AI is stupidly aggressive in some respects and stupidly timid in others.  Often times it will allow you to build up forces rather than opportunistically attacking you, or attack you recklessly where your defenses are strongest.  This has the effect of reducing the number of casualties you can expect to sustain.  Against a more competent opponent, you might have to divert 90% of your income just to replace dead units.  

I personally find these types of games to be quite uninteresting against the AI.  The AI doesn't build superweapons, so your eventual victory is assured if it drags on past the 3 hour mark (that's practically a forgone conclusion on large multistar scenarios). 

I'm aware; this is a huge problem that needs to be addressed.  I believe the AI has a behavior where it will never reteat when a starbase is present in the system (because it doesn't want to take the hostile phase penalty), which causes it to suicide.  This is half of the problem.  The other half is that the AI is an extraordinarily poor judge of combat strength, and seems to constantly get itself into battles where it is clearly disadvantaged.  It's one thing to launch a desperate gambit, it's entirely another to launch futile assaults on clearly superior opponents.

Gotta agree; the AI got much worse in entrenchment.  It seems the most notable improvement is the way the AI uses siege frigates; this is something of a moot point, however, as many of us have remarked that the AI would be much more difficult if it stopped wasting its money on siege frigates and instead bought combat frigates.

It's no secret that most gamers are singleplayer gamers.  I've heard of research that indicates that upwards of 90% of gamers (MMO's excluded, obviously) may only play singleplayer.  The problem is that these people are invisible; we rarely hear from them on the discussion forums.  Usually even if they do pop up it's for technical support; you're a rarity among your kind, hdaboy.

There are a few issues there.  IC isn't a large company, and they don't exactly have the resources to have someone build a world-class AI.  As well, the game is designed to run on low-spec systems, and as such the AI has a very tight budget in terms of CPU resources.  They can't go over-the-top and cause the AI to lag up a low-end system.  That said, there's lots of room for improvement, and at very least some of its questionable resource utilization priorities need to change.

This is true, but the fact remains that the AI is much easier right now because it doesn't know how to use it properly or how to deal with it properly.

Thanks Darvin3 - once again excellent points.  I agree the long games are getting kind of boring as I know I will win - that is why I felt the need to vent in my original post. I can't even remember losing a planet to the AI in recent times. But I want long hard struggles, with lots of setbacks, to dominate the universe - otherwise whats the point! Perhaps I should be playing Eve online...no no no... must resist... I still have a life despite SINS.

I don't use the super weapons out of kindness to the AI and because it would make long games even more pointless.

I know IC is a small company and they have done a fantastic job producing a game that is good enough that I have spent a lot of time playing it and consider the little money it cost me to be money well spent for the entertainment value. It is a shame that the AI seems to be the only part of the game that cannot be modded as changing the AI behaviour would be something that would keep me playing SP for a long time.

As to resources being used by AI  does the compuation take up nearly as much CPU as the graphics side of things (I am guessing that graphics are mostly shunted off to the graphics card hardware to deal with)? Perhaps some settings to turn down AI cpu usage if it is lagging the system could be a way around this? Anyhow I  know I don't know squat about what it takes to build a game AI and haven't played enough RTS games to know if there are better AI's out there. I would just like the AI to stop doing the same dumb things over and over or to surprise me once in a while by taking control of its home systems star or by sending its fleet via a route that avoids my static defenses.

I guess that is why playing against people is better - you cannot predict what they will do but even that seems to boil down to find whatever imbalances exist and exploit them repeatedly until everyone is doing the same thing and it boring but for a different reason. Its hard to tell from the forums but are there MP players that are so obviously better strategic players than most or is it all about who has the best rush?  Does the situation arise where (say) two players/groups end up controlling 20 planets each, with maxed out research + economies so that each has heaps of resource then it becomes a matter of who is the better strategic player, better at ability micro etc

As to getting Entrenchment I seriously recommend it - sure the AI is dumb at using the new stuff but as Beric01 says above the new stuff is seriously fun. It makes for a richer game and you don't have to use it if you don't want.

Does anybody know of any article/interviews/forum posts where IC discuss the AI implemetation? Does the AI know everything that is going on on the map and make decisions based on that or does it only have a partial view , as if it were a real player and only know about things it has scouted/observed? It would be interesting to know.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I like Entrenchment, but I only play the game in online multiplayer.  However, the original poster was complaining about the quality of the AI and the challenge that it offers people, and I wanted to suggest that perhaps Entrenchment puts the AI at a greater disadvantage than Regular Sins as a result of the added complexity.

It's kind of ironic that I've reached this conclusion becuase I had originally figured that the expansions would only be good for the single player crowd, but now I have more or less concluded that Entrenchment is great for online multiplayer and that if you only play single player you might have a better experience with regular Sins and custom mods (like SDS).

I think that this is a common misconception that some people have.  There are all sorts of different strategies to consider and part of the challenge is to figure out which one is best.  Since players come with all sorts of different strategic preferences and skill levels, everyone is not doing the same thing repeatedly.  Some people prefer to try to colonize more, some prefer to try to develop an eco, some prefer to try to play some defense, and some prefer to go on offense right away.  Mix all of that up with the three different races and you'll see lots of variety.  I think the game is rather thrilling and it can sometimes be hard to tell what a player will do.  Now, if you keep playing against the same people all the time, some of those people can become predictable, but not always; their strategies might change depending on the map and the situation.

Rushing isn't necessarily the best tactic and rushes can fail (and end up being disastrous for the rusher).  There are certainly some excellent players out there, but instead of rushing it normally comes down to who can expand faster, who can put together the best fleet, who can micro better, who can attack where and when at the right time, who gets fed more, etc.  Another important aspect is who makes the best use of the map and the planets around them.

Sometimes it might make sense to dig in and prepare to play defense or to prepare to migrate to the middle of the map if you start out surrounded by enemies (sandwiched).  It's even possible that you could be dug in and slowly lose ground but help your team by occupying or slowing two opponents.  I actually find this situation rather thrilling--you're just trying to survive and do whatever you can to help your team knowing that your starting home planet will get wiped off the map.  In that situation, what can you do to help your team win.  (It's a very different type of game in those regards than single player where you would just accept defeat and restart--the team game is very different in those regards since you try to do all you can to help your team win even if you personally are being beaten down.)

It's actually a very dynamic game and no two games on the random maps seem to be the same.  I really think that some of these misconceptions about the online game, while perhaps containing grains of truth, have been blown out of proportion.

Yes, but I think much of it also involves strategic choices about where to attack and when and how forces should be distributed and where.

Note that the online games are normally over within 2 hours and often within 1.5 hours.  Since you'll be on maps with teams of players, if you have to mop up every opposing planet you'll have a group of allies to help you.  Also, normally most players on the losing team say "gg" and concede defeat once the outcome has been decided rather than make people go through the motions, so the online games don't take forever to play.  (The benefit is that people can start a new, competitive game and enjoy the good stuff as opposed to the boring mop up.)

I don't know how IC is going to fix this, because even small AI quirks get magnified over the course of several hours.

You guess correctly.  Modern CPU architecture cannot hope to handle 3D graphics on its own.  I'm actually a programmer myself, but I have little experience with AI's.  My impression is that AI's have a high order of complexity.  This means that if the AI's empire and fleet doubles in size, the amount of CPU power required to accommodate this more than doubles.  The problem as fleet sizes get very large should be quite obvious. 

I've played lots of RTS games, and I've never run into a great AI.  The biggest problem is that AI's can't learn, so short of programming them with every trick in the book (which is quite impossible) they will inevitably run into strategies and tactics they simply don't deal with appropriately.  There are also many AI quirks that can be abused, where they do something illogical under certain circumstances.  It's quite impossible to predict and remove all this behavior.  In short, no AI is anywhere close to the potential of human intelligence.

On the surface it appears everyone is doing the same thing, but once you get a little deeper there is much more variation among human players than against AI's.  It's hard to explain, but I suppose the best way to put it is that "it's not what units you're using, but how you use them".

While there are some amazing players out there who can really surprise you with a direct attack, more common are multi-front scenarios (particularly in team games) where you're winning in some places and losing in others.  Very seldom do people simply win or lose on a quick attack, and when they do it's often because they started extremely close to a nearby enemy.

This is uncommon; as I mentioned, in player vs player scenarios it's quite possible that upwards of 90% of your income could be diverted towards replacing destroyed frigates.  As a result, those massive economies that seem so common in singleplayer are rarely seen in multiplayer.  Most of the time they occur in team games where one player stays at 0% (or close to it) upkeeep while sending his allies money to build huge fleets.

I with you hdaboy, I really would prefer the devs spent a little more time is making a sneakier AI.  I'm just not into multiplayer I find it too stressful. I like to be able to hit pause examine the situation and make adjustments.  I been playing a different RTS game where the skirmish mode is fairly challenging and giving me a decent fight so I know it's possible to have a decent single player AI. 

What mods are currently created to expand on the single player experience?  Is it possible to mod the AI, ex.  have them max out their defences?  

AFAIK it is not possible to mod the AI beyond a few constants that define values for the  "Aggresive", "Defensive", "Researcher", "Economic" choices you can make when setting up a game - I haven't played with changing these(yet) so I am not sure what effect they have. It doesn't seem to make a whole heap of difference what style of opponent you select when it comes to the some of the stupider AI behaviours - the AI will still sacrafice it's fleets against SB's /not fully research etc.

As with others in these forums I find it most strange that IC has gone so quiet - I would have thought that they would have at least made some comment in regard the MP balance issues/gripes that keep being raised. I hope that all this means is that they are heads down cranking out code for the next expansion and/or patch release an is not a symptom of something more serious being wrong at IC. I would hate to think that they have given up on the game after making something so good.

I have created my ICO account and am just waiting for a moment when I can reasonably expect to have a few uninterrupted hours to play a game against real peoples. I suspect that lack of free time and the timezone I live in (New Zealand) might make getting a game difficult but hey if I do get online then be gentle on the noob who appears to think he is playing Sim City

Not much to add except that I'm surprised we haven't seen a developer or something pop in here with some comments.