Monomaniac AI

Mmmm Starbases... DOH!

First off this game is great, and overall an excellent purchase I recommend to anyone! With that being said I noticed the most recent AI changes have produced some unusual behaviour.

I think the Dregin Human wars have given the AI a bit of a complex about starbases. It was definately a good fix to tweak the AI to blow up your resource starbases, but now I think they need some form of success prediction. Inspired by the journals, I set up a small map with only 2 players. My opponent (The Drengins) and I did the standard land grab and split up the galaxy. After this I decided to see how much I could get away with and pumped out constructors, and researched some of the basic starbase defense tech (the one that lets you give the SB +5 in defense). I did this to the point of not even producing a single tiny ship, and expectedly the dregins declared war. Now I should have been in big trouble as 2 fleets of 3 ships each entered my section of the galaxy along with some solo heavy fighters. While i was switching over to build some ships, the Drengins easily lost 12 ships battering into my research and morale mining starbases(upgraded 4-5x each). This gave me time to stabilize and over the course of the next 50 turns they fight me 1 time and blew up another 9 ships into my starbases.

Now the above stratgy might have worked if they had done all these attacks together.. but spaced apart it was worthless. Additionally, one time they had 2 transport heading to an important planet they had battered down to 3k. I had a constructor in orbit, but they ahd a fleet of 3 ships 2 spaces away so I knew i was doomed. However, the starbase 5 spaces away seemed to the fleet a better target. So they flew off to die, instead of clearing away the lone constructor blockign their 2 transports from taking the best (PQ19) planet in the galaxy

Takatok

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What level were you playing on? I've noticed on occasion that the AI gets focused on starbases, but I always know that even then, if I over-upgrade the starbases, the AI will stop attacking them and go after planets.

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It does it in intelligent too. But then again, all the AI fleets in intelligent that I've seen suck.

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Ah sorry, failed to mention it was intelligent AI, which should be the full AI without any bonuses.

The AI seems extremely good at the early exploration/land grab, as well as switching weapons/defenses to try to counteract you. But for the most part it seems to have a lot of trouble massing forces. This game reminds me a lot of WW2 tank warfare. Its mostly about massing forces and punching through strongpoints. It does very little to spread your tanks out across a long line. I believe any efforts to seriously upgrade the AI's ability as an opponent would need to focus on its ability to concentrate forces. A common example (though many more situations abound in this game) is a basic strategy when yoru behind in logstics. Normally if you fight a bunch of 1 v 1 fleet battels 3 shipt to 4 your gonna lose ships much faster than your opponent. Often though if you engage 3 to 4, you lose but leave tehm with 1.5 ships left. then your 2nd 3 fleet can win, sometiems without a full ship loss at all. The current AI would never do this.

I am far from competent in programming AI, so the following suggestion might be impossible to implement but here is what I do mostly in my games to evaulate where to move and attack.

Create borders based on lines between planets. You would need to create 2 routines for both offense and defense ratings for these lines. The defense would be nothing more than which spots would be necessary to post defensive gaurds to break up/intercept attacks (often a guard and a lot of sensor units work well). Then the offense would balance distance and PQ to figure out where to attack. Then don't just send in fleets as formed in waving hordes of barbarians, but try to send in multiple groups of fleets to back each other up. You will often mop up some potentially weak survivors (which after they heal are brutal if they get a lot of experience). This could also be couple with a routine to evaluate chances of 1 fleets vs Starbase X. Then don't attack until you get at least a certain % of succes , say 75% or higher. Then mass assualt the base and often it can fall.

Takatok

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