AI tweaking continues to be one of the many many things being worked on. I am still not satisfied with the AI though (it's wayyyy better than Beta 5 and Beta 5 was roughly on par with GalCiv 1).
Here's some results and you can see where the flaws being worked out on. I'm frustrated with the AI ship design stuff still. It's getting there but needs another day of tweaking.
Here are TWO games, not as detailed as the other, just whipped through them.
Human / Drengin Wars VIII
Map: Duel.
Setting: Intelligent (AI is playing its best game without cheating)
Note: smoothing effects off for debugger so don't look at these screenshots as representative of a typical game.
1) We need to work on what music plays when more. (for me to fix)
Early game:
Galaxy is split except a randomly generated minor race took Thindor. This will give my military the opportunity to try out some stuff when I take it.
Initial AI heavy fighter:
Initial human heavy fighter:
AI strategy this game: High logistics, wimpier ships. First major test:
5 Drengin ships vs 3 human ships.
Result:
Roughly equal damage but in this case, more, cheaper ships beat out fewer quality ships.
...
For quite awhile, the Drengin have a pretty substantial lead. I put everything I have to increase my logistics ability and couple it with a final generation of railgun based heavy fighter:
The Warhawk isn't much better than the Star Hawk on paper but it has better range and it has some beam weapon protection.
The Drengin's counter:
Practically the opposite. Fully protected for mass drivers with missiles instead. The mark 3 is the Drengin's "latest" design.
Spending Contrasts:
Me: 80/0/20 (miltiary/social/research) Income: $297. Spending: $238
Drengin: 48/7/43 (miltiary/social/research). Income: $238. Spending: $254.
By 2229 I've crushed the Drengin again:
Surprising other than in military it's pretty even:
But I can't conquer them yet. I need to get advanced troop modules (Which they have). So I'll have to switch to research for a bit.
If I do win, I think the biggest issue is they let me off too easy when I lost the first war. I was able to make peace by giving them some minor techs even though they had me on the ropes.
But really it's more an issue so far that the AI went for advanced transports while I went for better weapons. But at this stage, we're at a stalemate. I can't take his worlds without those advanced invasion techs he already has. I also fixed a bug with how the AI is handling their transports.
Another thing I think the AI could do is build more helpful starbases for itself.
The next war would be a battle of ship designs and manufacturing capacity of our societies.
The War Eagle cost less than the previous generation FireHawk, does 2 more mass driver damage, and has better range.
It would be backed by the Dauntless class Medium Frigate.
What's particularly nice about the Dauntless is that it's only 60 billion credits more expensive to build than the War Eagle despite having nearly twice the punch.
The Drengin fall before it.
A few other notes:
1) The AI should be more aggressive about taking out unescorted transports.
2) The AI should be more aware of battles it can't win. Some puny fighters going up against a fleet of dauntless's is futile.
The Drengin is destroyed.
Other Bugs discovered/fixed:
1) ALL AI players were building Influence starbases instead of military ones (copy and paste bug).
2) AI player was too quick to abandoned established military tech. Easy to fool. Now it takes into account how much it's invested. So if it has Zeon missiles and the player has some defense against that but none against beams, it's not going to just start over with beam. It's going to look at how much better its stuff is than the human players stuff. This is heavy duty stuff but I think that what hurt the AI was when it switched to missiles rather than sticking with beam. Sure, my ships had some defense but not enough.
3) But more effort into AI escorting transports
4) Fixed the Diplomacy AI to drive a harder bargain in wartime when it's winning. If the AI hadn't let me off the hook when it had the initial advantage, it could possibly have won.
---
Map: Duel
Scenario: Standard Drengin vs. Human. Test 9
Record: Brad (9 wins, 0 losses).
AI Intelligence: "Intelligent" (its best game without getting extra goodies).
Note: smoothing effects off for debugger so don't look at these screenshots as representative of a typical game.
This is the 9th generation improvement to the Drengin AI. This evaluation will see how effective it is against a skilled player. A lot of tweaks were made over the last generation. It is getting close to being "final".
First generation Drengin Heavy Fighter is different than any I've seen it build before:
But in reality, it's because the AI now is building military starbases which it wasn't able to do so before due to a bug. The military starbase adds +2 to the mass drivers.
Take away the military starbase (Which I promptly destroyed) and it's not quite so impressive.
First generation AI units remain unimpressive.
..
The Drengin ramps up their military much earlier. That's why they have those crummy M0 units. But the head start helps them. They take one of my planets as a result.
The first really critical battle involved 5 Drengin ships vs. 3 of my F-1's. First generation on both sides though I waited longer to commit so my ships are substantially better.
It's amazing how small the tiny hull is vs. the small hull when seeing them battling it out. Small tweak -- fighters should worry less about defense IMO.
Overall though the Drengin was definitely winning this time. They had conquered two of my planets. I'd retaken one of them but damaged it in the process giving me an overall disadvantage. Luckily they had stuck with the crappy mark 0 ships for a long while. Probably because it could crank them out (they're cheap).
..
No, it's a bug. There's a bug in the AI ship design. I've been able to exploit it thus far and get to where I am now which is even with the AI. So I'm going to fix it and restart. At the close of 2228, the AI's state of the art ship is a 1 attack, 1 defense ship, a first generation ship. Sad.
..
Fixed and reloaded the saved game.
Map is evenly split between the two of us. My biggest advantage thus far has been speed. The AI doesn't have impulse power clearly.
The balance of military power is in my favor:
The AI had cranked out a bunch of quality poor ships and I was able to wipe them out but it was a close thing.
It doesn't take long for the new changes to take effect: The Mark IV Heavy fighter:
A bit better but possibly too little too late.
My newest ships...
The Alpha, a medium class Frigate.
and the F-2 Star Eagle
My new units are superior to the Drengin's and wipe them out pretty effectively.
And so...
AI Ship Design remains non-optimal. Will continue on. T-minus 5 days until code-freeze. I think we're pretty close.
