AI gives up too easily

from Stardock Forums
Has anyone ever had the AI come back and win or present a challenge as soon as you were able to get above them in tech and military might? So far in almost every game I have played (intelligent - medium to gigantic size) If I can last long enough to get ahead by a bit, the AI pretty much leaves me alone and focuses on killing other AI. At that point it is trivial to culture bomb for the win.

My last game I ended up pretty thinly spread, even though I had a lot of ships. The galaxy was gigantic, so it would take many turns to mass forces in any particular location. Once I had the upper hand, the other races kind of gave up. I would culture bomb whole systems of theirs, have no defenders or even warships anywhere near them and they AI would just ignore me. They could quite easily retake those systems provided they smash my starbases first to prevent re-flip due to culture. It seems all the AI cares about is the magic military rating number. If the AI would just be more tenacious it would make the mopping up stage a lot less boring.
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Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
i have noticed this as well. once you've become significantly more powerful than any single AI player, you can easily culture bomb them to death since they'll be reluctant to fight you. but they hardly react at all to culture bombing anyway. hopefully this will be improved at some point.

cheers

h
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
Hmmm.. I just had an awful experience to the exact opposite. I had %87 cultural influence and was ready to round the magic %90 mark. But the Alterians picked a fight and while I was beating them away, the Drengins big time picked up on tech, manufacturing. I settled peacefully with the Alterians, only to have the Drengins pick a big battle with me shortly afterwards. I saw the Drengin come back from 3 or 4th place to first place within a matter of 50 turns.

Fun but frustrating for me...
-Anx
Sins of a Solar Empire II
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
Brysos: the simplest fix to this is to play on all genius+. I, too, had a fairly easy time with the other levels, but on all genius (with the normal spread of good/evil) you will not have time to "sit back" and build your culture bomb. I have found them far more agressive, with races less powerful than I (whom I was trading with) declare war on me, even though it destroyed his economy in the process. I am pretty sure he was paid to do this by the Altarians, who have us all beat. This will be the first game I lose, and it's a mildly frustrating experience (unless a miracle happens, like a gift of 100 terror stars). If you cannot consistently win on the hardest levels, please do not say it's too easy.

~SDC~
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
Gordeleth,

I was led to believe that the AI was exactly the same from intelligent on up. So I assume the behaviors I see apply to all difficulty levels above.

And so far I have won on intelligent 99% of the time. Now I do restart if I get a crappy location, and most of my games are played using the PQ bonus which is definately a huge crutch (PQ is very powerful -- imho). But the games really do flow in a similar way, which is in part do to my particular strategy.

I am sure the higher difficulty levels are more of a challenge, and I should probably go to the next level, however I have a feeling the gameplay is going to be similar, except I will have a much smaller margin of error in which to operate. The AI will do the same dumb things it does in intelligent, and have the same glaring weaknesses (such as attacking the closest defended planet/sector ad infinitium).

For me, unfortunately the lack of variety in the AI response is becoming a little tedious. If my military falls behind i get attacked, if I get the upper hand they AI lets me do whatever I want with relative impunity. I have no problem with the former, but the latter bugs me because the AI only seems to consider a single stat or simple calculation and it makes later half of the game pretty trivial.

You could make a new difficulty level and call it OMFG, and make all the other races start with dreadnaughts, but it still wouldn't change the end game. If you managed to survive long enough to get the military upper hand, it seems the AI will just do the same thing it has done in every game I have played. I always end up with a fun first half and a long boring mop up, which is a shame because the AI usually has enormous potential to provide a challenge for a lot longer than it does.
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
Give the higher levels a try, bro, and tell me what you think after, say, 2 games. I have seen them play quite differently than the Int or below games. They grow rediculously fast, though I have a slight chance of winning my second game if I can get the Altarians to ally with me. So far I have seen the following behaviors I have not seen anywhere else:

* The AI has gone around a heavily fortified planet or ships multiple times to attack what's behind it as long as it's in their single turn range (which 10-12 at this point).

* They have paid other races to declare war on me and do their dirty work for them (even though the first race was nice to me, was even to me in stats, and was my trade partner so it ended up screwing us both over) before sending tons of transports at different angles into my backfield to try and capture my newly-defenseless planets - frickin cost me a ton of time to keep them defended and take out the combat transports.

* They seem to be more aggressive or supportive, depending on the situation (I am playing one as a good player and one as "Evil G"); they seem to change their attitude toward me far more often, which keeps me guessing.

* In one game the Drengin lost all but one system (go Fundamentalists!) and are still holding off the most powerful civ as well as the defectors with a military rating roughly = to mine with 14 well-defended systems. This has been at least 30 turns since they lost most of their might and they are still fighting hard to expand (they have asked twice for peace so they can focus on the battle at home and I turn them down with a distinct sense of satisfaction). Granted the AI is not as ruthless as players (like sending a huge wave of ships AND transports at the same time, but I am not sure the Drengin wouldn't still find a way to survive). I never saw a thoroughly-beaten civ last this long before against the major power on any previous level.

* I have also felt the squeeze of their destabilization/culture tactics, which I have never really noticed before.

I have seen other things too, but I wanna go play now instead of spending more time getting worked up, lol.

Happy gaming.

Gord

~SDC~
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
Brysos,

The AI is NOT exactly the same on genius as it is on intelligent. It is true that at genius the AI gets a slight (about 5%) income bonus over the player, but there's also a difference in the way the AI behaives. (It is entirely possible that the AI plays the same on Incredible as it does on Genius ... I've never actually tried an Incredible AI, but Genius is definately smarter than Intelligent)

- Matt Lepinski :->

~SDC~
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
I wonder if the latest patch has really made Intelligent more ... intelligent?
Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top
I have seen the AI do its best to catch up to me when I had superiority. I ended up engaging the Drengin and Yor (separately) in genocidal wars just to end the damned arms race.

It is possible to get so far ahead that they can't match you, but then it's possible for them to do that to you, so it's not unreasonable.

~SDC~