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Why do I play this game I know..... - 11/23/2015 10:52:22 AM

aaatoysandmore

Posts: 2848
Joined: 9/11/2013
Status: offline

It has no decent AI. Every game I've played on hard or higher I get these kinds of results.

Quarg: Way of the Ancients government. Researches like blood spilling from a stuck pig. Has the two most powerful weapons in the game Death Ray and some Power Graviton weapon. Both doing over 1000 damage. I know the Death Ray alone has 1800.

My Military strength: 69014 His: 11399 This is on hard difficulty and he's right at my front door (even though I set all them up for distant they are all on my front doorsteps. Why is he such a poor ship builder. As it is now if my military strength is a tell tale of our power I could crush him even with the power that he has. Just overwhelmingly send tons of ships and fleets over and just crush the hell out of him.

Everyone else's power is about the same very low numbers compared to mine. Is there any way to make the AI build more and better ships? With a mod or something? I can't stand this difference in power and I have the lowest economy figures of all the races. Yet, still I can muster fleets like you wouldn't believe. I'm not going to gimp myself to make a challenge out of this. I want something that increases the power of the AI.

Post #: 1

RE: Why do I play this game I know..... - 11/23/2015 1:28:31 PM

Bingeling

Posts: 5186
Joined: 8/12/2010
Status: offline

Improved AI mod, extreme difficulty.

(in reply to aaatoysandmore)

Post #: 2

RE: Why do I play this game I know..... - 11/23/2015 8:19:24 PM

aaatoysandmore

Posts: 2848
Joined: 9/11/2013
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: Bingeling

Improved AI mod, extreme difficulty.

Link?

(in reply to Bingeling)

Post #: 3

RE: Why do I play this game I know..... - 11/24/2015 2:39:19 AM

ehsumrell1

Posts: 2529
Joined: 8/17/2010
From: The Briar Patch Nebula
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: aaatoysandmore

quote:

ORIGINAL: Bingeling

Improved AI mod, extreme difficulty.

Link?

Here you go:

http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=3647528

_____________________________

Shields are useless in "The Briar Patch"...

(in reply to aaatoysandmore)

Post #: 4

RE: Why do I play this game I know..... - 11/24/2015 5:05:15 AM

aaatoysandmore

Posts: 2848
Joined: 9/11/2013
Status: offline

thanks man I'm trying it now. ALready seen an improvement in the Guardians play.

(in reply to ehsumrell1)

Post #: 5

RE: Why do I play this game I know..... - 11/24/2015 5:25:28 AM

SirHoraceHarkness

Posts: 400
Joined: 5/17/2015
Status: offline

Yep, base game has anemic ai but icemania's tweaks really help with playability. Something else to do if you find the ai empires a bit weaksauce even with the mod is to go into the race files and give them small buffs to their economy and research or after a game starts go into the editor and find the home systems of the enemy and add a few planets and seed in all the resources they need to produce and fuel end tech ships. This will greatly increase the end game difficulty and certain races that are typically weak can become strong like the humans who always flounder under ai control.

(in reply to aaatoysandmore)

Post #: 6

RE: Why do I play this game I know..... - 11/24/2015 1:13:41 PM

aaatoysandmore

Posts: 2848
Joined: 9/11/2013
Status: offline

Yeah, sadly it started off nice but as I discovered more races they hadn't expanded hardly at all and hours into the game the Shakturi (sp) still only have 1 planet.

Is modding the game user friendly like with scripts etc? I can mod games with scripts but this new stuff it's like trying to work on a 2015 car vs a 57 chevy. I just don't understand it and really don't even want to try. Don't have that kind of time anymore, but, if it has simple modding ability I'll take a crack at it.

I find the AI doesn't expore enough the most. It always has less colonies than I do and hardly ever gets those neat lil toys like the Death Ray or Gravaton Super Weapon or those governmental doctrines Ancients and Darkness. If I can take those out or must make it where every race has the opportunity to use them at a cost I'll put that in.

One race is building a lot of ships like in the pictures but it's not doing anything with them. They are all just sitting at the home capital and I'm like +68 friends with them already. So, it's not likely they'll come after me. Diplomacy is really too easy. I always can get every race to like me even the bad guys as my income is always ungodly.

Perhaps if one forced themselves to play with everything on auto.

You only can control the fleets and strike forces "during wars" and just deal with what the AI gives you. You can place your leaders and stuff too. That might be fun. But, having hands on it's just too easy on extremely hard. Was the difficuly made for an 8 year old or what?

I'll continue to play this one and see if it gets better. But, as it is now I can take out the Shakturi right now without any trouble. They hardly have any ships. Hopefully they will get in a war and take some of the other AI colonies and make a game of it.

It also would seem one should set up the games where all the races are Military Dictatorship an aggressive. All the good races want to do is ask for my help, me to give them all my rare resources and be BFF's .

They do feed me money for free though. It's like every other minute one of them is sending me a gift of money.

One more thing I noticed about this mod is I had to design nearly every ship in the beginning. Is this suppose to happen? Now, the AI has taken over and is auto designing them but at first I only had explorers, escort, colony and construction ships. That was a pita to have to redesign all those other ships and I still have battleshps and carrier and energy ships to go. The ports were there alright thank the gods for that.

Anyways thanks for directing me at least you tried. I'ma try a game with all Military Dictators and aggressive and see what happens. I'll probably get stomped but at least it will be different.

< Message edited by aaatoysandmore -- 11/24/2015 2:16:34 PM >

(in reply to SirHoraceHarkness)

Post #: 7

RE: Why do I play this game I know..... - 11/24/2015 8:10:14 PM

Blueinstinct

Posts: 59
Joined: 12/17/2011
Status: offline

I found myself a nice solution by increasing the AI developement and
the general agression at the setup screen. both to 1 befor maxed out.
It will only affect the AI's if you use autogenerated AI empires. An it wont affetct you...
And extended AI improvement mod is a must!

at difficulty hard iam having a biig challange but since iam not the best at this game i even find challange with normal
in this starting conditions.
In my curent game (1400 stars/habitable planet rate increased by 1/ 11 autogenerated normal AI's/aggression chaos/ research expansive / no prewarp game)
Ai's have 20-45 colonys by the time i have 5.
I cant get any wonders and i have the first war declared on me soon.
Iam fighting it off well enough atm but it is one of the smaller AI's with about 27 colonys.

Pretty fun atm u, might wanna try it

greetings

(in reply to aaatoysandmore)

Post #: 8

RE: Why do I play this game I know..... - 11/24/2015 8:30:07 PM

aaatoysandmore

Posts: 2848
Joined: 9/11/2013
Status: offline

As I said in my first post. I don't want to "gimp" myself to make a challenge out of this. I want it to be challenging as it is with a real ai not this do nothing sit on it's butt ai. I want equal planets and equal military power and then let the wars begin. I don't want 5 colonies to 25 or 40 of the ai's.

This one I'm playing now is getting interesting. One AI that has like 9 colonies to my 10 is getting annoyed with me (he has a stronger military strength than I do also). I expect a war soon so I'm setting him up for disaster as I make defensive paks with other good races with 7 or 8 colonies right next to it. It's always a shame I never get to see the weapons used at the start of the game. Usually by the time war starts we all got heavy blasters and torpedos but the AI doesn't seem to know how to optimize them and I usually blow its ships to hell.

This is a 400 star system occassional on a 15x15 grid. Most everyone got about 7 to 10 colonies except a couple that only have 1 and never went past 1. I usally play on a 700 planet normal setting on one less grid pattern than 15x15 I think it is 10x10. I don't like a lot of planets but this one is rather sparce. So, I'm thinking a 700 planet occassional setting on a 15x15 grid will be the ticket. I'ma try that Military Dictatorship on aggressive the next game.

While I've had some games like yours with the AI getting lots of colonies the problem is that Death Ray and those governmental documents that give you ungodly power. There's even some super beam weapon also. I usually get them in every game. The AI doesn't seem to even scout ruins to get stuff like that. I wish I could give every alien race that Way of Ancients and the bad aliens the Way of Darkness. That's almost the same as the Jedi vs the Dark Side.

I figure if I work at it long enough I'll find the optimum challenge but right now it's just futile. It seems this mod takes so much away from the player ( I never had an economy problem in the regular games) I'm having a world of a tough time keeping my economy just at the balanced level. If I give the AI money it spends it and then I'm losing income and the ability to build new ships by keeping it from going bankrupt. It seems to be Republican (spend spend spend) but the trickle down effect isn't working. I'm (the little guy) getting screwed trying to keep it afloat. Just like real life huh?

Thanks again though for the help. I forgot a few things it's been so long since I played this and now I remember why I stopped. No fun.

(in reply to Blueinstinct)

Post #: 9

RE: Why do I play this game I know..... - 11/25/2015 1:35:22 AM

SirHoraceHarkness

Posts: 400
Joined: 5/17/2015
Status: offline

Try this modified boskara race file for some additional challenge but this is meant for ai use only as using it as a player is hilariously broken. ;^) Stick it in the race folder of the ai mod and make sure to backup the original. Makes extreme difficulty really extreme especially on larger maps with lots of habitables. The monsters are coming. Will you be ready? Is especially fun with several seeded nearby.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/i6b9pxwfkuomc84/boskara.txt

< Message edited by SirHoraceHarkness -- 11/25/2015 4:14:06 AM >

(in reply to aaatoysandmore)

Post #: 10

RE: Why do I play this game I know..... - 11/25/2015 8:42:56 PM

aaatoysandmore

Posts: 2848
Joined: 9/11/2013
Status: offline

Oh I think I found the optimum challenge alright. That Military Dictatorship and playing with all the intelligent aggressive unreliable bad guys is overwhelming on the setting just before extreme and aggressive setting. I got stomped right off the bat with like the first race I discovered.

Get this, it did a feint on me, lured me to another place with his main fleet and then jumped in with a FLEET of damn Troop Carriers and took my base before I could do squat. I'm like wow. I got hardly nothing to fight this armada with except like on fleet of destroyers. Within minutes he jumped in and took another colony while I was trying to repair and refuel. You guys are good if you can beat this one. I never seen such ships and AI play. I only had like 6 colonies before this war started and that's with high exploration in an occasional, 700 stars, 15x15 grid. These guys seem to only need one planet with the power they have now.

This is using that extended AI mod as well. But, I select the AI that play and as I said I selected all the bad guys with quite intelligent and aggressive an unreliable. Woah what a good game that was. At least I finally lost a game.

Ima bump it back down one level to restless or whatever that one is just before the one before extreme. I may go back to vanilla and set a game up like this one. The economy these guys get at the start is unbelievable compared to what I'm used to seeing. Plus the ship strengh is double to triple what I can get at the start. Even so, I did notice my destroyers that I make beat the crap out of that AI that stole my planets. It's just making MORE of the same weak ones. But, even an army of ants can defeat a spider if you ever played SIM ANT.

(in reply to SirHoraceHarkness)

Post #: 11

RE: Why do I play this game I know..... - 11/25/2015 9:13:52 PM

SirHoraceHarkness

Posts: 400
Joined: 5/17/2015
Status: offline

Game setup is important to getting the game style you want. Seeding a map with races either neutral or friendly to you won't have much warfare until you get to the very endgame and are bumping borders. The insect races otoh are the scourge and will be aggressive and nasty as soon as they find you unless you quickly build up a military. Try the boskara tweak I posted but only use one and seed in a few neutral races as a buffer and also to make you work for any defense pacts for extra challenge.

(in reply to aaatoysandmore)

Post #: 12