Wayston
Posts: 18
Joined: 4/17/2010
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thanks for the input, maybe I've just gotten too familiar with the AI behavour...
I started a game with the development slider two further notches to the right, so all the alien races started out with 5-15ish planets and I with one along with a tech and fleet disadvantage. It was harder at first because most of the good planets are gone wherever you end up and races with special colonisation skills (I always play a human democracy) have more time to snatch those fancy non continental planets away from you before you're able to colonize them... However after a bit of playing I'm easily the strongest power in the game again 
some things I noticed here
-factions splitting off are a major problem for the AI! Just about every AI empire experienced at least one revolution which makes their empire split up into two weak factions... booo!!!!! IMO such revolutions should be a really rare occurence like they were in civilization, more for the occassional flavour experience rather than a constant dispersion of AI power.
-in both games I notice that certain resources seem to be rarer than the extremely rare resources, there seemed to be only one source for that bifurian silk (that purple icon) and the rapidian ale (that black bottle icon with the reddish tip), as well as for the marble. On the other hand oddly enough there were two planets with korabbian spice  . I've never seen that before
-resort bases worked again as I figured they would, building them was even more imporant here since they were an easy boost to my income to work away the development handicap. The AI really dropped the ball here, e.g. totally neglecting a 89% black hole location right next to their planets!! I can't say that they're totally not programmed to do it because I've seen them, but they either have a very low build priority or the AI is too slow in figuring out that building them is a good idea (eg perhaps it won't build in scenic locations with only planets around that are still developing, not realising that these planets will become superhuge sources for tourists minutes later?)
-can't say much about the military aspect here because to be honest I deliberatly picked on the weakest empires first and before I knew it I was five times bigger than the second biggest empire , in no small part due to the many revolutions the AI suffered from. I did see a pissed AI empire block my home planet then (when I declared war on the whole galaxy to see what kind of fight they'd put up) they broke the blockade of this planet (which was pretty much impregnable of course) and went to another planet in my home galaxy which only had a small space port and they invaded it. This was a good move as such but still hopelessly doomed... they have way too little troops to wage any lasting campaign. They took it just in time (with 2 troops remaining) before my home fleet transport arrived with 5 reinforcements, needless to say a couple seconds later the planet was mine again with them having no possiblity whatsoever to do any planet invasions... I mean if you're going to pick a fight by blockading my home planet bring some troops damnit!!!!!!!!! At that point my main invasion fleet had 25 troops in them without being at full capacity!
-a very good side effect from the development handicap was that AI empires had a whole lot more troops on their initial planets. I on the other hand had a whole less troops due to my development handicap, this continued for a long time as I lost a lot of troops in attacking these planets. Very good indeed.
-there seem to be less ancient ship goodies out there which is a good thing because they were a big imbalance, especially since the AI doesn't make good use of them (I routinely see powerful ancient AI capital ships just frozen in the location they were found)
-there seem to be more technology goodies available through exploring ruins. The one that gives you the tech to build big ships and the death ray is really overpowered when you find it in one of the first ruins you come across!
-I really like the change they made to the "dead zone"
-I feel the diplomatic aspect of the game is still lacking. Even at higher agression levels the AI is still pretty passive. I don't want to turn it up to the highest level because I don't want the AI acting like a headless chicken on steroids, I want them to make an informed decision where they hit me when it is rational to do so, because I'm weak in some way they can exploit. I never really have to bother with building huge defences or keeping a defensive fleet even in far flung corners of my empire even if they are right next to the core worlds of a pissed off empire.
-More generally speaking I think that the AI should get pissed not just when you're trespassing inside their colonized systems, but also when you're colonizing closely to their systems, even if they didn't occupy those. You know, border frictions. Seriously, it's not right that I can send out entire colonization waves towards far flung planets and the AI empires present there accept me as a local. They should realize that a) I'm an easy target (at least at first) and b) I'm essentially making an agressive move because I'm snatching away planets from their future generations
-I think the game should differentiate when it comes to tensions due to having mines in another empire's colonized systems. On the one hand you have the situation where you had your mine there first and then another empire colonizes a planet in the same system. The game can treat this hypothesis the way it treats it now, the AI wants you out of there but is pretty laid back about it and is willing to trade you for the mine at a fair price. On the other hand there is the situation where you knowingly build a mine after it has been colonized already by another empire. The AI (and you) should not be laying back about this. They should have the right to kick you out violently without a reputation hit. The reason for this is that it's very easy to build mines in another empire's territory then exchange it for something useful. They are willing to offer a pretty decent price even if the resources are not particularly great. It's very easy to abuse this. For example I was able to mitigate my development handicap by deliberatly building a mine in another empire's territory. This mine significantly increased invalue after a little while and I was able to trade it for some money and tech. With a poorer empire I was able to trade it for a little bit of money and their galaxy map, kinda handy for me since they had a head start in exploring! It's even worse than you may think because the moment I decided to trade away these mines is... the moment there was a pirate strike against them. So I would have lost those mines anyway since I was too weak to spare ships for these mines and had I wanted to I could have rebuilt these mines since the AI is also not great at fighting off pirate raids.
-I think part of the reason why the AI is so beatable is that they try to maintain a large spacefleet at all times. I do the opposite. I maintain a sizeable but much smaller spacefleet than I can pay for (but I raise a lot of troops). For example in this game I only had 3 fleets for 113 colonies. A fleet for my core systems (with 5 ground troops) (basically just ships I build knowing I'm going to send them somewhere far away later but the home system is a nice waiting room), an invasion fleet (with 25 ground troops) which contains everything from frigates to cap ships and a smaller fleet of cruisers and cap ships to take out pirate bases and for extra strategic mobility against enemies. There were empires of 25 colonies that had a larger military rating than me, but this does not matter because if I'd ever be in a serious war (which never rarely ever happens because the diplomatic AI does not seem to be dynamic enough to identify and take advantage of weaknesses, see above) I'd pump out cruisers and cap ships like nobody's business and the AI is so passive that all I'm going to lose is some mines here and there, which could be painful in circumstances but then on the flip side I've saved mucho cash from not having a large standing fleet that these few mines are inconsequential, especially since I can rebuild them at will if they are in a colonized system since the AI doesn't really go there (it really should do stuff like that if you're weak btw!)...
I think this merrits stressing: with my playing style I would be hard pressed to defend against multiple fleets with forces strong enough to take out small/medium space ports and enough ground troops to take out many weakly defended colonies in a row. But the AI's fleet composition and tactics are the complete opposite, with barely any ground troops and a heavy emphasis on taking out mines. Such attrition tactics will never achieve anything against my playing style (that galactic war I mentionned well I didn't defend against it except for that action I mentionned in my home system and the AI wasn't even able to put me into negative income, which wouldn't have mattered anyway since I had 2 mil in the bank), the AI really needs to try and put boots on the ground on as many planets as it can, preferably prioritized according to your weaknesses (e.g. a decapitation attack against rich highly populated planets if they are weakly defended, or nibbeling away at the recently colonized periphery of your empire if that is weakly defended).
sry for the wall of text
< Message edited by Wayston -- 7/31/2010 10:32:28 PM >
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Some things I noticed with the new patch - 
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