Merker
Posts: 208
Joined: 7/3/2010
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I only have DW vanilla but some of these issues are kind of different, depending greatly on race and government type:
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* Empires start off with a very high potential research capacity. However, the AI does not utilize this because it doesn't build research labs unless it comes in the form of a research station built at a research bonus location. The effect is that for a very, very long time during the opening stages of the game - especially for empires that have a scarcity of research locations near their starting location - the AI is getting only a fraction of the research it 'should', putting it vastly behind a player who intelligently outfits his initial spaceport with extra research facilities to acommodate the large research potential. Consequently, the AI - even AI technocracies - are hopelessly behind the player in terms of research from the very beginning of the game.
-> I agree, the AI really hates research.
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* The AI is much, much too reluctant to spend its cash. In my game my empire was at war very early on. My empire had a 100,000 cashflow and a huge 500,000 treasury yet invested in very few ships - obviously a terrible decision. I know that Bingeling found the same in his game. The AI needs to be much more aggressive about spending its cash as long as there is a large treasury and/or cashflow.
-> well I've had like 2 games now in which the AI constantly builds ships, both civie and military, bringing my cash flow in the red from like 100k to -80k. The most aggressive AI seems to be for monarchy and reptile setting. In the pirate AAR, the AI builds defense bases, cruiser and destroyer en-masse even when at war with multiple empires. I'm absolutely thrilled by the efficiency of the AI
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* The AI builds far too few exploration ships. The consequences of this are far-reaching but the most important issue is not finding many planets to settle. This means the AI's economy and power base builds up at a snail's pace compared to the player's. The AI needs to produce a *lot* more explorers.
-> As before, depends GREATLY on government type and race. In the pirates AAR, the AI CONSTANTLY maintained at least 8 exploration ships and explored faster than I could cope with. However, in my previous games as a human empire, the AI barely had 3-4 E-ships, and those just stood there doing nothing most of the time, when there were unknown systems with Korrabian spice a couple of sectors away.
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* The AI also doesn't colonize fast enough. It will frequently have discovered a valuable planet yet wait several minutes before a colony ship is built and sent. In these situations there is no reason not to immediately build the colony ship and claim the planet for the empire. Please make the colonizing much more aggressive.
-> Again, depends on the race here 99%. The atuuk are simply OBSESSED with colonization. In all my experiences with this race as an AI empire, their greatest strength was not their fleet, but their HUGE ability to expand. At war, for every one of their colonies taken by the enemy they colonized 2 others. As long as you don't take out their infrastructure and capital, they're UNSTOPPABLE!!!!! They can get to >200 colonies by mid-game if you're not careful with them, they colonize everything and anything. Seems to me the AI is consistent enough here. As for the humans, the AI is a lazy son of a jack, constantly debating whether it's better to colonize that 90% continental planet with no resources 5000 sectors away or the one in the capital system 80% but with like 5 luxury resources.
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* In wars, the AI has an unfortunate tendency to send very weak forces (sometimes just a single ship) against vastly superior enemy fleets. These single ships will only try to escape once their shields hit 20% at which point the large enemy fleet has them surrounded and they get killed before they can power up the hyperdrives. This causes the AI to slowly but surely lose its entire fleet without having ever put up a real fight. There needs to be an algorithm that estimates the relative power levels of ships in a system: If enemy fleets are vastly superior in numbers and firepower, ships should immediately retreat, not fight.
-> Hmm, the AI in DW vanilla does seem to act differently sometimes. As in my case where the AI empire send 27 ships against my large spaceport and almost took it out were it not for my reinforcement fleet. However, in direct combat with my ships they lost even though they had superior firepower and numbers, just because they just seem to float in circles...
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* The AI also prioritizes targets poorly in wars and doesn't not take fuel into account enough. It will often send lot of ships large distances to take out minor targets only to have these ships completely drained of fuel and useless for a very long time until they can limp their way back to a space port. In my game, a 20+ ship fleet moved more than a sector to destroy a research station then flew the same sector back to homeworld to refuel. The AI needs to 'understand' the objectives of its various fleets better: Reserve large fleets like this to assaults on major enemy planets and leave the mop-up of minor targets to small strike force fleets. My AI empire would have lost its only truly valuable target, the homeworld, if the opposing empire had taken opportunity of this blunder.
-> As said before, sometimes the AI really does pick a good target, it just doesn't do it often enough in my opinion. In the pirate game, the AI empires hitting the boskara tyrants are systematically taking the outer systems before closing in on the heavily fortified central systems, which in my opinion is pretty good strategy. But in some cases, they head straight for the jugular, like when the Argos attacked me and subsequently lost the war.
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* Likewise, the AI doesn't consider that it might be wise to [temporarily] remove ships that are out of fuel from a fleet to avoid slowing the entire fleet down. This would be a very nice optimization to see and would greatly help the AI.
-> I haven't seen a problem here, the ships that need fuel simply disobey the fleet orders and go refuel on their own, while the rest of the fleet does its job.
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* The AI will build expensive projects like space ports on worlds that are not secure - even while the planet they are built on is under attack! This frequently causes severe blunders like spending a good 20K+ cash to try to construct a Large Space Port only to have this space port instantly destroyed. Not only does this severe flaw seriously hurt the AI's economy, it also completely breaks the immersion for the player.
-> Haven't seen this happening to my empire AI, but the AI empires have a serious issue with this.
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* AI needs to be better at estimating whether war is really worth continuing. My observed empire now has 'rampant' war weariness with no sign of wanting to end the war (which is going nowhere). Of course, these unnecessarily prolonged wars are to a great extent due to the AI's poor warring abilities (see above).
->I used to think this as well, until I noticed that after a while of harassment the AI I'm at war with will accept being a subjugated dominion if it has lost some colonies and a good part of the infrastructure.
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* Unit AI: When told to engage a moving target (such as an enemy fleet), ships will only move to whichever position this enemy fleet was at when the order was given - not to the fleet itself, because they don't update its position. This effectively means it is not possible to order an attack on any moving enemy unit and as such can be considered quite a major bug.
-> yep, this indeed is annoying, I fix it by simply selecting the indented target of the enemy fleet.
quote:
* In wars, the AI has an unfortunate tendency to send very weak forces (sometimes just a single ship) against vastly superior enemy fleets. These single ships will only try to escape once their shields hit 20% at which point the large enemy fleet has them surrounded and they get killed before they can power up the hyperdrives. This causes the AI to slowly but surely lose its entire fleet without having ever put up a real fight. There needs to be an algorithm that estimates the relative power levels of ships in a system: If enemy fleets are vastly superior in numbers and firepower, ships should immediately retreat,
->I totally agree with this.
< Message edited by Merker -- 2/27/2011 10:54:31 PM >
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