Fun with AI

from Stardock Forums
So I'm re-enabling some of the nastier AI functions for JUST the Arceans right now and only then at Intelligent and higher.

These were turned off because they're a bit CPU intensive and they can be pretty ruthless.

But I haven't seen too many posts from people sayign the time between turns is too long (which is surprising). We'll see how this goes. The beta is already available but not showing up for most people for some reason, tomorrow morning we'll make sure anyone with SDC who wants to play with the beta of GalCiv 1.02Z can give it a try.

The Arceans play a substantially different game tactically than its relatives. Watching them is pretty interesting with these functions back in. I had forgotten some. The Arceans have a concept of "tours of duty" which the others don't. Basically, when ships get damaged to certain point, they get sent home for refit while other ships come in and take their place.

There are other coordinating of attacks and starbase enhancements in there as well that should make things interesting. We'll have to see how they affect performance.
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Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
Thanks Frogboy. Look forward to trying it - someday. Now if I could only beat the AI at normal difficulty... :)

~SDC~
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
Frogboy,

Sounds great - I have a slow-ish computer (1gig pIII) and the game plays smoothly for me, even on huge galaxies, except towards very late in the game, and keeping in mind that no one else has complained (and people here complain just about everything, including me) I see no reason why the new tactics shouldnt be implemented for all AIs. (perhaps only on genius or up, or make it optional, or just supply the scripts as seperate files and users can install them at their discretion.)
Ashes of the Singularity II
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
Frogboy:

The GalCiv AI processing time in between turns has always been superb compared to other games, but there is often significant slow down, in fact "chugging", when all of a player's ship finish their moves and the game just devours all the CPU cycles. The situation can get so bad I will have trouble selecting units or adjusting sliders due to the 2-3 second delays for every action. Opening the F4/5 domestic/foreign policy screens seems to mitigate this problem, but the game will slow to a crawl as soon as I return to the main view. Can you look into this issue and see if something funny is going on with the triggers for GalCiv's multi threaded AI? I can't speak for others, but I would much rather wait through longer AI turns than have my turns suffer in performance. Thanks!
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
I'm running on a 550 MHZ PIII with no speed issues at all.

The largest galaxy I have played (and finished) was a "huge" one vs challanging AI and even at the end game turn times were fine so I would not bat an eye lid if on higher difficulty levels the turn times are longer
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
More spice for this excellent stew :D
I've got a PIII700/256MB and no real complaints about slowdowns, although I have noticed them occasionally. I've been playing on huge maps @ challenging diff. I did start up a gigantic map once, but it was slow right from the get-go, so I didn't continue that game. I'm not so sure I'd have the patience to finish a game of that size, anyway; the huge maps are taking me long enough :notsure:
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
Brad,

I'm running on a P4 2GHz (over-FSBclocked to 2.2)...all slowdown problems I have personally encountered are attributable to RAM limitations. When I moved to 512MB (by closing background app's, concurrent threads, etc.), performance immediately improved, especially on Large/Huge maps.

I am looking forward to your AI changes. The Arceans have always been relatively low on the "threat indicator" in my game, usually being more passive than the Drengin, and less bellicose than the Yor.

~SDC~
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
My maintance fee went up significantly when I reloaded with the latest beta, when sorted by maintance SBs seem to cost more than Battlehammers to maintain, can anyone confirm?
Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top
SB's in the new beta cost 5bc per turn. Battleships are like 12.

Regarding performance - what happens is that because the game is multithreaded, thigns happen while you're moving so it's nto so much the end of turn time that gets worse, it's that DURING yoru turn the game will kind of start chugging.

The REAL tough one is the domestic policy screen (Tax and spend).

Consider what has to be calculated:

Not only all your improvements on planets, and your abilities, but all those star bases and such. It can get pretty massive.

We've consider putting it into its own thread (the UI part on that screen). What would happen is that the movement would be very fast but it wouldn't update the numbers quite in sync but it would be very responsive. Not sure we'll get to that.

I play / work on the game on my home ThinkPad T20 which is around 600Mhz so I definitely know the feeling of when teh game chunks.

I want to try it out with the Arceans to see how things go. They've the weakest AI in the game right now so this might get them back in the game competitively. I mean really, does anyone ever lose the the Arceans? Their attorneys don't think it's funny and believe me, Arcean attorneys are nasty.
Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top
That's funny... I haven't noticed any slowdown on the tax/spend screen, at least on map sizes up to huge & on challenging difficulty. Does it get worse with higher difficulty?

As far as tough opponents... it always seems to be the Drengin or Altarians. The Yor may be tough, too, but they've always had a rotten starting location in my games so far.
Reply #10 from Stardock Forums Top
In my games, the Arceans seem to always be #1 or #2 among the AI races, with the Drengin or Altairians being in the top three.

The Yor and the Torians seem weakest in my games (although not consistently - I've seen the Yor rampage all over the map).

~SDC~
Reply #11 from Stardock Forums Top
One thing for sure: The Drenjin are almost always the looming threat of the game, ALWAYS! I almost always consider my games over when I beat the Drengin because too often they are the only ones that matter.
Reply #12 from Stardock Forums Top
Put Altairians as evil or play as evil and see what happens.

~SDC~
Reply #13 from Stardock Forums Top
Frogboy, you're not seeing many posts because a lot of us who would like to test out the software, can't, I have a feeling. :notsure:

~SDC~
Reply #14 from Stardock Forums Top
Oh, and BTW last game I played they were the power to beat, this would be before the current Beta patch; I haven't got that one.

~SDC~
Reply #15 from Stardock Forums Top
-sigh- EDIT: the Arceans were the power to beat.

~SDC~
Reply #16 from Stardock Forums Top
That would be great if you could make the UI more responsive. Even with a 1.4ghz cpu and a ton of ram, it can be a chore to play sometimes when the mouse and sliders chug along.

~SDC~
Reply #17 from Stardock Forums Top
Plays fine for me on 1.3GHz / 896MB / Gigantic / Genius running under W2K. Very occasional chugging, but overall I'm happy with the performance.
Reply #18 from Stardock Forums Top
The Altarians and Drengin are the biggest pain in the ass. They seem to keep up all the way to the end.

I have seen games where the Yor or Torians would dominate. But since the Torians are a bunch of softies (yep also when you put them on evil) I usually manage to stay out of trouble with them and somehow they manage to screw up their winning position.

The Arceans are up there every once in awhile when they have gotten a good starting location. I'm gonna give it a spin on a small map with intelligent races tonight to see what has become of the Arceans. Let's see if I can stay neutral this time and team up with them.
Reply #19 from Stardock Forums Top
#8
Brad,

Thanks for the explanation.

The Arceans have never been a world power in the games I have played. The Yor and Drengin are usually the major challenges.

I guess that's not the point, thhough. If their attorneys are anything like ours, it's not who wins or loses (the clients), it's who gets paid (the lawyers)! ;)

~SDC~
Reply #20 from Stardock Forums Top
The Yor and Torians have always been the wimps of my games.

~SDC~
Reply #21 from Stardock Forums Top
It seems to me that on higher dificulties (Iv played as high as intellegent) the Deregin dont do as well and are well ballanced. They have a realy strong early game, but they useualy end up as one of the weaker races. I think the other AIs just cant handle them on lower dificulies and that makes the AI seem better than it is.
Reply #22 from Stardock Forums Top
Sweet. I'm so looking forward to facing some more challenging combat intelligence.

Also, I've never had a problem with slow turns.
Reply #23 from Stardock Forums Top
Making the Arceans tougher would be good. They are always the wimps of my games. In the last 4 games I played, the Arceans always were the ones weakened so much that they'd get that "power increasing every turn" event -- but it didn't help them AT ALL! In fact, i didn't see that device having any effect whatsoever on the Arceans, and I killed them off at my leisure with no problems at all.
Reply #24 from Stardock Forums Top
Is there any info on what to expect from individual races?
Reply #25 from Stardock Forums Top
Looking forward to AI improvements. Although i love the game i'm not too impressed with the AI :sniff!: Flame me :)

Early on the AI is doing ok but it has problems to make use of its advantage. Usually they go into pointless wars when they feel powerful enough, draining each other until they're not powerful anymore, making peace, build up again, repeat. If they declare war with me i know exactly what to expect. They pick the closest target (city or starbase) and send a steady flow of attackers. I usually have lots of time to prepare. I wish they would start building some fleets before declaring war, or defend their starbases to the max. Look how long it takes them to destroy the poor Alexians (please give the minor races the ability to make a starbase in their own sector).

I love the characteristics of the AI though. The Drengin are well eh.... the Drengin. The Altarians: Look how good we are. The Yor are the only race that declared war on me from a hopeless position and i respect them for that, if only the attack had been a bit more pointed (let's destroy that weaponstarbase before going down and do the universe a favor). The Torians are usually the last ones left if i'm winning. I try to finish them quick, hoping not to hurt their feelings too much. The Arceans could use some character though, i hope these changes provide it.

Sorry for rambling so long.

btw I'm playing on PIII733 and have never even noticed slugging.