Poor Invasion AI

from Stardock Forums
Preface: I'm playing this game large map on Painful, though I think next game I'll crank back up to crippling. Early in the game, I have a nice start and a good number of planets. The Arceans are my neighbors but the closest point between us is has an empty sector inbetween. They spend most of the time varying between wary and cool to me. They also have a good start and more high PQ planets than I. They declare war on me. I'm actually very concerned by this as the land rush has only just ended the first couple of defenders have just come off of the line (I was intending to not go the military route this game, so didn't rush).

Here's the problem: The Arcean's completely muff the invasion. I mean total incomptetance. Here's the list of errors.

1) They had only Defenders and Fighters for warships. With a sector in between us, the defenders couldn't reach. How stupid is it to launch an attack with only Star Fighters. Ok maybe on a small map an early rush with Fighters can knock someone out of the game, but by this time we both had over a dozen stars. You can't invade an enemy of this size with fighter. There should be some line in the code that over rules declarations of war when the AI's own military capability is grossly in adequate like this.

2) Do the AI keep track of the ship's they encounter? I mean, ok...lets say you as a player got overly ambitious and declared war early hoping for a quick score. Once you enter enemy space and notice that the enemy has a horde of defenders to your handful of fighters, don't you think you'd ask for peace? Or after suiciding your fighters your next wave encounters battle axes...don't you think you'd sue for peace? Or how about when three waves later you're encountering the first of my frigates...? I mean at some point in this war the Arceans should have realized that they were completely inferior and called it off. Their efforts to invade me lasted A LONG time. I went from having only two defenders when the declaration was made, to having all of my planets defended with battle axes and a corp of 6 BAs and 2 frigates to launch my counter invasion with. This is a couple of years of game time...during which time the Arceans kept sending fighters to get killed. Why didn't the "hey we're outclassed and should back off" code kick in?

3)This is the worst offense of all. Over the course of my repulsing their invasion I killed at least 30 Transports. These transports were all sent to the same sector of mine (the closest one) in singles and pairs completely unescorted. At one point my scouts detected a chain of transports that extended from my sector, through the empty sector, to his sector, to rear areas supplying them. In that whole chain the largest stack had 2 transports and there were a grand total of 3 Fighters...not even stacked with any transports.

This is intolerably bad AI. Somehow the AI has to be taught the concept of mustering points. All of those disparate Transports should have been sent to 1 (or 2 or 3) rallying points where they would then travel to the target in a stack complete with escorting warships. The Arceans by contrast seem to have simply lauched each transport as it was built directly towards the planet they wanted to attack. Their defeat was certain.

Initially, when I was vulnerable, they had a chance. When their first wave of 5 or 6 transports (and strangely 2 constructors and a freighter) entered my sector I had 2 defenders and 2 starfighters as the sum total of all my forces in the vicinity. But they had NOTHING. Not even a single fighter. I simply killed them before they got anywhere near me. The second wave started bringing fighters, but only ever 1 at a time...I had 2, and by this time I'd started upgrading a military resource, so mine were better. I kill his fighter with 1. Send it back to get repaired. Kill his next fighter with the other, send it back for repairs...and repeat...for 2 YEARS he tried nothing else and I continued to destroy transports, freighters, constructors, and individual fighters.

4) Related to #3 above, his obsession with churning out crippled him. When the war started we both had over a dozen stars. I think I had 3 or 4 more than him, but he had more 20+s than me...so fairly even. Over the course of the war, I went from defenders to battle axes to frigates and built enough of them to become the #2 military in the galaxy on the chart. I did this with a balanced economy, I didn't even need to go 100% military or any wheeling and dealing with the other AIs.

The Arceans on the other hand, fell WAY behind. They never even produced a battle axe until they only had a couple of planets left and by then I had half a dozen frigates swarming their sectors. Why? I suspect its because they built far too many transports. I mean this was early in the game...my most populated planet was under 5 billion. He bled his population to the bone to fill transports which he then sent to get killed like fish in a barrel.

This crippled his tax base and made it impossible for him to climb the tech tree as fast as me or build as many ships. Not only that but it meant each of his planets were so under manned that they fell easily to me. I've never conquered that many planets so quickly because usually I have to wait and build up a sizeable force of transports. I was taking over planets with 300 to 2000 people on them...it was too easy.


Anyway, thats the end of my rather long tale. This isn't the first time I've seen the AI use ineffective invasion tactics, but it is by far the worst. The rest of the game became boring for me, because I was immediately twice the size as anyone else and I didn't even really have to work hard.

I realize that this is Painful and I could go up to Crippling for added challenge (and will), but supposedly, the AI on Intelligent has all of the brains they will ever have. My understanding is that Genius et.al. just gives them advantages but doesn't make them any smarter.

Any hope that a smarter invasion routine is in the works for the expansion pack?
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Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
On crippling and masochistic, it will no longer be star fighters moving in but hordes upon hordes of battle cruisers.
Star Control: Origins
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
Yeah, Buzu...you don't notice some of the stupid tactics as much on crippling, because instead of fighters he would have sent ships that would have wiped out my pathetic force, and then his ridiculous transport tactics would have worked...I mean, I'll send transports in dribs and drabs if I know all the space in between is secure too. But that's a result of the production advantages on the higher levels allowing them to get away with it.

I can't believe I forgot to add one more.

5) This is actually the dumbest thing they did. Dumb as in, it should be easy to program code to correct this. Transports have no weapons. That means if all you have is transports than a planet guarded by a single fighter is completely and utterly immune to you.

At the beginning of the war, my planets were undefended. But as I mentioned by the middle, I had BAs guarding each one. Why would the AI, send a transport to a planet that it physically cannot invade, because it never brought any combat ships with it. Ok, maybe evaluating whether or not the two fighters it has will be able to kill my battle axe and allow the invasion to take place might be too sophisticated to program.

But there is NO excuse for continueing to send transports to a planet that cannot be invaded. There should be some sort of check where the transport says:

"I'm going to Wardell, if Wardell is unoccupied, proceed. If Wardell is occupied check for nearby combat ships. If Wardell is higher priority than combat ships current mission, send combat ship to attack Wardell. Check ETA of combat ship. If ETA of combat ship is less than ETA of transport, proceed to Wardell. If ETA of combat ship is > ETA of transport, do not proceed to Wardell".

The do not proceed part would be to keep from sending vulnerable transports deeper into enemy territory until the enemy garrison has been dealt with. I'm not sure what behavior would be advisable to replace the "do not proceed" with. Whether the transport should wait, should head for the nearest friendly combat ship in order to stack, or what...but almost anything would be better than continue to journey to Wardell where it will sit outside unescorted and unable to attack until it is liesurely killed.

Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
Well, just wait until the computer steps up to battle transports. I've seen the DEF on those things as high as 30, so they'll put you in a world of hurt if you dont bring enough hardware against them.

Anytime the computer invaded me, it generally had me dead to rights, and I've had several planets fall to them before. So they're not that inept. And its certainly nowhere near as bad as another *cough*Moo3*cough* game. (although they have a patch coming out around noon PDT to correct this)

Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
That's why i consider military war with comp 2nd most exploitable thing after diplomacy.

P.S. Comp defends even worse.

~SDC~
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
Hey Force, I hear you, and really its not that I don't find the game challenging...although I am no thoroughly bored with the Painful level.

IF the arceans did the same thing with Battle Transports and Dreadnoughts, that would be different.

BTs ARE defended well. Hell I use them to anchor the defense for my starbases. Dreadnoughts are good at everything. Attack, Defense, Escort, Pursuit. But 1.04 pushes capital ship technology back to later in the game. You now spend more time mid game with the light stuff, and I find myself building far more light stuff than I ever did and facing off against the AI using light stuff more often and longer during the game than before.

And using light stuff the AI is completely inept. You can't get away with sending unescorted transports into enemy territory...even an enemy as lightly defended as I was.

Late in the game population is a problem, you try anything to get rid of excess population. After you top out the tax and production levels from pop, anything else just brings morale down. You can get away with cranking out CT after CT and losing them much better. In the early game...population is as precious as air and water. You can't defend a planet without pop. You can't invade a planet with a pop. You can't generate tax money without pop. Decimating your own population like the arceans did is just bad.

Basically what I'm seeing is in earlier editions there was a window where the AI was stupid before they got the tech and ship advantage but it was short...the rush to battle ships and dreads made the period I'm seeing now very brief.

NOW however, this window is much longer...giving ample opportunity for the AI to self destruct and leading to much less of a challenge.
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
There are 3 main problems related to your gripes:
-Evaluation of military power makes the AI believe starfighters are worth much more than their actual value.
-Lack of proper transport/support ship stacking.
-The fact that a ship doesn't seem to reconsider its target until it reached it. This means you see lots of transports waiting at the door of immune planets, and lots of freighters which wait for the war they just declared to end in order to go into your planet.
Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top

From a coding point of view, the invasion tactical AI is the hardest part of the game to do.

It's EASY to code. Hard to code it in such a way that is fast.

For instance, in the betas, we had written it so that a transport would actually evaluate "threat levels" between it and its destination and then determine whether it shoudl be escorted or whether it could go alone or whehter it should find another destination.

The problem with that is that it basically made it impossible to play the game at anything but small maps because it's such a lengthy calculation.

The AI has the path it will take from its present location to its destination. Then it would look at the ships in each sector on the way there and increment a threat varaible depending on what is there. It would repeat this until it got to the destination.

And it would have to do this EVERY turn because threats change each turn and there's the fog of war issue (the AI can't see your ships after all that are beyond its sensor range).

Now, at higher levels, the AI will escort its transports no matter what in many cases if it can. But at lower levels it's stuck with the ships that have the range which are things like fighters and even then, at the regular difficulty levles and below it won't tend to escort.

Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top
So, if a transport's built at a core planet and it's sent to attack an enemy planet, it plots one path for the entire trip? You could have it sent to a frontier world (or rally point if there's lots of empty sectors in between), and send the combat ships there. Then, escort it for the last leg of the journey.

Actually, if the AI started using rally points, it could hold off the attack until it had a group of ships with a good likelihood of attacking the planet's defenses, invading it, and defending it. If you've got a few combat ships with nothing to do (not enough to attack a planet, no transport to escort, etc), they could just go on a pestering mission - attack targets, get damaged, go home, repair, repeat.
Reply #10 from Stardock Forums Top
The strategic AI could be improved, too. When I go to war, I prepare. I move ships into position near key targets but out of sensor range, I put defensive ships on vulnerable starbases and planets, etc. Only when everything is ready do I declare war, and it is short and devastating--I try take out the AI's most important starbases and planets within the first couple turns of fighting. In short, I do a lot of damage as the war starts and can often land a crippling blow before any sort of resistance gets organized.

The AI doesn't do this when it declares war on me. It would be much more effective if it massed its fleets near my planets and starbases before it notified me that it intended to kill me. As it is I often get a long time to prepare between the declaration of war and the appearance of actual enemy ships.