Zeno42 Zeno42

AI Weakness

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AI Weakness

from Stardock Forums
Just a note after playing for a while with Beta 2, Beta 3, and Beta 3A. The AI seems to seriously undervalue population in the early game. It is quite easy to use money gleaned from tech brokering to buy out lots of colony ships and transports in the early game. And since early game colonization is IME among the single biggest factors in long term power this can cripple an AI civ. After I build up a bit of cash selling/trading tech I can always target the most threatening nearby races by simply buying/trading for all the colony ships (and transports if that's all they have) they produce until I run out of places to put them. In fact, I often find it more expedient to use even the initial starting money to buy another civ's colony ship rather than to rush my own. It costs less and it denies them the colony as well as giving it to you. And it just snowballs from there. The longer you keep it up the further they fall behind (and the easier it gets to buy more from them with the growing lead in tech, income, and influence). I've never had an early-game AI ask more than 450 for a colony ship, with 200 quite often in reach. This is just way too low considering the early game importance and cost to produce them - to say nothing of the population hit. I think you should consider increasing the trading value of colony ships - including taking into account the resident population - and in the early game the AI should consider them to be worth practically as much as an actual planet. In overall strategic terms thats pretty much exactly what they are...

Regards, and despite my above complaint this is quite an excellent game even if it is a Beta. I've been enjoying it immensely. Keep it up!

Zeno42
431 views 31 replies
Reply #26 from Stardock Forums Top
Some of us here at the office were talking about the issue of buying colony ships and transports. The suggestion was made that you have to have a high enough diplomacy ability before being able to buy a colony ship, so that you can buy them after the first initial rush is over. That way, you can buy colony ships for the secondary planets in your systems or the lower class planets that the AI have ignored when you want to be concentrating on building up your trade, defense, and constructors. Transports would only show up in the list if you were at a certain level of relations with the AI. Both would come with no population on them, and yours would be traded with no population as well.

This is not necessarily what is going to happen, since Brad has yet to hear this suggestion.
Reply #27 from Stardock Forums Top
"Both would come with no population on them ...". But if a colony ship has no population how do you get colonists onto them. You can't move a colony ship into orbit as the code stands now. Is this going to change?
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Reply #28 from Stardock Forums Top
Hmm...I guess we'd have to, if we made them come with no population...we can work out the details if this becomes the accepted solution.
Reply #29 from Stardock Forums Top
Speaking of colony ships, doesn't the AI build too many of them ? After the initial race for territory, that quickly ends when every 15+ planet is occupied, I feel the AI is still building colony ships. Often I see alien planets with more population orbiting in 5+ colony ships than on the land :) I just wanted to point out that since the AI knows where the planets are, they could calculate how many ships they will *ever* need.
Reply #30 from Stardock Forums Top
I think it is wise to have the colony ship consumed only when a new colony is settled and you be allowed to orbit existing colony worlds.

This is how the OS/2 game worked.

That way Colony Ships not needed after expansion can be used to pad population and and defense of worlds already colonized.

You can also move population off unhappy planets with the colony ships.
Reply #31 from Stardock Forums Top
The AI does build way too many colony ships, but here is my guess of the why of it: 1). the AI is still rather primative, 2). The AI knows where all of the class 15 + planets are, and it wants to colonize all of those planets. 3). The AI builds colony ships for every habitable planet before it knows that some of them are already taken. 4). The AI doesn't yet know to change ship projects as conditions change (as planets get colonized). 5). The AI doesn't receive its sensor data (remember the STL probes they have been sending out for Millennia?) until long after the planets are colonized (this last is just a rationalization, not a function of the code). ;)