Strategy update

[von Runstedt]

So in a previous post I asked the question of whether it would be advisable to simply begin a game by pegging out a large zone of control, only colonizing what planets I needed and leaving the rest for later colonization and then waiting while the Ai started off strong from colonizing more places first and then watch them rapidly decline from overtaxing their resource base and use that moment to begin expanding. I was able to do just that in my playthrough and the effects were very clearly devastating. In my wars against the Koalas and the Gavakians I found that where these 2 powers at first started off strong and were able to attack me with large fleets much larger than what I could field, the attritional strategy I had adopted began to kick in with a vengeance by mid game. At this stage, about 1,000ish years in, I started building up massive fleets that I sent out to conquer these enemies only to find no trace of the powerful foes who had attempted to intimidate me earlier in the game but was confronted instead by stunted enemy fleets that more often than not fled before the advance of my forces rather than give battle with the result that I took over many enemy planets in these campaigns essentially without a fight and without losing a single ship. Just as I had supposed at the start, upon inspecting the enemy's captured worlds I found many of their resources depleted down to negligible yields, hardly enough to maintain their basic building upkeep requirements, let alone maintain anything like a sizeable fleet.

At first I was satisfied at seeing my strategy come to fruition but then I began noticing a problem: a lack of response from the AI. From what I've experienced in playing this game, there come a number of points where difficult transitions are forced onto the player. For instance, the first dislocation might be that the limited number of planets capable of supporting farms limits the number of worlds and especially mining planets you can maintain at any given time which will eventually lead to both food and resource shortages. This i partly solved by hydroponics which opens up more planets to farming but this then leads to a new problem, resource depletion, as the planets you at first relied upon for resources like frozen and desert planets, start to be rapidly depleted which in turn is only solved by the ability to colonize and exploit gas giants. From what I could tell, where I was able to weather these hard transitions and come out stronger than before with the aid of new technology, the AI seemed much slower on the uptake. In the 1500 years of my expansionary phase in the game, virtually none of my AI opponents got past the 1st hard transition. In those enemy areas that I attacked into, I found numerous planets that the AI never colonized despite the fact that colonizing them would have allowed greater access to food and resources. Instead, I found that the AI had chosen to cannibalize its existing territories rather than try to find creative solutions. For instance, among the worlds I captured from the AI, I found oceanic planets whose focus under the AI was mining?!?!? of all things while most temperate planets I found were either set to mining or agriculture. None had any planets set to industrialization as this no doubt would have eaten too much into the AI's desperate need for resources.

This occurred not just in AI factions that were well behind me in tech, and there were many of those, but even more incredulously still under AI factions who were well ahead of me in technology and would presumably have been able to exploit the techs needed to help get past these transitions much sooner than I did. Never the less, 1500 years after my expansion began, by which point I have an empire of over 300 colonized worlds, the vast majority of my opponents still haven't managed to get past 70 worlds in total. Not only that but there were easily hundreds of worlds that went uncolonized for the entire game because the AI either could not or chose not to occupy them. The one exception to this trend, surprisingly, was the Urgans who about 2,000 years in seemed to understand that the transition was needed and started occupying more worlds having about 130 some worlds in my play through.

Like I said, while I was glad to see my strategy vindicated, I am never the less worried by this development. If the Ai is incapable of scaling up to meet new challenges presented to it by the game, then how can it hope to be a credible opponent in the mid to late parts of the game? It also makes the arrival of the Theoshans all the more terrifying since you realize that the dolt Ai will essentially just sit there and wait to die, leaving it up to you alone to try to stop the galaxy from going off into the long cold night. What I had hoped for would be competent AIs who would be challenging opponents in our localized battles but staunch and valuable allies against the outside force that came knocking. Sadly it has proven to be neither of those things which, frankly, for me takes away a lot of the replay value in this game. I understand that there is a limit to how intelligent AI opponents can be made in a game, but still, AI's who can't even handle the basic mechanics of the game?

[Ufnv]

There is a bug in AI associated with Gaia planets - currently AI thinks that only Gaias are good for science. It is fixed in the coming patch.

[von Runstedt]

Its not just a matter of the AI forgoing the research, it also chose to forgo using it for farms to which to my mind shows how desperately the AI needed the resources even more than research or food and despite the pitiful yield on resources it probably got from that.

[Ufnv]

Its not just a matter of the AI forgoing the research, it also chose to forgo using it for farms to which to my mind shows how desperately the AI needed the resources even more than research or food and despite the pitiful yield on resources it probably got from that.

Yes, and this is happening because AI thinks those planets are bad for science. It needs science more than resources but his algorithms shows that the only planet where it makes sense to develop science is Gaia

[TheFlemishDuck]

Seems worse than i thought it was for the AI, pitty for a game withought MP.

I can easily outdevelop/outpace the AI in the early game on hard. One thing ive learned is to make designs early on that are extremely conservative on harder to get resources so that i can have them in large numbers. So early on i work with slow Ion corvette's in large numbers and that works well enough. The Ai is more agressive in the early game and youre post explains why in detail. I can easily get an early techlead which allows me to get weapons like IR lasers or longer range torps earlier which can be overpowering to the AI. At this point the game doesn't really offer a challenge to me i must admit.

[Ufnv]

Seems worse than i thought it was for the AI, pitty for a game withought MP.

I can easily outdevelop/outpace the AI in the early game on hard. One thing ive learned is to make designs early on that are extremely conservative on harder to get resources so that i can have them in large numbers. So early on i work with slow Ion corvette's in large numbers and that works well enough. The Ai is more agressive in the early game and youre post explains why in detail. I can easily get an early techlead which allows me to get weapons like IR lasers or longer range torps earlier which can be overpowering to the AI. At this point the game doesn't really offer a challenge to me i must admit.

The patch is ready and should become available soon.