Tell us about the best AI moves!

GalCiv2 and strong/smart AI - you got to be kidding!

the smartest thing ive seen from the ai so far is it's put it's production spending on 101% lol

Tell us about the best AI moves

I personally like the Drengin quickstep, the Yor fandango and the Korx breakdance. Those Torians are crap dancers!

GalCiv2 and strong/smart AI - you got to be kidding!

Who are you...Gary Kasparov? Name a space sim with better AI and I'll send you a ruble.
I'd like to know how the AI rolls up with a 150 beam/150 shield
ship on BoG mode. The biggest hull the Terrans have is 80 cargo space, which means 160 in pts. I thought BoG mode meant everyone's tech was equal.

The biggest hull the Terrans have is 80 cargo space, which means 160 in pts. I thought BoG mode meant everyone's tech was equal.

Racial bonus in miniturisation? The galactic wonder.... hmm... could be something else that I can't bring to mind at the moment.

Well y'know, the computer AI is supposed to be good, but even on painful I see it build 5 unupgraded economy starbases next to each other, build stack of sucky ships and not upgrade their ships enough, have rally points trouble where there's 30 or so unfleeted ships that just accept their death without fleeting and fighting back.

The AI never researches better governements, nor does it build fleets that have an engine on it, they never re-design transports to have more engines, they send transports one by one so that they can't actually take my planet...

The game was more challenging in Galciv1, that's for sure. Actually, Galciv2 is the easiest TBS I've ever played. I usually suck at these, but not at Galciv2.

I think the biggest thing for the AI that needs attention are the ships, I ALWAYS have medium ships before they do and clean them out early while i can.

One thing i noticed is that the AI loves to fill their planlets with influence bonus structures, and almost no or absolutely no factories.

Did anyone here ever see the AI use a large hull? I sure haven't.

Sometimes, they use medium hulls. But it's like they never fill them to capacity with guns and defenses.

I have seen the AIs buid large hulls. It takes a while since they don't seem to prioritize tech enough.

The smartest thing I've seen the AI do is send attack fleets that swing wide round the target star system and come from an unexpected direction. Of course, it's ships were still too slow, so it didn't really matter.

When it declares war, it does send a good chunk of it's fleet at once.

I think quite a few problems stem from the strength evaluation. It just doesn't seem to understand what it's true odds are in a matchup. For instance, I was playing a game on crippling, the Altarians has a 300ish military rating versus my 100ish. Trouble was, my frontline ships were large 6 attack, 4 and 4 defence versus their 2-0 and 3-0 fighters. They were also attacking directly into the area protected by my military starbase. It was a slaughter.

I don't know why the AI isn't building more effective ships. I sometimes feel that the AI is somehow broken on my install, even though I'm always playing on tough+

Racial bonus in miniturisation? The galactic wonder.... hmm... could be something else that I can't bring to mind at the moment.

Cool, I'll check that out. Thx. I usually play as the Terrans and was just wondering. Can match most of the AI's ships except the Drath Legion. Their "Battle of the Gods" mode Dreadnought ship is like 175 lasers/200 shields. NOT a fleet, a single ship.
When I try to customize something equal to that I'm limited to 160 pts. for the hull. 375>160, game over.

wahhh whers the demo i need it

"Their "Battle of the Gods" mode Dreadnought ship is like 175 lasers/200 shields. NOT a fleet, a single ship.
When I try to customize something equal to that I'm limited to 160 pts. for the hull. 375>160, game over."

The Darth might also have acquired a military resource in that game. That makes a very big difference. Another possibility is they got a planet with a starship bonus.

I think quite a few problems stem from the strength evaluation. It just doesn't seem to understand what it's true odds are in a matchup. For instance, I was playing a game on crippling, the Altarians has a 300ish military rating versus my 100ish. Trouble was, my frontline ships were large 6 attack, 4 and 4 defence versus their 2-0 and 3-0 fighters. They were also attacking directly into the area protected by my military starbase. It was a slaughter.

If it requires some espionage for you to see the stats of AI's ships, the game might be slightly tougher.

The smartest thing I've seen the AI do is send attack fleets that swing wide round the target star system and come from an unexpected direction. Of course, it's ships were still too slow, so it didn't really matter. When it declares war, it does send a good chunk of it's fleet at once.

I'll agree here. I've also seen the arcarians go around my military starbase to strike at a less intuitive target. But then again, problem is speed. The AI's ships are too fucking slow, really. They never put an engine on their ships, while I never design a ship *without* an engine. :/

I think quite a few problems stem from the strength evaluation. It just doesn't seem to understand what it's true odds are in a matchup. For instance, I was playing a game on crippling, the Altarians has a 300ish military rating versus my 100ish. Trouble was, my frontline ships were large 6 attack, 4 and 4 defence versus their 2-0 and 3-0 fighters. They were also attacking directly into the area protected by my military starbase. It was a slaughter.

Amen. But then again, they don't have a choice but to judge from military rating. The problem is that they have many ships of suck that drags down their economy. I've seen the AI create really good ships when you destroy their obsolete designs.

Suggestions :

a) make upgrading cost less, so that the AI can upgrade it's ships to non-sucky things. Make it last 6 weeks if need be, but make it cost less in actual cash...
b) make the AI prioritize on tech and not on making ships. The strategy that works, since I use it, is to only build ships when preparing for war, because upgrading old designs costs too much and old designs are often useless thanks to defenses. IMO it spends too much money making armadas of suck and bringing it's economy down then on researching better components.

I don't know why the AI isn't building more effective ships. I sometimes feel that the AI is somehow broken on my install, even though I'm always playing on tough+

Amen brother. It doesen't get better on painful, that's for sure.

Perhaps I'm just not as good at GalCiv2, but at times I'm actually impressed by the AI.
I was playing with my Korx and had just conquered the Altarians and the Drath when the Thalans (whom I was already at war with) started adjusting to the laser heavy designs I had been using against them (and everyone else) with shields, it was taking whole fleets of my ships to deal with just one or two Thalan frigates so I had to break out missiles on my ship it took longer but they finally surrendered to the Drengins.
Then when my militaristic nature got the best of me and I declared war on the Drengins that had very powerful ships with lots of laser weapons, which again forced a redisign of my ships to versions that had shields(I stole the techs from the Thalans)
Though for the record the AI hasn't really ever taken the offensive against me.

The AI is very sneaky with troopships. They often loop into my fog of war when my faster and stronger but less numerous ships start to move into their territory, and then reappear right next to my nearly defenseless worlds with some fighters to clear out my garrison of outdated Defenders and the like.

However, they make huge stacks of unfleeted ships and hardly move those. They also never research Medium Hulls quick enough (or at least as quick as I do), leading to my small fleets of cruisers defeating hordes of unfleeted fighters and getting up to the hundred HP mark easily.

The AI also doesn't seem to put much of a priority on liberating systems from interdiction (that is, when you have orbiting ships around their planets that kill anything they build until a troopship arrives).

They build too many starbases, especially economic and influence, and never upgrade them. Further, I once saw a Terran Economic Starbase, no upgrades, in the dead center of Arcean territory, halfway across a Huge map. I didn't understand what it was there for, and neither did the Arceans who blew it up unceremoniously during their war.

Minus these faults, however, the AI is very smart and quite a hard thing to handle, IMO. I have difficulty winning even on Challenging, although that's mostly an expansion and economic issue on my part (I'm too slow to colonize).

LOL, don't feel bad, I can't even win a game on "Normal" setting. My impatience gets the better of me I suppose, though I did last long enough one game to help a race defeat the smug Arceans.
My treasury by then is so low, I don't even want the burden of colonizing more planets. I like to invade, steal their techs, destroy the colony, and then get the hell outta there (scorched-earth drive by).

The weaknesses I've seen in the AI's ship design and fleet movements so far are simple enough.

It seems "defense" designs can do without an engine ... but it's better if this is done if there are some speed techs researched (Impluse +1 ship speed, Warp +1 ship speed), and better still if local defense starbases include some speed modules.

All non-defense designs really need to include a single engine though; movement is not only getting to the battle in GC, but also how many attacks you receive. Most of my experiences against the AI are easy enough to defend within my local areas due to heavily upgraded defense starbases, and the low movement speed of the AI. I can fall back until they're positioned for me to hit properly. The low movement speeds also enables me to use defense fleets positioned centrally to intercept incoming fleets. When I move on the attack, the low AI fleet speed again lets my battle fleets take the fight to them, and control the engagements.

AI also seems to rarely upgrade starbases. I've occasionally seen a few starbases upgraded, but most of them are 0-0-0 0-0-0 when I look at them, and often I don't even seen the "good modules" on the eco / inf starbases (like +production or +trade, or +influence). That seems at odds with what I've been doing, which is to mostly crank construction ships throughout the entire game; dumping them into starbases to spiral them higher.

I also see repeated examples of single ships skirting or tiptoeing into my areas; these are just fodder, wasted AI resources, and free ship HP for me. AI should be smart enough to keep singles away, and to try to dodge them or form them into whatever fleet is nearby if it sees an opposing ship or fleet nearby.

Other than the engine thing, AI designs seem to be servicable enough. As an example, a recent game had the Korx attacking from galactic east. I used four defense fleets to shoot up their incoming fleets with great success; only a few losses and cycling my damaged ships to a nearby planet for the shipyard to fix up quickly. AI was using beam ships without defenses, while I was using tiny fighters with a single beam defense and as many beams as would fit. As the war went on, the AI redesigned a small and then medium hull layout that went to mass driver and missiles while using beam shields. Unless I concentrated my little fighter defense fleets into larger nodes, I started taking losses when I'd strafe in on these new fleets due to the shields. It was good to see the AI design against me with the shields.

The smartest thing I've seen the AI do is surrender to me.

The next smartest thing is targeting my weak planets where no ships are defending with a transport, and surprisingly with a few escorts to protect them on "intelligent". The other smart thing they've done is place influence bases near my weak colonies. The one who does this first is my first target for war.

I was getting too confident and thought I could go all offense. I was relying on backtracking with a few defending destroyers in case of attack. I figured their slow speed would give me ample time to intercept but they went through the one section I didn't have a base to screen. So they aren't that dumb but they can have their good and bad moments.

The best thing they do is go around your military bases once in a while.

Biggest Problems with A.I. at this time:

1. Speed. They never place any speed on their ships. They should have attacking and defending ships like someone pointed out. At least place the engines on the attacking ships and if they are going to do a surprise landing "always" send many escorts to protect the troops.

2. They never seem to research anti-missile tech so I always go missile for easy kills. They always seem to go with lasers and I have either traded or researched for the shield techs to counter them.

3. They always put laser guns on their base which I again counter with shields. I think they should put the weapon type that suits the defense weakness of the neighbor nearest the base. So if to the bottom the Thalans have no defense to missiles they should put missiles instead of lasers. If they know that everyone has shields why do they put laser tech instead of mass drivers or missiles. They should know since I've been trading it to everyone. They can see in trading as well, or should have access to any information I can access for free as well.

4. They don't seem to use enough military bases for defense and ship support or as a preemptive maneuver; placing a military base to extend influence into an area where they have plans to attack later. I do this but they don't do it, or I haven't seen them do it yet. They don't prepare attacks like this or try large assaults on one weak point.

5. Trading tech they should try to keep as an advantage to themselves. I do this with missile techs so I can gain an advantage but they don't do this at all. Unrestricted tech trading has ruined the game for me. If it remains unfixed I will lose interest pretty soon I think. I'm already tiring of having to tech trade every 2 or 3 rounds just to keep up and control the tech trade so I don't get left behind. I can't play my xenophobic research style anymore. This is a bigger problem than all combined in my opinion. You can easily become the guy that everyone gets their tech from, and control the game, while all the enemies become the same enemy essentially. The game is heavily unbalanced to favor aggressive expansionist diplomats.

6. They seem to favor offense over defense all the time even for defending ships. I follow the rule defense before offense. Follow this rule and keep your high defense low offense ships in a fleet. Pick out small targets till their HP gets high and then they will become unstoppable. They should try it out.

The game has a huge potential that awaits to be realized.

The AI is in definite need of improvement. I've noticed from my games on the highest difficulty levels that their economy and planet development are quite good, altough they tend to overstack them with 'useless' cultural bonuses.

But the millitary aspect of fleet managment and ship design are indeed really sub par. As a result, beating the highest difficulty AI isn't that big a deal - if you survive until midgame that is - as long as you keep your millitary competative with fewer but superior ships. But until you reach the that point, the AI sure give you hell and put up a great fight.

If the devs find the time to improve AI research focus and selection and these millitary issues, it would be a completely different story and beating the AI would take real effort.

In any case, don't think too much behind AI, for it isn't. Real intelligence has yet to be discovered in any AI, wether the one in deep blue or in computer games. Its just a piece of software programmed to play like humans, and use programmed strategies against known human tactics. Confront it with something entirely new, and it will be clueless, in fact it won't even 'recognize' the problem.

Having said that, programming the 'AI' is a very difficult matter, and just offhand improving it isn't all that trivial. I think the devs will figure it out, but let's just gave them time to do their thing.

And to those who find it difficult at the moment to win at normal difficulty levels - don't get your hopes down. The important thing here is to plan ahead, anticipate, and most of all, create a hammer economy. Do this by focusing on good morale, and a high population base. By the blessings of this game design, income is seperated from industry, so you can then pour all your money in research and you will quickly have the edge (since the AI is too busy pouring out those pathetic little ships). Specialise your planets, and have patience.

Ai make a lot of starbase that dont upgrade i see this too in crippling.
Ai budget go to pay maintenance of low tech ships.

I just finished a game (large galaxy, normal difficulty.
Yes, I suck, so sue me

Endgame was me (Earth) against the Yor with both in possesion of about half the galaxy.


"2. They never seem to research anti-missile tech so I always go missile for easy kills. They always seem to go with lasers and I have either traded or researched for the shield techs to counter them."


From the trade screen I saw early on neither the Yor, nor the Drengin had any anti-missile-tech, so I went for missiles, only to realize some time later, that the Yor had photonic torps, while I still had Harpoon IIs. So, no, they do not allways go with lasers. They never researched anti missile tech, however


"3. They always put laser guns on their base which I again counter with shields. I think they should put the weapon type that suits the defense weakness of the neighbor nearest the base. So if to the bottom the Thalans have no defense to missiles they should put missiles instead of lasers. If they know that everyone has shields why do they put laser tech instead of mass drivers or missiles. They should know since I've been trading it to everyone. They can see in trading as well, or should have access to any information I can access for free as well."


Initially, I had put some Chaff/ECM on my ships to counter the Yor´s missiles. The AI pretty soon changed to beam weapons, and after loosing a few ships, I switched to shields, which was followed by the AI by switching to massdrivers.
While this didn´t save the Yor (they kept on building those heavy fighters, while I had my destroyers (mediums) up and running) it sure was nice to see the AI reacting to my defense types.


"5. Trading tech they should try to keep as an advantage to themselves. I do this with missile techs so I can gain an advantage but they don't do this at all. Unrestricted tech trading has ruined the game for me. "


I can´t comfirm this. The AI, in my experience, trades rather freely planetary improvements like xeno economy and such stuff and is very eager to get diplomatic research, but seems very reluctant to trade away weapons tech. Trying to get planetary invasion early from an AI race is next to impossible (well I could get it, if I would give the AI about 10 of my techs, but that is out of the question).
Only if I am on very good terms with an AI, that is the loosing side in a war with a 3rd party, I can get weapon tech for a reasonable price.


I have to agree, however:
The AI builds loads of undefended Starbases (both, resource and military/economical) and hasn´t a clue (at least at that level) about when to attack and when not. Seeing a fleet of 4 heavy fighters attack a fully upgraded starbase (attack: 25, defense 15) is perhaps fun to watch once, but it would be easier for the AI just to scrap those ships.

I'd post a longer thing... but Kai summed up what I've seen. (Huge/Gigantic games in Crippling - Suicidal difficulty)

The AI picks a fair diversity of techs... the last game I played (Huge/Sucidal) they used mostly missle tech (both offensive and defensive). What needs work is their build strategy (planets they own are horribly put together) and their build strategy for ships (no engines, etc).