Over good Friday I spent a few hours playing video games. Galactic Civilizations II actually.  With 1.1 nearly done, I wanted to make sure the rest of my AI tweaks started to get in.

Moreover, I wanted to try a game where the AI is at its most vulnerable: A game where planets are rare.  The fewer planets there are, the tougher it is for the computer players. That's one of the reasons why metaverse scoring rewards those who play with more planets available.

In this test game, each AI only gets 2 planets each just like me.  The question is how effective does each player use its planets and use starbases.

For reference, here is my planet:

Here is the Terran Alliance:

Very similar to my setup except they have more factories.

Here are the Drengin:

More emphasis on making money.

Here are the Drath:

Fairly balanced set up with more emphasis on money than us and lower approval from a higher tax rate.

Above are the Yor (a few turns later).  Reasonably good setup. They have pumped up their taxes some and have a pretty balanced planet.

So this is the galaxy. All players are set to "intelligent" ("difficulty = tough") which is the highest intelligence they go before they start getting bonuses and such.

The Stardock symbols are my worlds.  I'm going to take out the Yor (purple) first.

Let's take a look at the ships that the Yor are building:

The Yor are slightly ahead of me in miniaturization. I know that because their max capacity is 35 while mine is 32 (10% difference).  On their ship they've put Impulse Drive plus they've gotten to Mark IV lasers.  But as you can see, they're optimizing their space better (This is something I've worked on this weekend -- as any developer can tell you, it's tricky to have it "Smartly" optimize the use of a container without using an O^2 algorithm which I can't use since the AI has to design its ships almost instantly (or else the game would be unplayable at larger galaxy sizes).

My "F2-StarCat":

My rail gun Mark IV isn't as advanced as the laser Mark IV (uses more space).  But the net effect is that at this stage, the AI and myself have the same ships except theirs are faster.

One of the bigger changes I've done, which I'm not sure how "good" it is is that the AI players (all of them) are now more aware of the threat of sneak attacks. Top human players will tend to make a deadly lightning strike and essentially win the war in one turn. I.e. Blitzkrieg in space. This is a hard strategy to fight against because what players do is make their ships fast enough that they can be placed outside the AI's sensitivity zone.  So I've made it so that the AI now keeps more ships at home than it used to.

This is going to be a real problem with the Yor because...

It's now leaving 4 defenders in orbit (unlike the old days where it would just have 1).  So it's going to be some work.

I move into place. The Yor know what I'm going to do but it's too late.

Within a game year, the Yor are dead. Next up, the Iconians. Let's see what they're up to..

The good news from their point of view is that htey've built up some starbases.  They've actually got a pretty decent economy going.

Plus...

They built a military starbase that gives their ships +1 on attack that covers my entire civilization (except for one planet).  The Iconians have one key advantage, their home planet is a class 15 planet, their secondary planet is only a class 3 but that initial planet is very helpful.

The Iconians have been very busy too while I was taking care of the Yor.  Their class 15 world is doing very well.

Lots of money thanks to a higher population and higher tax rate and they've made full use of their special tiles. They are also upgrading one of their embassies into a farm.  When I see people on the forums say the "the AI" (each player has its own AI actually) doesn't use its planets well, I don't know what to say because I'm not seeing it.  Statistically, the AI will make mistakes for sure but it's certainly not the norm.  To me, this is a pretty spiffy planet setup.

But I'm going to see about taking them out anyway. But I'm going to have to be very surgical about it. So I build a special type of planetary invasion ship:

I almost feel bad, the Iconians like me.

But I can make new friends. The problem here is that I don't have a lot of forces and I have to take out that starbase that is giving them an edge. I can't beat the fleet on new Iconian otherwise.

My military build up is getting some kudos though.

That's right humans, suck up. You'll get your turn right after Poland, er I mean Iconia.  The Iconians are already at war with the Drengin. So I need to make sure I take out the Iconians first.

The war begins..

This is going to be a close battle.  The Iconians have a decent fleet protecting their world.

Ut oh. My spear head is wiped out. But I did take out their military starbase. I send in my reserves.

My second wave succeeds.

And that paves the way for my invasion. New Iconia is mine.

Being the evil bastard that I am, I offer them peace for a bunch of techs. Then I'll attack them again.

Incidentally, the game does allow you to double cross like that. But it decreases your likeability with other races since it's kind of scummy.

With new Iconia mine, their minor colony is ready to defect. It might be cheaper to just let them be assimilated by my culture and move towards my next..victim.  The Drengin are at war with everyone else. They make a perfect target.

I have the Drengin beat in every way. This will be easy.

At this point, one might ask "Why don't the other guys do something about what I'm doing?"  The answer is, it's all in pattern recognition.  Now, this game is a pretty unique setup. Many of the people I see howl that the AI should be "Smarter" are likely playing on maps like I am where we all get 1 or 2 planets total with little ability to make use of the computer's natural advantage which is optimizing numbers. As soon as I took out the Yor, the balance shifted to me.  To thwart a strategy like this, players (including computer players) should get flagged when they go on wars of conquest. Then other players are more likely to go to war with them. 

Since I wrote the AI, I also know its secrets. I know, for instance that I have to keep the Drath happy because they do recognize wars of conquest and will pay others to unite in wars against those that do it.  But I've been keeping on their good side.  What will need to be done in the future is to expand on this pattern recognition.  But like I said, we're talking about a very specific map setup.

Of course, I haven't won yet.

This is the Drengin Empire. Not too impressive. Surrounded by enemies, the only smart thing they've done this game is put their economy starbase behind their worlds out of reach.

Their planet is cranking out money. About the same as I am at this point. Note that they chose not to make use of the influence bonus tiles. That's not a bug. They simply decided that galactic achievements were more valuable. I would have to agree.

Their capital planet is defended by a fleet of 4 mark II defenders. They are essentially as good as my ships but no better.

So what are they doing wrong?

The Drengin have Singularity Mark IV.  Their ships are pathetic compared to what they could be building. Their latest ships known as mark III's all have singularity drivers but upgrading their ships in orbit would have been a good idea. The question is, why didn't they? Answer, same reason many humans don't, money. But I stop the debugger, make some adjustments here.

Since I know they're ahead of me technologically, I need to move quickly.

The Drath seem to be upset about the Korx.

Meh. The Korx are nothing to worry about. I'll get to them soon enough. I'll give the Drath some goodies though to help.

I also design some new ships with my latest/greatest stuff.

Like the poor Iconians, the Drengin are on friendly terms with me.  They have no idea I'm about to wipe them out.

The difference between 1.1 and 1.0X is really very apparent here.  I'm attacking a Drengin world and rather than encountering one pitiful defender in my sneak attack it's actually got a pretty decent little force here. It's still going to lose but it's a huge improvement.  I lose my capital ship in the process which is a bit painful.

One new change in v1.1 is that ships are named after who created them. So you can now tell when someone is supplying your enemies with ships.

The "Korx Frigate" is owned by the Drengin. The Korx gave it to the Drengin to fight me. But it's too late for the Drengin. Soon they're gone too.

Let's see, who's next?  Ah the snobby Altarians.

The Drath aren't having a good time. In fact, they're gone.

But they have given me what's left of their empire.  The Korx were too tough for them. Well I'll get to the Korx soon.

So here's where we're at:

I've got the bottom left corner. The Korx have the obttom right corner. The Altarians have two worlds just above me.

But the Altarians have been busy.

Look closely at this sceenshot.  The Altarians have 4 starbases ringing Altaria. Two military, two economy. The military ones are pumping up their ships quite a bit and will need to be removed.  But realistically, the Altarians aren't much of a threat.

Like the Drengin, they have a decent home defense but they're just too weak.

Rats. They escaped.

Okay, now I think I will deal with the Korx.  They aren't too threatening yet and I don't want to give them time to become a threat.

The Korx are currently involved in a war with the Torians.  I'm going to use that time to build up and study them.

Their home world is decently used. It's not as profitable as my home world is but it it's doing pretty well. But the Korx are worn down by the battle with the Torians. They are both ripe.

One of the things I'm noticing is that the AI isn't re-designing its ships often enough. This was put in for performance reasons but I think we can do it a better way (which I'm now implementing, recompiling, etc.).  It won't help the AI players this game, but it will help them in the future if they can make use of their new technologies more quickly.

I also design up a new ship for the Korx with a heavy emphasis on defending against missiles.

The Korx are offended.  But the question is, why aren't they doing more about this? They're set to intelligent. Though I do have the intelligences randomized.

Aha! The randomized intelligences save me.

Internally, they have to have at least a rating of 80 to do something about it. So I'm off the hook. The randomize intelligence feature adds or subtracts a few points from the AI randomly to give it more variety.

The Torians are losing but they won't have to worry about the Korx in a minute.

The Korx are defending their planets better than usual. Part of the reason is that all of the AI players will station attack ships in orbit now if it detects even the slighest threat. It makes doing these sneak attacks harder.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

"Why shouldn't I always just pick the evil choice?" This is why (one reason). I just lost three key worlds to these guys because my people revolted because of my evil ways.

I'll deal with that soon enough...

The Korx war is a bit of a challenge...

And ultimately they are defeated.

The rest is just epilogue.  I ally with the humans and the Torians and have them wipe out the Thalan for me.

So what lessons can be learned here?

• The easiest way to defeat the AI is on rare habitable planets. The fewer planets that are available to exploit, the tougher the AI has it because it can't make use of its computing advantage.
• The AI players need to update its ship designs more often (done now).
• The AI players need to be more sensitive to military conquest strategies. I just marched right through and took them over. Of course, this was a very specific setup - rare planets, small galaxy so I could get away with this.  But still, any player marching through like this should get flagged and other civilizations should do the same.  In World War II, Germany nearly won.  Had they not back-stabbed the Soviet Union, things might have gone very differently.  In this game, there was no Britain equivalent.  Everyone just waited their turn to be attacked.  I'll have to put some thought on how to do that.

Not too many flaws though, it's just hard for anyone, even people in the real world, to deal with a focused aggressor. I think we can do something about that. Whether that'll make it into 1.1 or into 1.2 remains to be seen.