ai game play questions?

First, AI is pretty good at colony rush. Second, what do you consider "normal" difficulty level? AI gets several bonus ships on higher diffculty levels. Although
AI does not get bonuses to economy under "tough" (a difficulty level that some conisder "normal") it seems to get bonus ships (vets, correct me if I am wrong).

I personally dislike the way the colony rush currently works. With blind exploration on, there is little strategy besides making wild dashes with rush built colony ships for the most appealing cluster of systems with hopes of getting lucky. I wish it was somehow possible to do long range scanning before sending ships out. (e.g. you can get some useful infomration by paying for spectral (or whatever) analysis) But I doubt such feature would be implemented in GalCiv II

I've never seen the AI get extra ships to start, but beyond "Tough", they do get production bonuses. At "Painful" it's a smallish 5-10%, but on "Suicidal" it's 100%! There are a lot of factors that figure into how fast you can pump out colony ships. I can usually get one out every 3-4 turns. If I'm playing the Thalans, or I get a manufacturing bonus tile, I can do it every other turn.

If you're getting outproduced on anything lower then "Tough" then you probably need to go back and look at your early game strategy. On "Tough" you should be able to hold your own, on the higher difficulties, you're going to get outproduced, live with it. The AI has other deficiencies you can capitalize on.

Not sure what you mean by "fifth term", but the AI will always jump off to an early lead in the colony rush because they like to rush buy things with their starting cash. This hurts them economically in the long run, depending on the galaxy size and settings etc, but is very effective on small galaxies or those with low habitable planet numbers.

I would expect to have 7 planets by about June in the first year without rush-buying any colony ships. Most AI opponents (at Suicidal) will have 15-20 by then, and they keep a good lead in an abundant everything gigantic galaxy until about a quarter of the way through the 2nd year.

Maybe they dont get extra ships but extra cash to rush build. In the end it works out the same. On higher difficulty levels (tough included?) they also get significant sensor bonus which apparently helps a lot in colonization.

i have seen the ai use the same colony ship to colonize an entire system i think it was three planets

More likely it was rush-buying a starport and another colony ship on the planet it just colonized.

nope i clicked on the secound planet to make sure i was seeing it right the ship landed in orbit on the same turn it colonized the planet and the next turn launched and colonized the third planet

That's not possible. Once a colony is established, the colony ship is destroyed.

possible or not i watched the system for three turns and that what happened

Right. Rush building.

It's not so difficult to understand. The AI colonizes a planet, buys a starport on that plant on the same turn, then buys a colony ship on that planet on the same turn. Then you think it has the same colony ship it used to colonize that planet.

But it's a new one. Go figure!

The AI at tough or lower gets no bonuses over the player whatsoever. They're spending their money on buying colony ships.

Well, AI knows the location of resources without exploring. It also appears to know the location of nearest habitable planet and goes straight for it. It also knows immediately when such planet gets colonized. AFAIK difficulty level does not matter - I got he results in the "cakewalk" No wonder AI is so good at colony rush.

(It is easy to test. Run the game in the CHEAT mode. Set up a system with rare habitable planets and Thalans as an opponent. Reveal the map. Thalans do not have another habitable planet in their home system. Their colony ship heads straight into "unknown" space on the first turn and directly towards nearest habitable planet within the range of the ship. Forget scouts and flagship. If you manage to colonize such planet before them, their colony ship turns around immediately, i.e. regardless of whether the area is known to AI or not. If you think that I am wrong, then how do you explain AIs actions?)

Got source? I've seen the code that shows that it doesn't know that.

and on that same turn there is a colony ship in orbit above that planet and this is the last time i will say anything on this so there is no arguements

Sorry i mean the 50th turn or so that the AI has like 6-7 planents. but i do notice what they do after they colonize each planet is only building starports on it and nothing else.

Yeah, I've seen the code that shows it knows that. Seriously, you should be more specific with your arguments.

I thought I was quite clear why I think that AI has access to information on the location and status of habitable planets. Please run the little test and see yourself. Or give a better explanation.

How about the possibility that revealing the map in cheat mode also reveals it to the AI?

At suicidal (where the AIs get huge bonuses to sensors) I regularly see colony ships arrive at a planet I took a few turns earlier, not realising it was already occupied. They also build lots of scout ships and I can guarantee I will always see an AI scout ship in a sector before they send a colony ship.

Well, if the ship appears on the same turn, then that's clearly wrong and strange.

Give better explanation?

Brad posted on the forums the code used by the AI for colonization. The AI is not told to figure out where the planets are automatically. They have to go there to see the class and whether or not they're habitable or not. And yes, they do make a beeline straight for planets. So does every player who knows how to read the map.

And your test is invalid, the AI is using the exact same cheat you are when you reveal the map.

I had the same doubt. That is why I asked the question in a separate thread. A dev responded that he does not believe that the map would be revealed to AIs. So it is possible but unlikely.



Interesting, in the test they turned back towards the home system. It also seemed to me in some of my games (not in the test) that AI used colonyships just for scouting. This may have been an illusion because I could see only a small part of the map.



AI sending out scout ships does not necessarily mean it actually needs scouts for finding habitable planets . This may have been designed to mimic human behavior and make AI actions seem more plausible. Plus they may need scouts for other purposes: eg making contact with other civs

As a related note: they still build a lot of scout ships after the map is revealed. So, either the map is not revealed to AI or scouting is (partly) a smokescreen.

No, they don't do it to mimic human behavior. They actually have to see a planet before judging it. They know the general location, the exact way the human player does. But other than that they need to BE THERE to see the planet.

I'd be very, very surprised if the cheat isn't affecting them, judging by the behavior reported (you're not the first to notice the reveal map - insta colonize thing)

OK. This is much more convincing than simply: "I've seen the code".



Care to explain more how you can read the map without exploring? In the test they always make beeline for habitable planets and only for habitable planets.



How do you know that?

One odd thing I discovered accidentally is that your own Mining ships, when on "automation," at least under some circumstances, know where the asteroids are even if you don't. After finishing up the belt near my homeworld, they set out to a grey area (fairly close in, but one I hadn't gotten around to exploring) and started mining its asteroid belt.

With Stellar Cartography, the mini-map tells me the locations of stars and how many planets they have. I just send colony ships to the vicinity and hope that some planets are habitable. Since I play abundant all, there usually are, however if there aren't I just go on to the next system. I assume the AI can do the same thing that I do.

There's no reason to presume prior knowledge of the system on the part of the AI. It seems to me that they always grab the first planet they come to in a system even if it’s a PQ5 that’s right next to a PQ26. I've also seen the AI's have to sit with their ships for a bit if I beat them to a planet. If the AI's have prior knowledge of the system they certainly aren’t using it very well.

The only thing that it’s clear that the AI should have prior knowledge of are the location of anomalies since you can just set your survey ship to auto survey and go straight to unseen anomalies. If you can do this then the AI should as well.

As far as colonizing multiple planets with a single colony ship, I don't believe it's possible. It certainly is possible, as has been pointed out, to colonize and rush build a starport and rush build another colony ship all in the same turn. I know that I can do this in one turn. Given that all the AI movement and production occurs at the same time when you press the end turn button, I don't know how you would know it's the 'same' colony ship unless you made note that it was Colony Ship 1234 on the way in and Colony Ship 1234 on the way out. Have you been able to verify that in your experiment?

It's also possible to see the AI use a colony ship to 'bus' pop to multiple previously colonized planets. This is actually very common because the AI tends to 'claim' planets by colonizing with very low numbers of initial colonists that otherwise take forever to grow.