AI not colonizing

They are building ships but not colonies. In this pic you see that the Alterians have 16 ships 6 star bases and 3 colonies.

The class 10 may have appeared by the Benevolent trait Explorers and if they haven't scouted it they may not know it's there. 

In 69 turns I have 30 colonies, the Thalan have 2 and the Alterians have 3. Look how flat the AI power level is while mine is spiking there is something broken here.

The extra planet from the Benevolent trait pops up in your territory not outside of it. How would the Thalan have picked up the 30 Benevolent points to get the trait. Don't the Thalan favor the Malevolent traits?

I mentioned this problem in a former post. Basically, some AI, on challenging at least, are behaving quite differently from the past.

Essentially, since some time during beta 6 patch 2 (I think), the AI behavior took a major step back IMO. They don't colonize well and they horde credits. In one game, by turn 100, the races had anywhere between 15,000 and 70,000 credits... But they had half the planets as me, often fewer than 10.

If I had 70,000 credits, I'd be rush buying everything... Including colony ships.

And in response to your suggestion, Illauna, in my game the AI had planets in their ZOC that were uncolonized. Something changed for the worse with the AI.

I'm not trying to be critical, because I love the game and the work the devs have done has been awesome. But the AI is now dumb on challenging. I haven't had time to see what they are behaving like on higher difficulties. But compared to earlier betas, the AI performance is poor.

I remember people complaining about AI colonising too aggressively.  To which Frogboy said that it will be looked at.  So, here you go. It has been looked at most probably. Now two questions remain:

1. Whether on the higher difficulties it colonises quicker?

2. Where is that setting which defines colonisation speed? So that people can adjust it as they see fit...

There is no such thing as too agressive colonisation xD

If you post your save Frogboy can review the map and see if the AI was aware that planet existed. They have to actually scout the planet to know it's there. An early war could have destroyed the scout and hindered their map knowledge. 

I thought I saw mentioning that AI does' t see the entire map upto Normal including.  After that it sees everything. .. May be the change I've mentioned above was to make AI not see the map on upto Challenging including. ..

I also see this.

I played a Challenging game through 136 turns, by which point I had met 2 major races. I was at the edge of the map, so I assumed that was why I had met so few races.

And then I took a look at their planets.

The Yor had 2 planets. The Iconians had 4. I had 13. Slightly confused, I removed the fog of war and took a look. Some races - the Altarians and the Drengin - were actually keeping up with me. Nobody else was even half my faction power - and there were no wars or trading going on.

My best guesses:

1) AI doesn't explore much. They don't go out and find many new planets or resources to expand.

2) AI doesn't remember things. I recall from a discussion about AI seeing where all the planets were that what they do is, instead of a FOW for each AI, they ping each planet and see if it is in range. I'm not entirely sure how this works, but I had a thought: If a scout sees a planet, and then the AI builds/rushes a colony ship, the scout might then move away from the planet, hiding it under FOW - it would no longer be in sensor range. This leaves the AI with a colony ship that has nowhere to go. I can see evidence of this in my current game, as there are some idle colony ships around. https://www.dropbox.com/s/v6rr64ugm90fngz/2015-05-15_00002.jpg?dl=0 At the same time, I see that the AI can send ships to planets it hasn't found (this is on challenging, so that's WAD). https://www.dropbox.com/s/f9yos9lvefklbfu/2015-05-15_00003.jpg?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/rqveysbi5if7782/2015-05-15_00004.jpg?dl=0

3) AI doesn't deal with pirates. It just keeps sending colony ships to a planet, and pirates along the way destroy the colony ship. The AI doesn't go and wipe out those pirates. Particularly nasty when the planet is right next to the pirates.

Here is the link to the save game file.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/aymhye12f40b5aj/h2.GC3Sav?dl=0

One thing I noticed in games during beta. The AI tended to spam constructors and colony ships in my direction but if I managed to get around them there were open worlds on the other side of their space. 

I told stardock once: tune every race up not just those Drengin scum. 

Oh that'll be fine, don't worry they told me.

Now -- fail

I told stardock yet again: you guys are going the same road to failure as you did in GC2 and it's miserable expansions. Your new game is having all the same problems as before.

This all will be different this time they told me.

Now -- fail

I told stardock a third time: fix here and there and especially the race creating tool.

Of course we will! Don't be so negative!

Now -- fail.

Way to go with your release stardock! 

It is really hard to understand what you are talking about.

Back to topic, I also see the AI colonising behaviour inconsistent. Can't put my finger on it though. In some games they do quite okay (although far from optimum). All on challenging difficulty.

Quoting Bloodlust1983, reply 11

I told stardock once: tune every race up not just those Drengin scum. 

Oh that'll be fine, don't worry they told me.

Now -- fail

I told stardock yet again: you guys are going the same road to failure as you did in GC2 and it's miserable expansions. Your new game is having all the same problems as before.

This all will be different this time they told me.

Now -- fail

I told stardock a third time: fix here and there and especially the race creating tool.

Of course we will! Don't be so negative!

Now -- fail.

Way to go with your release stardock! 

 

I don't understand a word, except that you consider GC2 as a failure. Wow. I am pretty curious to know what games you consider a success. Tetris?

Ouch! Internet white knights rush to defend their precious yet-to-be-finished game. I'll just run in terror then *sarcasm.jpg*

Moving away from the unnecessary arguments back to constructive feedback.

I am playing a game on Tough and I would also echo that the AI's colonization has become too passive. I am cleaning up right now with ease while the AI is only taking a few planets.

I would say especially before the Age of War, colonization should be a stronger priority.

On my current game, twice saw pirates kill AI colonizers one turn after they were produced.

I have started a game at Tough and while the AI is not completely sitting on its thumbs I am seeing far less challenge than expected at this difficulty level. I have made several mistakes and the AI players are still getting their clocks cleaned.

I'm playing games on immense with 20 AI.

I can't say I've noticed the AI unable to colonize. In the case where the AI has struggled, it has typically been the exception rather than the rule. For example, I made all the Master of Orion 2 races as custom races. The Bulrathi (bear men who are god-tier soldiers) only colonized 2 planets when I had 10). I was worried that the AI was wonky because I had read a few threads talking about the AI not colonizing.

So I hit debug, typed FOW and checked things out.

The Bulrathi were basically the only major faction that wasn't at least as big as I was and the reason for their small size was geographical and bad luck. I was playing with tight clusters and they simply had very limited early game options to expand. On top of that they had a pirate base almost right on top of them.

Meanwhile the Sakkra (lizardmen that breed like rabbits) had 30-40 colonies and around 5x my score. I think the biggest culprit here could be things like tight clusters and pirates just limiting expansion options.

I have also noticed a drop in AI colonization speed since about beta 6 or so (I been playing on Tough).

Current game, huge map, turn 50 or so, nice empty planets everywhere.
I'm up to about 10, other races seem to have 2-3 each.

I also noticed that they have amassed credits, 7000 at least.
Those should be spent on colony ships!

Also they seem to favour building starbases everywhere rather than colonizing.

The only ones that should be different is the Yor.
When I played them I found you can't expand aggressively as you then don't have the people power to build more people

Meeting races with 2 planets, 10 colony ships (not going anywhere), and 70k credits.

I'm definitely not seeing the AI sit on colony ships if it can colonize. It's been hyper aggressive for me. Odd? Maybe people should list the settings they are seeing this on.

I'm currently playing on;

Challenging /w 20 AI

Immense

Spiral Galaxy

Occasional Star Frequency

Common Planet Frequency.

Common Habitable Planet Frequency.

Abundant Minor AI.

Pirates Rare.

Trying to think of any other settings that would be relevant to colonizing variables. I'm also using the experimental .exe that Frogboy released yesterday, but I had some 100 turn test games that had no colonization issues.

I would advice you to check which personalities your custom races have. From my experience races that follow Drengin and Yor behaviour are the strongest. They like seen quite a number of tests and tunes pre-release. Some other personalities may be weaker by far. Normally the less popular is the race among fans and devs the weaker it's AI. I remember Drath Legion and Arcean Empire always playing quite poorly.

Update: There is also a question on balance and proper priorities for the ai players. They can be just doing b-line research or trying to build military at the moment when they should colony-rush everything. The game needs a brake on colonizing I think artifically limiting the colony-rush speed. Like super expensive colonizers that would take much time to build. In such conditions different ai strategies may be more of a factor as they are obviously no good in the state when rush-build and grab-everything-you-see appears to be the only sane strategy.

Overall the game still needs a ton of fixes with the AI specifically. Let's wait and see for the 1.1 patch to come out.

I don't believe this is the problem at all. The three races that have performed the strongest in my limited number of test games.

Krynn, by a long shot, followed by the Yor, and then the Altarians. The Drengins tend to be in the bottom half, whereas those three tend to be in the top 7-10, with the Krynn frequently in the top 3.

Looking at the AI priorities, the Krynn do not have growth or expansion as one of their dominant priorities. Growth is 5th and expansion is 6th. They do however have aggressive and expansionist traits. If we compare to the Yor, aggressive and scientific with growth 4th and expansion 6th. Their racial abilities? Synthetic and Adaptable. A solid choice for early game expansion obviously. While the Krynn are prolific and zealous. I'd say that without question prolific is the most important early game expansion trait for the AI followed closely by fertility for any organic races.

I honestly have to question the settings. I've never seen any race sit on colony ships if it had planets it could colonize. Have you actually checked to see what these AI factions could in fact colonize?

I'm looking at a game with the FOW turned off that was played to turn 100. It was a loose cluster game with the same settings I mentioned in the other post. The overall civ power rankings have;

2. Iconian Refuge.

3. Krynn Syndicate.

5. Altarian Resistance.

6. Yor Singularity.

7. Drengin Empire.

The Thalans and Terrans are 18th and 19th respectively out of 20 AI factions. I can instantly tell why looking at the starmap with FOW disabled.

The Terrans have colonized 5 planets. They started at the edge of the map in a cluster that had 5 colonisable planets and then a band of empty space 40-50 hexes(parsecs?) wide. By the time they could reach anything else they were clearly already taken.

The Thalans have 4. They spawned in sort of a middle ground, but they face the same problem. On one side of them were the "Raas" an industrious, fertile, reptilian race with prolific as a trait. On the other side, is a vast expanse of dead planets, at least 50 parsec's deep.

I'm not saying the AI isn't doing as well as it can, but I think we need to exhaust all explanations before we say it's broken. Clearly it isn't broken when the Krynn, Iconian Refuge, Altarian Resistance, Yor Singularity and Drengin Empire are all capable of gobbling up 30+ colonies inside of 100 turns.

I firmly believe that the biggest cause of lack of colonization, is lack of opportunity to colonize. What size map are you playing? What star formation? How many AI? Do me a favor. Run the biggest map your computer can comfortably handle. Use the scattered star systems style, and set pirates to rare. Now just click end turn for 30 turns. Hit tilde, type FOW and then see if anyone is struggling. Then see if you can tell why. Reload the game, hit end turn for another 20 turns. See what it looks like at 50 turns, then at 75, then at 100.

If anyone is sitting on colony ships with very obvious opportunity to expand, then there is clearly an issue, if races are sitting on colony ships and they have nothing to colonize, then that might be the cause of what you are seeing!

I've done many tests with this problem in GC2 although I didn't play much in GC3 (the game in its current state brings me frustraition rather then joy.)

So you figured it out Although in contradiction to what you've stated above. Now one should do test runs with each ai to see how they are behaving. 10 tests for each race in the empty galaxy without rivals and pirates (to ensure there is no obstacles for them to expand)

I assure you I did so many times already you would hardly believe For me Galactic Civilizations IS the ai. I tested it quite a few times to determine their behavior. I've already discarded the thought of "infavorable conditions". There are results when AIs fail under even perfect condition. There is obviously either the coding flaw or the balance mismatch when the ai doesnt pay as much attention as it should to early game colony-rush. Me and you can't do anything more here. The devs need to look into their coding sheets to try and find the bug.

This I'm seeing quite often. And if you carefully read through the thread you'll find people reporting it too.

Some AI like terran for example do something strange with their colony ships. I am playing on Tough,  Huge map. There were 3 habitable planets between me and Terran. They colonised closest to my borders and furthest from them. Other two were left vacant. One they have colonised later.  Another one left uncolonised for abot 50 turns.

Also AI  level of playing is  too easy so far. On that map I have 30 my own colonies. The closest AI, Krynn, has 20. Terran live with 5. I've started war with Yor (3rd in power). And it went absolutely one way. I've taken 4 of his planets with bio warfare.  All I had to do was to sell some technologies to minor races to pay for bio weapon attacks. Will take another 5 and I am sure Yor will be finished. No resistance whatsoever. No fleet, nothing.

Krynn seem to have some kind of fleet. Which has reasonable strength,  but they don't use logistics!! Their logistics is 15 while mine is 35...

Well, all of it is kind of fun, while you are lear ing the game. But would be nice to have some challenge. ..

Yes, and I am only building 3 buildings everywhere: economic,  manufacturing and research.  Decided to build some farms on the planets taken from Yor. Just to see whether I can make that planet big and sponsor my troop carrier ships...