I have only done this once on GC2 I played the Godlike map where everyone starts will all the techs with 9 AI on tough after 26 turns and having 10 planets a mass of Drengin/Arcean and Drath battleships and dreadnoughts came streaming out of the FoW smashed my fleets of medium hull frigates and invaded my brains out! it was the shortest game of GC2 I'd ever played and the most scariest!

Hi Brad

I have high hopes for the AI in GalCiv3. You've talked extensively about it and I think it bears repeating. We're now basically 'crowdsourcing AI'.

As a base example, look at how Forza 5 does it

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/how-forza-5-is-crowd-sourcing-artificial-intelligence/1100-6409975/

The metaverse was the 'alpha' version of that. And I think we'll be going forward with more and more of this kind of concept. now its so much easier to grab game data from users and then feed that back into an AI structure. Before it was impossible to know what users were doign, what were their strategies, etc? now you can auto-collect that data and then decide what strategies can counter it, or use players strategies against them.

There's also a bit of an irony in that when the game tromp them its 'cheating' but when players win the 'ai sucks'.

Your AI is excellent. GC in general is probably the most sophisticated 4X out there. However, a lot of the things the game and/or the AI do are behind the scenes. The player is often oblivious to how much is really going on. This is why people call out braindead. Not because it is, but because they arent seeing it so they assume i4 isnt there. Or they point out one pet peeve that happens 'every game' - we know it doesnt - to bolster their opinion.

A simple fix is in the AI dialogue. When the AI makes a strategic change it could call up the player and

1 taunt him

2 offer to bargain

3 just say 'i see what you did there'

4 pronounce doom.

The acutual message isnt as important as simply telling the player things are happening.

Your game and its AI needs to "toot its own horn' a bit more about what it is doing and what is going on in the game. 

I havent "played an honest" game with GC3 yet because i have been scrimmaging with the AI and watching what it does and trying things, just to start a new game with more experiments. 

By the standards of today, your AI is good.

By the standards of the future, your AI is absolutely awful.  

It's sort of like asking: "were the people of 1000 years ago smart?"

How are you supposed to answer that? If they were smart, why did they think the sun went around the earth? Answer me THAT.  

Just do your best and we'll reward you with our money.  

It would be MUCH easier if we could, you know, make the AI ACTUALLY intelligent.  

Unfortunately the best we can do today is to make it PRETEND to be intelligent. 

Big difference there, as any AI programmer would know.  (How do I get this stupid dumb program to FUNCTION as if it was smart?)

Um... is that not basically saying 'it would be much easier if we could do something really, really, really hard instead?'?

IMO, GalCiv 2 Ultimate Edition has very good AI. It plays ALMOST like a human player.

In my experience, it knows how to develop its colonies well, and comes out with strategies on the fly to counter what you are trying to do.

That is why I am still playing GalCiv 2 UE on different days.

GalCiv 2 has a lot of refine features, strategic options and more depth than GalCiv 3. But that is because GalCiv 2 has 2 expansions and the AI has been tuned over the many years.

On other days, I play GalCiv 3 because of the following cool features:

1. Adjacency bonuses (IMO this is the best feature of Gal Civ 3 as it gives players strategic planning on colonies)
2. Nicer graphics
3. Strategic resources & relics

However, if I have to pick the AI between GalCiv 2 UE v2.04 vs GalCiv 3 v1.03, GalCiv 2 wins hands down.

GalCiv 3's AI does the basic things right. The issue right now to me, is that the AI is still not able to make full good use of the new features of GalCiv 3.

I'm sure though that when GalCiv 3 reaches v2.04, the AI will be many times better than GalCiv 2's AI.

Meanwhile, if I want a more refined AI experience, I play GalCiv 2. When I want to immense myself in the new features and do not mind the not so refine AI, I play GalCiv 3.

I think it is important to improve AI if you (as Stardock, Brad...) believe that (very) good AI will bring additional benefits to the players and more sales as consequence.
GalCiv2 AI was highly praised and I strongly believe from reading forums that that was an important factor in GalCiv2 sales and then it contributed nicely to GalCiv3 sales.
I certainly bought GalCiv2 after reading reports on how good AI was in that game.

I think realistically it was not that AI in GalCiv2 was that much better than in other games, but it was branded as such. And it is NOT a bad thing IMHO.
That happened because the overall gameplay, features, ballance allowed the variety of players to get that impression. That included beginners, normal difficulty players and hard core players.
GalCiv2 had that critical mass of features of which AI was one, which were working together nicely and satisfied the demand at the time.

At the moment I think there is more focus on AI improvments on this forum, since the game has improved significantly in terms of graphics, but the gameplay still has room for improvement.
I remember when Civ5 came out there were talks of AI, which wasn't so good in diplomacy and absolutely terrible in units management. And even game developers admitted that AI in that game is incorrectly designed.
Well after two expansions AI is still pretty much where it was, but since the game developed significantly in the amount of features and what player can do, then all of the AI issues just went in to background. And also AI in that game can
to an extend use all of the other features apart of those (diplomacy and warfare), which it can't use properly.

So, there are two avenues to take here, either add more features and balance or\and add significant AI improvements. I am as player would like to see both and I am sure most people wont disagree.
Still regardless of the path development will be taking it woudl be great to see AI be able to use existing features in the game, i.e. adjustment bonuses, logistics, buidling better ships, attack and take user (and other AIs) plannets, etc.

I've played Gal Civ II and I can guarantee you that the AI wasn't significantly better than the AI in Gal Civ III.  

The difference in Gal Civ II is that you couldn't expand as quickly because your economy would crash.  As a result the AI APPEARED to be stronger. 

The Yor AI right now in Gal Civ III could probably CRUSH any other AI in II or III.  On God-like they definitely designed that AI correctly, at least when it comes to pumping out sheer numbers of units in the mid game.  The tactics may still need work, but when you've got enough numbers tactics don't matter.  

In every game on smaller than gigantic maps I try to Bop the Yor as early as possible.  

then you did it wrong, you could either

(a) techtrade/broker

(b) rely on anomalies with add. surveyors

(c) breeder SA

(d) build only market center/ fertility clinics initially to take you up

any of the above methods worked alone, and even with Yor/Thalan under a most heavy prod output setup it could be done running @ 100% global spending throughout the whole game. As for the expanding, it took about ~60 turns to colonize all habitable worlds (up to 1400) and finish off the techtree (with techspeed set to Very Fast). Because of swindleing you won all games around turn 30 because all AI handed over everything they owned for peace (and vanished from the game) and the more they acquired beforeahead the stronger your own game became (that is, to pull this off on suicidal was most easy of all diff settings).

Although I think it could be done in GC3 as well... 

My general strat was to use superbreeder and set tax rates low enough such that super breeder will kick in for a couple of turns, then immediately turn it up again to produce more colony ships. 

Nonetheless, every once in a while I have to turn production completely off to let my population catch up.

IN GAL CIV III, WITH THE RIGHT SET UP, I CAN BUILD COLONY SHIPS INDEFINITELY FROM ALL OF MY COLONIES.   MY ECONOMY WILL NEVER CRASH.  

I still don't know how to feel about that.  

Brad:

It's been a long-time since I played Gal Civ II but I agree the AI was pretty good.  The main reason I bought Gal Civ III as an Elite Founder was because of the AI in Gal Civ II.  To me it's your core competitive advantage which you should want to maintain long-term.  And hopefully that means you put a similar effort into Gal Civ III otherwise you could lose that advantage in time.

Quoting marigoldran, reply 61

DEFINITELY FROM ALL OF MY COLONIES.   MY ECONOMY WILL NEVER CRASH.  

I still don't know how to feel about that.  

Frankly it needs to be fixed because it means there is no strategic choice early game.  The same rush is strictly superior.  That's boring.  You want the AI and human players to have a variety of strategic options early game that don't result in gross imbalance.  There are various options to resolve it. 

The GC2 AI was pretty good. I only played it on Normal because I don't like cheats going to anyone.  Now in GC3 I have only played on three settings, Beginner, Normal, and Godlike (insane.)   GC2 hands down was a better challenge on Beginner and normal. And since I never played the highest setting in GC2 I cannot compare it to the highest setting in GC3.  All I know is that the one Godlike game I played I got my ass handed to be but then the AI has all those cheats.

Keep in mind that the GC2 I played was after all the DLC's and updates including the community one so it was the best it could be.  Gc3 is just coming out of the gate and Brad I think knows that the AI needs some work.

For me AI was on of my top appeal for the game. It was clearly superior to other 4x games i played. I remember my shock when first time i i tought i had the  ultimate design countering AIs ships, and then it started to change them to counter mine:). It was really good. 

I found the GalCiv II AI to be good, but did some odd things. 

1. One AI player would build only transports and then get slaughtered by another AI.
2. it would find an anrnor dreadnaught and then sell it off because of the maintenance cost.
3. I don't recall it making optimal building choices or specializing planets.
4. delaclare war on me when it can't reach me.

It had some good things going for it.  If I built fleets of missile ships, it would counter with missile defended, ECT.   with each expansion and update the AI got better. The AI made the game.

I feel the same way about the AI in GalCiv III.  AI improvements make the game experience enjoyable and more memorable.