AI will ignore targets of interests in favour of attacking drones on planet

from GalCiv3 Forums

I had a ticket created a while ago about this behavior: #AJZ-662-10426, with a recent save game.

 

In this game, I'm playing at gifted.  I don't know if it's WAD because of the low difficulty level (I haven't played in a while, like 2 DLCs ago at least...), but as soon as you have drones defending a planet, like an orbital platform that creates renewable drones, the AI will always stick to attacking these drones no matter what is beside it.

You have a shipyard producing a brand new dreadnought turn after turn?  No problem, the AI will attack the drones.  You have a huge fleet nearby that albeit its size would likely or surely be defeated by that AI fleet?  No problem, the AI will attack the drones.

The only exception to the rule are fleets containing transports.  So if the AI is attacking a planet with drones and you are attempting to invade a planet next to it, or if your transport fleet happens to come by that attacking AI fleet, than it will react.  Otherwise, no attack, no invasion.

In this game, the AI could have wiped the floor with me given how badly I played early on.  Even now, most of the AI fleets are better armed than mine and could destroy my starbases, my fleets, invade my undefended planets.  But instead, it chooses to fortify its planets with troops waiting for me to invade.

My next game I'll crank the difficulty a couple notches higher to see if the AI still repeat that behavior.  That bug has been there for a long while...  It'd be nice if it were fixed for the next patch :)

Thanks :)

56,849 views 6 replies
Reply #2 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

@awunsh

No problem! :)

 

 

@devs

Here's another game, this time at genius, with the similar problematic.  Just it "TURN" and watch the AI ships behavior, and just play for a couple of turns and you'll see it doing the same over&over&over again.

Minor difference here is, the AI will seldomly try to invade a planet after destroying my drones there.

If I had to venture a guess, it would be as if the AI wants to invade, so it sends ships to destroys my drones, but it does not have any legions available so it can not build a transport ship to actually proceed with the invasion. 

There's like a missing requirement there: the AI prioritizes capturing a planet over destroying a starbase or a fleet, but since it has no transport, it can not proceed and so will keep attacking that planet forever.  There might be need for a kind of check "do I have legions to send? Yes- go ahead destroy the drones; No- destroy something else".

 

AI prioritize destruction of drones over other targets

Galactic Civilizations III
Reply #3 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

This has been the usual behavior for a long time.  I've learned to use this to my advantage.  When a fleet does nothing but attack the drones, I know it can be ignored.

Sometimes several enemies will send fleets to the same planet to attack the drones.  The fleet that is earliest in the turn sequence will attack and destroy the drones.  There aren't any drones left to attack, so the other fleets will done nothing when it is their to attack.  When this happens, I know all of the fleets can be ignored.

When this happens to several of my planets, that means more fleets can be ignored.

It sure saves me lot of trouble when I need to plan my defense.

Reply #4 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Old-Spider, reply 3

This has been the usual behavior for a long time.  I've learned to use this to my advantage.  When a fleet does nothing but attack the drones, I know it can be ignored.

Sometimes several enemies will send fleets to the same planet to attack the drones.  The fleet that is earliest in the turn sequence will attack and destroy the drones.  There aren't any drones left to attack, so the other fleets will done nothing when it is their to attack.  When this happens, I know all of the fleets can be ignored.

When this happens to several of my planets, that means more fleets can be ignored.

It sure saves me lot of trouble when I need to plan my defense.

Yeah, I know I can exploit it, and I know it's been there for a while, I thought it had been fixed at some point, but I guess I misremembered.

It'd be nice if this got fixed, eventually.

Reply #5 from Stardock.net Forums Top

I will ask about this for you guys.

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Reply #6 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

thanks! :)