The Weak " AI " !?!?

Mods make AI better. Specifically IRM & Balance Mod. Mods can be found easily at SpaceEmpires.net

Mods mods mods mods mods mods mods mods mods mods mods.

Suction feet are not to be trifled with!

The stock AI is dissapointing to be sure. But the imortant thing to realize is that this game was designed to be A) modded and B) played in multiplayer.

I doubt the stock AI will ever be good as it has to make too many compromises to keep multiplayer balanced and interesting. Even then multiplayer is far better with mods....

IMO, play BM for multiplayer and for a game resembling stock. IRM I understand has the better (more agressive) of the two AI's. I have not heard an opinion of it with multiplayer.

When playing multiplayer, it is again important to understand that it is not fast. You will hopefully play a few turns a day. And once the game gets going, that will be enough to keep you busy if your involved in a few games. and have job, wife, family, etc.

Secondly, while a game with 16 players (human) seems like a great idea, it is exponentially slower. Missed turns... complications... ack...

Personally I think multiplayer should max out at 6 players to be manageable. And even head to head games of 2 players are a blast. Try the King of the Hill tournament. Much fun. We're rolling through turns in my game. Only 2 players, much faster.

Anyway, my 2 cents.

Javaslinger

Yes, 1vs1 is pretty fast. I was able to complete a game in 2 playing sessions... I had enough free time though.
But 1vs1 misses the whole diplomatic/roleplay part of the game, which is enough to be the only reason to play SEV and its complex universe.
I find multiplayer REALLY fast compared to Alpha Centauri. Simultaneous turns, the ability of replace a human player by an AI until a replacement player is found, and the whole PBW automated system: those are really GREAT!

BTW, are there some mods out there that would concentrate on the multiplayer part? Maybe without an AI because it would probably make the complexity of the game be nerfed (supplies too cheap in IRM 0.9, playing in Paradise AI-friendly quadrant, etc...). I know there is the Gritty Galaxies Mod, but I was thinking about something more Stock-like...

There's also the Golden Eclipse mod as well which has been updated to 1.33 while GG has not. Though I can't tell you anything about it other than it's designed only for multiplayer.

Javaslinger

The AI is far from completed, unfortunately. Aaron has alot of work left to do before it is. Mods can improve the AI, it's entirely scriptable, but there are some things that even modders would have a very hard time fixing, like for instance giving the AI 'memory' so that it can cope with fog of war.

Don't rely on the AI to give you a challenge for at least a few more months and patches, I'd say.

No matter what mod I try, the AI sucks, it cannot even given tons of help, and a specific map just made for it, do anything useful.

My favorite gamestyle, is I build up a few choice systems, and see how long I can hold.

I don't do anything cheesy, I just want good fleetfights.....

Nothing happens, it does nothing, after defeating a few waves, its basically..nothing is happening.
In the end, I go bored and cannot really envision myself conquering planet after planet...and I conclude a win for myself..which IS BORING, I want to be hurt..maimed...

Thankfully Sword of the Stars maims me ...and I'm happy again.

Yawn.

Janster

What you could do, is make a new game with everyone under your control...Then build up the empires...Save....Then turn it into a scenario....That way the AI has human designed fleets, and even they probably couldnt completly screw it up at least for a few years

haha. Don't count on that. Stories abound from SEIV PBW about the AI running one turn by mistake and ruining entire empires. It works very differently than human players, and giving it a human empire usually results in a fairly quick crash n burn.

Yeah, the "AI" really sucks. Instead of giving them human designed fleets and ships make them a lot more powerful than you, build strong alliances and have them colonize half of the quadrant before you do anything. This should give you some challenge and it's even fairly realistic as the history has many examples of old empires being replaced by newer ones.

The problem isn't really the AI's empire management or designs( although both of those could certainly use improvements ), it's the fleet/ship/unit management. The AI quite simply stink at ordering its ships and fleets around. It has problems handling the game's supply system, the fog of war system, and a number of other scenarios. The AI is completely unable to launch the coordinated attacks required to wipe another empire out, unless they happen to have their colonies in the same systems. Thus we end up playing a game where there's no real threat to the human player.

yeah, I don't understand why the AI has to deal with supply, it's not good at handling it.
Just remove supply, and I bet the AI would have a MUCH better time giving US a HARD time.

However..there are the usual whiner crowd about 'no cheating ai's' who are sadly misguided by their inexplicable reluctance of playing on a lower difficultly, but instead want to play on 'hard' so that they get their hardon when the brag about how good they are.

Janster

1- Research Weapons for 5 levels more
2- Research Shields for 5 levels more
3- Research Engines for 5 levels more
4- Research Ship class for 1 level more
5- Mix that together and create a new ship design
6- Build (Last Quantity of ships made) + 5
7- Attack with them while repeating from 1

Is it so hard to implement? OK, I know, nothing is as easy as it seems, plus youve got to manage diplomacy and colonization and all that... But such IA would make a good oponent, I think, or at least would have updated ships. Its sad seeing your ships levels advance as the AI obsolete designs stands in time. Hope in next patch and/or balance mod something like this get implemented.

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Learn to overcome the crass demands of flesh and bone, for they warp the matrix through which we perceive the world. Extend your awareness outward, beyond the self of body, to embrace the self of group and the self of humanity. The goals of the group and the greater race are transcendent, and to embrace them is to achieve enlightenment.

* Chairman Sheng-ji Yang, "Essays on Mind and Matter"

This isn't misguided in the SE series actually. The SE AI doesn't cheat unless you give it a bonus. All "easy" and "medium" do is make the AI even stupider than usual, by turning off certain ministers. So sadly there really isn't much point playing on Easy or Medium; just use the bonus levels instead.

Maybe making an "AI empires only" racial bonus which reduces supply and ordnance consumption by 100% would be a good idea.

Mmmmm I dont like that idea. If nothing else can be done, all right, but Id prefer a game where all players follow the same rules.

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Learn to overcome the crass demands of flesh and bone, for they warp the matrix through which we perceive the world. Extend your awareness outward, beyond the self of body, to embrace the self of group and the self of humanity. The goals of the group and the greater race are transcendent, and to embrace them is to achieve enlightenment.

* Chairman Sheng-ji Yang, "Essays on Mind and Matter"

But as of now the only way the AI can win is through colective intell...

If It could be modded so that the AI would have naturally better weapons, I would mod it, but I don't think thats possible with the Files that I've seen...

But the AI always cheats in every game...Think about in RTS, The Ai seems to be able to move every unit simultaniously.... (Or something like that...)

Well, at least that way you can keep the supply system in multiplayer and still be able to play a challenging game in singleplayer.

Its possible to make the AI cheat via scripts and racial traits, actually.

As I understand it, the AI, short of giving bonuses, plays the same way the player does. The scripts direct actions, but don't make the AI cheat at all. AI specific racial traits might work, if it can be separated from human players and AI self-selection.

"Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been and will always long to return." ~Leonardo DaVinci

There are many abilities in the script files that can be used to make the AI cheat if desired. This would include things like returning lists and positions of enemy ships and planets (regardless of sensors); resupplying ships without going to depots; extra resources; speedy research; etc.

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Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

But only cheats on functions that a human can do intelligently. Speedy Construction/Research/Resource-Income can be tweaked in Settings.txt by the players themselves so we can leave that to the player's discretion. An intelligent human "cheats" in the sense that he/she can do things no AI knows how to efficiently do at present (e.g. planning ahead, coordinating construction, expansion, diplomacy and research, etc).

---Sig---
Playing Touhou games (Go here if interested . No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE V bug fixing.

Yeah, I think removing AI supply stuff, would GREATLY help the AI actually becoming a threat.

So what if he can send an army from halfway across the universe..

that just means I get to kill them.

Janster

nrgh

I think that there was a mod for SEIV that gave the AI a natual anceint bonus. However it ended up that the AI kept trying to make colonies on the other side of the map

I try to roleplay an empire to give the AI more of a chance. But even then its hard for it

My first try was to play an organic tech race called the Children of Gaia. Their main interests were on improving planet quality and habitability as they were tree hugging fanatics run by High Priestess Aurore, the great Druidess

I decided I would not leave my home system till first contact was made. Weapon tech would only be researched a little way (just to stop my homeworld being vaporised near the start by a lone ship should the AI start next to me).

Sadly, the first try did not work. I assumed the AI would do well like this, so I did not hold back apart from my self imposed rules. By the time the AI found me, I had tech 20 research centres, had researched colonisation for all types, and had 12 colonised planets in my system, 4 of which were huge planets with compatible atmospheres.

I sent a lightly armed scout into the path of the alien ship to roleplay a 'hello'. Predictably the ship blew up my scout. I then spent 2-3 turns all out weapons research, built some warships, headed out of the system to find the largest AI empire had colonised all the neighbouring systems. I had score visible, and could see that while I only had 1 system, the closest AI in research power has less than 1/5th my research. My tech lead was so huge that I was able to send fleets of 3-4 ships and crush system after system easily.

So after that I decided to limit my research to 50% higher than the highest research AI. This did help a lot to make the game harder.

The roleplaying helped make the game more fun too. An ecological race cant go around bombarding planets. So we could not take out enemy worlds until we had troops.

I also tried to copy some scenarios from science fiction books.

One thing I tried was based on kevin andersons saga of seven suns.

In this series, the Hydrogues, a massively ancient and powerful race with crystaline tech and living in gas giants are wiping out the humans and their iildiran allies. There are several human 'sides'. The Hansa is the biggest and controls all but 1 huyman world and a rag tag civilisation of 'roamers' who live in asteroid belts and exploit gas giants.

The only way to travel between stars is to extract hydrogen from gas giants.

So I make an AI Hydrogue race with some free tech and aggressive ministers. I play one of the other sides.

I add some house rules.

If I play the 'Roaners' I cannot colonise any planet larger than 'small' for cultural reasons and because they want to remain hidden and cant if they start colonising big green worlds.

In the books, the humans have big problems because the Hydrogues deny them access to harvesting Gas Giants, and so space travel becomes very hard.

So as a house rule, I say that I can have a fleet of 10 ships for 'free' but if I want more, I must build space stations around gas giants. Every gas giant I claim with a space station allows me to own an extra 3 ships (fighters are free - they dont have interstellar travel).

Realisticly, no government is going to be able to do anything it wants. By adding 'roleplaying' and adding houserules, you can make the game more fun and more challenging.

I also use the racial traits to define a race rather than get bonuses.

For example, the roamers would reproduce slowly in their inhospitable environments. However they are great engineers, they dont need formal spaceports, need less supplies, and are more efficient in their ship designs (faster drives etc). Thir society is also rather anarchic with their speaking having limited control over the clans. All definable ingame. They are also very picky about who they ally with and never agree to share system maps under any circumstances no matter how good the deal offered.

The iildirans have huge fleets, but have spent thousands of years using them for millitary parades. Their ships are antiquated though large. I make them travel with set fleet formations, and have even numbers of ships so they can be 'matching' in formation. I also dont allow them to research new weapon techs until they have captured a ship and disasembled it, then they can research the tech they see in that ship. They also hate living away from the rest of their species, so small ships cannot be sent out alone. Scouts must go in groups of 4 at least. They can only colonise medium or larger planets, and since they live on a homeworld with light around the clock, and are terrified of darkness, they can only colonise systems with blue or white suns.

All the restrictions are artifical and self imposed house rules but they add to the fun and because they are cultural in nature, still somewhat believable.

Aurore

I would really agree that role playing really helps make the game that much better..

Since I got the game I've been role playing in in multiplayer hotseat where I conotrol all the races (except neutrals) as then you can role play each race as you see fit...just as stated above.

Games of 2 - 5 empires play quite quickly however adding more does seriously slow down the game...I'm playing one at the moment with 10 empires controlled by me. And 4 neutrals...and to add more variation 5 AI empires are in the mix.

I added the AI empires because I'd got into the habit of not bothering with defenses as I knew where each empire was...adding some unknown empires has forced me to build at least limited defenses...and in several cases really heavy defenses.

In fact my Siliconia Alliance is in trouble because they must use big ships(light cruisers or bigger) and they are being attacked by the Yevolon Imperium (AI) and they just can't cope with the numbers!!! (you also have to keep in mind that at low tech small ships rule...later it changes with higher tech)

So I'd advise everyone to at least try some roleplaying or some real multiplayer...it brings a whole new angle to the game.
Edit: I'm using the balance mod...btw

Erm, well I guess RP can be used, aswell as self-imposed house rules, but honestly, I gotta really make a 1 eyed 1 legged, 2 fingered race, who has snot for brains and cannot use any other ship than tiny, and only level 1 tech here.

Also, they have to be mentally against all progress, and I have to wait 100 turns between techs.

Its -that- bad..doing the IRM mod now, its just as bad btw.

sniffle.

Janster