advanced AI

You can try the Unnamed AI mod here: http://www.spaceempires5.com/en-US/project/Unnamed

It only changes the AI's behavior if I remember correctly, not sure if it will work with 1.74 though.

Also there is a setting to give AI players a production bonus. It's one of the game options below the AI Difficulty I believe its called "AI Bonus".

Low is 2x, Medium is 3x and High is 5x

There construction rates are increased to a lesser extent.

I hope this helps.

Also I may be wrong with some of this been gone a long time just started playing SEV again.

The Balance Mod AI, with high bonus, high difficulty and team mode, can fight you to a stand still. However it is not agressive enough to actually defeat you. no AI is.

So my question to Kwok and the other major modders: do you think this will change? Is it possible to make the A.I. not only more efficient in the use of its resources but also more aggressive? I guess the lack of aggression refers less to the probability/frequency of declaring war to other players but rather to the AI's propulsion to go on the offensive and stay there.

Will there be a moment when I actually fear the Jraenar in the next system?

The Balance Mod AI in the v1.15 will be much better. They manage their empires a lot more effectively and now stack their construction queues, which they really didn't do in previous versions. That means more ships sooner and faster colony development - especially with any bonuses.

I also debugged the attack/defend routines and improved the AI handling of task forces. This means they are invading with troops on a much more frequent basis and utilizing their different design types more effectively.

Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

That sounds promising, Kwok. Any ETA?

However, without wanting to criticize your enormous effort which is undoubtedly a success (I for my part am only plaxing BM - with some modifications of my own), your answer falls in two parts:

1.) You are trying to give the A.I. more output (ships, units, research and intel points) with the same input. While this helps, it is in itself insufficient to makle me feel that the AI is actually competing with me for victory. I could (and I do) achieve the same or even more output for the AI by increasing the bonus setting or by giving the AIs more advantageous racial traits.

2.) What the AI lacks much more than increased output is aggressiveness. Right now, it attacks me much too rarely and if it does, its task forces are often understrength. In the very rare instances that the AI nevertheless takes an important planet from me, there is still no need to worry, because once it has bombed (or - oh what miracle - invaded) my planet, it will immediately withdraw its ships for refueling, retrofitting or redeployment, whatever. The bottom-line is it never follows through on itzs attack. Contrary to this, when the human player attacks and destroys the defending fleet, he will benefit from the temporary (local) weakness of his adversary and go on attacking planets nearby.

This is the behaviour I would also love to see with the AI. Hpefully the changes which you announce in the second part of your post are going into that direction.

Anyway, keep up the excellent work.

I wasn't really talking about overall numbers of items really. Prior to v1.15, I didn't really have the AI stack their queues so a lot of the bonus for construction rates were not being utilized since they'd be adding only 1 item at a time for the most part. This slowed down their initial expansion (especially with bonuses) and ultimately reduced their potential for building a strong empire.

Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

Trust me, the AI in 1.15 expand much faster......
Also for the first time use alliances.....

If you don't kill then a the beginning of the game you are in serious trouble even more if the maps are 150+ systems....

Is 1.15 out yet?

News on 1.15 sound nice. But is the AI also more aggressive and consequent with its attacks or does it "only" have stronger forces once you meet it?

one thing that should be fixed to speed up turn times is that they attack in groups, and dont send 50 colony ships one at a time into my system.

The AI is at a bit of a disadvantage in a sequential-movement game, which sometimes hurts how they can follow-up attacks. While they can attack multiple targets in a turn, if their fleet is damaged in the first attack then it's not likely they'll reach the second target. They have no way to dump the damaged ships until the beginning of their next turn, unlike a human player who could remove the damaged ships and attack extra targets in the same turn.

Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

Back to the initial question: will the SE5 AI ever reach the stage where it runs agressive campaign-like series of attacks?

Assuming the fleet is well supplied and its attacks are relatively clean in terms of damage, then sure.

Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

Then the question goes to is the AI able to understand that it has a fleet with a few damage/low supplies ships and remove them to press the attack.

He ponders the dangers inherent in the advantages, and advantages inherent in the dangers. - Ts'ao Ts'ao

highlighter/User define lang for NOTEPAD++ for SEV
Crimson Concept Mod for SEV

Crimson

Which is what I answered/mentioned a few posts prior. It can and does, but has a potential disadvantage in that it cannot perform this action after the movement phase and has to wait until the next turn.

Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

Let me ask for another prophecy from Kwok and the other capable AI modders out there:

Currently, the AI is frequently and - worse - repeatedly attacking warp points with single ships or forces which do not stand a chance to overcome the warp point defenses. This behaviour has several variants, e.g.
1.)The AI attacks a heavily defended warp point and losses its ship/fleet. Every human player would now note this warp point as "defended by fleet with strength XYZ" at least for a couple of turns. Contrary to this, the AI soon attacks the warp point again with a force that does not stand a chance against defenders of the strength against which it has just lost.
2.) The AI sends several ships through a warp point within one turn. Instead of bundling them into a fleet, it sends them through one by one (in the same turn), just making it more easy to destroy them piecemeal. It often repeats this absurd behaviour for several turns (see 1.))
3.) Turn for turn, the AI sends ships into a minefield of which it knows that the field will destroy the ships

Provided the AI could store information about a certain coordinate, one could theoretically imagine some pseudo-code which would run checks on the threat level associated with that coordinate and have the AI enter the coordinate only if its strength exceeds the expected threat level. Obviously, the expected threat level would need to be reduced over time. Furthermore, one could imagine making the AI mass its ships in front of a coorduinate with a high threat level but send a scout to the coordinate before entering it with the entire fleet.

However, I have no clue whether things like these are possiblke with the SE5 scripts.

SO here is the question to the modders: do you believe that one day somebody will be able to program a "memory" and/or "threat assessment" into the SE5 AI which will help it to abandon its "piecemeal" approach?