A Better AI

[EricLarsen]

Since this game is a solo adventure with the AI providing our playmates I think that improving the AI is crucial to keeping this game playable. After many games I've noticed some things the AI does and doesn't do and here's my take on how to improve the AI. To be honest I've noticed little difference between an advanced alien and an intermediate alien as far as good gameplay. Because advanced-game aliens start with more money and a better homeworld it only looks like they play better but I've seen them do the same dumb stuff intermediate-game aliens do.

I've noticed the AI is good at building ships early in the game, but it is very poor at building ships from mid-game onwards. I've discovered that once you've had the biggest alien on the block take his best shot at one of your worlds, and lose his fleet in the process that that is about it for facing big bad enemy fleets. The aliens need to keep building warships and stop wasting money on funding pirates. They need to keep building warships and not planetary weapons as a world's best defense is a good fleet patrolling it. I've also noticed the AI seems bad at keeping it's ships updated as new techs come along. I've seen too many alien ships that are a hodgepodge of new and old techs and it looks like they don't refit regularly which is something I do and my ships always have better tech from top to bottom.

I've also noticed that when I've whittled down the alien fleets and have 3 or 4 left that it is virtually impossible to get them to federate against me. I've had many games where once I'd destroyed the enemy warships I'd leave them alone pretty much except to stay at war with them and to refuse to answer any of their hails. I've tried turning the aliens all to the same philosophy, even opposite of mine, to see if they'd band together but no they all seem to want to do is fuss amongst themselves. This makes mid-to end game really boring as the aliens just seem to give up fighting me. Once a human player has a distinct advantage at the very least I would expect that the aliens would band together and give us humans at least one more small challenge late in the game.

Alien races have to do more than build surface mining facilities to enhance their worlds. While the extra $5 per world is nice it still does not help with research and production. Instead of building a bunch of worthless weapons on every world the AI should be set to research labs, research centers, nano factories, and replicator facilities. The AI should be set to build one each on every world. When I colonize a world the first thing I build is a nano factory or replicator to help expedite future production. I always build labs and research centers late in the build order since they won't provide any research help until the world is done producing stuff. When one supercedes the other I remove the obsolete facility. The AI should also go down the population techs so that their worlds increase population more quickly than they already do. This has to be a major way to improve AI performance as I've noticed it really gives me a leg up on the aliens. I've also noticed that the alien homeworld is the worst of all it's worlds as it gets the first techs and then the AI never updates them. I attack their homeworld while they are in the antimatter age yet they still have fushion-age shields or armor and atomic age weapons.

Aliens set to attack one of my worlds seemed real scary at first, but now I count on it as part of my gameplan. I can always count on the biggest baddest alien to attack one of my new colony worlds pretty soon after I hit the fusion age. At that time the ships and armaments aren't very good for this purpose and the alien is merely committing fleet suicide. Never do the aliens seem to declare an attack on one of my worlds and actually be ready to do the dastardly deed. There is always a large time delay between the attack declaration and the arrival of the enemy fleet and that gives me ample time to get my ships into a defensive position and to bone up their hardware as I get new fighting techs online. Sometimes I get tricky and declare an attack on one of their worlds and then their attack gets cancelled. Sometimes it's just a bluff and sometimes I really do make my declared attack. I think that delaying any world attacks until aliens reach the fushion age and have finished at least that age's combat techs is crucial to keeping the aliens competitive longer. Having them wait until they hit the antimatter age would be better. That way they wouldn't be committing mass fleet suicide so early in the game and it would keep us humans on our toes longer. They should also do a better job of massing to protect their worlds when I declare an attack upon them. Too many times I hit one of their newer worlds and there's nary a ship to defend it.

The AI does not do a good job of using certain artifacts. I've noticed that it wastes the instant population artifacts on worlds that are being attacked. It will activate them when the world has lost cities and is still under attack. That is a waste as all it does is create a few more easy targets for the attacking warships. I never, ever abuse my instant population artifacts in that manner. I always use them in my colonizing efforts. I load one up on a ship and have it patrol the system being colonized. As soon as my colonizing ship is finished creating a colony the program automatically uses that instant population artifact to create a fully populated world. That really cuts down the production time of building up that new colony's infrastructure and gives a player the best bang for the instant population artifact buck.

Crew compositions on alien ships are a wide variety of poor choices. There should be more standardization in alien crew compositions for each particular ship class so that their ships perform better than they currently do. I've seen too many instances of all naval personnel and no engineers and while that may give them a first shot advantage (unless I'm carrying standoffs and they aren't in which case I always get the first and last shots) it also means they can't take much damage before blowing up because no engineers are there to fix components during battle.
Eric Larsen