Details of automation?

[Gargantou]

I was wondering if I could possibly get some detailed information on how automation works.

For example, let's say I'm fighting a two-front war, one to the 'east' and one to the 'west', and I want the AI to fight the eastern war for me, would it be possible to for example tell the AI "Invading these two systems are your primary goals for your actions" and let them manage it whilst I manually control the other front?

Or if you give the AI control over your ships is it an all or nothing affair, as in you can't give specific goals to the AI such as the conquest of a certain system and so forth?

Thanks for any helpful reply, and I hope my questions weren't all too unclear!

[elliotg]

You can effectively achieve what you're describing by automating all of your fleets except for the ones that you want to control yourself.

The AI will try to use fleets that are close to targets, so if you automated all your fleets on the 'east' side then the AI will assign appropriate missions to them, while you manually control your fleets in the 'west'.

[Gertjan]

So those fleets will stay on the east side of your empire and no go to some other areas where it deems them to be more useful? This would seem a bit to automated or random for my taste.

[Wade1000]

ORIGINAL: Gertjan

So those fleets will stay on the east side of your empire and no go to some other areas where it deems them to be more useful? This would seem a bit to automated or random for my taste.

Well, does the AI in that situation analyze the negatives and positives of travel time of its fleets to the other side of the empire as opposed to just staying where they are and defending ar attacking nearby?

[Gertjan]

Seems to me that it is quite difficult to program the AI in this way. Do the other empires (in alliances) launch diversion attacks or joint attacks from different sides? That would be very cool and scary at the same time.

[Gargantou]

I was thinking something like in the game "Hearts of Iron 3", where you can divide up your war-zones into different theaters, and then assign a specific goal to each theater(i.e. take that area and so forth) and then assign the AI to handle that theater, letting you focus on the one you wish.

Of course if I need extra reinforcements for another theater I just reassign units from the computer controlled theaters to mine.