The AI of the other empires

[Krelos]

Ive been playing each game with harder and harder settings to try to give myself a challenge.

At the moment, I'm up to having a 1400 star galaxy, max independents, max pirates, max monsters, chaos, and giving all the starting empires 1 level higher development than me. I also removed the empires with less intelligence, since it seems those are easier than the rest to make like you.
It was a breeze.
My theory is that monsters and pirates hurt the AI more than they do me, so next time I'll turn them all the way down.

I'll try giving the game some objectives, since that's what you suggest. I'm also going to give all the empires a government that hates mine, higher tech and higher expansion level. I'll also not peruse the galaxy history at all, since that gives you lots of great stuff fast.

A big disadvantage the AI's have is ship design. As soon as you get torpedoes you can win the game by simply replacing all beam weapons with them. And they use ship sizes that are way too small. By the time I get to the 850 ship-shipyards, my ship designs go Escort-200 Frigate-300 Destroyer-450 Cruiser-650 Capital-850. Why doesn't the AI do that?
My suggestion would be to have a different AI shipset for each shipyard, so that when they get a new one they automatically begin designing larger ships to match, and scrap the old set which went with the previous smaller shipyard.

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: Krelos
A big disadvantage the AI's have is ship design. As soon as you get torpedoes you can win the game by simply replacing all beam weapons with them. And they use ship sizes that are way too small. By the time I get to the 850 ship-shipyards, my ship designs go Escort-200 Frigate-300 Destroyer-450 Cruiser-650 Capital-850. Why doesn't the AI do that?
My suggestion would be to have a different AI shipset for each shipyard, so that when they get a new one they automatically begin designing larger ships to match, and scrap the old set which went with the previous smaller shipyard.

This is an important point and we do appreciate the feedback. The more we can distinguish what exactly you all feel are the AI's current weak points, the better we can target our improvements. It sounds like we should really put some more emphasis on the Ship Design AI soon. I do also find the game more challenging when I use the "automated" designs rather than designing them myself (though I prefer the latter).

It's also important from our perspective to remember that player skill levels (and playstyles) vary widely too, so in making our improvements we want to make sure that there are still settings that are suitable for beginning players or those who want to do less micro management.

[BigWolfChris]

@Erik, To truly fulfil both ends of the spectrum, you would need a difficulty level system put in place that decides how advanced the AI behaviour is

[Wade1000]

With "Normal" setting the AI should design, act, and plan, intelligently; as close to casual players as possible. Lower and higher settings should adjust based on normal setting, without giving the AI any cheat bonuses.

[Gertjan]

I still find the game challenging, but maybe I'm just not that good (dont like designing ship myself for example). Perhaps the AI can get smarter, but I'm very confident that the devs can make it better with the feedback from the pro's here (that have the time to play the game over 40 hours a week). For example by fixing some exploits (I never use those exploits as I dont find it fun to use them against the AI, its like cheating) I believe the devs did a great job and the deserve the praise! [8D]