How does the AI get resources?

[Kruntzy.fi]

I've been playing this game a bit now and I'm starting to see this pattern where the AI seems to just absolutely conjure up troops out of nowhere when you get to the end game. Does the AI not need credits or any resources for troops? It seems like they aren't even constrained by manpower. I have been watching one AI next to me engaged in a three way war for centuries and their cities are all less than 100k in population and they are constantly changing ownership, yet they somehow build not just armies of robots but actual people. I can understand them having some resource since they have high level serpentization plants and demetalization plants etc. but I cannot for the life of me in anyway reason how they can actually sustain an army of easily over 2 million with 5 cities and total population of less than 300k.

4X games usually have cheating AI's yeah, but this just seems like complete BS just outright breaks almost all strategic aspects of the game. I can't even fathom sustaining half of those troops in active combat with the rate of reinforcements needed but these AIs are just ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ out 500k troops out of a zone with less than 200k population while still keeping existing units reinforced.

[Kuattro]

The AI cheats.

I don't know to what extent, if they can just as you say conjure resources from thin air, but it's quite a lot. For example, they practically ignore logistics, as long as there's a land connection between a unit and their SHQ, they will be supplied, if I recall correctly.

I understand why to be honest. Making a competent AI seems an almost impossible task to massive studios with dozens of developers. This game is made by just one guy, I expect he looked at how to make an AI that could play the game AND be challenging to the player and said "hell no".

[Kruntzy.fi]

Originally posted by Kuattro:

The AI cheats.

I don't know to what extent, if they can just as you say conjure resources from thin air, but it's quite a lot. For example, they practically ignore logistics, as long as there's a land connection between a unit and their SHQ, they will be supplied, if I recall correctly.

I understand why to be honest. Making a competent AI seems an almost impossible task to massive studios with dozens of developers. This game is made by just one guy, I expect he looked at how to make an AI that could play the game AND be challenging to the player and said "hell no".

Cheating's fine for AI, but this level of cheating is just ridiculous. It's kinda hard not to just drop the game because suspending disbelief just becomes outright impossible. I'd rather have a game make sense and be less challenging than this.

This level of cheating just renders entire game mechanics moot. What's the point of covert ops like inciting rebellions if the AI just swarms the entire zone with troops regardless of how many wars they have going on?

[Kuattro]

Originally posted by Kruntzy:

Cheating's fine for AI, but this level of cheating is just ridiculous. It's kinda hard not to just drop the game because suspending disbelief just becomes outright impossible. I'd rather have a game make sense and be less challenging than this.

This level of cheating just renders entire game mechanics moot. What's the point of covert ops like inciting rebellions if the AI just swarms the entire zone with troops regardless of how many wars they have going on?

What can I tell you? Until someone invents a deep neural network that can learn to play videogames effectively, and makes it affordable to small time developers, cheats is all they can offer to make AI stand up (barely) to the player. Sometimes massive cheats.

There's always the option of playing a multiplayer match with a friend, they won't cheat (well, allegedly) and should manage to compete with you.

Otherwise, you'll need to try to find entertainment in beating the cheating AI even against the odds.

[ulzgoroth]

The manual discusses how the AI does and doesn't follow the same rules as a player, in the "AI Rules Differences" section.

It does include some very significant advantages, but doesn't include the kind of egregious 'just give it a pile of free units' cheats that some games have used.

It doesn't get to cut corners in resources and production, though it has a few less expenditures there due to the way it does get freebies relating to logistics. It does largely ignore credit-sinks, so it's probably impossible for it to have fiscal problems.

[laagamer]

Originally posted by ulzgoroth:

The manual discusses how the AI does and doesn't follow the same rules as a player, in the "AI Rules Differences" section.

It does include some very significant advantages, but doesn't include the kind of egregious 'just give it a pile of free units' cheats that some games have used.

It doesn't get to cut corners in resources and production, though it has a few less expenditures there due to the way it does get freebies relating to logistics. It does largely ignore credit-sinks, so it's probably impossible for it to have fiscal problems.

This. The AI doesn't cheat anywhere near as much as OP and first responder think.

And, keep in mind, many of the advantages make up for the poor decision making of the AI itself. It's not as smart as a human player. Advantages keep it on an even playing field.

Just wait until you learn the game. Then you'll understand.

[Kruntzy.fi]

Originally posted by laagamer:

Originally posted by ulzgoroth:

The manual discusses how the AI does and doesn't follow the same rules as a player, in the "AI Rules Differences" section.

It does include some very significant advantages, but doesn't include the kind of egregious 'just give it a pile of free units' cheats that some games have used.

It doesn't get to cut corners in resources and production, though it has a few less expenditures there due to the way it does get freebies relating to logistics. It does largely ignore credit-sinks, so it's probably impossible for it to have fiscal problems.

This. The AI doesn't cheat anywhere near as much as OP and first responder think.

And, keep in mind, many of the advantages make up for the poor decision making of the AI itself. It's not as smart as a human player. Advantages keep it on an even playing field.

Just wait until you learn the game. Then you'll understand.

I literally counted their population and roughly estimated their troops. They have minimum of 2 million troops but probably closer to 3 million, they have 7 cities, 5 of which have less than 50k pop, one has a stable 130k and hasn't really changed in ages and one city has 58k. Their military is many times the population of their entire nation. Just one army has more people in it than any city except for one.

The only way I can make sense of that is that AI ignores credits and manpower completely.

[ulzgoroth]

Originally posted by Kruntzy:

Originally posted by laagamer:

This. The AI doesn't cheat anywhere near as much as OP and first responder think.

And, keep in mind, many of the advantages make up for the poor decision making of the AI itself. It's not as smart as a human player. Advantages keep it on an even playing field.

Just wait until you learn the game. Then you'll understand.

I literally counted their population and roughly estimated their troops. They have minimum of 2 million troops but probably closer to 3 million, they have 7 cities, 5 of which have less than 50k pop, one has a stable 130k and hasn't really changed in ages and one city has 58k. Their military is many times the population of their entire nation. Just one army has more people in it than any city except for one.

The only way I can make sense of that is that AI ignores credits and manpower completely.

Why do you think that follows?

Recruited troops don't count towards the population of the zone they were drawn from anymore, so there's no technical reason they can't have a larger population under arms than not. And some of the cut corners reduce the need for civilian manpower. The only question is whether they've actually been able to source that many warm bodies or not.

The AI doesn't pay salaries, so having millions of soldiers doesn't pose a financial problem. I did mention that credits were unlikely to be a problem.

[George The Ork]

OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH So that's why they have so bloody many food domes and ♥♥♥♥.

I figures they were just mentally defective or turning it all into biofuel.

So let me ask, does population in the military count towards the victory goal? If not then the AI recuting every warm body in it's empire into the army is a very poor long term strat, even if it does pay off in the short term due to their non-existent logistical concerns.

[ulzgoroth]

I would guess that soldiers still count as regime population, yes. It would be quite odd if it didn't. I don't find my manual to lay out the answer firmly though.

If they didn't, it wouldn't be very hard to rapidly demobilize them in order to surge over the victory threshold.

[George The Ork]

I was more thinking how easy it might be to nuke the few civs they do have to get the win. Which I actually did once, but if it didn't consider soldiers as pop anymore then that might make getting nukes the literal I win button.

[maerchen]

The AI isn't bound to pay recruitment bonuses. If it wants war, it just conscripts 80% of its people and throws them at you like spaceChina (sorry, no harm intended, the comparison was obvious for me). I saw majors falter after getting ripped off of their food supply, as the AI isn't bound to logistics but to supply requirements. If the traders cannot supply the war deficit, the AI will break apart. And no, soldiers are no populace:
Zone Populace
Tracks the Populace of each of your Zones. Populace is the sum of Population
and Workers.

The AI has no long term strategy. It is an AI, it reacts exclusively.

[ulzgoroth]

Originally posted by maerchen:

the AI isn't bound to logistics but to supply requirements.

Untrue. The AI is bound to logistics rules. However, it gets to build free roads and gets generous logistics point allowances without needing assets to generate them, so logistics are much easier for it than for a player.

Originally posted by maerchen:

And no, soldiers are no populace:
Zone Populace
Tracks the Populace of each of your Zones. Populace is the sum of Population
and Workers.

That quote (?) doesn't say what you say it does: soldiers are not zone populace, but victory is determined by regime populace.

Originally posted by maerchen:

The AI has no long term strategy. It is an AI, it reacts exclusively.

Not all AIs work that way. I don't know about the Shadow Empire AI.

[Nyx]

Originally posted by Kuattro:

What can I tell you? Until someone invents a deep neural network that can learn to play videogames effectively, and makes it affordable to small time developers, cheats is all they can offer to make AI stand up (barely) to the player. Sometimes massive cheats.

Why is it that every time any issue is brought up people default to "well sorry, it would be literally impossible for a single developer to do anything about it, get over yourself".

The reality is that while game mechanics are pretty well designed, the implementation is lacking in a lot of areas unfortunately. This is due to developer's level of expertise in various areas of development and not simply because you need a lot of money and manpower to accomplish it.

Neural networks would not work for game AI anyway, because you don't need a problem solver, you need a theater that would make the player believe the AI is intelligent. AIs therefore need to be tweaked a lot by the designers and potentially changed as development goes on, including after release. Neural networks don't really allow for easy tweaking without retraining the whole model every time, making them a poor choice.

The more likely explanation is that AI is poorly optimized, turn times are already really high. In addition, "give ai more time" option makes me think it uses a tree search, which would work pretty poorly in a games like this since it grows exponentially (explaining the late game slowdown). If this is true, logistics are simply unviable under such AI design, taking up too much time.

[Kuattro]

Stop chasing me around.

Thank you.

[Nyx]

Originally posted by Kuattro:

Stop chasing me around.

Thank you.

Haha, that would be flattering if I did, but I simply reply based on content of the post.