AI fleets completely imbalanced: too hard early game too easy late game

[Flyingbicycles]

This is something I noticed for a long time but it just now made me mad. I was playing a nice game early: I had militarized economy and a balance of alloys for expansion and fleets. By 2238 I had 2 corvette fleets with 750 fleet power each and destroyer technology. I try to follow early game guides and utilize my resources as much as possible.

Well, my AI defensive partner went to war, which apparently pissed off a nearby fanatic militarist (every AI was militarist around me). The fanatic militarist had a 3500 power fleet, and two 1100 power fleets. In 38 years. WTF? I can't even begin to try and fight that. Even when I've had games where I hyper-focus on fleets early and I can't make something remotely that powerful that early. It was commodore so not insane difficulty, but also Iron man so the game was scrubbed. so unfair! Why can AIs be so powerful early game? It's the biggest reason I don't move up a level. I just wasted 2 hours of my life.

But if I manage to make it out of early game, the opposite happens. AI fleets are like fighting little babies. I've never seen a regular AI empire break the 100k mark on a fleet. Usually they have a handful of 25k and one 50k... against my 200k+ artillery battleship fleets. The only threat they pose is annoying me. There is a brief period in the mid game where they are balanced to me, but they always get curb-stomped by the Khan or Grey Tempest so they are still worthless.

Is this just a me problem? Advanced AIs spawn near players is off by default, but maybe it's bugged? Should I turn off advanced AIs completely? Or turn on difficulty scaling? I don't want to stray that far from the intended set up. I like to think the developers made those things default for a reason.

[Råb!d]

Have you tried the mod Starnet or Startech?

Startech is probably what you'd like. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2494712590

[Sero]

The AI is bad at amanaging.
In the very beginning the AI gets propped up by their bonuses.
As the game progresses and their empire expands they have to manage more and more while their bonuses stay the same so their weakness becomes more apparent.

So for now that means you can either try to use the scaling difficulty option or/and use the before mentioned mod.

[yuzhonglu]

I've had 20k + fleet power in 38 years. 6k fleet power by year 38 is pathetic.

[Råb!d]

Originally posted by Flyingbicycles:

This is something I noticed for a long time but it just now made me mad. I was playing a nice game early: I had militarized economy and a balance of alloys for expansion and fleets. By 2238 I had 2 corvette fleets with 750 fleet power each and destroyer technology. I try to follow early game guides and utilize my resources as much as possible.

Well, my AI defensive partner went to war, which apparently pissed off a nearby fanatic militarist (every AI was militarist around me). The fanatic militarist had a 3500 power fleet, and two 1100 power fleets. In 38 years. WTF? I can't even begin to try and fight that. Even when I've had games where I hyper-focus on fleets early and I can't make something remotely that powerful that early. It was commodore so not insane difficulty, but also Iron man so the game was scrubbed. so unfair! Why can AIs be so powerful early game? It's the biggest reason I don't move up a level. I just wasted 2 hours of my life.

The ai will normally attack if there is a strong likelihood that it will win. The player's goal is normally to prevent an incoming attack, or at least control where it will happen.

This is one of the reasons that most players look for chokepoints and build a well-defended station there. In the early game, you don't need to max out on defenses to dissuade nearby empires from attacking you. You can play politics and try to befriend your neighbors, but if one or two are likely to attack you eventually, you would want to build extra defenses at the nearby chokepoints and/or try to get one neighbor to attack the other, rather than you.

All the while, you build up your infrastructure and gradually build your fleet. From this point on, you may choose to play "tall" or "wide" (or a hybrid of the two).

[Tiasmoon]

They buffed the AI a bit in the 3.3 beta, so its more capable of staying stronger for longer into the game.

1500 fleetpower by 2238 is very little for an empire that bothered to build ships, tho.

Originally posted by Råb!d:

Have you tried the mod Starnet or Startech?

Startech is probably what you'd like. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2494712590

Those mods would completely destroy the OP. Even on the lowest difficulty where they dont get any resource bonus.

[Flyingbicycles]

I made a choke point, but I couldn't make it work diplomatically. The first contact said they thought I was a coward, they immediately sent an envoy to harm relations even though I sent two to shore them up. I sent a gift trade deal that randomly cancelled so that made them madder and they rivaled me, then they weren't even the ones that declared war: I had made a defensive pact with another empire that attacked another random empire which sparked the war. I made a choke point: a star hold with 3 defense platforms and all gun batteries (1.1k fleet power) that got wiped in the first attack.

And the guy who had 20k fleet power in 38 years, how? Were you clone army? Devouring swarm? Scion? I was just playing mechanist.

[Flyingbicycles]

And startech doesn't permit iron man mode

[Tiasmoon]

Defense platforms that arent equiped with hangarbays are pretty weak, and platforms in general have very little hp.

While 20k might be a lot, 1.5k is still way too low to do anything meaningful.

Mods dont prevent iron man mode, just achievements.

[Mistfox]

Originally posted by Flyingbicycles:

I had made a defensive pact with another empire that attacked another random empire which sparked the war.

Never make a defence pact with another empire unless you are very strong. It'll just drag you into pointless wars.

As for getting high fleet power, try selling almost everything and buying alloys to fill up your fleets. The AI is much better at resource micromanagement than humans and it shows.

[pipo.p]

Originally posted by Flyingbicycles:

The fanatic militarist had a 3500 power fleet, and two 1100 power fleets. In 38 years. WTF?

An advanced, hegemonic AI empire, perhaps?

I can't even begin to try and fight that. Even when I've had games where I hyper-focus on fleets early and I can't make something remotely that powerful that early.

You can always kite them, and play cat and mouse with them for a few wars, until you get on par with them. But this requires having a sizeable expansion reserve in your backyard, with shipyards and stimulated colonies, that stay untouched by those wars, mostly. Build fortresses on every colonies, and the AI will be slowed in its advance. Ambush small reinforcement fleets and transports, and the AI will be locked into bombing to death your first couple of wolrds. Accept alliances with aggressive AI empire that are next to the common enemy, to open another front. Have a "octopus"/"crawling"/"looped"-like expansion scheme, and the enemy won't be able to design an efficient invasion plan, sending fleets to a distant frontier system, and leaving you opportunities to retreat and disperse as you wish, before concentrating and attacking in detail their isolated or damaged fleets. This works if your hyperlane density is not set too high (it's not a matter of having chokepoints, it's a matter of presenting several long invasion paths, as the AI is bad at handling them.

There is a brief period in the mid game where they are balanced to me, but they always get curb-stomped (...) or Grey Tempest so they are still worthless.

I had a game in 3.2 where the galaxy actually resisted Grey Tempest pretty well. Yes, they lost territory, several worlds where nanitized, and two weak empires disappeared, but when I finally got a foothold in Egress Terminal to intercept the periodic reinforcements, I had only contributed to perhaps half the war effort outside of L-Cluster (I was spared by the first invasion waves, and could prepare before loosing and retaking half my vast territory), So, I figure it depends on how advanced empires conducted their research and their expansion, and whether the player (with presumably the highest technological advance) did bother with sharing knowledge with their allies.

Is this just a me problem? Advanced AIs spawn near players is off by default, but maybe it's bugged? Should I turn off advanced AIs completely? Or turn on difficulty scaling? I don't want to stray that far from the intended set up.

I don't think that advanced AIs are prevented from spawning near the player, by default. Whatever, I'd advise you to try a tiny mod that, at least, warrants that all empires will spawn in the galaxy according to a regular, random pattern, instead of being clustered in the same quadrant as the player: No Clustered Starts. I played at least once vanilla, and I didn't like that my homeworld was 4 jumps away from an advanced aggresive AI empire's homeworld. The wars lasted for a century.

[sharky952]

Originally posted by Flyingbicycles:

And startech doesn't permit iron man mode

Any mod should permit you to play iron man games. But lots of mods disable achievements.

[RawCode]

it's possible to have 1k fleet by 2205, if you have such fleet by 38 well, you probably doing something very wrong.

obviously playing some trash meta is part of "wrong", try habitat merchants, clone army, robots on ringworld or probably lithoid necrophages.

mechanist considered garbage meta, solely because robots can't have trifty trait and 25% penalty to trade value obviously hurts.

[BlueBangkok]

Well, it's not news that AI is terrible at long-term economy management and only stays afloat thanks to its resource cheats. AI will always, always prioritize alloy production above anything else. More so if militarist. You don't really need to minmax or play any "meta trash" to beat the AI if you know this.

Early game AIs are powerful because they sacrifice literally everything to build fleets and you cannot compete with that unless you do the same, and kill your mid/late game in the process. The only situation I would even think about doing that is when I spawn next to a genocidal empire.

The best defense against early AI attacks is to prevent them. Improve relations, and if that fails, improve relations with their rivals and ally them. I regularly spend my first 20-40 years in AI games with 0 fleet, just teching-up, and I haven't been declared on once. If you started a war which you can't win, then you only got yourself to blame - you can check beforehand who is allied with whom to prevent a situation like this, and unless you are in a Federation with majority vote / president decides DoW law, you can always decline the offer to attack.

If everything fails and you find yourself hopelessly outmatched in early game, you can always try building up more starbases and retreat behind them. You can sacrifice a border planet by building armies & strongholds on it - AI won't continue its attack until it secures that planet, which can take a very long time if it has a mere 3k fleet bombing it. And it will be losing war score passively when doing this. In the meantime, you can build up, and either kill the AI fleet directly, or wait until it comes into your system with another starbase, and flank it when it's focusing that starbase.

[Rabob]

I notice it in 3.3 that the bonuses are insane. I can hardly get a 10k fleet up and some ♥♥♥♥♥♥ AI has 2x 25k fleets. Like wtf. I am even using scaling. The early bonus they get is insane. A full starbase + fleet still doesnt stop them.

[BlueBangkok]

Originally posted by Rabob:

I notice it in 3.3 that the bonuses are insane. I can hardly get a 10k fleet up and some ♥♥♥♥♥♥ AI has 2x 25k fleets. Like wtf. I am even using scaling. The early bonus they get is insane. A full starbase + fleet still doesnt stop them.

You can always go down in difficulty - absolutely no shame in that.