AI Cheats Excessively

[SP2244]

So playing extra hard against 2 enemies.... kill one, but the other one is impossible to kill because the AI keep creating huge military force even though they have no money. I just took 6 Titans and Death star against 150 ships (how even possible with low cash). Every time I kill their forces, it seems out of nowhere there is this insane force created. Single player just does not work on this game.... so unbalanced! I have tried various configurations but these flying saucers just seem impossible to kill when come in such large numbers. I have tried missiles, energy, gauss, etc. , just can’t handles a force of 150 no matter what I have configured. And all my planets combined can’t generate revenue to make that many ships at one time. ???? Might try one more time and lower setting …TBD.

[Kazzik]

By increasing the setting, you are telling the game you WANT the AI to "cheat" with extra resources. That's a little like challenging a tennis pro to a match and complaining that they hit the ball too hard.

[Waratah]

No, we want the AI to play smarter - not cheat.

For example, a chess computer plays smarter at higher levels. It has to be smarter because it can't cheat at chess, everyone would see that it cheated.

But in this game, it's like allowing the chess AI to have extra pieces on the board eg; the AI gets an extra queen for every level of difficulty.

[Kazzik]

While I am not expert on programming a chess opponent, that is probably easier with its very limited rules compared to a military, diplomatic, economic, technological, special battle, and overall score game. Also some chess games on higher difficulties just allow the computer more time to calculate possible moves (numbering in the millions) and selecting the best one.

Don't get me wrong, I'd LOVE for the AI to be better and there is a LOT of room for it to improve, but think of all the little decisions you make when making a turn, including all the things you DON'T do (leaving something 'as is' IS a decision) and try to imagine the program required to match a human brain for that.

[Spud Dastardly]

As far as I know, AIs in 4X games are almost always given unfair advantages on harder difficulties. The developers of the game are never going to be as good at playing the game as the best players of the game, and any AI they create is going to be worse at playing the game than they are because it will never have the ability to truly adapt to every situation (at least until the state of artificial intelligence research becomes much more advanced). So for skilled players, the AI without extra bonuses will always be inadequate.

A group of artificial intelligence experts could certainly design a better one (like the ones at Google trying to make an AI that can beat pros at Starcraft), but it would cost a lot more and take a lot more time to do so. Because the mechanics of the game change up until the game is ready to be released, you don't have that much time to develop a competent AI that can handle all of the latest mechanics in the game. They even changed the spying mechanics after the game was released, and so they had to rewrite how the AI handles spies just to keep up with that (and they missed some stuff like how the AI never offers a prisoner exchange).

That said, in this game in particular there is room for relatively easy improvements such as getting the AI to manage their economy better and having them not throw their fleets away attacking amoebae they underestimate, and WhatIsSol has made some significant improvements in his unofficial code patch which I highly recommend using. Since the devs seem to have stopped working on the game, Sol's UCP is our best hope for a challenging AI at this point, but as I said ultimately it's going to have to cheat to be a challenge to the best players regardless.

[Explore]

I'm playing on Hard currently, played through most of the races, and haven't experienced anything like that (yet). Sometimes an AI develops super-fast and overruns me before I can get proper defences ready, otherwise when it gets to the stage where I set out to conquer (end-game with all standard tech), I find it as easy as on any other difficulty setting. I kill their main fleet in 1 battle, and while they do try and build more, they can only build a fraction of their previous forces which they're not able to consolidate.

(Playing with 4X rebalance mod and UCP)

P.S. I do agree with what people are saying though - I also want the AI to play better instead of getting bonuses to compensate its very limited skill. Eg. playing on Hard, when invading Silikoid, I found they had turned several planets with completely human populations into Inferno planets (no food output)...

[SP2244]

Originally posted by Baracous:

By increasing the setting, you are telling the game you WANT the AI to "cheat" with extra resources. That's a little like challenging a tennis pro to a match and complaining that they hit the ball too hard.

That is not even close to good analogy ... just the opposite, I want to play the good player that plays by the rules, not a pro that also then hands me a racket with hole in center. Hard AIs should not cheat, just use their resources more effectively and give adjustment factors to their ships and planets , 1.3x shield strength, etc. It is not that difficult to create an adjustment matrix for different AIs levels without cheating. The cheating just destroys the game strategy and overall structure.

[SP2244]

I find playing on Hard to be more balanced so far.... I choose a small map (circle) then 4 enemies, which make the game faster, more battles, moves much more quickly - time just goes by so fast vs. when I played the larger map where it seemed to drag on forever before had even 1st combat. And if want to make it harder within the same game , declare war on more than 1 enemy at a time, now have to fight on 2 fronts. I just wish the tactical part was improved, and wish my ships would stop firing everything at once and then just sit there for the whole cool down taking damage - need an evasive movement button... tell a titan to move out of way of incoming missiles and seems to be almost waiting to get hit before moves... maybe a flaw in logic of execution queue stack commands? Wish could pick 20 missiles, fire say 5 every 4x cooldown points, so never just sitting there vulnerable (plus lot of missiles get wasted if first few already destroy target - even when use the extra re-engage computer option. :)

[Astasia]

Originally posted by SP2244:

Hard AIs should not cheat, just use their resources more effectively and give adjustment factors to their ships and planets , 1.3x shield strength, etc

How is giving the AI extra shields not cheating?

[SP2244]

Originally posted by Astasia:

Originally posted by SP2244:

Hard AIs should not cheat, just use their resources more effectively and give adjustment factors to their ships and planets , 1.3x shield strength, etc

How is giving the AI extra shields not cheating?

Is is adjustment factors how all strategy games typically work - most games list this in manual. Even this game when you start your character you can use point to get bonus to beams offensive/defensive, etc. Having a known correction factor is how games play from easy to very hard, without it , all levels would be the same. Cheating is making whole armies out of vapor with no money, going beyond correction factors that still play by the rules, etc. I think you already know this if you have played strategy games in the past.

[Astasia]

Hard mode means the AI gets a 10% bonus to production, research, money, and military capacity. That 10% bonus is cheating, but it's not blatantly creating fleets out of nothing. Remember you can create ships in batches, so they might suddenly pop out 20 battleships or 100 small ships, all at once, but that's because they queued them in a batch. The AI is almost always low on money because they are always spending it on rush projects, not because they aren't making enough each turn to support what they have.

[SP2244]

10% does not justify a Fleet my whole Empire can't build after owning 3/4 map..... it is cheating.... wish it was simple correction factors.... sorry, I know you like the game so trying to rationalize the bad AI. It is better than endless space, but still has major balance issues. I can see how multiplayer would be more fun - but don't have that kind of time to be online all day. How does that even work? With large map and many players, how does one even finish a game within a couple days.... I guess you stay up all night F&Sat?

[Kazzik]

Originally posted by SP2244:

Originally posted by Baracous:

By increasing the setting, you are telling the game you WANT the AI to "cheat" with extra resources. That's a little like challenging a tennis pro to a match and complaining that they hit the ball too hard.

That is not even close to good analogy ... just the opposite, I want to play the good player that plays by the rules, not a pro that also then hands me a racket with hole in center. Hard AIs should not cheat, just use their resources more effectively and give adjustment factors to their ships and planets , 1.3x shield strength, etc. It is not that difficult to create an adjustment matrix for different AIs levels without cheating. The cheating just destroys the game strategy and overall structure.

The analogy holds up. A pro tennis player gets to the ball faster, hits the ball harder, his shots have better accuracy, he has better endurance, etc. In MOO that means hard mode computer opponents produce more research, food and production per capita than the player. (think of it like a free bonus racial ability that you are giving them by selecting hard mode) In the game, the rules are still the same which is no different than each side of the tennis court being the same size, regulation tennis ball/net, etc... (though ironically YOUR proposal of better shields and the like would be not playing by the rules)

I also want the AI to be a lot better at making decisions, make no mistake about that.

If you want a completely level playing field and a more challenging opponent (perhaps even one smarter than you?), play a human (or five).

[Astasia]

Originally posted by SP2244:

10% does not justify a Fleet my whole Empire can't build after owning 3/4 map..... it is cheating.... wish it was simple correction factors.... sorry, I know you like the game so trying to rationalize the bad AI. It is better than endless space, but still has major balance issues. I can see how multiplayer would be more fun - but don't have that kind of time to be online all day. How does that even work? With large map and many players, how does one even finish a game within a couple days.... I guess you stay up all night F&Sat?

I don't like the game. It's very mediocre and not worth playing without mods like 5x and UCP, and even with those mods it's near the bottom of my list of 4x games. That said it took me less than a minute to glance at the game files and see where the difficulty offsets were defined, and it is indeed only a 10% bonus on hard, 25% on very hard. If you are going to criticize the game, at least attack the actual flaws.

Multiplayer is completely out of the question in the 4x genre as far as I'm concerned. I don't see how anyone can enjoy it or ever play a game for nearly as much time as needed. From what I understand from some people I talked to, they tend to play on the fastest speeds with advanced starts on the smallest maps, and basically rush to victory, which doesn't sound like a 4x experience at all to me.

[mensmans]

To be fair, it should not be to hard to create a mod that will do that for you. I have a mod that gives extra shields, hullspace and hull strength to custom player races. Should not be too hard to change that to AI players. I will look into it.

[Teralitha]

An AI is only as intelligent as its creator.