AI agressiveness

[IamLegend]

I`ve read on one of the most critical metacritic reviews that the AI does not really attack a human player. Yeah, i know i should not trust metacritic and play the game myself. But can someone with 10+hours of experience tell me if the AI tries to attack an human player when there is a good opportunity to do some real damage.
After civ 6 combat ai not being any challenge for the first 3 months. I would like to know before investing time into endless space 2. Thanks.

[Wintermute]

Depends. If you have border friction, expect war soon. Otherwise - they have their own things to do.

[BreadWithMayo]

If there is an opportunity and border friction - they will attack. I was attacked by Sophons and Lumeris (2 not warlike factions) over a couple of planets in their space, that I left unprotected

[ElPrezCBF]

How aggressive the AI is seems to depend on their faction traits and their military strength relative to yours. For example, a Vodyani AI would be more desperate to leech a system in order to develop and if you settle too close to them, they would more likely declare war. Sophons are the good guys, though they may be tempted to attack if you're too weak. Lumeris is also pretty aggressive. My experience against the Cravers has been mixed. Sometimes they attack, other times they threaten but don't dare do anything because my fleets are more powerful than theirs.

Overall though, I think the AI has a harder time customizing and upgrading its ships to challenge the human player. It tends to spam lots of small ships mixed with just a few medium hulls (at least on hard and serious difficulties). The AI has the best chance of disrupting the human player's progress early on, but once the human player starts to churn out medium hulls, it often doesn't stand a chance. On one hand, it's interesting to have an aggressive AI. On the other, your early game would always turn into a meaningless war of attrition that takes away any form of enjoyment from exploration and expansion if the AI is out to get you just for the sake of doing so, not to mention the annoying pirates. So there has to be a good balance of both.

[Star Paladin]

I had cravers as neighboors in my last game, and boy do they attack, especially if you colonize a system next to them.

Also, I've heard people complain AI does not build large ships. Wrong. The Cravers sent nothing BUT large ships at me most the time.

[Lack of Stuff]

Originally posted by Star Paladin:

I had cravers as neighboors in my last game, and boy do they attack, especially if you colonize a system next to them.

Also, I've heard people complain AI does not build large ships. Wrong. The Cravers sent nothing BUT large ships at me most the time.

Did they also graduate weapon quality? I read on another thread that the AI never seems to go above basic weapons.

[Star Paladin]

I don't think so. My medium ships always beat the large. But this may be because we/they can't get some strategic resourses due to that bug.

[Lack of Stuff]

Originally posted by Star Paladin:

I don't think so. My medium ships always beat the large. But this may be because we/they can't get some strategic resourses due to that bug.

Hmm but wouldn't they at least get the Titanium and Glasteel guns?

[Star Paladin]

Not sure, I had titanium defences/guns myself.

[Ole' Swifty]

To me so far it does feel like they are really passive when it comes to millitary.

I never see big fleets or aggressive pay back pushes.

I don't have a terrible amount of experiance but it feels like I often have way too little millitary becuase I feel like if one of them decided to declare war I could easily churn out an armada that would easily hold back an attack.

Never felt bullied. Never felt like I was at a sever tech disadvantage.

Meanwhile in endless space 1 that was fairly common.

[Wexmajor]

Cravers have not attacked me on hard despite starting right next to them. I have a little token military but nothing that should deter them really.

[Star Paladin]

I had SO much money (built every building at every system), and SO much food/population, I could have countered any attack from them even if they had destoryed my main fleet entirely.

Money/food is crazy over the top in this game so far.

[ElPrezCBF]

Originally posted by Star Paladin:

I don't think so. My medium ships always beat the large. But this may be because we/they can't get some strategic resourses due to that bug.

It's not just the hull size but also the module composition of both sides. That's possible if you outnumber them and your medium ships are fitted with weapons that they have little defense for and defenses that are suited to repel their attacks. On top of that, I noticed that more "balanced" fleets with both hunters and coordinators perform much better in combat. These factors seem to have a greater impact on battle performance than hull size per se. That said, small hulls are at a huge disadvantage unless their module capacity is upgraded and accompanied by larger hulls.

Btw if you're facing an AI that is always sending you huge (carrier class) hulls, you must be dragging the game a lot for them to get to that stage. By turn 150 on hard, I don't see any AIs using huge hulls at all. They only mix some medium hulls with lots of small hulls. Of course, how powerful these enemy fleets are also depend on their faction. Sophons tend to have deadly fleets with their rapid tech advancements, while Cravers fall behind if they don't expand fast enough once their systems fully deplete.

[Viroka Wright]

I played a game as the Sophons and that allowed me to see that literally all of the AI researched the techs that unlocked different hull types. So I think that you should always prepare for a possible war because even if the AI doesn't declare war on you at least you amassed a sizeable fleet that can possibly allow you to catchup and conquer their systems.

P.S. Make Horatio great again

[SpiderKhan]

Never really seen them upgrade that much, so past getting rushed by one they sort of faze out as a threat. I've seen them use mediums and smalls but never large hulls, though pretty often I end up just spamming small attackers with upgraded hulls and weapons and that's enough to beat them. They also seem to love beans and missiles way too much, which has made them really easy to handle.

[Viroka Wright]

Welp I played a couple more games and wth. It's always the same scenario, AI declares war and just steam rolls me even though I made 40 ships and they have 40 and suffered no casualties and mind you that was just turn 80 on normal speed.