AI insane cheating

[goldratte]

Hi, I installed the game again recently and found that it was pretty much unplayable. One of the AIs develops so fast that it swallows surrounding AIs within the first 100 turns. I played three games, in all three games one AI (different races) had 6+ colonies before 100 turns and endgame Tech (destroyed my space station with one battle ship in one game after ca 70 turns).
Is this a known issue? I played these games on normal difficulty, average civ, normal size and age galaxy, anteran attacks on.
I'll reinstall to see if that helps, just a curious issue.

Thanks!
Godratte

[Khadgarion]

Insane is just... so hard. Ridiculously hard. I think I only ever won a few times. Hard mode, I could beat pretty much every time though.

[Sloan]

Originally posted by goldratte:

one AI (different races) had 6+ colonies before 100 turns and endgame

It showed a master class.

[Talithmara]

I HAVE noticed scenarios in which the AI does in fact seem to visibly cheat.

I am not joking when I say I've had the last enemy down to one planet, before, and they were able to sustain a fleet of 800+ ships (hundreds of which were doom stars and titans) on a single star fortress' command points and one planet's income. WHAT!? I had every single planet in the galaxy under my control (tons of planets for income and star bases for CP) and sustaining a fleet of one hundred doom stars for ten turns while I tried to amass a capable invasion force saw me scrapping them by the dozens just to afford the upkeep of the rest. They were able to sustain this 800 ship fleet indefinitely. I proposed an alliance to spam "End Turn" to see how long it would take them to downsize. Hundreds of turns later, no change.

(Before anyone asks how: Stealth Ships. With no way of knowing where I'm attacking or defending, I was cherrypicking their undefended worlds and eventually managed to force them to pool their forces at a single world, before mass-conquering the rest.)

For the record, I've had this scenario occur with four specific factions: Mrrshans, Sakkra, Silicoid, and Klackon, with the Alliance Experiment being with the Sakkra. Any time I'm down to... say, just the Meklar or just the Psilons, they aren't nearly as stupidly infuriatingly BS spamming cheat codes.

[HereticPriest]

One way they could do that is by having accumulated A LOT of wealth before you took all their stuff. How many turns was that into late game ? Never heard about the AI cheating like that with unlimited commandpoints. But you pressing end turn hundreds of times does seem to imply there is something fishy going on. AI's developing fast though shouldnt surprise you on impossible as they sometimes have very good trait-combos(the "cheat" on higher difficulties is them having additional race design points, spawning animals like tolerant with subterranean and maybe unification to top it off. Also strong are completely warlike species with warlord and max defense/offense as they sometimes take over other empires quickly in the beginning).

[Talithmara]

Disclaimer: I can't shake the feeling that my math is wrong. So before my post, I'd like to state that before I bought MoO2 on Steam a few months ago - and my actual gametime is closer to 90 hours since I lost the net for 2 months and offline mode doesn't add to online mode hours - I hadn't played MoO2 in well over 10 years (Before Steam, I last played it with a friend who died 12 years ago) so I'm less of an old vet and more of a lost sheep returning to the fold. This means I don't have the facts about the game as deeply rooted in my brain as some, and could make mistakes that seem elementary.


That infinite sustain scenario I described seems to happen as low as on Average difficulty. In a Huge system, Average Galaxy age, etc. So it's entirely possible they could have amassed a ton of wealth to sustain it longer - which is why I made an alliance and started spamming end turn to see what would happen. If it was costing me tens of thousands of BC per turn just to upkeep, a much, much smaller force... yeesh.

For starters... let's assume I'm remembering this, correctly: It's 1 CP per size of the ship, meaning a Frigate is 1, a Destroyer is 2, up to a Doom Star at 6, right? Let's be super generous and give them 20 CP due to leaders and officers (only one planet, so it's not like they have tons of battlestations.) They had about 800 ships, about 200 of which were Doom Stars and about 300 of which were titans (rough estimate based on number per row and number of rows). This means they also had about 300 battleships. So let's use 200/300/300 as our reference numbers. Titans take 5 CP, meaning 4 titans alone would leave them with a full 796 ships to pay upkeep for.

200*6 = 1200 for the Doom Stars alone.
296*5 = 1480. (Removing 20 CP worth of titans)
300*4= 1200.
1200+ 1480 + 1200 = 3880 CP over their limit.
10 * 3880 = 38,800 BC per turn just to upkeep.

... that can't be right. I messed my math up somewhere. That's the kind of ship upkeep -I- was paying - and by comparison, my fleet was so small that I couldn't even dent their main force. I was waiting over 20 minutes for my turn when they started to go. Seriously, 800 ships is "Oh god, I wish I could change between Tactical/Automatic combat mid-campaign" worthy.

If It matters, this was in V 1.40 (the Steam Release) and I just recently patched it up to the most recent fan patch, so I don't know if it still happens.

[Sloan]

small program CoOrion, look at AI

[Freysgodi]

1. It should not be possible to have more than 500 ships total in the galaxy. If you saw 800+ ships i'd love to look at the save. It's either you are mistaken or it's a bug.

2. If you install 1.50 fan patch, you can easily view what's going on with AI: pressing ALT+X switches you to next player's empire. Works only in single player though and counts as cheat.

3. In any case AI has some discounts on command upkeep depending on difficulty. I don't know the exact numbers, but sure it affects math.

[Delthea]

What is "Insane"? Are you referring to impossible, or is this an even stronger difficulty? If it is a harder difficulty, I'm interested in learning how to access it.

As for impossible, yes. The game cheats, but not in the way you think. The AI has races with a much higher point count, and (as Freysgodi mentioned) a greater tolerance for command point expenditure.

If you have "every planet in the galaxy under your command", sustaining 600 CP in ships should not be difficult at all. Even without hyperspace communications, you can simply set your capped planets to trade goods.

Also, size does not matter, if you've got the tech. Player-built ships in vanilla trump AI built ships 100% of the time, on equal footing. I have a playthrough thread on the forums somewhere, which show a distinct disparity in fleet size, the enemy goes first, and they still get rolled, simply because I built a ship dedicated to one attack type (In this case, beam weapons).

Edit: Here's the image
http://i.imgur.com/PdP5crY.png

[Pherdnut]

I haven't played the fan mod but I've played this game for 20 years and have never seen the AI that ridiculous in average difficulty although sometimes one race will get a fantastic start and start overrunning its neighbors very early.

As for the gigantic fleets problem, max out phasors. All the mods and add all the beam weapon enhancement dohickeys. Give damage-enhancement and ranged-damage-loss reduction the highest priority. It won't matter how many ships they have. Also, pretty sure energy dampers + the antaran thing that reduces damage 75% makes you invulnerable to weapons damage. Bit of an oversight there. I stopped using that combo a long time ago. Too cheesy.

[Cybetrexs]

that's not a bug, that's just how the AI works. and yes, the AI does cheat. because we are human, we are capable of creative and logical thinking that the AI isn't capable of, so the game evens things out by giving the AI a materialistic advantage.

[admodum.rd]

You can win every time on the Impossible level but you have to custome your race to Lithovore and Creative. If you choose "Lithovore, Creative" and then minus "Ground Combat, Spying, and Low-G" save the two points for subteranian when you get Evelutionary mutation. Then you can win at the hardest level. You also have to give gifts of technology to make the other races like you and want to be your friends. Keep them friendly in the early game until you pass them with your knowledge later game.

[Sloan]

https://youtu.be/jvmHMwODHeU
10 colonies 5 system 64 turn

[Delthea]

Originally posted by admodum.rd:

You can win every time on the Impossible level but you have to custome your race to Lithovore and Creative. If you choose "Lithovore, Creative" and then minus "Ground Combat, Spying, and Low-G" save the two points for subteranian when you get Evelutionary mutation. Then you can win at the hardest level. You also have to give gifts of technology to make the other races like you and want to be your friends. Keep them friendly in the early game until you pass them with your knowledge later game.

You don't "have" to customize your race any way you don't prefer. In this video, I played on impossible using "Charismatic" as my only positive pick, with the full gamut of negative picks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESdEr-ZiAUU&t=1352s

[K1D 1C4RU5]

Most games, especially strategy games, cheat.

[Teralitha]

There is something different about this steam game from the original disk game. Not sure what it is but I dont like it. I bought the game, played one round with a huge galaxy, 8 opponants and I watched as the klackons conquered the galaxy in record time. By the time they got to me I had about 5 colonies and didnt even have time to build a fleet because I was always working on colony buildings. So when they came to attack me they had dozens of systems and hundreds of ships. I wasnt even to turn 100 yet. And for me to build a battleship on my homeworld would take 26 turns. I did have one colony destroyed by the antarens along the way. I had started the game with older galaxy and pre warp. I used to play this game a long time ago on disk and something seems different about it. I decided to refund it and just keep playing my disk version of moo3, which is awesome btw.