What happened to the AI?

[shubenig]

Ai was never great- but I expect that from a strategy game like this.

It was good enough that you could at least test out strategies and mess arround with goals and concepts and if you played dumb enough you could loss.

But all of a sudden the Ai has become so worthless its not even workable.

The computer players just pump up power, and the only terraforming they attempt to do is increase heat. They NEVER place oceans anymore- not even as prequel- and they stock pile money without doing anything with it.

What the heck happened?

[AronFJenks]

Originally posted by shubenig:

Ai was never great- but I expect that from a strategy game like this.

It was good enough that you could at least test out strategies and mess arround with goals and concepts and if you played dumb enough you could loss.

But all of a sudden the Ai has become so worthless its not even workable.

The computer players just pump up power, and the only terraforming they attempt to do is increase heat. They NEVER place oceans anymore- not even as prequel- and they stock pile money without doing anything with it.

What the heck happened?

nothing "happened" other than the same incompetent staff doing the same idiotic things they've been doing for 3.5 years. They're not going to suddenly magically become competent after three years of stunning ineptitude.

[chaney]

The AI has always been a great bad habit trainer. Play against the AI too long and then play against humans - it might be a struggle to do things that make sense :)

[Ferris]

No AI has changed a ton.
It NEVER was great, but it was competent. Before, it took obvious points, even worked toward free bonus marks, now it leaves them on the board, doesn't place oceans and does idiotic stuff like spend heat at the end for zero benefit. Hell it will even and loose the heat reward just to buy heat while it is maxxed. It has been broken, badly.
I have played a LOT of AI matches, and have witnessed changes throughout the patches. At one point the AI was very good. Please if you insist on having a weak AI, but levels for difficulty as a option. And for pete's sake let us add AI's to games with less than 4 players.

[chaney]

The AI was never very good, or even competent. It did get worse - a lot worse - which is astounding.

[AronFJenks]

Originally posted by Ferris:

It NEVER was great, but it was competent. . At one point the AI was very good.

It was never competent. It was never very good. It's "impressive" that they've made the AI even worse, but it was never anything approaching competent or good.

[geddon2]

Originally posted by AronFJenks:

Originally posted by Ferris:

It NEVER was great, but it was competent. . At one point the AI was very good.

It was never competent. It was never very good. It's "impressive" that they've made the AI even worse, but it was never anything approaching competent or good.

Yep, would have to agree. The AI was never "very good". Heck, in most cases it wasn't even competent. It only had one strategy, which was to just spam standard projects to raise the parameters. This could be occasionally effective at 5 player count and very occasionally passable at 4 player count, but laughable at lower counts.

So let's not kid ourselves here, there were never any glory days for the TM AI.

[AronFJenks]

part of the irony is, the AI used to always do standard projects in descending order of cost with any extra money, in the early generations, including power plants, but then would stop doing power plants in the later generations, even if it had critically important cards that were playable only if it would do a single power plant.

Now, in addition to the elimination of the idiotic spamming of standard project oceans, it seems that the programmers tried to "fix" the power shortage problem and took it way too far.

Either way, it was [possible to achieve an "infinite generation" game state (If you know what you're doing) and win by hundreds or thousands of points.

To anyone who says the AI used to be "very good" or competent" - you probably were playing "nice" and not exploiting the AI's obvious weaknesses. such as its tendency to only buy one card in the draft (and a random one at that), which made it ridiculously easy to run up a huge score as the game progressed into the later generations.

[chaney]

Originally posted by AronFJenks:

To anyone who says the AI used to be "very good" or competent" - you probably were playing "nice" and not exploiting the AI's obvious weaknesses. such as its tendency to only buy one card in the draft (and a random one at that), which made it ridiculously easy to run up a huge score as the game progressed into the later generations.

I generally put effort into not deliberately or abusively exploiting the AI's bad habits, and still found it to be well below the level of a new player.

The AI when I was playing didn't just buy 1 card per generation, and it was not random - it had many clear favorites (even though most were poor choices) and some it would never buy.

A typical obvious bad play would be investing lots of money into production very late in the game - even after game end was triggered - rather than doing something that would add to TR or end game VP.

Another example would be buying Birds in the first generation. Birds is a wonderful card for sure, but the opportunity cost of buying it that early is very very high unless you have a really strong capacity to enable it fast.

[AronFJenks]

Originally posted by chaney:

Originally posted by AronFJenks:

To anyone who says the AI used to be "very good" or competent" - you probably were playing "nice" and not exploiting the AI's obvious weaknesses. such as its tendency to only buy one card in the draft (and a random one at that), which made it ridiculously easy to run up a huge score as the game progressed into the later generations.

I generally put effort into not deliberately or abusively exploiting the AI's bad habits, and still found it to be well below the level of a new player.

The AI when I was playing didn't just buy 1 card per generation, and it was not random - it had many clear favorites (even though most were poor choices) and some it would never buy.

A typical obvious bad play would be investing lots of money into production very late in the game - even after game end was triggered - rather than doing something that would add to TR or end game VP.

Another example would be buying Birds in the first generation. Birds is a wonderful card for sure, but the opportunity cost of buying it that early is very very high unless you have a really strong capacity to enable it fast.

very true- early on, at least- it loves animal / plant / microbe cards, especially the ones that have an action. Even with no plan to raise the parameters needed to play the cards.

But once it hits gen 9 or 10, as the deck is getting depleted, and especially in later gens after the deck has recycled, it starts just buying one card, and often a terrible one, such as investment loan, when a multiple-VP card is available.

[AronFJenks]

Originally posted by Ferris:

No AI has changed a ton.
It NEVER was great, but it was competent. At one point the AI was very good.

Not tryin to belabor the point, but I'm going to copy and paste this from my saved word document every time someone claims the AI was once "capable."

(All of the following list is on the OLDER versions of the AI before the recent idiotic changes)

1) The AI plays capital and commercial district solely on the basis of a small number of pre-determined "ideal" spots, instead of putting them next to oceans or cities.

2) The AI will play any playable cards, even if there is no reason to, such as:

satellites when it has no space tags.

3) Or Toll station when opponents have no space tags

4) Cartel with no earth tags

5) Miranda resort with no Earth tags

6) Medical Lab with very few building tags and no need for the extra science tag

7) Water Import From Europa with no other jovian tags

8) Ganymede Colony with no other jovian tags and no use for a space city.

9) Terraforming Ganymede early in the game with no other jovian tags.

10) Space elevator with no steel to use, and no plan to get any steel

11) Electro Catapult with no plants or steel to use

12) Equatorial magnetizer with no energy to reduce

13) Caretaker contract with no heat to convert into TR, or worse, with heat but after it has funded thermalist.

14) Corollary to number 13 - as Helion, it will fund thermalist but then spend all its heat as money.

15) In general, it funds awards it cannot possibly win, or that are ridiculously easy to steal. You can bait the AI into funding miner or thermalist by using all your metal or heat while it still has some, because it bases the funding of those awards on current resources instead of production. It will fund banker with a 22-21 lead and no further cards to increase its MC production.

16) It misses milestones that it could easily attain.

17) It will sometimes pay 25 MC for a standard project city to gain only 1 point.

18) It almost always activates all its blue card actions, in order, before doing anything else, often to tremendous disadvantage.

19) It drafts horribly, seemingly at random most of the time, passing on obviously good cards and keeping obviously bad ones.

20) In later generations, it rarely buys more than one card.

21) It never buys or uses a handful of very useful cards (Unless it is an AI sub that has taken over for a forfeited player). Examples include Olympus Conference, Mars University, Insulation, power infrastructure. There are several others.

22) It will continue Searching for life even after it has found it.

23) It will perform other blue card actions even if they are detrimental, such as, the energy-into-oxygen factories when oxygen is maxed and temperature isn't. Or Adding animals to an empty animal card that are just going to be eaten by predators.

24) It plays VP-only cards early, and will keep playing production cards right up until the end of the game, even after all global parameters have been maxed.

25) It always buys the card for inventor's guild and Business network, even if it's trash or unplayable.

26) Early in the game, when it has 11, 12, or 13 MC, it will do a standard project power plant for no reason, but late in the game, it won't do one even if it has crucial cards that it can't play because it has no power production to reduce.

27) It will play development center with no energy production and then do nothing to increase it. Or, it has energy production, but reduces it to zero by playing an unimportant card.

28) Same with the four energy-into-oxygen cards - it will play an irrelevant card that reduces its energy below the amount needed for those actions, and won't do anything to increase it back up to the needed amount.

29) It will play security Fleet and pay for it with titanium - saving none to use for the action.

30) It plays greenhouses and Zeppelins and energy saving early in the game when there are very few cities.

31) It plays investment loan for no discount or rebate and for no reason at all.

32) It plays aquifer Pumping when 8 ocean have been played.

33) It leaves dangling bonuses from the parameter tracks when there is no reason to.

34) If it plays underground detonations, which it always will if it gets the card, it will keep using 10 MC to increase its heat, even when there is no longer any need to do so, thus crippling its finances for important stuff.

35) It has an “Order of operations” that it sticks to even if the human player has passed. Sometimes this means it will do a plant conversion next to an empty ocean space, then immediately pay 18 MC for a standard project ocean on that empty space, wasting 2 MC by not doing the ocean first.

Etc. This is by no means a complete list.



And all that is on "hard" mode.

[Ironsabbath88]

Agreed that the AI was laughably bad before the patch... now it's excruciatingly bad. To the point where I cannot feasibly enjoy the game against AI's anymore.

[Deogunz]

Yes, the AI I was never competent. But now, it's just retarded. It never buys oceans and just keeps buying power and pumping up heat. That's it. It hoards its money towards the end for no reason.

[Deogunz]

I wonder, is there a way to make a custom AI script?

[shubenig]

Originally posted by AronFJenks:

Originally posted by shubenig:

Ai was never great- but I expect that from a strategy game like this.

It was good enough that you could at least test out strategies and mess arround with goals and concepts and if you played dumb enough you could loss.

But all of a sudden the Ai has become so worthless its not even workable.

The computer players just pump up power, and the only terraforming they attempt to do is increase heat. They NEVER place oceans anymore- not even as prequel- and they stock pile money without doing anything with it.

What the heck happened?

nothing "happened" other than the same incompetent staff doing the same idiotic things they've been doing for 3.5 years. They're not going to suddenly magically become competent after three years of stunning ineptitude.

I dont agree entirely . The AI HAS changed - What I mean its it has started to behave DIFFERENT, but worse then before.

[shubenig]

Ok- a few commenters have missed the point. The AI was never good, I conceed that point. WHat I am saying , is that it has gotten WORSE , like WAY worse then it was before. Its like there was another update that was designed to make the AI more stupid then it already was.