Lord_of_Void

Join Date 10/2014

Make the AI want to win

This is something that comes around mid-game (300-ish round on larger maps) after having survived the first bunch of CIVs that declare war on the player and getting assimilated: The AI is either not out to win the game anymore or does not stand any chance

There are two types of AI:

Hates the player for Ideological and personal priority setting reasons
Loves the player due to diplomacy (maxes out quickly due to research+buildings+starbase bonuses), trade, treaties and other other smaller aspects

The problem is that the player has already beaten 2-3 enemy CIVS at this point in order to survive the early and mid-game and now dominates the galaxy in both economy, tech, population and the likes and though the first kind of AI is hostile, they are no match individually, and they do not cooperate.

So what if following changes would be made:

Have the AI use alliance to cooperate a bit more when they see that their common enemy is much too strong for either of them to take down alone (have not seen a precedence for this since the first version even when there are many CIVs on the map at around turn 400
Have more reasons for the AI to dislike the player. Aggressive CIVs say: "We want to conquer the galaxy", this is what we need more of but for other win aspects like:

We want to achieve ascendance (if the player is ahead in ascendance win condition and the AI is aiming to achieve it)
We want to achieve ultimate knowledge (if the player is ahead in research win condition and the AI is aiming to achieve it)
We want to assimilate the galaxy (if the player is ahead in a cultural victory and the AI is aiming to achieve it))

And so on...

What the above would bring is more hostility between the civs and make life harder for the player in late game but it would also make the AI feel more realistic in its political decisions.

If the AI would finally learn to create alliances, the two combined would make late-game pretty hard for dominant players but not punish those who do not do well yet and let them instead participate in these alliances again making for more interesting decisions and giving a chance to bring down dominant AIs even if one is small (or at least participating in the alliance and thus in the struggle)

This would also encourage a play-stile where it is not necessarily a good idea to grow too big too fast and make way for more subtle diplomatic decisions where we can form alliances with the AI but we both still follow our own agenda (the player can aim for research victory and the AI for Ascension and they would not be in direct conflict)

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erischild

Join Date 01/2012

+136

You are still talking about the AI playing not to lose as opposed to actually winning the game. However, I like all of the ideas and would love to see all of these behaviors. I especially want the AI to speak up and explicitly tell me why it is ganging up on me. And if there were an AI runaway, I would want other factions to conspire with me against that dominant faction is similar ways.

I especially like the concept of too big too fast being a trigger for reactions. That makes a lot of sense to me. Reacting to the leader's power is a standard strategy in Risk games, for instance. There is the corresponding concept of teaming up with the biggest power, and that will need to be balanced in, but that sounds doable to me.

But I want to emphasize the need for the AI to give you explicit clues about these kinds of reactions. It is not just to avoid complaining about AI ganging up on the player for no reason, which will happen. I remember being impressed as anything the first time the GalCiv 2 AI called me out for my war preparations and did a proper preemptive action. It wasn't just the behavior that was fun, it was the communication that added to the immersion that got to me. I had been caught red-handed and could only gape in astonishment for a while.

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+1. I've encountered this in many of my own recent games. Some great ideas there!

Every victory option requires planets in some capacity. By default, the empires that expand will win. If the human empire is the only one capable of doing that, then it's a fait accompli.

The Ai definitely needs work on how to expand it's empires and/or react to dominant empires (human or Ai) emerging in the galaxy. A lot of work has been put into differentiating the various races, technologies, and behaviour preferences. That should reflect in a diverse, evolving, changing galaxy, where empires use different tactics and methods to expand their empires.

I'd add that the 'military' Ai needs an overhaul so that aggressive races can actually fight a war. It can build ships fine, and start a war...but after that it falls flat. Stuff like invade more than 1 planet at a time, actually garrison and hold captured planets, prioritize 'important' planets for invasion, rather than just the closest ones, etc.

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I totally agree, there exists sort of a "point of no return" where the player gets so powerful that the rest of the game is just a mopping up action without any real opposition by the AIs.

I approve of Lord_of_Voids ideas. Another idea would be to have the chance that smaller AIs who are lacking far behind in power not only form an alliance but actually unite into one new faction, that also gets some bonuses in technology to bring this new faction up to the level of the leading factions.

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Galcivs 2 did a great job of making these things possible mwith races ganging up and tearing a civilisation apart in order to strengthen everyone else involved.You'd be invited to take part by other civs which was also something i miss greatly because it felt like the galaxy was alive and there was more than just your own actions and the AI reacting to it.

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Quoting hfxnikolai,

reply 2

Agreed. Have seen a sad tendency of the latest AI version on 1.6.1 to take a single planet of mine with a formidable fleet, then:

Leave freshly conquered planet with the whole fleet imminently even though I do not have strong enough force in the region to beat them but I do have a transport heading there to switch planet ownership again
Break up said force into individual ships (for whatever reason)
Head back to what I can assume was their starting location which is by nature far behind the front line

The above behavior might contribute largely to the fact that none of the enemy CIVs can expand correctly and they can get stuck in wars lasting for ever

Guess the above is more of a tactical AI issue though and needs to be posted for Frogboy if a suitable thread still exists

What was really striking to me after having played since release is that I haven't seen any alliance treaty between AIs and also none was offered to me. The current diplomacy AI script seems to avoid this option entirely I can only imagine, which really cripples the chance of a late-game, last-ditch effort, unified front against the dominant CIV in order to make things interesting

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I was rereading some of Brad's older posts about the ai over the weekend, and I wonder if this limitation might be linked to the "it does dumber things when it knows too much" behavior that was changed by adding fog of war to all lower difficulty ai's. I wonder if trying to achieve too much makes it do unsuccessful things. Perhaps if the ai determined a few very specific goals and worked to achieve them it might be more effective?

I dunno, but it seems like a similar problem.

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Quoting Empress_Fujiko,

reply 3

there's an event, part of a DLC, that sort of does that. It creates some relic near the homeworld of the weakest race and they're supposed to grow in power. This should be tweaked, or at least, explained to us so we can monitor it properly, because I'm not sure it really improves the AI's ability to survive in the long term, but maybe I'm just confused about what it is supposed to be doing.

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Weak AI players are an incredible asset that help you snowball faster as you can near guarantee their alliance to you by giving them technology.

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In Gal Civ 3 it doesn't happen if you're much stronger. The AIs in Gal Civ 3 worry too much about it's military strengh compare to the human player when declaring war.

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Quoting Seabrook,

reply 9

I went back and played Endless Space last week. In that game I've noticed multiple AIs declaring war on me, my score was too high or I'm too powerful. It doesn't matter if I have several times the amount of military ships, they still declare war on me.

In Gal Civ 3 it doesn't happen if you're much stronger. The AIs in Gal Civ 3 worry too much about it's military strengh compare to the human player when declaring war.

You can destroy an entire empire with a single fleet if you counter their offense and defenses perfectly in endless legends. Same can happen in Galciv3. But that was changed in a patch and AI started to use glass ships. Allout offense and no defense and then I stopped playing that game. Ships basically became cannon fodder that explode in one battle all the time. That's only reason why I stopped playing Endless Legends.

Don't know about you but I loathe putting fifty cannons on a single ship with no armor or engines or whatever and then send it off to battle.

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Quoting Seabrook,

reply 9

Don't know about Endless Space but the behaviour described sounds like it would be interesting late game.

It might also be true that military strength is voted higher then it should be but decreasing its weight only brings something to the table if the AI "dislikes" you in the first place else they will not act against the player even if it is weak. That is why I think they should be pushed towards disliking the player but only in late-game when it becomes powerful. This should also apply to any AI that is much more powerful then the others to prevent the feeling of an unfair scripted end-game conflict and also make the late-game more interesting for less dominant players.

Its a shame that after building an empire and having such a vast galaxy full with armed civilizations, these never lead to any large-scale conflict where the lines a drawn. I always have the feeling that everyone is sort-of fighting their own little skirmish wars which is party due to the fact that the AI (at least on normal difficulty) does not follow through its invasion plans aggressively but also since they do not form alliances and involve each other in a struggle. I can be best friends with a neighbor and still never really get the sense if they need help and who they are fighting with.

Don't get me wrong, they constantly tell me to declare war on this and that but there is a number of problems with this:

They tell whom I need to declare war on via a string: XY. Why not have at least the LOGO of the civ in question displayed? If I have only 50 AIs on the map, I will not really care for the names of all of them
Player does not have the chance to check how powerful the CIV in question is, where it is located or how the relationship is towards them before declaring war on them. What if we were to at least have a diplomatic status of them when hovering over their names?
Why should i care if the AI does not offer me anything for the declaration? War does cost money, ruins trade and its not like we are allied or anything so that I would loose something if I do not join in in their struggle

All the above make these requests meaningless and my assumption is that they get rejected almost all the time by players without even reading them.

An alliance mechanic would resolve this as the player would loose something if chosen not to declare war on an allies enemy. Loosing an ally would mean loosing all the benefits that come with it such as:

A military force backing you up if someone declares war on you
Constant exploration, trade and non-aggression pacts which cannot be dissolved
An ally would not be able to embargo or surprise attack the player without considerable loss of diplomacy via a modifier: "breaks treaties ----"

And now that i think of it... the AI never asks me to embargo anyone or declares an embargo on me...

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lordofvoid, its not that interesting. You watch ships kill each other in one hit and battles end in a draw. Whoop dee doo.

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Quoting Ericridge,

reply 12

lordofvoid, its not that interesting. You watch ships kill each other in one hit and battles end in a draw. Whoop dee doo.

But getting back to the subject: late-game does not factor in as most players probably quit a game after the first few enemies are defeated and there is nothing left then mopping up the rest 90% of the world - and if small maps are used, there will never be that many fleets to begin with

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Quoting Lord_of_Void,

reply 13

Quoting Ericridge,

reply 12

lordofvoid, its not that interesting. You watch ships kill each other in one hit and battles end in a draw. Whoop dee doo.

That doesn't necessarily seem bad if a lot of ships are fighting and there is at least a few capital ships that can take punches. Ending a battle in a draw might also be a way of getting some realistic battle feeling as a huge fleet is not eliminated within seconds off the map and the player gets a chance to reinforce and withdraw afterwards. This is something that frequently brought up for GC3 as well but is not something this game design supports due to the scale and late game battles

But getting back to the subject: late-game does not factor in as most players probably quit a game after the first few enemies are defeated and there is nothing left then mopping up the rest 90% of the world - and if small maps are used, there will never be that many fleets to begin with

Except for the problem that Endgame in Endless Legends will consist of fleets being eliminated in seconds due to the nature of Glass Ships. Some engines, All Guns, no defenses. And you kill any ship in one hit because defenses is worthless.

At least ships in Galciv3 can take a pounding.

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