Introduction,

I always play on normal because that is the intended game and I play for immersion. Gc2's twilight normal was more like a hard and easy seemed normal which is why I feel most played on below normal levels. It is very possible allot of people like to immerse into the game and see how the galaxy develops over long periods of play. The problem I find when playing a crush them all style is, I know how its gonna end. It's gonna be me or one of them,,,,, boring to me and not much replay value or exciting stories to tell friends. 

I am not very versed in how AI works code wise. I'm more like the philosopher scientists bring in to get another view point. In short I might see the elephant in the room but someone else needs to get the math down to prove it.

I know the biggest thing that separates us from most animals and machines is that we can predict the future and that is were the player outshines AI and the lesser creatures of our world. In short I don't expect much from an AI as being strategic <no consciousness> but it can be very reactive on the right here right now level.

Now to the meat,

Just from observation It seems the AI sends ships to a "space" rally point first or just a destination. This may be why single ships are always flying around scattered and never grouping up.

Possibly having the AI send its ships to its planets, ship yards, and star bases first. Then when the ships are needed, war time, They can now group up and go to a destination as a fleet. It feels like the AI is getting ahead of its self in that manner by trying to deploy a fleet before it even is a fleet. This way the planets and so forth are already defended by default to hamper back stab tactics of players.

@ marigoldran this is not an attack and I hope its not bad to suggest another game here but since allot of people like to use this game as a standered then; You sound like you would really enjoy Moo2 on impossible without removing or playing the spy races because that seems exactly what you are asking for. Turn 50 darlok steels plasma cannon, sells it to the klackons, Klackon refit their 100's of ship with plasma cannons that can be made in 2 turns, your allies the trillain all of a sudden decide your weaker now and declare war, game over, restart.  Awesome platform but the AI only had one objective in which made diplomacy harshly broken. If you didn't kill the darlock, elerians and pscilons right off the bat it would bite your butt hard mid game on impossible. It was so harsh you would eventually know if you were going to win just by which races were in your reach or by what planet you start on in the 1st turns.

The back stabbing gang up perimeters you are asking for should only be for a conquest only selection for victory or on the highest setting. Not a base game perimeter because then it makes diplomacy and 100's of races  pointless to even have in the game.

I've played a few games against "Genius" level AI opponents (one step below the max) and have noticed a few things the AI consistently does poorly, apart from the obvious planet specialization problems.

1) Small Fleets: the AI seems to either be unable to group its ships or to severely undervalue doing so. I often see 8 or 9 fleets of 2-3 ships each, which are all mowed down without losses by my own fleet of 6 ships. Even thoughtlessly-composed fleets with essentially random contents would be a huge step up from individual ships. Having the AI rally ships to some location under its control, and then waiting for a certain fleet size (even a semi-random size based on current logistics ability, so that there will be *some* large fleets) before deploying to the warzone would improve things enormously. I have even seen the AI split large fleets (usually in orbit of a planet) into smaller fleets, or come across stacks of individual ships in the same tile that are nonetheless not in any fleet. In addition to being ineffective, this is not very fun to fight against--I want to see my best fleets square off against my opponent's best fleets, not click a hex repeatedly after waiting for each fast combat to finish.

2) FOW problems: There are a number of ways to exploit the AI's ability to see the entire map. For example, I can tell which systems contain habitable planets by watching the direction AI colony ships try to move. I can also manipulate the movement of enemy fleets by allowing an unarmed ship to float nearby out of movement range. A lot of this would be fixed by making the AI aware of only what it can actually see, which is something I know the devs are working on.

And, some things that are probably not "low-hanging" fruit:

3) The AI seems to weigh in-game calculations of civilization power (esp. military power) too highly, and these metrics are calculated in ways that are not useful. In a recent game I stopped military production to watch an AI Krynn player's reaction--once they had achieved slightly more than twice my own military power, they declared war. That "military power" seems to result from a count of ship hulls by size or maybe a count of raw firepower/defense points; either way it does not seem to take into account other technologies. In my game, despite being so far behind in "military power", my ships were able to trivially defeat all the Krynn fleets. It's hard to guess at the underlying mechanics here, but it seems that the contribution of short-range, high firepower kinetic ships is overvalued when calculating military power, and that other supporting technologies (move speed, tactical move/evasion, accuracy boosters, logistics, etc.) are not considered.

4) Declaring war, then doing nothing: the AI seems to often declare war when it is unable to actually prosecute a war. This seems especially common against aggressive AIs that are currently engaged with other opponents--they declare on me (usually due to excessive military weakness), and then nothing happens because their ships are all elsewhere. This seems to happen too often for it to be the result of some simulated diplomacy between AIs. This might be difficult to implement, but I think it would help to have the AI behave as though it were at war for several turns before actually declaring war; this is essentially how I operate as a human player.

The biggest single issue by far, though, is the small fleets allowing the AI to be defeated piecemeal by an inferior force. Changing this would make a big difference in the "feel" of the game

I literally just scroll by when I see all caps. For the two or three posts that didn't have that there were some interesting nuggets. Real shame.

I have been thinking about this, AI is more than ship battles. Diplomacy needs to be seriously addressed also for the AI to reach a 7 level honestly otherwise the computer will always loose the game at the diplomacy table long before any war starts.

We need deeper trading personalities, where some races are more open traders , other more closed. 

Yet the computer doesn't really trade between themselves as well as the human. So the human gets a big edge here in the game.

Where the computer weighs the pro and cons of a trade more deeply (especially tech trades) .

Other aspects in diplomacy not all resources are equal in value but the computer treats them all too equally so it will take that +%5 mil bonus early game as equal value as the +5% luxury tax item. which doesn't make sense then

Or I can snag that colony ship just before it colonizes that planet when it should cost more if the colony ship is a turn or two away from colonization.

Perhaps not all the ships or planets or resources should be on the trade list, the AI can choose not to put all its resources on the table, based on trading personality for example Dregin would keeps its best miltary ships and techs off the table.  ETC

Also perhaps when trading tech, make it progressively slightly more expensive for the more tech at once traded.

An example of in-game diplomacy with the AI:

YOR: I hate you.  Notice the -12 modifier on my diplomacy screen signifying how much I hate you.  I'M GOING TO INVADE YOU SOON. 

Human: Um, yes.  That is in fact a major problem.  Could I, um, look at how many colonies you have and how many ships you have with which to invade me?

YOR: Of course.  In the meantime also take a look at what military techs I have so you know EXACTLY what to build to COUNTER ME.  

Human: Yes, yes, that is quite impressive and terrifying.  I don't even HAVE any military techs.  Could I please have some of yours?

YOR: What would you give me back in return?

Human: Um... 8 Snuggler colonies? 

YOR: We're YOR.  We're a race of synthetic creatures.  WE DON'T SNUGGLE. 

Human: Um... so it's a deal?

YOR: This sounds like a great idea.  Here is all of my military techs in return for 8 SNUGGLER COLONIES. 

Human: Thank you very much.  Um, could I offer you some Monsantium deposits so that you would instead attack the Altarians?

YOR: We're synthetic creatures.  We don't need food.

Human: So it's a deal?

YOR: Definitely.  Deal. 

Human: So... uh... are you still going to attack me?

YOR: No, I'm too busy attacking the Altarians.  Also your military tech is too good now. I still hate you though.  Notice the -12 diplomacy modifier on my diplomacy screen signifying how much I hate you.  

My feeling is that the AI doesn't value speed highly enough. i have rarely seen it field fleets that move faster than 6-8 speed. In contrast I don't build warships with move of less than 15 (which is still too slow for my liking). Speed matters because the ships can then engage multiple targets in one turn. It is also much easier to move beyond defences and then attack the soft underbelly of the empire.

i like the game but currently I don't feel the AI is really much of a challenge. But I think it has potential, please keep up the hard work, it is much Appericated.

We'd make a pretty reasonable "good cop, bad cop" tag team.  

Agreed. 

One question that should be asked....how much should a negative mod effect war at all?

There's an old expression, "all politics all local". Other than the occasional monarchy where a king gets so offended by something he declares war, nations declare war for strategic reason.

The negative mod for weakness makes sense, but otherwise a negative mod should affect your desire to trade....maybe influence that you trade better with neighbors that don't like me, but it shouldn't necessarily drive someone to war.

Yes, well, unfortunately the human doesn't play by any of those rules.  It's like demanding the AI to play "nice" while the human can troll all he wants.  And I can guarantee you: THE HUMAN WILL TROLL.  

The AI would get a lot more accolades if it was just programmed to be a Machiavellian bastard, and in return lower the amount of bonuses AI gets at the higher difficulty levels.  

How about this: Benevolent races are relatively trustworthy.  Malevolent and Pragmatic? Not so much.  In fact the Malevolents might declare war on you FOR NO REASON AT ALL because, well, they're malevolent. 

Thanks for making this thread Brad, I've been wanting to take a good look at what kind of improvements can be made to the AI either as mods or simply suggestions for you guys, this is great!

That said, I play against Genius AI with the occasional Godlike to give a bit of a late-game challenge, so a lot of what I'm likely to want isn't going to be relevant for most of the player-base I suspect.

Jjust to clear things up, in light of this:

Quoting Frogboy,

reply 23

AI gets nothing for free.  

What do these lines in the AIDefs.xml mean?

<FreeWarTechChance>0.10</FreeWarTechChance>

<FreeIdeologyPointsChance>.10</FreeIdeologyPointsChance>

<FreeIdeologyPointsAward>10</FreeIdeologyPointsAward>

Seilore