Interesting AI Behavior Towards Ship Graveyards

from GalCiv4 Forums

I have noticed that AI-controlled civilizations will send fleets of ships WITHOUT a survey ship to attack ship graveyards.  The result of this is that I can collect the contents of the ship graveyard with one of my survey ships without having to fight any defenders.

The first screen snapshot below shows that an Onyx Hive fleet is going to attack a ship graveyard on their next turn (see the first screen snapshot below to see how I can see where they are going).

The third screen snapshot below shows that the Onyx Hive fleet successfully attacked the ship graveyard, destroying the defenders and losing one of their ships.

The fourth screen snapshot shows that my unarmed survey ship was able to swoop in and collect the contents of the ship graveyard (a Probe).

While this AI behavior is very good for me, it does not seem to be a very logical strategy for the AI civilizations.  You may want to take a look at the logic the AIs employ for attacking a ship graveyard to require a survey ship in the attacking fleet.

 

galactic civilizations iv
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Reply #1 from GalCiv3 Forums Top


I have noticed that AI-controlled civilizations will send fleets of ships WITHOUT a survey ship to attack ship graveyards.  The result of this is that I can collect the contents of the ship graveyard with one of my survey ships without having to fight any defenders.

The first screen snapshot below shows that an Onyx Hive fleet is going to attack a ship graveyard on their next turn (see the first screen snapshot below to see how I can see where they are going).

The third screen snapshot below shows that the Onyx Hive fleet successfully attacked the ship graveyard, destroying the defenders and losing one of their ships.

The fourth screen snapshot shows that my unarmed survey ship was able to swoop in and collect the contents of the ship graveyard (a Probe).

While this AI behavior is very good for me, it does not seem to be a very logical strategy for the AI civilizations.  You may want to take a look at the logic the AIs employ for attacking a ship graveyard to require a survey ship in the attacking fleet.

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Known bug thought it had been squashed though. 

 

Reply #2 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Paul you are up to date on the patches? Or are you using an old save?

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Reply #3 from GalCiv4 Forums Top

gypsy2299,

I started this game 2 days ago (Friday, 8/5) and I am running the current test version (1.05.351507).

Reply #4 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Just needed to be sure the bug was still here.

Reply #5 from GalCiv4 Forums Top
 
Known bug thought it had been squashed though. 

 
 
Really? Hadn't seen anything saying it was. The other issue though is that they don't seem to survey later waves of anomalies, at least mostly as far as I can tell.
 
edit: What the? Screwy formatting. edit2: Okay, quote was being screwy.
Reply #7 from GalCiv4 Forums Top

Yeah, survey-raiding enemy sectors to scoop up the empty yellow anomalies is a "great" way to quickly get a couple of fleets of small ships. Although sometimes I find a sector that's been completely cleaned out. So the AI does it, just a question of under what conditions 

Reply #8 from GalCiv4 Forums Top

They've also stopped attacking graveyard and heavily defended anomalies for some reason in my game, so, there's a lot of anomalies still uncleared of enemies. I see it happen sometimes, but not to this extent.

Reply #9 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting smjjames, reply 8

They've also stopped attacking graveyard and heavily defended anomalies for some reason in my game, so, there's a lot of anomalies still uncleared of enemies. I see it happen sometimes, but not to this extent.
End of smjjames's quote

That is the fix Derek was supposed to implement 

Reply #10 from GalCiv4 Forums Top

The thing though is that I still had them attack anomalies without surveying them earlier in the game and I think I saw one ship try to attack an anomaly not that long ago ingame, I dunno.

I'm kind of chalking this up to the somewhat unusual setup with all of the default races made into true synthetic (synth trait and Yor pops, The Yor themselves are unchanged) since I wanted to see how well the AI actually does them (not super well since they aren't manufacturing pops like they should).

It's also only one game and one data point, so, I'm not convinced. Plus it's not exactly a fix if they stop trying to survey them, just makes players have to do the work, which is fine with me.