Re: TDM least to greatest?
 

Thanks!

Re: TDM least to greatest?
 

The Tesselate and United Flora need at least a low bonus, and medium bonus is better, to be successful opponents. Their two racial traits take a lot of research, and they may be crushed by another AI first. Conversely, the Rage and the Sergetti fair poorly after a while, their phase polaron beams don't provide much punch, because most TDM modpack AI's can get phased shields up early, again, with the bonus.

Re: TDM least to greatest?
 

I've found that if you want a tougher game against the AI, create larger quadrants with less AI's. This gives them more room to expand, get established and make use of their bonuses. If they encounter other empires early, they'll all set up borders & defenses, usually go to war and stunt each other's growth.

Re: TDM least to greatest?
 

Maybe they are only last at fighting other TDM AI's...

PvK

Re: TDM least to greatest?
 

There's also the "team play" option, so the AIs all gang up on the human player(s) and don't fight each other.

Another suggestion, based on my play against TDM AIs, is to play against AIs with the same atmosphere preference as the human player. The AIs aren't as good as humans at matching breathers and atmospheres, so this would reduce a human's advantage somewhat.

Question: Would it affect AI performance to change their atmosphere preference, e.g. when adding the Tessellate to a game, change their atmosphere from carbon dioxide to oxygen?

Re: TDM least to greatest?
 

No, you could change it without any problem.

Re: TDM least to greatest?
 

I concur 100% with you. The "combo" races need more time to offer a decent challenge.
In my view, an human player MUST play with at least "low bonus" to find some kind of challenge against the AI. For this reason have optimized the 3 AI's I did (Tessellate, Aquilaeian and Pyrochette), to play with "low bonus".

Playing without bounuses against others AIs, think still the UF and Tesselalte are very competitive, because the others AIs are not so smart to fight against their ramming ships.
Anyway, concur with you that during that time, can compete against them with success.

Althoug think the Rage it's an strong AI, in my view is not under the 10 best AIs list. Agree the Rage are good in the early game... but fighting only with PPB and with wars against anyone, most the time they're hopeless in mid-long time.

About the Sergetti... think it's a very different history. In their time, they were one of the best, and first modded AIs.
In fact, they inspired me to enter into the bussiness and to create the Pyrochette!
But while most the modders continued modding and updating their AI files to take advantage of the new patches, Daynarr doesn't did it and think that now the difference between the Sergetti and a more "modern" AI, its very clear in terms of performance.

Re: TDM least to greatest?
 

hey, when are you all gonna think about putting stuff like this in the wiki for easy editing and updating eh? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

dont worry, I've taken the liberty, but someone has to finish it:
http://wiki.spaceempires.net/index.p...dpack_for_SEIV

Re: TDM least to greatest?
 

Thanks, MB.

Re: TDM least to greatest?
 

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif No problem!