[PvK]

Good feedback on the AI issues, guys. I really haven't taken time to look at the AI at all since 3.0.1, and then I just did basic tweaks to get them to research and build working colonizers.

Before 3.0, the AI was much better, although not really wonderful.

I do think it would probably be possible to make an AI that would work well in 3.x, but it would take a lot of time, which I'm not going to be able to devote myself. I do, however, know what can be done, and would be very happy to give tips to anyone who wants to try to fix it.

First, any AI needs to be based on (or at least import a whole lot of changes from) a Proportions 3.x AI, and not an AI from the unmodded game.

The worst problem is building Cultural Centers on colonies (as that won't get accomplished for 1000 turns or so). Which AI have people seen this with? The unmodded AI will do this because it is set to go for resource production or research abilities. The Proportions AI's are set to instead look for bogus AI tags which get them to build the right types of facilties. It's possible though that the changes to facility (especially homeworld) abilities in 3.0 have broken that solution, but it should be correctable.

The next worst problem is probably the Base Space Yard issue. The problem is probably from trying to fit an Orbital Space Yard on a 500kT base. In order to avoid having the AI try to upgrade and fail, we probably need to add a new bogus AI tag that allows the AI's to build two types of bases: ordinary spaceyards on 500kT bases, and OSY's on 1000kT bases.

Fighters should be do-able by the AI, but will require re-doing all of them, because the fighters are a lot different in 3.x.

Empires designed to use Meson Blasters and APB's will need to be adjusted to research and design for Lasers and Charged Particle Beams.

Probably the best overall approach is to try to get one AI working doing what it should, and once that's done, base the other AI's off of it.

The whole sequence of what makes sense to do, what ship designs work, and what economic strains come up first, is different in 3.x vs. 2.x, so there is probably a lot of work to do to get that right. The way I did it in 2.x was to watch the AI play a game, see what it was doing wrong, and make changes, then go back and watch it again, and repeat and repeat.

It's a lot of work. Other options to help are to give the AI a bonus, and/or to add some AI-only racial techs to give them advantages (as JLS did for AIC mod).

PvK