Computer AI bonus

[Emperor Zodd]

What do you guys set the computer bonus to?
I beat the AI badly every time on the high difficulty. Is the low bonus a good enough help to the AI?

[Nyx]

A low bonus makes the AI much better, but it's still not up to the challenge of a human. Even on high bonus, it's just wealthy and stupid, instead of truly dangerous. The bonus mostly changes whether you get attacked by a few badly designed ships with incompetent captians, or a lot of badly designed ships with incompetent captains.

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[Tomgs]

Well a lot of badly designed bigger and higher tech ships. They seem to research things much quicker if you give them a bonus. If you are a conquorer style race though soon you will catch up with them either through capturing their ships to study or when they surrender to you and give you their technology.

[Emperor Zodd]

I play on a 200 system map. If the bonus is on high,won't the races far from me be very strong by the time I get to them? Giving me a tough game?

[HAL]

The choices you make on building your race and the tactics you use, dictate how much of a challenge you get from the computer players.

If you choose gas giants as a homeworld, min/max your race and use missile dance tactics, you will crush the computer. Otherwise, you better dig in for a considerable challenge.

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I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.

[Tomgs]

Actually I can start out on "none" ice worlds and still win fairly easily. Its a bit more challenging than the gas giants but not by much. It just takes a few turns longer to get started. The key is an aggressive style and not letting the AI get a toehold near you. If you "kill on sight" the AI doesn't seem to have a chance. If I were to sit back and make treaties with it maybe, but I still will out colonize it and outbuild it by a vast margin. Any longer range weapon will decimate the AI, the phased poleron beam is just about as effective as the "missle dance" except maybe against some higher level weapons but by then I will have other options also.

Also about large galaxies the computer doesn't really expand enough to make use of the increased room there. It is actually a bigger challenge on a small map with fewer AI and no neutral races to get in the way. The computer races don't fight multi front battles well so its best for there to be fewer of them.

[This message has been edited by Tomgs (edited 09 January 2001).]

[HAL]

I think I play fairly aggressively. Maybe I am just researching the wrong techs at the wrong times. I find starting off on Ice/Methane worlds an incredibly more difficult game. I think I am in real danger of losing, as in being crushed out of existance, my current game.

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I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.

[Tomgs]

Well my one recomendation I always make to make the game easier is to create some long range scout ships with few weapons and a lot of supply storage as early in the game as possible and scout. If you know where the AI is before it knows where you are you will almost always win. The first couple of fights untill you secure your borders might be intense especially if the AI has a high bonus but after that it will get a lot easier. I always research cargo early and while that might not seem to be an aggressive strategy it allows me to keep all those resources that otherwise would be lost without storage units and have extremely long range ships. With a large amount of stored resources I can keep building ships and never get to that point where I have to stop building them because I am short of resources.

Another tip is to have propulsion expert as one of your racial picks it really gives you an advantage early on if you do tactical combat. You will be as fast or faster than all the other races out there so you can at least force a stalemate sometimes in battle even if you can't win the fight because of lower tech.

[This message has been edited by Tomgs (edited 09 January 2001).]