my AI dont do what it should!

[AJC]

From my own Ai building experience I have found that it is a poor strategy to have your ai crank out ships in this way- you end up with a fleet of obsolete and usually huge numbers of the early technology ships and alot of small ineffective vessels draining the AI resources..

I have found that A gradual to moderate level of build up is better to aim for.

[Athena]

I start to really hate this construction_vehicle file... Is the AI supposed to follow the instructions in it ?

to understand the in and out of it, I set a very simple game :

I put in the file just two entries for all AI states, which are:

entry 1 : have at least 2 colony ships
entry 2 : 5 attack ships per planet

So initially my AI build 2 colony ships and then proceed to build 3 attack ships (escorts class). When she colonize a system, she rebuild a colony ship. Fine.

Now she have the planetary shipyard iddle, with a low maintenance usage (coming from something like 5 escorts build). Have a huge stock of minerals. Why ??? Doing nothing except for the occasional rebuilding of a colony ship, and also a new attack ship. In now way she try to crank as fast as possible attack ships (in the general settings, she is supposed to stop building at 90% maintenance).

Can somebody give me a pointer? I want the AI to crank attack ships like mad until she reaches the max maintenance percentage, but to no avail. She follows very loosely the entries.

[Mephisto]

Can you post the whole file? That would make it easier to have a look into it.

[Athena]

Dont forget I just want to set a quick testbed. I agree thats not the best option for the AI to let it cranks ships like mad. But if its not possible to have it follow a simple behavior, how can you expect to follow a more complex one?

Here is the sample AI file:

AI State := {put all AI state here}
Num Queue Entries := 2
Entry 1 Type := Colonizer
Entry 1 Planet Per Item := 0
Entry 1 Must Have At Least := 2
Entry 2 Type := Attack Ship
Entry 2 Planet Per Item := 2
Entry 2 Must Have At Least := 2

Should have 2 colonizers, then up to 5 ships per planets. The AI dont follow this, why?

[Mephisto]

Are you running low on organics or radioactives?

[Q]

Greetings to the goddess of wisdom and warfare!

How many colonies did your AI empire have at this moment?
I usually work more with the "must have at least" than with the "per planet" option, using the latter more for the late game when the AI has 100-200 colonies.

[Athena]

>Greetings to the goddess of wisdom and warfare!

Thanks Q, I see that you know my spheres of influence

Nope, the AI is not low in anything.

If you prefer, you can put a 'must have at least' of 150, and a 'per planet' of what you want, then run a little testbed. You will see that with no apparents reasons (I checked them all I think), the AI dont comply to the simple order of building like mad (just for the purpose of testing the file, I have never said that this was an optimal strategy).

It is like there is an override of unkown origin hardcoded... I cant think of anything as for know to solve the problem. The point is that I play with a 15% maintenance per turn with some friends in a PBEM with slightly modded AI (on construction_vehicle for instance). When I open the AI turns (with the permissions of the players) I see for ALL the AI which are in a good shape these parameters:

Huge stockpile of the 3 resources.
98 to 100% of the shipyard doing nothing.
Something like 30 to 60 attack ships, whereas the Last entry in construction vehicle ask them to have something like 5 per planets .
They have not hit there maximum maintenance percentages, most of their planets have build facilities, and still they build nothing, throwing into space hords of minerals...

This is begining to bear on us seriously, because there is no challenge. The AI have the infrastructures to maintains fleets 4 times the size of our fleets, but still they do nearly nothing.

[Mephisto]

All I can say is that the AI does not do this in my testings. There are so many variables that it is sometimes hard to find why something is/ is not happening. I just had a chat with Aaron about a bug he could not reproduce. Turned out that the bug would only appear if the AI_Main.bmp was present in the folder even so the bug had nothing to do with graphics (it's the build units on a planet without cargo bug).
Grab an build file from the Earth Alliance, don't put all AI states in one file and try again. Maybe it helps.
And just to make sure: You are running on the 1.67 patch, aren't you?

[Q]

Athena, if you use standard SE IV gold post the savegame and perhaps someone finds the explanation. And try once to place units instead of the ships in the contruction order: does that change anything??

[Athena]

Q, K126, thank you for your time.

Yes I'm running 1.67 with some adjustments (minor I would say) in the cost of facilities.

I will set a new testbed with less drastic changes in construction_vehicle, it perhaps screw somehow the AI to have such an atypic file (after I edited it).

if things seems still weird, I will post a savegame along with the modded vehicle file.

U r speaking of UEA Mephisto?