Re: Man, this game is great ...
raynor - didn't mean to offend those of you who are trying to get a good game out of the AI; I was aiming my post at those few gamers who give their race every possible bonus (including minimizing certain "unused" traits - I believe the favorite of these is physical strength, since many people prefer to force a surrender rather than invade - and use the extra racial points to increase, say, ship combat to incredible levels) and then complain about how "easy" the AI is.
Anyway, as I stated in my Last post, another tweak for the AI may be using the player strategy above - decrease certain stats to match the race descriptions, and use the extra points to give them better bonuses in stats that also match the descriptions. For instance, the Amonkrie should probably have their physical strength reduced and ship combat increased (From the Amonkrie_AI_General file: "Though physically weak, they make up for it with powerful warships."). However, I also recall reading somewhere on this board that trying to mod the AI to take advantage of this isn't really working. But it's certainly another place to "improve" the AI.
I also applaud the modders' efforts in improving the AI - although the AI also has to learn how to use some of their facilities after they've built them. I destroyed a planet that had a ship training facility and a fleet training facility, but there were no ships at all in that system; I don't even think there was a space yard nearby. I also found a planet with the "Events Predictor" (temporal facility that improves combat response); again, no ships anywhere in the system. Although this one at least had a space yard, but still...
Anyway, I again apologize if I offended you, raynor; by now, we're probably all "preaching to the choir" about how to make the game challenging for you experts out there. Personally, I considered myself an expert at the Space Empires series; I've played SEII and SEIII, and beat the AI's rather handily in both. But the AI in SEIV is giving me more of a run for my money. It's not perfect, and I would be dead ten times over against a human opponent (this time - I haven't been nearly as aggressive as I could be, since I _want_ the game to Last a while), but I think this AI is actually an improvement over SEII & SEIII. It certainly colonizes a lot faster than it used to, and is a bit more aggressive about ship building; but you're right about not attacking often enough. I tend to attack every planet in a system within the space of two turns (three if there are a lot of planets and/or they're spread out), but the AI only seems to attack one planet at a time. I'm sure there are reasons for this, but it could probably be improved anyway. The AI also doesn't seem to be moving colonists around very well - I've found a lot of low pop colonies, and have yet to find a cargo transport (not to mention I have half (!) the colonies of the strongest opponent, yet twice the population).
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