Idea for MM to improve AI's strategy

[dogscoff]

Nice idea. Assigning a preference for attack / capture would go a long way to giving each AI a distinct "personality".

You're right though, I think it would need a major code change. Mind you I don't see why that should stop us suggesting it. All my favourite suggestions require hard code changes=-)

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"Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?"
"Uh, I think so, Brain, but we'll never get a monkey to use dental floss!"

[Barnacle Bill]

Good idea!

While they are at it, though, they need to fix the "piecemeal attack" method the AI uses. Example - in my most recent game I played a very non-expansive method concentrating on internal development rather than exploration/expansion. The Sallega found me pretty early and keep sending single ships to attack planets heavily defended by weapon platforms. They started out with sending single escorts to my homeworld. They worked up through the sizes to sending light cruisers. When I started building orbital stuff at the homeworld and colonizing other planets in system, they switched targets to the colonies w/o any ships & bases. However, I've been landing WP's on the turn of colonization So far, every ship they send has been swatted without causing any damage. Had they every waited 10-20 turns and collected the ships into a single fleet, instead of sending one ship every 2-3 turns, it would have been a different story.

In the MOO games, when the AI decided to attack a system, it would assemble what it thought was a good-sized strike fleet in a nearby system before launching the attack. Sure, you could disrupt it by a pre-emptive strike on the assembly site, but it was still a lot more effective than SE4. I'd like to see the SE4 AI select targets as prosed in this thread, but then assemble a reasonable strike fleet based on its recon of the target before launching the attack.

[Q]

jc173 I support your ideas especially the proposal that the Ai should attack also systems of the enemy that are not marked as contested.
BarnacleBill check the Sallega AI settings file:
Turns to Wait until next attack := 6
If this value is increased it should correct the premature attack.

[Taqwus]

Curiously, in my present game (255-system cluster galaxy, 1.35 + ModPack... and a race w/o any advanced traits, heh), I've seen both behaviors. Rage normally uses fleets approaching 20 ships in size, while the Ukra-Tal tend to send in singletons and pairs, or occasionally 4 at a time. It might be just that Rage has a larger production base than the Ukra-Tal (when we were allies shortly before I became Mega-Evil, they were in second place and the UTs were fourth), but their behavior does seem a bit different.

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-- The thing that goes bump in the night

[Barnacle Bill]

Q:

Does the "turns to wait for next attack" make them assemble a fleet, or just control how often they will send in a lone ship?

I'd like to see the AI take what it knows (i.e. has already seen about the target's defenses) and assemble a fleet that can take them, and not come back until they have that big of a fleet. Otherwise, they are just wasting ships. If I hit an enemy planet, and it was defended by several WP's, I certainly wouldn't go back there without a fleet that could take those defenses. Of course, the defender could further beef up the defense while I'm gone, but it is assuredly not very likely to weaken them. I'd use single ships to probe for recon, then assemble a sufficient force to take the defenses I detected before I launched an actual attack. If I sent a single ship in to an enemy planet and found it too heavily defended by immobile forces (WP's, satellites, bases), I'd just sit outside their weapon range and click "end turn" 30 times, then go home & get some friends It should be a simple set of rules to make the AI do likewise.

[Daynarr]

BB, the parameters that are most critical for AI to make fleets are located in fleets.txt file. Here are some specifics:

quote:

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Fleets Div 1 Max Amount of Ships:= 20
Fleets Div 1 Max Amount of Planets:= 0
Fleets Div 1 Num Fleets:= 3

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These lines tell AI how to distribute its ships in fleets. By moding these lines you can make AI build few large fleets or lots of small fleets. Good races to compare here are Narn and Xi'Chung. Mephisto has made Narn create lots of fleets with less number of ships in them, which suits their defensive strategy quite well. OTOH I have made Xi'Chung build only few large fleets, which they need in order to be successful in their attacks.

quote:

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Fleets Percentage of Ships For Fleets:= 85

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This line tells AI how many of existing ships to put in fleet. By reducing the percentage you can make AI have lots of 'freelancers' going around with their own individual orders.

quote:

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Fleets Dont Use For Num Turns:=30

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This is the line that, most likely has caused AI to attack you with single ships. It tells AI not to use fleets for the specific amount of turns since the beginning of the game. This line must be carefully balanced because if you make AI use fleets too soon it will have problems with exploration and colonization (Sergetti had this problem for a while). This is because AI will position all its fleeted ships above some planet and try retrofit them all the time, so no ships will be doing the exploration. What value to use here depends greatly on AI research; if AI researches quickly some low-cost weapon (like DUC), it will design and retrofit more often, so larger value is better. OTOH if AI researches something like Missiles at the start, lower value should be safe.

In order to make AI use fleets like it should all these values need careful tweaking.

[dogscoff]

quote:

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Originally posted by Barnacle Bill:
Q:
...I'd just sit outside their weapon range and click "end turn" 30 times...

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Does anyone else think MM should include a command in the tactical combat to do this automatically - ie "resolve combat peacefully" or something. The existing resolve combat button destroys ships and planets I might otherwise want to capture in a later attack, as well as putting your own ships at risk.


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"Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?"
"Uh, I think so, Brain, but we'll never get a monkey to use dental floss!"