Atraikius, please read.

[Rollo]

Master Belisarius and Atraikius,
I am currently running a test with the Orks, the Aquilaeian and my Viking AI. If you are interested I can give you some feedback on how they perform. I wonder which one will send over troops first .
Btw, I am also using armed Colonizers (no stealing honestly) because in my early tests with the AI I was annoyed how many Colonizers were shot down by pitiful ships (like neutral frigates, ughh). I am still very early in the test (haven't even encountered the Orks, yet), but I'll let you know how it turns out.
What is best setting for a test anyway? I am using a small galaxy with 4 players (just me and them) and I gave the AI a low bonus.

Rollo

[Master Belisarius]

quote:

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Originally posted by Rollo:
Master Belisarius and Atraikius,
I am currently running a test with the Orks, the Aquilaeian and my Viking AI. If you are interested I can give you some feedback on how they perform. I wonder which one will send over troops first .

Rollo

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Yes, sure! Please send me some feedback.

quote:

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Originally posted by Rollo:
Btw, I am also using armed Colonizers (no stealing honestly) because in my early tests with the AI I was annoyed how many Colonizers were shot down by pitiful ships (like neutral frigates, ughh).

Rollo

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hehehe, honestly I don't care if someone want to use something that I did.
Anyway, the Aquilaeian colony ships are not "armed colony ships": I only wanted colony ships with more fuel range and cloak capabilities. In my view (only my opinion, of course), strong colony ships are a waste of time (construction time), and resources.

quote:

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Originally posted by Rollo:

I am still very early in the test (haven't even encountered the Orks, yet), but I'll let you know how it turns out.
What is best setting for a test anyway? I am using a small galaxy with 4 players (just me and them) and I gave the AI a low bonus.

Rollo

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How many starting planets? With your current settings, probably you will meet one or two races very fast, and then, if you have started the game with 1 started planet, they will have a short time to develop their own empires.
Although I have optimized the Aquilaeian to play without bonus, I think that always is good play at least with Medium AI bonus.

[Rollo]

"hehehe, honestly I don't care if someone want to use something that I did.
Anyway, the Aquilaeian colony ships are not "armed colony ships": I only wanted colony ships with more fuel range and cloak capabilities. In my view (only my opinion, of course), strong colony ships are a waste of time (construction time), and resources."

The colonizers the Vikings use are "kind of" armed. Well, you will see . I don't worry about the time and cost too much (but I can see your point). I just wanted to include something I have never seen other AIs use to provide some new challenges for players. IMHO the best thing about it is that the players don't recognize a weak colonizer anymore just by its hull.

"How many starting planets? With your current settings, probably you will meet one or two races very fast, and then, if you have started the game with 1 started planet, they will have a short time to develop their own empires."

Only one planet. I have made contact with the Aquilaeian and the Vikings very early. I wanted it that way, because I am interested about the early stages of the AI mostly. IMHO they have to be quite strong in the beginning, when the humans are still vulnerable. *evil* HeHeHE */evil* The Aquilaeian are giving me a good run for my money, because I don't have good PDs, yet.

"Although I have optimized the Aquilaeian to play without bonus, I think that always is good play at least with Medium AI bonus."

I have developed and tested the Vikings without bonus so far also. I just put in a small bonus, so that at least I have some challenge.

Rollo

[Atraikius]

Rollo

- I would like to hear any comments you might have, I find that they help a lot in finding problems, or possible problems a lot faster than trying to find them myself.

- I don't consider the armed colony ships my idea to steal, I had read some comments on placing napalm bombs on them while I was still testing them. As for the items I found that hadn't been worked out, like initially getting the AI to capture planets, I'm happy to see that someone is taking advantage of it, because it makes all of the time and effort I spent worthwhile.

- Typically, I use a large map with the default 100 systems setting, and then manually select 20 of the toughest races, with High difficulty, and low bonus. I think this gives the AI a 'worst case' setting, while still allowing enough room for expansion. (Plus, with all of the hostile races I normally find that I have enough of a struggle in the early part of the game due to multiple wars, that I'm not even in the top ten until well into the game)

[Atraikius]

- I went to the armed ships myself because I was getting sick of seeing the AI picking off each others lone colony ships, so I got rid of the typical cargo component and cut back the speed on thier initial colonizer in order to fit in a DUC, and later on had them switch to warship hulls so that they could fit even more weapons and defenses on them - found it very amusing to watch a dreadnaught sized colony ship that was armed as heavily as most battleships pound through three enemy systems in an early test game, but reduced them down to BC size due to the time for construction. I wanted to keep them as big as possible to keep with the Orky feel though.

Also, I normally pick 1 starting planet to keep the research slower (tried three once, and had the orks hit me wiht a fleet of BB's while I was still researching light cruisers), and I quit using the high bonus after I started testing the orks because they would max out thier number of ships way to soon.

[Rollo]

Master Belisarius and Atraikius,
I had to cancel my test, because the map was so bad. The Aquilaeian didn't have any systems to settle without running into me or the Vikings. The Vikings started off next to a black hole (always a killer for the AI). I never got to see any Orks because they were cut off by black holes as well (no, it was no ancient map).

I started a new game with medium mid-life galaxy, 3 planets, no intel, 20000 resources, low tech level, medium tech cost, 2000 race pts, and medium number of players plus neutrals. I also modded the quadrant file to get rid of black holes (should thought of that long ago).

Guess what happened: I started off in a system with three planets to colonize and three warp points leading out of it. Fair enough, so I build 3 colonizers right away. On turn 2 or 3 the orks show up on my eastern warp point. They don't look friendly, so I quickly build some missile sats and later some scouts. I send one scout to the south and encounter an Aquilaeian home system. The other one I send to the north and find the Viking home system! This is really weird. I am sqeezed right in the middle between the AI that I want to test with no room to expand...
This could be quite interesting , if you want I can email you the savegame (you just need the .gam file, right?)

Rollo

PS: Anybody want to place a bet who will kill me? My money is on the orks, they have already declared war on me and start sending ships over (I guess they can sniff weakness from systems away). Lets see how they can overcome my (pitiful ) defenses.

[Master Belisarius]

Yes, please send me the *.gam file to jlperyr@adinet.com.uy.

And I bet for you! I always bet for the human player!

If you believe that are going to lose, then, research mines and deploy them over your planets/colonies (you don't need a mine layer to do that). Sooner or later, the AI will have the capability to remove your mines (for example, the Aquilaeian attack ships had mine-sweepers), but will give to you the time to crush them.
Of course that this is a unfair strategy against the AI... but at least is not a cheat!