More than just 'weak' AI?

[AngleWyrm]

If you liked, you could go and take out the retard-o-vision ones (No research, no intel, no treaties with others) and recompile all the AIs and see what that does.

Here's a possible use for those: When you are in a militarily dominant role, you could bully with threat of force. "From now on, you will not do any research."

It would be major cool if the ai could figure out that this is a threat, and reply according to the liklihood of win/lose military combat in their systems.

It would be even more cool if it could remember if you broke such treaties shortly afterwards and just killed em all anyway.

[Shadowstar]

Well that's the way the game should work. It doesn't though because it was rushed and the AI was never properly completed. Kwok certainly has a full plate.

[Raapys]

The core game mechanics and the AI need a ton of work before this is anywhere near latest version of SE IV in quality. I was hoping the AI would actually be better here in SE V, but I see we're a long distance away from that point. The AI also has major problems adjusting to 'new features' such as fog of war, which creates silly pathfinding problems and sometimes makes the AI waste dozens of ships just because he can't 'remember' that I have 50 Satellites on the other side of that warp point even though he had already tried 4 times that turn to send lone colony ships through.

Let's hope there will be a pure AI focused patch in the near future.

[Shadowstar]

At this point I'd settle for any AI improvements.

Actually what I would love to see is Kwok's mod getting integrated into the stock game once he's got most of the major issues worked out. He could throw in some AI fixes to that too, and maybe make SE5 the game it should be.

If there's even a chance of that happening, I think MM would do well to fully support him in his endeavours. The two of them working together could have some wonderful results.

[Captain Kwok]

The Balance Mod was actually started to replace stock SE:V, but unfortunately there was enough time before release for it to be integrated into the work already done at the time.

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The AI is not as dumb as you think though. It does remember a number that there are enemies on the other sides of warp points and it does calculate your fleet strength and the value of your systems to see if they are good systems to attack. It also remembers the things your empire commits against them and is capable of some "diplomatic thought". Their fleets do patrol various systems and guard warp points. They do designate explorers and surveyors and they will mine and lay satellites at warp points too. Unfortunately there are still some values that need to be tweaked and designs to be improved to exploit their abilities further.

[Raapys]

I don't know. It might look better on paper and in theory. But situations where one AI empire sends 5 seperate fleets in *one* turn with *a single colony ship* in each, even though it has done the same things dozens of times and never had a ship last more than 1 second once through, makes me think it doesn't really work right. It's not even remembering where and how it met my ships the very same turn.

[pujal]

I made a mod yesterday that took out the no-research a few other treaty elements from the game. Sadly it didn't help much. The AI seems very limited in how much they expand and how many research facilities they make.

I want my money back.