Have you ever been beat by the AI?

[Taera]

Once or twice (not counting my most stupid destruction of my homeworld by enemy escort-scout). Usualy in a bad game AI locks me up on defense and slowly destroys my space. I might have survived in such cases but i cannot be sure because i never waited till the end in such occasion becasue it becomes boring.

[oleg]

I've been beaten by TDM AI. People who are very proud about being head&shoulder (P&G tm) above AI probably never played TDM at highest settings. If you are unlucky with starting position, it may be absolutely impossible to win. Does not matter how good you are.

[Ragnarok]

Originally posted by oleg:
I've been beaten by TDM AI. People who are very proud about being head&shoulder (P&G tm) above AI probably never played TDM at highest settings. If you are unlucky with starting position, it may be absolutely impossible to win. Does not matter how good you are.

Yeah, this is what I've heard. That's why in my next game I'm using TDM races with the highest settings. I think it'll be a fun game. I'll get beat probably but hey, nothing wrong with that!

[Arkcon]

Just a little life history ...

I was in severe withdrawal from my favorate game Galactic Civilizations because I didn't have OS/2 anymore. So I searched CNET and downloaded the demo of SE3.

And was rapidly whipped to a froth by the AI.

Seriously... I couldn't do anything. Oh so many stories. I couldn't understand tactical combat so ship design was random. My best story? I designed a ship with boarding parties... AND IT GOT BOARDED AND CAPTURED BY THE AI I'm still at a loss for how that happened. Once I won, by turning on all ministers. Neat trick it had -- building spaceyards in the asteroid fields and sending ships everywhere from there.

So I went to the MM website and found out about SE4, waited for the demo to be ready and downloaded it. Lots of eyecandy, good interface, new rules. And I got mysleff royally spanked yet again from the AI.

I paid for and ordered the full game before I ever was able to even survive 100 turns. Boy, wouldn't it have been stupid to own a game you couldn't play well at all?

Soon I figured it out. Pay attention to each planet, adjust ship design to what you see around you, the AI is heartless and wants nothing less than complete galactic domination -- and those are the peaceful ones. (that is the biggest diffence between SE4 and GalCiv)

Long story short, if the AI is too easy for you MoO geniuses, it's because MM wrote it for people like me.

Perhaps in SE5, there could be different sets of AI files -- low dificultly would use a simpler AI files, high difficulty would use very efficient TDM modpack-like files.

[EDIT] Com'on newbies. 'Fess up. Some people have mentioned that they were losing and needed serious help. Anyone else just pick a race that looked good in the quickstart menu, start playing (just what dificulty does it usewhen you do that), and just fail to build enough of the right facilitys and ships and just lose all planets and ships to a AI assault?

[ July 20, 2002, 14:24: Message edited by: Arkcon ]

[Nodachi]

This happened recently; I was trying out Fyrons Quad Mod with high tech and TDM races. I was hell-bent on colonising every planet in my home system before spreading out. I had managed to do it and built-up some kick-*** defenses. I started sending out some survey ships to start spreading out. The new turn started and I read that a star had been destroyed. Oh no! The AI had the same idea as I did (I had two star destroyers being built). It wasn't until moving further down in my Messages that it clicked in my head, That was my home system's star!! I had forgotten to build a system shield!

Whether I was defeated by the AI or my own stupidity is your call!

[Baron Munchausen]

Nope, never been strategically defeated by the AI, although it can win the occasional battle here & there. It's just too simple-minded, and never presses the advantage when it has it. That's why I think we need more game features to keep human players busy. Space monsters, pirates, etc. When life gets more complicated you'll have more trouble using your superior thinking skills to whip the AI.

[capnq]

pick a race that looked good in the quickstart menu, start playing (just what dificulty does it usewhen you do that)

A Quick Start game always uses the same default settings that you see on New Game/Set-Up. It doesn't remember the settings you started the Last New Game with.