AI+Minefield
Even with the improvements in patch 1.19 the AI is still totally hopeless with minefields.
I've watched in awe as the AI throws dozens of attack ships agains minefields. Sometimes
it will try to sweep these minefields, but the problem in this is that it sends only 1 sweeper. Usually this is not enough to clear the minefield. AI should create Mine sweeper
fleets as it now creates fleets of attack ships and carriers. Or it would be even better that those sweepers would be included
in these fleets. It is clear that the mines
are too powerfull at the moment. You dont need any other defense against AI except mines. An easy way to protect your colonies
is to just build few mines on the planet and then launch them to the orbit. Works way better than Sats/WP/Bases. It is strange also that at the moment you can put 2/3/4 mine warheads in mines. They would be powerfull enough, even if this would be lowered to 1/2/3 warheads. I know that you
could play without mines, but that is just
like playing the game with one hand tied behind your back. Also one partial solution to this problem would be to include 1 or 2
mine sweeping components in Attack ship designs. It would lower their effectiveness in combat but in games where players use mines the AI hardly ever gets to attack anything because of those minefields. One other nice solution would be to change minefields to decaying minefields. Perhaps it could be made so that each minefield would lose 10% of it's mines or 1 mine whichever is greater per turn. Also one solution and perhaps the best one is to change the point defense component so that it acts also as a minesweeping component.
One could imagine mines then as small missiles with engines and sensors. They would activate themselves when enemy ships enter their sector. Then they would fire up their engines and start acting like missiles... this would justify the use of point defense against them. Also no minesweeping components would be required then.
Ah.. and that colony ship bug with minefields still exists after the patch 1.19.
Send a colonyship into enemy minefield and it will suck all mines from that sector with only the colony component staying intact.
Possible and easy solution to this is to change the colony components Tonnage Structure value from 200-->50. I have tested this and the problem is gone now.
AI+Black Hole
These are a real pain in the butt for AI.
Combined with unstable warp points these black holes are a real death trap for AI ships. At the moment unstable warp point does 200 points of damage. Any smaller ship
(colonizer for example) is almost guaranteed to lose most of its engines, and then it is history. I have also seen the AI to throw
dozens of ships in these death traps from turn to turn (i remember that someone else has mentioned this before). So when AI encounters a black hole in a game, it's almost guaranteed to lose most of it's ships
in this death trap. A couple partial solutions could be:
- Change the unstable warp point damage lower, possibly 200-->50, it would give the ship entering a black hole system at least a small chance of survival.
- Lower the percentage of systems with black hole. Currently this ranges from 5% to 15%
of all systems. Could be something like 2% to 5%. This could be also closer to reality, i doubt there is 1 black hole per every 20 star systems in real world
.
Phew.. sorry about this long rant.. had to let some steam out
. All in all the SEIV is the best 4X game ever made... even better
than MOO2 IMHO.
AI+Minefield/AI+Black Hole=Disaster (longish)
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