This Was Much Too Easy!

[Richard]

This is more luck than anything, I have rarely seen the AI this easy to push over or to not have colonized other systems yet.

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Sarge is coming...

Richard Arnesen
Director of Covert Ops
Shrapnel Games
http://www.shrapnelgames.com

[pathfinder]

yeah, the AI kicks my anthrapoid butt all too often...as it just did

[Talenn]

What Version were you playing with? In the release (1.02) the AI could sometimes be dealt a 'Small' homeworld which is absolutely crippling, especially if you were on a Gas Giant and close to them.

Try it under the latest Version and with 'Hard' set for Difficulty. It wont play as well as a human most of time but it can do well in certain conditions.

Dont sell it short just yet!

Talenn

[Tomgs]

With the new patch also the fighters are much better. Some AI's use them to guard worlds also. I lost a few ships trying to blockade a homeworld not expecting the beam weapons to have 1% chance to hit fighters 2 squares away and only a 10% chance one square away. I bet this was one of the tweaks in the patch. This makes fighters a lot better. I haven't gone up against one with my point defence yet I just got to level 2 with PD I expect it will have a more normal chance to hit fighters.

Also if the AI views you less amiably the chance he will give you his homeworld is much less. So if you had gone around and killed his ships for a few turns first as is usually the case with a homeworld further away from you he would be much less likely to give up a world to you. It seems, at least to me, if you are amiable or warm to them they give up a bit too easy. Perfect universe for a backstabber.

Also about planets being called systems where did you see this? In my cursory look through the Online manual I didn't see it. I did report one error to Malfador Machinations in the initial release of the manual and they fixed it in the patch. So if you see an error there E-mail them. They do say some things about sectors which is one square in the game. Enough space to hold one planet and its moons if it has any (your ships can move one sector for each of its movement points). But systems are as you say a group of planets revolving around the sun which is how I saw it used in the manual (see system display for example).

[This message has been edited by Tomgs (edited 23 November 2000).]

[Kodos]

This was with the ver. 0.99 Demo.

Yr point about the AI giving in if yr nice to it sounds like what happened. My first act of agression was to blockade it's homeworld, all was peachy before that. Still, it had two other planets in the system, and another colony elsewhere --- it should not have given in to my demand so easily!

And yes, it was the "sector" when refering to a planet's area that led to some confusion (specifically with Supply Depots and Spaceports), not "system" --- my bad.

[Darwin]

Well the important thing to remember here is.

1) Se3 had increadable AI. So we know that MM can do it.

2) I just fired up my copy of SE3. Version 1.17 and I looked through the history.txt for it. Lots of AI improvments throughout.

Lesson of the day is. Just keep playing Just keep downloading the patches. MM are good determined people. This game will get better as you do.

[Tomgs]

The AI is definately better in the full Version than in the demo and the changes in the patch give them better options for defence such as the fighter change and curing the unsheilded bug for units. Its quite a bit harder to win now than it was. Not impossible by any means but the AI is improving.

One thing I would really like to see is a bit more aggression on the part of the AI to attack me in my systems instead of waiting for me to go there and attack them. If I had to spend some of my resources on defence I would have less resources to press my attack. Especially when they declare war on me they should make a concerted effort to find worlds that I control and attack them at least on the higher difficulty levels.