AI must be patched!

[Courageous]

You think the A.I. sucks? Play _Ascendancy_.
Then you will count your blessings. Anyway,
for a harder game, play in a small universe
with the maximum number of AI opponents.
Turn off the neutrals. Set the AI to hard
and give the AI's the maximum bonus. You
might also hand generate a number of AI
players as opposed to using the random ones.
Make them all bloodthirsty xenophobes.

[Talenn]

Courageous:

From what I can tell, making them 'Bloodthirsty Xenophobes' will do nothing. 'Xenophobe' is just a Cultural trait with attendant modifiers to production etc, but 'Bloodthirsty' seems to be a simple text description that has no bearing on the game.

I could be in error here, but I see nothing in the AI files that references whether it is 'Friendly' or 'Bloodthirsty'. Aside from that, simple game experience has shown me that the two type will act no differently.

I think that seems to the #1 complaint at this stage...lack of variety and competence of AI.

Talenn

[Warlord Adamus]

Talenn- Bloodthirsty is a happiness type and does have a big effect in the game.

[Talenn]

Ahh, ok, I thought he meant in the 'Description' part. But actually, making an AI 'Bloodthirsty' as a Happiness type just seems to screw it up. It still doenst respond and it just has unhappy colonies instead. I experimented with that when I first had doubts about the AI's aggressiveness. Has it been changed in 1.11? I didnt see anything about such but I havent tested it yet.

Thanx,
Talenn

[Courageous]

Eschew peace. Declare war; this will make
those AI's quite happy, I assure you.

C//

[Warlord Adamus]

"But actually, making an AI 'Bloodthirsty' as a Happiness type just seems to screw it up. It still doenst respond and it just has unhappy colonies instead. I experimented with that when I first had doubts about the AI's aggressiveness. "

That kinda depends on the situation the AI is in. If they are fighting many other AI's bloodthirsty is often better. I posted some improved AI files on the bottom of this, or the previous page. It has the AI's using different happiness types and includes the rest of them at a 2000 point start. It should be in the next regular patch, I think.

[Taqwus]

...on happiness --

Is there some minimum ratio of ships to colonies that one must have to stop mass riots?

In a long (maybe 280-turn), large (255-system) galaxy where eventually the Ukra-Tal, Xi-Chung and Fazrah all surrendered to me, *all* of their planets were rioting. The Ukra-Tal, first to go, were rioting for years...

It's simply wasn't practical to garrison them all, or to build useless warships just to hang out in each system -- I had stopped years before at a total of 19 DNs, 8 BBs and 1 BC, because more weren't justified from a military POV. In fact, the sole opposition was an isolated neutral that hadn't yet been found, and hadn't developed anything more menacing than a DUC-1 it seemed.

Never mind that they were now protected by the most powerful ships they'd ever seen (as in -- destroying fleets of 7 DNs, solo, with ease), never mind that given the chance I'd have improved their lives via atmosphere conVersion and similar facilities, never mind that my espionage system would keep them safe from saboteurs or that their previous leaders were incompetent...

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-- The thing that goes bump in the night