AI Improvements

[Xytop]

After a few games (Hard and Very Hard Difficulty) I found some things where the AI definitely needs some improvements:

- Economic Victory: This is the easiest by far. No one is gonna stop you if you go for it. During mid-game (Mechanical Era) you just set the taxes to 100%, build wealth in some city and your econimic victory goes up by 4-8% per turn. 10-20 turns later you win the game without any interference from the other factions. I think the AI should at least reduce their production on some degree and concentrating on generating money to prevent the player when he gets close to win the game. This also applies for the other victory types. I think all the factions should go all out on any player to prevent their victory (if someone reaches 50%+ or even before).

- Declaring War on the player: Is it just me or does the AI rarely declare war to human players? In all my games only 1 AI every declared war on me (on my first game). Even if I was one of the weakest factions. As often as they are fighting between them, I think it should be the same for the player. On my last game I was between Ascension and Imperium and they were fighting against each other but never declared war on me (difficulty very hard, very aggressive aliens, my military strength on the diplomatic window only showed 1 point).

[jdmillard]

Excellent points.

- Declaring War on the player: Is it just me or does the AI rarely declare war to human players? In all my games only 1 AI every declared war on me (on my first game). Even if I was one of the weakest factions. As often as they are fighting between them, I think it should be the same for the player. On my last game I was between Ascension and Imperium and they were fighting against each other but never declared war on me (difficulty very hard, very aggressive aliens, my military strength on the diplomatic window only showed 1 point).

I will add this to the Diplomacy Feedback thread above.

[HitmanN]

AI's have declared war on me many times. In almost every game Imperium and Ascension both have done that eventually. In addition to military strength, there's also diplomatic relationship to consider. My playstyle rarely involves any pacts or paying tributes or anything, so unless a faction worships me of its own volition, the AI's tend to be pretty pissed at me, which is probably why they declare war often.

I personally find it rather odd that taking a neutral stance (not threatening anyone, but also forming zero pacts) veers towards negative in the long run. IMO, it should lead the relationship to some sort of neutral state. Why is everyone pissed at me if I decide not to use diplomacy? They don't seem to get angry if I decide to produce little wealth or research, so why be angry if I 'produce' little diplomacy? I like being a recluse. "Leave me alone and I'll leave you alone." It shouldn't be seen as negative.

[Xytop]

Could be that it depends on your diplomatic actions. I always do the same, accept every non-aggression pact (and research/trade if they offer it to me) but I never accept an open borders treaty. It could be that the AI declares war less often if you dont sign this treaty (or even never, the only war declarations I ever received was in the game, where I accepted the open borders treaty).

[jdmillard]

I can confirm that it does depend on your actions. In the past I've been able to get every single faction to "generous" except 1. There's always 1 (sometimes two) who is completely uncooperative and eventually declares war on me even if I never did anything against them (thus confirming the "one war declaration per game" pattern).

Obviously, I could change up my diplomatic actions and let other factions hate me... that would clearly have a different result.