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DreadArchon

Join Date 05/2006

AI Stupid Planet Bulding--I know the cause!

(Disclaimer: No I don't. Not really.)

A lot of people complain about the AI not developing planets well. I hadn't really noticed, but I looked around in my most recent games and sure enough...

Now, I haven't done any real testing (since I'm not really sure how to), but it would APPEAR that the AI will not build on Terraformed tiles! All the races in my current game (on Painful) have free space on their (otherwise expertly developed) planets, and that free space is about what I'd expect you to get by Terraforming. The races with Habitat Improvement but no Terraforming have fewer undeveloped tiles, even!

Four possible reasons for this occur to me:
1) The tile improvements themselves function as buildings (fact), so maybe the AI regards those tiles as being "already built on" as a result. This could be tested by trading Xeno Ethics to a neutral race before they have a chance to reasearch the Soil Enhancement line, as they'd get those tiles without imagining something on them already. I haven't tested this, though, as it'd take a while to do so, especially since the AI will usually go for Terraforming long before Xeno Ethics (despite being neutral!).

2) Perhaps the AI asseses a planet based on how it is when the AI arrives. I tile that's unusable once may be unusable always.

3) Something else I haven't thought of.

4) A different cause for the problem entirely, me being totally wrong.

I'm leaning towards #1, as it would explain why I sometimes see Arceans with well-developed worlds throughout the game.

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But that doesn#'t explain how they leave 30 out of 35 tiles undeveloped about 3 hours into a game.

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Now that I've NEVER seen. Do they do it often? Is it possible that those planets were damaged in a recent invasion? Are those numbers (30 and 35) exaggerated, or precisely accurate (I've gotten planets that jumped by 15 tiles after terraforming, it would appear that terraforming availability is randomly determined)?

Edit: And what's "3 hours?" I've played a few games where the colony rush wasn't done in three hours, and I rarely if ever am finished with construction that fast, but how many turns was 3 hours for you?

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I've seen this on several occasions--one of which I'm playing now (Large/challenging/4 races + me the Terrans). My 52 planets have nearly finished populating the planets tiles with various structures. A Yor planet flipped to me on influence (Yor were never involved in wars, have built only 1 combat ship, own no resources or other starbases).

The planet that flipped (Class 9) only had 4 tiles populated and it had colonized it the same time some of mine were colonized that are now full of structures.

My suspcion is that they research the expensive manufacturing plants and get into the upgrade cycle without the proper manufacturing base already established.

For myself, my strategy is to hold off on many of the later (expensive) upgrades until I've nearly fully populated the planet's tiles with structures. Then I enter into the eternal upgrade cycles.

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This still doesn't explain why the AI sometimes wastes bonus squares with inappropriate buildings (ie ones that don't use that bonus).

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30 of 35 unused happens EXTREMLY often in my games... And i play all from normal to insane

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I wonder how much of what is being seen, particularly on militarily conquered planets, is a result of "scorched earth" policy, where the civ knows its about to be invaded and just decommisions many of its factories etc. to force the invader to rebuild, slowing them down. Of course a flipped planet actually *likes* the 'invaders' so those instances have to be something else.

Cheers,
Reaver

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Its based on YOUR players planet quality score during the game. Not the AI's. The AI's might be totally different than yours so can only build on certain tiles.

If it isnt, it should be.

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Alstein

Join Date 07/2004

+55

I think the AI should have a hard-coded rule. Do not develop anything on bonus tiles other then a building that receives the bonus, if there is another empty tile avaliable...

That's something 100% of players would do, and anything that 100% of players would do can be hard-coded.

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I play mainly on suicidal level and can confirm most large planets are largely empty...even before I take over their planets...this after 4-5 game years. The smaller planets seem to be more developed.

The AI seems to build very very few Factory improvements, I suspect it buys most of the ships it needs. Also probably 90% of the planets have no Farm improvements and therefore pop caps out at 5k. When it does build an improvement, the AI often misuses bonus tiles building the wrong improvements

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Argh, no! What about farms?!? What about manufacturing worlds that have a research tile and vice-versa? What about influence and approval bonuses on planets that have multiples or otherwise don't need them? That'd be like ten steps way back.

Killzone: I'm not seeing that on Painful. Currently, I'm a few years in and and at least four of the opposing AI's have multiple planets where 75% or more tiles are used by manufacturing centers. That seems to happen consistently enough in my other games, too. Also, the AI is using its bonus tiles expertly in my games. Maybe I'll get you a screenshot or two.

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Huh. Well this is odd... I guess you guys have a point. While still in the process of building worlds, the AI in my games has worlds that look like they'll turn out like this: [link="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v351/DreadArchon/GC2goodworld.jpg"]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v351/DreadArchon/GC2goodworld.jpg">Link

However, most I'm seeing now are somewhat blah, like this: [link="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v351/DreadArchon/GC2goodworld2.jpg"]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v351/DreadArchon/GC2goodworld2.jpg">Link

And MOST of them look like this: [link="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v351/DreadArchon/GC2averageworld.jpg"]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v351/DreadArchon/GC2averageworld.jpg">Link

Note that those are all three screenshots of different AI worlds from the same turn of the same game. That first one came out okay (though not what I personally would call "good" since it has a fleet manager and isn't full, plus it's a bit small for a capital, etc.), but that last one is by far the most common design. In fact, at least 75% of the ai worlds I'm seeing, across all races (except the Arceans, who have discovery sphere instead of invention matrix), have those EXACT improvements.

So, yeah, I have no idea.

What really gets me is that their planets don't look that bad while they're building them. It's like they think they're optimizing somehow by reducing the planets to that third picture when they're done with them.

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