AI Faction Strategy and doing without Centauri Ecology

[aaglo]

I thought that the industry and research bonuses cannot be more than +50%, no matter what the SE-settings are...

[Kataphraktoi]

yes,any bonus over 5+ is wasted. 50% faster is still alot...

The AI cheat I don't like is its ability to see your units no matter if they are hiding in fungus, are subs, or have a cloaking device. The AI sees it coming no matter what

i have used carrier+cloak on transcend,the AI never attacks me,even when it has a huge airforce...i find carrier+cloak very nice for sneaking PBs in....

[Grail Quest]

Originally posted by Cataphract887
i have used carrier+cloak on transcend,the AI never attacks me,even when it has a huge airforce...i find carrier+cloak very nice for sneaking PBs in....

Eh? Can you have a cloaked ship? I thought Carriers are only for sea units, and Cloak only for land units. The rationale, I suppose, being that at sea, ZoCs are ignored anyway, so Sub becomes the "cloaking device" for sea units.

[DilithiumDad]

I have played a number of "switcheroo" games where I use the Editor function to take over the weakest AI faction and then go on to win the game. (I recommend it --quite challenging on Transcend especially fighting against the faction you formerly controlled!) Anyway, the last-place faction was usually Spartans or Believers and almost always lacked Centauri Ecology. This could be some sort of bug in the AI routine to overemphasize military.

[Kataphraktoi]

Eh? Can you have a cloaked ship? I thought Carriers are only for sea units, and Cloak only for land units. The rationale, I suppose, being that at sea, ZoCs are ignored anyway, so Sub becomes the "cloaking device" for sea units.

you might be right.its either sub or cloak,anyway.i find it strange that you can have a submarine\cloaked aircraft carrier.

[Kataphraktoi]

(checked in editor)

yes,ships have sub,not cloak.i did forgot you needed troop transport for the carrier option to appear and was wondering why i couldnt select that ability

[Phil_de_geezer]

The a.i. always sees your hidden units?

Hmmmm. I had a transport on hold in some fungus for about 200 years and it was never seen despite Believing ships constantly moving next to it. The transport was in a little inlet so i doubt the ai had any reason to move into the square.

Having said that, the ai does seem to spot your units more than they should - does anyone know anything about it?

[johndmuller]

Conventional wisdom is that the AI has total visibility. A possible reason would be that otherwise the game would have to maintain 8 or more pretty much complete maps to keep track of the real map plus what each of the factions think it is (of course it does just that in a 7 person pbem).

Alternatively, it could be that the AI is capable of much more disciplined constant patrolling and peeking into things than would a human. Since even human players get to see hidden units if trying to enter the tile they are hiding in, the AI could possibly be getting its info legitimately.

I have looked into infiltrated AI bases to see if it showed my units in close in fungus tiles and generally it doesn't, so that would suggest that the AI is fair. OTOH, if you drag a unit toward some distant point, it will avoid otherwise hidden units along what would have been the obvious path granting even human players some info that they don't deserve to have.

Whatever the actuality, I think that most people have concluded that they seem to know more than they should and act as if the AI knows all.