AI's dumb planes strategy

[Col]

So there I am, in the middle of what was shaping up to be a really cracking game. For once the outcome wasn't decided by the time I'd reached Industrial Automation as I faced off against Yang.
He had an army of planes before I had even researched the technology and I braced myself for an aerial onslaught . . . and waited . . . and waited.

To cut a long story short his ambition reached no further than picking off the odd crawler or former while I tediously picked off his bases one by one after building up my airforce. His huge number of planes would occasionally shuffle rather sadly from base to base but would generally remain at home to get blasted to pieces by my now rampant forces.

The computers inability to use airpower yet again ruined my game. Is this a bug and has it been patched, or just unbelievably shoddy ai? Is there a mod out there that helps out maybe, or even some way of removing airpower completely?

How do others deal with this and get a satisfying game out of the computer. I can overlook most of its shortcomings but this blindspot with planes effectively ends the game prematurely.

Any help?

[Alinestra Covelia]

Yang does have a tendency to mass build planes. As far as I've seen, the tactical algorithm that induces the AI to make an aerial attack has to be very highly in favor of the AI winning before it will attack. Most humans can calculate in terms of losing many planes so that others can clear all resistance, but not the AI - it can only see in terms of individual planes dying and therefore count it out of the question.

[Lazerus]

Even then i rarely see chaos needlejets attack anything above a synth, even if its just a plasma with no aero complez or sensor ....

If you want you could always remove the chopper and needlejet chassis from the game by editing the text or moving them right upto the top of the tech tree.

[Alinestra Covelia]

I always remove the choppers from any game I play. They are simply way too powerful to be allowed in the game.

[Mead]

Col


Yes, it's common for Yang to build a terrifying fleet of Aircraft and then only use them to fly them around to attack formers or other soft targets. The AI can't look beyond the immediate battle.

One of my most memorable SMAC memories is a game in which I was getting bored watching Yang fly his fleet east over my (University) territory to harass my submissive ally (UN) and then fly west again to Yang's base. After tolerating this for two turns (and enduring the resulting delay of the game), I decided to build a wall of my units between Lal's base and Yang's base after Yang's planes flew east to visit and harass Lal's base.

Yang's planes were at the end of their fuel range and could not fly around the barrier. A human player would have sacrificed two or three planes to punch a hole though the barrier to allow the rest to return to their base (my barrier units were all ground units). The AI however decided to have each plane do a dance in front of my barrier before each crashed from lack of fuel. Twenty-eight Hive Shard planes did the dance and died.
It was a lot easier than hunting them down later.

Usually, if the game gets to the stage where Yang has a lot of planes I have to take them out, base by base, with choppers; a lengthy tedious task.

The AI has little knowledge of tactics and even less of strategy.


Mead

[moi]

not 100% sure on this or anything, but can't the ai cheat to some extent on fuel allowances (range)?

[Jamski]

Not as far as I know

-Jam

[Lazerus]

Only with missiles


And LOL @ 28 crashed planes, reminds me of lemmings

[gwillybj]

Hive University

[Googlie]

If (in the interests of a better game) you are willing to sacrifice the all-important "pure" smac score, here's what I do.

After starting the game I hit the sceanrio editor and then set the AI's strategy and tactics. Set it to "defende objectives" and then set it to "emphasize air power" and voila, the AI builds loads of interceptors and often air superioroty choppers

If I am playing a "switch" game (change factions every 75 - 100 turns or so) I'll often set the about-to-be AI's Base Governors to produce e.g. defensive units only - land and air, (plus facilities). Again, that base will eventually turn out interceptors, choppers and missiles.

G.

[Maniac]

not 100% sure on this or anything, but can't the ai cheat to some extent on fuel allowances (range)?

In my experience the AI does cheat. For example I'm playing a game where an AI chopper has been hoovering steady over my territory for the last ten years.

[Googlie]

Originally posted by Maniac
an AI chopper has been hoovering steady over my territory

Just be thankful it's sucking up all that fungus!!

GGLIE

[Col]

Originally posted by Googlie
If (in the interests of a better game) you are willing to sacrifice the all-important "pure" smac score, here's what I do.

After starting the game I hit the sceanrio editor and then set the AI's strategy and tactics. Set it to "defende objectives" and then set it to "emphasize air power" and voila, the AI builds loads of interceptors and often air superioroty choppers

G.

Thanks for the tip. What are objectives BTW, can you specify them or is this only a general strategy?

[Googlie]

If you select the left hand menu/scenario/victory conditions it brings up a table whereby you can assign objectives status to a number of items :







You can designate a single (or multiple) base as an objective through the base editor screen:







In addition, you can designate any unit as an objective (in scenario mode) - simple rh click on the unit, and select "edit" - you can set that unit as an objective, have it invisible until a player's unit enters an adjacent square, have it lurking (ie doing nothing for a time) (and I don't know why it says "monolith" - it's a crawler that's there):






- and you set the time thru the data submenu when in the edit mode - but here a scenario glitch forces a rollover to zero at 256, so the effective maximum lurking time is 255 years.





I use that objective status to stop the AI doing stupid things with the units I give it - eg crawlers on a prebuilt energy park (otherwise it uses them to rush basic units and prototypes)



A good tip is to give it, say, five AA's and have them lurking for say 100 years - with maybe a photon AAA trance defender with them in a bunker just to scare away other factions that might stumble on them). The AI then gets either a nice tech boost when cashing them in at mid-game, or else gets a quick SP that otherwise the human player would snag



Then you can set the AI's personality:






and strategy:







and his dealings with each of the other factions in turn (eg Marr's with Deirdre):






Of course you can always give them extra techs, through the scenario editor or extra base facilities, etc, just to make them more powerful


G.