What bugs you most

[fender]

What bugs you most about the AI. There are a few things that bother me.

Bad military decisions.

Wrong type of units used in military actions.

Vendetta on you when they have NO chance of even putting up a fight.

The very warlike nature of any faction in the lead (and a some not even close to the lead) is a sad comment on mankind.

Many or most won’t surrender ‘til they have only a few bases left.

Most of the time if you're too powerfull, no one will pact with you unless there are in really bad shape and under attack.

I guess general stupidity sums up most the problems with the AI.

[smacksim]

make it into a poll Fender

[Blake]

The AI doesn't bother me much. What really bothers me is having to confirm destroy farms/forets etc under a borehole/condensor. Not for the first former, but for the Nth former assisting on the job.

[Enigma_Nova]

Annoyances about the AI:
When they f*$@ base-push me, I invade them, and my integrity goes down.
I mean WTF?

[Skanky Burns]

That I agree with, but in my current game it was so satisfying to finally get my own back on the AI.

I'm running FM so my war with the Hive is on a defensive footing, but with my continuous ICS push, I got bases progressivly closer to his territory. I got one base so that there was just one square between his and my base, sent a whole heap of attack rovers sitting inside my new base. Next turn, invasion without the associated drone problems and without the inefficiency of leaving FM.

[Enigma_Nova]

I heard Kody mention something about a line of bases progression.
You might be on to something there, Mr. Burns.

[Blake]

Thats the thing about AI stealing territory, any human who is half decent at dense base spacing pratically ignores territory, because every base pushes the AI territory back. In general, humans are far more agressive at stealing territory than AI's.

Thing that actually annoys me most about the AI is they won't plant enough forests or build enough treefarms, and they are so obsessive about building units they end up using 80% of their minerals on support, and having garrisons of aircraft under FM....

[Enigma_Nova]

Would have been better to make the AI moddable, eh?

[logic_error]

Originally posted by Enigma_Nova
Annoyances about the AI:
When they f*$@ base-push me, I invade them, and my integrity goes down.
I mean WTF?

Just provoke them with a single probe team to declare war. Problem solved, huh?

[Dis]

many things bother me.

Like when they propose lobpsided tech trades. Progenitor psych for industrial automation or some other level 3 or level 4 tech. I actually did agree to a trade like that. Just to keep on their good side.

Or like how the AI cannot use navies effectively or launch amphibious assaults or use transports at all really.

Or how the AI cannot coordinate attacks of large numbers of units.

There are many things that I don't like about the AI.

[smacksim]

Originally posted by Enigma_Nova
Would have been better to make the AI moddable, eh?

All that needed to be done was to have the interface scriptable so that we could make AI bots. Yeah, so AI bottable, rather than moddable. I can understand why they didn't release the source code of the AI. It may look bad from our perspective, but it was a lot of work for them. Also, SID games never release source, as far as I can tell. I think it's an intellectual superiority thing: "Noone would be able to think of this themselves"

-S

[CEO Aaron]

I'm with Blake, the AI's worst features are it's loathsome overcommitment of it's own support, the feeble and halfhearted terraforming, and the absolutely inept management of their resources altogether.

[ESpark]

The fusion of two things is currently irritating me. I know its not about the AI, but I feel the need to vent.

The first is the way fungus is placed. Storyline, it is said to be in 'beds', but the way it looks is simply lines and lines of Fungus.

The second thing is that for whatever reason, it always takes my units annoyingly long to cross a single line of fungus, sometimes. This is usually most annoying early in the game when I need some raw base advantage, and my pod takes 3 or 4 turns just to get passed that damned square. Its lame, but I find myself saving every turn in those early games - not to avoid hitting worms, but so that Pod 1 can get to the base location before turn 15.

/rant

[livid imp]

Originally posted by ESpark
The first is the way fungus is placed. Storyline, it is said to be in 'beds', but the way it looks is simply lines and lines of Fungus.

I believe the "beds" are actually represented by a single tile, not multiple tiles as you are assuming. A single tile would have to represent several miles worth of fungus. We, in our 'god view' sometimes forget this point.

Originally posted by ESpark
....and my pod takes 3 or 4 turns just to get passed that damned square....

So does everyone else. I have a hard time being irritated by something that at least is inherently fair.

I find the AI refusing peace when they don't even have a chance of defending itself (i.e. all military units are destroyed), or ridiculously imbalanced trades to be the most maddening. 50ec for Air Power? I don't think so.

[ESpark]

A single tile would have to represent several miles worth of fungus.

I thought a little about that. How big are squares?

So does everyone else. I have a hard time being irritated by something that at least is inherently fair.

The AI (all I ever play against) doesn't seem to.