1) the ai seldom/never uses ship designs with modules that cost strategic resources.

this cripples the ai as it is ~2 tiers of tech behind a player that uses those modules. a fleet which is that far ahead can usually defeat many fleets with generic modules.

the optimal strategy would be:

a) ships that go for full quality, i.e. the best modules that you your strategic stockpile can muster. these high quality ships should be lead by a hero and be primarily used to crush enemy fleets. these fleets should be fast, i.e. at least two engines to hunt enemy fleets.

b) ships that use generic upgrades. these ships are used for secondary defence and sieging/invading enemy systems

this would mean that the ai would need two ship designs per ship type as well as different strategic use of fleets depending on their role.

2) the ai uses the wrong battle cards for it's ship designs. i have seen a few times, e.g. using close quarter combat cards when it has all missiles or using long range combat cards when it uses beams. to be fair it is a bit seldom as those weapon systems are not used that often (they should be rebalanced imho, missiles shoud be 100/80/50 and beam should be 25/50/100).

3) as described the ai does not build dedicated combat supremacy fleets but tends to spam mediocre ships. but even then it does not conduct warfare correctly:

the first thing the ai should do is hunt down enemy fleets and invade systems with secondary fleets later on. currently all the ai does is sieging the nearest system.

addendum:

4) the ai uses retreat too often. i often see the ai retreating with it's fleets and taking damage, then it returns the next turn to be defeated in battle (or hunted down by my fleets) just to combat my fleets with weakened ships. the ai should fight if the enemy can catch it's fleets and it should not send injured fleets it just retreated back into systems it just retreaded from.

1) What difficulty are you playing with? This is simply isn't true, in my last game AI rather effectively and constantly used both titatium and hyperium weapons against me. They might not equip said modules, if they suffer resource shortage. This is especially true with higher tier strategic resources, because of their scarcity. It's better to have some weapons then none.

2) Same thing. In my game AI doesn't simply amplify their fleet effectiveness with cards, but tries to counter my fleet at the same time. Card effects are often stronger then range intentions they allow.

3) AI is usually limited by its resources. If to produce fully equiped large ship it will require 10+ turns and virtually all startegic resource stock it has - it won't do so. If it can produse a big strong ship in a short time and still be left with a high stock of resources - it will do so. I've seen such cases too.

4) This is were AI might actually need some adjucements :)

Suggestion: try rising AI difficulty to hard and above. AI will get a boost in resource production, so it WILL become more aggresive and well prepeared.

1) serious

2) not if you disable all your weapons. might be fringe case.

again i made my observations in with games of 200+ turns and always on serious difficulty. also the market is flooded with strategic resources.

in my last game i conquered the remnants of an enemy empire, they had 2 systems and ~6 fleets of 10 small ships. i destroyed/fought 2 fleets in combat before i finally conqered both systems, because the ai kept retreating.

maybe retreating should only be limited to colonizers and scout ship classes:

1) the ai can't handle it, see 4) above

2) it is very annoying, especially because it takes like 10 seconds before the ai decides to retreat and the player just stares at the screen waiting for the ai's reaction

Hi tesb,

Sublustris is right on what he told you and most of the time strategic resource scarcity is the problem. If the market was indeed flooded then it should have bought the resources on it (if you have a save I'll investigate). It could be however that the AI doesn't research new military modules agressively enough, this is always something we could tweak.

Let me also add that currently the AI adapts its ship designs to what we call its "main enemy" - it's possible you weren't its main enemy at the time (if you provide a save I can tell you for sure :)) and that she was at war with someone else.

The good news is that we have been working on the retreat heuristics, and the AI will retreat less often and (hopefully) more intelligently in upcoming patches!

Thanks for the feedback,

ok i finally saw some strategic resource weapon modules (red and blue missiles). needless to say that they came very late (my fleets are all highest tier strat. res. modules)