Suis3i wrote:

Well, overall I hope the DEVs see this and are inspired (?) to continue to improve the AI. 

Maybe you are not that serious about this statement, but I don't dig the implication that the devs don't care or are not inspired to continue improving the AI. Threads like this pop up periodically here and in the Steam forums. (Of course, some on Steam are a lot less polite than most on this forum). I'm sure they are aware of player feelings on this by now. It is probably more helpful to upload a game save that shows a specific AI behavior that could be improved. 

I'm sure good AI is hard to program as the "AI" in games does not have any actual intelligence to react to specific situations. And the devs have to strike a balance, as some players want an AI that tries hard to win while others want AI that acts in character with the faction it represents. And maybe amplitude doesn't have the resources to maintain different sets of AI behaviors for different difficulty levels.

That said, there are areas that could stand ongoing improvement, such as the AI's ship designs and fleet management. When it is really losing a war, I've seen an AI send smaller fleets to systems I'm sieging, but then retreat when I attack those fleets. Sometimes it will do this with a fleet that is already below full health and lose ships for nothing. That type of behavior ended up hurting the AI a lot in Endless Legend. It would be better if it could attempt to wear down a sieging fleet, using long-range tactics cards and appropriate weapons (instead of Railguns on small attacker ships).

Apologies. That is why I said "maybe you are not serious," and I didn't mean to associate you with posters on Steam. So we agree "inspired" may not be the right word. My post was more a reaction to the ubiquity of threads about AI. Some threads (like this one) contain potentially useful feedback for the devs, while others may not.

Slashman wrote:

OK on this point I don't exactly agree. AFAIK, the AI in ES 2 does not have a different set of intelligence algorithims for Normal than it does on Endless. It simply gets FIDSI bonuses. That distinction is important to understand when assessing AI competence. The AI does more "smart" stuff at higher levels because it doesn't have to earn its resources in the same way that a human player does. 

The AI in ES2 doesn't simply get more FIDSI (that was true of the AI in ES, though). The AI in ES2 also becomes quite a bit more agressive as its difficulty level scales up, rendering more likely to do the sneaky "smart" stuff, whereas it's happy to tag along in lower difficulty modes.

As mentioned by eruanion, a game save showing a specific behavior that could be improved (along with a good description of what led up to that point) would be handier than high-level discussion of systems.

Has the AI got any better after a year of patches ?

Because I restarted a game maybe 10 months after my last one.  After 50 turns, on endless difficulty, Carvers neighbor keep sending my civilian ships (?!?!?) for free money and send me fleet of like TWO HUNTERS while I have Medium ships ?!?  

It looks terrible....

Because military in this game ain't that hard.  Aggressive AI should just stack up a big attack fleet until its maxed out and pimped and the only "decision" they need to make is "when they send it".  Because right now that "decided" that two hunters is a strong enough fleet ?!?