Primarily the thing that is making me not want to play this game is the current AI set up. I understand my previous play style was a little overly indulgent. I only built up fleet ships when I got into a war. I stayed up on tech and had good systems to build them immediately, so it still made sense and seemed fine overall. I can see balancing for an AI opponent that approach is not necessarily fair. They need to build ships since they cannot see sneak attacks. It is great they are using military checks and basing aggression on them. I do not mind shifting my play style.



However, there is no other option for the most part any more. Every computer empire is an endless clown car of ships. I do not understand how their economies work at all. I have to derail my own economy every game just to get the chance of not being at war with every empire on the map. I can destroy fleet after fleet after fleet and they just keep coming. Even the friendly aligned empires go to war if I am not losing 200 dust per turn to fleet upkeep.



I mean even the Amoeba, Space Freaking Gandhi, eventually just go to war because I have not built 16 ships for every system I own. "The Way of Harmony" achievement is completely impossible at this point as far as I can see. It makes sense if the Cravers, Hissho, and Sheridan all favoured that mentality: war if the other empire has low fleets. But seriously? The Amoeba, Pilgrims, and Sophons too?



I just do not like that I cannot focus on cultivating a strong empire of good well developed systems. One with economic or science power and relative peace. Instead I have to have my systems constantly making ships or I cannot get trade routes or treaties which means anything but a military based victory is off the table.



The computer also seems to function just fine colonising every single planet they can. From turn 1. Did they get a retarded buff on morale or something? I am going toe to toe with them, I have better tech and the same number of systems. They colonise all their planets and apparently all their output is higher despite what should be open revolt on morale. With 6 billion ships, and colonising every horrible planet they can find they still have more income per turn. If the morale aspect cannot grind an empire to a stop, it serves no function at all.



I know the game, I have nearly 800 hours in it. I have been playing since December of last year. Everything used to make more sense. But since the Disharmony release I have had to get extremely lucky to get a game where I do not end up at war with the whole galaxy. I'm about to stop playing at this rate. If the game is just going to be "build ships, invade planets" then I can play an RTS better geared towards it. The non-military options seem vanishingly small, and that is the strong element 4x games give over other game formats.



Sorry if this is a bit rambling, but I am really frustrated with the current state of the game. It seems you either build a military empire or just wait for turn 100 when everything is falling apart and start a new game. Please do something about the AI, at least the peaceful aligned ones. Tired of constant war.

You at war with everyone constantly because you are winning. Fall behind points in one game and you'll see the AI is noticeably more docile towards the human player. I've noticed that in most my games where I end up 3rd or 4th in the points tooltip this happens. You will still get the occasional sneak attack but they won't all be gunning for you.

I am rarely in first, usually in 4th or lower. Yeah, being behind on points makes them less likely to declare war. But they will declare war if they have bigger fleets. Fleets and population heavily influence score, I play Sower affinity often so with small fleets and low population growth it is easy to be lower in the overall score. It makes no difference. War with 3 empires that are near enough to invade always seems to happen.

There currently is a bug that causes the AI to declare war on every other empire no matter there current number of wars because of a wrong condition in one of the XML-files.

I have fixed it in my Mod: /#/endless-space/forum/37-modding/thread/16158-released-small-mod-governors-colors-tonnages-ressource-requirements



Meedoc has confirmed the fix to work and said it'll be in the next patch.

So you can either try out my mod or wait for the next patch and then hopefully there will be less war-declarations.

Ail wrote:
There currently is a bug that causes the AI to declare war on every other empire no matter there current number of wars because of a wrong condition in one of the XML-files.

I have fixed it in my Mod: /#/endless-space/forum/37-modding/thread/16158-released-small-mod-governors-colors-tonnages-ressource-requirements



Meedoc has confirmed the fix to work and said it'll be in the next patch.

So you can either try out my mod or wait for the next patch and then hopefully there will be less war-declarations.

Giving your mod a try.



Does your mod break Steam achievements or anything like that? I've never used mods in ES before.

donorfeo wrote:


The computer also seems to function just fine colonising every single planet they can. From turn 1. Did they get a retarded buff on morale or something? I am going toe to toe with them, I have better tech and the same number of systems. They colonise all their planets and apparently all their output is higher despite what should be open revolt on morale. With 6 billion ships, and colonising every horrible planet they can find they still have more income per turn. If the morale aspect cannot grind an empire to a stop, it serves no function at all.

You probably realized this by now, but the computer players cheat. The higher the game difficulty the bigger their inherent bonus. My memory is a little fuzzy on this but I believe the cheats were made much greater for Disharmony (as opposed to Classic). I've heard the rationale was the players were previously beating Endless too easily and AI improvements would take time so they put in the cheats as a crutch.

Ail wrote:
There currently is a bug that causes the AI to declare war on every other empire no matter there current number of wars because of a wrong condition in one of the XML-files.

I have fixed it in my Mod: /#/endless-space/forum/37-modding/thread/16158-released-small-mod-governors-colors-tonnages-ressource-requirements

I encounter that bug at least 10 times a game. An empires status towards me is "Very Friendly" and the next turn, he declares war.

Slashman wrote:
Does your mod break Steam achievements or anything like that? I've never used mods in ES before.

Yes, it "breaks" Steam-Achievements. They are disabled for any mod because theoretically a mod could also be made to make the achievements a lot easier.



@Stealth_Hawk: Well, there probably is more to it than what I fixed. I only fixed the behaviour that the AI, that already is at war would declare even more wars. If the AI is not at war with anyone, it might still declare war on you if it likes you. But chances are it declares war on someone it doesn't like first and then won't declare any more wars on the ones it likes.

Ail wrote:
There currently is a bug that causes the AI to declare war on every other empire no matter there current number of wars because of a wrong condition in one of the XML-files.

I have fixed it in my Mod: /#/endless-space/forum/37-modding/thread/16158-released-small-mod-governors-colors-tonnages-ressource-requirements



Meedoc has confirmed the fix to work and said it'll be in the next patch.

So you can either try out my mod or wait for the next patch and then hopefully there will be less war-declarations.

I wish when a bug this serious is found that an interim patch would be issued. "We'll fix it next patch" while certainly better than no fix at all is not a satisfying answer.



PS. Thanks for the mod to fix this!

Well, when it comes to AI-behaviour, the seriousness actually is questionable.

There might even be those who consider it alright if there are so many wars going on.



As far as I remember there have been a few of those interim-patches. But mostly when the game was completely unplayable or you couldn't use your savegames anymore.

Ail wrote:


There might even be those who consider it alright if there are so many wars going on.

That's me as long as I'm not playing the Amoeba lol (Which I was when I described my scenario a few posts above)



The Amoeba's hull weakness drives me insane.

Regarding the Amoeba achievement, I just got it a few days ago (latest Disharmony patch):

- Newbie difficulty!!!

- Pirates off!!!!

- Fast game

- 4 players (all Amoeba)

- Medium 4-Spiral galaxy, perfect constellations with few wormholes, many planets, abundant resources



Strat

- Try to stay in 3rd place scorewise until you have friendly relations with everyone, and they've started fighting amongst themselves

- Make peace with everyone ASAP (offer dust and/or luxuries if necessary). The sooner you have peace, the sooner you start building up the long-term peaceful relations diplomacy modifier (up to +100 diplomacy). Also as Amoeba, trade is amazing for your economy.

- Make cooperation treaties as soon as you have the tech

- Give away ship-modifying luxuries you can't use for kudos with the others (+50 diplomacy, max=1)

- Do not colonize outside your constellation

- Do not colonize the system with the wormhole from your constellation, and try to expand your influence around it so nobody else can either. This will basically avoid the "tense borders" diplomacy modifier (-30 diplomacy I think)

- Decline alliance requests. They will just drag you into wars you cannot fight, and they cause broken Cooperation Treaties (-100 diplomacy)

- In this type of game, trade tech/buildings can account for 30% of your dust and science, so don't ignore them!

- You will probably win a tech or economic victory eventually. Don't risk trying to get the diplomatic victory achievement in the same game, it takes many more turns, and you don't need your hands tied behind your back to get that achievement.

I noticed the AI being much more agressive since one of the last patches as well but nothing game breaking and face it....you gonna end up in war anyway....you just dont initiate it



And I agree....its very annoying and makes some achievements almost impossible at the moment

The patch is making progress and there's a test-version for the VIPs. So far I haven't been declared war on despite having systems adjacent to the Hissho.



What I think has happened is that they will want to finish their ongoing wars first before declaring new ones.



However, I don't think that this will make the game any easier. It will allow the strongest empires to swallow one empire after the other and if you are the one whom they are at war with, it might turn out to be a much tougher war when they concentrate their whole forces on you.



I'm looking forward to see how things are going to turn out in my ongoing game.

I feel that with Disharmony the game just got WAY harder. I could beat Master of Orion 2 on the Impossible setting. Normal setting on this game is now harder than that.

Some serious tweaking needs to be done to get the game rebalanced again. I've been a big fan of this game but the way it is now, I may end up playing something else until they get it fixed.

However, I don't think that this will make the game any easier. It will allow the strongest empires to swallow one empire after the other and if you are the one whom they are at war with, it might turn out to be a much tougher war when they concentrate their whole forces on you.

1 on 1 that might be the case thats why checking the diplomacy status of the AI regulary can pay off. Say you see one of the stronger races going to war versus a weaker one that might be a great opportunity to get a treaty with the weak to backstab the strong. Often enough a keystrike will cripple the AI without much hope for recovery so laying low and biding ones time might be a good strategy.