I just uploaded 1 game so you see what the thread is about (see end of post)



Situation at endgame 100+ turns, ships with all best technology researched. Played vs 1 normal AI in medium galaxy. Enemy controls 40% of the galaxy, and has enough income to keep building numerous ships per turn (precisely he gets 26k dust per turn, and me 55k). This leads to massive battles that are mostly about watching the artificial combat timer move, again and again. You can get over 10 combats each turn, and i only just started the wars this game. It is only going to get worse from that point on. None of their fleets can do any dent to my armada, but they sure want to try...



So should something be done about the combat?

1) Remove the timing, calculate it as fast as you count AI vs AI combats. Less pointless waiting.

2) What if all fleets on same star system joined forces on 1 massive fight? We don't need to scrap command points idea, each leader assigned to fleet would still only command those ships only.

3) Make AI understand what is fight he can't win.



Those are just few things that come to mind.

Don't like #3 at all.



Idea #2 isn't bad until they overwhelm you with weaker fleets using missiles.



Idea #1.. ever try to auto resolve the combat?

As Nasarog said, number 1??? Watching the Auto timer move is about 5 seconds. Hardly what I call a waste of time.



2) As long as the sides have the same amount of CPs. However, this would be incredibly hard to implement.



3) The AI does understand what fights he can/cannot win. That is why he uses the retreat card. However, knowing when he will be destroyed by using the retreat card.

AI's are never that great at the whole retreat/don't retreat thing, often leading to situations where they always will or won't.



But of course if the player could in the future use their spy agency to steal data in a players ship numbers, designs and fleet locations, it could lead to a better strategic AI who is more well informed about their opposition, leading to smarter decisions.



(Not that I am plugging a smart spy system over the god awful Civ 5 or MOO clone models, NOT AT ALL *WINK *WINK)



And would allow players themselves more strategic feed back, helping them learn more about why they might win/lose a war, positioning, and overall better feedback that will hopefully improve everyone's performance, and possibly help in the process to tighten up AI designs and algorithms too!

Nasarog wrote:
Idea #1.. ever try to auto resolve the combat?

Umm, i do 99% of my battles in auto combat, as seen in the video? 5 seconds piles up. 1-2 seconds clicking/waiting between next battle and multiply by 10-30 times. By my calculator, 6x30 makes for 3 minutes of waiting per turn. After that you can focus on more important things, construction (this can also take many minutes), starting fights with your own fleets etc for another 5 minutes per turn. So do you realize how much i want to get rid of all "forced time waste" i can?



What i am used to seeing, is 40 unique fleets on 2 different star systems. And i wasn't even playing on normal difficulty on that game, imagine enemy AI builds more aggressively on harder ones.



Also, this whole suggestion doesn't really concern any game where you or AI are under 15000 dust per turn.



#3 AI does use retreat card, it was added some patches ago and i like that. But i wonder if he would do the same if could, send his fleet away before attempt to fight? Maybe i should be playing without defend flag on all my borderline fleets, allowing them slip through if they feel like.

... which leads to suggestion 4...

4) Allow sending fleet to friendly systems even when enemy has blockade on system. This would also solve the scenario with scouting, when you send scout to enemy areas, get stuck inside a blockade. You can't even attack back to use a retreat card away from it, it's just stuck (prisoner) until war or peace is called.

You can go to blockaded systems, you just can't leave until you destroy the blockading fleet or via a successful retreat.

Uploaded save game for these massive battles. It's not the best example though. Game was already won by Wonder victory before and my custom race was optimized for peace and technology. But i kept going, wanting to wipe out the enemy. It would be crazier with huge galaxy and endless difficulty. So, go ahead and declare war with pilgrims. Wipe out all his systems, and then tell me that war like this is not annoying at all.



edit: Argh, ship design was horrible. Refit flaks immediately.
Beginning of great war.zip

afaik you can minimize Battles. I normally click fight, minimize, select another task, .... It's not the most efficient time management but it cuts your "staring at circle filling"-time down to 0.

Zaflis wrote:
Umm, i do 99% of my battles in auto combat, as seen in the video?

oooops, I somehow missed that. On another note, I play using an older MAC, so my game is rather slow between turns and during combat anyways, so when I auto resolve it's practically instant compared to watching the one combat vid. That's why it isn't a problem for me.

Oh, you are talking about the meat grinder affect aka Scout Spam



I thought you had 20 battles on the notification list. When that happens you can run multiple battles simultaneously.

No, it's usually tens of fleets on 1 system. They appear 1 after another, not able to fight many simultaneously. Not scout fleets, but real combat 2000-30000 military power each.

Zaflis wrote:
No, it's usually tens of fleets on 1 system. They appear 1 after another, not able to fight many simultaneously. Not scout fleets, but real combat 2000-30000 military power each.

Scout Spam is a general term used for swarming with allot of fleets.



And appearing one after the other is what is, at least in other games, called the meat grinder effect where your ships take no damage yet they keep coming one at a time as if the AI thinks that his fleets actually might survive, when the probability that they will do so is less than a Snowball's chance in hell.



btw it might be good to embed the video into the OP so people don't miss it. (Do so with the 'Insert Video' button.

When I have a race/leader that gives me dust/science for defeating enemy ships, this scenario makes me happy! Course, getting rid of the timer, thus making it faster would make me more happy!