Stargem wrote:
The AI does cheat, on any setting higher than Newbie.

I do have poor sensitivity...sorry, you are right.



Only playing Harmony on Endless difficulty makes me feel that the AIs definitely cheat, but partly because the Harmony is something we are not familiar with.



Probably because the poor management of the AI is too obvious, and it somehow compromises the effect of cheating?



That's why I propose that if there must be AIs involved, maybe Mass Effect 3 multiplayer style co-op can be the cure.



The devs can make AIs cheat like crazylol, but that won't be a problem.



From my experience, veteran players can do well with rookies and it creates a certain kind of balance.



The devs will no longer have that sort of problems: some players think the AIs are overly cunning, but the others think they are morons.



But that's only my opinion, and I am no so sure if such an idea can be accepted by the majority...

Cheating in my understanding would involve being able to do stuff thats outside your reach like....."teleporting" around the galaxy from turn 1 or colonizing all planets within a system with only 1 population at hand. Lets think of more stuff that would be "cheating"



- destroying a couple of your ships BEFORE long-range phase

- access technology it hasnt researched

- recruit more heroes that it has academy slots





Lots more but I think the point is.....cheating is bending the rules in a way that ll give you an advantage over your opponents which is not the case. The AI operates under the same game rules everybody else is. It just has a larger point-pool for traits, thats the bonues and thats what makes it more difficult. In a perfect world the AI would be perfect and there would be only 1 difficulty setting. You cant just "turn" your AI up or down and programming in new code segments to enable new "thinking strategies".....thats a little hardcore for a game. So most games make the AI harder by giving it stuff for free to give it an advantage. Its behaviour is still the same (build or improvement logic, research parameters you name it) it simply has more stuff it can use now.



Its unfair....its not cheating

MTB-Fritz wrote:
Its unfair....its not cheating

Totally agree.



I have something funny to share.



In Mass Effect 3 multiplayer, the enemies do have something outside the box: Instant kill.



None of the players can do this, and it is the most fearful ability the players are afraid of.



But on the other hand, the players have tons of privileged skills and weapons. If the AIs have them, that will be a disaster.



However, we can call that even because the players are outnumbered and outgunned.



In Endless Space, it is very tricky and the devs can't do in this way.



The devs follow the steps many others have walked on, like X-Com: Enemy Unknown, which has a great singer player game but as usual, an ordinary multiplayer mode.



I hate to say that Bioware tremendously cashes in on Mass Effect 3 multiplayer, but it is proven to be a great way to solve many known problems.



I am not saying that my way is the highway, but the devs do have difficulty because they chose this business model.

Stargem wrote:
The AI does cheat, on any setting higher than Newbie.

Lol that's not cheating, it's what explained in the manual: "AI bonuses are adjusted to compensate the decisions only a Human can make. AI

opponents will become a real challenge here".



There's rules and you accept them or not, if you don't accept Normal difficulty rules then play Newbie.



Cheating is transgress rules and it's cheating. Let me give you a real life example. in Go game there's handicap, a player could start with more pawns on board because he is weaker. Two players playing the game and one has a handicap, there's no cheating. There's cheating if a player break the rules and place two pawns for example or move a pawn.



So again play Newbie if you can't accept the Normal or upper difficulty rules, it's rules with handicap not cheating.



EDIT: In my opinion if there's a point where AI is cheating it's its inhuman ability to support micro management. That is weird and have a AI managing this would avoid those ton of two ships fleet.



EDIT: Well first edit is probably more unfair stuff but where it's enough borderline to morph from unfair to cheating is managing the simultaneous turns, in pure theory a human could do the tricks that apply the AI, as rush out when a fleet is coming and not let the time to guard the system and trap the fleet, or continue a movement to a system right after you unguarded or leave it. In theory it's just unfair, no rules are broken, but inhuman abilities has been applied so I consider this cheating. :-)

MTB-Fritz wrote:


...

Its unfair....its not cheating

It's not unfair as soon as you choose the difficulty then accepted the handicap. But yeah no cheating either.

Nook wrote:
... it's what explained in the manual: "AI bonuses are adjusted to compensate the decisions only a Human can make. AI opponents will become a real challenge here".

And I think the devs can just add an Iron Man option like that in X-Com: Enemy Unknown.



It can do the trick and doesn't take any time or resources to make.



In X-com:Enemy Unknown, if you check Iron Man, the killed teammates will never be revived because the game saves immediately, and there is only one savefile.



Of course the AIs now still can't pose a real threat even on Endless difficulty and with Iron Man.



But it will work if the AIs improve.



And people who complain about the AIs can check Iron Man themselves to enjoy the feeling of a real professional Go match.



If anyone wants even harder difficulty, maybe professional Go match rules can do the job.



In a professional one, the player only has limited total time for him to think. If it is depleted, every turn must be finished in a few seconds.



The AIs don't have the luxury of time to think or the privilege to own the greatest technology in Endless Space: a time machine, to load the savegame.



And the best thing is that all of these won't take the devs too much time.



And it will perfectly satisfy(or torture) players who would like to enjoy it.

As long as the AI can't design ships that are able to hurt the player's hero fleets (or kill normal ones), then nothing will change..ever



high HP dreadnoughts with 25%hp to armor battlecard (probably even without) are invincible in singleplayer even without going full HP/defense module.

my current dreadnought design in the Beta-patch has



1000/1700/1700 attack and 800/800/2200 defence with just 36000 health. + repair module

(as you can see, I didn't put much thought into it)



I don't know if its because of my rather low deflector-defense (the deflector module is freaking useless, the passives are even worse than shields and it only deflects 10 bullets each, so its only somewhat usefull against long range kinetics) but the Pilgrims in my current game (either endless difficulty or impossible I can't remember) tend to use full kinetic ships on smaller vessels, full bombers+defence modules on dreadnoughts (called "Oracle") or full kinetic with very high balanced defenses (called "Paladin")... and well-balanced cruisers in both damage and defense

on hero-fleetbattles with 70k vs 70k MP im literally taking *zero* damage except from the odd bomber (~200 damage in afterbattle report) while dealing around 100k in 1-2 phases





so how is anyone suppossed to lose in this game (military)?

the explosion in dust income during mid/late game isn't helping either, without the use of trade I'm getting 200k each round, though obviously, nowhere to spend it on since the AI can't destroy playerdesigned ships



and since we are at it, what are the stronger and what are the weaker AI factions?

Pilgrims are probably one of the weakest, Hissho being missle ♥♥♥♥♥s as they are being slightly stronger, I believe beam users to be the strongest

KrayZee wrote:
As long as the AI can't design ships that are able to hurt the player's hero fleets (or kill normal ones), then nothing will change..ever

and since we are at it, what are the stronger and what are the weaker AI factions?

Pilgrims are probably one of the weakest, Hissho being missle ♥♥♥♥♥s as they are being slightly stronger, I believe beam users to be the strongest

That's true and we should tell the ones who complain to play the Harmony as the solutionlol



And that design makes the ships have a great possibility to survive. With the benefit from leve up, it's even harder to defeat the player's ships except other players'.



The ship design is not the only reason why the AIs can't defeat experienced players. There are plenty: the poor hero management, unfamiliar with new invasion mechanisms, known strategic and tatical bugs, and so on.



The devs can improve it but it takes time.



Therefore, the players who do want harder AI can help themselves, play the Harmony or any unfamiliar, try not to load, limit the time to think, get a smaller galaxy with one opponent(like others suggested) or a tiny one with 8 empires(I haven't tried it and don't know if it's harder).

The AIs don't have the luxury of time to think

Uh what do you call the "calculation time" then every computer needs? The lag you can experience as empires grow and matches grow older is there because your chip uses internal resources to decide what the AIs are gonna do. Take an outdated computer system and you got longer times on your hands.



We call them AIs but of course they are no AIs. I m not even sure theres something possible like it, certainly not in conputer games. What you have is a program with lots of parameters and directives. How "intelligent" such a computer controlled opponent is will be affected by its programming. Yes, the computer is not "touring" capable but it certainly doesnt stink.



Once you start to analyze game mechanic and take a closer look the game will often become easier and once fomidable opponents start to become weaker and weaker. Thats allright you know...."life" is the only game so far that humans dont outgrow like every other game. The important question is "can Endless Space provide entertainment and challenge along the way?" and I say "YES" it can.

MTB-Fritz wrote:
Uh what do you call the "calculation time" then every computer needs?

Of course you know what I mean. And of course I think Endless Space can.

But if someone doesn't, it won't be bad for us to suggest some ways to solve the problems.



And limiting the time to think is a great way when one can't wait for the devs to enhance the AIs.

I want to add that the addition of Bombers and Fighters to the game made the AI even weaker, lets face it, they are pretty much useless, they need to be at least 5 to 10 times as strong as they are right now in the beta patch.

the AI however uses them way to much, even building dreadnoughts around them with nothing but defence and bomber modules (why do they take up 2 special module slots anyway?)



thats 4-12 CP points wasted on every fleet for them (Its not rare to face 3 of that design at once)

There are plenty: the poor hero management, unfamiliar with new invasion mechanisms

I'm not sure if it was added into the recent patch but the AI does use the invasion mechanic quite often. one time I lost 3 systems in 1 round because of that.. though it was very easy to get them back, because the AI sends siege fleets without escorts