Sometimes my friends and I decide to play a private multiplayer match. I encouraged them to get the game and they don't let me play against them so we have AI opponents too.

My query is this; sometimes, for whatever reason, the game disconnects and kicks my friends out of the game. Since I'm host I reinvite them and all should be well, but it isn't.



It always seems like the AI has deliberately screwed them over in the turn they were away.



They come back after the turn the DC'ed on ends, only to find some fleets have been disbanded, their heros assigned to the different places, weird unbalanced trades to computers and their production queues making the wrong things.



Why does this happen? They were gone for a turn (which I was still present for) and I see their fleets disappear before my very eyes and get their faction trying to give me all their bluecap mold for nothing. This isn't even standard AI behaviour and can ruin games if it happens at the wrong times. (although loading autosaves fixes it)

Unfortunately, the AI's idea of good management does not always follow with what human players would like to see happen. When a disconnect occurs, I would recommend reloading the most recent auto-save where all players were still in the game, and have them join in via the lobby as if you were starting a new game. This may mean you'll have to play one turn over again, but it will also mean that no-one is screwed over by the AI's poor management.



Hope this helps.

Blackraptor31 wrote:
Why does this happen? They were gone for a turn (which I was still present for) and I see their fleets disappear before my very eyes and get their faction trying to give me all their bluecap mold for nothing. This isn't even standard AI behaviour and can ruin games if it happens at the wrong times. (although loading autosaves fixes it)

For having modded the AI extensively i know the AI works with weights, and those weights are affected by all kind of parameters due to difficulty levels and AI's personalities tied to the race affinity. The vanilla AI does need a lot of work in that regard because while it does have all the tools to do it's job, the parameters aren't fine tuned. In my FairFight mod a normal AI could beat the crap out of a Endless one in Vanilla. And that's not due to cheating, just better weightings for production, research and hero management.

Yeah the current AI of the game is in fact intensely bad, but the worst thing is as stated the fact it's crushing everything a player has been done if it takes over just for one turn.

Un-fortunately, the AI needs extreme 'cheats' in order to make it challenging. This ruins the game sometimes.

Happen to me a very similar thing in a multiplayer game with a friend, but I don't think is a IA problem, more a desync one:

I was kicked off after a sync problem. My friend saved the game, and on reload my empire was screwed.

I had 4 5000pt's fleet sieging an enemy home world, and after reload I had only 2 fleet, 1 of 2500pt and 1 of 3500pt...the first with 2 colony ship inside (and before the desync I haven't any colony ship in any fleet).

The rest of my ships were scattered across all my empire, the heroes moved and one injured with no reason.

When I tried to reload the autosave on the turn before, I discovered that all my saves were corrupted.



Similar thing happen these week end, I played 3 multiplayer games with 3 friends.

We weren't able to finish any of them because of 1 steam crash, and 2 desync problem

during the two desync, the turn before happen that a fleet disappeared during a battle: battle started with 3000 pt each, win by the host without losing a single ship, because only a single enemy ship really fight, the rest of the fleet simply disappeared.

The second time happen against a pirate fleet.

In all the desync problem the saves were corrupted after (except the host one).