Lets talk about the highly questionable AI!

[ShockMeSane]

If you've played the game at all, you know about the auto-resolve. I find the land battles terribly tedious, but all you need to auto-resolve your way to a land-battle victory is a  huge stack of stormtroopers/AT-STs or Rebeltroops/SnowSpeeders. You'll lose some of course, but if you hate the land battles like me, that is your best option of beating the game on hard and not ever seeing a surface battle.

 

I once auto-resolved a late-game battle vs space pirates. They had: 3 pirate frigates, 1 level 2 starbase, and 2 SPCs. I had, 4 Star Destroyers, 3 VSDs, 8 Tartans. I won, but managed to somehow lose 2 Star Destroyers, a VSD, and 3 Tartans. You can imagine the eye rolling that ensued. Fortunately it was at the point in the game where it doesnt matter anymore (generally after you take a 2nd planet from the enemy, sadly).

 

The AI doesnt know how to retreat, or how to protect its leader on levels where killing the Emperor or Mon Mothma is a victory condition. I set the game to hard on one of the 20 system levels, and killed the emperor within 25 days by simply blitzing Coruscant. Also, if you auto-resolve the battle against the Emperor, you seem to automatically win and take no unit losses, even if he is ridiculously defended by AT-ATs and other heroes and all you have sent against him are plex troops/rebel soldiers.

 

I literally sat in orbit for 3 days over Coruscant, seeing if the AI would go... "OH NOES HE IS GOING TO KILL TEH EMPEROR!!!111", but, the AI just acted like it didnt even matter, leaving a fleet with the Accuser and 3 VSDs sitting at Kuat, glaring at my defensive fleet on Kessel with an angry glint in their eye. I mean personally if the AI had a fleet in Orbit over Fondor, where I had Mon Mothma cheapifying Calamari Cruisers for me, I would have immediatly withdrawn all my other fleets without regard to the consequence.

 

The sad thing is, I was sitting at a system within striking range of Coruscant for at least 3 days preparing for my final assault, with 3PO spying on their defenses for me, and the AI made no move whatsoever to put a massive defensive fleet into orbit to protect the Emperor.

 

This game would be about 4x more fun if the enemy actually recognized a losing battle and fled from it BEFORE losing 95% of its forces. Generally the only things that ever escape are Missle Cruisers hiding on the other side of the map. It would also be more fun if it pretended to have any clue that it should protect the Emperor. I've never actually let the Empire construct the Death Star when I played as the Rebellion, but I can only imagine that if they did, they would put it with a VSD, an Acclamator, and 19 Tartans (yes, this is the AIs idea of fleet, which is why building fighters is totally pointless against it), and then sit around looking for a weak point in my defenses until I blew it to oblivian and ended the game.

 

The other thing is, as I'm sure most of you have noticed, is that the AI will seemingly auto-produce ships with apparently no cost involved. They can be down to one system, but if you leave them there for 15 days, they will produce 30 corvettes, 20 fighter squadrons, 10 missle frigates, and an assortment of frigates/destroyers. My first game, the enemy was apparently able to construct Star Destroyers without a Star Destroyer producing system, or in fact, any starbase above level 2. Now, I don't mind the AI cheating a little on the hard difficult level to make up for it not being able to be as smart as a human, but that level of cheating is just obnoxious. A little more work on the AI would have made it totally unneccessary.

 

And lastly, the only major AI point remaining to be made is its fleet composition. The AI simply has no clue what constitutes a good fleet. It will build 5 Tartans/Corvettes for every larger ship in the fleet. And oh god, the Missle Cruisers. I can safely say the AI must be set to build, fleet composition wise: 40% corvettes, 20% missle cruisers, 10% fighters (if rebels, otherwise, 50% corvettes for Empire), 10% Frigates, and 10% Destroyer/Battlecruiser. Its so fun when the enemies "Uber fleet" on day 40 is the Accuser, 25 Tartans, 10 Missle Boat things, and one Acclamator and VSD. When you have 3 mon cals, Home One, 4 corvettes, and 2 Assault Frigates. They don't even stand a chance because they blow their money on huge amounts of craft that are really only necessary in small numbers. Once I reach a certain point in the game, production stops for everything except Star Destroyers/Mon Cals, but apparently the AI does not feel this is necessary.

 

Hopefully, one day the AI will not feel the necessity to build literally billions of the anti-fighter corvettes, and I will actually be bothered to build fighters against it. As it stands right now, 4 corvettes already blow the heck out of an almost unlimited number of fighters. They really need to not be as strong as they are right now. They are a particular problem for the Empire, as the Acclamator is really the best suited ship to destroy them, but is completely worthless outside of that role.

 

Anyone else have any AI gripes?

[Nevets]

Yea I noticed you have a more of a chance to lose if you autoresolve. Seems like you lose a lot of units that way too.

 

I think it evens out tho, you should be rewarded if you actually fight the battle over autoresolving.

[shadowsfm]

tarken soposed to make research  25% cheaper, but he didnt

and mara jade never showed up, even after tech 5

 

i was playing 10 planets, starting tech 1.

[ShockMeSane]

Well, neither of those are AI issues And if you actually read closely, you will see Tarkin makes research FACILITIES 25% cheaper, which he does. He does not make research ITSELF cheaper, so its a pretty pointless bonus. He is incredibly powerful in command of a fleet you are confident will not have to retreat, however. Mara Jade must only show up in the Imperial Campaign because yea, you don't get her in Galactic Conquest.

[Faceh]

well she dont as i have completed the campain and not a sign of her

[Little.B]

Of course auto-resolve is a bad choice. But it should be. With this lazy bones are punished. The computer only counts units and compares the units in a fleet to the other units counterparts and from this suspects which units would be lost. Of course playing is always a better way and the game forces you to do so. Somehow I like it this way.

 

But referring to AI in general. Mh, I would have to think and play a bit more to talk about it.

[Sarkone]

I've noticed another problem of the AI in spacebattles. At one point it stops sending in more reinforcements, like once I was attacked by like 100 Y-Wings 40 X-Wings and millions of millions of corvettes after like the 2nd wave it stopped sending in more reinforcements and so I barely was able to win the battle against them (I had like only 4 damaged VSDs left without any fighter support and my tartans were already dead) so instead of being overwhelmed by the fighters I got away with a smooth victory..... Apart from that and the fleet composition i think the space battle AI is quite okish.

The ground AI of course is a different story .... its rather disappointing, although it does have its good moments and it sometimes IS active but sometimes it just sits there and gets slaughtered .....

But apart from that I found EAW to be more fun (battlewise) compared to the Total War games, where the AI was a pure walkover (1000men slaughtered by an inferior force for just 10 losses etc...)

[Guest]

the AI is that bad!?  OMG!

 

hmmmmmmm..... :-\ Come to think of it I don't think Ive ever played an RTS with good AI. The only reason the AI ever seems to win in RTS games is because they can multitask and overwhelm you with numbers. Either that or their too stupid to look in the corners of the map, or just sit there when there is no more resources. (I have never played C&C so don't hold that against me)

[Megajames]

Take at look at http://pc.ign.com/objects/743/743961.html, the AI might not be tha good in it (No one knows as very lttle has been said on it) But it will still hide in buildings, take cover behaind anything it can