Santiago is as dumb as a post.

D4everman · July 17, 2001, 10:47

Hmmmm.....the AI really should be more into self preservation.

Random map, w/ random AI opponents including the aliens. Others are Morgan, Cha Dawn, Aki and Santiago. I'm, as always the UoP.

Santiago declared Vendetta on me early on, but never attacked right away. They built a sea base right next to my coast, though. I lost a few ships trying to kill the one plasma sentinel they had in it. The caretakers landed on my coast too, but I had prepared nerve gas rovers for them!

Santiago was a war with them also, though. The aliens successfully reduced Aki to two bases, and Cha to one. I don't know how many morgan has, but I know he's stuck next to Marr and probably getting clobbered. But Santiago is being just plain stupid.

The Caretakers are at war with the spartans and whooping their butts. Santiago was down to maybe four bases when I took her largest base...a sea base next to the coast of Sparta Command, size 9. I watched as the aliens decimated her other three bases and closed in on sparta command. I landed some troop there figuring I'll get there first, when Santiago calls me up. Now you'd think that with the aliens running roughshod over her she'd surrender to me and ask for help...but nooooo....she threatens me and even says "You cannot hope to stand against me!" huh? Sister, you got one base left standing and a dozen caretakers heading this way. And i'm not gonna willingly let the caretakers use Sparta Command as a base so you can either sub with me or get killed. Case closed.

(Amazingly Cha isn't much smarter. The aliens ate him for lunch and he still says "I won't tolerate you working with morgan/ Santiago/ Aki." Maybe if his little ass actually tried to make friends with the humans he'd have some help and more than one base right now. Only a fool fights in a burning house.)

Amazing, especially since I've had games where the AI reacted with a lot more common sense. Anyone else seen this kind of masochistic behavior?

D4

death_head · July 17, 2001, 10:52

I've always been under the impression that the "common sense" is random...the AI is terrible when it comes to things like this. I wonder how hard it would be for Firaxis to re-write the AI code to consider self-preservation before all things, e.g. it would check to see if it was almost dead before it insulted someone with a big army.

Wiglaf · July 17, 2001, 13:08

The AI isn't too hot in this game, no doubt about it. Sometimes it can do smart things, but as death head said, it could be random anyway. A couple of its strategies are pre programmed, but not many, evidently

D4everman · July 19, 2001, 04:20

The reason I mentioned it Death Head is because the AI put up a better showing in games I've played in lower levels. (Or maybe I was just wasn't very good and that made the AI seem smarter....maybe)

The only human factions left are me (UoP) and Cha Dawn and Cha only has about six wimpy bases. The Usurpers have a lot of bases, the Caretakers are down to about eight or so and losing them rapidly. I don't play around with the aliens, especially now that Marr has too much for my liking. I've been nerve gassing them of the face of the planet. That rat bastard Morgan teamed up with Marr against me so I wiped his greedy behind out.

Its not going to take too long to destroy H'Minee, but Marr keeps lobbing missiles at me. As soon as I can get the Caretakers out of the way and hopefully build some ODP's (or be certain Marr doesn't have any planetbusters left) I'm dropping mine on him. I don't know if I like games with the aliens as much as just the human factions. The aliens spent more time fighting the humans than each other or trying to attain their goals.

D4

Ned · July 19, 2001, 15:50

There is a pattern here that I too am trying to figure out. Apparently, on the higher levels, the AI is more aggressive. Perhaps this makes for a harder game on small maps, but it clearly makes the AI a very poor player overall if the game lasts to midgame. This is why some of us have changed the AI faction aggressiveness settings to passive.

But still, even in games with this setting, the AI will still at time never surrender.

If you go to the SE, you will find that you can set a faction to "never surrender." What I think happens is that the AI can randomly? set this for a faction in a real game - especially on the higher difficulty levels.

When I see this behaviour, I get really frustrated for I am looking to get a submissive, not a bunch of ruined bases.

So, what I expect happened is that Santiago, and perhaps all factions in your game were set to "never surrender."

To test this, load a game, enter the SE, Ctrl K, and go to Senario. Find "edit personalities." See what Santiago is set to.

death_head · July 19, 2001, 18:11

The A.I. is much, much brighter as a pacifist. Especially when they go for transcendence...

Kirnwaffen · July 20, 2001, 00:26

What I find odd is that in my experience, the AI has put it's best foot forward in Librarian level games w/ Domai. Sort of odd considering his poor research and the level, but that's what I've had happen. Anybody else seen something similar?

Avenoct · July 20, 2001, 03:12

I'm in agreement with Ned, and I've been wondering if ALL of those settings you can acesss in the Scenario Editor for faction diplomacy, faction personality, etc. are randomized. For instance, in some games a faction will attack with probes, others with missiles (that's a highly exciting one), and a player can change these things in the SE. I'd really love to see players able to make custom factions that pre-programmed these settings, including the 'I will DIE before I give you anything' one. Imagine a faction that Always went for Airpower, Satellites, and Probes!

If you find the AI playing better at lower levels, it's quite possible to tweak the alpha or factiontext to make games at those levels much harder for the player, and hence playable as if they were on Transcend, well not really, just differently difficult. I'm not saying it's as easy a clicking a button, but it's possible. Vel's Mod should do this nicely in fact. An easy way to analyze it is to say 'What makes the game easy for me?'. Is it Crawlers? Is it my research? What?

For a quick fix, you could disable crawlers in the Alphatext:
change this line:
Supply Transport, Supply, 0,10, 8, -1, IndAuto,
to this:
Supply Transport, Supply, 0,10, 8, -1, disable,

[Personally, I'd never disable Crawlers. It's one of the great things that distinguishes the player from the AI. I say, let the AI cheat, but give me my crawlers! Combat is another area in which the human factor becomes apparent. For me, I like having the AI spit out units faster than Yang's Tunnels, but since the AI can't use them well, I have an advantage...few units used very well, like in most 'shoot-'em-up' games.]

One could make a custom faction that had 'Social, -----RESEARCH' or just slow down their particular research ability with 'TECHCOST, 150' for 150% research cost, or even 'RESEARCH, -10' whereby your bases each lose 10 labs per turn, poof!

None of these things make the AI play better, that's true, but if you step back and think about it, the AI does a darn good job (well, at least I think so).

In the end though, Santiago is dumb as a post. No way 'round that one.

-Smack