Dog New Tricks

Mr. President · August 30, 2002, 07:12

I'm not talking about Shirley Manson's singing. I was playing as the University earlier (a rare occurence for me) and something rather odd went down. Beating on the Hive with the tried-and-true helicopters and air drop garrisons combination, I was surprised . . . when Chairman Yang shoved the tactic down my throat.

Yes, you heard me correctly. Before the fifteenth or so year of the war, there was not a single Hiverian chopper in service. Once they saw what I was doing, they started doing it themselves. Who says the AI is dim?

Has this ever happened to anyone else?

Andemagne · August 30, 2002, 09:45

I haven't seen this.

Darius · August 30, 2002, 11:36

I have not seen this myself, but have seen others mention it here in the forum.

Have you made any modifications to your alpha.txt or alphax.txt (perhaps to be compatible with others in a pbem) to encourage the AI to build choppers?

Adalbertus · August 30, 2002, 13:19

Sometimes, I have the impression that the AI might imitate the player's behaviour. It uses probe teams when you do (quite often) or eventually they start to buils SAM aircraft after you wiped out their original noodles.
Is it possible that you lost a chopper to them via mind control of a base?

Clear Skies · August 30, 2002, 14:26

Never seen it happen, but what I wouldn't give for a more intelligent AI. Usually it's almost as dumb as a certain US President.

Kajak · August 30, 2002, 14:29

I've got one that's probably paranoid but...

I've been playing for a couple months now and have had most fun (for me) playing the huge map with lots of water, (Keeps Marian from shoving colonies up my nose while I'm trying to get started.) In my earlier games the AI built lots of sea type improvements, which I then delighted in eliminating. However, lately in games of this type the AI doesn't build hardly any seatype and a lot less of the seaside improvements I can reach with bombadments. If the AI can learn this why can't it ever learn to drop "bombs"?? It always flyes past a bore hole in order to shoot up a 0-1-1 former, duh!
Actually part of the fun if figuring the blind spots of the AI..

Tommara · August 30, 2002, 16:37

Have you increased the difficulty level lately? There seems to be a big jump in the AI's capability at Thinker level, at which time I noticed this happening to me for the first time. Or maybe it's just that on lower difficulties, I already had my airports in place before they obtained drop capabilities?

Googlie · August 30, 2002, 23:44

I've had the Gaians chop and drop in games.

Also, if you add prototyped units to the #UNITS list in alpha.txt and alphax.txt, the AI will build them (sea trawlers, foil probes) - it seems to use trawlers much more efficiently that it ever uses crawlers. And in a recent PBEM the AI UoP built about a dozen foil probes and sent them out and about.

G.

Mr. President · August 30, 2002, 23:54

I have modified alpha.txt in this game, but not to add units; I may have lost a chopper to mind control, but Yang got M/MI shortly before the incident. But, I did just move up to Thinker from Librarian. That might explain some of it.