Is the AI always this dumb?

[Action]

Played my first game at talent level, and none of the 4 enemies I encountered terraformed (actually the peacekeepers terraformed 2 tiles, but the others didn't at all) and the university never built more than one city, even though it had room and was not under attack. They also compacted their citys when there were huge tracts of fertile land nearby. Does this get any better at higher difficulties?

version 4

[Sprayber]

Well, the last game I played Lal terraformed everything in site. After I carted him off to the punishment sphere, I went through his continent and cleaned up a bit. I just hate it when they put roads in every tile. He was alone on his continent though. This was on Talent I think.

------------------
"Now it's day and night the irons clang, and like poor galley slaves
^We toil and toil, and when we die, must fill dishonored graves
^But some dark night, when everything is silent in the town
^I'll shoot those tyrants one and all, I'll gun the flogger down
^I'll give the land a little shock, remember what I say,
^And they'll yet regret they've sent Jim Jones in chains to Botany Bay."
-- "Jim Jones", Traditional

[Skanderbeg]

Most time the AI terraforms quite stupid, building roads everywhere, farms on dry land, mines on hilly,
but sometimes it does terraforms quite nice,
with farm/solar collector and even some condensors.

For my experience, it does not depend on the difficulty level of the game, but on the environment. On rainy, hilly squares even the stupid AI will make ist: farm/solar collector, forest, farm/mine, everything would work.

I agree that the AI packs it's bases to close together, especially in the monsoon jungle. Makes is a good target for a singularity PB! ;-)

[Sprayber]

Those roads are nice when it comes time for invasion.

[Gregurabi]

The roads also let the AI counterattack (with probes) when you take one of its bases. If you can't get enough defensive probe teams in the conquered base, you'd better blockade or remove those roads.

[Blake]

I saw an AI borehole, once. I've also seen them use a few condensors.

But as for the roads, I confess I also lay lots of roads, on my second round of terraforming I hate having my borehole teams lose terratime if I can possibly avoid it, result is roads everywhere. At the start of the game I only build minimum roads, but later in the game I build roads in every tile which is going to have a borehole or condensor, which ideally is every tile

I'm sure it's a bad habit, and I would regret it in MP but no former is allowed to waste time in my army. As for the AI it suits me if they lay roads everywhere, makes cleaning up there territory much easier.

[cbn]

The AI is often very dumb but it will usually terraform more than you indicated. It terraforms badly but it usually does terraform quite a bit. When I take over AI areas I usually find that the easiest thing is to forest most everything.


As for the single city thing-- I have seen that sometimes where the AI inexplicably refuses to grow horizontally beyon a city or two with plenty of space (isolationist faction leader LOL)-- I don't know what causes it since I have seen several different factions do it occasionally.

It sounds as if you had a particularly bad experience with the AI that time. It usually plays (a little) better-- See the thread where people are confessing to actually losing to the AI

[Aredhran]

quote: Is the AI always this dumb?

YES

I saw the AI build a condenser once. On a ROCKY tile (the list goes on and on, but I'll stop here)

Aredhran