Feedback from recent play on v.2.8, especially FFA Aggressive AI game on small map #30
JoGr223
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This was very interesting game, the hardest I ever played in single player
actually I also played this on kind of "iron man", never reverted to previous years IIRC; attaching saved games; all games on transcend
morgan v28 thinker saves.zip
faction:morgan
map: small
I got pretty average start not in a jungle, but past first 3 bases I managed to add next like 4 in jungle, then meet Sparta, so it was tough from the beginning. I failed to expand with more bases cause of constant pressure from sparta at this point, so was stuck with around ~8 total for a long time. Fortunately other enemies were far enough from me and focused on each other for a while. Due to pressure from sparta I went HGP first before PTS, cause I figured HGP would affect more bases (lvl4) at this point which i needed - i got terrible drone problems. Now I think it was mistake, should have gone PTS first anyway. But the pressure was so high I didnt ICS for long time and didnt even manage to get WP SP,as free drones made it.
Around year 80-90 I started having problems with hive so had to fight on 2 fronts, but managed to do it for enough long time till I got Doctrine:Air around year 101 - very late, overall very low tech game due to the constant need to focus on army. But even with 4-1-2 units i managed to pick some hive bases and like 1 spartan base but decided i will just freeze battles at this point and research air.
Up until this point game was very interesting, but as I expected, as always, air is so OP it leads to quick win. Maybe if AI can focus on stealing this tech and then prioritize air army units then it had some chance (they did manage to take over with probes one of my core bases like 2-3 times - both hive and cons). Like 15 years later hive researched air on their own but even after this they didnt make almost any air units while they still add land attackers ! Like they didnt realize how good planes are. But at this point they already lost like 8 of their ~30 bases to me (though they were still progressing in fights on south vs Cons) - so they could definitely make things a lot harder for me if they could play air better - but still they weren't totally bad as they had a few anti-air planes and managed to kill a few of my planes.
So once I got air I just switch to total-air-war mode, all bases making planes and within ~12-15 years got total map dominance against both sparta on south as well as hive on east at the same time + ICS which lead to 54 bases in year 118. At this point I decided I cannot lose so its pointless to continue and its boring cause its just grinding. While "making things more interesting" and focusing on tech or stealing bases would be just less effective and against the goal of the game (conquer only goal).
Aggressive AI +FFA game is most difficult but its not very interesting cause at this point it was total grind with mass of formers,crawlers and like ~40planes, very mundane. Also agressive AI Free-for-all game (conquer win condition only) is more of a dice roll as you never know how much enemies will focus on you early on and this is main dependant on your chances to win - in this game if hive was more aggressive toward me (or drones on west across the river) then I would likely just lose.
Though I'm quite pleased the way diplomatic aspect was unraveling in this game. I was offered to "join forces as pact against x" a few times and i did accept it from Free Drones just to avoid having them as enemy. Also I might have given to hive's blackmail at one point and shared them my tech for free just to avoid fighting them (but not sure if i remember it correctly).
Also got some diplomatic relations with believers and univ and it all felt good - meaning I felt like AI was really just trying to build tactical periodic allies which is in line with "agressive personality". Although maybe free drones were a little too good to me unnecessarily - we were in pact most game, but maybe it was because they were really facing tough opposition in Believers on their south boarder - I saw multiple times base were swapped between them and non prevailed whole game ! It was quite interesting to actually see that drones (in jungle) were like 2x stronger than believers, but believers were growing gradually whole game. Maybe it's because they were making the wisest SE choices with free market and wealth at times (though they had agenda:police state).
I also played recently another morgan game on small, which I concluded as "win, cant lose, not interesting to continue" in year 2165. this was typical peaceful, pleasant cooperation game:
I started in mini jungle and managed to pack 4 bases there and then found another jungle like 10 squares away from my HQ.
So this game in 65years I got 4 pacts and 2 vendettas, 1 vs univ which was not even on my boarder so irrelevant while other against hive (strongest in mil+pop) which didnt even threaten me as I got 3 pact brothers fighting him and occupying his attention successfully so I just sit in FM/wealth whole game and ICS (on PTS drugs) till 21 cities. At this point I'm 5 years away from doctrine:air and GG. Also got SPs: HGP and CN as I expected more land wars, but couldnt get WP.
This game I actually reverted 1 year after I lost 1 base to hive due to not having any defender or was just probe-steal (or both). But then I regretted it as game turned out too simple :) I just wanted to keep it peaceful at that time, I think I then put the base at same location but just with some 1-1-1 or 1-2-1 so it was not so easily taken over (and it wasnt).
some specific thing I noted mostly during aggressive AI game:
enemy probe teams move next square to your city (or your units) but dont perform action: likely they are out of action points
expected: they should always stop 1 square away from city so that next year they can perform sudden attack; this is in a situation when they are aware of your city/units location
AI make useless project merchant exchange when there are other projects available for him
expected:
AI: make it prioritize good projects; if its hard then just simple priority order: PTS>HWP>WP>CN>PEG>CDF>VW ; VW as top1 for univ
rebalance proposal: -33% merchange exchange cost and other SPs that affect only single city
Jungle still is OP
I suggest just always split jungle into 7 areas spread around evenly across map e.g. 7x8squares with random square placement within each minijungle
Now basically whichever AI get jungle almost always end up strongest, so thats just stupid RNG logic; same when there are a few jungles e.g. 2: just these 2 factions are on top (like sparta and drones in my game)
AI makes artillery units which are useless
expected: rebalance artillery or make AI not build them
trance plasma hoverboat 2-3t-4 - why it cost only 18mins ? seems way too cheap; 2-3t-1 unit cost 27m!
in randomize faction personalities in agenda i got spartans agenda "values wealth" which make no sense since they cant even use that !
impact penetrator 4-1-10 are ridiculously OP, most OP unit; cost only 18mins !! its total game breaker
proposed: cost 2x and range 7 (best would be to adjust per size but not sure it's possible, eg: tiny=5,small=6,standard=7); all more powerful needlers also adjusted
proposal2: make hovertanks be discoverable before air and move air tech to higher tier and more expensive so it's discovered later and requires more tech points.
what makes air so good is that land units cant attack them, which also means you can "cover" your land units on same field with air units so that none will be attacked;
proposal3: maybe the solution to this would be to make AAA ability work both for defence and offence or "air superiority ability" available both from doctrine:air as well as from some other earlier tech so that faction that cannot afford air will be able to defend in any way. Right now these defence anti-aa units like 1-<3>-1 AAA cost 27m while 6-1-10 cost 36m!
military power dominance is not calculated properly to account for air power: eg i got 12 impact + 2 missle air units and im not the biggest despite enemies got basically no anti-air
also on F7 screen its written "air units 14-9-" which makes no sense
the biggest army enemy (hive) got just 3 AAA units; 2212: later i got ~40 planes, most missile ones and still no military top1 place! when noone can match me and i could probably even win if all enemies combine vs me - there were 3 big ones still, but only 1 had air power tech (yang) and just started making it, but i already broke his faction killing/taking over multiple bases and he is like half of me on faction power chart
needlers do not deal collateral damage - they should imo cause it's logical
free drones faction is in game, cities of AI often have drones but they never revolt and join drones - they should; I assume some of these drone problems persist multiple rounds, but im not sure
critical error: game hanged once when i was in diplomatic talks and used datalinks to check cities of AI i was talking to (i had infiltration); i opened city view of enemy and couldnt close it, buttons didnt react
SE +3 police doesn't work exactly as advertised "police effect doubled" I tested on single base using cheats: morgan+police state+ ascetic virtues SP (gives +1 police) + garrison police unit with nont-lethal ability - it should reduce drones by 4, but it reduce only by 3; thought it works ok with simple scout patrol (reduce drones by 2)
drones, spartans and believers and hive all had ton of formers; and all made wise decision to make boreholes, except hive, which somehow got no boreholes - ok i see it might be because hive h 8000 as no energy restrictions lifted yet so that might be good
we already discussed PTS nerfing (e.g.+50% price or base start at lvl2 instead of lvl3); additionally I think maybe even going further and decoupling whole IA tech would be best: e.g. keep only crawlers and wealth there, but move (nerfed) PTS 1 tech higher
i got "auto prune obsolete units" and "Design units automatically" both turned off, but despite this when new reactor tech (fusion) was researched a ton of units were designed automatically with new reactor
expected: none is designed
AI is very stupid when exchanging bases: e.g. you take over lvl1 base from hive and exchange it for lvl 7 base with freedrones; proposal: just remove base exchange or make some calculation of real base value and exchange only bases where it is beneficial for AI
minor: even if you play with option "dont restart eliminated players" you can still liberate captioned faction leader; I think it doesnt make sense as such but broader the whole option regardless of "dont restart..." doesnt make sense for me and dont bring anything worthwile into the game (imagine someone captured 40 years ago and now u liberate them and he restarts with some tiny 2 bases somewhere - it feels very superficial)
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