Enemies rarely attack and are often weak (poor ai)

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Game version: 0.95.178
Operating System: Windows 7 x86
Java runtime version: Version 7 Update 65
Installed using the Launcher? yes
Game language: en

Hi,

I never seem to get attacked (or very rarely) by my enemies. I tried pretty 
much every setting: easy/normal/hard ai, campaign/campaign (free)/human vs AI, 
start relationship: war/game template.

If i wait a whole game year (as a test) they slowly attack some planets. But if 
i play for real i conquer the galaxy mostly without ever being attacked once, 
with 9x hard-ai enemies. Constant requests to surrender myself and that my end 
is near are there though.

Is this normal and is the ai always easy, or is something wrong here.
If not, is there a way to make the ai more challenging?

Thanks for all the time you've put in this amazing game, can't wait to see more!

Original issue reported on code.google.com by mwe...@gmail.com on 21 Jul 2014 at 11:38

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Unfortunately, AI is weak and I hope I can ramp-up the difficulty some time in 
the future.

There are other settings that can add advantage to AI players:
- on the General page, there is the global difficulty: on hard, you get less 
money and they get more money.
- There is a trait column (T) you can click on and setup some enhanced 
properties to AIs.
- Non-human races have limited economy options due to the main game. You can 
add daily tax infusion to all players via the Economic tab.
- You can enable the build anything option in which case AI should be able to 
build all economic and defense buildings.
- You can group the enemy AI's so they won't bother attacking each other but 
instead focus on you.

Original comment by akarn...@gmail.com on 22 Jul 2014 at 6:21

• Changed state: Accepted
• Added labels: Type-Enhancement, AI
• Removed labels: Type-Defect

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Thank you for your reply,

Would it be possible to implement some "fairly easy" (i know things are rarely 
uncomplicated when changing code) improvements? Like changing "int base 3" into 
"int base 1" in AttackPlanner.class

[code]
    /**
     * Compute the time when the next attack will happen.
     */
    void computeNextAttack() {
        if (world.nextAttack == null) {
            if (world.mayConquer) {
                int base = 3;
                if (world.difficulty == Difficulty.NORMAL) {
                    base = 5;
                } else
                if (world.difficulty == Difficulty.EASY) {
                    base = 7;
                }
                long next = 1L * (ModelUtils.randomInt(3) + base) * (8 + 2 * ModelUtils.randomInt(6)) * 60 * 60 * 1000;
                world.nextAttack = new Date(world.now.getTime() + next);
                setNewAttack.invoke(world.nextAttack);
            }
        }
    }
[/code]

Or further tighten the taxation/max planets ratio. It would problably be easier 
to make hard harder instead of creating a new very hard mode.

The handful of remaining bugs (which reveal themselves) i get when playing dont 
really bother me. the passiveness of the ai is the biggest negative imo. It 
would be great if the game is challenging again.

Original comment by mwe...@gmail.com on 23 Jul 2014 at 1:10

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This is just the attack attempt frequency. Even if it goes more frequently, if 
there is no full fleet built, the AI won't attack.

The most likely source of issues is the lack of priorities between building, 
research and production. There is usually the lack of money and the AI spends 
it on mostly buildings. The second problem is the high bar on entry to fleet 
management, which requires a 80k military spaceport,  40k for researching the 
orbital factory and another 80k to produce one. This leaves no room at the 
beginning: the first 200k is spent, it takes months to get back to a proper 
money flow.

Original comment by akarn...@gmail.com on 23 Jul 2014 at 6:40

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I can easily give the Dargslan "infinite" money (100000000 or so) and at least 
all of the planets within their starting rectangle. Everything with the cheat 
shortcuts and right at campaign start. I am attacked somewhat more often then, 
but it's still no real challenge. Could the initial relation be war, with the 
Dragslan at least ?

Original comment by anonymis...@arcor.de on 19 Oct 2014 at 11:25

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They have a war threshold of 95 out of 100 so basically they are enemy to 
everyone. What seems to happen is that they attack nearby races and fail 
because space defenses are way stronger than their ships.

I've changed the target selection frequency and logic and made sure the 
Dargslan target the player.

Original comment by akarn...@gmail.com on 20 Oct 2014 at 7:33

• Changed state: SVN

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Original comment by akarn...@gmail.com on 20 Oct 2014 at 9:21

• Changed state: Fixed

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"What seems to happen is that they attack nearby races and fail because space 
defenses are way stronger than their ships."
I very much suspect this happens often, yes. Not only for Dargslan, but also 
for the other races, with higher severity, as their ships are weaker. This is 
of course since the AI does not bombard space stations and planetary defenses. 
It's clear that making an AI intelligent is difficult, but they don't need to 
build 3 space stations on every planet before building ships. So changing their 
priorities could "fix" it. They should only have space stations on a few very 
important planets, such as the ones with the highest population, or an orbital 
factory. That's probably easier to implement than making AI bombard.

Original comment by anonymis...@arcor.de on 20 Oct 2014 at 5:08