AI in TA

I notice that the AI actually follow the diplomatic values better, and they aren't all the same anymore. Some of them are good and some are not so good. You can get better deals from the not so good ones, but gone are the days of pillaging all the AI's the same. I like the fact that even if I get diplomatic translators and go up the tree I still find there are races with better diplomacy skills than myself.

I notice to that some of the races are "also rans"... In any given game of vs. 9, 4 or 5 of them are going to be duds.

I agree the Torians are one of the more formidable, they always seem to do OK, as well as the Thalens. The Korinn and the Korath also do well, although the Korath seem to fade end game. The Thalens and the Korinn always seem to be the last ones standing aside from myself.

The Yor, the Korx and the Arceans are perennial losers, I have yet to see them do well in any game I have played.

The Altarians and Terrans are wild cards... they either do really well or very poorly. If they do well, they have a third of the map before anyone gets going...

I still notice after all this time the AI is downright dopey about placing structures, especially on bonus tiles. This really makes no sense at all to me. How hard is it to program that this is a bonus tile... you build "improvement" on this tile ONLY, unless your race can't build said improvement.

T

Given that I went through the large majority of a game with 3 AI where only 1 of them built any ships, IMO it may have gotten worse. Was playing on a small galaxy, and up against terrans, alterians, drengin and arceans. Sure enough the drengin got their military up quickly and declared war on the arceans. I then paid them to declare war on the alterians as well, hoping the two combined could take down the drengin, and then also got the terrans in on the act as well, but the alterians and terrans just did research and didn't build a single combat ship. I then ended up at war with the alterians (can't remember if they declared or I did), and throughout the entire war (that ended with me wiping out their last planet) they didn't build a single combat ship. The terrans weren't any better either, building ships with shields but no weapons (something only an idiot would do). Oh, this was on crippling or something as well, difficulty wise, so the AI was meant to be at it's smartest. Anyway I decided to try and make the game go on a bit longer so with the alterians dead I then went and focused on the drengin, wiped them out, then moved on to the terran, who had finally started building some fairly powerful ships. By then I had a massive size advantage though so was able to roll over their forces and crush them. I was disappointed with how feeble the terrans and alterians were though AI wise.

Before you start your games, go and edit the races to give them some advantage in the areas you think they need it in. You can also edit the 'xml' files to give them more than the game can.

The Terrans and the Altarians don't seem to do well on small maps or low AI count at all. I figure it has to do with their alignment and objectives values... if they don't have enough planets they can't tech fast enough, and since they seem to hold off on weapons they don't have any for awhile. This is offset by either a) alot of worlds so they tech fast or alot of AI to trade with. In your case, The Arceans are junk, they never do anything... The Altarians are Terrans, just a different color and the Drengins are war mongers who hate to trade weapons techs.

I tend to play larger maps with more AIs in ToA... It seems to help the races that do nothing out a bit. If I could only get a option to turn off Race Specific Techs, I'd be OK...

T