AI Eyes need to be spawned MUCH LESS frequently

[Philo]

For people new to AI Wars, what AI Eyes do is they will spawn more troops for the AI if you go 2x over the troops they have on the planet. So say, they have 100 dudes over in their planet, if you send in 201 people, the AI Eye will start spawning more fleet for the AI.
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As of this moment in all of my games, AI Eyes are spawned on around 60 of all the 80 planets. This really makes the game feel repetitive cause you always have to deal with the planets in the same manner.

1. Send all bombers you have and a distraction fleet with them so the bombers don't take all the damage. The distraction fleet can't be good against dealing against the AI troops since this will diminish their numbers and the AI Eye will spawn hell on you. Rather send in a very crappy army + bombers.
2. Bombers are probably able to take out about half of the guard posts in that planet
3. Rebuild bombers and repeat.

Dealing with AI Eyes is REALLY grindy. Cause you almost never are able to take out all the guardposts in one go AND you can't afford to send in a complex fleet of any kind because then you will go over the double limit AI Eyes have and it will spawn free bots against your fleet.
I'm sure everybody's also had to deal with sending a fleet in that doesn't go over the AI Eye limit and then watch as the AI uses almost all of their fleet on that planet to attack your base which in turn makes the AI Eye spawn a huge free defensive army for the AI on the planet. And if your troops were already deep in territory with the AI Eye now blocking escape back to your own planet you can say goodbye to them.

I think the AI Eye is a fun concept if it was special event. Like if there were only a handful of planets say 10 in the whole galaxy that had em'. But now it really feels like your huge fleet is always just standing there as you send in a wave of 200 dudes at max. AND, you're never really dealing with looking at, hey, what is their fleet comprised of in this planet? Should I send in more of these dudes to counter those? No, you're always forced to send max bombers to take out the guard posts as fast as possible so you can send in your main fleet.

I don't want to worry about sending in a fleet that WILL destroy the enemy cause the Eye will just spawn more of them. Isn't finding a good fleet composure that kills the enemy kinda the point anyway?

[chemical_art]

For people new to AI Wars, what AI Eyes do is they will spawn more troops for the AI if you go 2x over the troops they have on the planet. So say, they have 100 dudes over in their planet, if you send in 201 people, the AI Eye will start spawning more fleet for the AI.
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As of this moment in all of my games, AI Eyes are spawned on around 60 of all the 80 planets. This really makes the game feel repetitive cause you always have to deal with the planets in the same manner.

Well, if the AI has a fleet of 100 and you send in 201, the AI will send one more ship to make things more even. Annoying, but at least they don't try to overwhelm you in turn.

Also, 60 out of 80 planets? That sounds really high, even for a defensive AI. Perhaps you got a bug?

[TechSY730]

As of this moment in all of my games, AI Eyes are spawned on around 60 of all the 80 planets. This really makes the game feel repetitive cause you always have to deal with the planets in the same manner.

60 out of 80!?  

That is WAY too much. The number spawned per map is supposed to much, MUCH lower. What version are you playing on? I think there was a version where the spawn rate of the AI eye was about double what it should of been.

Also, what difficulty are you playing on? The spawn rate goes up as the difficulty goes up IIRC. However, even for 2 level 9 AIs, 3/4 planets is too high. I think the expected rate (for around level 7) is closer to 1/4.

Normally, I would chalk this up to an unfortunate seed you got and remind you that low probability only means low counts on average, not in every case; you might of gotten an "unlucky" seed. However, there are two holes with this theory. One, I think the rate is an exact number to be spread across planets, not a chance per planet. Two, you mentioned you got this for several games. Such rates happening consistently outside of expected ranges over multiple tries is most certainly suspect.

I have to say though, I do not see this in my games. In my games, it is much closer to the expected 1/4.

EDIT: As chemical_art pointed out (and ninja'd me with), the number of AI eyes is also dependent on AI type. The defensive AIs, especially the turtle types, have a much higher spawn rate (again, IIRC, 1/3 for a level 7 turtle). However, even two level 9 turtle AIs I think should have a rate closer to 1/2, and I highly doubt you would torture yourself trying to fight 2 high level turtles. 

[Philo]

I don't think it's a bug. In all my games at least 3/5 planets have AI Eyes.

And the unfortunate truth is that usually the AI's forces get smacked at least by 40 in the early attack, so you're looking at 200 vs 60 troops more likely than 200 vs 100. Which means that the AI gets a steady income of 40 dudes, which more than likely also get smacked right out of the gate. But still, it's a 40 free fleet dudes per few seconds in this scenario which I don't really find fair to deal with in almost every goddamn planet I attack to.

Also, if the AI has say 400 dudes. You will likely want to attack, lower their numbers to around 150 (best number for you to send in max bombers + crap fleet without tipping off the Eye) and then flee since the Eye will start pushing out so many goddamn troops. Then come back in deal with it in the normal phases. I mean, that's just lovably grindy work and not fun at all.

[Philo]

I'm playing 5.0 with all expansion except Lots. And right now I've been toying around with a LVL 10 and 8 AI.

But, in my games with my friends we were playing against a LVL 8 and a 7 and on both games we played there was an AI eye in around 3/5 planets.

Damn, I thought this was normal, guess not.

[TechSY730]

I don't think it's a bug. In all my games at least 3/5 planets have AI Eyes.

And the unfortunate truth is that usually the AI's forces get smacked at least by 40 in the early attack, so you're looking at 200 vs 60 troops more likely than 200 vs 100. Which means that the AI gets a steady income of 40 dudes, which more than likely also get smacked right out of the gate. But still, it's a 40 free fleet dudes per few seconds in this scenario which I don't really find fair to deal with in almost every goddamn planet I attack to.

Also, if the AI has say 400 dudes. You will likely want to attack, lower their numbers to around 150 (best number for you to send in max bombers + crap fleet without tipping off the Eye) and then flee since the Eye will start pushing out so many goddamn troops. Then come back in deal with it in the normal phases. I mean, that's just f-ing grindy work and not fun at all.

And that is why they are supposed to be the exception, not the rule. In fact, now that I think about it, I think the rate is closer to 1/5, not 1/4 like I originally said. In any case, you are having some odd behavior.

Can you post the seed, map type, AI types, AI difficulties, your start point, settings, and basically anything else that influences map seeding, where you are seeing this AI eye spam?

Or easier yet, can you post some of the save games that have AI eye spam? We can copy the settings used to seed that game from a save game.

[TechSY730]

I'm playing 5.0 with all expansion except Lots. And right now I've been toying around with a LVL 10 and 8 AI.

But, in my games with my friends we were playing against a LVL 8 and a 7 and on both games we played there was an AI eye in around 3/5 planets.

Damn, I thought this was normal, guess not.

Well, a level 10 AI is supposed to be absurdly unfair, unbalanced, and near unwinnable, so normally I would tell you to "man up" because you asked for it. 

However, since you are seeing it on lvl 8 and 7 as well, then I guess I cannot chalk it up to the absurdities of lvl 10 AIs. 

[Philo]

Well here is the game with my friend. You can see that all except 1 AI controlled planet has the AI Eye as of right now, and it wasn't much less frequent in the beginning either.

http://rapidshare.com/files/451976846/Great.sav

And the LVL 10 is a sissy. Just the AI Eye spam is what keeps me from winning that bastard.

Edit: Just counted them. 11 of the 12 AI planets we can see have an AI Eye on them. And we just cleared two planets which also had them. Bastards.

[TechSY730]

Well here is the game with my friend. You can see that all except 1 AI controlled planet has the AI Eye as of right now, and it wasn't much less frequent in the beginning either.

http://rapidshare.com/files/451976846/Great.sav

And the LVL 10 is a sissy. Just the AI Eye spam is what keeps me from winning that bastard.

Thanks. But sadly, I don't have the "developer magic powers" that allows me to debug the seeding process. You'll have to wait for Keith or Chris to do that.

Also, you might want to post this on the actual bug tracker. Maybe I should of mentioned that before asking you to post the save game. 

[Sir t]

I think there is a ai opponent that has ai eyes on every planet but does not launch attacks...

[Philo]

Well I'm happy to say this problem went away after installing the 2 new beta updates. My new game seeds look to spawn AI Eyes on a 1/5 ratio as opposed to it being on almost every planet. This game is so much more enjoyable right now.

[BobTheJanitor]

Hopefully someone still looks at that save. If base 5.0 is spawning crazy numbers of eyes that's going to affect a lot of players.

[Tharrick]

I'll second this - I've had several games at difficulty 6/7 where the AI spawns eyes on more than 50% of planets. My current game has a totally different issue, with ion cannons, and mass drivers on every planet, but I think that's the Peacemaker AI type at work...

[Red Spot]

Assuming my game works as normal, I think I dont I even get 1 on each 5 planets playing on 8.7. Perhaps just that, but absolutelly not more frequent than 1/5.

[keith.lamothe]

Assuming my game works as normal, I think I dont I even get 1 on each 5 planets playing on 8.7. Perhaps just that, but absolutelly not more frequent than 1/5.

Some AI types do have more, so that explains some discrepancy.  The 4/5 ratio is way way out there though