Game is increasingly becoming more grind-y.

[Spikey00]

AI War has become very grind-y with the latest updates to the AI logic, mainly the "do not attack until firepower greater than player firepower" is the issue, along with waves that spawn as CPAs.  Here's what I've observed so far in my playtesting with regards to that:
1.  Waves that spawn as CPAs will spawn on an AI planet, and thus they will turtle there for whatever else that triggers them to attack.  These waves typically (without force CPAs being on or them being normal CPA waves) happen when:
         a) no AI planets connect to a player planet.
         b) no AI planets that connect to a targeted player by a bully or assassin AI.

These CPA waves make it far more difficult in penetrating a planet because of the numbers in which they spawn--during mid-game that's about 500-1 000 ships that instantly bolsters an AI planet that otherwise should have never been; even more so if you have multiple players (and in my unfortunate case, three players and a bully AI:  three planets instantly reinforced).  I've not had too great of an issue with it because I always choose autobombs now (these seem mandatory in a long-term game) and they're perfect in most situations.  However, it would take far more effort and time in reducing their unnatural numbers with normal ship fleets, and so that's why I think this is a bad approach in 'improving' AI behavior.  It makes both new and veteran players reluctant to get anywhere in the game because it's too difficult now.

Now on to actual CPAs; I know I've already posted about my 18k/30k threat levels in an extremely long game, but I'm seeing all the time now, that there's a great number of threat hanging overhead from CPAs; they never do anything with their ships, so they're just "somewhere" out there in the galaxy.  The following series of screenshots depicts our four-hour three player game with 7/7 bully/turtle AIs; the surrounding planets, which are clearly of a greater firepower.


We're busy attacking an AI planet while the two planets sit around doing nothing; that planet in the center has nothing beyond a few defenses, but yet the AI doesn't do anything.


Here are our ship numbers after taking the planet.


This is the aggregate firepower.

There is a ton of ships on both of the planets (mixed, I can't tell what's part of a CPA or wave that turned CPA beyond a 1K fighter cloud), but obviously the AI has the upper hand in this situation.  However, from this roll-over of the threat (just read you could do that now):



2 880 ships are on Clarity's End, which is the top connecting III planet while 984 exist on the III planet below.  While that's not all their ships on each of the planets, that's significant enough that it should attack.

The CPAs doing nothing imposes both a huge offensive obstacle and performance issue.  Before, CPAs were a fun and dangerous thing to undergo:  the AI could come from any direction, and all your fronts would be attacked by streams of AI ships, and after the wave you could use that as an anchor to attack because the AI expended its ships from planets that accumulated ships.  Now all I see is a... well, nothing really.  I don't want to say I don't care about the AI being intelligent, but I definitely don't want the game to become any more grind-y than it is currently, and that's something I am really bothered about.


Please offer your thoughts.

[Spikey00]

Also as a side note:  I'm not sure how the firepower is calculated, but both of those planets do have broken golems, and perhaps they're being calculated into the firepower rating (which I doubt should be).

[Echo35]

You know I actually just had something similar go on in my game. A big CPA built up (Still relatively early in the game, so "big" is about 900 ships) and all they've done is sit on several AI planets. They aren't attacking (Okay, so about 150 of them did once), they're just sitting there. I've got scouts out on every planet that is alerted to me, so I can follow them around and they never attack me. These damn Neinzul Enclaves I'm having so much trouble with are being more of a nuisance than the AI is.

Another weird thing about it that I noticed is that one planet next to me has a few hundred ships on it from the CPA, while the planet right behind it has about 60 Mk. II ships and two Mk. V fabricators on it. Why on earth aren't the ships going there or attacking the planet of mine that is two hops away from TWO Mk. V fabs?! Seems a little weird to me (I'm playing on an X map, so those two planets are at the end of a line completely cut off from the rest of the AI force, so I'm not really sure why it would be getting a few hundred ships from a CPA anyway, but I digress).

[lovekawakawaii]

Guess you have to go hunting or try to win before something triggers them all

[Elukka]

Perhaps they should wait for reinforcements only for a limited time, then attack regardless. I do like that the AI considers its strength relative to the player, but I think an attack should be an attack.

[zebramatt]

I think it's a bug that so much threat is hanging around out there, I'm not sure.  Before you upgrade to the next version, if you can take them out offensively that might be good.  But I still have to do the actual testing of what's going on, and implementation of the changes, tomorrow.  The latter half of today was all Tidalis for me, it turned out.

[Wingflier]

I agree that the latest patches make things feel "grindy", and also that the "overwhelming force" mechanic seems very shaky and unpredictable.  The AI simply doesn't attack when it should, which just turns the game into the player having to manually go and "clear out" said planets, which is extremely hard to do when the planet(s) in question are MKIII or even MKIV, and like has been said previously, doesn't particularly add to the game experience.

Another unfortunate byproduct of the "overwhelming force" mechanic are that groups of thousands of units, something the player rarely had to deal with before except in rare circumstances (from my experience).  Now, having to go and clear out thousands of units is a common occurrence, which forces the player to take AoE units like autobombs, Riot Starships, and others just to have a chance at winning.  I don't feel like the player should be forced down a certain tech tree of units just to have a chance of winning.

[superking]

I agree that the latest patches make things feel "grindy", and also that the "overwhelming force" mechanic seems very shaky and unpredictable.  The AI simply doesn't attack when it should, which just turns the game into the player having to manually go and "clear out" said planets, which is extremely hard to do when the planet(s) in question are MKIII or even MKIV, and like has been said previously, doesn't particularly add to the game experience.

do we know if it is a bug yet?

[Wingflier]

I agree that the latest patches make things feel "grindy", and also that the "overwhelming force" mechanic seems very shaky and unpredictable.  The AI simply doesn't attack when it should, which just turns the game into the player having to manually go and "clear out" said planets, which is extremely hard to do when the planet(s) in question are MKIII or even MKIV, and like has been said previously, doesn't particularly add to the game experience.

do we know if it is a bug yet?

That the AI doesn't attack when it has a clear advantage?  I'm not sure.  But the problem is that I don't even know how it's calculated.  Does the AI only consider the planet(s) it's adjacent to?  Does it consider the adjacent planets and the planets adjacent to that?  Does it consider your mobile army since that can be pulled to defend as well?

The problem with this mechanic is that there's so much "unknown" involved for the player.  Even if it did only consider adjacent planets when determining whether they have "overwhelming force", I still think it's really gimmicky.  The player can simply "trick" the AI by moving all its units off said planet for 1 second to trigger the attack and coming back.  This isn't strategy, it's just a gimmick.  However, if you make it to where the AI doesn't always attack even if it does have overwhelming force, the player never knows whether the attack will actually come or not, and therefore has to waste time clearing out planets "just in case".  It just seems like a lose lose situation to me, and it doesn't seem to make the game any more enjoyable or deep.  

edit:  If it were up to me, once the AI massed so many CPA units on their planets and hit a certain threat level (say 5k), it would just send them all, whether it thought it had overwhelming force or not.  The 'OF' mechanic just seems too inconsistent and confusing for players to deal with, and there should just be some point where the player knows the AI is going to send their guys, regardless of what they do (otherwise you just get into an endless battle of power threats where nothing is actually getting accomplished, like the Cold War).  Hopefully with Hunter-Killers, this will be the case, I'm excited to see if that changes things (I'm assuming HKs will be offensive because to be clear, Hunter-Killers sitting idly on enemy planets would be very frustrating )

[TechSY730]

And we have come across another facet of the challenge that this game has struggled with for ages, how to make the AI smart without making it not fun.
The behavior described here, hording up thousands and thousands of units before attacking, is a smart thing to do. Such a huge force would almost certainty hurt the player a lot, and the AI has the patience to keep hoarding until it gets enough units. The problem is that this is not necessarily fun. And when this becomes a core game-play mechanic, this may be a problem.
Another problem is that this behavior is what we, the players, do. Most players that I know, once they hit the mid game, will frequently build up to several thousand unit armadas before attacking, which may take quite a long time. Even though the AI takes longer to get the same number of units to attack, when we complain about the AI doing it, aren't we being hypocritical?

[Wingflier]

And we have come across another facet of the challenge that this game has struggled with for ages, how to make the AI smart without making it not fun.
The behavior described here, hording up thousands and thousands of units before attacking, is a smart thing to do. Such a huge force would almost certainty hurt the player a lot, and the AI has the patience to keep hoarding until it gets enough units. The problem is that this is not necessarily fun. And when this becomes a core game-play mechanic, this may be a problem.
Another problem is that this behavior is what we, the players, do. Most players that I know, once they hit the mid game, will frequently build up to several thousand unit armadas before attacking, which may take quite a long time. Even though the AI takes longer to get the same number of units to attack, when we complain about the AI doing it, aren't we being hypocritical?

Aren't we being hypocritical that the AI doesn't just send their entire Armada at us at the start of the game and wipe us out within the first 2 minutes?  I think you're fighting a losing battle there.

I don't mind the "overwhelming force" mechanic, I just think it needs a threshold or something.  It could just be that it's bugged right now (as shown in the OP's screenshots) because even when they should be sending their guys, they don't.  In a perfect world though, the AI would just send their force after a certain point whether they had overwhelming force or not, so that the player actually has some kind of basis to make a strategy around.

So far in AI War, it seems like the AI behavior has been very clear and understandable.  That doesn't mean that the AI is stupid, it just means that they act in such a way that you can  reasonably counter if you play right.  The AI had 3 main methods of attacking:  Waves, CPAs, and Border Aggression (4 if you counter Counter-Attack Posts).  There were also counter-attacks after you destroyed something vital on one of their planets.  All of those methods are clear-cut and practical.  This whole "overwhelming force" thing is a completely different mechanic than what we've seen before.  You get no warning when the AI will strike, you have no idea how many units it will actually send, and it has the unfortunate drawback of making the "conquest" aspect of the game more difficult as well.  What I'm trying to say is that the 'OF' mechanic is vastly different from the traditional, understandable methods the AI typically uses to engage you, and not in a good way.

[TechSY730]

Agreed, the "overwhelming force" computation needs some tweaking.
Maybe there should be two tiers of "freed units", one from freed defensive units (blowing up a guard post or planet or what have you) that acts like the current freed unit system (overwhelming force and everything). And then an "attacking freed units", where the units in it have a much softer calculation for "overwhelming force", and a maximum time to wait. Freed units due to CPA and waves that spawn on an AI world (like when there are no warpgates adjacent to a player home, or a raid engine) will be put into "attacking freed mode". For bonus points, if the number of regular freed units gets too high on one planet, a small percentage of them can be reassigned to attacking freed units.
Notice, the player, outside of debug info, will have no way to tell between the two. They will both come up under threat.

[ShadowOTE]

Agreed, the "overwhelming force" computation needs some tweaking.
Maybe there should be two tiers of "freed units", one from freed defensive units (blowing up a guard post or planet or what have you) that acts like the current freed unit system (overwhelming force and everything). And then an "attacking freed units", where the units in it have a much softer calculation for "overwhelming force", and a maximum time to wait. Freed units due to CPA and waves that spawn on an AI world (like when there are no warpgates adjacent to a player home, or a raid engine) will be put into "attacking freed mode". For bonus points, if the number of regular freed units gets too high on one planet, a small percentage of them can be reassigned to attacking freed units.
Notice, the player, outside of debug info, will have no way to tell between the two. They will both come up under threat.

That could work well - there's been talk of how to get "siege" mechanics working right, and this strikes me as a possible way to go.

[superking]

I get the impression this is a closed book until the bug is fixed, but heres another idea:

the required superiority of AI forces before the AI attacks is proportional to the total theat

eg. at a threat of 100 on one planet, a 4x firepower superiority is required before they attack; at a theat of 2000, only 1x firepower is required, with a smooth curve inbetween. this would prevent seiges scaling up infinitely since by eg. 4000 units, the AI would only require a 50% of the firepower to still think attacking is AOK

[Spikey00]

I still really dislike how the AI turns these waves into instant reinforcements because it quickly turns the game into a slow-paced attritionfest.