Nearly impossible to attack at 400 AIP and... diff 7

[TechSY730]

It's a pretty nice buff for higher AIP playstyles. It won't really affect mid or low playstyles much though (the range this causes the capping behaviors at tend to be high enough to be unsettling due to AI offfensive strength), but it still is a very nice "fallback" to help avoid the sort of grind that happened in this thread. I approve (and as always, exact values for the constants in the equation can be tweaked later)

Two questions.
1. What about AI's that don't send waves, especially those not marked at formal turtle type and thus don't get some of their waves "redirected" into reinforcement points. (Support corps comes to mind)?
2. What about the ultra low difficulties? Will difficulty 1 really have an effective AIP for reinforcements be 1^2/2 = 1/2 = .5? And thanks to the initial AIP and AIP floor of 10, this means any difficulty < ~4.47 (difficulty^2/2 < 10 === difficulty^2 < 20 === difficulty < sqrt(20) ~===  difficulty < 4.47) basically will never get a higher rate of reinforcements than they get at the start of the game?

[Drjones013]

Wow, I might actually be able to convince my friends to play AI War again if this keeps up (they typically will play a mid to high AIP game).

Hopefully something good comes out of this!

[nas1m]

Just in for 6.019 (which will probably be out next Tuesday or Wednesday) :

* Normal AI reinforcements now have an "effective AIP cap" of (AIDifficulty^2)/2.
** So, for example, a Diff 7 AI's normal reinforcements will not increase from AIP increases past 245 (on Diff 8 it'd be 320, on Diff 9 405, and on Diff 10 500).
** The main reason for this is that reinforcements tend to produce stalemates rather than player-loses outcomes.  If the player really oversteps the viable AIP range then waves or CPAs or something like that should step in to kill them, but reinforcements generally aren't going to do that.

A pretty general question: Will changes like these affect existing saves from earlier versions?
If so, how will they be affected in this specific case?
Will the changes simply affect all reinforcements dealt out to the AI after the update?

I got a game going at 6/6 with ~600 AIP and all AIP reducers already popped - these changes might be able to finally end the grindfest this game has become (after ~70h wall clock time invested I'm simply not up to calling it a day as far as this game is concerned )...

[kasnavada]

Thanks for the answer Keith. Mine, to your questions :

- Multiply AIP by AI level = real AIP used for wave and reinforcements.
- Mutiply AIP by AI level squared = real AIP used for wave and reinforcements.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean here, but rest assured that there are difficulty-based multipliers for both of these   Diff 10 probably gets around 9x the pain as Diff 7 in a lot of ways, and in some places it's probably worse.

I meant that the current multipliers multiply mainly the number of units coming by waves, if I remember correctly, not the quality. The formula is still something like 200-diff*10, 800-diff*10 and so on ? So with 400 AIP you get 200 to 1000 lvl 2 ships because lvl 3 ships are at 700+. The point of this change would be to get higher AIP so higher diff unlock higher quality ships for wave much sooner. So, 10 planets taken from the AI would mean lvl 2 waves for diff 7, lvl 3 waves for diff 9. Again, number indicative and not representative of any balanced system at all, other formulas could apply to balance the game better.

Anyway, not being able to take more than 20 planets without encountering a stalemate situation is fine (and not unique to this phase of the game's lifetime).  But I'd prefer if you still had a decent shot with 20 on Diff  7.

This still poses a "problem" for large maps, the skill needed to beat up a 40 system map with 20 AI system captured is not the same as the skill needed to win a game with 20 AI system captured for a 120 system map. If intended (again) some displayer should at least be put stating that. In my opinion, larger maps are already more difficult because the ressources tend to be scattered around, making defenses much harder to mount up.

I'd personnaly prefer the way Civ5 did it though (bonus / malus to global happiness depend on map size), but really I have no problem with either.

* Normal AI reinforcements now have an "effective AIP cap" of (AIDifficulty^2)/2.
** So, for example, a Diff 7 AI's normal reinforcements will not increase from AIP increases past 245 (on Diff 8 it'd be 320, on Diff 9 405, and on Diff 10 500).
** The main reason for this is that reinforcements tend to produce stalemates rather than player-loses outcomes.  If the player really oversteps the viable AIP range then waves or CPAs or something like that should step in to kill them, but reinforcements generally aren't going to do that.

This looks promising 

[keith.lamothe]

mid AIP games look viable

Well, what's your definition of mid-AIP?  Even on diff 7 this new cap doesn't have any impact at all until AIP 246.  I was considering going lower but mainly my goal was to prevent the stalemate on the 7 to 8 range, thinking that if you went that high on 8+ it would be more likely to just kill you.

Anyway, we can pursue this more if it looks promising, possibly moving the cap at 200 AIP across the board and just having the "extra" get shifted into the next CPA or something like that.  Less likely to stalemate, more likely to kill you.

[chemical_art]

mid AIP games look viable

Well, what's your definition of mid-AIP?  Even on diff 7 this new cap doesn't have any impact at all until AIP 246.  I was considering going lower but mainly my goal was to prevent the stalemate on the 7 to 8 range, thinking that if you went that high on 8+ it would be more likely to just kill you.

Anyway, we can pursue this more if it looks promising, possibly moving the cap at 200 AIP across the board and just having the "extra" get shifted into the next CPA or something like that.  Less likely to stalemate, more likely to kill you.

Well you see Keith, that is hard to say. Digging up early AI Wars games, I got AIP games of around 350AIP. And I considered it fine (for AI 8 or lower.)

The fact that now, when everyone thinks that is high AIP, including this very thread, shows just how much power creep has occurred.

I think within my first 5 posts I wrote to the effect of "From 7.7 to 8.3 the AI bites much harder, even at 350 AIP."

This was pre LotS. Could you imagine that statement applying now?

[TechSY730]

mid AIP games look viable

Well, what's your definition of mid-AIP?  Even on diff 7 this new cap doesn't have any impact at all until AIP 246.  I was considering going lower but mainly my goal was to prevent the stalemate on the 7 to 8 range, thinking that if you went that high on 8+ it would be more likely to just kill you.

Anyway, we can pursue this more if it looks promising, possibly moving the cap at 200 AIP across the board and just having the "extra" get shifted into the next CPA or something like that.  Less likely to stalemate, more likely to kill you.

I'd rather not see that, I do like that higher difficulties get more in defense. If you are worried about the to be released cutoffs being too high, you could make it something like effective AIP for defense = min(AIP, max(150, 10*(difficulty^2/N))), with N being 4 or even 6 or 8.

Or maybe reduce the cutoffs for border aggression to start on higher difficulties?

[keith.lamothe]

I'd rather not see that, I do like that higher difficulties get more in defense.

They definitely do, even if the AIP "ceiling" were the same for reinforcements.  Remember that the higher difficulties get more "per AIP" in pretty much everything, reinforcements included.

Anyway, yea, we would want to avoid making it too easy to just cut through AI space on a non-superweapon mid-AIP game.  But having solid walls of ships that regenerate faster than you can kill them doesn't seem to be an experience people generally enjoy.

[TechSY730]

The basic problem is you don't get anything from having 400 AIP that you didn't get by 200 AIP, but the AI is twice as hard.

If you are using your AIP reducers properly, then that seems reasonable to me.

One of the key aspects of this game is that human player strength gets a large increase over the first few planets, but then begins to decelerate and plateau out over more planets after that (eventually hitting a theoretical max if you manage to unlock all options, hold all capturables, and have enough economy to rebuild your entire everything without ever hitting 0), but the AI is much more consistent with its growth, maybe slower than the player at first, but will start overtaking the player if you take too much.

[TechSY730]

I'd rather not see that, I do like that higher difficulties get more in defense.

They definitely do, even if the AIP "ceiling" were the same for reinforcements.  Remember that the higher difficulties get more "per AIP" in pretty much everything, reinforcements included.

Anyway, yea, we would want to avoid making it too easy to just cut through AI space on a non-superweapon mid-AIP game.  But having solid walls of ships that regenerate faster than you can kill them doesn't seem to be an experience people generally enjoy.

So long as feels that it is my fault or that I am just trying to take a planet way too early, I actually don't mind this. Helps me to realize the AI is chokepointing well, and thus I need to find a way around it, or come back to it later when I have enough to break it. Also, it teaches me (somewhat passive aggressively, though freed guards are a concern) to try to avoid giving the AI a natural chokepoint and to not let the border planets be on alert for so long the AI can save up enough to "chokepoint" all of them.

It does become a problem when I encounter this when my current strength/current AI strength is at max, and what I need to take out is not something I can just ignore (like the homeworld).