The AI Blacklist

[I-KP]

Players can now blacklist AI types that they do not wish to appear in the random selections (see recent beta update post).  It might be interesting to see which of the AI types are currently not so popular.

[Black]

I don't use random AI's so I probably won't bother with the list. I find that the game varies so much between different AI types that it's better just to pick the game I want to play.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

Death to turtles!

They're the only reason I don't use Random.

[Kjara]

The main ai I can see using this on is train master since I usually play with trains turned off and it just turns out to be a very gimped ai with that setting.

[Buttons840]

I say the more the merrier, so all AI's enabled.

[x4000]

Cool poll, definitely interesting info.  One thing I should note is that a few of the harder AI types in particular -- mostly everything that is a technologies -- are intended to be an extreme challenge, so I'm not going to be surprised if most people either disable them or avoid them.  That's quite all right by me, I specifically wanted to have a few AI types that were only suitable for maybe 0.001% of all the players.  My thought process on that is, if the best Starcraft (or whatever) players in the world wanted to give AI War a spin, would there be anything for them to do at their advanced level of play?  I wanted to provide a myriad of options so that my mom could play it at the absolute lowest levels, and so that a theoretical mastermind wizard sort of player could always have anything ranging from a fun time to a stiff impenetrable challenge as well.

And, also, the technologist's serve another purpose as well: if you don't like the AI playing really smart with all its tactics for some reason (you like playing with a lower difficulty level), but still don't want to steamroll the AI, then you can use the technologists.

Or, another thing that had crossed my mind, was if you had really bad hardware and could not handle many ships of the AI in the game, you could use the technologists on difficulty 7 or 8, and then give them a major negative handicap.  That way you're facing many fewer AI ships overall, but they are higher level than yours, which gives a similar effect as to playing against more ships of a same level.

Anyway, AI War is built around the concept of providing a very wide array of experiences for a wide variety of people, and I don't expect every player to want to play with every feature.  But, by the same token, my goal is also for there to be enough things for each player to enjoy -- regardless of skill or playstyle -- that they aren't shoehorned into a single style of game or type of scenario.  If any one player uses even 50% of the various modes and options in the game, I'd be very surprised.  But that's okay, it's like going to school and only taking perhaps 1% of the possible electives that you could take.  It's still great to have a vast choice of electives, that way you can take the ones that really interest you, rather than being forced to do something that seems kind of lame to you.

My two cents.  But this poll will be interesting to see what people like (or more importantly dislike) the most.  I'm surprised the entrenched homeworlder is getting many disables, as to me it's sort of the "vanilla" AI that is all around balanced, if slightly defensive.  Useful data for when the next expansion rolls around and new AI styles are needing to be decided upon.

[Lancefighter]

I personally dislike any AI that defends its planets.

Yes, I just said that.

I find it much more enjoyable to steamroll over an AI system, then be required to retreat my forces to deal with a 600+ ship force doing a raid.. Its a more fast paced gameplay instead of the slowly attacking each AI command post and then rebuilding, or whatever..

Also makes homeworlds a bit easier to crack. And reduces the consequences of leaving an AI planet on alert for a long time.

[x4000]

I personally dislike any AI that defends its planets.

Yes, I just said that.

I find it much more enjoyable to steamroll over an AI system, then be required to retreat my forces to deal with a 600+ ship force doing a raid.. Its a more fast paced gameplay instead of the slowly attacking each AI command post and then rebuilding, or whatever..

Also makes homeworlds a bit easier to crack. And reduces the consequences of leaving an AI planet on alert for a long time.

Which is cool, that's why I tried to put in a variety of offensive and defensive AI types.  I'm personally more on the other end of things, but I actually enjoy the variety of both more than anything.

[MaxAstro]

One Way Doormaster, Shadow Master, Starfleet Commander, and Scorched Earth.  Those are the AI types that in my opinion make the game not fun to play anymore.  One Way Doormaster basically turns every planet in your way into 20 AI progress one way or another (and should REALLY not be on the easy list...), Shadow Master and Scorched Earth both throw any semblance of normal tactics out the window instead requiring hyperspecialized tactics only useful against those AIs, and the Starfleet Commander just stops being fun after about the third 50-some starship world.

[I-KP]

Or, another thing that had crossed my mind, was if you had really bad hardware and could not handle many ships of the AI in the game, you could use the technologists on difficulty 7 or 8, and then give them a major negative handicap.  That way you're facing many fewer AI ships overall, but they are higher level than yours, which gives a similar effect as to playing against more ships of a same level.

This is what I did for a few single player games due to the end game stage often becoming rather unplayable.  Recent performance improvements have found me doing this less and less.

[Chimpster]

Scorched Earth is the only one that I've found isn't especially fun to play against and I'll usually restart the game in frustration if I'm playing against one

Other then that, I enjoy the random nature of it

[Minty]

I'm similar to chimpster: The only AI I will absolutely regen a galaxy if I encounter is the Scorched Earth or it's variants. If I take a planet, I want that planet.

Scorched Earth is too much like having every planet controlled by that AI being visited by an unstoppable Mining Golem on kill. NOT fun, imo.

Of course, I don't begrudge the fact that that particular AI type exists, it's just one I don't enjoy playing against.

[Kordy]

One Way Doormaster, Shadow Master, Starfleet Commander, and Scorched Earth.  Those are the AI types that in my opinion make the game not fun to play anymore.  One Way Doormaster basically turns every planet in your way into 20 AI progress one way or another (and should REALLY not be on the easy list...), Shadow Master and Scorched Earth both throw any semblance of normal tactics out the window instead requiring hyperspecialized tactics only useful against those AIs, and the Starfleet Commander just stops being fun after about the third 50-some starship world.

Apart from the Doormaster, I agree fully. Especially Starfleet Commander. That blacklist will come in handy, I say!

[Anticept]

Cool poll, definitely interesting info.  One thing I should note is that a few of the harder AI types in particular -- mostly everything that is a technologies -- are intended to be an extreme challenge, so I'm not going to be surprised if most people either disable them or avoid them.  That's quite all right by me, I specifically wanted to have a few AI types that were only suitable for maybe 0.001% of all the players.  My thought process on that is, if the best Starcraft (or whatever) players in the world wanted to give AI War a spin, would there be anything for them to do at their advanced level of play?  I wanted to provide a myriad of options so that my mom could play it at the absolute lowest levels, and so that a theoretical mastermind wizard sort of player could always have anything ranging from a fun time to a stiff impenetrable challenge as well.

This is why I like AI war so much. Many games don't have a difficulty level high enough for my tastes, nor have enough fine tunings. There should ALWAYS be a difficulty in games which beat everyone...

I would like to be able to change AI difficulty mid game though... the AI types are so different that sometimes picking random ones give me AIs which I am REALLY good at beating... others are really good at beating me. If there is a moral issue with people changing difficulties when the game gets too hard or easy, you could put in a time limiter. Say if you want to decrease difficulty, it will start a random countdown (between 5 and 20 minutes, etc) before it takes effect. Perhaps this system could work for fast and dangerous vs normal too?

[vince0018]

  So I just started reading this thread about the blacklist but there's something I'm not sure about. Are the AI's on voted most to be on the blacklist going to be removed from the game? Or will there be some sort of option to randomize without said AI? If so I think it would be better if there were some sort of tab or something when creating a game where you can place checks by each AI type you want to disclude from the randomized list. I always play against either random easy or random moderate so I'm not really sure exactly what each type does in particular, so I don't yet have favorites or ones I wish blacklisted. I do agree that it might be nice to change difficulty ingame, or maybe change it then have to restart the game like when you change game speed.  I'm a person though who enjoys a lot of variety in playstyle. I want to start up a game having no clue how it's going to go, as long as I have set the difficulty level right, then adjusting to the AI's playstyle to counter it instead of the AI solely adjusting to me.