AI - Pants on head?

I've been playing quite a few games vs AI recently with friends, and we've all noticed that the AI, on absurd difficulty, has the same pattern of play, and is very easy to overcome.

We are not / don't consider ourselves the best players in the universe, not by any means.
But, the AI is literally stupid.

An example, AI sends radar to your planet - decides its a brilliant idea to send a transporter holding a commander and hover over T1 AA until it blows up.

When this doesn't happen, the AI's tactics are always the same, and are extremely easy to overcome.

The AI will always try to populate all planets, this is fine, but considering even when it manages to build a transporter, even if it manages to switch it on, you'll have a few T1 units to contend with, whether the games been going 10mins or an hour. It will continue to do this, over, and over, and over.

Literally, if the AI is deliberately left alone as to hope it'll offer some sort of challenge, it will simply spam nuke after nuke to the same spots. Over, and Over, And Over.

You could literally leave the game going while you go out to the outside world, come back, and it'll still be spamming nukes.

When, if ever, will the AI not be "pants on head" stupid.

The default AI of Supreme commander was better... and that wasn't exactly great - atleast without Sorian.

Considering, Sorian is the lead AI dev for PA - why is the AI so stupid!?

It used to be pretty strong but the recent changes screwd the AI over

It seems to have an issue with prioritization of units. It actually seemed smarter in the past, now it often runs units forward, but pulls them back. I sort of consider it a bit of a bug, but I'm not sure.

Sorian made the ai incredibly deadly at one point, it also seems smarter in skirmishes compared to GW.

Am I playing the same game?

The AI has some wierdness since the build after release from what I have been playing.

But the AI is still usually stronger in GW than skirmishes, and the AI had been flipped late gamma so Absurd will try to conserve units if their death is guranteed they will pull back last second, while the normal AI will suicide units continuously.

Also, generally, people have trouble with the AI, to have time to casually look at your building system, you set the AI to 0.6, while if you are good you can raid all game and can set the AI to 1.4 or just play 3 AI at 1x eco.

I like playing coop 3 shared vs 6 AI because of one of the AI weirdness: (at least on hard-relentless) AI sends fractions of units to your base, but not all of them at the same time, and does not coordinate well with teammates. This turns game into sorta Tower Defense. You start surrounded by enemies and your expansion is limited, and enemy has enough force to wipe you out, but instead they are sending relatively small squads from all directions, there is always lots of action going on every edge of your base, but you can crawl slowly to nearest expansions and eventually gather enough stuff to wipe out AI one by one. This lobby setup is only fun because AI won't coordinate or throw all of their units at out base.

Another weird thing with AI is that it sends commanders in astreus to planets it didn't even scout. I once had 3 AI commanders killed after their attempt to land on my heavily fortified planet. I'm not playing at absurd difficulty, but this type of behavior is not acceptable even on normal. It's 'easy'.

In GW the AI on Absurd is a real challenge, especially with limited tech and no sub coms. Its genuinely pleasing to defeat it.

I think it needs more randomization

I played today against the AI (relentless level) in a 1 vs 1 skirmish.. and the AI is harder to beat than it was a week ago. I have not gone back into GW to see how it is there, but it has always been harder to beat in a skirmish than GW for me at least.

Right now I'm back to screaming SORIANNNNNN!!! I expected that though when I read in the notes that he made updates and one was a new neural net.. So he let it learn again.. sigh..

Should be the other way arround, unless you have some unit buffs.
The AI seems to always have basic air tech or bot tech, with both it can work well at harassing you.

My Sup-Commanders always seem a bit handicapped by my choice of tech. Propably have to use more bots from now on.

It is pleasing if it doesnt suicide at last minute. Let me tell you my GW match real quick.
I was againts one AI on absurd in the GW. We spawned one for each planet( two planets system). I had only the basic tech for bot, no superweapons nor t2, nor orbital tech (only astraues). So after i locked down my planet, with a load of umbrella, and repelled some attemps from the AI to invade me ( with one astreus with one air faber loaded) i decided to try to invade the enemy planets. So i loaded like 8 fabers and sended them to the planet. After two attemps, i manage to build a beachhead and swarm the planet with 1468 doxes and some granadiers. They've been wiped out and the AI base suffered heavy damages but not enough to call the gg. So i was ready to send more, the nukes keeped coming over my base, but the AI decides that it was a brilliant idea to land with its commander, over my planet, right above one of my many umbrellas. that was disappointing . (Forgive my poor grammar)

Can somebody clarify for me what the difficulty levels on GW are? I decided to give it a go finally but I want to play it against an AI that is not restricted in any way and has no eco modifier. Which setting is that?

I think they are: normal, hard, relentless, uber & absurd. Absurd means cheating. Don't think it cheats on any other difficulty. Maybe on uber, but I'm not sure. Normal remains easy for to long.

Anyway start with hard or relentless. It will be easy at first, but trust me it gets real hard if you don't get any allies or good tech quick. Especially the boss battles are hard. You basically don't want to fight a 1v4.

I also noticed a severe decrease in AI difficulty these latest patches.
I have been playing GWs where I had to solo vs. two AI commanders. They literally rained down thousands of units at my base from any angle, I had to struggle for 50 minutes until I could finally get one of their commanders down with artillery.
Now when I play GW any match is a cakewalk with barely any resistance at all, even on high difficulties.

So really I need to know if Uber cheats or not. I started a game on Hard and tbh it's not much fun. I'm a 1v1 player primarily, not a particularly good one, but unless there's constant pressure back and forth I get bored. In theory having limited tech should force me to come up with new and interesting ways to use the game's mechanics, but in practise I understand them well enough and limited tech just frustrates me.

The eco modifier difficulty has been axed since like beta, haha.

So the highest difficulty level still has no increase in eco? Might give that a go then.

Yep, I've heard lately it's been getting pretty dumb though... which sucks as it used to be so smart. ;~;

The main thing I noticed on Hard was its heavy reliance on air. You have to play quite differently to playing a person, turrets are an absolute must against the AI.

Yeah it really likes air these days. Very sad, it used to really vary it's army. I don't get what happened. It was so awesome and smart before.

Don't play on absurd and expect it to be fun. YOU WILL DIE.

I've yet to try it, but I can't get my head around how an AI without an economic multiplier could be more dangerous than an above-average player. Does it honestly not cheat in any way?

Mind you, that Sorian sure knows his stuff.