Due to when I can play, versus AI is my best option. I've now played three games in which the AI put up next to no fight. I'm not good at this sort of game and this one in particular so I should be seeing some competition. I did notice an economy accelerator, but based on his behavior, it doesn't appear to be an economy problem. Is the AI simply not ready to be played against? Am I missing something key? Yes, I know, "search," but "AI" is too short a term. Thanks!
I see you're new to the forums, and welcome! You should have used multiple words, which would have made the search term long enough. This gets asked a few times a week. The AI is being constantly developed. It's not the most intelligent yet – doesn't even build naval. You'd be surprised how much the economy accelerator can alter gameplay. You should also try taking on multiple AI at once. Or playing an army match where you take on a larger AI team. The game is in beta. It still needs a lot of work. You should try playing against other players though. While wait times may be a little long, you can find someone to play against at all times of the day or night.
Larger planets tend to be more challenging. For now, the AI doesn't really know what to do if it doesn't have a lot of metal around. Sorian has suggested that he plans to work on this, so I expect it to get better. We'll have to wait and see what happens though, because the gameplay will change quite a bit if they make it easier to get off the planet.
"It's not done yet" is good enough. I'll mess with the econmod and see how that goes. Sounds like that in conjunction with very little water may be the way to go. Thanks! If it doesn't work out, I'll treat the mode more as a sandbox. I still have yet to have the AI commander live long enough (and I do try to avoid him) to launch nukes or planets. That's all I really want to see right now I'd love to play with others, but my schedule really doesn't allow it... Or I'd need to find folks who don't mind pausing for 20 minutes fairly often, but don't do that themselves because I wouldn't be able to stand it And thanks for the welcome! Looking forward to getting involved here.
The best thing you can do to give the AI a fighting chance is to play on a planet without much water and without too many features that hinder pathing. I would suggest a radius of 650 on with a moon or earth biome.
Then everything would be stickied. We have 12+ questions/suggestions that get brought up at least once a week. If we stickied a post about every one of them, the entire front page would be nothing by sticky posts. The majority of people who post for the first time on the forums don't perform a search and ask questions or make suggestions that have been discussed over and over and over.
I typically (in forums and betas) see a single FAQ stickied that contains links to all the commonly asked questions. Subject line is usually something along the lines of "[FAQ] Have a question that might be common? Check here first to see if it is answered!" If I'm not simply glossing over one that already exists, I'm happy to get it started.
Another common issues is water metal spots. The AI will get stuck if there are nearby water metal spots and the only fabbers it has are land based. Try playing on a moon.
The AI occasionally dies off meaning that it doesn't move its units at all. Some speculate that it's related to MEX concentration, I haven't found a link to it myself though.
Put 5+ AI on a team on a size 2 planet. It's not cunning, but I guarantee you could lose if you weren't careful. Good practice for dealing with early and constant harassment, though.