That's the nice way to put it I suppose. The AI isn't prioritizing scouting early in the game and its putting economy way ahead of unit pressure. Last patch, if I was being lazy or just jerking around at the beginning the AI would scout and have some units on me forcing me to counter, now the AI just builds huge swaths of power and metal, a bot fab and an air fab then sits and waits for me while it expands the base and puts planes on patrol around it. This lack of early pressure is allowing me to beat the AI every time whereas before I would lose if I played stupidly or passively. And forget playing on systems I created, the AI just sits around building econ and I can win with a T1 bot rush usually. The neat thing is that if I wipe the base and leave the enemy com it then goes about acting like it should starting a new base and putting the pressure on early in that bases evolution (like it should at the very beginning of the game), its just moot because I am already at a huge unit/econ advantage. The AI is pretty fun overall, this is just some stuff I have noticed. I like when the AI tricks me and kills me or does some weird thing that I hadn't expected and wipes some of my base out that's the fun of it, constantly winning because the AI has its pants on its head is still fun just not as much.
I think there are a few remaining bugs, that will probably be delivered as hotfixes. At least that's what I'm assuming.
I haven't seen the AI fail to scout or raid. I played two games and in both it raided me with bots at the right time However, it's really weak at dealing with any kind of early aggression.
There are some fixes that got checked in today. We delayed putting them in to try to get a stable patch out.
Are you playing with a ton of water? The AI is still having some issues with bodies of water. I found them reasonably upsetting today. I do play with the AI @ 1.5x my economy.
1.5? I might see that on water or metal plants, but I still have some trouble fighting it on moons (or did on 58772) What strategies do you use?
I think that is the issue, I have played a ton(20 or so) more games and the ones where I rush T2 aggro are the ones that I notice the oddities the most on. If I noob up my opening builds for whatever reason the AI can usually match my pace or get the better of me, though the 'no scouting' oddity still pops in here and there. I haven't played against the AI on anything but moon type maps for a while now, the past pathing issues on the 'bumpier' map types lead to frustration so I just ignored/still ignore them. I just want to add that as an AI this is probably one of the most useful ones I have played against as far as teaching certain necessary aspects/best practices of the game, this thing will definitely let you know if you're doing something wrong. As the AI has been steadily improving I find I can use matches against it as a test bed for ideas/strategies since firing up an AI game is faster than finding a 1v1 opponent(I keep weird hours). Its been invaluable as far as cleaning up my opening strategies, I guess I am just getting anxious for the AI to 'learn' the long game. I just don't want my posts to come off as unappreciative or complain-y, excellent work so far, whatever my opinion counts for.
I was playing an AI game on the 16th (last last update). Myself and the AI were had a lake in-between us & large packs of units were stuck. They made it half way around then tried to cut "through" the lake. It was a bit odd because units were still able to go around the lake and attack, it was only about 1 in 4 that got stuck trying to go around the lake.
Confirmed this did happen occasionally. Had it happen with a "crack" in the land, curved in shape, where the AI clumped it's units against the curved bowl shape of the crack walking towards the fissure as if it is just going to walk/drive right over the crack and into my base across from it. I peltered them, then won the game. Had the army not clumped in the crack lining, they would have marched on my base and defeated all resistance while raising it to the ground.
It happened often, not occasionally. The issue is a pathfinding problem. A unit will encounter terrain it can't path. The AI tends to fixate on a certain objective of a certain threat level. It's units will become spread all over the map and it will just tell them all to gather in a certain location. On their approach, units get stuck on terrain and so on. The same thing happens to human forces. But a human recognises something has become stuck, so it fixes the error. Whereas the AI doesn't. @sorian I can reliably reproduce this if you would like me to take a video?
Pathfinding issues are not something under my control. The only thing I can try to do is get the AI to recognize it has units stuck, and that is not something that is a high priority issue to work on at the moment.
@sorian True. To be honest, the pathfinding problems have been solved in the psst by the tweaked generation of metal spots. The commander is the worst culprit for it. There was a change so that metal spots didn't end up in mountains as much. So the AI doesn't spawn in that bad spot. Likewise metal spots are closer at the starting spawn. It is more likely that the commander will build a factory before he gets stuck. So long as he produces the factory it doesn't matter if he gets stuck because it continues to expand and the game is playable This pathfinding problem would probably be solved by the AI not throwing everything it has at a problem, but giving multiple groups of units different missions. And possibly increased optimisations across the board, because the worst time for it seems to be late game
