Question about a weird Pilgrim fleet

[Ethaniel]

Worst case, the Pilgrims have 14 ships. Best case, they have 24 at 1 CP each. The only have "one" system. How can they afford such a military power? No to mention the hero upkeep. They should be drowning in bankrupcy already.

[Earlito68]

trade routes? which round of gameplay?

[Fishman]

It's the AI, it cheats like crazy. Not only that, it relentlessly abuses the "can only attack one fleet per turn" rule by deliberately creating fleets that are just slightly too big to be force-stacked, so that you have to kill each one one at a time, and if you try to split up to attack them faster, the moment you unstack, he instantly freezes your game and forms into a single killer fleet and destroys your ships one by one. I'm pretty convinced the AI just SPAWNS these things like pirateships from outside your sensor range, because the moment you besiege all his planets, he suddenly has no fleet production at all, but if you leave so much ONE planet unsieged somewhere, there will be a gigantic swarm that pours out of there mysteriously, even though when you take over that planet, it turns out that it's a depopulated outpost with no industry.

[n18991c]

I've noticed that as well, I had Horatio effectively besieged in the remnants of their once large empire but which now only comprised approx three systems... and they kept throwing fresh fleets at me at almost every turn! How!?

Same happened to me once when I still had about two dozen planets and I was having a hard time getting enough ships produced and sent to the frontlines because three other races were making war on me and kept destroying my recently commissioned ships. So if I couldn't produce ships quickly enough, how could the AI do it with only three blockaded systems?

[Ethaniel]

At the time of the picture, turn 54, no trade routes. They colonized Hydrus but I took it pretty quickly. When I started the invasion of their homeworld, the Pilgrims started to spam fleets. I assume they had them on the hangar but, there's an upkeep anyway. You have to pay to have ships. Actually, the Pilgrims had 24 ships with 1 CP each. How can they afford to have 24 ships with one system, and even increase their MP? I eventually conquered them, but I lost precious time making war. I have 18 systems (half the galaxy in my view) and the biggest population, but FIDS insists that I'm second, with another faction of Pilgrims trailing close. I've conquered two factions, but the game report says my fleet is actually the weakest. The Sophons supposedly won't be in the front of the battle, focusing on science and research, but they have a fleet that could beat the crap out of me. And don't get me started with pirates. Three fleets of 6400 MP and another three around 4000. I don't know what those pirates are eating, but they could share the recipe...

[davea]

Pirates do spawn out of nowhere. I have studied this pretty carefully, and I do not believe AI player fleets spawn out of nowhere. However, the AI gets a large FIDS bonus, and from turn 1 it starts building these fleets. So by later in the game, it has what appears to be a huge number of ships, which are hanging around one of its systems. When you attack, the AI player may or may not move all of them at once. Eventually, you *discover* this huge number of ships, which may look to you like they suddenly appeared.

It is very instructive to save your game every 10 turns, and when you discover this huge fleet, then jailbreak your previous save game and go look at that AI. You will see all those fleets already in place. You can see how to jailbreak a game here:

http://forums.amplitude-studios.com/...any-ai-player-!!

Many people have requested the dev team to improve the way the AI *plays*, so that it will either retrofit or scrap the old ships, and build new ships which will be (a) fewer in number, and (b) more challenging to fight. Once they do this, then they can reduce the FIDS bonus, and the game will be much more fun. You can read some more specific AI feedback here:

http://forums.amplitude-studios.com/...es-ship-design

[Earlito68]

Thank's Davea for the insight. Didn't know that, do you know when the dev team will implement this?

[Miesha]

Earlito, they might not. It's a community suggestion and Amplitude is very big on that, so there's a big chance that they're working on the AI changes, but it's not a 100% guarantee. The AI might just be exactly what the devs want them to be, in which case we'll learn to love or hate the AI.