Horrable AI for instant action

[Recoome]

I have a fresh install of A2 and when playing Instant Action the AI is simply moronic.

First game I started with normal resourses, easy AI, and 4 players other then myself. All but 1 would not build any mining stuff and run out of money pretty quickly and pretty much wasted my time. Species 8472, the only one who built anything would simply attack with 2 small ships at a time a few minutes apart from each other.

Second game I started with more resourses, medium AI, and 3 players other then myself.
The Fed AI had a decent little fleet going but would constantly fly past my own construction ships and freighters completely ignoring them and only made one half arsed attempt on an attack on my base with I believe 2 Akira, 3 Defiant, and a few scouts.
I took over it's mining operation and it refused to start one up anywhere else and kept sending 1 construction ship at a time to it's death by way of my torp turret as soon as it was built.

Though I saw a few Romulan and Klingon ships flying around cloaked they never attacked and when I got around to destroying their bases (which were barely built up) no ships showed up to defend them. When attacking the Romulan base there were even two small ships there and all they did was fly towards me and then away but never attacked.

Add in that my ships would sometimes refuse to fire on mining satelites, sometimes they would get confused by the explore or seek and destory orders and just sit there.

Finaly, on both games played they never ended. I had explored everything and had scouts searching for cloaked ships everywhere and there was no enemy left on the map but the game did not end and I had to abort.

Now I'm pretty sure I patched all the way up as I almost always patch as soon as I install but I'm going to redownload that official patch and install to make sure.


My questions are these....

Has anyone else had these problems?

If I havn't been patched up will the patch correct these issues?

If I had patched up and re-applying the patch doesn't correct these issues is there an unofficial patch that will help?


I have had A1 for years but just recently tracked down A2 so I wasn't sure of what issues came with it.

Any help is apreciated and thanks in advance.

[C.A.B.A.L.]

Try this AI boost over here. There are some other AI mods around the site but they can be hard to find. I think Freyr is the King of AI around here, if that one isn't mean enough for you. There is also an unoficial 1.2 patch around the site, but I'm not sure if it will help.

[Freyr]

The problem with any AI for A2 is simply that there is only one AI written for any and every type of map.

Consider the differences between the stock maps, Warzone and Achron for instance. As I recall Achron has a class M planet, a dilithium moon, then a latinum nebula half way across the map with another dilithium moon pretty much the entire length of the map.

If I write an AI for that environment it's going to be building up a fleet of 40+ destroyers and cruisers to give it the firepower required, while completely skipping battleships due to the high metal requirement that can't be financed.

While that AI would do quite well against a human on Achron, it would then get trounced on warzone because there are lots more resources and it would be stuck building destroyers and cruisers while the human would be building fleets of battleships. If you assume a warzone level of resources, when your fighting on a map with lower resources the AI simply rolls over and dies, and it will get outbuilt and destroyed on a larger map.

Without knowing which level of resources you can expect it is impossible to write an effective AIP without cheating, which is why I have concentrated on the campaign to this point, as the campaign has one AIP per mission/map.

I'm sort of looking at Skirmish AI's, but I don't think it's going to be possible to write one on the same level as the Merciless campaign AI's.