AI not building enough stations?

[Sicon3]

After beating a few games dissapointingly easily I decided to install an AI mod (Enhanced AI Mod) to see if that helped. It did but not a ton so I decided to use the observe command to see what the AI states were up to. I noticed a few trends.

1.the AI almost never creates more than 3-5 colonies despite having the resource overhead and planets to do so. This cripples their reach and leads into number 2
2. The ai negelects to build enough mining and research stations meaning while my mineral output will top 2k they rarely break 400. Same goes for energy and their tech falls behind.
3. Aggressive AI just seems to make the AI have a permanent debuff to relations and not actually make them go to war any more often or expand quicker. From what ive seen almost all AI will just start with Xenophobia and nothing else changes
4. AI closes borders on contact and even federation members close borders to you
5. The AI only tends to have one ot maybe at most 2 science ships meaning they loose out on survey and research opportunities.
6. For buildings they focus too heabily on food and end up with a class 20 planet with close to 60 surplus food -20 energy 6 minerals low happiness and maybe 2 science per catagory. They should know to deconstruct some farms when the planet is fully populated

Thats what I have seen for noe let me know what you think and if you have seen the same behavior

 

[I_am_Nemo]

What difficulty level/other settings is this on? And was this with or without the mod? Because I haven't used observe at all, but basically none of this fits my observations from playing on hard.

1) Not sure about colonizing vs. conquest, but AI tends to blob and keep on blobbing until a tougher blob stops them.
2) AI seems to tech just fine, and I struggle to out-fleet the bigger blobs. They don't seem to have any lack of minerals/energy.
3) Haven't played on regular aggression in a while, but while I've seen some games with a lot of xenophobes, I've also seen federation builder spam. It's kind of random.
4) Maybe xenophobes do, but otherwise, not usually. Most AI will leave borders open unless they're ticked enough to rival me.
5) Not sure here, haven't paid attention.
6) Can't say I've seen this one either; they do tend to overbuild food, but not to that extent.

 

[smjjames]

I've noticed that the AI tends to not clear out all the 'monsters' from systems in their territories, even when they have ample ships to do so with. So, this is probably a reason.

 

[terrycloth]

After beating a few games dissapointingly easily I decided to install an AI mod (Enhanced AI Mod) to see if that helped. It did but not a ton so I decided to use the observe command to see what the AI states were up to. I noticed a few trends.

1.the AI almost never creates more than 3-5 colonies despite having the resource overhead and planets to do so. This cripples their reach and leads into number 2
2. The ai negelects to build enough mining and research stations meaning while my mineral output will top 2k they rarely break 400. Same goes for energy and their tech falls behind.
3. Aggressive AI just seems to make the AI have a permanent debuff to relations and not actually make them go to war any more often or expand quicker. From what ive seen almost all AI will just start with Xenophobia and nothing else changes
4. AI closes borders on contact and even federation members close borders to you
5. The AI only tends to have one ot maybe at most 2 science ships meaning they loose out on survey and research opportunities.
6. For buildings they focus too heabily on food and end up with a class 20 planet with close to 60 surplus food -20 energy 6 minerals low happiness and maybe 2 science per catagory. They should know to deconstruct some farms when the planet is fully populated

Thats what I have seen for noe let me know what you think and if you have seen the same behavior

I haven't seen most of these. AIs build every single possible mining station in their territory and usually have a good food balance on worlds I conquer. They only close borders if they hate you or if they're xenophobes.

I have seen them be strangely reluctant to expand into empty space, although they'll eventually get there. If there's a way to weight claiming territory higher that might improve things a lot.

 

[MasterOfGrey]

I haven't seen most of these. AIs build every single possible mining station in their territory and usually have a good food balance on worlds I conquer. They only close borders if they hate you or if they're xenophobes.

I have seen them be strangely reluctant to expand into empty space, although they'll eventually get there. If there's a way to weight claiming territory higher that might improve things a lot.

The AI has a lower desire to colonise when it's tech rate isn't keeping up with its growth. Whereas conquest is driven by more diplomatic focuses. This means that if it has a few newer worlds that are undeveloped, or if it has a few that are stuck mostly covered in blockers, they won't be as inclined to colonise.

The AI not prioritising tile blocker tech contributes to this, but on the other hand if they do pick it all up they can be very enthusiastic. The pacifist blob in my current game (and first purge the xenos game) has colonised to be 1.5x my size despite me having colonised heavily and conquered the territory of 4 other 3-6 works empires. They even jumped one of the empires I conquered and have colonised a separate block bigger than most existing empires.

Basically it's a luck of the draw to their available research and how dense their development is.