AI Space Race reluctance

[The Last Conformist]

Is it only me, or does the AI seem extremely reluctant to actually build a spaceship? I've several times entered the modern age as a middle-ranking civilization, far smaller than the couple biggest AI ones, but still pulled off a spaceship win by setting a lot of cities to Wealth, upping the science funding as much as possible and concentrating on researching the prerequisites for Spaceship parts. Five or so good industrial cities can build the parts a quick as I can research them, so it doesn't matter if the AI has a bigger industrial base than me (or I than them), but obviously an AI civ bigger than me should normally be able to keep up in research with me. When they do research the prerequisites as quickly as I do, they often delay inexplicably before actually constructing the parts.

Now, being able to win from an underdog position doesn't hurt, but it's still somewhat irking that the AI won't throw itself into a desperate research mania and try and beat you to the launch pad, nor throw a everything they've got at you to try and burn your launch pad. It seems unaware that I'm going to win by building a spaceship.

This is mainly from experience on Regent and Monarch - I don't really know if the AI exhibits the same strange reluctance on Emperor and Deity.

 

[God]

I play on monarch too, and often see this happening. It seems to happen more when the AI is at war. They put all their cities into producing units, and get no production in the other areas. When I'm at war, I often have my top 2-3 cities producing SS parts or ICBMs. The AI doesn't do that.

But if there is a civ in peace, it will quickly build up all the parts, so then I'm forced to fight them.

This happened alot for me in GOTM 8.

 

[T-hawk]

Don't forget that they each have to build the Apollo Program first, which can delay them by up to 40-50 turns if they start it in a lousy city (the AI seems to never change its mind once a wonder is started except by cascade.)

Also, the AIs don't prebuild parts -- which the human can do even before Apollo -- or even change to them as soon as the tech appears. They wait until a good city finishes whatever it was building and then begin a part. That makes them appear slower as well. Plus the AIs seem to forever be building about 40% military units even when the entire world has been at peace for centuries.

I usually play on Emperor, and the AIs usually lag me by about 30-50 turns on the spaceship, about equally due to lagging in tech, not prebuilding Apollo, and not prebuilding parts.

Plus they can get stuck without aluminium; if nobody has any to trade that civ is screwed for the spaceship. (Too bad they aren't intelligent enough to realize this and immediately go to war with everyone.)

 

[john heidle]

I'm playing Monarch now. I just lost due to a spacerace as I was experimenting with Communism for too long a time. I kept on trying to build up remote cities while under communism and I lost the research race without even knowing what was going on.
I should have switched back to republic and paid more attention to the other civs tech progress. So the AI does build a spaceship now and then even if we can't understand why they don't do it more often.

 

[The Last Conformist]

I know the AI does build SS parts now and then. In a particularly weird case, the Egyptians completed their first SS part a couple of turns before my Apollo Project finished. Then, after building a couple more parts, they decided to start an apocalyptic war against the Greeks (Egypt and Greece where the biggest civs in play), completely ceased to build SS parts and saw me surf to an easy Space Race win.

 

[Portuguese]

Yes, AI sounds very stupid now and then...

 

[eighty]

I just lost a game on Emperor to space race. Then again, I wasn't trying to win by space race. Plus, I didn't want to stop them cause they had lots of nukes. Of course I kept playing and am at war, and they have yet to use the nukes.

 

[Klasanov]

Well, you could always find their ICBMs then nuke those. Nuclear warfare is fun. Too bad I only had 1 when I did it, and ICBMs take so long to build.

 

[Portuguese]

ICBMs have to be costly to be build, VERY costly. Imagine what would be the world if they was so esay to build like, for example, a mec! That would make AI players, specially agressive ones, impossible to declare War against, because they would use nuke.

Believe me, it's better this way!!!

 

[eighty]

That particular game it was the Americans. They had (via my spy info on military advisor screen) 5 ICBMS and 11? or so tac nukes. I warred with them for about 20 turns and they didn't nuke me. I was the most powerful civ and had a couple others fighting the Americans.

Just curious, in what circumstances have you been nuked?

 

[Portuguese]

After I nuke them!!! They nuke as a response...