Movement bug or AI stupidity

I posted this at the GalCiv2 official forum as well but I think I'll post it here to see if anyone here knows...

I noticed this in a game I was playing pretty early on but I never really gave it much thought, I'm now a good way into it and I've noticed it again. During the opening turns my Flagship stumbled upon two other flag ships, Dregan and some other one, and they, like me, were heading towards a wormhole. Fortunately I got there first however the two Flagships of the respective races simply stopped and haven't moved since.It's as if they had a job of heading towards the wormhole but once I got there first and removed that variable they didn't have a backup to do so simply ceased to operate. I simply thought "all the better for me" and continued on but I seemed to have noticed it again. the Dragans and I were at war with a 3rd race (again still haven't played the game enough to know all the different races ) and we were both sending fleets to take a planet. My transports got there first and we took the planet in the ensuing land battle however the Dragan fleet on the way as well simply stopped moving and thats about 3-4 ships in two fleets.

Is this a bug or are they simply INCREDIBLY patient in waiting for a new oportunity to present itself?

Steviejay

 

First of all, what difficulty level do you play on ? Because for the easier ones, the AI is made to act dumber.
Secondly, the AI can be very patient. For all I know, it's just waiting there to see what's going to happen to planet and it's keeping it's ships there within sensor range, so it can monitor the planet.

 

Just medium difficulty, nothing special. I thought thats what they could be doing but there are over 6 ships there in 3 fleets, and that doesn't explain the two flagships which just so happen to be in an intergalatic face-off. Especially when at the time they stopped doing anything, there was still plenty of anomolies to explore. heh, it was as if the two flagships didn't get the wormhole they wanted so decided to sit and sulk until the end of time...

 

Do you have the latest version installed? If not, maybe it is something that was fixed in one of the patches...

Stardock is also releasing a beta version of 1.1 this week on Stardock Central (not sure if it is already there as I have not yet checked). There are supposed to be tons of AI tweaks in 1.1.

 

Oh and... even at normal difficulty the AI is dumbed down a little bit.

 

I noticed that the movement part of this game isn't ...err... optimal.
I have seen situations like steviejay described, where an AI-ship would simply stop moving for a very long time. Just doing nothing.
But I also noticed that the automated movement doesn't function properly. On several occasions my ships suddenly decided they didn't want to move anymore when I had given them a 'go to' order.

 

Yes, I too have seen similar problems. On Normal difficulty. My ships that are set to auto attack...will attack for a few turns and then all go to some preditermined spot and turn off auto attack and stop. Its like they all just want to hang out at this mysterious point in space. If I move them they will again begin to attack and then they all congregate at some OTHER point in space and turn off the auto attack feature. It drives me nuts as they will bypass targets in a god awfull hurry to get to this point and stop. I have the 1.5 updated version of Dread Lords. (no expansion packs yet). Anybody else seen this?

 

I've noticed when I set my flagship to "auto-survery" and the map is out of anomolies to explore I get a notice that the ship is going into standby mode. Also when I give a constructor or colony ship orders to mine/colonize and someone beats me to it the ships will just stop. The flagship will just sit there until a new anomoly appears. I don't think it has so much to do with the AI being stupid as the AI just has nowhere in particular that they want those ships to be at the moment so they just park. So, maybe technically, the AI is being stupid: after all, there are much better spots to sit on the map if you have a particular purpose in mind - invasion for a fleet, surveying for a flagship. But the problem is the computer isn't planning ahead at this level and so it will just park the ships until they need them again. Which can be unsettling when you've got a battle fleet parked at your doorstep and can't figure out if the computer is planning a surprise attack or is just being lazy.