Can A.I. 'passively' respond to attacks?

So, I’m currently fighting in a all-ai game, and I’ve noticed several times that while AI obviously won’t counterattack, they appear to passive-agressively respond to incoming attacks.

Numerous times I’ve attacked a AI only to find a fleet incoming to the star I’m about to conquer, set to arrive either just before or after I’m going to get there.

A current example, I’m about to lose 670k ships because the ai suddenly decided to send a 170k ships to reinforce a star that already had nearly twice the average number of ships compared to it’s other stars, about 2 hours after my fleet started towards that star.

This isn’t a occasional or infrequent thing, I’d say that this has happened with well over 50% of the attacks I’ve made.

I’ve had people ask for a link to the game before, so if anyone wants to see it it’s here: Neptune's Pride

Just saying, if you quit an all-AI game, it still gives you credit for the win.

@Buggy ,

1.A.
What you are observing and describing is correct.

The AI have been reprogrammed and started to behave this way many months ago. I wonder if the 170K ships began their defensive reaction ambush against you from beyond your scan range ?

According to military strategy and tactics, this is called a “Feint Retreat”.

One way to fight this AI tactic is to send 2.5 times the ships needed to capture your target star, so that after the successful capture, you will have excess ships available to defend against the AI ambush counter-attack.

1.B.
One fun thing about NP Triton is that because this game lives on a server, Jay is able to program new features while games are running.

Some players here wanted the AI to be less dumb, so Jay added this new tactic that some players have been using against each other.

In your galaxy, I would suggest that for now, you should focus on taking the Industry and Science away from Orange Edasich, and then you will feel a bump surge in the power of your empire.

After that, then tilt the infrastructure away from Red to grow your empire, because Red is the easiest for for Green to swallow.

In order from weakest to strongest, you should take Orange, Red, Cyan, Pink, then you should win the game.

I suppose that feint retreat thing is why ai will occasionally leave stars at 1 ship?

As for your recommended tactics, Orange’s science and industry is evenly spread throughout all its stars, if I take out most of his industry then I’ve taken out most of him outright.

Edit: Oh, I thought you meant Yellow, not Orange. My mistake.

Honestly, just quit. One of my accredited “victories” is fake in the sense that all other 7 players quit before me.

@buggy is not a quitter ! He will overcome !

This game is still winnable but would take a long time. Green needs more ECON and IND, and some SCI.
Green can capture IND and SCI from AI.

Read this strategy guide.

https://plus.google.com/u/0/117903310261452377204/posts/7yvBz9LWLT8

The “Feint Retreat” uses deception to make you believe that you need less ships to capture than you actually need.

Shortcut key “B” will toggle the color names.

Green probably will not need to take any stars from Yellow or Blue, because they are more powerful than Pink.

Purple stars “Lost Ash” or “Algenib” is within range, but the AI counter attack could be very powerful because your carrier flight time is a very long time.

Leaving 1 ship at each star brings the largest ratio of your ships to their ships destroyed in combat.

Because the defender always attacks first, they’ll attack at the weapons level…and they’ll only take 1 ship.

Green should stop researching Hyperspace range and Scanning range, because what you have now is more than sufficient.

With the number of ships in the hundred thousands, I’m not sure this would be really helpful.

I can not read the Empire screen, so I could not read the Weapons tech levels. I started to second guess my previous boast. I needed to think more about this in depth.

I zoomed the browser out to compare scan ranges. I am gut estimating that the AIs have four times the weapons tech of Green. Crunching numbers, assuming the consistent continuing approximate rates of infrastructure growth, Green ought to be able to KO Orange in maybe around 77 days ? YMMV

If @buggy can tune up the rates of his infrastructure growth, then maybe earlier ?

After KO Orange, then onward against Red. The numbers are foggy. Always in flux, the future is. :wink:

Red could go down. Faster if Green infrastructure growth is properly tuned.

I am guessing that thus far he has purchased too much SCIence Labs, and carriers for suicide missions against Blue and Yellow.

Red could be the decision point.
Either this game is winnable by KO red and continuing on to KO Cyan and Pink ( I think it might be possible, but will @buggy figure out how to accomplish it ? It would be a very interesting and challenging learning experience ). There is no time limit in this game, until the server breaks down. Learning can be fun, and victory has a sweet taste.

Or else take the easy way out and just hit the “Accept Victory” button like @bbobb555 says. AFK players do not earn Rank, so @buggy is already 1st place.

http://triton.theducky.com/#5288521854091264 You can see all the stats here. The weapons are about the same but yellow has over 40 times as many ships as @buggy. Even if @buggy mustered all his ships into one fleet, it wouldn’t even be able to take one of yellow’s stars. Excluding orange, who has one star, no player has less than 10 times as many ships as @buggy. You may not have noticed that the number of red’s ships has one more digit than the number of @buggy’s ships. Also, infrastructure grows quadratically, so the AI’s advantage (as a ratio) will just increase. There’s pretty much no hope.

Edit: Apparently theducky switches some of the colors around, so I ended up mixing them up. Should be corrected now.

On second thought, I just looked at the infrastructure levels and it’s clear that the AI are hardly upgrading their stuff. If @buggy just keeps upgrading, eventually he’ll get stronger than the AIs

Was that a standard settings game?

I’m not sure, it was a beginner’s game so it has whatever settings those usually have.

Well, I’ve just done a turn based game, and won in 26 days. Max each player had was 7000 ships.

Looking at the Ducky charts. @buggy stats are more encouraging than I previously guessed.

@buggy has the most Economy. Keep it growing. @buggy has 4.2 times the Industry of Red.

But Red has 2.3 times the Manufacturing of @buggy, and Red has 1.2 times the Weapons of @buggy.

If @buggy is able to capture any one Red star, then he ought to be able to take all of Red,
and then also KO Cyan and Pink, and win. IMHO, I think it is winnable, but will take time.

@buggy just need to ensure sufficient ships to defend against Red’s ambush counter attack when he captures the first Red star. That could be the decision point for this game.

Attack timing could help too. I can not see any Red Warp gates and flight times. If during the 6 hr flight when @buggy flys from Avior to Garnet, most of Red’s carriers are already in flight and unable to change a decision to ambush, then @buggy might be able to win Garnet.

All this will be after KO Orange. Wait a while.

@buggy has higher Weapons tech than Orange. Green has enough ships right now to KO Orange. It just takes time for his carriers to gather the ships together.

Commendations Buggy,

I can see that you took a few stars from the big yellow over the last month’s worth of play.
Nearly impossible, yes, but you are making the incremental progress needed.

So long as you do not AFK, your rank from this galaxy will be well deserved.

Press on , my friend.

@Buggy,

Since your technology in certain areas are severely behind vs AI.

I recommend the following:
Research 80-100 tech levels of Experimentation before next research on Weapons.
The turn production research bonus will help you in many areas such as Terraform and banking where the AI’s are way above you. Eventually, it may also help on Weapons or manufacturing, where you are currently skewed.

Switch your attacks from Yellow to Orange, and then Red. The ratios can allow you to win sooner.

Free advise, but I respect your game so far.