AI and number of units in game

[Nitram Draw]

I tend to use the default settings for number of units and number of ships. Does anyone know if this setting helps or hurts the AI? A low number of units is easy to manage as a human, as you can jettison old or misplaced units but I don't know if the AI does this.
Any thoughts?

[jc173]

quote:

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Originally posted by Nitram Draw:
I tend to use the default settings for number of units and number of ships. Does anyone know if this setting helps or hurts the AI? A low number of units is easy to manage as a human, as you can jettison old or misplaced units but I don't know if the AI does this.
Any thoughts?

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I would think a higher number would help the AI. My experience has been that AI is pretty bad about retrofitting and upgrading ships so I'm not sure it's a lot smarter about tossing units and building new ones. I've seen some really ancient WP's and Sats even late (100-150 turns) in the game armed with weapons like CSM I or APB I.

[raynor]

In the Last game I played, the Xi'Chung ran into a ship limit of 200 and then couldn't build any more ships. At the time, more than half its fleet was just light cruisers while the rest was cruisers, battlecruisers and other larger ships. It didn't appear that the AI knew how to scrap the light cruisers and replace them with larger ships. I kept building ships and eventually built the maximum number of ships. But all my ships were battlecruisers or larger. So, I agree agree with jc173. A higher limit is better.

Similarly, when I ran some tests playing as the Xi'Chung player, I found that they continued to build and attempt to launch units well after the units in space limit was reached.

[Q]

That's also my experience. The AI does not destroy old units or scrap ships (unless they lack resources). So the higher the limit the better for the AI. The only limitation might be your computer performance: the turns may take very long with many ships and units if you don't have a fast processor

[jc173]

Well for units I think it's more a question of how difficult you want the game to be, since they cost no maintenance. I used to keep it at 3500 in earlier Versions, but bumped it up to 5000. I do play in a large galaxy with a higher warp number of warp points per system.

[Nitram Draw]

What do you think a good upper limit is?
The reason I haven't changed it is that I was concerned about the AI running out of resources by building huge fleets and lots of units. It does seem that I should increase the limit though, as I have run into more undefended planets now that the AI is getting better and my games are taking longer to finish.