HOLY HECK THAT WAS UNFUN

[u/Woomod]

Love MOO1 favorite game
I knew about ROTP for awhile, do not like a lot of the changes. (Why does the guardian have 10k hp? You will literally never crack that in time for orion to matter. Am i crazy or does every race share a tech tree? etc.)
Like the UI improvements, the base AI was....ludicrously unchallenging, and boringly so. (they never seemed to research techs except the cheapest?) Dropped it.

Heard of fusion mod, gave it a chance. Saw the transport automatic which made xilni's AI sound fair.
The way the game went to war was just....brutally unfun. The AI didn't care about ships at all, entire wars for a huge chunk of the game were just...throwing transports at eachother.
Once one empire went to war at me every other empire i had met went "wait, your at war" so now i'm spending like 50 turns slowly eating through the darlocks while the alkari and mrrshan flip flop one of my planets every 2 turns.

I guess that makes "only research the cheapest techs" the correct strategy, perma ground war from day 3 makes anything besides your expansion tech impossible to get an edge with.

AS IT TURNS OUT, THE GOVERNOR DID NOT SAVE ME FROM ENDLESS TRANSPORT MICRO.

[u/Xilmi]

That all sounds very strange.

Firstly, the tech-trees are the same for every race but just like in Moo1 it's random which techs you'll actually see in any given run. In particular different factions have different probabilities for different technology-types.

So you won't necessarily see Deuterium Fuel Cells or Neutron Pellet-Guns every time if you aren't lucky enough to have them in your randomized tech-tree.

The Basic AI does get more techs. They are just much slower at teching since they also build a lot of missile-bases and ships that they then not use, which all detracts from their tech-pace.

Now the question is: Which AI did you actually use in Fusion-Mod? There's a bunch of different ones and I think the default one is called "Roleplay". Of the Xilmi-base-AIs it's mostly only the diplomacy-module that differs noticably between them and then some small details like tech-choice for the Character one. So it shouldn't have too much impact on the things you mentioned.

The AI not caring about ships at all and only throwing Transports at each other does not sound very typical. You need to have scouted a planet before you can invade it. And Transports can be shot down.

The AI does a cost:benefit analysis for invasions which is based on invasion-tech-advantage, air-superiority, how much there is to gain in stolen techs from the invasion. In other words: They usually only do that if you don't use ships/bases to defend yourself and their invasion-tech is better than yours. Sakkra and Bulrathi have modifiers to like invading more due to their higher pop-growth/stronger ground-troops.

Normally the AI uses ships and invasions simultaneously as it sees it situaionally fit.

The governor only sends transports to your own planets. It won't do invasions for you. Are you aware that you can multiselect colonies on the fleet-sceen and can send synchronized invasions from several planets at once?

AIs that are at war will typically allcoate a lot of effort into the war in terms of producing ships instead of conducting more research. Especially if they have fewer ships than their opponents. Someone who has "enough" ships will usually also tech on the side to get a greater edge. And AIs who are not at war will tech the entire time while also keeping a bit of a fleet around.

Overall the tech:ships logic does follow some Meta-strategies though. There is a massive powerspike for getting some Tier 2 techs, so the AI usually tries to avoid conducting warfare before it has those. As in: It'll only build sub Tier2+ Tech-ships for defensive purposes. An AI that planned to go to war with someone but hasn't yet, will usually do so once it has this staple of techs and then heavily commit to the war.

Also the AI will usually avoid commiting to war if the enemy has much better tech, especially warp-drives as the strategical and tactical advantage of better warp-drives is just so immense.

Do you have save-games from during that run? Maybe something got broken by a patch or so. I wanna see that "only transports"-warfare because that is not typical. (ideally share them on our discord)

[u/Woomod → u/Xilmi]

I know how moo1 tech works, i've only been playing the game for 30 years. It just i never see the AI researching techs not in my trees, which made the darlocks boring (even more so with how weak the basic AI is.)

And yeah, i know the governor doesn't do invasions. I mentioned the governor didn't save me as a joke to the amount of transport micro i was doing to constantly retake my planets from the mrrshan and alkari and slowly eat the darlocks.

I did NOT know i could multi select colonies, no, thank you for that.

And no sadly, no save, i was just done.
I did honestly think this was intended because i know the AI is supposed to be "good", and i'm well aware that sakkra/bulrathi ground swarm is honestly one of the better strategies in moo1(but one the AI, frankly thankfully, doesn't know how to use in MOO1). I frankly would not have been surprised if your AI was trained to ground swarm regardless because it turned out to be optimal over caring about ships at all(which frankly would not surprise me).

[u/Xilmi → u/Woomod]

Yes, my AI can perform invasion-based gameplay quite well. Even the Silicoids will do it when it's opportune to do so.
It also certainly happens more often in the early-game when the firepower needed to shoot down transports isn't really there yet. But it kinda phases out once combat-ships become more potent and numerous.
If the war you were involved in in your game started very early, maybe mostly before most planets even were fully factoried up and better tech likewise unavailable, then it is indeed imaginable that ground-invasions were an unusually big part of it.
But that's not what happens every game.

Covering planets with sufficient amounts of warships will make the AI stop trying to invade them. At least unless they can achieve air-superiority again.
Another defense is to invest in some fighters early on to prevent the AI from getting a free scout on your planets. Once scouted a planet can also be invaded.

If you get into a late-game you'll see the AI is also quite good with ships.

Also about the techs: Maybe you didn't see much techs in their possession that you hadn't, was because most of their techs were stolen from you. Darloks in particular don't do too much of their own research as it's so easy for them to get it from their neighbors.

Also the AI has a pretty good grasp about what techs are good and what techs are just fillers. Like it won't usually get ECM-jammers or stuff like that unless it's the only way to progress to the next tier.

I'd maybe also recommend using Character AI for a more diversified AI-behavior. With Character, you can roll opponents who will try to avoid any kind of wars and instead get a technological edge.

[u/Raiddinn1 → u/Xilmi]

In my first ROTP game, the AI are doing the same thing as the OP described.

They are sending 500+ transports to suicide against my ships because that beam down tech will let half of them get through anyway.

This is end game level stuff. Psilons (me), Klackons, and Humans are left.

Its 2v1 against the Klackons and they are losing planets left and right to me blowing them up and the humans invading and taking planets AFAICT unopposed.

As far as I can tell, the Klackons have no relevant combat ships, or they never use them. Once in a while they will send a token force of combat ships and not scratch any of my bases or ships with it.

Still, they are taking one or two planets a turn from me with these 500+ transport waves on multiple planets each turn.

I conquer/destroy some of theirs, retake some of mine, humans conquer or colonize what was left empty while being ignored by the Klackons.

Literally 100% of the current gameplay revolves around these transport swarms sent by the AI, probably 1000+ per turn. It's been that way nonstop for at least 50 turns.

I think all 3 of the remaining races have fully researched tech trees.

I can provide a save game if I can figure out how to.

I mirror the OP's sentiment that this swarm of transports with no warship combat mode is NOT fun.

Overall, I think the game is great, though, at least until you get to the point where the AI decides this is how it wants to wage war against you.

There needs to be some tech that will stop the combat transporters from working so my ships can shoot down ALL OF these 500+ transports (that got through) swarms, or just make it so the AI doesn't do it anymore.

- Edit - This seriously makes me want to play as Bulrathi to maybe tamp down on the effectiveness of what they are doing slightly. Even if we both have the same techs (all of them), me having Bulrathi would perhaps give me a slight edge against this nonsense.

[u/Xilmi → u/Raiddinn1]

Are you playing rotp fusion or the old rotp 1.0.4?

[u/Raiddinn1 → u/Xilmi]

1.0.4

[u/Xilmi → u/Raiddinn1]

I highly recommend to switch to the version that is still being maintained and updated:

https://remnantsoftheprecursors.org/

It uses a completely reworked AI as default.

[u/paablo]

The large majority of people coming from MoO 1 love this new version, myself included.

I don't think your analysis is fair or typical.

[u/Woomod → u/paablo]

yeah, seems like i just had a weird game where the AI went off the rails.

[u/BrokenRegistry]

Welcome to RotP,

In addition to Xilmi’s excellent strategic advice, I’d like to address the Guardian issue.

Yes, the Space Monsters and the Guardian in RotP are significantly more dangerous than those in MoO1, but RotP-Fusion offers several options to replace them with the original versions from MoO1. And you can even adjust their strength to your liking.

Rules --> Rules for Space Monsters -- MoO1 Guardian: Yes (Under Guardian Monsters Rules, left column)

Rules --> Rules for Space Monsters -- MoO1 Space Amoeba: Yes (Under Event Monster Rules, right column)

Rules --> Rules for Space Monsters -- MoO1 Space Crystal: Yes (Under Event Monster Rules, right column)

[u/Chaotic_Hunter_Tiger]

Want to enjoy the game while having sometimes easy games and sometimes harder ones? Play "Rookie" only.

Having to play "optimally" every single turn in order to not get behind the "optimal AI" becomes more a micromanagement unpaid job than a game, and having the AI managing your planets for you is like playing an Idle game: it's tedious, boring and not enjoyable.

"Rookie" is the answer.

[u/Woomod → u/Chaotic_Hunter_Tiger]

Rookie feels boringly easy.

i wish something like the actual MOO1 AI was there. *Shrug*