Military victory conditions

Based on what you described, the AI must have surrendered. The exact conditions are difficult to explain, because the AI isn't consistent.

Thanks for the quick reply

The actual military condition is to be the last player or team standing, and you eliminate players by destroying all of their planets. But as mentioned the AI can surrender before that point under conditions that aren't entirely clear, though a large fleet size is a confirmed important factor.

The AI is generally well and thoroughly beaten before it actually surrenders.  The exact "last straw" is therefor very difficult to pin down and usually is something quite arbitrary.  Often times the AI surrenders when its fleet gets cornered by a force many times larger.  This can feel frustrating if this was the final move in a hour-long game of cat-and-mouse that the AI likes to play when it's on the defensive.

Ultimately, the AI's surrender behavior is a tad unpredictable.  Having a larger fleet is the best way to encourage it to happen.  I did a bunch of reloads of a specific scenario once, and confirmed that the AI surrendered much sooner when I increased my fleet size, even if I wasn't actually using those units.  The second largest factor is usually the AI's own empty fleet supply.  If it has a massive amount of unused fleet supply and insufficient income with which to fill it, it will often surrender.  In other words, conceding an economic victory.  The exact number of casualties you need to inflict to do this is variable, so again it's hard to predict when it's going to happen.

The bottom line is that I've never seen the AI surrender when it has any real fight left in it, so don't worry too much about a premature finish.

There really should be some tweaking options for the AI. That way, you could set how soon they give up, what stage of the game they get their cheats, how often it decides to retreat, how fast it expands, what type of offense scheme it throws at you (massed attacks vs many smaller attacks, or something similar). This is in addition to the economist/researcher/fortifier/aggressor/random settings.

I'd also suggest allowing some degree of modding to the AI in order to make them smarter, but I doubt any of that would happen.

Thanks guys for your answers.

@ SithLordAJ

I like the ai to be more random. I believe that if it was that much customizable it would be very predictable



Cheers

Actually, it's predictability wouldn't change any bit from what it is now.  Right now it follows a set of rules, we just don't exactly know what those are.  Sith (and a whole lot more of us) just wants to be able to change those rules which would in actuality vary the AI more then it already is, as well as make it perform better in the game.

So maybe you can set it to randomly populate those settings too. I'm just in favor of more options. Right now, the AI (to me), doesnt seem very consistent in it's strategy (if it even has one). Giving it more character and direction seems like the best idea to me. It also seems to me like a way to bridge single and multiplayer. I am not a fan of the cheating the AI does. It should behave like any other person, but with better intelligence, have the ability to issue commands on other sides of the galaxy simultaneously, but probably wouldn't have the micro skills players have (though for somethings, I can see it being possible. ie. guardian usage).

I guess I misunderstood you. I though you wanted to knowingly preset these variables before each game begins so that you would know how the ai would exactly behave. Sorry