RTS with a good AI?

[Landwalker]

The original poster specifically asked for RTS not turned based like Advance Wars or Total War. I personally enjoy the Age of Empire series.

The poster did ask for RTS games, but then went on to use Total War and the quintessential turn-based strategy series, Civilization, as examples. So either he doesn't understand what "RTS" actually is, or he's soliciting any ideas regardless of system.

Either way, I have not played the most recent incarnation of Age of Empires, only the original and Age of Kings (and Age of Mythology). Perhaps Ensemble made a huge AI improvement in the transition to AoE III, but in all the other ones the AI was abysmal, tending to just hurl units at you with virtually no regard for tactics, planning, or organization. Set up a moderate defense at a choke point and you basically have unlimited time to build up your own army, and when it comes time to swoop in and eliminate the enemy, it's basically just a matter of steamrolling the opponent--there is no coherent or organized defense, nothing.

If Age of Empires III made an improvement on this, then that's great. But if not, then, as enjoyable as the series is, I wouldn't recommend it on the strength of its AI.

Cheers.

[bovi]

Age of Empires III AI is very good at getting up a quick army, but completely moronic once it gets smacked around a bit, and requires constant supervision to be of any use at all to a team. Playing MP with an odd number of people with similar strength makes it really hard to make a match, as on hard it's practically useless and on expert it gets double the resources of everyone else so is impossible to beat.

For good turn-based AI, I can vouch for Galactic Civilizations II. Give the AI a couple of percent more income than you and you'll have a good run for your money. I also like Civ4's AI, although it tends to be very unforgiving about the wars against me, which I didn't start I might add. There's also Igowin which is not entirely stupid.

[Elminster12]

Civ4 AI is very nice, especially since each leader behaves differently, and there is also an option for Random Personalties, which could lead to such madness as psychotic warmongerer Gandhi and peaceful builder Alexander. It is usually decently competent at war(and will actually pick on weaker AIs to good effect) and it is also capable of pursuing any victory in Beyond the Sword(people have actually witnessed AIs win domination victories.) They also pursue tech gambits(they are capable of, for example, setting up a Feudalism slingshot using the Oracle if conditions are favorable.) However, you won't find AI that is anything better than average when compared to humans.

[Bootsiuv]

Gal Civ II has an excellent A.I., but sometimes, the game is a little too abstract for my tastes.

You can design all of these cool-looking ships, but you never get to see them in battle a'la Imperium Galactica II. Also, the complete lack of any scientific related notes is also disappointing ie click on a star, and recieve a few facts would be nice, and the same goes for planets.

It's still a very good AI, although in Rome's defense, the creators really had to create TWO AI's....one for the campaign and one for the battle map. If they had stuck with one or the other, it's likely the final version would have been more polished, but also more limited.

Overall, though, if it's A.I your looking for, GalCivII is very good, albeit a little abstract.

[Pharnakes]

Hmm this galciz sounds intiguing,could you give a bit more detail on it please, also min specs?


Thanks

P.S. Bootsiuv, any luck with the Indo Hellenics yet?

[Bootsiuv]

No....but my girl has class tomorrow, and I'm going up there for an hour and a half while she is in class, so I'll have much longer to look through books.

And the min req for GalCiv II are very low....if you can play EB, I'd venture you could play GalCiv II....the planets and stars are very well rendered though, and they're is some cool stuff in the background, but that's about as intense as graphics get.

[Pharnakes]

Thanks, hope you get some good info

My pint is thought that I can't play eb, so I was rather looking around for something to fill the gap untill I get a new comp.

[bovi]

The only really good graphics in GalCiv2 are in the ship battles, which you'll probably disable after you've seen it played out about 100 times (and the ship designer where you make the nice ships, image below). The rest of the graphics are pretty functional, and I usually zoom out so it becomes sprites instead of the nice ship renderings anyway. You don't need much of fancy FPS-graphics in a TBS anyway.



A lot of other screenshots can be seen here: http://www.galciv2.com/Journals.aspx?p=5

[iwwtf_az]

total annihilation was pretty good. the reason is, there was no unit cap. so even if the ai was horrible, i never noticed since i was constantly under siege.