We're in Beta, and the AI isn't even finished yet. They're probably tuning the AI using player vs. player data.
I'm not great enough to 1 v 1 Insane AIs, or rather I don't feel like it. But in 2 v 2 with all Insanes and me? A right army combination, devastators with zeppelin support, unit abilities and forcing chunks of their army to go after you at a time followed by a full dragon supported assault leaves me winning with manageable casualties all the time.
Beta is the perfect time to point out problems, that's the whole point of beta isn't it?
The main focus of this thread wasn't really about the A.I, I just brought it up to give some background to my feelings towards the population pool. Those 10 games I was just experimenting with a wide variety of ideas, some worked and some didn't. But the fact still remains that I ran into a ton of stalemates, typically in an RTS if you employ a poor strategy you should just die for it, not get stuck in a stalemate.
Also while there are indeed cost effective ways to defeat the AI. that's only because the AI doesn't react to some strategies properly. The AI is hopeless against Juggernauts for example, you can sit 3 juggernauts bombarding their base and they'll just continually lose thousands upon thousands of recruits to them. The AI responds VERY poorly to Juggernauts. However obviously a player isn't going to just stand around and let this happen, and should be able to respond in a reasonably cost efficient manner.
Imagine a PvP game that had been very back and forth the whole way through, and the population pool has run out, both players own 10 Armours and 6 Anti-Ground Turrets. This is a no win situation for either player, whoever makes the attack will lose the game because the other player will have the assistance of turrets. While that's just a very simple example the game just greatly favours defence as a whole. Instead of building those 10 armours at all an even better tactic would be to have built nothing at all, and simply waited to see what the enemy produced with their remaining reinforcements. Once you see what they create you can easily mass create whatever counters his composition way before they reach your base, giving you an even bigger advantage beyond just the turrets.
Now what happens if both players realise all this, the population cap has ran out, and they own no units but have 200 Reinforcements each. In this situation the best course of action is for both players to do nothing, because who ever makes the first move will lose...
I strongly believe that even if it's not the suggestion I provided that is used, that something needs to be done about the end game of a match when the Population Pool is Deleted. Everyone mentions that it's supposed to end the game, but how does it end the game? All I see it doing is stalling the game into an awkward stand still of nothing. The only logical strategy to do as soon as the Population Pool depletes is to turtle, it is statistically going to give you the highest chance of victory, because controlling the map is irrelevant, and attacking the enemy directly is inefficient. But if both players just turtle on 1 main base, how is the game going to end?
