Will you and Yitzi work together on one combined patch?I have no time to cooperate or coordinate or whatever. But it should be very easy to combine our efforts in one patch, if Yitzi does not mind. I'm fine and as far as he lets me do my job (AI).
c) I have also something I have called "AI_max_pref_socio_var_unused". Any idea what it could be (these things most probably coincide with some faction setting in alpha)? Maybe that skipped Miriam option or what?
a) ECONOMY and EFFICENCY are considered together. If the AI player is not anti aggressive (-1) and not (some being_attacked flag) or interested in wealth (+1) or tech (+1), their basing factor is (times) 1. Any of above cases double/triple the effect. Interest in tech has double effect itself. (and other factors enter in afterwards, like energy increase times number of bases etc.). There is further 200% boost for factions that
have neither growth nor power setting +1. No extra FM considerations here, I am afraid.
Remember that the player can't choose the hated SE setting either, so letting the AI do that would be cheating!
I have a question here - can you modify the strings or just the values? Can you flat out remove some consideration from the above list? I understand that you can't shoehorn the FM consideration here?I can modify whatever I want as long as I find some space. People who are able to create DLL injections have no problems with space, sadly it's not my case - I am not a programmer, just a self learned matemathician-amateur.
This SUPPORT and POLICE mix-up is a big thing, obviously. But there is something I don't get - so AI running FM 'thinks' it has -5 SUPPORT? What does it do with such a revelation? I still see it cranking units like there's no tomorrow.Looking at the social agendas' table, perhaps the AI tries to offset -5 SUPPORT with POWER setting. It could be a factor.
I think that support stuff needs separate consideration. Like for example "don't clog your base minerals with more than (10-20%) maintenance unless" and 'unless' means here either 'you're winning a war' (took +2 bases), so it's a good idea to push on, or 'you're losing a war' (lost one base) so you must defend.The game has it already, when choosing stuff to build in a base, the surplus is taken in consideration! The game AI has a lot of things inside, in fact. It is really complex, most complex AI from all games I have ever seen, I suppose it's a heritage from civ2 game. Just not working very well. (That's not a bad thing, since it's easier for me to make existing structures smoother, than creating AI code from the scratch.)
I'm quite busy this month, but for a longer while I wanted to start a thread on AI behaviour, especially in terms of diplomacy. I've always wondered if there is a slider like the one you see in Civ4, when you get 'points' for behaviour.
And again, wow, this SUPPORT/POLICE thing is a crazy mistake. How could that fly under their radar?I actually think that there may be bigger problem in the Morale decision. The way it is counted, +Morale becomes a holy grail, just as you noticed in your analysis. The AI spawns many units, the more unit it spawns, the more continent it settles, the bigger the desire for +Morale. On bigger map, it's worse. I believe we should tone it down.
I'm afraid there is a difference between "SE aversion" (you can't run it) and "SE hatred" (AI scolds you for it and will never use it itself). This is particularly conspicuous for Zak and Miriam, as their aversions and hatreds are not even in the same SE line. Either human or AI Zakharov can't run Fundie, but the AI Zak will additionaly never run Power and Wealth, something which is available to humans.I can switch off this behaviour easily, if you wish. If I'm right, it works like this: Zak has knowledge set as his preferred agenda, so he programmatically avoid the other options. That's in the code.
Will you and Yitzi work together on one combined patch?I have no time to cooperate or coordinate or whatever. But it should be very easy to combine our efforts in one patch, if Yitzi does not mind. I'm fine and as far as he lets me do my job (AI).
so we might just be able to have one person hold off any changes while the other is at that last stage, and then they can download that and work from there.The nature of AI changes requires different approach, I am afraid. I need to create a lot of test builds, to see how AI reacts to different approaches. Afterwards, I reverse some features, I take others in. At the end of the process, a few months on, we may have a better game. Or not, if I fail. In between, the changes may seem even detrimental to the cause. I learned to understand that is normal with AI development.
Since I am going away for a few weeks, I cooked a quick test build for SMAC AI (requires SMAC only for now, sorry). SMAC_444_l version in the Downloads.
The highlight is the correction of Support <=> Police mismatch in AI social engineering. You'll find the rest in the short notes to the patch.
I can modify whatever I want as long as I find some space. People who are able to create DLL injections have no problems with space, sadly it's not my case - I am not a programmer, just a self learned matemathician-amateur.
I can remove, move or replace a lot of AI SE choice. Don't worry. I cannot inflate the code with massive new tasks, basically, I have to work with the variables the AI already uses. Example: we have Nr_of_my_land_units_on_continent_X variable. We have Nr_of_my_naval_units as well. But we don't have Nr_of_my_air_units, so we cannot check that against running Free market - pity.
The game has it already, when choosing stuff to build in a base, the surplus is taken in consideration! The game AI has a lot of things inside, in fact. It is really complex, most complex AI from all games I have ever seen, I suppose it's a heritage from civ2 game. Just not working very well. (That's not a bad thing, since it's easier for me to make existing structures smoother, than creating AI code from the scratch.)
I actually think that there may be bigger problem in the Morale decision. The way it is counted, +Morale becomes a holy grail, just as you noticed in your analysis. The AI spawns many units, the more unit it spawns, the more continent it settles, the bigger the desire for +Morale. On bigger map, it's worse. I believe we should tone it down.
I can switch off this behaviour easily, if you wish. If I'm right, it works like this: Zak has knowledge set as his preferred agenda, so he programmatically avoid the other options. That's in the code.
Thanks. When (if) you extend it to a SMAX patch, please build it off my latest version at the time, so our patches can be combined.
By the way: One of the things mentioned in your AI patch was beelining; will that make the AI play badly if various dependencies/tech-bonuses/etc. are moved around? (i.e. will it make the AI beeline for things even if you change the tech tree so that there is no longer an advantage to such beelining?) If so, that might need changing.
Thanks. When (if) you extend it to a SMAX patch, please build it off my latest version at the time, so our patches can be combined.
Please remember also to have a copy of kyrub's changes but without modifications to the game rules, tech tree, ecodamage, etc. MP players are quite conservative and although they're happy with bug fixes and AI improvements, they're are very reluctant to changes which force a shift in strategies.
Just a small suggestion: when you release a new version, could you please go into properties\summary of your exe and add a comment on what version it is? Thanks.
All my changes except the clear bugfixes are set up so that you can use the default rules if you want*.
*Well, actually this is not technically true; for instance, for purposes of convenience I plan to remove the "10Xdifference in chassis cost" term in the upgrade cost, but only because I can't think of any circumstance where it would actually be relevant.
I didn't mean list all the changes - just add "Yitzi patch v2" (or whatever it is) to the terranx.exe file.Just a small suggestion: when you release a new version, could you please go into properties\summary of your exe and add a comment on what version it is? Thanks.
Each of my versions will contain a readme listing all the changes.
Oh, I see, that's cool. I thought that you're planning some really massive rework of eco-damage, etc. Is it possible to make that optional, just through the alphax? I thought you're changing the code.
What do you mean here? I don't know the formulas off the top of my head. Is it a big deal?
It is a valid strategy to build 'shell' units (trained 1-1-chassis) and upgrade from there
I didn't mean list all the changes - just add "Yitzi patch v2" (or whatever it is) to the terranx.exe file.
Add it how?Right click on the terran(x).exe file, go to Properties, go to the Summary tab, add comment.
I'd disagree, and consider that strategy to be horribly imbalancing (as it throws off the mineral/energy balance), but my patch will (as usual) make it possible to change the rules to scuttle that strategy, but anyone who wants to play with the current rules can.
Yes, I agree with you, I've never liked this particular strategy, although I would use it every now and then. It's simply not the way the game is meant to be played. However, each such change would make a few MP players drop out and insist on playing the vanilla version.
Also, it'd be hard to replace it with a new rule that doesn't have weird side effects. If you cut out upgrading 1-1-chassis, people would simply start to make 2-1-chassis types.
While this is tangenting a little bit, as a person who's made an epic mod that's largely ignored by everyone, I'd advise to keep it to "tweak" levels rather than new things entirely. Unless you get a lot of positive feedback of course. :)
I think that by targeting mainly the strategies that most people dislike (ICS, heavy energy focus, and air power will probably be the biggest targets) and those that clearly unbalance the game (e.g. those that make the race for midgame projects into purely a tech race, rather than a combination of techs and production), that should cut down on the dropouts. And if you essentially get two different games, that's ok too.
Well, I think it's more like Kilkakon says. :) The first time I came here, I couldn't even find players for a game with crawlers and choppers banned, and if this thingies are not OP, then truly nothing is.
So it's thoughtful to keep things optional. I imagine you'd lose a player or two if you changed as much as the period between council proposals by three turns. People play vanilla, they got used to exploit stuff like crawlers, air, ICS or shell upgrade and I'm afraid not much can be done about it. Hell, even I shed a tear for that bugged Children Creche, because I really relied on it, and I'm a guy who really understands that this bug must go. :)
People play vanilla, they got used to exploit stuff like crawlers, air, ICS or shell upgrade and I'm afraid not much can be done about it.So well said.
This became a vicious circle in itself - personally I have nothing against mods, but I don't explore this topic too much for I know I won't find co-players to it anyway.
By the way: One of the things mentioned in your AI patch was beelining; will that make the AI play badly if various dependencies/tech-bonuses/etc. are moved around?Yes, if you change the position of some techs, the AI will end up beelining another tech. The beelining should probably be in alpha.txt, for modding purposes. (But in my modest opinion, modding for SMACX is dead, because nobody tends to play the mods that are created. Or am I wrong?)
I think I have an elegant solution here.QuoteI can switch off this behaviour easily, if you wish. If I'm right, it works like this: Zak has knowledge set as his preferred agenda, so he programmatically avoid the other options. That's in the code.
Yes, I'm strongly in favour of this solution. No need to handicap AI in the way humans aren't. Besides, they still can't run their 'opposite' choices, I think it's in their respective faction files.
Yes, if you change the position of some techs, the AI will end up beelining another tech. The beelining should probably be in alpha.txt, for modding purposes.
But in my modest opinion, modding for SMACX is dead, because nobody tends to play the mods that are created. Or am I wrong?
Yes, I'm strongly in favour of this solution. No need to handicap AI in the way humans aren't. Besides, they still can't run their 'opposite' choices, I think it's in their respective faction files.
I think I have an elegant solution here.
What about: If AI likes an option A, than options B or C are not totally excluded (like now) but the whole SE "position" is worth 25% less. This will make AI
a) switch to the other possibilities when the A option is not yet researched
b) prefer A option to B and C massively
c) still use B or C when highly valuable
(But in my modest opinion, modding for SMACX is dead, because nobody tends to play the mods that are created. Or am I wrong?)
Yes, if you change the position of some techs, the AI will end up beelining another tech. The beelining should probably be in alpha.txt, for modding purposes. (But in my modest opinion, modding for SMACX is dead, because nobody tends to play the mods that are created. Or am I wrong?)I can testify that modding is dead! At least for big things, it seems. I've spent two years of my life on a game nobody online has played and survived to tell the tale. Woo! I'm probably killing people without realising. XD
I think I have an elegant solution here.Can you make it take immunities to negative stats and civics into account? E.g. Hive's immunity to negative EFFIC, or one of the secret project's immunity to Cybernetic? Or is that automatic in the considerations?
What about: If AI likes an option A, than options B or C are not totally excluded (like now) but the whole SE "position" is worth 25% less. This will make AI
a) switch to the other possibilities when the A option is not yet researched
b) prefer A option to B and C massively
c) still use B or C when highly valuable
I can testify that modding is dead! At least for big things, it seems. I've spent two years of my life on a game nobody online has played and survived to tell the tale. Woo! I'm probably killing people without realising. XD
But that's not the point of this thread. I'd agree that having them work off the rules rather than hardcoded settings is better as otherwise they'll be really lolligagged/freaked out by some mods (e.g. crawlers are disabled in my game, and some more mods, not sure what would happen if the AI beelined to them).
Oh by the way! Some good news. I managed to get both Kyrub's and Yitzi's patches working on my laptop. The catch is that they MUST use DirectDraw=0 using that patch or it won't run. The other catch is that DirectDraw=0 doesn't like my laptop either, as even the basic game with only scient's patch will crash in a few turns after a bit of exploration. :(
There is a difference between total conversion mods and tweak mods.Naturally, hence my line "at least for the big things".
Well, at least that still gives hab complexes, which are also pretty important. But what if mineral and energy lifting restrictions are moved, and it still beelines to Environmental Economics?That's what I mean--would be better to beeline to specific, valuable technologies, such the prereqs for certain facilities, tech req. for mineral lifting, etc. It's the perfect example as my mineral lifting tech is different from hab complexes and all the tech keys are changed.
Sounds like a graphics issue with your laptop.Yeah definitely, it can't handle Baldur's Gate (even the GoG.com version) in full screen either, have to hard reset that (which is what happens with DirectDraw=0 off). So won't be able to use the nice patches for MP, but no biggie at this stage.
That's what I mean--would be better to beeline to specific, valuable technologies, such the prereqs for certain facilities, tech req. for mineral lifting, etc. It's the perfect example as my mineral lifting tech is different from hab complexes and all the tech keys are changed.
BTW.. I am loving all the discourse on AI. I have been staying silent to let the experts speak since I was a previous years long lurker and others can put what changes are good better than me.
In that case:
1. What do you have it beeline? Some of it might be adjustable to be based on the tech that gives X feature.
2. Would it be possible to write separate AIs for beelining and not-beelining in the same program? If so, I can show you how to make it based on an alpha.txt variable. (Note: For SMAC, you will need to reduce some limit (I used the landmark limit) to make room.)
3. Did you include the beelining in the SMAX mod as well, or just SMAC?
4. While we're on the subject, what terraforming did you teach it in the SMAX mod? In particular, is it going to use boreholes and condensers like crazy?
Can you make it take immunities to negative stats and civics into account? E.g. Hive's immunity to negative EFFIC, or one of the secret project's immunity to Cybernetic? Or is that automatic in the considerations?
1. Not in this thread, please, start another one (like AI - research choices) and I will try to answer there.
2. This would be quite helpful. There should be an option to switch AI beelining off completely. BTW, if you put in the "Random research" option for yourself, it's not completely random, you are actually using the AI beelining... You should be able to choose "Completely random research" to increase the challenge.
No need to wait all night.
The best way is to choose a faction you don't want to watch.
Start a game.
Go to Menu->Scenario->Eliminate
Choose your faction.
Switch off all notifications you don't want to see.
Now use "Y" key to hide everything.
Keep clicking Enter or End of turn.
If you want to have a look, press "Y", then "E" to study AI social engineering etc.
In 5 minutes, the game's done.
Is it possible for you to make AI attack gathered units from inside a base when it thinks it has enough power to do so (like some kind of city defender power X vs. enemy power condition Y where X and Y are balanced with taking into account enemy striking back next turn)?Good idea, Kraze.
Also with the current patch AI seems to ignore building space units and also doesn't seem to use transports to cross the sea at all. Granted it's been a while since I've played the game last time but I'm fairly certain AI colonized overseas locations at least even if it didn't do invasions.AI colonizes overseas even with the patch. I have witnessed it myself. Please, beware from making quick judgments based upon one game or one segment of a game. We need more evidence, more refined notions. You may have found a flaw in the patch, but we need more details, better understanding of the conditions under which something works / does not work. - Thanks!
Also: did you use "small lands, huge world" setting?
I have only 2109 year save from that game unfortunatelyGot it. Will run a few watch-games on it tonight, with Vanilla and the patch.
But I also included the final save for you to compare
Since I am going away for a few weeks, I cooked a quick test build for SMAC AI (requires SMAC only for now, sorry). SMAC_444_l version in the Downloads.
The highlight is the correction of Support <=> Police mismatch in AI social engineering. You'll find the rest in the short notes to the patch.
So Best > Agenda > Simple?
I agree Deirdre should run Green over nothing, but I'm not so convinced that I want to watch Miriam trying to bash coconuts with sticks as she runs Fundie.
First let me ask about the things I don't understand. What does the following mean in your patch description?These are my internal notes, they give little sense in themselves, sorry.
d close base and fungus love from 70
e unit_abilities_8
g formers chance
All in all, I see big improvement in:Thanks a lot for some positive feedback, we achieved something without actually changing a lot.
1) not sticking to preferred SE at all costs
2) use of Wealth by Morgan and Hive, really congrats guys and good for you
3) smarter use of FM (i.e. AI uses it but switches off under Vendetta)
However, I still think that Wealth is under- and Power is overused. Can Power be made as something of last resort? Or barring that, something which is used only if >95% bases build combat units?If we make INDUSTRY setting more pertinent, the AI will prefer Wealth and use Power only as a last ressort. This should do the trick, easy.[/quote]
Which reminds me - what's the difference between aggressivity and power? (you mentioned them along with growth, eco and commerce).It's "ai-fight", the first number of the five. Willigness to use army (the number can range from -1 to 1.). I say aggressivity, because it seems to fit better to the fact. This number is quite powerful throughout the code. Of all numbers, most used are (sorted): ai_fight, ai_power... ai_tech, ai_wealth. Ai_growth is severely underused, it's strong only in the research choice, IIRC. Surprisingly, AI growth does not lead to ICS.
d - close base, I forced AI to place bases not as close (I dislike the ICS). I reversed the change afterwards, because it changes game's rules. It works normally now.
g- AI builds a LOT more formers. This i quite evident from the game, I think.
It's "ai-fight", the first number of the five. Willigness to use army (the number can range from -1 to 1.). I say aggressivity, because it seems to fit better to the fact. This number is quite powerful throughout the code. Of all numbers, most used are (sorted): ai_fight, ai_power... ai_tech, ai_wealth. Ai_growth is severely underused, it's strong only in the research choice, IIRC. Surprisingly, AI growth does not lead to ICS.
This could also discourage AI from building any further bases at all. I don't know if you changed anything, but in this test I played (it's 2220), I noticed all AI have 1-3 active colony pods and look like they are not sure what to do about it (the numbers are 1, 3, 1, 1, 2, 1).There's no change, I just pushed some factions to be more pro-active in spreading (Morgans, University). It's quite visible. AI has a general problem to place its colonies, the pods go round in circles. The bug source is not known, yet.
The numbers are 4, 13, 3, 3, 8, 1, so it's seem fine. I wonder why the difference between 1 and 13? Is there any way to introduce a lower limit ('thou shalt not have less than 2/3 X # of bases')?Room for improvement? Surely. I am currently working on better AI building, so Formers can fall in. I am pretty positive about the potential improvement here, it will make AI better.
We are talking about how these numbers affect the AI behaviour. Can you say a few words how they can in turn be affected by external factorsOh no, these are constants from the faction txt files. Open Morgan.txt and the 5 numbers you see in the header are the constants that influence 60% of AI behaviour in the game. That's why AI Hive is usually the best, it has the most succesful number combination.
What I suggested was to make them not_constant. Switch ai_fight on +1 even for "peaceful" factions (-1), under some defined circumstances.
It might not be a good idea to mess with ai_fight, as think that really determines more what circumstances it prefers (i.e. aim for peace or not) rather than how it acts in a particular circumstance. If it's in a major conflict, I'd think you'd want more focus on ai_conquer and leave ai_fight alone.
Try to read this thread: http://apolyton.net/showthread.php/19938-Re-Balancing-SMAX-Factions?highlight=Switching%20Sides (http://apolyton.net/showthread.php/19938-Re-Balancing-SMAX-Factions?highlight=Switching%20Sides)
They think ai_fight has massive influence on how much army is built, how offensive / radical the AI behaves... What I see, seems to confirm that. AI_conquer is less relevant.
Kyrub, if you modify the AI so that it knows how to use gravship formers/supplies and aerial colonies properly, then I will be forever indebted to you!By the stage of the game when air is available, I'm generally not needing to build many of bases, and though getting there a few turns earlier is cool.. it seems to be a pretty minor thing compared to many of the AI's other weaknesses. And Gravship formers? Why not just make tank/speeder and sea ones, on land you'll have a magtube network by then anyway so they can get many places faster than a gravship. Plus by Gravships the AI is effectively always doomed, due to other issues.
I think I mentioned this to you on another board, but just having an AI that's capable of aerial colonization would, in my opinion, vastly strengthen it.
And Gravship formers? Why not just make tank/speeder and sea ones, on land you'll have a magtube network by then anyway so they can get many places faster than a gravship. Plus by Gravships the AI is effectively always doomed, due to other issues.Frankly, I disagree. Aerial colonies - as early as Needlejets - would open up new possibilities for the AI: rapid expansion to deal with drone problems, open up new vectors rapidly in Vendettas, settlement of far-off islands that would otherwise require a Transport + Colony pod (i.e. more turns building, and more support resources) and 5-10x as many turns, etc. That said, I do agree that the AI has more glaring flaws than this one that need dealt with.
And Gravship formers? Why not just make tank/speeder and sea ones, on land you'll have a magtube network by then anyway so they can get many places faster than a gravship. Plus by Gravships the AI is effectively always doomed, due to other issues.This is really just a personal annoyance of mine - I like replacing land+sea formers with Gravship ones, as they're more efficient support-wise and I think they look cool. Plus they get additional protection due to being aerial units. And I've got to believe it's a minor bug that causes Gravship formers to automate properly on land, but not on sea. But yes, this has little if any priority in AI fixing :)
Frankly, I disagree. Aerial colonies - as early as Needlejets - would open up new possibilities for the AI: rapid expansion to deal with drone problems, open up new vectors rapidly in Vendettas, settlement of far-off islands that would otherwise require a Transport + Colony pod (i.e. more turns building, and more support resources) and 5-10x as many turns, etc. That said, I do agree that the AI has more glaring flaws than this one that need dealt with.Rapid expansion tends to lead to more drone problems due to BDrones, even with high efficiency. Having a base as a recharge point in an attack is interesting, but unless the AI was very smart about it may just give away a base. The newly founded base is rarely going to contribute much to an attack other than healing which will be further away from the action than a captured base, and bringing a speeder colony pod along with an attack would do almost the same thing.
This is really just a personal annoyance of mine - I like replacing land+sea formers with Gravship ones, as they're more efficient support-wise and I think they look cool. Plus they get additional protection due to being aerial units. And I've got to believe it's a minor bug that causes Gravship formers to automate properly on land, but not on sea. But yes, this has little if any priority in AI fixing :)Long before Gravships all your formers should be Clean, negating support entirely, and you should have a tube network, making speeder formers faster in many situations. I could see gravship formers having a very few niche uses, and they do look cool, but teaching the AI when they're worthwhile and how to use them seems entirely not worth it. Maybe making automation work for them (at least a copy of Land automation) would be much simpler and so worthwhile though.
Interesting finds! Especially the Police/Support multiplier, that could well be very significant. Would it be practical to post/share your disassembled version with functions you've identified, so that perhaps others would be encouraged to join in the search for improvements, or at least gain insight into the workings of the game?It's police/police multiplier, I made a typo. Sorry.
By the way, this is vaguely off-topic, but once you've solved the big AI problems I'm wondering if you might be interested in making a version of your patch without the AI beelines?I have no problem with it and I find it desirable.
As far as sharing of disassembled database, I understand your interest in testing and probing AI. I love studying current AI algorithms and finding new ones and better, same as you, ete.
But the short answer to your question is: not now.
The longer answer: I will most probably disclose my IDA database later, in months to come, to wider community for any use. I did so in all my other projects so far (bar one that was first and is still unfinished). So you may more or less rely on the fact.
Right now, I am doing the AI business myself, in the pace I set to myself, without any pressure and enjoying all the surprise and fun it offers. It's a bit egoistic but it's well deserved at the same time (see below). When I am done with my effort, I'll open the database to the community and you may improve it or build a new concurential model. You may try to create a scripted AI as well, if you wish and have abilities to do so.
To explain my stance a bit further: the ground disassembling is the really hard part, the rest are the fruits. When you disassemble a game, the first stage is "simple findings", very fruitful (like combat bonuses or POP limits locations). This is short. The second stage is very hard and can take a hundred of hours time, because you are trying to understand the non-obvious in the code. It also brings few fruits. After that, you may try to understand the AI. This is the hardest, because you must penetrate something that is not visible in the game AT ALL: how the AI uses its own data, what analysis it does for its goals, how it communicates in AI-AI mode. Also, without understanding the AI more than 80%, you fail to improve it. That's another hundreds hours thing (for SMAC I mean, other games have much simpler AI).
I have put this effort in the game, and that's why I tend to think I can enjoy a small time for tinkering with it, before I feed to the player's community. I am trying to do my work to help the players, but, for now, I do it privately, myself. - Hopefully that does make some sense to you and others here.
5) AI does not check for pacifism drones when trying to make SE choice.
Wanting to play around with code yourself given the effort required to get that far is is entirely understandable.Thanks for that, ete.
Also, could you clarify your work on SMAX/SMAC? How much of your research can be applied directly/almost directly to SMAX, and are you currently still working almost entirely on SMAC?I am using SMAC for changes, since my knowledge was gathered in SMAC exe database (the postSMAX version 4.0). To project the changes into SMAX requires some time and energy, the SMAX exe, while being extremely similar, has different addresses. - So I avoid it until I am sure the changes are tested and valuable. Once we have a whole AI module (like: SE choices, or building decisions, or terraforming) ready, tested, approved , it can be transferred to SMAX.
I'd try the same thing. I have seen AI Morgan keep his units inside his territory for whole periods of his game, so there is some space for cautious optimism.Quote5) AI does not check for pacifism drones when trying to make SE choice.Giving them this check properly could well be the key to making them handle FM drones properly, or learn to avoid FM unless they can. I'd discourage entirely dissuading AI from FM unless there's no reasonable way to prevent them incurring far too many drones, since FM is extremely helpful to a faction if used correctly.
Actually, Lord Avalon, what you mean to say is that Pacifism drones should be assessed first, then all drone management facilities, projects, etc. should apply.
I agree, but I am not sure this is something that can be modded.
Should pacifism drones come after regular facilities? It's a pretty strong penalty if (nearly) every military unit is causing a drone, and very strong for two. If you have unused calming potential, why shouldn't that be applied?If they were applied before facilities, pacifism drones would be almost no penalty, and Free Market (already extremely useful) would lose its largest downside: Not being able to fight wars. I often get to the stage where all or almost all of my citizens start off as drones, and still suppress them with facilities/SPs/Psych. It'd be a significant gameplay change improving the power of already the best social engineering choice.. I'm not keen on it.
Actually, Lord Avalon, what you mean to say is that Pacifism drones should be assessed first, then all drone management facilities, projects, etc. should apply.
I agree, but I am not sure this is something that can be modded.
No, I meant what I asked, which was to open debate about changing the game to what you said vs status quo.
Would it really be "almost no penalty," like ete says? You can get Free Market pretty early, when bases aren't that large and have Rec Commons, or maybe RC + Hologram Theater. How well can they deal with extra drones, even if pacifism drones are assessed with other drones? (Off the top of my head, I don't know when the 1st pop drone turns up, and the 2nd.)
What if all drones were assessed first, but pacifism drones are super drones?
As I understand it, superdrones are only harder to suppress via psych, facilities turn them into citizens as easily as normal drones.
Yitzi: It may force you to up your psych in some situations if done that way. Still a vastly smaller penalty than the current and entirely justifiable system. But again: Why would we want to alter the game to buff arguably the best Economic setting, and one of the best SE settings overall?
I think that people are grossly underestimating the difficulty in playing FM. The penalties are very difficult to manage, especially at the early stages and when at war.Yes, FM makes it extremely hard to go to war, which is pretty much the only reason you're ever going to leave FM. And very early before your facilities are up too, though that's fairly short and Planned's Growth/Industry bonuses are very appealing then.
Just the fact that Police cannot be used at all for drone control hurts the early game, and the fact that the penalty is so severe that even using Police State to offset accomplishes very little. Exploration is much more difficult, due to pacificsm penalties.
The highly negative Planet rating means that after the initial "half-strength" period, mindworms are a major threat! While a non-FM faction can literally farm mind worms, given the 1.5x attacker rating, a FM faction has less than a 50% chance of success, especially if Wealth is also used. So a FM faction has to research Empath capability pretty early to have a chance to fend off mindworms.Yes, if badly managed or fighting a native faction, FM can give problems. However, with care and adequate management, worms are entirely dealable with, you've just got to remain vigilant and accept that exploring fungus is going to be very difficult.
Furthermore, the negative Planet rating means that any overproduction of minerals at a base does FAR MORE ECODAMAGE, and thus the chance of mind worm pops are far more likely. (Coupled with the fact that mindworms are far harder to deal with.)
Think about it: such highly negative penalities on Police and Planet, just to gain a +2 bonus! At first glance, one would wonder why anyone would possibly make such a tradeoff. Furthermore, if you take FM, you have to give up Planned, which is the most amazing government for the early game.I'm not talking from theory. I may not MP, but all my games have been Transcend for many years, and recently the AIs have mostly been given extremely overpowered factions just to try and make them feel like some kind of threat for part of the game. Once I discovered the power of FM (it was admittedly some time before I gave it a good try because at a glance it looks really bad), I've used FM almost exclusively in my games (with exceptions: very early, when I'm fighting a war without using rehoming tricks which seem cheap vs AI, when popbooming, when I'm fighting a heavy native faction like the bards, and very late game when I feel like reducing micromanagement of anti drone stuff). You know full well that FM is extremely worthwhile in its current form, and that its penalties, while severe, are more than counteracted by the massive boost in energy and research. Not easy to use by any means, but very far from needing a buff.
Anyone who thinks FM is easy, just play a few games yourself on Transcendent on the normal map of Planet, and see how you deal with it.
One Dilbert comics strip showed the pointy-haired boss thinking that anything he does not understand must be easy, so he assign tasks ard priorities accordingly, giving Dilbert one week to upgrade the entire corporate PC base to a new OS. It makes me wonder if the people who think FM penalties are easy to deal with have ever played a transcendant game with FM themselves?
If they were applied before facilities, pacifism drones would be almost no penaltyI should have said that this was only compared to the current system, but I did not say FM as a whole would have almost no penalty. -3 Planet is significant, though no where near as significant as the magic +1 energy per square.
I think that people are grossly underestimating the difficulty in playing FM. The penalties are very difficult to manage, especially at the early stages and when at war.
The highly negative Planet rating means that after the initial "half-strength" period, mindworms are a major threat!
While a non-FM faction can literally farm mind worms, given the 1.5x attacker rating, a FM faction has less than a 50% chance of success, especially if Wealth is also used.
So a FM faction has to research Empath capability pretty early to have a chance to fend off mindworms.
Furthermore, the negative Planet rating means that any overproduction of minerals at a base does FAR MORE ECODAMAGE
Think about it: such highly negative penalities on Police and Planet, just to gain a +2 bonus! At first glance, one would wonder why anyone would possibly make such a tradeoff.
Furthermore, if you take FM, you have to give up Planned, which is the most amazing government for the early game.
Anyone who thinks FM is easy, just play a few games yourself on Transcendent on the normal map of Planet, and see how you deal with it.
I'm not talking from theory. I may not MP, but all my games have been Transcend for many years, and recently the AIs have mostly been given extremely overpowered factions just to try and make them feel like some kind of threat for part of the game. Once I discovered the power of FM (it was admittedly some time before I gave it a good try because at a glance it looks really bad), I've used FM almost exclusively in my games (with exceptions: very early, when I'm fighting a war without using rehoming tricks which seem cheap vs AI, when popbooming, when I'm fighting a heavy native faction like the bards, and very late game when I feel like reducing micromanagement of anti drone stuff). You know full well that FM is extremely worthwhile in its current form, and that its penalties, while severe, are more than counteracted by the massive boost in energy and research. Not easy to use by any means, but very far from needing a buff.
Actually, the thing I would like to change is that Centauri Preserves, Tree Farms, etc. keep their industry immunity after they have been built and sold. If you sell it, the bonus should go away. This would perhaps be the penalty you are looking for with Free Market, if you could not build and sell Centauri Preserves to build mineral immunity.
I wonder if it is possible to mod that, so that if you sell the building, the mineral immunity bonus goes away?
I don't think it is at all silly for these enhancements to raise the clean mineral limit. They each reduce pollution and industrial impact overall. And they each have a maintence cost that has to be paid for the privilige (as long as you are not allowed to sell them and keep the benefit.
Actually, it makes less sense to me that a fungal pop would increase the clean mineral limit
Actually, the thing I would like to change is that Centauri Preserves, Tree Farms, etc. keep their industry immunity after they have been built and sold. If you sell it, the bonus should go away. This would perhaps be the penalty you are looking for with Free Market, if you could not build and sell Centauri Preserves to build mineral immunity.Agreed. This would be my no. 1 change to eco damage, and a bugfix. Making the eco damage formula count the number of current eco facilities rather than the number you've build would make much more sense and close a major unintended loophole.
I wonder if it is possible to mod that, so that if you sell the building, the mineral immunity bonus goes away?
Yitzi, I think you will find that if the player can't just create and destroy Centauri Preserves (the cheapest facility of this kind) over and over to increase the mineral limit, THEN the Planet penalty and ecodamage becomes much more significant.
I think the clean minerals being globally raised to fairly high levels in mid/late game was a design feature to combat ICS, which would otherwise be strongly encouraged once bases were hitting their clean production limits.
Unless either all bases produce eco damage (perhaps smaller ones more) or large ones can be made to not, it's going to encourage ICS. And doing the former.. well, it'll be interesting to see how it turns out. Perhaps it'll work very well.
The former is possible (though not doing it based on size) with my patch. However, here's another idea that would avoid encouraging ICS: Remove clean minerals entirely. No clean minerals means no large freebie that's multiplied by your number of bases (you'd still want a small freebie in the form of rounding down or similar, just so that you're not facing ecodamage almost as soon as you start), so there's no ecodamage benefit to ICS. 200 minerals faction-wide would be the same whether it's spread among 10 bases or 50. (You would of course have to cut ecodamage substantially to compensate, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.)
I would say that pollution should be on a per-base basis. Logically only bases that pollute would have fungal pops. Also, this adds some strategy in having mineral cities with eco facilities to offset. The problem with eco facilities as they are is that they benefit all your bases by raising the clean mineral limit (a pro-ICS mechanic).
I would tie eco dmg to these factors only:
- Population size of the base
- Eco facilities (ideally, I think only the preserves. Tree farm and Hybrid Forest are strong enough).
- Planet rating
ECODMG =MAX(ECO_RATE*(MINERALS/BASESIZE^BASE_RATE)*(1-(PLANET*PLANET_RATE))-BASE_CLEAN_MINERALS),0)
MINERALS: minerals produced by the base
BASE_RATE: a small exponent to slightly benefit larger bases in terms of eco dmg. I think this will be needed in the late game where you will have much higher mineral totals from Genejack, Replicator, etc. May take some playing around but I would put this at a value of ~1.1.
PLANET: City owner's PLANET rating in SE
PLANET_RATE = 12.5% (for 12.5% more/less pollution per planet rating) seems reasonable. FM would thus pollute quite a bit more than Green, as this is calculated before clean minerals are subtracted.
Actually, with baserate>1 and BASE_CLEAN_MINERALS=8, you'd almost never get any ecodamage, as you'd need to have more than 8 minerals per population, which is unlikely at any stage of the game.
I would say that pollution should be on a per-base basis. Logically only bases that pollute would have fungal pops. Also, this adds some strategy in having mineral cities with eco facilities to offset. The problem with eco facilities as they are is that they benefit all your bases by raising the clean mineral limit (a pro-ICS mechanic).
QuoteI would say that pollution should be on a per-base basis. Logically only bases that pollute would have fungal pops. Also, this adds some strategy in having mineral cities with eco facilities to offset. The problem with eco facilities as they are is that they benefit all your bases by raising the clean mineral limit (a pro-ICS mechanic).
This is not a pro-ICS mechanic, but just the opposite.
With ICS, any particular base produces only 1/4 - 1/6 or less of what would be produced in a non-ICS scenario. When you do not allow eco facilities to have a general effect, then this actually promotes ICS, so that you can keep the production of any city smaller.
Non-ICS requires the current mechanism to be competitive with ICS. If you get rid of the current mechanism, you force players away from large cities, and toward ICS to minimize the production at any particular city.
Looking back, it's not really 'clean minerals per base' that I was subtracting. It's a flat 8 off of eco damage at the end and is not multiplied by population. In effect this works like a clean mineral limit but it really is not.
Your formula fits the game descriptions of how the base facilities work, and it's close to how it is now.
The problem with eliminating the clean mineral limit entirely is that the game is balanced around running 0 eco damage for most players, most of the time. Even tiny bases will be triggering fungal pops in the early game.
Now this is probably how it should be, but with how the boils progress they will quickly get out of hand. Even running Green and all facilities will not really be enough. As you showed, you will be creating 39 eco damage for every 300 minerals produced, and that's late game when all facilities are even available and built to cut down pollution.
If you're running FM and no facilities it's ~413 eco damage for the same 300 minerals.
Facilities should be strong, but I think that they have way too much an impact if clean minerals are taken out. They'd be more or less a requirement and late game captured bases would be pretty much just a burden by the pollution they make.
For example, Green in early-mid game (25 techs) with no facilities (nano and temple are very late game, and preserve is mid-game), is 60*TECH/20*0.6, or 300 mins -> 45 eco damage (across any number of bases). With FM on it's 120 eco per 300 minerals. This is a lot higher than current eco damage numbers.
I think the real issue is that the boils progress very sharply. They are balanced around a very all-or-nothing model of eco damage (which means surpassing clean minerals but not till the very late game typically).
And then getting rid of native mass captures and free energy for stack killing.
This is not a pro-ICS mechanic, but just the opposite.
The base exponent would also make larger bases pollute less than an equal number of smaller bases. For example, a size 10 base making 64 minerals would pollute as though it was 10^1.2 -> ~10 size 1-bases each making 4 minerals.
I believe native mass captures are already impossible, and I know that ecodamage-caused worms can't be captured at all.That turns out not to be the case - late-game, you start getting that "A more powerful mind seems to be controlling these worms", but up to then, I've captured upwards of 20 ecodamage-caused worms at a stroke; I did it just today.
I believe native mass captures are already impossible, and I know that ecodamage-caused worms can't be captured at all.That turns out not to be the case - late-game, you start getting that "A more powerful mind seems to be controlling these worms", but up to then, I've captured upwards of 20 ecodamage-caused worms at a stroke; I did it just today.
Here's a better view of the city-looking thing - and an uncaptured one stacked with another unit. Attack it with the active unit, and reload the attached save over until you capture those two. It shouldn't take all night. This is how the game normally behaves - it's not capture-able because the game's gone buggy.
(http://alphacentauri2.info/MGalleryItem.php?id=555)
scient wants me to get the game to crash, and I've still not finished the other thing I was working on, and it's late, so...
Re: Boils:
Yea maybe it's different in your patch. I've seen games where boils progress to 20+ stacks of Elite Locusts. These stacks could not be captured and took no collateral damage.. It seems like this was after only a dozen pops or so.
Re: Eco facilities:
300 faction minerals is mid game faction-wide production. Certainly not early-mid. That's 10-15 bases, around size 7 with 2 crawled boreholes each, and no mineral multipliers.
I forsee two problems. Nanoreplicator, Temple, and Pholus Mutagen are very late game. In addition, facilities reduce eco damage way too much. As they are, each eco facility reduces eco damage as follows:
#1: -50%
#2: -66%
#3: -75%
#4: -80% (Pholus Mutagen with all 3)
While I think Planet rating and facilities should matter, the effects of running FM and/or no facilities will be too devastating to even contemplate these options.
What is the cap on +Planet? I assume it's +3, as there's no benefit past that on the SE page.
Yea I butchered the numbers really badly on the city size idea. My head's been a bit off today. What I meant was that a base would have its eco damage reduced slightly by a function of its size, which is anti-ICS.
The pollution in a base would scale down by a factor of [N/(N^1.2)], where N is the city size.
Actually, when I opened that game a tried the capture, NOW I was getting the "vastly more powerful mind controlling" message, at which point captures never seem to happen. It might be possible to find a stack to capture in the first save I posted which was a turn earlier and when I captured that stack - there had been a lot of fungal pops, and I doubt I found anything like all of the ecodamage worms.
On reflection, I think this was originally a SMAC game, and that's why it's so buggy. I did succeed in crashing it - by attacking a worm two turns later, with that captured city thing... scient can tell you more, but it had a reactor strength of zero. You CAN duplicate the crash effortlessly by moving it up and over from the right in the last save posted, and attack that worm pictured in place of the active unit.
I'm not aware of it being fixed, but then the save is a borked game only demonstrable of instability...
Ah, so the actual exponent would be 0.2. That makes more sense...but if so, your proposal would be even harsher than mine in the late game for mineral-focusing factions; a 300-mineral size-50 base would produce 5X(300/50^(0.2))*(3/8)-8=5X137.19X3/8-8=249.23, rounds up to 250, and that's before applying techs.
+2 for ecodamage actually; my proposal would increase it to +5.
Only in the later game when going for high mineral production. If you ditch the boreholes and most mineral-boosting facilities and build condenser/farm everywhere, you're looking at far less.
What version are you guys playing? I've seen mass captures happen in my games.
Yea it's very off, I had an error in the formula. It was more of an idea to reduce the pollution a bit for non-ICS strategy.
Though with more thought, I think the current formula is very good but just needs some logical tweaks in addition to removing clean minerals (a bad mechanic, as it is an invisible value).
With a quick combat test it seems that there is no cap on +Planet. So the game does not just set the user's Planet to +3 if you are over.
+5 Planet would be 0 pollution at 20% per Planet. I'm not so sure that's balanced, Gaia and Cult can hit +5 and +6 respectively with Green+Cyber. Green+Cyber will be pretty much a requirement to get +4 when they are already very strong SE settings due to +Efficiency. As well Believers/Usurpers would only be able to hit +3, which is double the pollution of +4.
I would put pollution effects at more like 10% per Planet or cap it at -60% pollution.
Consider that +Planet rating is already good where it gives +10% attack to and with native life, free native life, and easier fungus movement.
It's probably a known bug but the Planet combat modifier should be the differential between attacker and defender rather than just the attacker's +Planet.
- Boils scaling by tech and/or faction size, rather than linearly out of control. I will have to test this as well, to see how it scales in the patched version.
- Modified values for eco damage from terraforming. How difficult would it be to change the terraforming portion of eco damage?
It seems highly exploitable that crawled tiles do not count as terraforming eco damage. For example I could create several boreholes outside a city radius and crawl them with 0 terraforming eco damage?
I think Boreholes should be much more eco damaging and maybe a little quicker to terraform. If a Condensor is 4 and a Mirror is 6, a Borehole should be like a 20. Boreholes seem to be a staple of early game ICS. What if Boreholes also only got -25% pollution from Tree / Hybrid? Or if Tree / Hybrid only mostly reduced terraforming eco damage for all improvements. My concern is that Tree Farm / Hybrid Forest will become even more 'must build first in every base' than they are now.
Replacing forests only seems worth it after Hab domes
Right now there's not much downside to heavy mineral strategy even late game.
High minerals are needed to build a satellite every turn. Perhaps this is a side issue where satellites are way too good/cheap relative to Formers, and tend to end the game very quickly.
I was thinking late-game pollution could be a good incentive to get out of mid-game Forests. The option of high minerals would still be there I suppose, and you could keep a few 'mineral bases' with eco facilities for high-mineral things like satellites and Secret Projects. The low mineral, high-pop/energy bases would make 1 turn crawlers / formers / army units. In turn, late-game techs would take more labs. I'll have to do out the math to see what 1 late game energy = in terms of average energy credits, then convert it back against modified minerals. Usually by this point the game is won and I pay little attention.
Maybe if Echelon mirror doubled Solar Panels in the late game, raised Farm/Solar would blow away Forest.
As Earthmichael will tell you, ICS has enough weaknesses anyway; all that's needed is a method of reducing ecodamage that doesn't favor ICS.
Keep in mind, though, that:
1. Even +4 would reduce ecodamage to quite a manageable amount even in the late game. Not 0, but fairly low. Even +3 would cut ecodamage to a quite manageable level, especially if you're using lower-production terraforming methods.
2. The competitors of Green and Cybernetic also have advantages. Planned and Eudaimonic give +Growth (quite important if you can keep satellites up), FM and Eudaimonic give +Economy (quite important as well, especially with a lot of trading partners), and Thought Control is great for the warpath.
3. The Cult and Gaians paid for it in the earlier part of the game, by being unable to run FM for +2 ECONOMY.
4. EFFIC does decrease fairly substantially in value once you get a lot of it; the difference between +4 and +6 is far smaller than between +2 and +4.
Even so, I think cutting Cybernetic to +1 PLANET would be a good change with that, as it's pretty strong anyway. The real losers would be the Drones, who can't run Green; changing their aversion to Cybernetic might help fix that (as +2 PLANET would probably be enough to manage, especially since they can then get +5 INDUSTRY.)
I'd say that at 10% it doesn't need a cap, as -60% would already be the best you can get.
However, 10% may be a bit low; perhaps 12.5%?
On the other hand, getting it isn't cheap; until the late game, you have to either give up that +1 energy/square (or +2 GROWTH/+1 INDUSTRY if you'd go Planned) and take an additional -2 GROWTH, or play a faction that can't get +1 energy/square until the late game.
It's probably a known bug but the Planet combat modifier should be the differential between attacker and defender rather than just the attacker's +Planet.
That's what I thought, but then Earthmichael pointed out that those things take a whole lot of former-turns to create; since crawling only provides one resource, it generally won't be worth it.
Actually, right now there's a huge one, in the form of absurdly high ecodamage.
Raised farm/solar already is competitive forest in the mid-late to late game; raised farm/solar with mirrors and condensers will tend to be something like 4/0/6 or 4/1/6, which is quite competitive with 3/2/2 even at a substantially higher terraforming time.
You could drop Cyber to +1 PLANET. I'd argue that +PLANET doesn't even make sense for Cyber. But it would be difficult for everyone to agree on what 'makes sense'. Eudaimonia is much stronger for a builder until +2 ECON becomes diminished.
Thought control is decent but I consider it weak by the time you get it. This is because PROBE, POLICE, SUPPORT are not all that important (other than perhaps -5 POLICE). For the same reasons you rarely see Power, Police State (other than for Yang), or Fundamentalism picked.
This is true. I don't feel that Gaia is too strong right now, probably about right.
Logically native life should scale in both attack and defense with +Planet rating. Morale works this way.
But again, I think there's a treading into making FM useless and Green possibly too good.
I would argue that in the later game FM gets diminished as is, when more production is off base and +1 energy/sq is less of a % increase to total energy.
If clean minerals are removed, then this exploit becomes more worth it (to avoid early eco damage).
Losing even one crawler or other unit to eco damage would likely outweigh those former turns. I'll try and do some analysis on this one to see what I come up with.
But by the time you reach that, the game is over.
Yea I'll try to run some analysis to prove this. A lot comes down to the 'value' of nutrients, minerals, and energy, which is the first step. There are various terraforming layouts possible with raising. It's fairly complex, because multiple mirrors affect the same solar panel and you need a certain amount of condensors to keep it rainy. Further the condensors produce 6/0/0.
My first thought is that 'all condensors and no solar' might be superior to farm/solar raising post Hab domes.
If one person is going Eudaimonic or Cybernetic, and the other is going Thought Control, and they start the war on an even footing, the side with Thought Control will probably win.
yeah; I'd say that things that boost them should come with a small hit on top of it; how does increasing their fairly irrelevant -1 POLICE penalty to -2 sound? (The Angels probably could also use the same treatment; while not the easiest faction to play, they seem they'd be very powerful in a 7-player game, since they can keep around the middle in tech even if they neglect it entirely, or become one of the best techers if they put stuff into tech and simply avoid the usual beelines.)
[With transcendi and satellites, "all condensors and no solar, crawled" is probably superior to fungus with the Manifold Nexus and +3 PLANET. It is seriously overpowered, as you say. That's a large part of why I think cutting it to 5 nutrients would be better.]
Thought Control is decent, and probably balanced enough. I'd want to see it at +3 POLICE, and/or some higher POLICE benefits.
I would say Thought Control is much better than say Power, Police State, or Fundamentalism.
Even in a small warring map, I couldn't see picking any of these 3. The early techs are too much of a power increase.
I do feel they should be more viable options, right now it's all about staying in 'builder' SEs even when warring.
-2 POLICE is quite crippling at the very beginning. Much worse than -2 ECON or -1 INDUSTRY. The second citizen always has to be allocated to Specialist. Police State comes too late. Rec Commons are too much of an early investment.
I'm not so sure Gaia is stronger than say University or Morgan either, even if you fix eco damage.
Believers definately need some help, though.
Agreed, FM is very strong. Though once airpower comes out, it seems like you can't run it anymore. To me the whole -POLICE of FM doesn't make a lot of sense. That seems like something that should be tied to Democracy.
Although one can argue it's the Transcendi specialists that are just as game-breaking. 2 nutrients into 8 energy, and a satellite cap increase. What were they thinking? Lol
I'll get to it over the next while, its a decent sized problem. I think it will come out that even 5 nutrients win out, crawled or not.
Police State is not a good builder choice.
1. If you are running Planned, Police State -2 EFF will cripple energy production. Only Hive can do this, because of immunity to EFF.
2. If you are running FM, Police State's police bonus is not that useful. And the -2 EFF still hurts a lot (but not crippling). +2 Support can be worth up to 2 minerals per city, but I would usually prefer the growth (and EFF) bonus of Democracy. The main problem with Democracy to me is losing the 10 minerals to start a new city (which allows me to rush build Recycling Tanks), so I usually pick nothing in the top row until I have finished my first wave of expansion.
Even +2 is pretty good, especially as there's a good choice you're going Police State and Power with it.
On the other hand, the idea of a third tier of specialists does make sense as a late-game/endgame thing; I think a better approach would be to reduce the value of pure-condenser spaces, make it possible in the late-game/endgame to crawl all three resources in the base square (so that producing only one resource isn't an advantage that way), and make satellites a lot easier to shoot down than to build.
I suspect the help they need is simply not playing on maps designed to hurt them, plus nerfs to a few of the strongest beelines.
[I think the idea is one of social unrest. As for airpower, the usual trick is to base all the air units from a single base (or two if you really have a lot) which has a punishment sphere.
I think the idea is after you get the techs you need for your rush; you don't want to run fundie right away, but once you've got the ability to build those impact rovers, it's a nice boost (or for Santiago an extremely strong boost, as combined with command centers and monoliths you can hit elite and get +1 movement for all your units.)
Police State seems it should be actually not that bad for a builder in the early game; that early, efficiency isn't as important, and -2 drones per base is quite nice (especially on Transcend).
And as for Power...morale lets your forces win battles, so you can send them back (or into captured bases) to repair, vastly outweighing the industry effect if you're going for full-fledged war. The ability to support more non-clean units is also fairly nice, as clean units are expensive. (A more builder-ish game will probably find it not worth it, though.)
I do see the concern (though on the other hand, Transcend is supposed to be very hard.) Any alternative ideas?
+2 POLICE from POLICE is not enough to offset -2 EFF
Yang could run FM/Police but IMO Planned is still every bit as good for him (where +GROWTH and +IND get better the more you have).
I feel that PS/TC is not worth going because there's no added benefit to +4/+5 POLICE.
Likely you'd see Demo/TC or Fundamentalism/TC.
By the time you hit Thought Control, the builder SEs don't seem to have much drone problems anyways. Thoughts?
I agree, specialists should get stronger late game. I do like that they get more powerful...it's just that Transcendi are ~4x more powerful than previous Specialists.
It's really hard to balance around 2 N -> 8 E.
Triple crawling is an interesting idea. If you really want to benefit farm/solar late though I would consider making it double crawling. Perhaps to limit Forest and Borehole power late, have the double crawling work only for Nutrients+Energy.
Believers get smashed even harder early game on small maps. They take too long to get Impact Laser / Rovers.
The +2 SUP is decent for early large armies but not enough on its own. At the least I think they should have IMPUNITY on Fundamentalism.
Yea I may be underestimating/misunderstanding Morale. Hitting +3 SE morale seems to be the big breakpoint.
I will have to play more games aiming for high morale as I thought troop rank was determined at the time of troop production. Therefore Power switching isn't that good.
-2 IND is a lot less troops.
Hitting Elite is definately huge against human players. +1 move is absolutely insane, imo even better than the +% modifiers, as a lot of battles come down to positioning. You can pretty much deadzone the enemy backwards a tile a turn and there's little they can do to counter it.
Put Gaia to +1 EFFIC for a small nerf.
Yea I've really gotten on a tangent regarding many relatively small balance tweaks.
Here's a simple example:
I have a 2/1 infantry unit, and so does my enemy. It's my turn and they are separated by 1 tile. If I move into the tile, my unit will die. Therefore the tile between us is a 'deadzone' for me. I cannot go there. Conversely, neither can my enemy because I will kill them if they move beside me. The tile is therefore a 'deadzone' for both of us, meaning a stalemale. Neither side can advance.
What does this mean? Since offense vastly overpowers defense in SMAC, +1 movement generally puts the enemy into a deadzone. You can generally force the enemy to retreat indefinately. This is also why airpower is so good.
Actually, once AAA becomes available, defense is comparable or superior to offense when the attacker is an air unit (though choppers still get overpowered simply because they get so many attacks per turn even at a sizable distance). ECM accomplishes the same thing vs. rovers, to a lesser extent.
QuoteActually, once AAA becomes available, defense is comparable or superior to offense when the attacker is an air unit (though choppers still get overpowered simply because they get so many attacks per turn even at a sizable distance). ECM accomplishes the same thing vs. rovers, to a lesser extent.
It seems in my games that there's always a rush to Fusion (10) and Shard (13) while defense is still at 3. Fusion Power and Satellites are just so good.
In the earlier game ECM is only +50%, which in most circumstances is not quite enough to offset the power of attack.
I will agree that once defense catches up to "6", air units can again be somewhat safe in a city with an Aerospace Complex and AAA garrisons.
Back on the topic of Gaia, you could make it so that -1 POLICE (or more) means you can't commit any atrocities, perhaps even with UN Charter repealed.
As well I don't feel punishment spheres should work with -POLICE SE. -POLICE SE already applies to nerve stapling...I'm not sure why they didn't extend it. But this would likely be too much to fix/change...I assume anyways.
I think even with those changes you'd still see a rush to Fusion and Shard. The problem is moreso that they lie along the Fusion reactor line and that the defense techs can be skipped.
I noted that neither 8 (Chaos) nor 4 (Silksteel) are required for Fusion Power.
So that might be okay as-is, if satellites didn't pile onto this problem.
rather than Synthetic Fossil Fuels (a requirement you'll always have by getting Fusion
I think it would be interesting if the satellites required Chaos and Silksteel instead, but I haven't really analyzed what that would imply for strategy.
It's even more relevant with copters than needlejets because copters can attack over and over
Running a lot of defense units is not that viable either, because you typically have many cities to defend. Eventually you'll get surrounded, or your crawlers and formers with 1 defense will be whittled down.
A battle has to be considered in terms of total mineral losses (factoring for mineral production of both sides) and not just who has a higher number. I have to do a more full analysis of optimal combat still, where not all units have the same cost. Intuitively I think we all already know copters are too good, whereas infantry and attack ships are generally not so good.
I still feel the whole punishment sphere to avoid p-drones seems like an exploit. In fact a lot of things that have this kind of an SE impact tend to be game breaking. -5 POLICE from FM was intended to make it very hard to fight offensively with FM on.
The multi-attack capability of copters is just broken; copters should not have multi-attack. If there is no way to mod copter to not have multi-attack, they should be banned, because they screw up the balance.
Even if you greatly reduce speed, copters are still very powerful in an active defense role.
Even if you drop the speed of copters, a single copter can devestate a whole stack of attackers once the AAA defender(s) in the attacking stack have been destroyed.
This is just the point. Copters should not be used to justify any changes, because if you compensate for overpowered copters, you make Needlejets nearly irrelevant.
As for mineral balance, if I am trying to attack, and bring up a stack of 10 attackers, the defender only needs to get rid of the AAA defender(s) and then a copter or two can wipe out the rest of the stack, a single copter eliminating 4+ attackers, whereas a Needlejet can only take out one attacker every other turn.
Though the point remains, offense techs are king and you should always beeline to Shard before Silksteel.
Air Superiority units are generally a sub-optimal purchase for many reasons:
higher cost than non-AS
-50% attack to ground
less movement speed than non-AS
AS takes up a slot (deep radar or clean have to be excluded)
A non-AS unit is on par when hitting an AS unit
Choppers to 8 move would still leave them overpowered. They're moreso problematic because they also don't crash when out of fuel. Why does this matter? You can take a risk and sneak in a small stack to somewhere other than a city. With infiltrate, you can know exactly where the enemy airforce is. Since choppers have multiple attacks, it's a worthy gambit to wipe out an enemy's entire air force.
I would say air in general has way too much movement speed. Needlejets, Copters, and Gravships alike. Ideally the main benefit of air would not be the crazy movement, but its ability to fly over enemy troops. Or at least ignore terrain which it already does.
Granted the AI isn't smart enough to play as a human would/should. I'll have to do an analysis of AAA counterattack chains. It gets more interesting, if both sides have the same movement on their air units. AAA makes a defensive infantry unit cost effective against air even in the open. But not quite cost effective enough to protect offensive land units under them.
There is no justification for Copter multi-attack. It is the only air (or sea) unit with this capability.
Even higher tech air units do not have this capability.
Anything you do to increase defense against Copters with also affect all other air units (who don't need the fix).
Dropping copter mobility is a start, but it has little effect on defensive roles for Copters. If I wait until a stack is 1-2 squares away from a city being defended, I can get 4-6 attacks from a single 8 speed chopper and still land safely.
This is a lot different than the attack every other turn from a Needlejet, which is then vulnerable to counterattack. Choppers are why air power is widely considered overpowered, and they can still be overpowered even with only 8 speed.
Now I'd start with balancing infantry vs infantry battles.
With the +25% to base, I think they intended you to 'break' a base with infantry. Unfortunately, with infantry having double the attack as defense, this doesn't work. You can never get infantry next to a base safely. So even at a basic level it's broken.
I feel that they really got the whole combat system backwards in SMAC. Armor values should be equal to or greater than weapon values. And then, bigger modifiers should be on the attack of a unit. For example, give infantry +100% attack to base. Rovers, +100% in the open (attacking from a base would not count). Air units, +100% against fast units and non AAA-ships. This sort of thing. This creates more of a 'I make this unit to kill this unit' dynamic.
Likewise, rovers/air should have armor on them for balance purposes.
At 3:2 the optimal strategy would still be 100% offensive rovers I think.
Defensive rovers are an interesting unit, and decent to sometimes have 1 of, if only because they can hit mindworms at 100% attack prep. But they cost too much compared to infantry
Is it more interesting to have 'offense' and 'defense' troops' rather than troops where you max both? Perhaps. My thought was that if you make weapon and armor relevant to every unit, that might make the tech choices a little more interesting. Where armor doesn't help air, I think I'd still tend down the 'weapon' tree even if armor was boosted up.
Do you feel the game is too war oriented?
Well you're always going to bring a probe to down the Perimeter Defenses.
I'm not so convinced the early game or the game in generally is actually even that unbalanced at 2:1, as I think more and more on this. The problem is, few games are played at a high level between humans with a warring mindset. The AI wars poorly, and humans prefer to build (logically, growth/teching is exponential so you get left in the dust to be too aggressive early).
I had the thought that a more sensible way to balance might be around chassis cost only, rather than tweaking the movement and rules of everything which is a lot more complex.
Here are some common early-mid game unit costs (pre-Fusion/Chaos/Silksteel):
Infantry:
1/2-ECM: 20
1/3-ECM: 20
1/3-AAA: 30
4/1: 20
6/1: 20
6/3: 50 (6/3 AAA/ECM is more than 50, not worth it)
Rovers:
2/1: 20
4/1: 30
5/1: 40
6/1: 50
Needlejets:
6/1: 40
6/1-AAA: 50
Copters:
6/1: 40
6/1-AAA: 50
The problem here is that air units get a flat quartering cost reduction. This makes all 3 air units (8+1)/4 -> 2.25 factor, universally cheaper than rovers (2+1) -> 3 factor, or hovertanks (3+1) -> 4 factor. Logically air should cost more than a rover or even a hovertank.
What if we change copter's movement cost factor to 30, and Needlejet to 18? Then we get:
Needlejet
6/1: 80
6/1-AAA: 100
Copter
6/1: 120
6/1: 150
You'd still buy them, just not in mass quantities. Then you can keep AAA as-is (100% with a cost: 1)
But if we change this, is it possible to make AAA no cost on Air units (like deep radar). I see no reason for intercepters to cost more, since they take a 50% penalty to ground to compensate for the double air attack.
As long as we are mucking with things, I think armor on Hovertanks should be costed the same as Infantry. As it is, it is prohibitively expensive to put armor and a weapon on a Hovertank.
Which seems absurd, since tanks for known for armor.
http://strategywiki.org/wiki/Sid_Meier's_Alpha_Centauri/Units (http://strategywiki.org/wiki/Sid_Meier's_Alpha_Centauri/Units) - good source for unit cost, it seems close/accurate
Yitzi would have to comment on how much harder it is to edit the hardcoded parts like the 1/4 air cost reduction.
On a side note Gravships also need a raising in their 'move' for cost purposes. Likely to somewhere between Copters and Needlejets. I haven't analyzed foils but I feel they're also overcosted, and are also tilted towards 'all attack' or 'all defense' units.
The thing is though in the later game, you'll see copters and other 'expensive units' not have the same gap in cost vs rovers. This is because the better reactors cut down costs non-linearly. I'm not sure if this was intended, and it's something else to consider. It impacts all units, and although it makes units with both attack and defense more affordable, it also has the effect of making the best chassis cost a lot less.
Re: Perim defenses. Yes it's true that a lot of wars come down to whether you can hold the enemy at a single chokepoint. Generally if there's only one base in reach, it is quite difficult to break. As well CDF and CBA make you more or less unbreakable at a single choke city.
Air does need a higher minimum cost and a higher overall cost.
I assume you mean -1 modifier like ECM, in that its free on defense units only
Having to take ECM and AAA on most of your infantry not made for cities, I think is a good thing.
There are many points in the game (New reactors, when air first is available, and after Centauri Psi) where 100% air would still counter AAA infantry, even if AAA is made free. Where air counters rovers, attack infantry, foils, cruisers, and anti-air (on par) also, you'd largely still see 100% air-to-ground copter armies.
For example, Chaos Fusion Chopper is 30 in cost. That's absurd, it has the same cost as a 1/4/2*AAA-ECM infantry, with free AAA.
Even ignoring standard combat, if you suicide that into 2-3 crawlers or formers it pays off.
This is why I'm also in favor of letting non-combat units (formers and crawlers specifically) get armor for free. Granted, they would perhaps need to be changed to -75% combat power to compensate.
The way reactors reduce costs really messes with overall balance, and a single minimum unit cost across all chassis types is a big part of this.
I believe air combat only uses the attack strength of the defender, so armor is of no value on an air unit, except maybe defending against non-air units.
I see no reason that Hovertanks should be penalized so heavily for having both armor and weapons. I think it should be treated exactly like infantry.
What really needs help is ships. Armor on transports (and other non-combat ships) should be much less expensive.
AAA should be free on ships, just like air superiority should be free on aircraft, because ships are sitting ducks for aircraft since they do not get a bonus for terrain.
Sea terraformers should also be cheaper.
So...perhaps increase the minimum cost, but apply the "infantry is half cost" after that?
Centauri Psi is game breaking because it gives you Dissociative Wave, which lets you ignore ECM/AAA/Trance. Gas Psi Choppers crush everything, and +Planet/Dream Twist only add onto this. There isn't a counter, cheap normal units don't really work (due to min unit costing). But if they do that then you just mix in some copters with conventional weapons.
For examples, it's highly dependent on tech-level (especially reactors) as to how much it costs to break a base with air (or ground for that matter). What I would prefer to see is a more consistent balance throughout the game.
What I don't like about the current costing model is that often an increase in weapon is actually a decrease in effective attack/defense per mineral spent. Sometimes due to rounding, but more often to the wonky way in which reactors affect costs.
Also they can travel 2 turns out, and hit those former/crawlers from 16 tiles away even if they are hard capped to 8 movement per turn. That's usually pretty far into your territory.
Yes, the idea is for only Rovers to be penalized for having offense & defense; that tech improvements get rid of this limitation for Hovertanks.
I like the idea of defensive ships being able to add AAA for free, as long as it includes armored non-combat vessels (like transports).
Maybe we can add that offensive ships can add air superiority for free if they choose.
It's Wave that is game-breaking more than Gas.
Gas is -25% enemy morale for +25% cost. Against higher morale defenses taking Gas actually downs the efficiency of Wave Choppers a bit. But it's not a huge effect and generally worth taking so you can more reliably preserve choppers. Since their efficiency ratio is so high, you don't need to put a lot into minerals to have a stronger army.
A much simpler and intuitive unit cost formula would be:
M = (W + A + C) * 10
M: the cost of the unit in minerals
W: weapon factor. would scale from 1 for early game weapons to 6 for the late-game weapons.
A: armor factor. would scale from 1 for early game armors to 4 for the late-game armors.
C: chassis factor. 0 for infantry, 1 for rover, 2 for hovertank, 3 for needlejets and gravships, 4 for copters. 1 for foil and 2 for cruiser.
Since weapons have double the values of armor, and a 3:2 cost ratio, this would give a 3:2 effectiveness ratio of attack to defense (the same as PSI).
For rovers, foils, cruisers, needlejets, copters, and gravships, add (W-1)*(A-1) to the above cost
Yea well the intent was that infantry and tanks with both weapons and armor would be viable. Right now they're not.
An infantry with the best weapon and armor would cost 110. Alternatively, you can buy a defensive infantry for 50 (with free modifiers) and an attack infantry to go with it for 70. I think that's a pretty good balance.
A few things to consider:
If you're attacking and you lose your offense infantry, you're only down 70 minerals instead of 110.
If you lose your defense garrison, the enemy has to commit an additional unit to kill off your offense unit. This often sets up a counterattack.
It's much more vulnerable to rovers/air, unless you put ECM/AAA on it. And in this case the 'good at everything' infantry would cost a lot more than 110. If AAA has -1 for a modifier and ECM, each of these has a cost of 2 when weapon is double armor. Not very viable to pay 220 for an all around infantry.
I do see some upsides to the all around infantry:
- 10 less mineral cost
- Less transport space
- Less support required
- More suited to Drop and other Cost: 1 modifiers not skewed to defense. Where the defense unit would have to give up one of ECM/Trance/AAA to follow along.
Although if you really hated all around infantry it could also have the option of (W*A) applied.
Just as Cruisers usually make Foil obsolete, I think Hovertalk should do this to Rovers.
I think the roles could be better defined with the special abilities, not the weapon and armor. For example, the default unit would be your best reactor, best weapon, and best armor. But for certain special roles, such as air defense, it might be costed so that it is cheaper (or even free) to add air defense to a defensive unit. So there would still be a reason to create specialized units.
What do people think about Gravships? Are they like ever used?
As I understand it, superdrones are only harder to suppress via psych, facilities turn them into citizens as easily as normal drones.
As I understand it, superdrones are only harder to suppress via psych, facilities turn them into citizens as easily as normal drones.
In the process of studying the drone rules, I found that this is not in fact true. Facilities also take two units of drone suppression to suppress a superdrone, though they seem to work on them last.