My thoughts 1.3

[wormfood]

Greetings here are my observation playing Yitzi's unofficial SMAX patch 1.3 installed correctly, I am giving feedback on my AI
experiments incase it is helpfull. I am not familiar with the online community so forgive me if I have posted something
already well known. Experience has taught me that some people lose it really badly to even minor critism so please understand
I am giving my honest opinion as sought out.




Things I have observed while letting the AI control my units on automate

Why no attacks from base ?
AI built units in bases are often put on Hold thus have no moves to do anything.
In one of my tests Independent Battle Ogre however did have moves ready even on Hold.
Theory: these units are using there moves too early in the AI turn order for any AI change of plan, or perhaps AI cannot give
new orders to units with no move left. Perhaps changing this default behaviour to "on alert" may have an improvement.

Observation: I witnessed usurpers send units to kill a spore launcher the first time ever, it was after erradicating the
drones and haveing no land borders to enemies.
Observation: In one game Drones became paraylsed by a spore launcher shelling there only base producing colony pods at year
175 4 colony pods had became "paraylsed" in this base. Changing the spore launcher to a hostile faction did not change the behaviour of the Drones,changing the spore launcher to a regular infantry artillery did not help either, Even worse the base was next to a monolith. Not even giving a needlejet changed the result. Is It the case that AI can only make aggresive moves from base to base ? and attacks against adjacent units are just a matter of oppurtunism.

Conclusion: Games against the AI the Spore launcher should probly be changed into some other non artillery unit, Trance SAM  is one possible option.



Observation: A nerve gas unit I designed for the AI was built by the Usurpers and used against Drones but never used the attrocity gas option, there was several situations where using the gas would of turned a loss into a win. Changing personalty to use atrocities blatantly however usurpers began using the gas.Unless there is some deterent factor I am not aware of, factions should probly not build nerve gas units unless they are prepared to use them.

Observation: AI does not self destruct even when next to a big stack.

Observation: under AI control Probe teams cannot effect mindworms message pops up very often.

Observation: under AI control Offensive land units Pirates controlled try to move onto land from seabases every turn without amphibous pods.

Observation: AI gives very long move orders to probe teams Ie "go directly to this enemy base 13 squares away" of course this is the same path the enemy ai at vendetta will be sending its attacks from. It appears it cant send the unit untill the base has been located in its map data.
Theory: If Ai could group move probe teams alongside military units, results would improve, also AI fights wars badly if it does not know of an enemy city exact location.
I have seen regular military units move in what looked like proper groups.


Observation: I never realised until replaying the game laterly that combat bonus modifiers are calculated
like this, (4 25% combat bonuses)
+25% +25% +25% +25%    
not like this  + 100%
1 25% bonus equals one  25% bonus
2 25% bonus equals one  56% bonus   
3 25% bonus equals one  95% bonus
4 25% bonus equals one 144% bonus
The data links would be improved to include this important fact.


Observation: I noted custom units added to the alphax.txt get the special ablities of AI setting applied to them: former,
probe, nuke, supply, etc.

Observation: Interstingly infantry with naval transport AI can move but not attack from sea base to land and vise versa sort
of a "semi-amphibous pods".


Experiment: I made a test where a 10 mineral scout version of every avaiable unit AI type set except artifact was availabe from the start.
All tests used the factions set to the same personalities and strategies only aggresiveness changed.

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PERSONALITIES                       STRATEGY
CYBORGS  CONQUER               AIR FORMERS
ANGELS          EXPLORE BUILD       AIR COLONY PROBE
DRONES    BUILD CONQUER       FORMERS
PIRATES    ExPLORE               LAND SEA SEABASES
CULT         DISCOVER BUILD CONQUER          SEA PROBE
CARETAKERS DISCOVER BUILD              SEA AIR MISSILES
USURPERS EXPLORE DISCOVER CONQUER     SEA AIR SEABASES MISSILES
This is what they built by 2175.

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test 1 (ALL AGGRESIVE)

CYBORG ANGEL DRONES PIRATES CULT CARETAKERS USUR


-1  = Auto Calculate 1 1 6
0  = Offensive 1 2
1  = Combat 1 1 11 1
2  = Defensive 5 10 4 2 7 3
3  = Reconnaisance
4  = Air Superiority
5  = Planet Buster 3 4 5 2 8 5 10
6  = Naval Superiority
7  = Naval Transport 5 16 5 39 1 2
8  = Colonization 1 1 1 2 2
9  = Terraforming 2 6 2 3 5 3
10 = Supply Convoy
11 = Info Warfare 1 1 1 13 5

Observations: 0 supply units built
CYBORG ANGELS NO WARS ON PEACFULL ISLAND
DRONES STUCK ON 3x4 ISLAND
PIRATES ATTACKING USURPERS ISLAND CONSTANTLY WITH SEMI-AMPHIBIOUS INFANTRY
CULTISTS AND CARETAKERS LOCKED IN MEATGRINDER LAND WAR

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2nd test (neither aggresive or passive)


CYBORG ANGEL DRONES PIRATES CULT CARETAKERS USUR


-1  = Auto Calculate 1 3
0  = Offensive
1  = Combat 2 11 6
2  = Defensive 2 5 11 6 6
3  = Reconnaisance
4  = Air Superiority
5  = Planet Buster 6 5 4 2 3 7 16
6  = Naval Superiority
7  = Naval Transport 15
8  = Colonization 2 1 4 2
9  = Terraforming 1 1 2 5 4
10 = Supply Convoy
11 = Info Warfare 1 5 11 7
CYBORGS STARTED A WAR AGAINST CULT EARLY AND ESCAPE PODDED
ANGELS STARTED A WAR AGAINST CARETAKERS AND ESCAPE PODDED
DRONES JUST CURLED UP IN THE FETAL POSITION

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3rd test (all passive) CYBORG ANGEL DRONES PIRATES CULT CARETAKERS USUR

-1  = Auto Calculate 3
0  = Offensive
1  = Combat 1 5 1
2  = Defensive 7 2 1 2 6 2
3  = Reconnaisance 1
4  = Air Superiority
5  = Planet Buster 5 3 4 1 4 9 12
6  = Naval Superiority
7  = Naval Transport 2
8  = Colonization 8 3 2 3 1 1
9  = Terraforming 7 5 3 11 5 3
10 = Supply Convoy
11 = Info Warfare 2 2 6 5
2153 CULT LAUNCH ATTACK ON CYBORG MAKE PEACE A FRIENDSHIP TREATY 1 TURN LATER
2154 PIRATE COMBINE FORCES WITH USURPERS AGAINST CARETAKERS MAKE A FRIENDSHIP TREATY 1 TURN LATER

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4th test
same as test 2 with fake planet busters disabled (5)
added another 10 transport scout variants
supply scout now has proper supply equipment locked at 10 minerals

-1  = Auto Calculate
0  = Offensive 1
1  = Combat 1 5 2 5 3
2  = Defensive 5 4 1 1 4 4 5
3  = Reconnaisance 1
4  = Air Superiority
5  = Planet Buster
6  = Naval Superiority 1
7  = Naval Transport 4 9 3 16 10 1 17
8  = Colonization 6 5 3 6 6 7
9  = Terraforming 5 4 4 1 9
10 = Supply Convoy
11 = Info Warfare 7 6 7

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5th test
same as test 4 this time with former variants instead of transport variants

9  = Terraforming 6 9 6 0 6 9 1
Observation: makeing many identical terraformer models slightly increase amount produced, probly by accident.
But it appears Pirates then do not build any sea terraformers at all.

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6th test
try to trick AI into building 10 mineral crawlers
20 variants of supply crawler available from start
result:no supply crawlers built.

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7th test
try to trick AI into building 10 mineral crawlers by changing the AI behaviour
they will build the crawlers but not use them as crawlers because they do not have the correct unit AI.
Theory: some way to change the unit AI type of units after being built would be one possible way to get them to build and use
desired units:


Observation: I observe that the AI uses governer priorities without the govener in its cities and that those are all exactly the same in every city with no specialisations do these effect what the AI builds ? A desirable outcome would be some more specialised cities.

Observation: Governers sometimes do not build enough colony pods or formers the basic starter units of increasing productivity I theorise they are distracted by new techs and perpetual vendetta status. If each new base was forced to build 2 colony pods and 2 formers they would grow exponentially quick.
Theory: Someway to railroad the build que of new AI bases possibly could be an improvement, A flexible option would be randomising to follow or ignore said list every production chance.
I did notice in one test that about 2280 one caretaker city built 2 crawlers and a cult city built 1, caretakers had 16 cities and cult had 15. It appeared the trigger for this behaviour is special resourses within there territory at the point where they dont want to build any more bases? They sure do waste a lot of workable tiles and energy to inneffiency with there very generous spacing.

Observation: When they do start terraforming they unfortunately do not prioritise the best squares first, the resource bonus squares or river squares.
It would also be desirable to have them place 1 forest on the worst square in base area to benefit from its spreading nature.
Also they terraform UP without the required technology.


Note mentioned: Free market and AIR units, problem here is self evident.




Meta Theory: I would say that AI when no vendettas they play for the long term but when vendetta (almost always) they play for
the short term.
I believe the path to further AI improvement is a formula to recognise the difference between fake wars and real wars. A fake
war would see the AI only trying to maintain force parity with its enemies and protect its own borders, surpless production used on infrastructure.
Another option is stop all there idiot emotional I dont like the color of your hair Vendetta ! declarations, perhaps merely degrading to no truce no treaty instead.


On a personal note just wanted to say Im impressed by the improvements the modding community has made so far.

[Yitzi]

Things I have observed while letting the AI control my units on automate

I didn't even touch the AI in 1.3 or earlier, as far as I know.  If there's something that seems off, test the same situations with Kyrub's latest patch (which is what I used for the AI); if it behaves differently in 1.3 than in Kyrub's, then post a savegame and a description of the different behavior so I can take a look.

Observation: I never realised until replaying the game laterly that combat bonus modifiers are calculated
like this, (4 25% combat bonuses)
+25% +25% +25% +25%    
not like this  + 100%
1 25% bonus equals one  25% bonus
2 25% bonus equals one  56% bonus   
3 25% bonus equals one  95% bonus
4 25% bonus equals one 144% bonus
The data links would be improved to include this important fact.

I haven't really done anything with datalinks; they aren't in the exe, though, so anyone should be able to modify them as they desire.  That said, I would think that the way it works is the default way to add percentage bonuses and doesn't need to be mentioned.

Observation: I noted custom units added to the alphax.txt get the special ablities of AI setting applied to them: former,
probe, nuke, supply, etc.

You mean that if set to AI setting of former, they get the ability to terraform?  Interesting fact if true, but if so that's a feature that was in the original.

So your experimentation is probably going to be helpful, but more for Kyrub than for me.