The Thinker mod mindworm apocalypse

[bvanevery]

MY 2178.  As my probe teams near, Marr finally wants to talk.  He's not surrendering so I shine him on.

I have circumnavigated the South Pole.  There don't seem to be any major land masses to connect to, so now it's a tedious job of bringing all these units home.

MY 2179.  I infiltrate the Usurpers.  Among other things they have Applied Physics, so it's definitely time to steal techs and get the war on.  They have 12 cities to my 8, although I'd like to think mine are better positioned and have better resources.  I've got half a rail network completed.  I start building 3 more Command Centers.

My 2nd probe team goes to steal a tech, but they claim a high security lock is on the city.  I guess the Spartans must have stolen from there a long time ago?  I didn't have many moves remaining, so I stole energy to try to get home safely.  Didn't.  2 credits for the trouble!

MY 2180.  I lose all 3 mindworms attacking a single Scout in a base, thinking it should be an easy mark, but it isn't.  There's another Sensor somewhere that I didn't disable.  I save scum my turn.

On the replay, I steal Doctrine: Loyalty and gain Fundamentalist.  I switch to it.  In my mod, the Cult of Planet's RESEARCH can never fall below 0.  That's because they're always doing a certain amount of real science dissecting mindworms.  I suffer a -1 JUSTICE penalty from Fundamentalist, but otherwise it's just benefits.

[bvanevery]

MY 2182.  Unfortunately I research Applied Physics just before I was about to steal it.  39 turns until my next tech.

MY 2189.  I relent on my cheapness and buy some techs from the Caretakers.  I go Green.  Now I've got +4 PLANET but -1 GROWTH.

MY 2190.  Whelp, Marr finally got his Laser Rover finished.  One of my Scouts in his territory bites the dust.  Time to pull back and let him come to me.  I've got lots of Laser Speeders in production, I'm plenty ready for the war.

Details Roze to the northeast

Roze to the northeast

MY 2195.  I found the Data Angels.  We trade a tech and sign a Treaty.  They give the commlink for the Pirates and sign off.

The Pirates won't trade and aren't interested in a Treaty, but they do give the commlink for the Believers.

The Believers sign a Treaty and sell me Biogenetics.  In my mod that gives Police State and Children's Creche.

The Spartans figured out Adaptive Doctrine somehow.  We trade.  They've been a pretty runty civilization, but at least they don't seem to be stuck anymore.  They have 6 cities now, and nobody remotely near them except myself.

The Caretakers don't trade me anything.  They are doing way better than anyone else on the graph.  In an ordinary game, I'd say they were sitting on the Monsoon Jungle.  In this game, it's still possible that starting with 3 colony pods is a huge advantage under the right conditions.  The wrong conditions are, being stuck behind my own empire, har har har!

I don't think I'm selling any comm frequencies or getting any map info out of anyone.  I don't have the votes to with the Governorship so I'll just ignore everyone for a bit.

[bvanevery]

MY 2199.  I steal the tech for Plasma and the Citizens' Defense Force from Marr.   I start 2 copies of it in cities that don't have Command Centers or Biology Labs.

MY 2201.  The Caretakers get uppity and declare war on me.

MY 2205.  I gain a Gun Needlejet from a sea pod.  I could use it to give me invincible air cover, which might make a big difference in the war against the Usurpers.  It's an exploit, but I'm getting tired of our stalemate.  I have forces, but I don't feel like I have enough production to overrun Marr's whole empire.  I waited for him to come to me, and for the most part he hasn't.

Tired, going to bed.

[bvanevery]

I rallied by doing something else for an hour.

MY 2209.  My 1st use of the Gun Needlejet is to escort a Foil Probe Team to target.  I stole the tech for the Command Nexus.  That's valuable enough that I rushed it, using 2 Artifacts, cash, and selling off my Command Centers.

I capture my 1st Isle of the Deep.  It was carrying 2 mindworms.

MY 2210.  My 2nd use of the Gun Needlejet is pillaging enemy Sensor Arrays from the air.  As I only have 1 plane this takes time, but there's nothing the enemy can do about it right now.  Although... I got a Pillaging dialogue, but my action actually did nothing to the map?  Maybe this is a bug.  I did this in another game, but maybe I didn't notice that it didn't work?

I capture my 2nd Isle of the Deep.  It was also carrying 2 mindworms.

MY 2211.  I sign a Pact with the Data Angels.  I gain a fair amount of map info from this.

MY 2212.  A Caretaker sea colony pod is fleeing from the Usurpers.  It founds a city.  I have an armored cloaked foil probe team in the area, so I steal its tech.  Now I can make the Xenoempathy Dome.  That's pretty important to me, and the Caretakers have been at it for awhile, so I rush it with 5 Artifacts.

[Induktio]

MY 2148.  The Angels are really being mindless dicks!  They subverted one of my Scout Rovers.  I've declared war.  I ask Yang to join me in the war, and he won't!  Dicks all around.  What good is he if he won't do my fighting for me?

Details cheating or something else

cheating or something else

Ok, I'm in a bit of wonderment at the Usurper colony spread pattern.  I know they start with 3 colony pods, but 13 cities?  I've got 4.  Roze has 6.  Yang has 10.  I do have 1 city that hasn't produced any food at all.

That image shows Thinker's city placement algorithm in an interesting way. I suspect the world exploration data is out of date, so you don't see most of the improvements, and you didn't post a save game either. That city count given the time frame is certainly on the higher end of the AIs expansion speed, although it's not unheard of. They may have gotten some really favourable results from the pods since you seem to be playing with pod scattering on.

It's important to note those 2 nutrient bonuses near their capital. Early on I figured nutrient bonuses were the key to early growth, so Thinker AIs will place extra high importance on improving nutrient bonuses first, then other bonuses, and then normal tiles. That might explain some of the fast growth. Also one of the tricks they do is place boreholes on mineral/energy bonuses, so that way the resource restriction can be lifted much earlier.

[bvanevery]

They may have gotten some really favourable results from the pods since you seem to be playing with pod scattering on.

Both Aliens had the 18 or 19 city count in that game.  Other factions had roughly 12-ish cities.  Either the Aliens both got "lucky", or it's pretty much proportional to the number of starting colonists.  And, the start delay in no way makes up for the difference.

In my current game, the Caretakers are the dominant power of the game.  I can only see a few of their cities on the edge of Pirate territory, so I don't know what their starting conditions were like.  I've revealed 70% of the map and still don't see the Monsoon Jungle anywhere, so they could be sitting on it.

Usurper growth was unimpressive for a long time.  They got 8-balled behind my starting position, on a small peninsula with unexceptional food.  If I had taken the walk-in on their capitol when I could have, it may have been all over for them.  As it stands, I let it go, to see how they'd grow.

Currently they're still a credible threat, although I do think I can take them out if I can just bring all those damn Sensor Arrays down.  They have such a large number of cities in a relatively small area, that I'm leery of just taking 1 or 2 cities for fear of counterattack.  I want to wipe them out in a broad swath, and I haven't achieved the production for that.  I also didn't have any kind of straight up rail access to them, it took long enough just to build my own network.  I think I will kill them soon, but I want to do it right.  I've got the Xenoempathy Dome which gives my mindworms extra punch, and I've got Biology Labs in all cities nearing completion.  Once I've got mindworm spam, I think it's over for them.

Also one of the tricks they do is place boreholes on mineral/energy bonuses, so that way the resource restriction can be lifted much earlier.

I never knew about the borehole on minerals or energy trick.  Do you end up with a borehole that produces 12 minerals or whatever?

[bvanevery]

MY 2217.  I capture a 3rd Isle with complementary mindworms.  The Usurpers just massively gave up on their Citizens' Defense Force project.  I wanted them to complete it so I could take it over.  Instead they're making a very expensive Plasma unit.

Details rows of 7 when they should be 10

rows of 7 when they should be 10

MY 2219.  When preparing for my invasion, I suddenly realize that Marr is getting minerals and nutrient bonuses as though the cost factor is 7, not 10 like I started the game with.  His government is Fundamentalist Simple Survival, which does not give any industry bonus at all.  His faction doesn't get any industry bonus either.  In my mod he should be getting +1 GROWTH for Simple economy, so having rows of 7 for nutrients is surprising.  I'd expect them to be 6.

Without ruining my game, looking at factions I have infiltrated, I see the Caretakers have rows of 6 nutrients without a Children's Creche, and 5 with one.  They have rows of 7 minerals for unit production.  They are Fundamentalist Socialist Survival, which gives +2 GROWTH.  Socialist does not give any INDUSTRY bonus in my mod, Capitalist and Wealth do that.  So again, it's playing as though the cost factor is 7, at least for production.  I'm confused about the nutrients, as again, they don't add up.

Spartans also have rows of 7.  Frontier Simple Survival, which has a net of +0 GROWTH and no INDUSTRY bonus.

Data Angels also have rows of 7.  What's weird about that, is they're Fundamentalist Capitalist Survival.  They get +1 INDUSTRY from Capitalist, yet this is not reflected in unit production.  Maybe INDUSTRY bonuses are capped?  But I could swear I've seen historical games with the stock binary that had rows of 5.

There's nothing wrong with thinker.ini.  I am playing on Transcend.  There's not even a 7 in the file to have.

Code: [Select]

; Set AI cost factors for mineral/nutrient production for each difficulty level respectively.
; All other difficulty level modifiers remain unaffected by this setting.
cost_factor=13,12,11,10,8,10
; Changed Transcend from 7 to 10.  AI is too competent at colonizing and resource management.

I've attached a save of MY 2219.  Now I load up an older save, from MY 2206.  Same thing.  That's the oldest manually saved game I have.  Finally I try the oldest autosave I've got, from MY 2190.  Same thing.

I sure thought I started this game with the correct numbers.  Did they change during the course of the game?  Or was I wrong at the beginning?  Does the game somehow ignore settings once they're committed to a .sav file?  That might explain why I'm noticing it today and not yesterday.  I can't know for sure though.  Only thing I see to do, is scrap this game and start a fresh one.

[Induktio]

When looking at those build orders from save MY 2219, I can tell for a fact most of them were not selected by Thinker, instead by the stock game production logic. Just look at the over production of transports etc. That means the game was probably started with Thinker present, and then later restarted without Thinker and saved to that file.

If Thinker is loaded correctly, it should be always visible in the game version menu. So I have not been able to replicate any of that discrepancy between cost_factor in config file and in game. As far as I know, cost factor information is not ever preserved in a save file, instead it's always loaded from the config file if it's defined there, otherwise it defaults to stock game values.

[bvanevery]

Ok, I made a new test game per the Bugs/Patch forum.  I was very careful with saves and documenting screens.  No problem has shown up, so this is looking like it was my user error.