SMACX AI Growth mod

[vonbach]

The first victory condition I get rid of is political victory. I like to provoke the AI into attacking me.
I never disband units if I can help it and I like to have all my units up to date if possible.

[bvanevery]

Diplomatic Victory is abbreviated conquest IMO.  You clearly would win, you just don't have to go through the motions of wiping out every last damn city on the map.  Since I always play on Huge maps nowadays, that's a lot to get through.

Today I realized that the cost of fission Conventional Missiles was seriously out of whack, like 220 or some rubbish.  I'm fixing the missile costs for 1.31.  My design notes today:

- Missile Chassis: now costs 1.  This makes it easier to calculate the final cost of a missile weapon across all the different reactor sizes.   Previously the fission version of a Conventional Missile was exorbitantly expensive.  The cost of Conventional, Fungal, and Tectonic missiles vary with reactor size, but Planet Busters do not, so they did not need to be changed.
- Conventional Payload: now costs 50.  This makes Conventional Missiles cost 120, 90, 60, and 60 with increasing reactor size.
- Fungal Payload: now costs 25.  This makes Fungal Missiles cost 120, 90, 60, and 60 with increasing reactor size.
- Tectonic Payload: now costs 55.  This makes Tectonic Missiles cost 270, 200, 140, and 80 with increasing reactor size.  The cost of Raising/Lowering Land with Formers was doubled to make it a more weighty choice, so this is increased as well.

[vonbach]

Intersting missile changes. I usually disable the diplomatic victory because its too easy.

[ChaDawnFanatic]

Beautiful. 

[bvanevery]

Aesthetic approval is welcomed!  Did I do anything specifically beautiful?  I have very few changes planned for 1.31.  AAA reduced to 50%.  Missile costs rationalized.  Mind control cost probably increases 50% over the stock game, except the Data Angels which will get normal faction stock game costs, no bonus.

[vonbach]

He's a question why does the cost for mind control go up to insane levels? Is there a way to fix that?

[bvanevery]

I don't know why it does that, but I've noticed it as well for a long time now.  My changes for 1.31 aren't going to help matters either, as I'm increasing mind control costs by 50%.  It's just not acceptable to have it be so easy for a nearly defeated faction to be taking back cities, particularly when they're full of enemy units.  I consider the formula for mind control cost to be broken, and the worst thing about SMAC bar none.

The only control that I see for these costs, is PROBECOST in the faction.txt entries.  I say it has to go up, not down, so it just isn't available for solving this problem in my mod.

Awhile back, I got rid of all the tech bonuses that increase base probe team morale.  This is for 2 reasons: 1) it's pretty easy to increase probe team morale, as Command Centers, Bioenhancement Centers, Cover Ops Centers, and SE choices all boost it.  2) I realized that armored probe teams are a serious exploit.  Making Elite armored probe team units easily available is not cool.

I wonder if those probe team tech bonus increases are hooked into the cost formula?  The way to test that, would be to reinstate all the bonuses and see if the horrible costs go away.  I have to admit, I don't feel terribly motivated to test that, but I'd listen to someone else's results.  Alternately, someone could go digging through the back articles on how mind control costs are actually computed.

An alternate theory is, on Huge maps there just end up being a lot of enemy cities, with a lot of wealth, which causes the cost of mind control to go up a lot.  The cost definitely increases as the game goes on, with endgame costs getting particularly silly.

Meanwhile, finishing my current game is proving to be a drag.  I dominate, I've elected myself Governor, and I'm Clone Vatting my cities to be bigger and bigger.  However it still hasn't been enough to vote myself Supreme Leader.  It may yet come but turns are very slow.  My greatly increased manufacturing costs, take a huge amount of time to get through.

Planet has undergone some flooding due to factories I've built to make those units.  I've still only made Genejack Factories and Robotic Assembly Plants, even though I could do more.  I have a +2 PLANET rating and the Manifold Harmonics.  Possibly other factions are contributing substantially to global warming, but I haven't really checked.  I find myself waiting for my units and repairing my rails.  I've been building Psi Gates everywhere because they do actually seem useful, although in practice I've used them very little.  Sometimes a huge pile of Locusts of Chiron attacks and I haven't bothered to make any Air Superiority units to deal with them.  Instead I make AAA defensive units.  I recently acquired 12-Res armor so that helps, although I've forgotten whether 12-Res is actually any better than 3-Res as far as defending against psi attacks.

I feel like I'm waiting for an inevitable victory but the waiting is taking a long time.  I don't play that much of the game per day because it's not that interesting.  Instead I've spent most of my goof off time arguing about what Season 8 of Game of Thrones did right or wrong.

[vonbach]

Oh that show. I haven't watched tv since the Bush administration. I don't miss it either.
The probe thing has to be some sort of bug. Its just annoying. I was thinking of making an enormous
Terraformed Venus map.

[bvanevery]

Low erosion and rainy?  I haven't done an Enormous map in a long time.  I wonder if some of the distant AIs could actually present a challenge at that scale. 

[vonbach]

Low erosion and rainy?  I haven't done an Enormous map in a long time.  I wonder if some of the distant AIs could actually present a challenge at that scale.

The longer the AI has room to expand the more dangerous it gets. Even on my "normal" Venus map a huge map
whomever gets the main continent gets very powerful. I try to make the map with as few tiny islands as possible
to avoid terrible starts for the ai. One main reason i started making maps in the first place.

[bvanevery]

I don't know if you generally dislike random maps, but my world generator settings almost don't produce tiny islands.  They are almost forbidden.

[vonbach]

I do actually dislike random maps. I never had any luck with them. Even in your mod.

[Vidsek]

   For my testing (and when I want to play in a certain set of circumstances) I generate random maps and then mod the best of them.
  I too have the mapmaker program set to make no small islands so I can then put a few in where I want if I want.

   My background with plant ecology, geography, and anthropology makes me very unhappy with random placements of the special features and bonuses and, most especially, fungus.  Plus I have some education in cartography and find it to be a lot of fun for me.

  I can, of course, just go with the randomness and consider it a gameplay factor, however unsatisfying the unreality feels.  However, I've found that while it takes some time and work, making the map follow some real-universe laws and patterns also results in playable maps and introduces some new strategy factors to consider.

   I'm generally not fond of the slow early stage of the game so for the most part I've gone with rather rich environments (high erosion/rugged terrain, very moist, large cloud effect, very few flat tiles).
   This also affects the mid and late game some but is by that point swamped by the greater effect of terraforming and facilities.  The non-builder factions still lag behind the builder ones (in the absence of war at least).

   My current map is designed to specifically test some aspects of the AI Growth Mod (and of the game in general).  It has seven continents with enough ocean between to make raising land bridges impractical, leaving sea transport of troops for across-the-beach landings as the main way to proceed.  Later, airdrops can supplement them.
   If each faction has it's own landmass, war is uncommon or absent during the early game so it is possible to evaluate the performance of the factions at handling unhampered growth and development.  Their use or neglect of seapower and ocean bases is also clearly apparent.

[bvanevery]

The non-builder factions still lag behind the builder ones (in the absence of war at least).

What are some examples of "non-builder" factions?  I ask because everyone has got Explore as an AI trigger, except the Usurpers who don't need it.  That's not quite the same thing as building, but it does try to ensure early empire growth and size.  I think of the Spartans as a non-builder faction because they have no economic advantages whatsoever.  Otherwise it's not so clear to me.

   My current map is designed to specifically test some aspects of the AI Growth Mod (and of the game in general).  It has seven continents with enough ocean between to make raising land bridges impractical,

Even with standard play for my mod, it's not so easy to make land bridges now as it once was.  The Weather Paradigm is significantly more expensive and requires specific Build research to obtain.  A player can have it if they want, but if they choose other things, I find that AI factions complete it before I can do anything about it.  Raising land takes 2X as long now, so it isn't as easy to make bridges to places.  It's possible, but I find myself strongly preferring existing continental routes with only short water passages to bridge.

leaving sea transport of troops for across-the-beach landings as the main way to proceed.  Later, airdrops can supplement them.

Lately I prefer sitting around minding my own business until I've achieved orbital insertion.  Long distance marine assaults are tedious!  Only Secret Project cities are worth conquering anyways, or a city sitting on the Manifold Nexus.  I can build better cities closer to my capitol.

Their use or neglect of seapower and ocean bases is also clearly apparent.

But what can influence it?  I've gone through an iteration of very cheap ships, then dialed it back up to more normal price, however with greater speed for all ships.  I think the ALIEN and AQUATIC AIs are ok at sea colonization for some reason, like maybe being given more code for it in the expansion.  But the normal faction AI just isn't that good at it.

[vonbach]

Have you ever thought about making certain things easier for the AI like sea colonization happen earlier? Something to help the AI expand earlier or maybe
giving the AI a second colony pod to start with and a spare former. Just to help the AI out early game. One thing Ive noticed is the AI stays at size 2 bases
a lot.