SMACX Thinker Mod

[dino]

I think, I've figured out how your colony pod placement works...
It just use the original code, but before it moves you check if there is a base within 2tiles radius, if not and a base can be built, you do it instead of moving.

Details colony pod pathing

colony pod pathing

You could disassemble a bit more of the original function and reduce the radius in witch it seeks for spots to lets say 12 (or 9 ?) tiles.
Maybe then Peacekeepers could find a destination on an excellent terrain to the west, instead of settling barren wasteland on a path to the distant Monsoon Jungle.
It's a common issue, I've observed in most of my games. I once saw Deidre settle whole Great Dunes, because they were on a path somewhere, while ignoring 4 bases worth of rainy hills in the opposite direction.

If we are at Monsoon Jungle, you could get rid of the original code that build bases two tiles away on it, the bases are too cramped and have no space to grow to their full potential there.
Small error, maybe it's vanilla - ai can build a base on top of volcano, in fact it almost always does that.

> About those interface graphics not sure if that is necessary, they seem to only change the colors a little.
It's not necessary, but it'd be a nice touch, it's also a bit more than colors. It bothers me enough to overwrite smax pcx files with renamed smac files in my installation folder, ocd, autism, whatever it is, it's no joke

Any thoughts on the tech ai weights from my previous post ?

[Induktio]

I play with tech stagnation, dense rainfall, low erosive forces.
In my previous games in 2170s most bases worked only improved terrain and half of the factions started to deploy crawlers and build boreholes.
With vanilla weights + tech_balance=1 in 2160s half of the factions didn't start to terraform at all, no boreholes in development, no crawlers, but Deidre is an industrial powerhouse obviously.

I had it well though out, so there was a bit of variance between factions, but I forgot the exact changes, but it was roughly something like this:
Centauri Ecology,              4, 4, 5, 6,
Biogenetics,                      4, 5, 4, 4,
Industrial Base,                4, 3, 5, 3,
Information Networks,      3, 5, 3, 3,
Planetary Networks,         3, 5, 4, 3,
Social Psych,                     2, 3, 5, 4,
Applied Physics,                5, 3, 2, 3,
Nonlinear Mathematics,    6, 4, 3, 4,
Ethical Calculus,                3, 4, 5, 5,
Industrial Economics,        3, 3, 5, 4,
Industrial Automation,       4, 4, 6, 5,
Gene Splicing,                    3, 4, 6, 5,
Environmental Economics, 3, 3, 6, 5,
Ecological Engineering,      4, 4, 6, 5,

It gets them complete economy and basic defenses with 4-2 units. From there I left them to play with vanilla weights.

What you did here is somewhat similar to what tech_balance did in its earliest version before the scope of changes was significantly reduced. So in essence, your changes increase the bonus assigned to economy techs and also value the beeline to Industrial Automation significantly more. In the default tech tree the economy bonuses are so much stacked in the Growth part that Gaians always tend to get them first. But if one goes to edit the weights in alphax.txt, it will also significantly skew the blind research results of player factions. Tech_balance should not affect player factions.

Basically the AI factions and players doing blind research always iterate through all available techs, calculate the values by multiplying tech weights with research priorities, and then usually research the highest value tech. It seems there is some random element to that. Tech valuation function is just pretty complex and the result is really far from a simple dot product the weights would imply. The default valuation code stacks so many modifiers on top of that, the values might even change according to the game situation.

One basically needs a debugger to see what kind of actual values the AI factions assign on the techs. I could print out all the tech/faction pair values the AI calculates but the results might change because of those other modifiers that are calculated on top of that. But if you put weights like 5,5,5,5 on a tech you should be able to force the AI always research it when it is available. I think I need to address the fact that Gaians tend to get these techs so much earlier before the other factions in the next release. For example the bonus multiplier that is given on some of the economic techs could be increased significantly.

[bvanevery]

Tech valuation function is just pretty complex and the result is really far from a simple dot product the weights would imply.

Nevertheless at least with my mod's tech tree, in recent development versions of your Thinker mod, it behaves as though a simple dot product is all that's happening.  Believe me, in all those test games I looked really hard to see if you'd pulled something weird with this.  We both know it was a huge issue between us at the beginning of your development.  But now I find nothing, nada, zip.  AI factions learn exactly the techs I expect them to, exactly as they do with the stock binary.

Now why might this be?  Well with rare exceptions, the highest weight I ever give to a tech is "4".  I have many techs that have secondary categories of weight "3".  Using a "2" or "1" is uncommon in my tree.  I have strict categorization rules about what Explore, Discover, Build, and Conquer imply, so many of my weights are "0".  I generally do not put a "1" in something to "help things along", I make hard barriers.  Some parts of my tech tree are also very narrow, like the Discover and Build portions.  The Conquer part of the tree is particularly broad, because Firaxis actually put more combat oriented techs in the tree than anything else.  I don't try to hide that or dole them out in "different" subtrees.  You wanna fight, you have to study Conquer.  I have a lot of "pure" Conquer techs in the tree, with the other categories zeroed out.  That could be suppressing some of the "complex" code tweaks.

Whatever the under-the-hood complexity, my approach to the weightings seems to have simplified it.  It appears to work like a straight dot product. That's all I can actually observe in real games.

For many years I've wondered if things like exploring more land, or using more navy, somehow changed what kinds of techs you'd get.  Like suddenly you're stimulated to get Doctrine: Initiative or something.  But I have no proof of that.  And I've read articles about players looking at AIs for various games, where they attribute all sorts of random noise to "intelligent" AI behavior, where none exists.  Player confirmation bias can work in the positive or the negative for a game developer.  I just refrain from saying "this is what's going on" when I can't actually observe it.

[bvanevery]

Faction_placement works in a way that the bonuses will appear in squares that previously contained supply pods.

That would explain my observations on land.  It would also seem to imply, that factions that don't have supply pods next to them, won't get any help.  And also, that the help will be overwhelmingly nutrients.  Not other things you might want like a minerals resource, an extra Speeder, etc.

Actually when we will add forests to the mix, it makes also sense from the storyline point of view because forests can be popped from supply pods.

Telling a story requires that you do A, B, and C, in order.  If forests just seem to randomly appear on the map, that's not a story.  Walking up to a supply pod, popping it, having forests go everywhere, and getting a dialog box explaining what just happened, that's a story.  Player did something, it had a consequence, player knows they could possibly do it again in the future.  Just randomly having forests appear on Planet is completely nonsensical, is not storytelling, and does not respect player agency.

This kind of tradeoff is exactly what GNS Theory is about.  What you might think is a perfectly ok thing to do as a Gamist, to drop forests on the map because the minerals are highly desirable for a starting city, is damn irritating to either a Narrativist or a Simulationist.

Please try to remember that there are a lot of Narrativists playing SMAC.  Narrative is the reason that people are still playing and talking about this game 20 years later.  When I post on /r/4Xgaming that GOG is having another $1.49 sale, it gets 93 upvotes.  That's the highest number of upvotes for any discussion subject right now, and it's the highest number of upvotes of the past three months.  That pattern has been generally true in the past as well, for that 13.5k subscriber forum.  SMAC in its own weird way is badass like that, or at least $1.49 SMAC is.

[dino]

I think one guaranteed monolith for ai would be the best, forest from the start could spread too fast and eat too many rainy tiles before ai can put farms on them.
If some player wanted to help ai with an early development even more, there is always free former option, it will mix forest with farms.
It also has to be ai only, I can utilise two nutrients on rainy terrain way better than ai, to spam colony pods.

***
Regarding colony pod placement, I've actually red through thinker source and it seems that all necessary functions are already disassembled, below I propose changes to the code that should:
1) Prevent ai form ignoring excellent terrain nearby and build bases in a stright line toward monsoon jungle, with increasingly higher travel distance for colony pods ( screenshot from my previous post ).
2) Prevent ai from ignoring few tiles of excellent terrain when it is surrounded by a lot of fungus.
3) Allow ai to travel colony pod across few tiles of empty terrain, to settle on the other side of arid plateu/west slope/great dunes.

Proposed changes, with comments explaining reasoning behind them:
I didn't compile, or test it, could made syntax errors ( but hope it's ok ), it's jus much easier to present my ideas this way)

Code: [Select]

int base_tile_score(int x1, int y1, int range, int triad) {
    const int priority[][2] = {
        {TERRA_RIVER, 0}, // was 2, river doesn't matter much and few river tiles scew the result
        {TERRA_RIVER_SRC, 0}, // was 2,  river doesn't matter much and few river tiles scew the result
        {TERRA_FUNGUS, 0},
// changed from -2, negative values from few arid/moist fungus tiles shouldn't outweight too easily good terrain with few rainy, or resource tiles
// I deal with the fungus with other changes later
        {TERRA_FARM, 1},  // was 2, reduce impact of terraforming from nearby base
        {TERRA_FOREST, 1}, // was 2, reduce impact of terraforming from nearby base
        {TERRA_MONOLITH, 6}, // was 4, but do not add rainy/rolling bonus later
    };
    MAP* sq = mapsq(x1, y1);
    int score = (!is_ocean(sq) && sq->items & TERRA_RIVER ? 2 : 0); // comparable with energy bonus, wich I'd value much less than nutrient/minerals
    int land = 0;
       
if (sq->landmarks && !(sq->landmarks & (LM_DUNES | LM_SARGASSO | LM_UNITY | LM_RUINS)))  // with my changes monolith provide a lot of weight and fungus doesn't have negative impact, so do not add magnetism to ruins
        score += (sq->landmarks & LM_JUNGLE ? 24 : 12); // one flat bonus for a landmark, 3 : 2 for each tile caused monsoon to outweight excellent land from 20 tiles away and medicore land from 40 tiles away

range *= (triad == TRIAD_LAND ? 3 : 1);
  // could be changed to 2 : 1, to increase search area, if colony pod was capable of refusing to settle on below 13 score terrain until it reach its destination.
// Basically before you build base when 3 tiles away from previous one, check base_tile_score() for current location, if it's less than 13, continue moving toward better destination
        // If it reach destination tile without deploying on the way, build base there.
// with these two adjustments it should be capable of crossing few tiles of arid plateu/east slope/great dunes to reach oasis/landmark on the other side,
// eventually these gaps of terrible terrain would be settled anyway, after all good spots were used

    for (int i=0; i<20; i++) {
        int x2 = wrap(x1 + offset_tbl[i][0]);
        int y2 = y1 + offset_tbl[i][1];
        sq = mapsq(x2, y2);
        if (sq) {
            int items = sq->items;
            score += (tx_bonus_at(x2, y2) ? 6 : 0);
    score -= (tx_bonus_at(x2, y2) == RES_ENERGY ? 4 : 0); // value energy much less

            if (!is_ocean(sq)) {
if (!(items & TERRA_MONOLITH)){
if (sq->level & TILE_RAINY && sq->rocks & TILE_ROLLING) // rainy and rolling is very valuable for a new base
score += (items & TERRA_FUNGUS ? 1 : 4); // fungus has to be removed
else if (sq->level & TILE_RAINY)
score += (items & TERRA_FUNGUS ? 0 : 2); // fungus has to be removed
else if (sq->level & TILE_MOIST && sq->rocks & TILE_ROLLING)
score += (items & TERRA_FUNGUS ? 0 : 2); // fungus has to be removed
}
                                else if ( sq->items & TERRA_FUNGUS ) score -= 2; // Monolith on fungus - ruins most likely, so reduce weight of monolith cluster
            }
if (i < 8) {
if (triad == TRIAD_SEA && !is_ocean(sq)
&& nearby_tiles(x2, y2, LAND_ONLY, 20) >= 20 && ++land < 4)
score += (sq->owner < 1 ? 20 : 5);
if (is_ocean_shelf(sq) && !(items & TERRA_FUNGUS)) //fungus has to be removed
                    score += (triad == TRIAD_SEA ? 3 : 2);
}
            for (const int* p : priority) if (items & p[0]) score += p[1];
        }
    }
    return score - range + random(6) + min(0, pm_safety[x1][y1]);
}

And again get rid of 2 tiles bases spread on jungle. Instead of using extra nutrients, to rapidly settle jungle and surrounding area ai gets clustered bases with too much food and too little production.

[bvanevery]

I think one guaranteed monolith for ai would the be best,

From a human player's standpoint, it's definitely less disruptive to the narrative than a magically appearing forest.  Yes aside from the Ruins, Monoliths don't just appear on the map without a player popping a pod.  But story-wise a Monolith is not something that a player "does".  The player didn't bring a Monolith here, the player simply discovers that it is here.  Whereas, humans bring trees with them. And robot mining equipment.  And robot farmers.  And robot solar collectors.

If some player wanted to help ai with an early development even more, there is always free former option.

I wonder if it's possible to change the way a Headquarters works, so that it always gets an extra 1-1-1 of resources.  Or even 2-1-2.  Making sure that sure that every faction has at least 1 viable city, might help a lot with starting stability issues.  I think the idea of "your capitol provides more stuff" is pretty common in the 4X genre.

[dino]

The forest would appear in place of unity pod, near the place human crashlanded, it's obvious they spilled the seeds, when crshing.
You also complain about gamism in a game where harverstable forest can pop to existence in a year.

[dino]

I've realised that with my changes The Ruins would be almost as bad, as Monsoon Jungle previously, so I've added two lines of code to deal with it in my post about improving colony pod deployment.

[bvanevery]

The forest would appear in place of unity pod, near the place human crashlanded, it's obvious they spilled the seeds, when crshing.

You are laboring under delusions of already knowing how the game is played.  There's a point at which I can't impart game design sense to anyone else.  You have forgotten that a human player never sees a supply pod.  They only see the forest near where they land.  The only reason you know about supply pods is because you're deep into the algorithms of how all this works internally.  You aren't trying to see it from the perspective of a player who's never seen this mod, and who may never ask questions about this mod.

You also complain about gamism in a game where harverstable forest can pop to existence in a year.

So go give tanks Pegasus wings then, because Nothing Really Matters [TM].

[Induktio]

This kind of tradeoff is exactly what GNS Theory is about.  What you might think is a perfectly ok thing to do as a Gamist, to drop forests on the map because the minerals are highly desirable for a starting city, is damn irritating to either a Narrativist or a Simulationist.

Some features might result in autistic screeching, yeah. Adding resources on the map is definitely non-vanilla behaviour, so this should be a configuration option as have been earlier suggested. For the most part, this mod is suppposed to keep the vanilla game mechanics. I'm kind of inclined to keep this an AI-only feature by default, since the human player will have those pods to pop anyway. The point is to mostly provide an early game advantage so that the factions don't get bogged down in nutrient-poor starts. That's why a monolith may not be nearly as useful because it doesn't lift the nutrient production cap on a tile.

I think, I've figured out how your colony pod placement works...
It just use the original code, but before it moves you check if there is a base within 2tiles radius, if not and a base can be built, you do it instead of moving.

For the most part it was not supposed to use original movement code, since the new base placement code should replace it. The old code is only a fallback mechanism in case something fails with the search. There is some kind of a flaw in the way movement orders are processed that results in this weird behaviour. Usually it is supposed to go to the nearest usable base site, and not go seek far away landmarks.

[Induktio]

Looks I have to copy a screenshot from the recent playtesting thread, I just.... have to do it.

Details swiss cheese

swiss cheese

The Weather Paradigm driven Datatechs have been going nuts with Boreholes for a long time.

That's some advanced level terraforming right there. Just look at how nicely the pop-maxed bases are placed in rows and so on.

[bvanevery]

I'm kind of inclined to keep this an AI-only feature by default, since the human player will have those pods to pop anyway.

At least the AIs don't care what story they're being told.  The human player will rarely if ever see what goes on at an AI landing site.  They might see what happens with the Cult of Planet, Caretakers, or Usurpers.  Even then, maybe they are always placed in an area of the map that's black / unexplored to the human player?  I can't remember if I've ever actually seen Courage: To Question get founded, for instance.

That's why a monolith may not be nearly as useful because it doesn't lift the nutrient production cap on a tile.

However the 2-2-2 of a Monolith has a pretty good nutrient to minerals balance for spewing out colony pods at a good clip.  3 nutrients and 1 mineral does not get you the fastest colony pods.  You want to get to size 2 rapidly, then kick up the minerals to knock it down to size 1 again.  Excess nutrients with no minerals to match, actually makes everything take longer, because it'll try to go to size 3.  Most factions will drone riot at 3.  Even if they don't, it's just taking a lot more food to make a colonist, absent any substantial minerals increase.

[bvanevery]

That's some advanced level terraforming right there. Just look at how nicely the pop-maxed bases are placed in rows and so on.

It's also longstanding terraforming.  They got the Weather Paradigm pretty early on.  They've been the powerhouse of the game and were giving me lots of free troops when I was invading the Believers.

And would you believe that by delaying the availability of such terraforming techs to everyone else, and doubling their completion time, and making Supply Crawlers cost 50 minerals with a Fusion reactor, I'm not technically out of the game yet?  And I've not built a single Condenser or Borehole, nor do I convoy anything with Supply Crawlers except 1 that was left over from something.

You just made me think about Supply Crawler costs again.  In the screenshot, none are visible, but Reveal Map may not show units.  I'll check whether any were produced.  I'm playing this game so I'm not going to cheat to stare at it.  We are allied, so I could get a unit up there eventually to look around, but I've got other game pressures.  Even if we weren't, I could eventually launch a Conventional Missile and use it as a scout, since in my mod they don't use fuel and stay aloft indefinitely.

Details Roze's quantum supply crawlers

Roze's quantum supply crawlers

Details even quantum crawlers cost roughly 50 minerals

even quantum crawlers cost roughly 50 minerals

Long story short, I have +1 INDUSTRY and am paying 45 minerals for a Quantum Supply Crawler.  Roze effectively has +4 INDUSTRY and should be paying 30 minerals.  She has only built 4 recently.  I don't know if she built more before.  Does your latest development version use supply crawlers to rush Secret Projects?

[Induktio]

Thinker does not use supply crawlers or energy reserves to rush secret projects in any situation. It maybe occasionally uses artifacts to rush projects, but I'm not sure actually. It might also just attempt to connect them to the network nodes. Artifacts are handled by the default movement code. I've been thinking about implementing project rushing but it might result in run away AIs accelerating even faster, and maybe it is also annoying for the players to see the projects snatched away with little warning. It regularly completes projects with the overflow minerals though.

Regarding colony pod placement, I've actually red through thinker source and it seems that all necessary functions are already disassembled, below I propose changes to the code that should:
...
And again get rid of 2 tiles bases spread on jungle. Instead of using extra nutrients, to rapidly settle jungle and surrounding area ai gets clustered bases with too much food and too little production.

Jungle bases are packed densely because by the middle game they will max out the population cap so quickly with all the extra food. Also formers will not attempt to build boreholes on jungle tiles because it would waste the food bonus. Probably this is not even a big issue, but the initial placement could maybe follow 3 tile spread and later (after more bases are built) it could fill the gaps using the 2 tile spread. I have not evaluated the code in that post in detail because there's been some other issues to look at too.

[bvanevery]

It might also just attempt to connect them to the network nodes.

I saw the AI do that in an AI vs. AI test game.  I was surprised.  None of the AIs are consistent about it either, because I can readily see the AIs hoarding Artifacts even late game.  Sometimes I'm able to take them when I conquer a city.  Other times they just get destroyed.

I've been thinking about implementing project rushing but it might result in run away AIs accelerating even faster,

It's a certainty.

and maybe it is also annoying for the players to see the projects snatched away with little warning.

It is.  I already see that in mid to late game.  Secret Projects are born and die like mayflies, and I usually can't do anything about it.  I'm too busy trying to catch up on the most basic production, in the face of all the AI production spam.

I hope some day you accept that your AI has become competent enough, that the buffs given to the stock "stupid" AI, need to go away forever.  It's not an interesting game to be summarily clobbered by an AI endgame when I've only just gotten an empire together.  My current test game, is the last time I'm going to  play on Transcend with cost_factor=7.

It remains to be seen if even cost_factor=10, same as the player, is enough.  The AI still has the eco-damage abuse advantage, and there just might be that much potential in Condensers and Boreholes, even with all the delays I've implemented in 1.29 of my mod.  There's a point at which I can't make it any more painful for players who are only playing the stock game, and don't even know what Thinker mod is.

I could see raising the Weather Paradigm from 400 to 600 minerals, but I can't see moving it later than B3 Ecological Engineering, which is already much later than the stock game.  Half the point of the Weather Paradigm is giving you early access to all the nifty terraforming gewgaws.  600 minerals would make it a "double cost" Secret Project, as all my other early ones cost 300.  Aside from the Ascent to Transcendence, 600 minerals is the highest expense level I have in the game.  It's for the latest game techs, like the Cloning Vats, which I deliberately stuck near the end of the tech tree.

Now I could increase the cost of many Secret Projects, totally recalibrating them to have a much steeper progression, as I've otherwise done with weapons, armor, and chasses.  IIRC correctly Fission Armor went somewhat down this road, and Mart did it in his work as well, although he didn't change when you got the techs.

But if it's only Thinker mod that is breaking the enjoyability of the experience for the usual player, I question whether it's worth going down that design road.  Seems like it would be more rational not to recommend Thinker mod to anybody.  At least, not without huge caveats about what kind of game a particular kind of player is expecting.  People make highly qualified appraisals of 4X TBS games on /r/4Xgaming all the time, and they aren't shy or kind about it.  There's definitely a class of player represented, where right now I'd honestly have to say the experience of Thinker mod sucks rocks.  It's an interesting piece of technology that demonstrates the production potentials of the game, but it's just there to abuse you and make you lose.

The kind of player who wants Thinker mod as it currently stands, is the player who wants "monster" challenges.  I'm not into it, and I never needed an AI for that anyways.  I could have just cranked various resource abuse settings up to Eleven.

I don't like GNU Chess either.  I've never been able to do a darned thing against it, and I'm not that interested in flailing myself with Chess book strategies to figure out why it's beating me.  That's saying a lot because I have played a fair amount of computer Chess, am reasonably competent at it, and have beaten other AIs of lesser abilities from the early 90s.