SMACX Thinker Mod

[dino]

I'd be vary of overdoing various anti "runaway" mechanics. The whole point and fun of the game is to either runaway, or to not let runaway the ai, depending on difficulty and player skill.
The fact that tech cost raise exponentially is an anti runaway mechanic in itself.

This could also be an occassion to give diplomacy more meaning:
No contact, no bonus. For each faction in contact, that own the tech:
1) informal truce, truce, or war: -2% ( infiltration -4%)
2) treaty: -4%  ( infiltration -6%)
3) pact: -8%

It's too easy for a player to exploit certain mechanics and negate ai tech advantage, so some other mechanics from later civs could be useful ( I understand that, these ideas may be difficult to implement ):

Make it impossible to trade/steal tech you don't have prerequisites for. It's reasonable in itself, but additionally if we went for fixed tiered tech costs, it'd prevent ai to some extend from trading away high end techs easily. Or better yet make ai refuse to trade tech with too high tier difference.

Make tech trade, probe steal, or spoils of war, reduce cost by 50%, instead of just giving tech. You could hold a separate list of traded/stolen techs and it should override diplomacy bonus, not add to it.
Eventually you could display these techs in tech report screen in brackets, so player could track the techs he already has traded/stolen.

Make stealing a unit, don't give prototype, but cause all unknown techs required for stolen unit, to be included in traded/stolen list ( if the player has prerequisites for them of course ).

Increase ai weights for research selection of lower tier and traded/stolen techs.

[Induktio]

Hmm Been a little busy lately with other things, so this is still under consideration.

> This could also be an occassion to give diplomacy more meaning:
> No contact, no bonus. For each faction in contact, that own the tech:

Something like this could be done quite easily, but I'll probably first try a simple version where the costs are reduced by how many factions know the tech, regardless of diplo status. The later items you mentioned are getting more complicated. I'd like to adjust how much energy the AI demands for techs in trades, but not sure if there's any simple way of doing that. Plus some of those other items might require changes to the save game format, which is something not to be taken lightly.

> Did you explore the effectiveness of a forest-heavy approach?

I did test factions with/without boreholes but that's about it. The latter would just get stomped by the end game because of the energy difference.

[DrazharLn]

I think the point of the forest strategy is to save money on formers and expand more in the early and mid game.

Also, I guess if you play with default climate change and native life it can make a difference.

[Induktio]

Okay, finally an update. Develop build 20190831 is now available from downloads. This update features a new tech cost implementation in addition to the features I posted before (config option is revised_tech_cost). In the end it was a tricky feature to implement, so for the first time ever, Thinker also stores some variables in the save game to manage the game state. The save games should be fully compatible with non-Thinker versions of SMACX.

The main formula for new tech costs is:
2 * Level^3 + 98 * Level

So it results in this kind of cost progression on standard sized maps:

(click to show/hide)

100
212
348
520
740
1020
1372
1808
2340
2980
3740
4632
5668
6860
8220
9760

It seems a cost formula with an exponential term is not needed, because a cubic term will increase the costs quite quickly. I'm still totally undecided on what kind of constants to use in this formula or how to do the difficulty scaling. These kind of factors are multiplied with the base cost:

* For AIs, one unit of cost_factor below/above 10 equals a 5% bonus/penalty
* For humans, cost discount is 7% * (Transcend - current difficulty)
* Map size scales according to the square root
* All other faction/alphax.txt factors should work as before
* Tech stagnation is the same as before, but it could changed
* If 2 or more factions with commlink has the tech, discount 25%
* If only 1 commlink faction has it, discount 15%

For example, if you play on Transcend with cost_factor=10, then you are on equal footing with the AIs.

[Induktio]

One more factor that I forgot to mention on the list:

For the first 10 techs a faction discovers they get decreasing cost discounts. So on a standard map, the first tech will cost 14 labs instead of the 100 labs default price. This approximates the tech costs in vanilla game mechanics for a couple of first techs.

The idea here is that level 1-3 costs stay relatively modest and the big cost increases should begin from level 4 onwards. I was also considering using 3*Level^3 instead of 2*Level^3 as the cubic factor, but there might be some issues how that will scale on huge map sizes, because then the later techs would get really expensive. On huge maps techs cost 90/56 = 1.6 more than on standard maps.

[dino]

I'm not in the mood to reach the end game currently, but early to midgame works fine.

As for tech for energy trade ai should only accept an energy equivalent of tech cost, adjusted by some modifier based on commerce difference betwean factions.

If we are at diplo, the minimum bribe ai should accept when it threatens you, should be based on your highest owned tier tech cost.
If you can't pay and don't have any tech, they should demand a base that is nearest their territorry.
If their military score ( not power score ) is 2x, 3x, 4x for ai_fight 1/0/-1, this demand should never be an empty threat and always result in vendetta if refused, even when original code would back off.

This new tech cost mechanic will be very easy for a player to abuse by saving money on research and stealing techs with probes.
The only reason it's not a problem with vanilla game, is because player can easily be a tech leader himself instead.
With super high tech costs in the endgame, probe teams will be extremely unbalanced. So my proposal to solve this issue is:

Make a successful tech steal attempt cost half the research cost in energy, adjusted by PROBE social effect.
The part of the original code used for base mind control could be repurposed to display an appropriate dialog window.
If we are at it, the amount of money required for mind control and diplomacy base trade could be given a multiplier.

These ideas are based on the code that is already there and should be easier to implement, then my previous proposals regarding tech trade and probes balance.
I understand the diplomacy code is not dissassembled yet and these ideas won't happen probably, but you've said you'll be looking at diplomacy tech trade, so I threw some more ideas worth looking at when you'll be at it.

[DrazharLn]

Glad to see someone playtest it. Do you feel that the revised formula is an improvement in the early and mid game?

I disagree that militarily stronger factions should never make empty threats. I think it should still be probabilistic.

Re: probes, maybe we can just teach the AI to keep their bases defended? Unescorted probe teams are quite easy to deal with and escorted ones can be defeated by probe defences or by destroying their escorts. I don't know how you balance this game mechanic effectively, keeping it not OP and also not tedious or useless. Probably requires some experimentation.

[Induktio]

Actually some parts of diplomacy are known. For example, there are two separate functions for deciding how much the AI will bid/ask for techs in trade. They are not even very long functions. The right approach here would be to rewrite them in C++ and just redirect the calls to Thinker.

If there's some place where to start rewriting the diplomacy code, that would be a good choice. Only obstacle I see is that some stuff needs to be figured out so that the dialog box code can be called from C++. Now it's just a question of finding enough time to code such a thing.

[Rocky]

Does this version also have the option of setting the amount of AI bases? Or is this planned for a later update?

[Induktio]

> Does this version also have the option of setting the amount of AI bases? Or is this planned for a later update?

That change was already committed over a week ago, it's in the newest config file.

[Rocky]

> Does this version also have the option of setting the amount of AI bases? Or is this planned for a later update?

That change was already committed over a week ago, it's in the newest config file.

Thanks! I somehow totally missed it. I'm looking forward to try it out.

[silva]

Hi there folks. First post here. 

Alpha Centauri is my favorite strategy game of all time, and is the first game I install in every new PC I buy (the second being King of Dragon Pass). It seems we've finally found a way to improve the AI. So thanks very much to Induktio for this project.

BUT I have this worry that is more or less reflected in the following comment..

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.

..pretty much this! SMAC/X is not only a pure logical challenge for me, but also an opportunity to role-play a leader in a ideological conflict in an amazingly evocative futuristic setting. So my question is: Do the patch upgrade the AI while also respecting the planet and factions original personalities? I mean, will Morgan still pursue the more economic enabling techs, or Deirdre pursue environmentalist ones, etc? Or will Deirdre build thermal boreholes left and right and Morgan become a warmonger just because it's more "efficient" from a pure gameplay standpoint?

I intend to give the patch a try anyway, but this is an important question to me.

Thanks again Induktio for the great work. 

[DrazharLn]

In the latest beta, at my suggestion ;p, PLANET factions will build fewer boreholes.

Thinker makes some small changes to AI tech selection: https://github.com/induktio/thinker/blob/de26192bfa0c600d7bb2580a0a30176938971ef2/src/main.cpp#L329

If tech_balance is on in thinker.ini, the ai will prioritise techs that provide certain important benefits, if any of those techs are in the available panel of techs (The AI will not beeline to any techs). In my opinion, these do not affect the lore of the factions.

Thinker optionally also provides a changed tech cost progression formula which makes the late game techs come slower (by default they come all at once at the end, if you have an efficient empire, so you never use a bunch of them).

As far as I remember, thinker makes no changes to faction strategic or diplomatic choices.

Thinker improves the AI's tech selection, terraforming, tactical combat and more. Overall it moves them from "pretty useless" to "quite challenging".

Overall, I find it less immersive to eventually find the AI scrubbing about with completely undeveloped territories and tiny bases than it is to see Gaians with a few boreholes. I would recommend that you use this mod.

[silva]

That's great to hear DrazharLn! You just made me more anxious to try this mod.

Are there any options that should set to an .ini file or something to have this more "role-playing inclined" experience?

And what difficulty level is recommended with Thinker? I used to play Thinker level (duh) Ironman in original SMAX as it gave a me a mix of fun and challenge, but an I right to infer that would be too tough in Thinker mod ?

[DrazharLn]

Glad to hear that you are excited

Get the latest develop build from here (bottom of page): https://www.dropbox.com/sh/qsps5bhz8v020o9/AADv-0D0-bPq22pgoAIcDRC3a/develop?dl=0&lst=

(That link is from the github project page)

If you're used to Thinker difficulty and don't want a tough challenge, you might like to drop down two difficulty levels or stay on Thinker difficulty and adjust the cost_factor in thinker.ini

No changes are required to get the experience I described in the latest development builds, though you should be aware that the revised tech cost formula is enabled by default (disable in thinker.ini if you like)