SMACX Thinker Mod

[lolada]

AI is cruel  its funny how in AC AI just declares war on first sight. Later civ games became so friendly.

Looking at that your screenshot you could have placed 10 more bases around and it wouldn't be ICS ^^. One of the great strengths of Thinker AI is that it does not go strolling around but places bases close to each other. And it generally fills tons of available space.

AI has some base breakpoints - 20ish bases? Then they build more? I've read this somewhere - i see AI place lots of bases and then stop - its a bit weird as they sometimes leave half the continent empty even when there are good settle spots. They often spam a lot of sea bases.

One thing that might hurt them badly is a loss of base. Induktio changed AI to spam military units if it loses the base ?! I think. Looks to me that they go all-out war mode for very long and stop colonizing.

[Induktio]

Wow, that's a lot of worms. What kind of faction are those "Believers", do they have planet/psi bonuses? The other factions have some eccentric looking base names too.

Very interesting to look at those screenshots. You can tell instantly from the screenshots if it's running the stock or Thinker AI. It has a very distinct base placement/terraforming style. It's not quite human in the way it develops the area but it has some kind of an unique flavor.

> AI has some base breakpoints - 20ish bases? Then they build more? I've read this somewhere

Try setting expansion_factor=200 or similar to get more bases. It's scaled to the map size.

> What do you mean by research rating being ignored in wtp?

The RESARCH rating that you see on the social engineering screen, that value is irrelevant as far as research costs are concerned.

> But it also works if you enter their territory and they counterattack - they get +50% territory attack bonus.

I actually don't think it makes to sense to also add *counterattack* bonus on top of the territory defend bonus. Or if it has both, then the amount should be nerfed from 50%. I believe this percentage is multiplicative on the standard combat strength value.

> 1. is mind-probe thing bugged? +3 Probe says bases can't be subverted, but AI overrides that.

Nothing is changed there unless it's mentioned in the Scient's patch notes.

[EmpathCrawler]

It's somewhere in the mid 2200s in my high eco damage test game. Zak got really savaged at first when he unlocked boreholes and condensers, popping big worm stacks and even locusts. I have him infiltrated so I could see him building Tree Farms. Hopefully that wasn't a coincidence!


He seems to get caught flatfooted by the pops. I'm regularly seeing defenseless and relatively small bases in his interior that I know were large, well developed bases before.

[EmpathCrawler]

I got bored with playing my test game so I let the AI play by itself for a while and then my macro messed up and I had to crash the game. There was a lot of odd behavior regarding sea colony pods. Morgan parked some in a two-tile strait off my shore for mission decades. I also saw one of Zak's inland bases with a sea colony pod inside. It was in the middle of the Uranium Flats and AFAIK never had access to the sea. I can get a screenshot of the latter if you need it. The only other mod I'm using is SMAC in SMAX.


The AI got better at handling fungal pops as it developed, and there were quite a lot of them. Consistently rebuilt trance units. I forgot to check to see if it was building anti eco damage buildings.

[lolada]

In my current AAR (will to power and older AI thinker version) it took some time, but AI started to build lots of trance units eventually (defenders 3-10t-1 and similar), including some cruiser trance designs (like 16-3t-6). They also started to build more empath attacking units and counterattacking my worms. I was hitting them a lot with Sealurks and Mindworms, not sure what trigger them to start spamming more units. I eventually got to +5 Planet and big worm army.. maybe that.
Caretaker aliens and Drones - Domai AI.

Btw few extra notes:

- about that "territory combat bonus" - +50% might be too strong, including counterattacks, but wtp had specific goal to make attacker lose 2-3x more than defender.  Seems it does that. Still AI can conquer other AIs.. as well as player its just harder and takes longer. I presume it won't be big issue for player anyway unless combat formula is changed (wtp changed that to increase loses).. vanilla favors attacker a lot. Probably +50% def with vanilla combat rules won't slow player that much.. counterattacks are more dangerous and limiting.. it doesn't cut it to invade fungus tile with say few 4-1-2 rovers and 1-3-1 defender.. as that defender is nowhere near good in enemy territory. AI would likely counterattack with 2-1-2 units and wipe the stack.. as such rover would have edge over 1-3-1 unit in this case.

- ai builds hovertank units and probes (armored)

- ai builds and uses choppers but WTP has them beuatifully balanced -_- its hard to win combat vs any capable opponents without taking some damage and i can't see chopper killing more than 2 units in enemy territory.. 3rd one he's likely dead. I rarely used them because they get killed by interceptors and AI has enough aerospace complexes and AAA units

[Tayta Malikai]

> What kind of faction are those "Believers", do they have planet/psi bonuses? The other factions have some eccentric looking base names too.

Good catch! Yes, they are intended to be a planet/psi-focused faction. At the moment they're kind of a Super Cult in terms of stats:

Code: [Select]

Personality: Aggressive, Explore, Conquer

^TECH: {Biogenetics}

^-2 ECONOMY: {Excess wealth viewed as sinful}
^+2 PLANET: {Practises responsible stewardship of their holy land}
^+1 mineral, +1 energy in fungus: {Taught to live off the land}
^+15% offensive combat: {Religious fervour}
^Mind Worms act as double police: {Native wildlife viewed as angels}
^{May not use Wealth values.}
That's definitely overpowered; I didn't consider the interaction between psi bonuses from +PLANET and general +attack bonuses. With the Manifold Nexus, her units already had an effective +45% advantage over mine. Add in my faction's inherent -1 PLANET and the 3:2 odds for psi attackers... even if I had every base staffed by Trance units with decent morale, I'm not sure I'd have been able to stand up to that.

And yeah, coming up with half-decent base names was one of the most tedious parts of making these factions. xD I'll probably make a thread about them soon, now that I've playtested them a fair bit.

AI is cruel  its funny how in AC AI just declares war on first sight. Later civ games became so friendly.

Looking at that your screenshot you could have placed 10 more bases around and it wouldn't be ICS ^^. One of the great strengths of Thinker AI is that it does not go strolling around but places bases close to each other. And it generally fills tons of available space.

AI has some base breakpoints - 20ish bases? Then they build more? I've read this somewhere - i see AI place lots of bases and then stop - its a bit weird as they sometimes leave half the continent empty even when there are good settle spots. They often spam a lot of sea bases.

One thing that might hurt them badly is a loss of base. Induktio changed AI to spam military units if it loses the base ?! I think. Looks to me that they go all-out war mode for very long and stop colonizing.

Aye, I'm finding that cranking out bases as fast as possible is essential to standing up to the AI in this mod. I used to be averse to having bases near each other, so it's been a bit of a change for me.

Basically, sprawl as hard as you can and hope that your girth impresses the AI enough to get them to leave you alone (gaining a decent energy income in the process), then consolidate and build up your pop and infrastructure so you can keep up in the tech race. I think that's the meta for now. The downside of this approach is that you'll probably be beaten by the AIs to various projects, barring unity pods or crawlers.

Anyway, I gave up trying to make that faction work for now after that experience, starting a new game with a different faction that emphasises pop growth at the expense of industry. Things have gone much better this game: I started on a continent with 4 other factions, and was able to sign pacts with 2 and treaties with the other 2, getting much needed exchanges of tech. Things were fairly peaceful for a bit, and we all kept about neck-and-neck in development; using the above strategy, I grew a nice population but missed out on most of the projects.

Then ideological differences inevitably led to war, helped along by some probe trickery to stir things up, and I invaded my neighbour to gain access to his projects. Rather amusingly, I conquered all his land bases and forced him off the continent, but he still survives with 6 sea bases somewhere, so I doubt he'll surrender (sunspots are currently in effect). I'm kind of curious to see if he'll make a comeback if I leave him alone.

If there was ever any doubt that the AI would know to prioritize psi units...

Yowzers!

Infiltration shows they have 29 worms on the field, and little else. Those are going to be painful to dislodge; I may have to resort to Empath jets to clear a path.

[Nexii]

Regarding combat, always felt it made more sense to give large defensive bonuses in cities rather than territory. Territory bonus is like a 'for free'. I could see a small morale bonus fighting on home turf but not 50%.

Problem as I saw it was a costing issue, armor just costed too much. My solution was to just allow the use of best weapon/armor on everything. You shouldn't be discouraged from using your best technology. Using hand weapons or unarmored when you have better options is silly.

The choice should be in what chassis and abilities to pick.

I would try this but I feel with defense being so strong the whole game would come down to how fast you expand at the start, since you'd be so hard to conquer.

[Induktio]

> I can get a screenshot of the latter if you need it. The only other mod I'm using is SMAC in SMAX.

Always provide the save game if you're reporting bugs. An exception to this is if something is trivially repeatable, no matter which save game you load.

On a side note, next develop build will have an important fix contributed by Scient: satellite attack bug will be fixed when smac_only mode is activated!

> The AI got better at handling fungal pops as it developed, and there were quite a lot of them. Consistently rebuilt trance units.

That's what I'm thinking too. Fungal pops cause only a temporary stepback because each of them raises the clean mineral limit. It is actually best to trigger first fungal pop ASAP so then all the subsequent tree farms will raise the clean mineral limit. Some people don't actually understand this mechanic.

> Good catch! Yes, they are intended to be a planet/psi-focused faction. At the moment they're kind of a Super Cult in terms of stats:

Actually I've overlooked WORMPOLICE ability in the PSI unit preference algorithm. It makes sense to produce worms even more if they help quell the drones. In that factions case, +2 PLANET and +15% PSI causes AI to prefer worms heavily, also because it hasn't researched any advanced weapons yet.

> And yeah, coming up with half-decent base names was one of the most tedious parts of making these factions.

Bletchley Park, Comparative Advantage... you got something going on there.

> One thing that might hurt them badly is a loss of base. Induktio changed AI to spam military units if it loses the base ?

Maybe slightly spoiler info follows.

(click to show/hide)

Over the different versions, I tried various approaches but eventually settled on this kind of system: the threat evaluation metric considers a) average distance to nearest enemy bases, b) number of our bases that were captured by the enemy, c) comparative military strength of both factions (least important). This is one the rare cases where Thinker treats factions differently according to if it's a player faction or not. Even one base lost to player is nearly enough to send the AI into panic mode.

[lolada]

Yes meta is spam enough bases to counter AI.. its effect of Thinker AI. AI spams bases and boreholes and its really hard to compete if you don't do the same. In turn you lose most of secret projects - but thats ok i guess. I managed to build 1-2 pretty much every game, you just may not get exactly the one you want. Thats for early project - player can get mid-late game project often at will if you direct research or spam crawlers.
Considering base spam, unit spam and boreholes, someone like Hive or Miriam is real threat if they spam bases get their production up and you end up in their attacking range.

Now on defensive bonus - I don't know.. human finds a way to turn pretty much every mechanic into his benefit sooner or later. For example Thinker AI spam units much better than vanilla - but still don't know how to use them well. Ie. you as a player can defend with token rover force against 3-4x larger AI force and build up behind. Mainly because attack is favored and you don't lose units. So in this case you can with few units sit behind and build up your economy while AI bangs in the wall.
Larger bonus in bases - i need to try bvanevery's mod i think he did that also. Will to power has 50% defense in base (sensors dont give bonus).. Territory bonus is on top of that.. but combat gives you chance to win even when attacking below odds. Making only bases stronger instead of territory might be good solution - but AI needs more boosts, like cheaper armor (to actually not get picked up by player in field).

Will to power makes this easy picking-off units strategy harder in general due to few cumulative changes:
1. Allowing cheaper armored units - attackers like 6-6-1.. or Rovers like 10-6-2. I think cost of armored infantry is comparable to unarmored rovers. Fine change as Nexii said.
2. Making combat deadly - you have a higher chance to lose even when attack > defense. Kinda leads to spearman kills tank scenario. For example rover 4-1-2 dies like 25% of time (less i think but not insignificant) vs 1-1-1 scout. So casual attacks are not safe win.. and even when you win its unlikely rover is at full HP.. so can't kill 2-3 in a row.
3. And on top of that that territory bonus.. making attack even harder.. so that scout is practically 1-1,5-1.. or Synthmetal would be 1-2-1 turned into 1-3-1, Territory counterattack is pain - i described that earlier in post.. Scout will really hurt/kill that Rover if it ever attacks it.
4. Then weapons and armors are balanced that odds are close to each other.. vanilla usually have attack > def.
5. Healing is nerfed to 10%.. 20% in base.. Command Center does not fully heal as well.

Now this is tricky.. all this means that you can't stop AI with only a handful of units. So when AI comes knocking on your bases - you might think i am safe with that def bonus. But then you lost map control and formers, can't work tiles.. and Probes really mess up everything - ai spams them and they are armored. And even weaker AI units have a chance to kill your defenders however small if you let AI amass units base will fall. And you don't heal fast and AI takes the base.

All this in the end makes you invest more in army - defending may look easier on paper - but none the less player loses units and you still don't want AI to roam into your lands. AI is programmed to spam units - this kind of forces player to make more units. Thinker AI also expands well so they start to attack from many sides.
Now if you try to use those units in attack - they tend to die even faster Its a challenge -_- but thats the point i guess. Its safe to say you will lose lots of units. I'll take a screenshot when i come home.. i lost ton of units in my last game.

In that sense i don't think doing just one change is enough to really improve AI combat to challenge player. This is my view ofcourse.. generally this way of modding leads to longer games - more build focus - someone might really not what to play that style. I did for example crush Gaians with Miriam with 4-5-6 weapons early on taking their 10 bases even when they had silksteel armor(4) in last few bases. Mod boosted  Miriam to +50% attack... but even 25% or 33% would work well because units get promoted. Morgan is still wimp due to support so Miriam cuts through him as well even if he has higher tech. Someone like Yang is tough to break ^^.

[Nexii]

Seems to me that raising defense that much would lead to massive amounts of artillery being the best strategy. Especially with healing slowed down.

[lolada]

Seems to me that raising defense that much would lead to massive amounts of artillery being the best strategy. Especially with healing slowed down.

Good point - having a few units really helps - i've been using some (you can follow AAR ^^ shamefull self-promotion). I am still learning - so i think i failed in that department - heavy use of artillery would likely reduce loses a lot - and i used it consistently but in small numbers.. 2-3 units so it takes time to hurt defenders and then i attack impatiently. I used lots of spore launchers (cheap police) to soften up ships.  Was it Civ3 that promoted artillery stacks ^^.

Actually i discovered something last night - it even make sense to use conventional missiles when base is not heavily stacked with defenders. Like it takes 2-3 turns to build the missile - it takes same time or more to build good attacking unit. And when distance is big and attacking unit is likely to die - you can just hurl the missile directly (its 20 movement) rather then try to transport unit or build drop unit.. especially if you fight over the sea like in my game. Or when trying to take down sea base. Lategame there's enough resources for that.

[EmpathCrawler]

Always provide the save game if you're reporting bugs. An exception to this is if something is trivially repeatable, no matter which save game you load.

On a side note, next develop build will have an important fix contributed by Scient: satellite attack bug will be fixed when smac_only mode is activated!

Very well, I'll do the minimum asked of me! I finally figured out where Windows actually stores saves...

I believe the save has both examples. Zero Point is the University base with sea colony pods. As you can "see" it's in the middle of the Uranium Flats and yet it's home to two. If you look at the narrow strait that divides the Gaians from the Monsoon Jungle, you should see a Morgan sea colony pod that he doesn't move.

Unfortunately the game crashed so I don't have the results of many years of AI-only play (my holding Enter down macro got stuck).

Looking forward to raining death from above!

That's what I'm thinking too. Fungal pops cause only a temporary stepback because each of them raises the clean mineral limit. It is actually best to trigger first fungal pop ASAP so then all the subsequent tree farms will raise the clean mineral limit. Some people don't actually understand this mechanic.

I only learned about it when I started playing again recently. Does the AI know to wait for fungal pops before its first Tree Farm?

[lolada]

Here are some shots.. its will to power mod, but AI is thinker basically with some tweaks.

These are casualties, its M.Y. 2400 game is not over yet. I lost over 100 native units -_- lost many others but this display is bugged certainly - at least it can't show all the prototypes or merged them not sure. There's more to list but i didn't want to post more pictures.. i had 12 formers sniped by enemy air units. I lost quite a few 24-16-1 units and amphibious units but can't find them on list now. Checked Drones stats for example it says they lost hundreds of units but types seem all screwed up.



This is AI city placement (terrain is not up to date - there are boreholes and improvements but my map don't show them - i can see them when i zoom to cities). Gaians stopped around 20-ish bases - they have lost some here. Aliens have even less somewhat. They are in war all the time. That's what i was talking about AI and losing bases - nothing east is colonized and there are Ruins with monoliths for example. Aliens also didn't colonize that much beside monsoon jungle and some sea bases - they have space or they could pack more cities in there (north is not visible on map.. but there's space - can be seen on minimap).



This is Drones map - they conquered Zakharov - defense didn't save him. He died quite quickly, he had at least 9 bases.



This is AI building hovertank probes, empath and trance units. AI had lots of trance defenders at a time but it seem they upgraded them tu <> AAA units. I presume .. i doubt they died i didn't kill them.



Here's one lategame city, not sure what they are up to with eco damage at this point ^^ they usually keep that in normal levels.



Thinking of it now - AI could maybe be better if they would actually be less aggressive  . They are fighting someone all the time.

Here's combat. For example Elite unit died -_- defender stayed alive at 10%. Then i had less exp unit win without taking dmg ^^ - so there's that randomness that happens. Yeah i forgot.. base bonus is +50%.. but Perimeter Defense makes it 100% total not 150. And With tachyon is i think 150. So thats nerfed otherwise it would be def overstacked. Without territory bonus i suppose those should be victories easily.

[Induktio]

I suspect nobody has realized this before, but the AI has a hilarious bug in faction_upkeep. When it has the energy reserves to do, it will attempt to corner energy market repeatedly each turn even if the previous attempt is still in progress! I guess having the original AI produce surplus energy is such an alien concept, this has never occurred before. This actually happened in one of the test games where one AI (guess which one?) ROFLstomped the others and was producing thousands of credits each turn. I'll incorporate some more fixes on late game events for the next release.

> Gaians stopped around 20-ish bases - they have lost some here. Aliens have even less somewhat. They are in war all the time.

Happens all the time on smaller maps. If they are at war with a neighboring faction, the AI kinda has no choice but to keep producing more units. In that screenshot the AI has also lost some of its own bases.

> I believe the save has both examples. Zero Point is the University base with sea colony pods. As you can "see" it's in the middle of the Uranium Flats and yet it's home to two.

I think what's happening here is that the AI randomly attempts to raise land bridges to adjacent land masses and sometimes it has some unforeseen consequences. It shouldn't be happening that often though. Land bridges are pretty important to help the AI grow sometimes.

[lolada]

Landbridge happened in my  game i was so surprised ^^ Will AI raise land bridge to attack other AI ? Or is it accident (they wanted higher land or something?) - because AI's connected continents - but there was no room for expansion as land was taken by other AIs already. What motivates AI to terraform up/down?

Yes ok i now understand that about expansion and on number of bases. I suppose I'd like to see continent eventually filled with bases - it would be smart to sneak in colony pods even during the war. Sometimes its the best to stall the war effort  ie. defend and expand in safe zone. But i see that may be too complicated for AI.

On topic of AI aggressiveness: Is it known why AI is so aggressive? I had 5x weaker AIs declare war on me for example. Its possible if AI would refrain from silly wars in first 100-ish turns that it would have much better setup for winning the game. AI often threatens and declare wars on first contact - starting warfare that puts back both AIs.