SMACX Thinker Mod

[Nexii]

How about those adjacent boreholes

[Induktio]

> What is going on? I am playing WtP that uses Thinker AI for crawler placement. Look at the picture.

Well, I only consider bug reports that happen with the latest version of Thinker. If you fork something, then debugging can only be done by you.

> One suggestion: Is it possible to improve AI specialist usage? Activating them instead of using quite useless tiles.

The problem here is that specialist allocation code is not reversed fully yet, so it's hard to integrate these solutions into the game engine. (Anyone want to contribute code here?) Remember that the governor for player factions uses the same logic too. I think the biggest flaw there is still that it can't fully anticipate drone riots and wastes a lot of production turns as a result. The stock AI even needed a patch to get it to use borehole tiles *at all*. Fixing the governor would probably have a really big impact on how much micromanagement it saves for the players.

I also deployed some changes to the tech cost formula: drop the difficulty modifier for player factions, drop 10 first techs cheaper rule, AI cost_factor bonus is reduced to 8% per unit, and base formula for tech costs is now 6*Level^3 + 74*Level - 20.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

I've installed Thinker 2.0 and tried my save there. The behavior stays the same. The Anvil of Men produces crawler in 2 turns and this crawler walks to (3,17) where there is already a crawler harvesting nutrients. Then the second crawler started harvesting nutrients too.

[Nexii]

So does the AI just ignore borehole placement restrictions? It wouldn't surprise me too much as it ignores tech requirements on basic improvements (farm, forest, road, sensor, mine, solar)

[dino]

How about those adjacent boreholes

Or the one on the slope of Mount Planet.

[Induktio]

> So does the AI just ignore borehole placement restrictions? It wouldn't surprise me too much as it ignores tech requirements on basic improvements

I'm not sure if you're trolling here. When was the last time unmodified Thinker built boreholes next to each other? When does it ignore tech requirements?

Duplicate crawlers on one square shouldn't normally happen either. There's some kind of an issue in the save game with the way it checks if the square can be crawled or not, but I doubt one would encounter that situation normally. If those crawlers had forest tiles available, they would switch to them. Though it should get some kind of a fix for the movement code.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

I've played WtP and then loaded save into Thinker. No trolling intended. I understand you may doubt this is a valid test. So I'll probably try to repeat the same with Thinker from beginning. Or maybe I won't be able to.

[Nexii]

I'm not sure if you're trolling here. When was the last time unmodified Thinker built boreholes next to each other? When does it ignore tech requirements?

Not trolling, AI ignores tech prerequisites for basic improvements - not boreholes though. It was noted in the bug forum.

[Induktio]

> Not trolling, AI ignores tech prerequisites for basic improvements - not boreholes though. It was noted in the bug forum.

Yeah but notice we're talking about Thinker here and the terraforming AI is vastly different, almost from another planet.

Thinker should always check the tech requirement before performing any actions. If there's some instance where this is not the case then let me know.

And yes, it does *also* check if the tile has a valid slope before building boreholes. I haven't seen it build them on slopes where it wouldn't be normally allowed by the game rules, but the terrain shape can change afterwards because of various reasons and then the earlier boreholes will remain there anyway.

[Nexii]

Ok I had modded for plant forest to take tech: Ecology (Centauri Ecology). Formers take Indust (Industrial Base) to make. The AI can plant forests before getting the tech Ecology. This should apply to all basic improvements - Farm, Solar, Mine, Sensor, Road. As well the automated terraforming functions circumvent technology requirements for human players.

[Induktio]

I can't replicate what you're describing here. Are you talking about automated formers in player-controlled factions? They don't use Thinker at all. It should be described in documentation btw. The only place in the code where Thinker could decide to plant forests is preceded by this check:

Code: [Select]

has_terra(faction, FORMER_FOREST, sea)

[Nexii]

Yea seems Thinker mod fixed the bug where it relates to AI factions, I had misread the tech list of the test factions

It does apply to automated terraforming functions which is an aside

[Tayta Malikai]

Ok I had modded for plant forest to take tech: Ecology (Centauri Ecology). Formers take Indust (Industrial Base) to make. The AI can plant forests before getting the tech Ecology. This should apply to all basic improvements - Farm, Solar, Mine, Sensor, Road. As well the automated terraforming functions circumvent technology requirements for human players.

Nevill reported seeing the opposite back when we were first porting his mod to work with Thinker. We had formers and basic improvements (farm, solar, mine, road) available from the start, with Centauri Ecology unlocking forests. However, this seemed to confuse the AI, which wouldn't learn Centauri Ecology and thus be unable to use forests. So we ended up swapping it around so that forests were also available from the start. This was with Thinker 1.0.

Started a new game with Thinker 2.0. The AI seems to be notably less aggressive this time around: nobody instantly declared war or tried to extort techs, and I'm sitting comfortably at the top of the rankings with a significant population advantage, when previously I would be a weakling for most of the early game until Human Player Ingenuity^TM caught up with the AI bonuses. I think some of the AIs had trouble dealing with all the fungus on this map. Do the faction personality settings (Pacifist, Erratic, Aggressive) still influence their building priorities?

Curiously, one of the AIs appears to have moved his HQ to take advantage of a nearby Uranium Flats. When the game is over I'll go back in the scenario editor to check if he did actually move it.

EDIT: Never mind, it seems I spoke too soon. My neighbour who was quite happy to pact with me for free before has now gotten uppity and sparked a global war over demanding tech.

[Induktio]

> Do the faction personality settings (Pacifist, Erratic, Aggressive) still influence their building priorities?

It does influence it, but the effect is somewhat subtle and shouldn't result in huge variations in development. Aggressive factions tend to build more units at an earlier date. And abundant fungus also slows down any AIs quite a lot.

> Curiously, one of the AIs appears to have moved his HQ to take advantage of a nearby Uranium Flats.

They should not spontaneously move the HQ unless the previous one was lost. With automatic relocate the game engine does it for them also.

Actually, thinking about that terraforming automation for player factions, it should be possible to implement it now when almost all variables relating to it are reversed. I'm not sure if it's strictly necessary but might be useful if some players don't want to micromanage formers all the time.

[EmpathCrawler]

1/3 global warming seems okay. A few factions are nearly to Advanced Spaceflight when it happened in my games so far. I might lower the world builder setting that lessens sea rise a little bit. So far I actually like that it is almost guaranteed if the AI is allowed to go nuts developing. It helps shake things up and puts into play a game mechanic that doesn't get much attention in the stock game.


I haven't seen any strange terraforming that's been described above.


AIs seem to go through a methodical seabase expansion phase, is that Thinker?