SMACX Thinker Mod

[JoGr223]

combat rules in SMAC are fundamentally broken

you don't actually use convincing arguments to support this statement; I will just say: it works in MP -> its not broken; some things can be considered too strong/cheap/useful/too early e.g needlers,copters as they give "unfair advantage" compared to player/AI without these techs

basically you advocate to "nerf fighting" make attacking weaker; I think this would make game less "fun" actually; your main point is about attack/def ratio change to 3:2; I think you dont consider enough the fact attacker also have to move the units into enemy territory, while defender doesnt - this is huge cost for attacker; your propositions would likely make attacking entirely pointless

It seems like u kinda make contradictory points: once you say attacking is too strong, but then you say "but 1 copter can kill all enemy attacker" - ok but that doesnt prove combat is broken, it just shows dynamic completely changes while copters enter the game, you need to play land units completely different; I do think mind/machine tech appears too early, but the fact it also gives you drop pods is kinda good balance to support different role for land units once copters appear

With the original ruleset it's impossible to make AI capable of defending against the player, just do the math

math has nothing do to with it, AI just cant fight; what you advocate would just mean "dumb AI" is better at "dumber units" (more equal attacker/defender ratios == dumber, less specialized units), so I'm against that; of course it's possible to make better AI -> make it use more optimized strats like the ones I described in the 2268 game thread

with vanilla rules either ai will be always defenseless, or player will be if you teach it to attack first with mass assault properly

this is not logical statement - if AI is taught to fight properly then it makes it more equal in fighting to humans -> more fun challenge for humans; so it doesn't make human player defenseless; other factors like cheating by AI by having growth/ind/tech-speed bonuses then come into factor, but are adjusted with difficulty levels

[dino]

My balance proposal is simple: flat terrain favours attacker, rough terrain/base odds are even, perimeter/bunker favours defender.

I've explained my points well enough, there is no point repeating myself, to counter you. If you don't understand why defender inside defensive structure having an advantage is a staple of every serious strategy game and a real world experience, then we are not going to understand each other. Good luck writing an algorithm that can plan and synchronise units movements like an experienced player, to play the game of "I attack first, I win with little loses", regardles of whether it's actually a desired puzzle to have as a combat for a strategy game. This very conservative rebalance I've propsed only slightly changes the balance of importance of tactics vs strategy ( economy and planning ), there is still plenty of room for rewarding micro.

Sid Mayer's design philosophy for Civ series was to make rules, that make the experience easy and satysfying for a casual player of all ages, not to provide an interesting challenge for autists like us.
This is why you can efortlessly steamroll 3x stronger enemy, when you feel like it. I'm not bashing Sid here, it's just a paraphrased quote from an interview, we were never the main target audience for these games.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

I understand you are quite aware of both Thinker and WTP mods. Not to specifically advertise WTP one but everything you mentioned is implemented there for this exact purpose that you explained: to make defense viable. I'd like to clarify whether you advocate porting these changes to Thinker or just highlighting general vanilla war imbalances?

I 100% agree with what you said. Actually it is just repetition of all 2 year old discussion on war balance. However, I doubt Induktio will be porting this changes into Thinker as it is too far from its mod goal (AI improvement). I would also advise him not to as his mod is pretty much concise and complete in fulfilling declared goal.

With the original ruleset it's impossible to make AI capable of defending against the player, just do the math:

You are absolutely right here if you mean passive defense does not pay off against direct assault. Vanilla ruleset favors sneak attack and blitzkrieg. So to make your statement precise we should say that passive defense is not a viable strategy in vanilla. And that is what vanilla AI is doing.

It is, theoretically, possible to teach AI to do the same what player does - accumulate assault forces and launch sneak attack making AI a competitive opponent. However, the mere fact that one singe assaults wins the game is quite disturbing for 400 turns 4X strategical game concept. It makes all careful building and expanding planning obsolete and overall game not interesting. Therefore, I would advocate on fixing ruleset first as you proposed and then tuning up the AI toward that ruleset. As you can clearly understand that different rulesets lead to different optimal strategies and, subsequently, to different AI programming.

The combat rules in SMAC are fundamentally broken, no amount of AI improvements will change it, so there is no point in both playing and developping combat ai without addressing it:

Same thesis I just expressed above. Interestingly enough this is already implemented in WTP in almost the same way you described it. Again, this is not a self advertisement just a reference to some existing implementation and previous discussion to support the argument.

1) Edit armor values in alphax.txt to change att/def ratio from 2:1, to around 3:2.

Armor value is adjusted and lined up with weapon one. They are also synchronized in research tree to assure their more or less parallel progress so that contemporary armor is 1:1 to contemporary weapon. That gives defender default 2:1 advantage behind PD.

2) No instant healing with command center, only 20% per turn.

This is an exact value in WTP.

3) Disable collateral damage from loosing a unit in a stack.

That is too.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

with vanilla rules either ai will be always defenseless, or player will be if you teach it to attack first with mass assault properly

this is not logical statement - if AI is taught to fight properly then it makes it more equal in fighting to humans -> more fun challenge for humans; so it doesn't make human player defenseless; other factors like cheating by AI by having growth/ind/tech-speed bonuses then come into factor, but are adjusted with difficulty levels

I agree with you here as I stated before: it is theoretically possible to teach AI beat the human. Like they did in chess. And chess is a very good example of exceptionally imbalanced collection of pieces. It is so imbalanced one can lose at second turn! So no dumb algorithm using stupid pawn frontal assault will do. Chess is a pure combat game. The goal is to destroy opponent. SMACX is not. It is a combination of many elements and it is possible to win with cooperation and without destroying everybody else. So sure. Viable "blitzkrieg" strategy make war part of game more interesting but it diminishes other parts of the game like development, expansion, accent to transcendence. And that is the major complaints for this imbalance.

Total war (or total war oriented mindset) could work for multiplier games. After all most of the multipliers are about fight to the death between human participants when AI is just a fodder. However, it does not work for single player one where player may role-play or try to build and empire or develop, etc. Fighting human never get boring as both sides learn and present new and new challenges to each other. Fighting AI gets boring as AI does not learn. That is why there is no notion of *balance* in multiplayer but there is in single-player. The single-player *balance* is just a predefined finely tuned ruleset of the game that makes it last longer before it becomes completely boring. The one that prolongs player learning curve until they able to beat it every time.

I would turn your statement around by saying multiplayer is never broken. There is no point to measure the game by it. Single player mode is the biggest challenge.

Therefore I am with dino on it. 1) Ruleset need to be adjusted to make war not a single prevalent strategy and 2) AI should be continued to be tuned to present more challenge to player.
Keep in mind, though, neither dino nor me advocate for an absolutely impenetrable defense. It should be more economically effective in some cases but less in others, etc. Like base behind PD should be an ultimate sanctuary that is most difficult to destroy and it definitely should present more economical losses for attacker. Not if units fight in the open. So more powerful and/or skillful opponent should be able to win but they have to be more powerful and skillful for that! That is the only thing we promote. That translates to build/fight decision in multiplayer games too when immediate assault at the beginning of the game is easy to deflect and it may or may not be the best strategy! So player needs to weight their options more carefully.

And 3) yes, we are not an intended audience for games in general. That is why we are doing our own games (even if on a base of existing ones). 😁

There are not many of us. Let's get together and find good rational core in each others ideas to please ourselves and each other. Ability to converse with equally mindset people is precious!

[JoGr223]

Ruleset need to be adjusted to make war not a single prevalent strategy

do you mean prevalent as "most commonly deployed by AI" or as "the most effective strategy to win by human/AI" ? if the former then simply you can modify in each faction settings flags ai-fight to -1 and ai-power to 0 and everyone should behave like angel ?

since you nerfed attacking in your mod I assume you either mean both or the latter
if you think it's single best strategy to be warmonger then I don't agree, actually more likely the opposite is true: peaceful play is the most optimal for winning. This is true for most factions but with exceptions for a few war-minded faction like hive: basically often hive has to fight or blackmail to get techs, this is kinda their destiny, thats how they were designed. But since hive is a weak faction and freemarket factions are the best eg morgan,lal,univ and for these best factions peaceful play is optimal, therefore the conclusion is that peaceful play is overall the best

Here are the main arguments:
1) in 1v1 scenario whoever starts war usually is at disadvantage;  let's say we play peace morgan1 vs warmonger morgan2; this is because if peaceful opponent will play optimally he will make sure not to be surprised: so for example in typical scenario let's say our closest bases are 20 squares apart and war will be executed using 4-1-2 units. So with infiltration morgan1 realizes morgan2 is amassing army: he will make sure to have some contingency defence units in place and some scout units; since morgan2 is amassing army morgan1 will know he needs to prepare too; so now when morgan2 is making army units morgan1 is still making crawlers for a few more turns - morgan1 knows it takes at least 10 turns for enemy to arrive, and since he has a few scouts he will exactly know at least 5 years ahead before enemy can touch any of his base (scouts are on boarders); so even if u have two factions that are exactly the same , they have 20 bases each, then whoever starts war preparation will by necessity have smaller industry potential; even if it was just 1 crawler more per base x 20 bases then this is huge advantage for peaceful player; now consider also that warmonger can't run freemarket when he moves units outside his territory; this 1) statement is true whichever factions face each other if all else is equal (i mean random factors excluded); even for hive vs hive if tech-parity is given;in typical scenarios especially it is even true for lal vs hive or gaia vs lal etc
2) in global game aspect of 7 factions: whichever factions fight they just kill each other, while the rest benefits; this is always true and pure logic; fighting factions just change balance of power between themselves while bleeding; meanwhile others grow in every aspect; this is true whenever there are at least 3 factions in game of course: if 2 fight, the 3rd benefits

of course there are some limitations to this: first the territory - on tiny maps especially this will be less true as areas of growth are limited: if u cant expand vertically, then peaceful play is mostly either teching or vertical growth;
but even in this 2268 game i just played on standard map: if i was not attacked by hive and lal i could just make mass drop colony pods +sea colony pods and get 2x base count in 5 years; actually it would be interesting to see how much morgan there could gain in 10 years - this could be run as a challenge with diplomacy edit of permanent pacts with everyone except hive where permanent truce is set

the other limitation factor is tech: the more tech is already discovered by everyone the less is yet to be discovered so the teching will give less advantage; if everyone is at 100% tech then of course it is not a differentiator any more; so the lesser the differentiator it is the more it may make sense to just go war

to put it simply: peaceful play gives biggest ROI; ROI from conquering bases is much worse than for example just building crawlers 

[dino]

I understand you are quite aware of both Thinker and WTP mods. Not to specifically advertise WTP one but everything you mentioned is implemented there for this exact purpose that you explained: to make defense viable. I'd like to clarify whether you advocate porting these changes to Thinker or just highlighting general vanilla war imbalances?

We've already convinced Inducti0 to implement these in thinker as optional features, I'd personaly make it a default config, but I know it's unlikely that Inductio would go for it.
I was just trying to at least advertise these balance changes to players who are after some kind of a "vanilla plus" experience and wouldn't try WtP.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Ruleset need to be adjusted to make war not a single prevalent strategy

do you mean prevalent as "most commonly deployed by AI" or as "the most effective strategy to win by human/AI" ? if the former then simply you can modify in each faction settings flags ai-fight to -1 and ai-power to 0 and everyone should behave like angel ?

Sorry, I didn't understand the difference. Prevalent strategy is the one that is computed best in most of the cases (95% for example). It is most effective strategy for both AI and human as it is the most effective strategy in general. The fact that AI does not use it does not make it less effective. It is just AI is missing on this opportunity.

if you think it's single best strategy to be warmonger then I don't agree, actually more likely the opposite is true: peaceful play is the most optimal for winning.
...

Don't tell me you didn't play this game for at least thousands times! Yes, mathematically, one can compute the point of just enough army to defend against aggression. However, this does not work in practice because of following thing.

The army effectiveness is insanely related to army size due to the attack over defense prevalence in vanilla. This is like cubic dependency of even more drastic. If two sides have same total army strength (adjusted for skill) they will destroy each other. However, if one side has just twice as stronger army they incur not 50% losses but 10-20% losses. And if they are triple sized then they most likely incur zero losses. When you are on the edge of mutual army destruction a slight increase in army count results in huge advantage.
Let's say, as in your example, a faction can match opponent forces and have 50% extra production capacity. Then if it spends this capacity for further development and neighbor attacks - both armies will be destroyed and both defenseless factions will be just taken by others. Game over.
Now if this faction uses its 50% extra capacity to double the army and launch preventive strike it'll destroy opponent's army in a matter of few turns, keep about 80% of theirs, and taking all enemy territory as a prize just as a side effect. Then conqueror switches to infrastructure improvement and production power increase, research army refinement, army reinforcement and cycle repeats until nobody can stop it.
Granted doubling territory does not immediately double the production power as these new bases need to be worked out on. But still the growth acceleration is incomparable to peaceful development. I personally saw the jump on power graph when I do that every time and all other players did and I am sure you observed it too. Why arguing that conquest is not the best development strategy?

Your shiny ivory tower mathematical computations are also broken by huge random variations in faction initial development. There are common case when faction is 2-3 time stronger than neighbor. According to your computation extra 20 turns of building army before the assault does not save weaker faction. Stronger one will just send waves and waves of triple reinforcements until its done. Unfortunate factions won't have any chance to survive at all. And that is another thing we are trying to prevent.

Let me reiterate it. The game is designed to last somewhere 300-400 turns. Everything is tuned to that: tech tree, research speed, chassis speed, road speed, map sizes, multipliers - everything! If this game would end every time at turn 100-150 it would omit large portion of its content. Which is what actually happens in vanilla! That is what we are fixing here.

Not sure if I got to you with this. Maybe it requires more detailed explanation.

[JoGr223]

Alpha Centauri Bear
question: do you think if 2 players of same skill play multiplayer (let's say experts) and they play same faction on mirrored map, so no random factors interfere and let's say it's pure 1/1, no AIs in game  (again to eliminate random factors) - then do you think the one of them who will plan a war and attack first (aka warmonger player) will win the game ?

consequently the other player (peaceful defender) will lose ? note that in such scenario I assume peaceful defender can switch to total war once he is attacked and then proceed with total war for exhaustion - he is still considered peaceful player as he didn't start the war, so the war is "justice war" for him and he can righteously kill his opponent as he cant trust him anymore to switch to transcendence mode win (so this is diplomatic assumption for this scenario)

let's assume its standard, round map and they start both on the equator maximum distance away from each other

also interesting how other ppl answer this question

also please specify what would be the optimal moment of attack ? estimated year and with what kind of war technology (eg 4-1-2 or 14-1-12 or nukes or drops ?)
if u wanna answer "largely depends on faction played" then let's assume lal vs lal for brevity also would be interesting if u specify any other "war plan" eg how many attacker army, maybe army composition (how many different kind of units) etc

since this is Thinker thread assume Thinker 3.0 mod (it has a few rebalances)

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Alpha Centauri Bear
question: do you think if 2 players of same skill play multiplayer (let's say experts) and they play same faction on mirrored map, so no random factors interfere and let's say it's pure 1/1, no AIs in game  (again to eliminate random factors) - then do you think the one of them who will plan a war and attack first (aka warmonger player) will win the game ?

consequently the other player (peaceful defender) will lose ? note that in such scenario I assume peaceful defender can switch to total war once he is attacked and then proceed with total war for exhaustion - he is still considered peaceful player as he didn't start the war, so the war is "justice war" for him and he can righteously kill his opponent as he cant trust him anymore to switch to transcendence mode win (so this is diplomatic assumption for this scenario)

let's assume its standard, round map and they start both on the equator maximum distance away from each other

I am not sure what mirrored map is and how can you switch off all randomness but let's assume you can.

Then the answer to your question is peaceful faction wins taken they are of same production power (an important condition). Your previous computation is absolutely irrefutably mathematically correct as I stated in my previous post. There is no argument about that and we can close this discussion.

This is not the question we are facing when choosing which way to go modding. The question is - what actually happens in the game most of the time and whether we like it and, if not, which way we go to make it more likable for us?

What I am leading at is that your proof is absolutely correct but it lays on top of very important and very rarely occurring condition that both sides are economically equal and no random event will tilt this equality besides player actions only. If you look at if from this point of view you'll realize that it never happens in game built on randomness foundation. So even if your conclusion is true it is not practically applicable to any game related discussion. Sorry, I didn't mean to diminish your logical efforts but we need to acknowledge that to move further. Let me know if you still think your result is applicable (not just true) to the game. That was my opinion only and I may be mistaken as anybody.

As a fun exercise I'll give another analogy. Chess. A completely deterministic game with an absolute ideal initial balance of power and perfectly symmetric position. Following your logic with such balance of power and lack of randomness two armies should destroy each other resulting in draw most of the time. Yet quite often people win and lose. Why is that? You will be surprised but, if you think about it, the answer is attack over defense prevalence!
😁
Indeed there is no defense in chess. Attacking piece wins 100% of times. The only way to counter opponent attack is to sacrifice cheaper piece and counter-attack. The active defense in its utmost form. When a player loses a piece they fall below in number of attacks and balance can never be restored (unless other side make mistakes too) just because number of attacks is the only resource that leads to local wins and even more imbalance in material and so on. Snowballing in action.

Once again. That does work perfectly for multiplayer but sucks in single player. You won't be playing thousand games against chess computer that loses every time, would you?

also please specify what would be the optimal moment of attack ? estimated year and with what kind of war technology (eg 4-1-2 or 14-1-12 or nukes or drops ?)
if u wanna answer "largely depends on faction played" then let's assume lal vs lal for brevity also would be interesting if u specify any other "war plan" eg how many attacker army, maybe army composition (how many different kind of units) etc

since this is Thinker thread assume Thinker 3.0 mod (it has a few rebalances)

It is largely depends on ruleset. Answer is different for vanilla - Thinker - WTP - AIGrowth, etc. And could be different for each version albeit slightly.
For vanilla it is certainly Fusion reactor + Needlejet. I don't remember if Thinker adopted WTP reactor modifications. If yes then is it not that straightforward. Ask bvanavery. He has good opinion on it. I would say for Thinker/WTP total war starts after satellites + magtubes + paratroopers.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Couple more notes.

First strike does matter obviously but it is less relevant than sheer army size and/or production power. Three times smaller army probably still don't have chance even with the first strike.

I don't understand why people rank factions. Their differences are exceptionally minor comparing to other random factors. The one who lands on jungle wins. They are not only minor they are sanely balanced. You can play pretty much any tactics with any faction barred some exception like Yang should use PS and Miriam should mostly attack. Other than that it is pretty minor factor.

[JoGr223]

I don't understand why people rank factions. Their differences are exceptionally minor comparing to other random factors. The one who lands on jungle wins. They are not only minor they are sanely balanced. You can play pretty much any tactics with any faction barred some exception like Yang should use PS and Miriam should mostly attack. Other than that it is pretty minor factor.

you lost me here  maybe cause I have some foundations in science methodology from years ago, which I barely remember, but which lead me to completely different conclusions; and also experience as player so i have very clear views on faction ranking (eg morgan wins vs yang ~90% of times)

you seem not to understand the need of constructing this kind of isolated experiments where randomness is controlled (minimized/eliminated)

another try to explain: let's say we play any faction vs same faction, same skill of players; eg angels vs angels; but 2nd angels is slightly boosted (let's say give them +100ec like morgan has) - given what you say above you consider it completely minor as you consider even bigger differences minor; OK, whatever; you can say other factors matter a lot like being in jungle - this is true; now play million such games with all the random factors; 2nd angels will win more than lose - we can't say now how often, roughly it will depend on number of games played, my estimates:
1) 100 games played - they win 60%
2) 1000 - 70%
3) 1000000 - 95%

maybe at million it will be just 75% - the point is the more such experiments you make the better your confidence about the level of difference between these 2 factions with just minor difference; another point - minor difference translates to major win/lose difference ; same as in sports - if one runner for 1000m distance is better just 2%, he will have seconds/miliseconds better times, but he will win 95% of time

the more you isolate randomness the less games you need to play to say which faction is really better

saying that factions differences are minor is quite bold statement, I will say mildly it's the strongest thing u said that alters my perception of your views on SMAC

mirrored map is when you have same, equal starting positions, completely symmetrical map, like for example in starcraft pro games

Chess. A completely deterministic game with an absolute ideal initial balance of power and perfectly symmetric position. Following your logic with such balance of power and lack of randomness two armies should destroy each other resulting in draw most of the time. Yet quite often people win and lose. Why is that? You will be surprised but, if you think about it, the answer is attack over defense prevalence!

this is not following my logic; "why is that" ? because ppl differ in skill obviously; also it has been researched that there is no perfect initial balance: white is slightly better than black, just because white always starts, IIRC on average white wins like ~52% of time or so; it's small difference, but it is
following my logic you could say if ppl of exact same skill play million games, results will be 50.0001% more wins for player A compared to B (because they also swap sides black/white); also this is actually relatively easy to test and im sure it has been done: by using top chess AI engines like stockfish

[dino]

Then the answer to your question is peaceful faction wins taken they are of same production power (an important condition). Your previous computation is absolutely irrefutably mathematically correct as I stated in my previous post. There is no argument about that and we can close this discussion.

Is it always the case with vanilla rules ? Because that is what the question was about and for me it's hard to believe.
I'll present two theorethical scenarios and please explain me how they are not the case in multiplayer.

1) Simplified ideal theoretical  scenario one:
Everything is connected with magtubes, the armies consist of equal number of units with att/def 2:1
In preparation for an assault aggressor neglecting development adds 20% to his units count, all cheap armorless assault units.

With 1:1 against perimeter, the base assault results for 10 defenders are: first 10 engagements 50% losses on both sides, remaining units are near death, three cheap rovers finish remaining defenders and take over a base without much further damage. In the first turn of combat you can wipe out 80% of enemy forces and bases, while suffering 40% military losses, you start on equal footing, you end the first turn with at least 3:1 advantage in bases and units, the war is practcically won before defender could even respond.

2) Scenario two, there are no tubes, no paratroopers, no planes, defender stations a lot of armorless rovers on the border, his bases are connected with roads:
Attacker in most cases can't approach and attack enemy within the same turn, so his forces will be striken down in the open by even 2x weaker defender with almost no loses on the defender side, since in this scenario aggressor doesn't get the first strike on a tactical level and in vanilla SMAC it's the only thing that matters. Successfull offensive against competent player is impossible in this stage of the game.

Both scenarios display how degenerate the ruleset is. With balance changes as outlined, neither side would be immediately victorious and in both cases and they would end up in an economically crippling stalemate instead, so a war against opponent of equal size is pointless unless it's the last two standing total war. Otherwise for a war to be worth it, you have to work out an advantage first: grow bigger, secure an alliance, backstab a faction already engaged in war, sculp and secure some geographically isolated opportunity target ( local advantage ), etc. Once you have an advantage, the offensive should be neither a cakewalk, nor impossible at any stage of the game.

Another accusation was that it would dumb down the tactical combat. I think it's completely untrue, in vanilla you can't play any kind of positional placement and teritory control outside of the bases, the assault consist entirelly out of hopping with fast units from base to base by roads, tubes, or air, it's a death sentence to end a turn with your units in the open. These changes should actually make a wider range of units and tactics viable at any stage of the game.

[Induktio]

Okay, let's comment on some things.

> 1) Edit armor values in alphax.txt to change att/def ratio from 2:1, to around 3:2.

Regarding this and other ideas, you can always publish a new alphax.txt version with your edits and then we can compare the player feedback. It's also possible to use Thinker's alphax.txt as a base for new modifications. Thinker-specific configuration is separated to its own config file, so there's nothing stopping from distributing new alphax.txt files separately. I would recommend creating a new repo on github for this purpose, so it's easier to monitor the changes.

> 2) No instant healing with command center, only 20% per turn.

Healing rate is already reduced in Thinker's config.

> 3) Disable collateral damage from loosing a unit in a stack.

Maybe? Also another consideration: probe stacks have implicit 100% collateral damage. It might be a good idea to provide a new config parameter for that.

> 1) in 1v1 scenario whoever starts war usually is at disadvantage;  let's say we play peace morgan1 vs warmonger morgan2; this is because if peaceful opponent will play optimally he will make sure not to be surprised

Ah, but this reasoning relies on gaining and having accurate infiltration info. In this respect the vanilla game is very unbalanced and unrealistic. In some other games the intel reports are incomplete or randomized to account for fog of war. I nerfed infiltation with counter_espionage option but maybe it could do more. Especially having exact unit composition/base production info seems a little too powerful.

> Let me reiterate it. The game is designed to last somewhere 300-400 turns.

But if you play using anywhere close to the optimal strategy, you should be transcending by 200 turns. So beyond that is not very relevant given the current game mechanics.

> I don't understand why people rank factions. Their differences are exceptionally minor comparing to other random factors.

Have to disagree here. Let's assume large map size and believers/morgan for example. There's no way believers could keep up on the early tech race if these factions start far away from each other. Maybe AI doesn't push all the advantages to the maximum but even then the differences are clearly seen.

[JoGr223]

> 1) in 1v1 scenario whoever starts war usually is at disadvantage;  let's say we play peace morgan1 vs warmonger morgan2; this is because if peaceful opponent will play optimally he will make sure not to be surprised

Ah, but this reasoning relies on gaining and having accurate infiltration info. In this respect the vanilla game is very unbalanced and unrealistic. In some other games the intel reports are incomplete or randomized to account for fog of war. I nerfed infiltation with counter_espionage option but maybe it could do more. Especially having exact unit composition/base production info seems a little too powerful.

how is this unbalanced and unrealistic? "in some other games"  I'll say: in some actual realities like we actually live in you have excellent info about each other forces  just look at USA/Russia balance today: we see russia creeping on ukraine, we know very well how big are their forces on the boarder; not only intelligence and government forces know it, every citizen has this info available within few seconds of search I know peaceful treaties regarding nukes makes auditing process of each other to guarantee balance, idk but maybe similar stuff is for regular armies
when let's say past first half of 20th century there was a war where defended country said "omg i didnt know attacker has 2x bigger army than me" ?

I'd say for balance and "realistic" aspect it would be better if just having treaties meant by default you have infiltration: due to goods and boarder crossing of citizen it's much easier to sustain infiltration; also why in 22nd century specialized intelligence forces would be worse at infiltration ? do you think counter-intelligence measures will evolve in same pace ? short argument against it: complexity, more complexity=harder to cover all potential infiltration areas

also consider instead "very unbalanced and unrealistic." that it was done by design ? to make game actually more peaceful - this is great ! thats why i even turned off this "random infiltration losing" param in my games
if you have treaties currently AI will tell you "withdraw forces immediately" even when don't actually see your forces - i think its good

=======
this entire premise of dino and Alpha Centauri Bear's "change 2/1 to 3/2" is made on unfounded assumption - and this is main argument to "nerf fighitng, conquering is OP"

when exactly do you have 2/1 ? how about sensors +25% to defender ? base +25% defender (when attacked by rover) creche +12,5% to defender; AAA tracking +100% to defender vs air; ECMcomm jammer +50% defender bonus vs fast; specialized anti-speeder armour defender bonus
sensor alone make the entire argument pointless - it's super easy to insta-build, zero cost, v.strong

how about that if you going to war and focus on building army then ur opponent is still teching up ? so he might as well have better armour than you OR better weapon - so instead 2/1 like eg 8/4 which mean 8- vs -4 you may as well be 8- vs -5
OR even more likely 8- vs 10- -- the whole assumption attacker vs "defender's armour" is wrong because defender more likely will use weapons and not armour to defend, eg early game with speeder vs speeder or assult infantry vs speeder;
you guys dino and Alpha Centauri Bear don't talk these details - so i think u just dont know them  I asked about army composition of attacker and didnt get any answer
are you aware for example that in 4-1-2 vs 2-1-2 it maybe be more efficient to defend with 2-1-2 ?

where is 2/1 in air fight ? how about aerospace complex giving +100% air def ? so with AAA units u get 4x armour; so you dont have 2/1 ratio but 1/2 ratio + insanely good not to say OP sensor; sensor is so strong that u often actually need to destroy it first before fighting base
also in air fight are you aware that 14-1-12 unit can be killed instantly by 4-1-9sam unit ? and this sam defender is actually ~33% cheaper ! (im talking about scenario where sam unit attacks air to air, not as defender)

in late game what about tachylon ? give bonus both vs land and air; again breaks ur 2/1 ratio even further - but it doesn't even make sense to build it as ur better off defending with weapon-based units not armour based

drop pods: they are great, but get -50% penalty if the attack immediately; +they may get -20% health just for dropping

drop pods with space elevator - this might be OP, but its the ultimate game ender tech

this kind of nerfing of entire conquer aspect of game, and why because AI likes to fight ? this is 4x game not 3x game (removing conquer aspect); beside idk exactly how AI is coded but i know about these flags that make them want to proceed peacefully or warmongering; so its not like "AI is conquering a lot so it must be best strategy" - AI conquers cause thats their DNA

btw If we are not speaking of playing just vs AI, but doing some RPG, lets say human players only, then it would entirely make sense if lal-governor says "i have biggest eco potential and total infiltration and i decide this is peaceful game, I impose total ban on units with weapon >1; if you make single such weaponized unit it will be considered war mongering and act of war against the peaceful factions of the planet" 
will anyone dare to question that ? yes, if you make some allies "against peaceful order factions"
my point is if 2 factions are equal or 3/3 allies factions are equal in potential, then its just arbitraty decision if they like to go to war or they like to win peaceful - all output is decided mostly by eco+ind+tech potential anyway

[dino]

> but it doesn't even make sense to build [ Tachyon Field ] as ur better off defending with weapon-based units not armour based.

It's like the entire point of the whole issue summed up in a single sentence...

Our change doesn't make offensive combat impossible, it makes deffensive one viable on a tactical level.
Vanilla rules make offensive war impossible untill long range units and magtubes come into play, because defense with weapon based units strike in the open is unbeatable.

Our change makes offensive war challenging but manageable in every stage of the game, if you manage to work out some advantage first, ( although I think WtP went a bit too far with homeland security bonus ).
We consider that to be a more satysfying balance in general, that a more passive by nature AI would benefit from the change is only a bonus, but a crucial one as far as single player is concerned.
And yes, many tactics, unit types and strategies you are used to could stop being as effective and you'd have to conisder new ones previously unviable.