Turning SMAX back into strategy game

[bvanevery]

MY 2230.  Domai tried to extort me.  Since he's a near neighbor to the east and has nothing better to do than bother me, I thought about buying him off.  But I do not like that.  I decided, let's see if in this mod, he's capable of being a real threat.  At least now I know I'm going to have to spend a lot of time cranking out military units.

Interestingly, the Command Nexus has not been built yet.  I do have 4 Artifacts sitting around, which is half of the 400 cost.  I just fished a 5th, but it's deep in Domai's back waters, so may not make it home.  I don't have any spare capacity to build an expensive Supply Crawler.  Nevertheless I'm going to try to build the Command Nexus.

Domai destroys the Laser Skimship I had en route to the Caretakers, but at great cost to his own ship.  I shall attempt to sail past him with a mere Transport.

I think it's time to accept that I am technologically ass-backwards and it's time to go Fundamentalist.  If I were at peace, my main mission would be to connect to the large island that has the Garland Crater, then colonize it.  New tech doesn't change that in any way.

Weird for Fundamentalist to be PLANET friendly, yet the Believers are PLANET unfriendly for being religious.  I think Fundamentalist means too many things to people.  Fundamentalist Christian, Fundamentalist Eco-Nazi, Fundamentalist mindworm cult, Fundamentalist U.N. Charter, Fundamentalist what to do with Manifold Six?  In my mod, I got rid of the Believers' -1 PLANET penalty.  None of the rest of the lore of the game supports this.  Miriam's videos aren't anti-Planet, they're anti-Cyborg.

MY 2232.  I gain 2 more Artifacts although getting them home will be tricky.  A city becomes available to build something surplus.  A Supply Crawler is expensive, 14 turns of effort, by which time I could have possibly completed the Command Nexus by other means.

Instead I design the 0-4-4 Skimship Probe Team.  The armor doesn't cost any more than the 0-2-4 version, which seems like a flaw.  Glad the AI doesn't know how to make these!  Now I will go bug Domai.  Maybe this is even the answer to holding him off, just get him to suicide against my ships.  Note too, I will benefit from the PROBE exploit, these ships will be trained.  And any increases in base probe team morale in the tech tree; I removed all of those from my mod.

I learned last game, that naval power is the way to exploit this mod.  Now we'll see if I can put it into practice, even given the seriously bad start I had.

I whine to Zhakarov again, and he gives me Centauri Empathy.  I'm such a crybaby.  It gives Green.  With a -2 INDUSTRY penalty, I don't feel it's all that helpful for a war effort though.  I also wonder if that's too onerous for the traditional PLANET friendly factions.

I now realize I'm benefiting from an undisplayed extra TALENT given by Fundamentalist.

MY 2235.  I don't manage to make contact with the Caretakers, but I see a Drone 4-2-1 marching around on their land, so perhaps they are at war.  Far to the east in Drone territory, my Transport with an Artifact pulls out of the Sargasso Sea and begins heading home.

MY 2237.  I contact the Caretakers.  They sign a Treaty and sell me High Energy Chemistry.  I whine to Zhakarov again and he hands me Doctrine: Initiative.  The Maritime Control Center has not been built yet.  It is even more expensive than the Command Nexus though, so I think I'll stick with the original plan.  I design a Destroyer Probe Team and a Plasma Coastal and get started on prototypes in 2 coastal cities.

MY 2238.  The Cyborgs conquer a minor Peacekeeper city and steal Gene Splicing from them.  I trade them for it.

MY 2240.  2 more Artifacts have made it home, although they're not to the Command Nexus city yet.  A Drone Plasma Coastal attacks one of my Sea Formers and actually dies.

MY 2243.  The Cyborgs complete the Command Nexus before I can bring my Artifacts to the appropriate city.  I switch to the Maritime Control Center like everyone else.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Wealth has a -1 EFFICiency penalty!  I don't understand why.  In my mod it gives a +1 EFFIC bonus.  In this mod, also -2 MORALE.  In exchange, a mere +1 ECONOMY and +1 INDUSTRY.

There is no why in games in general and in SE composition in particular. I tried to keep them as close to box game as possible or, at least, keep the main element like +2 ECONOMY in Free Market.
Read my readme. There is a section about SE composition there. In short, EFFICIENCY and ECONOMY are two strongest effects. I tried to negate one with another. So you never see them with same sign in any of my SE choices.

I tried to balance models by spreading effects across them evenly. Looks like I've more or less achieved my goal. Now, honestly, I sometimes don't even know what to choose - they are so close in summary effect. Unless I have clear war preference, other options are difficult to decide for. What is better +1 energy each square or +2 INDUSTRY or +2 POLICE or +2 SUPPORT - tough to say. They've become kind of colorless for me.

I am thinking to revert my thin spreading a little. Allocate not 4 but 3 effects at most for each model, even future society ones. Make changes stronger instead to create a well recognized theme. Like Police State is mainly for POLICE, Democracy is for EFFICIENCY, Green is for PLANET, Planned is for INDUSTRY, Knowledge is for RESEARCH, etc. This way many people would be able to make a selection by SE model name. That is much easier than to weigh in each and every small change and chose between 3^4 possible selection combinations.

[bvanevery]

Details you gotta be @#$ kidding me

you gotta be @#$ kidding me

I QUIT.

I'm not playing with this kind of garbage.  That was my Maritime Control Center city with 5 Artifacts in it.  I had forgotten about this sort of thing because I seem to have fixed it in my mod a long time ago.  The main trick was getting rid of PROBE bonuses.  It caused the AI to calm down about abusing with Probe Teams.  I think it no longer seemed like the best deal since sliced bread to the AI, so it didn't make so many, or try so much to take things over.  Another thing that's galling in this case, is between Fundamentalist and my faction bonus, I have a +2 PROBE rating.  That city isn't out in the boonies, it's 9 squares away from my capitol.  My cash reserve isn't that large, only 156, but it's not 0 either.

Just how rich do the Drones have to be to punk me this way?  Scenario Editor says the Drones have 59 credits now.  They have Democratic Simple Wealth, no PROBE advantage at all.  Loading an autosave of the previous turn, they had 393 credits.  So they spent ~320 credits to punk me, when I have half as much as a reserve, which is supposed to affect the outcome of these things.  I have rage quit this game in disgust about this sort of thing, more times than I can remember.  Much more than any other problem with the game.

It's not Tim's fault, it's just not something I think he's gotten around to thinking about or dealing with in his mod.  But I am DONE with this and going back to my own modding now.  I wanted to know what kind of threat a near neighbor such as Domai could present, and now I know.  A completely intolerable one, because of overpowered Probe Teams.  How was I to know?  I figured he'd land a bunch of Speeders or something, like Cha Dawn did.  This is completely ridiculous and broken.

My other major takeaway from this game, is my map generation modifications are seriously, seriously worth having.  It can be completely pointless to play the game with a start as bad as I got.  You can do it if you have something to prove, but I proved things like that over the years, over and over again a long time ago.  I modded that garbage out of existence, and I'm sticking to that!

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

What PROBE bonuses are you talking about? Is it PROBE SE rating? If so then this doesn't decrease base buying cost. The base owner negative PROBE rating does.

[bvanevery]

Code: [Select]

#SOCPROBE
-2, -50% cost of enemy probe team actions; enemy success rate increased
-1, -25% cost of enemy probe team actions; enemy success rate increased
 0, Normal security measures
 1, +1 probe team morale; +50% cost of enemy probe team actions
 2, +2 probe team morale; Doubles cost of enemy probe team actions!
 3, +3 probe team morale; Bases and units cannot be subverted by standard Probe Teams!!
I had +2 PROBE.  Enemy had no PROBE bonus of any kind, if that's even a factor.  Enemy spent ~320 credits to buy my base.  Assuming this table is correct and means something in the real world, the standard cost of buying my base was 160 credits.  That's awfully damn cheap for a base that's in my core empire, near my capitol.

I don't know why the AI doesn't go after land bases as much in my mod.  It almost obsesses about sea bases.  You are guaranteed that a Foil Probe Team is going to cross oceans to bother you at some point.  The sea base issue is highly annoying and makes me reticent to build sea bases at all.  But at least sea bases are not typically critical infrastructure for a land based faction.  If they become so later in the game, at least by then you've probably managed to produce defensive probe teams, or the Hunter-Seeker Algorithm.

In my mod, I removed PROBE bonuses from Fundamentalist, and otherwise only have them in Thought Control.  I made Foil Probe Teams as a predefined unit.  That's it.  Somehow, these things changed the AI's behavior.  In the stock game, when you're invading an enemy, typically the AI makes mountains upon mountains of probe teams to try to retake cities you've conquered.  Now it doesn't.  I don't know why.

I'm going to look up whatever this site has about how exactly base buying costs are determined.  Maybe there's something else in my modding that affected this.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

That is indeed looks cheap. What is your base size and what is the distance from HQ?

[bvanevery]

Ok, here's what I've figured out:
-Distance seems to be calculated with the "direct" distances (edge to edge, that's actually diagonal) counting as 1, and the corner-to-corner boundaries counting as 1.5 (round down.)  Perhaps the guys at Firaxis were D&D fans?

My distance is 9 squares, linked by road.  As the crow flies, that could be 7 edge squares and 2 corner squares, or 1 edge square and 8 corner squares.  That results in 10 or 9.5, respectively.  As the road goes, it would be the latter.  Let's just call it 10.

-For bases, the formula is (target faction's EC+1200)X(population+military units in the base+past mind controls+past unit subversions/4 rounded down)/(4+distance to HQ).  The effective distance is halved by a children's creche, halved by a punishment sphere, halved by nerve stapling, and tripled by a genejack factory.  Drone riots halve the final cost, and a golden age doubles it.  Finally, the result is multiplied by 1 more than the number of bases captured (I presume this means via mind control) this turn.

Assuming he's right, (153+1200)*(3+1+0+0/4)/(4+10) = 1353*4/14 = 386 credits.  I don't think that includes my +2 PROBE bonus either, which should bring it to 772 credits.  Instead my opponent only paid ~320 credits and didn't have any PROBE bonuses of his own, whether those affect the calculation or not.  Possibly my opponent made an additional ~60 credits during his turn popping pods, killing mindworms, or selling comm frequencies or something, and did pay ~380 credits to subvert me.  Which would still mean I was ripped off.

I know for fact that when I try to buy enemy cities, when the faction goes Fundamentalist in the stock game, costs go way up.  PROBE does and is supposed to have a major effect on cost.  +0 PROBE is pretty inexpensive to buy, +2 PROBE you'd need to be seriously Daddy Warbucks to do it.

I can't say this formula works for me. Could you run a test? It is also worth noting here the military units must be offensive, i.e. garrison doesn't increase the price (which is why I always believed that units don't affect the cost).

I had a 1-2-1 garrison.  If Yitzi is correct about the forumla, and Kirov is correct about offensive military units, the result is 1353*3/14 = 289 credits.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

AI also may have bonuses in buying bases. Same way they have bonuses in everything.

[bvanevery]

If true, then I'm absolutely justified in saying the stock game is a POS as far as probe teams go.  I just wonder why everything has calmed down in my mod. 

[Geo]

Perhaps difficulty level plays a part as well?

[bvanevery]

I'm playing on Transcend as always.  I haven't found anything specific to PROBE or Mind Control on ACWiki about that.  Found some pretty obscure ways to navigate the wiki though.  Orphaned pages and whatnot.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

bvanevery, thank you for spending time on my mod. I've already did some changes based on your input.

Now I am thinking about obtaining 4 weapon when other factions didn't get 4 armor yet. This is a big problem of early game with 1,2,4 weapon progression. Each one doubling the rating. The 1,2,3 would be much easier to balance. Well, I guess nothing can be done about 4 as its value is tied to the picture. Here are some options I thought so far.

Make 4 armor a level 1 technology. Currently it is level 2 same as 4 weapon but it seems that weapon usually got discovered earlier so it is even possible to get 5 weapon against 2 armor.

Make weapon progression 1,3,4 - this is still possible without messing with pictures. Then make starting armor = 3. This way discovering first weapon brings attacker on par with defender. Even if attacker discovers 4 weapon and 5 weapon soon, the 4/3 and 5/3 ratios are much better than 4/2.

[bvanevery]

Your "everyone gets 2 armor" decision is interesting, and has important cost of production consequences.  I still don't have a feel for what to do within that production and combat system.  I only know that land units cost too much compared to sea units.

I just solved the weapon and armor problems by mostly locking them to the Tier of tech.  My Particle Impactor comes at Tier 4 and that takes a long time to get to in my mod.  My tree is extremely dense, every single tech has 2 prereqs.  There really isn't any problem with someone getting a strength 4 weapon, because by then, lots of factions have got strength 3 armor, and some will soon have strength 4 armor.

I've pushed lots of non-weapon, non-armor technologies earlier in the tech tree.  The sheer amount of tech spam in the tree, makes it harder to get higher level weapons and armor.  It all take much longer.  Another thing is until recently I had very little "channeling" of the research weights.  Every Conquer tech was a "4" and there were lots of Conquer techs, far beyond just weapons and armor.  So it takes a long time to randomly punch through all of them.

In the extreme case I've had games where Orbital Spaceflight was an "available" tech for like, forever, but I still didn't manage to obtain it.  My Blind research can feel really blind because of the number of Conquer techs involved.  I'm just reflecting the reality of what Firaxis actually gave us in the tree, instead of implementing their policy of handing out weapon and armor "candy" to "underprivileged" factions.  I don't believe in that.

The way my tree has been working out recently, is many of the Tier 1 techs will be obtained quickly but you might miss 1 or 2.  They're also not difficult to trade for, as I don't have any Secret Projects at Tier 1 or Tier 2 that would prevent an AI from trading.  Information Networks is the tech most likely to be missed, as it is a pure Discover tech and only feeds Biogenetics.  All the other techs are feeding a lot more things and many are cross-listed for research foci.

Tier 2 is a lot broader, and has various Pure focus techs, so you are likely to miss some of the Tier 2 techs.  AI factions will trade them with you, but they may have missed something in their research as well, due to breadth.  Someone may just not be available to provide what you're looking for in Tier 2.

At Tier 3, Secret Projects come online hardcore and you're not going to get didly squat out of AI factions until they're completed.  I've not really seen the AI perform any of the "stupid moves" the way Roze and Aki-Zeta5 tend to do in the stock game, just giving away Secret Project bearing techs like Christmas presents.  Doesn't happen.  Must be some combo of Tier 3 + research weights put on things + almost nobody getting a starting tech.  The point is, anything at Tier 3 is a pretty serious barrier to progress in my mod, you've gotta earn it.  Even if a tech is not protected by a Secret Project, it's just difficult to climb your way up the tree by this point.  Lotsa breadth to send you off in some other direction.

If you get to Tier 4, you've basically achieved something important that other factions probably don't have yet.  Things like the Virtual World, Environmental Economics energy restriction lifted, supply crawlers, Genejack Factories, Cruisers, etc. come here.  The idea is you've gotten your advantage that you were working up towards, and now you need to go hurt somebody with whatever you got.  Or keep right on trucking with the world's best Builder faction or whatever.  And you are only getting Particle Impactors at this stage.

I have Missile launchers on par with Fusion Power and nukes, they're all Tier 6.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Your "everyone gets 2 armor" decision is interesting, and has important cost of production consequences.  I still don't have a feel for what to do within that production and combat system.  I only know that land units cost too much compared to sea units.

Why absolute armor value bothers you? Only relative weapon to armor ratio matters for odds. I set it to 2 so that single breakthrough in level 1 weapon technology doesn't give immediate 2:1 advantage. In early game with weak production and small number of bases one could wipe out a neighbor with a single rover. That is too devastating. Now I am facing the same problem with 4 weapon. It is a double jump from previous model.

Item rating has nothing to do with item cost. These are two separate numbers. I adjusted them both for different purposes. So the fact that 1-2-1 Scout Patrol costs 2 is mere coincidence. You'll see later that there is no exact match between unit strength and cost aside from my intent that stronger unit should generally cost more.

Sea units cost growths quadratically. So yes, early sea units are relatively cheap but later are catching up in cost. You cannot do anything about it. I can easily bump up early sea units and make them more expensive but then their later analogues will cost sun and moon. Not good either. See my cost calculation worksheet attached and play with numbers.

I just solved the weapon and armor problems by mostly locking them to the Tier of tech.  My Particle Impactor comes at Tier 4 and that takes a long time to get to in my mod.  My tree is extremely dense, every single tech has 2 prereqs.  There really isn't any problem with someone getting a strength 4 weapon, because by then, lots of factions have got strength 3 armor, and some will soon have strength 4 armor.

I've pushed lots of non-weapon, non-armor technologies earlier in the tech tree.  The sheer amount of tech spam in the tree, makes it harder to get higher level weapons and armor.  It all take much longer.  Another thing is until recently I had very little "channeling" of the research weights.  Every Conquer tech was a "4" and there were lots of Conquer techs, far beyond just weapons and armor.  So it takes a long time to randomly punch through all of them.

Again I don't understand why you bother with absolute timing. Only relative timing matters. Like 4 weapon should be next to 3,4,5 (or so) armors in the tree. It doesn't matter how exactly long it takes to discover it.

[bvanevery]

Decided I will test "1.1+" version of Tim's mod, by adding 2 changes of my own to deal with egregiousness per my "I QUIT!" post.

World Builder section: set Continent base=30, Continent modif.=60, Islands=0.  Despite the enormous amount of work I did once upon a time to arrive at these values, the actual changes needed to make better land masses is pretty trivial, just these 3 settings.  Feel free to use them if you decide you like them, without worrying about crediting me.  The license on my mod is for taking "big" portions of my work, not a setting here or there.

Predefined units: added Skimship Foil Probe team, in the hope that it diverts AI attention from obsessive land probe team production.  It may not.  The seeming change in AI behavior may be about PROBE values in the Social Engineering table.  But I think it is worth finding out one way or the other, so let's see if I get sucker punched by an overpowered probe team again.