AI weights for Secret Projects

[bvanevery]

In alphax.txt the Secret Projects have weights assigned to them, to tell the AI about their desirability:

Code: [Select]

; ai-fight=Corresponds with AI 'aggressiveness' setting of -1, 0, or 1
; ai-mil= military value
; ai-tech= advance-of-knowledge value
; ai-infra= infrastructure value
; ai-colonize= colonization value
In the original game, none of the weights are higher than "2".  I am wondering if they can be, and what the effects would be?  I didn't want to get into it for my 1.29 mod release.  If it works at all, it could change the gameplay a lot, and I already had plenty to shove out the door for 1.29.

Some of the weights are even negative.  I assume it's to discourage an AI with a particular research focus, from pursuing that Secret Project.  Some of those negative weights are misguided.  For instance, I don't know why a military player should avoid the Human Genome Project, as opposed to any other SP.  You need lots of things to keep an army in the field and happy citizens doesn't hurt your military.

Some of the negative weights are just plain wrong.  For instance, the Empath Guild.  Seasoned multiplayers will tell you that automatic infiltration of other factions is quite valuable, to the point of them thinking that SP is game breaking, must be put later in the tech tree, must be more expensive, etc.  The Xenoempathy Dome weight is similarly wrong.  Moving on fungus as roads yields enormous tactical advantages, as well as more strategic movement capability over long distances.  It's pretty clear with most of these negative weights, that the game designers had no idea what they were talking about.  The only one that actually makes sense is for the Voice of Planet.  If you want a Conquest victory, you do not want to start this project.

I have interpreted the weights as follows:
0 = not important to this research focus
1 = somewhat of interest to this research focus
2 = VERY important to this research focus

But some things I'd dial up even higher, if I knew it would work.  For instance, the Weather Paradigm.  Gotta be worth 3 or 4 to an ai-infra faction, if it's allowed.  It merely puts one on the fast track to using Condensers and Boreholes to win the game!  Especially in a Thinker mod game, everyone should be killing each other to get this SP.  Yet in my last test game, I saw an AI just blow it off when it could have rushed it.  An Explore and Build focused faction, no less, who got B3 Ecological Engineering first and started the project first.  Just blew it off when some other AI decided to finish it a little sooner.  Completely dumb, took the Merchant Exchange as a booby prize.

If higher values cause the AIs to claw tooth and nail over various SPs, well that's just something I didn't have time to playtest for my 1.29 mod.  It could have unintended consequences.  Like making an unfun game that sucks for a human player, because they can't get anything with all the AIs going totally ruthless.

[Vidsek]

   An interesting subject.   I haven't been able to find any documentation on whether or not values above +2 are allowed or whether the AI would actually understand them.  Testing is in order, go to it and good luck .

  With some other parameters, a wide range of values are permissible (aka won't cause a crash), but the AI can't process anything other than the standard limited range (eg. 0, 1 or -1, 0, 1).  What it actually does when the value is outside those ranges, I haven't tested or found documentation of.

[bvanevery]

Testing is in order, go to it and good luck .

Blagh, way too burnt out on testing anything right now.  Spent all my energy on determining I should not change the Pirates at this time.

[Vidsek]

         LOL, it can wait.  Your pirates work was interesting.  They're an odd faction with their aquatic start and resulting differences in how they start.

  I've long been suspicious of their +1 MINERALS on all water squares, and their ability to develop over an abyssal depth.
  The latter can be justified by their use of floating platforms a la Waterworld.  But the minerals imply a technology that normal factions don't have and can never learn.
  From a gameplay perspective, to give them some unique qualities, I can see it, but my logical, scientific side wants either those traits to be removed or given to all factions once they have (eventually) researched or stolen them.
  I lean on the side of not spreading them further.

  Would the pirates be excessively crippled without that mineral bonus?  An INDUSTRY and SUPPORT penalty wasn't a burden, but was that due to those not being hugely important to them, or was it swamped by the glut of minerals?
  Since changing these bonuses seems to be an *.exe editing matter, or removing the AQUATIC trait from them (not acceptable), I'll go with Pirates being Pirates as they are, greed, braided nosehair and all.

[bvanevery]

  Would the pirates be excessively crippled without that mineral bonus?

No.  They'd have to hug the coast more to get the minerals.  Just like real pirates.  They'd still have a massive mobility advantage over other factions, a moat, marine detachments on every ship...

An INDUSTRY and SUPPORT penalty wasn't a burden, but was that due to those not being hugely important to them, or was it swamped by the glut of minerals?

I don't think the Pirates achieve a glut of minerals early in the game.  For instance, in the Secret Project races I documented, they only had 6 to 8 minerals in the cities they built their projects in.  They outright lost a SP race to a land power, even though they had the cash to rush the project.  They simply got beat, slightly, on how many minerals they had in their city to produce the SP.

Pirates get a glut of minerals when Planetary Economics rolls around and they get +1 mineral per mining platform.