SMAX - The Will to Power - mod

[Tayta Malikai]

2188: First Secret Project on Planet! Megaboosted AIs with -30% discounts on everything they do remain unable to compete with the industrial might of glorious SCIENCE.

No, seriously. They all seem to have given up on pursuing any projects. I'm not sure if it's the new production weights you added, or just the fact that projects cost more, but I remember (and confirmed by checking saves) that the AI was far more aggressive with pursuing projects in Thinker.

Could also just be bad luck, seeing as the Peacekeepers in lolada's Spartan game built quite a few projects, and AIs built some projects in bvanevery's games too.

Still, regardless of the cause, I now have the Human Genome Project under my belt and will soon have the Weather Paradigm as well, still very strong projects in spite of the price increases. Both will enable me to economize further on drone control and formers.

(click to show/hide)

An amusing incident. I probed the Edenists a while back (and lost the probe that I planned to disband to speed up projects, go figure), and saw they were building something very expensive in a fledgling coastal base. So I sent in a probe foil and sabotaged it. 90 minerals gone just like that.

(click to show/hide)

I am now at war with the Edenists, which was only a matter of time due to my Planned economy, so my immediate goal will be to secure continental supremacy, which should give me enough security to outstrip the other factions in the tech race. Not sure what projects I will pursue yet, though the Living Refinery is definitely a priority to ameliorate that accursed ---SUPPORT penalty.

I can also confirm that free Psi Gates now correctly appear inside captured enemy bases. Could be pretty stronk.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer/blob/master/wtp_changelog.md#version-155

I have v156, and it doesn't work there.

That may be my bad. I have rolled back versions 155 and 156 completely and now I am incrementing version counter again. So 155 and 156 have completely new and different zip files now on github. I understand this is rookie mistake and I didn't thought it through. I should probably completely remove and skip these numbers to not confuse people. Sorry for hasty work. My only excuse is an awesome responsiveness. 😛


Here. I just did this. Renamed 156->158. Please test it out.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

So I made the switch to Democracy+Planned, and hooooly bajeezus, this is painful. Every single unit costs minerals to support; I can either have formers, or I can have an army. No such thing as a free lunch in this mod!

Fortunately there is a way around this. It involves an advanced technique known as the support base. As the name suggests, you build extra bases with the explicit purpose of soaking up unit support costs, allowing you to maximize output in your important bases. Three bases are at 15 minerals now, and I should be able to push it to 20 soon.

I have also begun work on Hologram Theatres in bases approaching size 4. This will allow me to trim more fat by disbanding excess scout patrols. The maintenance costs will be covered by drilling more boreholes and building tidal harnesses everywhere. The good news about switching to Democracy is that not only did it remove the hated -INDUSTRY penalty, it also allows me to actually have an energy income (going from 1/turn to 20+/turn with 60% Econ). Power to the people!

You see. SE choices at time have pretty strong effect. However, each and every of them should bring more benefits than penalties with right use. They should be all more or less beneficial on average. Some could be more than others given the circumstances.

Support bases? Interesting technique I never used. I didn't get to the support yet as it is not that bad in vanilla. However, I am thinking to introduce proportional support. I.e. each unit requires X minerals to support. Less with higher rating and it could be fractional number rounded after you multiply it by number of supported units. It is quite difficult to implement so I'll probably do it very not soon.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

In my Spartan game I have some issues with Morale mostly, Power SE, and Planet is a bit weird.
I think there's way too much morale in the game. Its either too strong in pluses or in minuses in both SE and facilities. Spartans have +2 Morale, but i don't even have to pick Power or build Bioenhanced facilities because my morale is topped all the time. Actually optimal thing looks like to pick Euidaimonia with its -3 Morale since it will be great anyway.. and economy would be fantastic. You can have it all.
Its not at all hard to max morale in midgame.. Meanwhile lots of AIs like to pick all the -Morale options, forget to build facilities and ruin themselves to Very Green even during wars.

So i suggest to go much easier on + and - morale (especially on negative.. AIs like Euidaiomania with -3) and maybe to even revert starting morale very green because of dumb AI. Just start the player on very green if possible or you feel like its needed. Help the AI to have decent morale most of the time.

There needs to be some balance here.. ideally it should be hard to get to great or terrible morale.. with most faction staying most of the time around disciplined. If in war they could notch up a bit here they would be much better. In general, SE points are hard to get.. like Support.. Growth Police rating, but there's so many Morale sources around (for the player.. AI is somehow ignoring them).
Worms are much harder to level up for example because their facilities give only +1 cycle. Nerfing Command Centers and other morale facilities to +1 (decrease maintenance) is one way of improving situation.

Its a complex issue - i feel balance would be better if the morale disparity is reduced a bit.

Planet is similar but better balance, either you end up in very red or very green; both end of spectrum are strong. Lots of -worms really ruins faction vs worms and eco damage. Ecology is quite a big issue for both player and AI. In lategame SE stacks and its possible to have tons of +planet (+facilities) which is kind of op; we discussed some of this earlier.

I agree there is an issue with morale. It is not THAT bad just something to look at. The issue is that total combined spectrum of bonuses and penalties is about twice as wide than allowed morale levels. SE MORALE: -3 to +3, facilities: 0 to +4, monolith: 0 to +1, High Morale ability: 0 to +1, and promotions those are theoretically unlimited but let's say on average unit is promoted twice until dies so: 0 to +2. That totals at -3 to +11 = 15 levels! Whereas there are only 7 unit morale levels. It doesn't matter which way you shift that huge number of morale bonuses they will quite frequently cap at bottom or top. I wouldn't worry about this much as many other effects get capped and wasted and this is normal. This one is the worst, though.
One solution is to remove some morale bonuses from the game. I wouldn't go this path as they all are give unique game flavor.
Another one is to widen the unit morale range. I wouldn't go this path either as it is insanely hardcoded everywhere in the code. So it is just unfeasible.

Halving facilities bonus is not good for two reasons.
1. MORALE <= -2 halves these bonuses. So if you halve them initially there won't be anything to halve anymore.
2. The total number of lifecycle improvements by facilities is already equal or more than morale facilities. So reducing them even more would be unfair imbalance between conventional and psi units.

Reducing amount of MORALE effects in SE choices is an option and it may slightly mitigate this but still won't solve the main issue. We do want to be able to crank MORALE by SE to both -3 and +3 anyway.

Once again, I do not think this is game breaking issue. AI is doing just fine. I often see their elites running around. Yes, they may either fall into deep - or deep +, but why do we as human players care? They are normal game variation. It would be dull to see all units on average all the time.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

No, seriously. They all seem to have given up on pursuing any projects. I'm not sure if it's the new production weights you added, or just the fact that projects cost more, but I remember (and confirmed by checking saves) that the AI was far more aggressive with pursuing projects in Thinker.

They focus expansion more now underprioritizing everything else. This definitely could be tuned if you think they lose more disregarding projects. They still build them in powerful bases.
Generally, I believe, expansion grows their power more as they become quite strong economically and military. This is better than building projects and then give them up to greedy neighbor. This is disputable. Let me know if you can beat AI now easier or not at all.

I can also confirm that free Psi Gates now correctly appear inside captured enemy bases. Could be pretty stronk.

Yay!

[Tayta Malikai]

I have discovered an obscure crash situation. Seen in v141 and v145; PRACX is installed. To reproduce: press F1 to open the datalinks, go to Base Facilities, and press 'T' (as in Tree Farm). Game crashes.
Bug is not present in Thinker 2.0 with PRACX installed.

EDIT: Specifically, the game crashes upon trying to load the datalinks entry for Tachyon Field.

So I made the switch to Democracy+Planned, and hooooly bajeezus, this is painful. Every single unit costs minerals to support; I can either have formers, or I can have an army. No such thing as a free lunch in this mod!

Fortunately there is a way around this. It involves an advanced technique known as the support base. As the name suggests, you build extra bases with the explicit purpose of soaking up unit support costs, allowing you to maximize output in your important bases. Three bases are at 15 minerals now, and I should be able to push it to 20 soon.

I have also begun work on Hologram Theatres in bases approaching size 4. This will allow me to trim more fat by disbanding excess scout patrols. The maintenance costs will be covered by drilling more boreholes and building tidal harnesses everywhere. The good news about switching to Democracy is that not only did it remove the hated -INDUSTRY penalty, it also allows me to actually have an energy income (going from 1/turn to 20+/turn with 60% Econ). Power to the people!

You see. SE choices at time have pretty strong effect. However, each and every of them should bring more benefits than penalties with right use. They should be all more or less beneficial on average. Some could be more than others given the circumstances.

Support bases? Interesting technique I never used. I didn't get to the support yet as it is not that bad in vanilla. However, I am thinking to introduce proportional support. I.e. each unit requires X minerals to support. Less with higher rating and it could be fractional number rounded after you multiply it by number of supported units. It is quite difficult to implement so I'll probably do it very not soon.

Support bases are mostly useful for Morgan in vanilla, who starts with -1 SUPPORT and is likely to hit -3 from running Democracy to maximize the gains from Free Market /  Wealth. And he is already incentivized to spam bases, since under those settings he stands to make a tidy +7 energy per base. Not to be sneered at.

It's also especially effective for the Omegas here, since they can complete units and instantly teleport them to where they're needed and reassign the support in a single turn.

Fractional support costs sound interesting, but I think I'd have to see how it fared in action to make a judgement on that. So probably not anytime soon.
At the moment the system is pretty intuitive. One unit uses one mineral, but the first X are free.

That reminds me: you extended the scale of GROWTH and RESEARCH effects, right? You may wish to update alphax.txt to include SE entries for the new levels, so that it's clear in-game that you continue to benefit from higher ratings.

No, seriously. They all seem to have given up on pursuing any projects. I'm not sure if it's the new production weights you added, or just the fact that projects cost more, but I remember (and confirmed by checking saves) that the AI was far more aggressive with pursuing projects in Thinker.

They focus expansion more now underprioritizing everything else. This definitely could be tuned if you think they lose more disregarding projects. They still build them in powerful bases.
Generally, I believe, expansion grows their power more as they become quite strong economically and military. This is better than building projects and then give them up to greedy neighbor. This is disputable. Let me know if you can beat AI now easier or not at all.

I can also confirm that free Psi Gates now correctly appear inside captured enemy bases. Could be pretty stronk.

Yay!

Yes, I've noticed the AI has been building a lot of Creches and Hab Complexes. I am definitely behind in population, which was to be expected since I have -2 GROWTH, with 46 pop compared to Stewards' 88 and Traders' 76. But as the kids like to say, it's not the size, it's how you use it.

It turned out that this version still had Pressure Domes at 2 maintenance, which caused the AIs to unfairly lose a lot of money since they just love to spam sea bases everywhere. I have now fixed this, we'll see if they do anything dangerous with the extra funds.

However, I believe I have identified a major cause of the AI's industrial underperformance. And it is a problem that other modders have struggled to deal with. But some of the changes WtP makes seem to have made it worse.

Simply put, the AI builds too much crap. Many of their bases that produce decent minerals are clogged up with useless scout patrols and slightly less useless formers, CPs, and military units. Then they run Democracy and/or Planned and the problem gets even worse. Considering how I'm already struggling with distributing support costs appropriately, I don't expect the AI is going to handle this much better.

Here is an example of what I mean:

This would indeed be a decent project base... if 11 out of 16 minerals weren't taken up by support.

I suspect the cause of this is the support reassignment mechanic, which reassigns support from low-mineral bases to high-mineral ones. This is actually the opposite of what should happen. You want lesser bases to take the hit so that your main ones can focus wholly on projects, prototypes, or big-ticket infrastructure items like Genejacks or Tree Farms. Then you use the enhanced output from your heartland to bring the provinces up to par.

I think this may also be sufficient reason to argue for removing the -SUPPORT penalty from Planned. It both annoys the player and impairs the AI.


Speaking of SE... this is caused by Thinker and isn't affected by WtP, but if you are planning to fiddle with the AI's SE decision-making process (please make this optional btw, force_AI_social_preference or something, because I heavily disagree with bvanevery on this), I would like to request that you also look into how SE immunities (the faction cannot go below zero in the specified SE modifier) are handled. At the moment the AI doesn't know how to handle these, since Induktio wasn't aware of how immunities (as opposed to impunities) worked.

The result is that the Edenists, who have +2 SUPPORT and immunity to POLICE, have a bad habit of comboing Police State with Free Market. This is very suboptimal for them, because they already have SUPPORT near the cap, and their POLICE will still be at zero anyway.

This only really affects modded factions though, so I understand if it's not a priority. I can probably fix the issue on my end by giving the Edenists Secrets of the Human Brain for free so they can run Fundy instead.

[Tayta Malikai]

I have discovered an obscure crash situation. Seen in v141 and v145; PRACX is installed. To reproduce: press F1 to open the datalinks, go to Base Facilities, and press 'T' (as in Tree Farm). Game crashes.
Bug is not present in Thinker 2.0 with PRACX installed.

EDIT: Specifically, the game crashes upon trying to load the datalinks entry for Tachyon Field.

Making a separate post for this bug.

The cause of the bug is in helpx.txt. The entry for Tachyon Field contains a line that is too long for the game to handle. Thus it crashes.
This can be fixed by breaking up the offending line as follows:

Code: [Select]

#; Tachyon Field
#HELPFAC5
Disables base intrinsic defense bonus.
^Adds 50% defense bonus to units at base against all conventional attacks cumulative with other defensive facilities.
^This effectively raises unit defense bonus to 150% when combined with $LINK<Perimeter Defense=100004>, $LINK<Naval Yard=100028>, or $LINK<Aerospace Complex=100029>.
^Defensive facilities do not work against $LINK<Psi Attacks=38>.
^
^Can only be constructed in a base which already has a $LINK<Perimeter Defense=100004>.As a side note, helpx.txt currently contains a typo in the Perimeter Defense and Tachyon Field entries: "^Defensife facilities do not work against $LINK<Psi Attacks=38>."

See, I don't just complain about balance, I can find bugs too!

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

I have discovered an obscure crash situation. Seen in v141 and v145; PRACX is installed. To reproduce: press F1 to open the datalinks, go to Base Facilities, and press 'T' (as in Tree Farm). Game crashes.
Bug is not present in Thinker 2.0 with PRACX installed.

EDIT: Specifically, the game crashes upon trying to load the datalinks entry for Tachyon Field.

Wow. Thank you for discovering and testing that! I confirm that is reproducible in the latest version too. Will have a look.


Apparently SMACX has limit on string length in help. Didn't know that and that bit me.

# Version 159

* BUG: Too long line in help entry caused game crash. Fixed Tachyon Field, Growth, Industry entries.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

That reminds me: you extended the scale of GROWTH and RESEARCH effects, right? You may wish to update alphax.txt to include SE entries for the new levels, so that it's clear in-game that you continue to benefit from higher ratings.

I have extended GROWTH but not RESEARCH. For later I planned to because of large bonus given by Knowledge but didn't get to it yet.
All entries were updated, correspondingly. Some of them just crashed the game due to very long lines. Thank you to discovering this. I just slapped new release that fixes it. Check out new colorful help entries with a lot of supplementary information! 😊

It turned out that this version still had Pressure Domes at 2 maintenance, which caused the AIs to unfairly lose a lot of money since they just love to spam sea bases everywhere. I have now fixed this, we'll see if they do anything dangerous with the extra funds.

Yea. Sorry for oversight. This should be updated in newest version.

However, I believe I have identified a major cause of the AI's industrial underperformance. And it is a problem that other modders have struggled to deal with. But some of the changes WtP makes seem to have made it worse.

Simply put, the AI builds too much crap. Many of their bases that produce decent minerals are clogged up with useless scout patrols and slightly less useless formers, CPs, and military units. Then they run Democracy and/or Planned and the problem gets even worse. Considering how I'm already struggling with distributing support costs appropriately, I don't expect the AI is going to handle this much better.

Here is an example of what I mean:
This would indeed be a decent project base... if 11 out of 16 minerals weren't taken up by support.

I suspect the cause of this is the support reassignment mechanic, which reassigns support from low-mineral bases to high-mineral ones. This is actually the opposite of what should happen. You want lesser bases to take the hit so that your main ones can focus wholly on projects, prototypes, or big-ticket infrastructure items like Genejacks or Tree Farms. Then you use the enhanced output from your heartland to bring the provinces up to par.

I think this may also be sufficient reason to argue for removing the -SUPPORT penalty from Planned. It both annoys the player and impairs the AI.

I agree about support distribution. I should remove it. It was intended to help a human player to keep gift units. AI tends to give them at same exactly location close to the border and some specific base so this base gets overloaded with support and units just disappear. Support distribution is suppose to reshuffle these given units across the other bases.
However, as you pointed out, it gets abused by AI. It doesn't happen because of redistribution per se but by mindless unit production in weak bases but redistribution allows it to happen for longer. So I am going to cancel this feature anyway.

Generally speaking, reducing amount of crap can be done by building not crap. And that is the work in the progress. Both production choice and moving units is a very deep AI tuning work. So will continue on that.

Speaking of SE... this is caused by Thinker and isn't affected by WtP, but if you are planning to fiddle with the AI's SE decision-making process (please make this optional btw, force_AI_social_preference or something, because I heavily disagree with bvanevery on this), I would like to request that you also look into how SE immunities (the faction cannot go below zero in the specified SE modifier) are handled. At the moment the AI doesn't know how to handle these, since Induktio wasn't aware of how immunities (as opposed to impunities) worked.

The result is that the Edenists, who have +2 SUPPORT and immunity to POLICE, have a bad habit of comboing Police State with Free Market. This is very suboptimal for them, because they already have SUPPORT near the cap, and their POLICE will still be at zero anyway.

This only really affects modded factions though, so I understand if it's not a priority. I can probably fix the issue on my end by giving the Edenists Secrets of the Human Brain for free so they can run Fundy instead.

I don't know either and I have to look up the difference all the time but I am aware of it. 😊
Will see what I can do.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

I have discovered an obscure crash situation. Seen in v141 and v145; PRACX is installed. To reproduce: press F1 to open the datalinks, go to Base Facilities, and press 'T' (as in Tree Farm). Game crashes.
Bug is not present in Thinker 2.0 with PRACX installed.

EDIT: Specifically, the game crashes upon trying to load the datalinks entry for Tachyon Field.

Making a separate post for this bug.

The cause of the bug is in helpx.txt. The entry for Tachyon Field contains a line that is too long for the game to handle. Thus it crashes.
This can be fixed by breaking up the offending line as follows:

Code: [Select]

#; Tachyon Field
#HELPFAC5
Disables base intrinsic defense bonus.
^Adds 50% defense bonus to units at base against all conventional attacks cumulative with other defensive facilities.
^This effectively raises unit defense bonus to 150% when combined with $LINK<Perimeter Defense=100004>, $LINK<Naval Yard=100028>, or $LINK<Aerospace Complex=100029>.
^Defensive facilities do not work against $LINK<Psi Attacks=38>.
^
^Can only be constructed in a base which already has a $LINK<Perimeter Defense=100004>.As a side note, helpx.txt currently contains a typo in the Perimeter Defense and Tachyon Field entries: "^Defensife facilities do not work against $LINK<Psi Attacks=38>."

See, I don't just complain about balance, I can find bugs too!

Yep. Figured it out too. Thank you for deep investigation! You cannot even imagine how invaluable such contribution to any development. That is why you earned a dedicated credit line. 👏
https://github.com/tnevolin/thinker-doer/blob/master/README.md#credits

[bvanevery]

I have continued to play version 154.

I find that Social Engineering choices do not look like they are worth making, at least before midgame.  Why take these penalties?  I also "gain" animosity from some faction for disturbing their ideology.  Generally not worth it.

Details the spam rate

the spam rate

MY 2174, I quit this game.  I was the Free Drones.

Starting next to the Monsoon Jungle, this is about the best spreading I'm going to do.  The AI will always have a consistent 25% to 100% advantage in city count over me.  I am certain to be one of the smaller empires.  The city spam is so bad that I don't see any viable way to play the game except to do likewise at the beginning of the game.  Aesthetically, it is inelegant and unpleasing.  Game mechanically, it's forced busywork for awhile, not at my own pace.

At some point, the realities of borders coming together, and Bureaucracy penalties, and the need to start building Rec Commons, stops my growth.  The fill rate of the AIs will continue unabated.  So, I'm starting to be able to predict how geography will inevitably lead to a specific border.  This implies that the relative strength of AI empires is primarily determined by the starting land masses.  I seriously doubt that sea bases contribute much to empire strength.

I typically build 1 garrison unit, 1 Former in most cities.  The need for land Scouts is not infinite as all pods soon get popped.  Captured indigenous life forms aren't nearly as useful as in other mods, as the new psi combat tends to get one's mindworms killed half the time they fight another mindworm.  The big rolling armies of snowballing mindworms just aren't gonna happen.  A few Gun Foils can be used to clear the sea, but there won't be many supply pods for long, so not much point in a navy.

Once colonial expansion isn't viable anymore, the typical progression is now Rec Commons, Recycling Tank, Children's Creche.  Might build a Command Center or two.  A high production Command Center gets a Skunkworks on it.  I find a lot of waiting around while my empire is in the "big, thin, feeble" stage.  I avoid pissing anyone off, because I'm obviously not strong in any way, and probably the other factions aren't either.  Like I said, no point in making social engineering choices because their penalties look worse than their bonuses.

Tech generally outstrips what I imagine I'd do with it.  I've yet to get to the point of feeling like I've built up a surplus of units worthy of taking over a neighbor.  The game is always making my skin crawl before then, because of the intense level of spam, and I quit.

I really don't like all the colony spam and don't know how much longer I'll have the patience to see what I can do in such an environment.  I think it's pretty over the top, and does not represent sophistication, only a huge AI resource input.  I suspect that the colony spam determines the game, but I haven't gotten far enough yet to know for sure.

One thing odd about this game compared to some others, is I really didn't have any problems getting dusted up by mindworms.  Maybe it's the close proximity of the Cult of Planet as an ally earlier in the game.  They may have shielded me from abuse.

I trade pretty indiscriminately, not worrying about whether a tech grants a Secret Project.  SPs are expensive enough that nobody will finish them for a long time.  I tend to hold onto cash and do massive rushes of SPs, to the extent that I can actually make the cash.

[MercantileInterest]

Finally updated from version 90 (or somewhere around there). Lots of exciting new features. Thanks for fixing the former bug. Early game worm swarm makes me dread fungus in a good way. You've given us options to add extra colony pods and formers in the thinker.ini. Given the prevalence of worms, an option to add extra scout patrols could be useful.

Am now trying the game with planetpearls deactivated. Initial impression: favourable. Wondering whether it might make sense to keep the mechanic solely for Planet Cult. Here's how they're currently set up:

TECH, CentEmp, SOCIAL, +PLANET, SOCIAL, --ECONOMY, SOCIAL, -INDUSTRY, FREEFAC, 35, FUNGMINERALS, 1, WORMPOLICE, 0, UNIT, 8, FUNGENERGY, 1,

The hope is to give them a low-terraforming fungus reliant playstyle, distinct from all the other factions. Planetpearls mechanic doesn't really 'make sense' but neither does the Cult harvesting more resources from fungus at the same technology level as other humans. Still worth it for the sake of unique playstyle.

You added this line to the ini:

; Arbitrary tech cost scale to adjust tech progression.
tech_cost_scale=1.0

Must be a discussion of how this works somewhere in the thread?

Now that tech cost is determined by tech level rather than amount of knowledge already discovered, we could use an estimate of research time when the game asks us which techs we want to research. We now have a strategic choice between rushing for earlier techs and waiting for more advanced tech. Is this feasible?

[bvanevery]

Now that tech cost is determined by tech level rather than amount of knowledge already discovered, we could use an estimate of research time when the game asks us which techs we want to research. We now have a strategic choice between rushing for earlier techs and waiting for more advanced tech. Is this feasible?

There's no point early game.  The early techs go by really fast, even when you're a -2 RESEARCH faction.

Which techs you want to research, is a question only applicable to directed research.  Which by default, is only an Alien ability / advantage.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Like I said, no point in making social engineering choices because their penalties look worse than their bonuses.

Hmm. You are saying this mod choices are worse than vanilla's? Like, for example, Fundamentalist became less appealing in WTP?

Tech generally outstrips what I imagine I'd do with it.

That is intended to give player some options to go about building if they want to. However, if you feel like it is too much and tech runs away too fast and most of the discoveries are sitting there idle for a long time - let me know for adjusting tech rate. Can you share some of your saves along the way so I can see how many tech you have by turns?

I really don't like all the colony spam and don't know how much longer I'll have the patience to see what I can do in such an environment.  I think it's pretty over the top, and does not represent sophistication, only a huge AI resource input.  I suspect that the colony spam determines the game, but I haven't gotten far enough yet to know for sure.

That is right. Colony spam determines the game. This was there before and this is nothing we invented. However, people frown upon my attempt to slow it down by conventional measures like Colony cost increase. They said it slows down the game/expansion and makes in uninteresting especially in MP. I already split SP and MP configurations. Maybe now I can keep Colony cost higher in SP. I bet this will keep expansion speed proportionally slower.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Given the prevalence of worms, an option to add extra scout patrols could be useful.

I don't think anyone needs it. It's only 10 minerals worth a gift unit available to everybody at start whose support overwhelms its cost in 10 turns too. Colonies are given to even out faction expansions because the variance in first base nutrients and minerals could be quite significant. Formers are given to even out early terran work because not everybody could get Centauri Ecology immediatelly and terraforming is another important base growth factor.

Scouts everybody can build. It's not like some faction is deprived by this. Besides until the turn 15 worms are essentially no threat for any unit. I quite often use colonies and formers to block them from reaching my early empty bases.

Am now trying the game with planetpearls deactivated. Initial impression: favourable. Wondering whether it might make sense to keep the mechanic solely for Planet Cult. Here's how they're currently set up:

TECH, CentEmp, SOCIAL, +PLANET, SOCIAL, --ECONOMY, SOCIAL, -INDUSTRY, FREEFAC, 35, FUNGMINERALS, 1, WORMPOLICE, 0, UNIT, 8, FUNGENERGY, 1,

The hope is to give them a low-terraforming fungus reliant playstyle, distinct from all the other factions. Planetpearls mechanic doesn't really 'make sense' but neither does the Cult harvesting more resources from fungus at the same technology level as other humans. Still worth it for the sake of unique playstyle.

The problem with planetpearls as with any other exploit is that human can use it but AI cannot. So if we give this ability to one faction it'll suck as AI but will have enormous advantage as human. Very difficult to even out.

You added this line to the ini:

; Arbitrary tech cost scale to adjust tech progression.
tech_cost_scale=1.0

Must be a discussion of how this works somewhere in the thread?

I exposed it for my own tuning that's why I didn't advertise it. It is a simple scaling factor much like "Technology discovery rate as a percentage of standard" from alphax.txt. Now having said that I am thinking this is redundant.
Yes, anyone can crank this or similar alphax.txt parameter to make tech go faster or slower.

Now that tech cost is determined by tech level rather than amount of knowledge already discovered, we could use an estimate of research time when the game asks us which techs we want to research. We now have a strategic choice between rushing for earlier techs and waiting for more advanced tech. Is this feasible?

Estimate research time is show in F2 screen. If you are asking about estimate at the direct choice tech picket screen before you started to research it then it is difficult to do. I've already checked it and it is quite hardcoded there. Besides, bvanevery has already replied to this one. The only good thing to change would be to mention tech level everywhere because now it is missed in some places making me guess how high level this tech is.