SMAX - The Will to Power - mod

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

No I mean i built it.. AI doesn't even the tech. But it then happened that AI rushed complete AtT at 90+% for cheap (i am not sure anymore) and won the game. What this mean is that if player wants to win - you delay Voice.. prepare crawlers.. money and have to rush it on turn 1.. or you really risk losing the game.

Share the save, please.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

RE: combat volatility

This could be an endless discussion. With all my respect to your feelings and appreciation for your participation in discussion I believe this is not worth worrying about.

Yes. There is some randomization in games to represent a chance. Usually nobody ever complains about the degree of randomization or the specific shape of probability distribution function but only about fairness to all players. People can as well play roulette, black jack, or any board game like monopoly with a pretty archaic cubic random number generator and I never heard anybody complained about too much or too little randomization. Or requests to replace 6 side dice to 12 side dice because the former is not random enough. 😕 DnD uses latter not because they seek some special type of randomness but because they need more granularity in options per turn.

Random effects do affect the game outcome but they nullify itself on a larger scale. Sometimes it takes few turns, sometimes few games. Monopoly and poker, for example, are heavily random games. It takes few games to let more skilled one win more often. The combat in turn based games is not like that. It equalizes own randomness on a course of few turns. Civ1 has a highest possible combat volatility with each unit either live or die. Yet million of gamers enjoyed it for decade and nobody even noted that you can lose a well built empire in the middle of the game due to combat volatility. Randomness becomes already irrelevant after about 20 battles and one usually conducts like 1000 of them during the game.

There are also plenty of other random factors in a game those much, much, much more impactful due to their unique nature and strong effect. Take an initial placement for one. It could directly lead to misery or prosperity - no matter how good your play skills are! That is what worth worrying about if one is so concerned about amount of randomness.

Let me reiterate once more. Did you enjoy playing Civ1 for years? Did you complain about combat volatility back then? Probably not. New system introduced in Civ2/SMACX changed the combat significantly to the level that new combat tactics appears. Unusual at start but we got used to it and enjoyed it again for decades. WtP combat is just somewhere in the middle of Civ1-Civ2 scale. No new principles at all. I feel like most of the complaints are because it does not feel like vanilla combat. Yes, it feels different and maybe shocking at start. It took me like 5-10 WtP games just to get used to it and adjust my play style and strategy to it. Now it's organic. I love it. I love my new strategy. And I don't want to go back! 😝
Try it out. You may love it too.

Civ1, Civ2, and WtP combat formulas produce same exactly results on large scale after 20+ combats or so. New formula was devised to counter worm hunt abuse mostly (kill and heal). Now when weapon/armor is equalized, defense got their bonuses, healing rate is lowered and land psi attack advantage is removed it is not that important anymore to keep it. You are free to dial it down to vanilla version or something in between for your liking. I don't think it is really worth to spend time on proving (😕) which value is good or how exactly we should change combat outcome. It's minor.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

# Version 62

* Changed default value of alternative_combat_mechanics_loss_divider=2.0.

Here you go. I've changed the default value for alternative combat so it should feel less volatile now. I believe lolada or dino just set it like that for themselves already so it should be good sweet spot.

[Nexii]

Didn't get your MAPFACTOR. I though you proposed to make them more expensive with time. Which is a great idea in my opinion.

mapfactor is just scaling by the size of the map. By # of bases+colony pods makes more sense than time. Time means they get expensive whether you have a large empire or not. And it would force players to do all their expanding early on.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

RE: borehole build restrictions

I don't feel these restrictions are good because it is difficult to enforce them and they are actually can be easily broken. One can start building them on adjacent squares and get adjacent boreholes. Slope restriction is also easy to break with raising and lowering land to get borehole sitting on slope after that. So I don't think I'll bother restricting AI terraforming with them. I can also remove them for human if community so desire. However, this is minor thing either way even if human has them and AI don't. This effectively doesn't restrict their quantity.

The more important thing about boreholes is that they are really effective. For twice longer construction time one get 1.5 more minerals that mine produces plus 6 energy. Obviously, AI would spam them in large quantities instead of mines given the opportunity. We cannot blame it because it is a right thing to do and sure path to victory. They need to be either nerfed or somehow restricted in quantities.
Condensers and echelon mirrors are free of this problem. They are really nicely designed supportive structures. They do not replace farms and solar but act in symbiosis with them increasing their yield.
Boreholes are not symbiote but a competitor of mine. Poor poor mine - it has so many competitors like forest and borehole. 😢
I believe this is not easily fixable. Whatever borehole yield will be it will either replace mine completely if it is more profitable or won't be used at all if not. The only sufficient solution I see now is to make it less mineral producing but more of energy. Something like 0-2-4. This way all previous improvement combinations will have their unique attractiveness.

• farm-solar = nutrient/energy. Not affected by SE.
• fungus = nutrient/energy. However, its yield is technology related not terrafroming. It is also affected by PLANET rating as well as The Manifold Harmonics. So it is not a direct competitor of farm.
• rocky mine = mostly minerals and sometimes 1 nutrient on rainy tile.
• forest = nutrient/mineral with all facilities 3-2-1. One of the most unique improvements as no other is focused on this combination.
• borehole = nutrient/energy. Also unique yield combination. In its 0-2-4 form it is not completely superior neither to forest nor mine nor farm-solar. It is still comparable to mine if we convert energy to minerals 2:1. They both will be equivalent to 4 minerals. So borehole will be better if you want to shift focus from minerals to energy.

[lolada]

Here - thats 1 turn before they rush Att. 106 turns to go.. 11 minerals per turn. Pirates are at +1 industry (fund + planned + power + thought police). If you click next turn they will fully rush it.

Something is bugged in my save i think ?! it says 14k to rush my project.. but it can't be.. Project cost is 2400 minerals with my discount.. that should be 9600 energy? I noticed this rush change during game some point but ignored it.. a bug? maybe i could hunt down what caused it.

Here for example save in 2320 - i can rush Dream Twister for cca 2800 energy (720 mins).

M.Y. 2367 save is me working halfway on Voice of Planet.

p.s map is weirdly terraforormed due to global warming

re: on combat - well i didn't change any factors - i guess i can try with 2.0 and see if it "feels" less volatile.. i got used to 3.0

[Nexii]

I saw boreholes as more as a replacement for mines. Mines only get a production increases with tech on sea tiles.

One thing about making boreholes more E focused is that it doesn't really leave much improvements that give M. Mines aren't that great by the midgame at 0-4-0. Forests end up being more for N than M or E. Fungus was redesigned to be N and E. I think 0-5-5 or so is ok for boreholes. They just need to require more tech. A lot of terraforming improvements just come way too early. To use a Civ2 analogy, it's like getting Supermarkets and Superhighways while still in the medieval era.

[lolada]

borehole = nutrient/energy. Also unique yield combination. In its 0-2-4 form it is not completely superior neither to forest nor mine nor farm-solar. It is still comparable to mine if we convert energy to minerals 2:1. They both will be equivalent to 4 minerals. So borehole will be better if you want to shift focus from minerals to energy.

Did you forget ecological impact? And river impact - they ruin river flow. Boreholes are awful for eco damage, take long time to build, have restrictions that work well. They are not available early. If someone wants to cheat/exploit boreholes with terraform up down.. i wouldnt bother trying to prevent it.. if someone wants to have fun that waz with their game they are free to do so.

Yeah they are competitor of mines, but you can for example take a look at my saves there and see i have lots of mines and basically 1 borehole per base. There's not even 1 borehole in new bases. Whats the problem with borehole > mine as long as there are restrictions and eco damage?

btw. if you take a look at save - AI is really having trouble with eco damage and fungus - that is a big problem imo. AI does not control eco damage well - it ruins its land with fungus and does not remove it aggressively. Take a look at Lal's land he's using ton of 2-0-1 tiles at endgame. Zakharov has Manifold sp.. but who knows he might have ruined himself the same - i presumed he planted fungus. I've seen the same with usurper aliens - AI is really heavily affected if having negative planet - it can't easily get rid of worms and eco damage is higher so their development is even worse... with negative planet fungus gives low res.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

mapfactor is just scaling by the size of the map. By # of bases+colony pods makes more sense than time. Time means they get expensive whether you have a large empire or not. And it would force players to do all their expanding early on.

Scaling by the size of the map and by the # of bases+colony are two completely different things. Do you want them both contribute to the effect or these are just two options?

I think scaling by faction achievement makes less sense then by time. It penalizes factions achieved more. Why? Just to equalize everybody regardless of their efforts/skills/luck? There are quite a lot of such penalties in the game already.

ICS is the worst at the very beginning of the game. Later on everybody becomes preoccupied with other things and it naturally fades down. It still going on but not in explosive exponential way.

The purpose of making colonies and other non combat units more expensive with time is to model combat unit getting more expensive with their better weapon/armor. Non combat units do not get upgraded like that. So you may end up producing more than one former/colony/probe a turn after mid game especial with reactor decreased cost. This is not a big deal per se as everybody will be on same page. Just a mere inconvenience and unmatch with other contemporary units/facilities. Therefore, simple increase in cost with time should do it.

I was actually thinking to increase all non combat modules cost with time to make it more fairer and to not break cost balance with combat units. Something like gradual increase by approximately 50% every 100 turns. Combined with 20% reactor cost drop every 75-100 turns it will give about 30% factual increase per 100 turns or so.

Here sample progression for turns 0-100-200-300-400.
Colony: 6-8-10-13-17
Former: 4-5-7-9-11
Transport: same as former
Speder Probe: same as colony
Supply: 12-16-20-26-34

With that in mind some non combat unit cost could be lowered down a little to make them bearable at the beginning. Like supply can start from 8 or 10 instead and then grow up.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

re: on combat - well i didn't change any factors - i guess i can try with 2.0 and see if it "feels" less volatile.. i got used to 3.0

Ah. That was probably dino then.
No worries. I've already set it to 2.0 by default in last version. It is still adjustable by users, though.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

I saw boreholes as more as a replacement for mines.

Yep. Agree on that. See my notes in some previous post.
Along with nerfing boreholes we could also increase output of mines with tech same way as for platforms to make them more relevant in later game. Maybe even couple times with two techs: 4-5-6. However, the amount of minerals with all multiplier facilities is already quite large in late game. I would prefer to nerf borehole rather than beaf mine.

[lolada]

Here sample progression for turns 0-100-200-300-400.
Colony: 6-8-10-13-17
Former: 4-5-7-9-11
Transport: same as former
Speeder Probe: same as colony
Supply: 12-16-20-26-34

With that in mind some non combat unit cost could be lowered down a little to make them bearable at the beginning. Like supply can start from 8 or 10 instead and then grow up.

I'll put up stop sign here  What do we want to gain with these changes?? ICS stop? Why not just let players colonize finish with it and proceed the game.. i am not sure that colonizing something whole game is better. If you want to stop ICS why don't just restrict base distance to 4+ tiles or something?!

Colony pods more expensive - i don't know is there a point to it?? i mean its natural to expand early on and then you want to build infrastructure and units. If I continue expanding i delegate colony pod building to fringe weak bases - i want my main strong bases to work on more important things.

You may even make things worse - if you made it that expensive later - then player will just rush it to colonize early while its cheap. And AI will be way worse since they don't know the difference.

Formers - basically i build better formers - speeders so its expensive.. or one can armor them to protect them from air attack. AI builds grav formers.. They die more and AI is having trouble terraforming fungus for example - they need formers. Making them more expensive doesn't help.

Transport - thats a nerf to AI as well imo --- player will build up 2-3 transports.. AI spams them.

Speeder Probe - AI LOVES to spam them and they spam really expensive variants like neutronium probes. Making them more expensive is bad idea.. It would be good idea to actually teach AI not to build them so much!

Supply - AI builds armored variants.. they do pay off faster later, but there's less turn in game.. i don't see the point. It would also affect rushing?!

I think making these units more expensive is likely worse for the game overall.

Making units slightly cheaper at start ... maybe.. At this point it is worth it to rush Recycling centers for example i think.. Maybe even Rec Commons. If you make Colony pods too cheap then it will be vanilla colony spam again. Making formers slightly cheaper might be good idea - since they are hard to rush (4 energy.. per min).

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

And river impact - they ruin river flow.

Hmm. Just tested this in scenario. Placed bore on a river - it doesn't change it a bit.

Yeah they are competitor of mines, but you can for example take a look at my saves there and see i have lots of mines and basically 1 borehole per base. There's not even 1 borehole in new bases. Whats the problem with borehole > mine as long as there are restrictions and eco damage?

The problem is that these restrictions are only in human mind. They are not physical restrictions. AI will spam them as it sees fit disregarding ecodamage and causing global warming for everybody. However, I agree with you on that fungal pops destroy improvements boreholes included. So maybe I was too harsh on them. 0-4-4 would be more on target. And we should teach it to regard ecodamage.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Here sample progression for turns 0-100-200-300-400.
Colony: 6-8-10-13-17
Former: 4-5-7-9-11
Transport: same as former
Speeder Probe: same as colony
Supply: 12-16-20-26-34

With that in mind some non combat unit cost could be lowered down a little to make them bearable at the beginning. Like supply can start from 8 or 10 instead and then grow up.

I'll put up stop sign here  What do we want to gain with these changes??

Whew. Thank you man. I was afraid I had to implement these changes to satisfy users. 😌
I agree there is no real need for that. At least nothing major.

Now I will remove myself from this discussion hoping you'll forge some agreement with Nexii.

[lolada]

Just tried it - in this case borehole eats river. I know it can it rivers ^^ it may be wonky. I remember seeing T-Hawk screenshot of many short rivers.. he spammed boreholes and condensers in optimal grid.
Anyway.. quick experiment on one of my save.. right side is with river.. i removed old borehole and placed new one directly on river.


+1 for teaching AI to control eco damage