SMAX - The Will to Power - mod

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

The one I'm most watching in this regard, is whether the AIs are magically immune to having their colonies killed by the hordes of mindworms.

Their colonies are not immune to be killed. They have about 50% survival chance after turn 15 and I occasionally see them (and other units) killed by worms. Turn the scenario editor and you'll see it.
I also constantly see their bases wiped out by worm attacks including the cases when worms kill defender and then wipe out the base.

[bvanevery]

You're right I should witness an AI only game to see what's going on.  Because the death count in my game, looked like their colonies didn't take a scratch.  Be advised that if the AI gets to perform perfectly for the first 30 turns of the game, and the human is given a super deadly hard time by comparison, that does pretty much establish a fundamentally game conditioning imbalance.  So it's not a casualty count on Turn 200 that matters.

I'd also like to know if the AIs are receiving anything like the offshore swarms of mindworms that I am.  It is possible that it's the accident of where your landmass is compared to others.  Exposure to oceanic interlopers doesn't have to be at all equal, and might be a kind of unfairness that no placement algorithm computes.

[bvanevery]

Details anti Green Gaians

anti Green Gaians

I see that WTP has inherited Thinker's disregard for faction aversions.  I really wish you'd make that go away.  It's jarring, and it also messes up the diplomatic interactions.

[bvanevery]

Details polar island

polar island

I did better at my early spread this game.  Once again I got stuck on a small land mass with the Morganites.  Once again my desire for peace, caused me to do an about face and threatened to cut me off from land.  Fortunately, the Morganites weren't as on the ball as whatever happened in my previous game.  They had settled Morgan Industries and Morgan Aerodynamics.  After backtracking to my side of the border, UN Commerce Committee became my 2nd city.  That extended my influence enough that I was able to do more settlements to extend my land.  This was mainly powered by a fairly productive capitol.  Without that it wouldn't have worked.  I did grab part of the Uranium Flats but Morgan did a better job of pushing north.  I did better pushing southwest.

My rate of growth has been sad though.  Deirdre, sitting on the Monsoon Jungle, won the election by a landslide.  The Social Engineering choices are a puzzle to me, as they seem to consist of really bad options in all categories.  Consequently, so far I have chosen nothing.  I find myself especially askance at why Democratic has a PLANET penalty.  GROWTH and SUPPORT have to be bad for PLANET ?  Well why not do that in Planned then?

Most of the units seem to be incredibly expensive to make.  Sure I've had the tech for all kinds for quite a long time, but how would I ever afford to build anything?  I have not built any Recycling Tanks as I neither understand nor trust them.  I don't tend to build factories in games, being a "forest and forget" style player usually.  They've caused me severe eco-damage, global warming, and global flooding way too many times.  I have trouble believing that a +50% minerals facility isn't another kind of factory that does eco-damage.  Even though it is called a Recycling Tank.

No, I haven't read all the notes on how the mod actually is supposed to work yet.  As an experienced player and modder, I'm not really sure why I would, right off the bat.  I have tried looking at Help entries for some facilities.

So I'm faffing around with Scouts, Gun Foils, and Formers.  Those, I seem to be able to afford.  I've planted lots of forests despite double the time to complete.  I haven't noticed any problem with that.  I think the immediate availability of 2 free Formers, offsets the production effort compared to what I'm used to.  The forest spread looks comparable to what I'd see in my own mod.  This island just has an obnoxious amount of fungus on the bottom of it.  Some of that was from supply pod blooms.

I didn't get quite as many mindworm invasions this game, and I think the explanation is real simple.  Poles are safer, being nearer the center of the map is dangerous.  So the game is basically unfair that way.  I seriously doubt the faction placement algorithm takes that into account, and I simply got lucky being on the bottom of the map.

I did radiate some Gun Foils this time, unlike last game.  That enabled me to kill a few Sealurks, that otherwise would have messed with me harder.  It did nothing an Isle I tried to intercept at all.  I died, barely scratching it.  So that mindworm landed, but killing it on shore did not turn out to be that big a deal.  I will confess though: I do save scum some.  IMO the mindworm spam is dialed up too high.  Since the game is unfair in this regard, I counter by dialing the fairness to what I think is actually appropriate.  I don't owe this game the death of an early city, when 4 mindworms decide to appear on my island at once, in different places that I can't readjust to.  That was the worst it got though, which is a lot better than the previous game.

I seriously have no clue about the Secret Projects.  They're way too godawful expensive to even consider starting them.  There are no supply pods generating the usual beaucoup de Artifacts, so I'm not going to be hurrying them that way either.

I don't really have a clue about tech advantages, so I'm just doing a typical "fill out the early city facilities" thing, hoping that proves to be a meaningful course of action.  If it isn't, then I imagine I'll get clobbered.  Then I'll quit the game, activate the Scenario Editor, and diagnose what went wrong.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

You're right I should witness an AI only game to see what's going on.  Because the death count in my game, looked like their colonies didn't take a scratch.  Be advised that if the AI gets to perform perfectly for the first 30 turns of the game, and the human is given a super deadly hard time by comparison, that does pretty much establish a fundamentally game conditioning imbalance.  So it's not a casualty count on Turn 200 that matters.

I'd also like to know if the AIs are receiving anything like the offshore swarms of mindworms that I am.  It is possible that it's the accident of where your landmass is compared to others.  Exposure to oceanic interlopers doesn't have to be at all equal, and might be a kind of unfairness that no placement algorithm computes.

I did not introduced any special treatment for AI in WTP. Nor Thinker does to my knowledge. All combat chances are calculated regardless of combatants affiliation.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

I see that WTP has inherited Thinker's disregard for faction aversions.  I really wish you'd make that go away.  It's jarring, and it also messes up the diplomatic interactions.

I wasn't aware it does. I can look into it if you tell me how did you determine that.
And yes, obviously WTP inherits Thinker in whole as it is built on top of it.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

My rate of growth has been sad though.  Deirdre, sitting on the Monsoon Jungle, won the election by a landslide.  The Social Engineering choices are a puzzle to me, as they seem to consist of really bad options in all categories.  Consequently, so far I have chosen nothing.  I find myself especially askance at why Democratic has a PLANET penalty.  GROWTH and SUPPORT have to be bad for PLANET ?  Well why not do that in Planned then?

As I stated before, things like SE modeling is not a cornerstone of this mod and they can easily be tweaked without losing overall playability. So I am open to suggestions in this area. Current modeling is quite close to what Nevill uses in his mod. Surprisingly, we just came to about same solution independently. I didn't have a time to review it in details and adapt, though. Would appreciate a community help on that.

Most of the units seem to be incredibly expensive to make.  Sure I've had the tech for all kinds for quite a long time, but how would I ever afford to build anything?  I have not built any Recycling Tanks as I neither understand nor trust them.  I don't tend to build factories in games, being a "forest and forget" style player usually.  They've caused me severe eco-damage, global warming, and global flooding way too many times.  I have trouble believing that a +50% minerals facility isn't another kind of factory that does eco-damage.  Even though it is called a Recycling Tank.

People are constantly complaining about this and I cannot understand why. How much is incredible? They are about same as in vanilla or lower. See below change from vanilla to WTP.

Code: [Select]

Colony Pod 3 4
Rover Colony Pod 7 6
Sea Colony Pod 7 4
Formers 2 2
Sea Formers 4 2
Transport Foil 3 4
Speeder Probe Team 3 6
1-2-1 2 2
1-4-1 3 4
1-6-1 4 6
1-12-1 12 12
2-1-1 2 2
4-1-1 2 4
6-1-1 2 6
12-1-1 4 12
2-2-1 3 3
4-4-1 4 6
6-6-1 7 9
12-12-1 21 18
1-1-2 2 2
2-1-2 2 3
4-1-2 3 6
6-1-2 5 9
12-1-2 9 18
1-1-3 2 2
2-2-3 4 6
4-4-3 6 12
6-6-3 12 18
12-12-3 17 36
1-1-4 2 1
2-2-4 2 3
4-4-4 4 6
6-6-4 7 9
12-12-4 17 18

See above. Most of the units are about the same cost except pure attackers. This is not WTP attackers are costly. This is vanilla attackers are exceptionally stupidly priced. Attacker 12-1-1 costs 4 versus defender 1-12-1 costs 12 P-lease. 🙄
That was discussed multiple times already.
Currently speeder chassis is 50% and hovertank is 100% costlier than infantry. I can make it 25% and 50%, correspondingly, if it matters to someone. However, I believe they are fairly priced with their triple speed (9 tiles over roads, 27 tiles over tubes) and three attacks per turn.

No, I haven't read all the notes on how the mod actually is supposed to work yet.  As an experienced player and modder, I'm not really sure why I would, right off the bat.  I have tried looking at Help entries for some facilities.

I didn't insisted you do. Just referred to it when you asked about specific change. Feel free not to.

[EmpathCrawler]

I see that WTP has inherited Thinker's disregard for faction aversions.  I really wish you'd make that go away.  It's jarring, and it also messes up the diplomatic interactions.

I wasn't aware it does. I can look into it if you tell me how did you determine that.
And yes, obviously WTP inherits Thinker in whole as it is built on top of it.

It doesn't. Thinker will let the AI choose its not-priority model if it makes more sense at the time, but the AI will still be pissed if you don't choose it yourself. If Morgan needs efficiency, he will run Green, but he will be pissed if you run Green or Planned. So the AI can be pragmatic even if it means being a bit hypocritical. It will not disregard a faction's social opposition. Morgan still can't run Planned.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

# Version 150

**Experimental**

*Original functionality is scattered across the code and is heavily hardcoded. This modification may make game crash or display incorrect results.*

* All direct mineral contributions are scaled to basic mineral cost multiplier in alphax.ini. That effectivelly ignores INDUSTRY rating impact on such contributions.
  * Alien Artifact is cached at base contributing to project or prototype production.
  * Unit is disbanded at base contributing to current production. This is actually already scaled in vanilla so no changes were needed.
  * Hurrying production. Hurrying cost is not dependent on INDUSTRY rating anymore.

[Tayta Malikai]

I see that WTP has inherited Thinker's disregard for faction aversions.  I really wish you'd make that go away.  It's jarring, and it also messes up the diplomatic interactions.

I wasn't aware it does. I can look into it if you tell me how did you determine that.
And yes, obviously WTP inherits Thinker in whole as it is built on top of it.

It doesn't. Thinker will let the AI choose its not-priority model if it makes more sense at the time, but the AI will still be pissed if you don't choose it yourself. If Morgan needs efficiency, he will run Green, but he will be pissed if you run Green or Planned. So the AI can be pragmatic even if it means being a bit hypocritical. It will not disregard a faction's social opposition. Morgan still can't run Planned.

To my understanding, setting social_ai=0 in thinker.ini will disable this behaviour.

It should remain on by default, though. The player isn't shackled to any particular SE choice, neither should the AI be. They have enough disadvantages as it is.

My rate of growth has been sad though.  Deirdre, sitting on the Monsoon Jungle, won the election by a landslide.  The Social Engineering choices are a puzzle to me, as they seem to consist of really bad options in all categories.  Consequently, so far I have chosen nothing.  I find myself especially askance at why Democratic has a PLANET penalty.  GROWTH and SUPPORT have to be bad for PLANET ?  Well why not do that in Planned then?

As I stated before, things like SE modeling is not a cornerstone of this mod and they can easily be tweaked without losing overall playability. So I am open to suggestions in this area. Current modeling is quite close to what Nevill uses in his mod. Surprisingly, we just came to about same solution independently. I didn't have a time to review it in details and adapt, though. Would appreciate a community help on that.

I wouldn't say it quite follows Nevill's balancing scheme. The way I understand it, you seem to be trying to make each choice balanced in itself, hence why Police State and Planned have SUPPORT and INDUSTRY offsetting each other, and Democracy gets -PLANET; as well as making each choice viable at every stage of the game. Nevill is more focused on balancing the potential benefits within a category against each other and enabling pretty synergies across categories, while accepting that some options are just going to be dominant at certain stages of the game. Nobody is going to pick Democracy and lose their 10 free minerals at the start of the game; likewise, even nerfed Planned is still the only real sensible choice to kick off the initial round of base building.

What I'm trying to say is that it's fine if some choices are clearly stronger than others, as long as it's not all the time. The risk is that the choices become too balanced and we end up with situations like this, where it's unclear what to pick because every choice hurts too much somewhere.

That said, there remain some convergences: in his latest version of the mod, Nevill made Police State give +2 POLICE, +2 SUPPORT, -1 GROWTH, -1 PROBE. So there is some scope for "yes, it's strong, but we might as well give it some downside to make it not as strong". The -INDUSTRY he gives for Free Market is an example of this too.

Most of the units seem to be incredibly expensive to make.  Sure I've had the tech for all kinds for quite a long time, but how would I ever afford to build anything?  I have not built any Recycling Tanks as I neither understand nor trust them.  I don't tend to build factories in games, being a "forest and forget" style player usually.  They've caused me severe eco-damage, global warming, and global flooding way too many times.  I have trouble believing that a +50% minerals facility isn't another kind of factory that does eco-damage.  Even though it is called a Recycling Tank.

People are constantly complaining about this and I cannot understand why. How much is incredible? They are about same as in vanilla or lower. See below change from vanilla to WTP.

Code: [Select]

Colony Pod 3 4
Rover Colony Pod 7 6
Sea Colony Pod 7 4
Formers 2 2
Sea Formers 4 2
Transport Foil 3 4
Speeder Probe Team 3 6
1-2-1 2 2
1-4-1 3 4
1-6-1 4 6
1-12-1 12 12
2-1-1 2 2
4-1-1 2 4
6-1-1 2 6
12-1-1 4 12
2-2-1 3 3
4-4-1 4 6
6-6-1 7 9
12-12-1 21 18
1-1-2 2 2
2-1-2 2 3
4-1-2 3 6
6-1-2 5 9
12-1-2 9 18
1-1-3 2 2
2-2-3 4 6
4-4-3 6 12
6-6-3 12 18
12-12-3 17 36
1-1-4 2 1
2-2-4 2 3
4-4-4 4 6
6-6-4 7 9
12-12-4 17 18

See above. Most of the units are about the same cost except pure attackers. This is not WTP attackers are costly. This is vanilla attackers are exceptionally stupidly priced. Attacker 12-1-1 costs 4 versus defender 1-12-1 costs 12 P-lease.
That was discussed multiple times already.
Currently speeder chassis is 50% and hovertank is 100% costlier than infantry. I can make it 25% and 50%, correspondingly, if it matters to someone. However, I believe they are fairly priced with their triple speed (9 tiles over roads, 27 tiles over tubes) and three attacks per turn.

I think a key question here is how many minerals bvanevery is getting at each of his bases in 2177. It is pretty difficult to break double-digits if you weren't lucky with mineral bonuses, and I don't see any of those in that screenshot. Conversely, a single rocky mineral can turn your faction into a relative industrial powerhouse.

For comparison, here is a screenshot from a singleplayer game (with Nevill's alphax.txt) I'm currently playing to pass the time between multiplayer turns. Coruscant and Cyberdyne Systems both have 8-9 minerals, which is respectable enough to build 30-mineral Impact Rovers and Speeder Probes in 4 turns and a 20-row project in 25 turns. Hoth and Purity of Essence both have 11+ thanks to mineral bonuses, which will be pretty nice to build projects or military units with. (Not that I'd want to build projects on my border with human players around...)

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

We have talked about it multiple times. Absolute combat unit costs do not matter as they are mean to fight enemy units. Slight variation in unit cost leads to slight proportional variation in number of combat encounters not number of units. Cheaper units will engage more often because everybody can stamp them faster on assembly line. They also die more often so the total number of them will be about the same.
What matters is relative cost of offensive and defensive units and other classes as this may give advantage to attacker or defender respectively.

[bvanevery]

I see that WTP has inherited Thinker's disregard for faction aversions.  I really wish you'd make that go away.  It's jarring, and it also messes up the diplomatic interactions.

I wasn't aware it does. I can look into it if you tell me how did you determine that.

Simple, I right clicked on the Contacts and looked at the Gaian readout.  She was Planned.  Ridiculous.  This design decision was deliberate on Induktio's part.  He values absolute AI performance over narrative experience or diplomatic mechanics. 

[bvanevery]

Details can't move Former to safety

can't move Former to safety

I'm not at all happy that you're making my Formers unable to change their orders and move off when a mindworm slides up next to them.  I assume you deliberately changed the game to behave this way. 

The opening of your game is very very dangerous with mindworms.  Furthermore, you have made one of the best methods for mitigating early too-close fungus, planting trees right next to it, take a long time to execute.  So now you've deliberately nailed my foot to the floor, to make me die.  This is 1/2 of my terraforming production you think is a great idea to kill, before I've even had a chance to found my 3rd city.

I am quitting this game.  And if the pattern of too much fungus, too many Formers getting whacked, continues too much, I won't be playing again until you do something about this.  I get the idea of wanting mindworms to be "dangerous and a challenge", but you need to balance that against slapping the player around, when they're fresh out of the chute and haven't managed to do anything yet.  There's this thing called player agency, we expect to have it.  If I'm just going to get a bunch of random BS handed to me at the opening of the game, which severely determines everyone's early expansion rate, I'll be passing on that kind of game experience.

[bvanevery]

I see the Pirates don't get a free mineral in the ocean shelf squares.  Well, that might be ok.  I did get to start with 2 minerals deposits.  But I didn't really get a chance to test further because:

Details gtfo

gtfo

WTF is this?  Turn 5.  This is still revised version 148.  Have you jacked the maintenance cost of Pressure Domes through the roof or something?

[bvanevery]

Details the swarms

the swarms

Can you give it a rest with the indigenous life forms already?  This is Turn 2.  I'd like to get my 2nd colonist underway, without it being a shooting gallery, or being gratuitously obstructed.  If it turns out that some other faction has started right next to me, well... I do have faction_placement=1.  If it means the same thing under Thinker as under WTP, this is rather unexpected.  Did you put an instantly spawning fungal tower just south of me?  This could be a rather quick game, so I suppose I'll be finding out soon enough.

Give a player too many crap starts, they're gonna stop trying.  Unless you're just doing a high pass filter for players who only like "monster" challenges.

Details diversion to the Jungle

diversion to the Jungle

So the immediate effect of such an incursion, is you're making me drop what I'm doing to deal with the spore launcher, rather than going out and popping pods like I want / am supposed to be doing.  You're putting me behind the competition, at a time when every single lost turn counts a great deal towards my growth.

I see that I'm sitting on the edge of the Monsoon Jungle.  Somehow I'm having my doubts that that's going to turn out to be a good thing, but we'll see.

Details why spore launcher spam

why spore launcher spam

This is the 2nd spore launcher that has popped up in pretty much the same place.  It just appeared this turn.  I moved 2 Scouts to reveal more of the map south of it, to see if there's a fungal tower.  Nope.  What's up with this?  Deirdre turned out to be in the hood, wandering a Scout around in the north.  I don't know what her closeness is, as I can't see a border.  I am not inclined to believe that she was waltzing around to the south.  It is far more likely that this spore launcher came from an offshore Isle.  However that doesn't really explain the 1st one.  The Pirates are not in this game, so sea disturbance shouldn't have been happening on Turn 2.  I'm not seeing how the spore launcher would have wandered in from another direction.  Either it came by sea, or it is spawning here.  Why?

Details pretty early Isle

pretty early Isle

This is the same turn.  I hadn't finished moving my units, when I took the previous screenshot.  Now I see an Isle to the northeast, carrying a mindworm larva.  Although Deirdre could be now churning the water up that way, I have to wonder if they just spawn on their own and come right in.

Details quality partner

quality partner

Next year, Deirdre signs a Pact and rubber bands me with a free Social Psych.  She does not have any naval units, nor any record of one having died.  The Isle appears to be spontaneous.