Thinking about Pirates

[bvanevery]

Details oh you distracting frying thing

oh you distracting frying thing

MY 2221.  I need my free Naval Yards.  This is getting to be a bit much.

Details finally boarded

finally boarded

Generally the incoming ships have just been getting fried.

[bvanevery]

Details distance problem

distance problem

MY 2222.  Going too fast, I almost missed this.  I learned from last time around that I can't just have a gun duel to extend my range.  It may require a bit of sacrifice to get rid of this thing.

Details coast guard peons

coast guard peons

I scrape up what I've got, but I've still got a skeleton country.  This one-by-one stuff is starting to become an attrition problem.

[bvanevery]

Details more great wipings out

more great wipings out

MY 2223.  I'm still mainly fighting the Caretakers, so I don't think this changes anything.  Never did make any X weapons.  Haven't made any weapons in a long time actually.  Just trying to get these dang bases past size 7.  As Hab Complexes come on line, I'm starting to make cheap untrained Trance 3-Pulse Skimships.  I hope they can take hits better.

[bvanevery]

Details stronger ship

stronger ship

MY 2225.  Not sure how I'm going to blow up this thing.  Hope it wears itself out.  Even the Caretakers have Doctrine: Initiative now.  Maybe the Planetary Datalinks is a better idea than I thought.

[bvanevery]

Details why the weak

why the weak

MY 2226.  I don't understand why my 50% wounded unarmored R-Laser foil was chosen as the defender.  I did have it set "L" to be notified when it's healed up.  If that doubles for "designated defender", that sucks.

Details humans suck

humans suck

We're just not getting anything done.  Lal's pretty much getting his butt whipped.  Santiago I think is in a stalemate.

[bvanevery]

Details a scout can't be good

a scout can't be good

MY 2227.  Why did my scout get selected to be killed?  Surely, it can't be the strongest defender?  I hope I'm not in for some rude awakening that these 3-Pulse ships are completely worthless.

[bvanevery]

Details no I'm sorry, I quit

no I'm sorry, I quit

MY 2229.  That's a size 9 city fairly close to my capitol, while I have an EFFIC of +2, and everybody's happy.  I don't care if I was pursuing Knowledge and had -2 PROBE.  The original game rules are broken and I'm not going to put up with them.  Way too much work just to try to get my empire off the ground, to have one of the game's hegemons summarily show up and do this to me.  I don't care if it cost them 1000 credits, and I suspect it didn't.  I'm no longer interested in whether Thinker plays the original game "well", because it's a junk game with serious flaws.

Details totally unlikeable

totally unlikeable

To add insult to injury, it used my own captured ships to execute the sea escape pods, that I didn't even want to found new cities with anyways.  I already worked on all my spam.  Lots of teeny weeny cities waiting for me to do the same boring stuff to them all over again.

Details if that's not good enough then what's the point

if that's not good enough then what's the point

15 squares away from my capitol.  I was not capable of producing a sea empire any better than I did.  It's as good as it gets in a real stretch of ocean.

Details 20 the other way

20 the other way

This empire isn't "everywhere on the map" like stock binary Pirate AI does.  This is pretty close knit, while still attempting to keep up with Thinker base spam, and still refusing to engage in the monstrosity of Infinite City Sprawl.  I've worked an awful lot of terrain.  By hand.  Every single one of those Tidal Harnesses.  A lot of the kelp was free.

Details prep for heist

prep for heist

I'm especially finding it rather difficult, to obtain the Pirates' free Naval Yards, in a relevant timeframe.  I came close this time, but it danced out of reach.  I probably would have stolen it from the Caretakers in 3 more turns, but I consider 2 other factions having it first, to be a bit of a survival problem.

[bvanevery]

A review of Thinker.ini settings I'm using:

Gotta turn off the things that weren't improvements.  Looking in thinker.ini, I notice:

Code: [Select]

; Set the amount of priority AI factions have for the preferred social model.
; Allowed values: 0 (no priority) - 1000. By default the priority is moderate.
social_ai_bias=10
Totally cranking that to 1000.  Enough of this Morganic Green and Deirdre Planned AI rubbish.

Here's the one that got me started looking:

Code: [Select]

; Probe team infiltration on other factions can expire randomly when this option is set.
; Chance for discovery is rolled each turn and depends on the comparative PROBE ratings of the
; attacking and defending faction. If discovered, a dialog box will be displayed for both.
counter_espionage=1
That's a zero!

I totally don't understand the purpose of excluding these 3 factions from a slate of random opponents.  It might explain why my opponents have been awfully consistent from run to run.

Code: [Select]

; Select whether to exclude some factions from random selection in the game setup.
; Factions can be selected individually but at least 7 factions must always remain enabled.
;  1 = Gaians
;  2 = Hive
;  3 = Univ
;  4 = Morgan
;  5 = Spartans
;  6 = Believe
;  7 = Peace
;  8 = Cyborg
;  9 = Pirates
; 10 = Drone
; 11 = Angels
; 12 = Fungboy
; 13 = Caretaker
; 14 = Usurper
; 15 = First custom faction slot if available etc.
skip_faction=12
skip_faction=13
skip_faction=14
So, erasing those entries.

And now, I'm dumping my SMACX AI Growth mod on top of Thinker.  That means global warming frequency is set like the stock binary.  Of course I've made numerous changes to the rules.  The condenser / borehole / supply crawler thing isn't going to happen for most factions until late game.

It could happen earlier for 1 AI faction if it gets the Weather Paradigm done.  However, early Secret Projects are a bit more expensive, 300 rather than 200, and are not immediately available in the game.  I don't know if Thinker's Infinite City Sprawl will manage to crank those out or not.  It depends on how reliant it usually is on supply crawlers, how vertical it's willing to make its early cities, if it knows to cash Artifacts to speed things along, and if it knows how to spend cash to do it.

It's probably not going to get the cash by popping a lot of early supply pods.  I actually think Thinker's paucity of supply pods on the map is an improvement, over the gluttonous ways of my usual play.  So, I'm retaining that Thinker.ini setting.  I wasn't particularly impressed by Thinker's collection of pods.  It might be expected that I got the most at sea, but it left noticeable scraps on land as well.  In some cases, like with Lal, it really never finished exploring.

The main question I want to try to answer is:

Is Infinite City Sprawl the only way to win the game?

In the original game rules, the answer might be yes.  However, that question is superseded by the overpowered probe teams.  It's such a dominant strategy that it really doesn't matter.  Big empire might equal a lot of cash, then summary buyout.  But going -2 PROBE might be your death sentence, irrespective.

In my rules, I plugged up a lot of Thinker's and expert players' exploits eons ago.  There might still be some.  And it may not matter in the end, if ICS reigns supreme.  But I've designed rules that are the best balance I could hope to come up with, for humans playing the game, who don't want to be super tedious with everything.  Like I could make various terrain improvements even more tedious to get done, or take them out of the game entirely.  But I didn't do that.  It's all there... it's just not obviously your immediate beeline to victory.

It will be mildly amusing if Thinker makes surprisingly effective use of Cloaks.  At least in a single player game with dumb stock AIs, I consider it a completely useless technology.  It becomes available fairly early.  For many releases, I made it a starting ability of the Alien factions!  I toned that down eventually, because I thought it was so useless, it wasn't even worth bothering to give away at the beginning of the game.

Oh, and if Thinker can go nuts with Clean Reactors being available from the start of the game.  That was a bletcherous hack for the stock AI's benefit.  I don't think Thinker needs that kind of aid.   

It should be noted that I might have broken Economic Victory.  I definitely nerfed it, because some of my versions of Morgan were buying the entire world for 1000 credits.  It's godawful expensive now.  Might have something to do with my probe team fixes, not sure.  Currently I don't see any scenario where a human player would choose Economic Victory over some other approach, including conquering every last city on the map.  But an AI, who doesn't care about tedium?  HMMM.

[bvanevery]

Ok here we go.  Frankenstein's monster of a mod.  Some gory severed limb of a thing could just fall off, because the compatibility train left the station years ago.  Induktio and I each went our separate ways years ago, and it's kinda luck if this can converge well again.  There's probably not even a point in speculating how exactly this might explode.

Details a real aquatic faction

a real aquatic faction

Factions in my mod do not have penalties.  Empirically, this allows the stock AI to play better.  The dynamic range of penalties in the original game is too severe, it's rather onerous and crippling.  So, nobody experiences them.  Human players don't like having crippled things either, like your bases being trivially taken over when you've got -2 PROBE.  So nobody suffers any of that.

Factions don't get starter techs.  It's pointless.  All it does is accelerate the early tech trading economy.  Techs in my tree are meticulously balanced, for when they tend to arrive in the game, according to their [power tech wealth growth] weights in alphax.txt.  The Tier 1 game is "Verified Fair [TM]" and a notable consideration is, everybody starts with ships.  Nobody's struggling to get off an island or away from a peninsula they're choked up on.  If they want to go pop sea supply pods immediately, they can.  It'll be interesting to see if Thinker takes ready advantage of the exploration and expansion opportunity available to it.

In addition to all those considerations, my Pirates get IMPUNITY to Wealth.  When played by the AI, they are not aargh arrgh Santiago of the sea.  They're Passive.  They sit back and rake in money.  They have this huge food energy minerals rich moat to do it in.  Why should they ever bother to conquer anyone at all?  They tend to win the Governorship.

There have been times in my modding work, where my Pirates have been truly terrifying, even with the stock binary.  Like Orbital Defense Pod terrifying.  But there have been some bugs in the stock binary that sometimes crippled them, that I've had to work around.  I think I've got it under control lately and they're effective once again.  I don't remember being terrified by them lately, but I might just be that much better at my own mod, and I might not have played enough recent test games.

Details social engineering in 1.52

social engineering in 1.52

Worth making clear what "impunity to Wealth" means, as well as the other stark differences in my SE table.  Capitalist (Free Market) is broken up.  You're not stuck with the "military restriction game" with -5 POLICE.  I mean look at the USA, it's capitalist as # and you don't see them even slightly averse to being the world policeman.

There are no PROBE penalties in the table.  That's because negative PROBE is way too obnoxious in the original game.  There are no INDUSTRY bonuses, because it's overpowered.  Domai gets an INDUSTRY bonus for his faction and that's it.  No other way to get it.

GROWTH and JUSTICE (EFFIC) are on strict diets.  Pop booming takes real work.  Generally speaking, "strict diet / game of inches" is the theme.  You're expected to get Future Societies a lot earlier and have 4 SE choices for a lot of the game.  It's somewhat of a mix 'n' match system.  Moreso in earlier versions of my mod, less so now.

I wonder if Thinker will exploit the Green giveaway?  It was necessary to work around a bug in the stock binary.  It has no penalties because if there are any, Deirdre won't go Green for hundreds of years.  Since it's a giveaway, recently I made Centauri Empathy take longer to get.  Shifting techs in time, is one of the ways they can be partly rebalanced.

[bvanevery]

Huge map.  Realizing I probably did 50%..70% ocean since I just did "start new game" without specifying anything.  Average settings.  Transcend difficulty, full set of random opponents.  As seen in the Pirates faction screenshot above, the Gaians, Usurpers, Morganites, Spartans, Cyborgs, and Believers are in the game.  It should be noted that my Morgan is no wimp.  He doesn't have all that Morgan crippling stuff.  He's more like a Haliburton, a military contractor.  Morgan at various times in my modding, has been really really scary, although not so much lately.

Details is it a lake

is it a lake

This is a weird start.  Why am I being given a Transport?  That never happens in my mod.  Maybe Thinker is doing its own world generation and is not using alphax.txt terrain generation parameters.  I'll roll with it for now, but if it's too crazy, I'll look for the knobs to make the game do it my way.  I'm also realizing I took Thinker's "equidistant" faction placement algorithm and not the stock binary's.  That could change some things.

Details am I sealed

am I sealed

So many games, land factions have been locked up by water.  Not too often does a water faction get locked up by land!  It can happen if you deliberately choose an "old school" 30%..50% land generation with the stock binary and alphax.txt.  Not much in the way of real oceans on those.  But I changed my land generation eons ago, even before I started on SMACX AI Growth mod.  You might call it "preflight" modding, coming up with that world generation solution.  If this sucks hard for Pirates, then I'm bailing, and calling this a false start.  There's nothing interesting about being put waaaay behind other faction's ability to spread.  Not the least of which is because, popping ocean pods is how I keep up with AI advantages.  No oceans, no pods.

[bvanevery]

Details it's a bloody lake

it's a bloody lake

Well that was cute.  We're not doing this.

This kind of thing never happens on my mod.  I've got "continentally" land masses, always with big Earth-style oceans to go with them.  Never crater hole lakes or Mars type stuff.  Never archipelagos.  Never 1x1 islands or even smaller islands.

Thinker's settings have gotta go.  Where are the knobs.  Perusing Thinker.ini.

[bvanevery]

This knob, I'm turning off.  Maybe it works in the real world just fine.  But anything that gives the AI a discount, when the AI already has every production advantage under the sun, strikes me as probably a bad idea.  I don't feel like spending limited play testing time on what's probably a bad idea.  It could be responsible for excessive AI research rates, tech leakage, and therefore ruining the game.  I've observed noticeable tech leakage problems in Thinker, in the form of sugar daddy AI allies, and egregious leakage in The Will To Power.

Maybe I should actually read Details.md but I'm not going to right now.

EDIT: Ok ok, I RTFM.  Not interested in this.  I balanced my whole tree based on vanilla behavior.  I'm not trying to re-cost a vanilla tree.  I know my tree works fine.  Gold standard of tech trees AFAIAC really.

Code: [Select]

; Improved tech cost mechanic to increase late game research costs (see Details.md)
; Tech costs scale relative to the level of current research item, instead of the
; old version where costs increased according to the amount of techs a faction had.
revised_tech_cost=1

; When revised_tech_cost is enabled, this factor is applied on AI research costs.
; Example: 100 = 100% of human cost, 76 = 76% of human cost. Minimum value: 1.
tech_cost_factor=116,108,100,92,84,76
That's a zero.

This knob I'm already clear on, without even trying it.  No.  Just, no.  I designed my early tech tree for a reason.  It's not an excuse to blitz through the game to get to "better stuff".  I realize Thinker is targeted at the original game, and seeks its own way to address the original game's limitations.  But I spent 3.5+ years of work doing it a different way.  Even if I were to utilize revised_tech_cost for some reason, I would never turn this on.

Code: [Select]

; Special option for revised_tech_cost. Apply a temporary, decreasing discount for
; the first 16 techs that are discovered. Any starting techs will count against the limit.
cheap_early_tech=1
That's a zero.

Found the knob I was looking for.

Code: [Select]

; Enable Thinker's modified map generator. This replaces the old WorldBuilder.
new_world_builder=1
That's a zero.

Since I turned off the new world builder, I don't think the Monsoon Jungle mod matters.  But I thought I would comment: this is most likely to be a giveaway for the AIs.  Sure, it increases the chance that a human player will start within settlement range of one of these.  But there are 6 AIs taking their chances with that.  We know from vanilla that even 1 Monsoon Jungle in the game is very powerful for most factions, and likely to make them into the dominant early power of the game.  So now you get maybe 2 AIs getting that kind of boost, instead of just 1.  And you the human, maybe you get it, maybe you don't.  You're either at parity, or below 2 factions.  I think it's probably better to be below 0 or 1 factions, with just 1 Monsoon Jungle on the map.  Or remove the M.J. from the game entirely as overpowered.

But I'll leave the setting alone because I still haven't experienced much of its consequences.  In other games, I learned a long time ago not to fixate on the Monsoon Jungle.  It's way cool if you start close to it.  If you have to take some huge hike to colonize it, the loss of JUSTICE / EFFIC and time, is more trouble than it's worth.  Pointedly, you can get bought out by probe teams, unless you relocate your capitol there.  So what's your original settlement location gonna be, just starter resources?  It's a lot of delays.  You're usually better off "popping pods judiciously" around you, utilizing those resource specials effectively, and getting a good empire going right where you are.

Code: [Select]

; This replaces the default Monsoon Jungle landmark with multiple dispersed jungles on the map.
modified_landmarks=1
Leaving this alone.

I sit on the fence about equidistant faction placement.  I think it makes the AIs very hard to intervene in.  But if under my rules, I find a way to intervene anyways, then maybe it's not such an issue.

Code: [Select]

; Balance faction starting locations more evenly on random maps and
; maintain a minimum distance to any nearest neighbors.
faction_placement=1
Leaving this alone.

You know?   A long time ago, I remember actually approving of this tweak.  In one of the rare early instances where I provided feedback on Thinker's choices.  But that was then and this is now.  I see no evidence that the Thinker AI factions need any kind of starting boost at all.  Frankly, it reminds me of corporate welfare.  This goes.  If it results in games with clearly runted crippled starting factions, I will reconsider.

Code: [Select]

; Faction placement can also add two nutrient bonuses for each land-based faction.
; 0 = disable for all, 1 = enable for AIs only, 2 = enable for all.
nutrient_bonus=1
That's a zero.

Well that looks like it's it.  More changes than I anticipated.  But, I really didn't pay thorough attention before.  No sense continuing to get a little bit into games and then just quitting.

[Induktio]

I'm not sure what's the rationale of just playing version 3.0 when 3.1 is also available. Maybe to post about only one version in one thread? Well, it's not very relevant then if some of the issues got fixed in the new version. Probably that spawning issue will not happen. You might also have some misconceptions about how cheap_early_tech works. With revised_tech_cost first level techs are very expensive for a starter empire, so the cheap_early_tech option is not much different from vanilla behaviour in the early stages of the game. The discount decreases after each tech discovered, so soon it will not affect things that much. Modified landmarks also has no effect if the new world builder is disabled.

[bvanevery]

I'm not sure what's the rationale of just playing version 3.0 when 3.1 is also available.

3.1 is available?  As development in progress, or a stable release?  I'll go check your repo.

Ah, I see what has happened.  I started this thread on Feb 5th and 3.0 was your stable release at that time.  You released 3.1 on Feb 11th and I was not aware.  I will install 3.1 and review what changes it made over 3.0.  Then decide whether to proceed with the Frankensteining.

Maybe to post about only one version in one thread?

Even bumping the version, I would still do 1 thread.  This thread competes with every other AAR I ever made.     No hard feelings but I want to showcase my mod more than yours.  Still, you've earned the right to have some attention.  To the extent that anyone reads AARs, and some people actually do.  This is not my usual "full production values" AAR but it's not that far off either.  And it has the odd quality of being about a particular topic, run into the ground, until its most gory conclusion.  There's some specific value in that.  Wanna know how sea empires really work?  Hey well, here it is...

With revised_tech_cost first level techs are very expensive for a starter empire, so the cheap_early_tech option is not much different from vanilla behaviour in the early stages of the game.

Hm.  Well, that might not suck.  But I don't want to take the time to test it.  I already know that my modded treatment of the tech tree, does not suck.  Apples to apples.  Fewer moving parts.

The goal is to see if your AI can play without the exploit of the condensers, supply crawlers, and boreholes just handed to it.  Without getting to ignore global flooding.  And if even given all that, does Infinite City Sprawl strictly dominate the game?  If one has the patience / motivation / non-disgust to do it.  That'll never be me.  Fine for an AI, but I would never waste my free time pushing so many units.  It's one the ways that 4X TBS gets seriously old.  Its form of grinding.

Trajectory of game design in Civ IV was anti-ICS.  I think it only continued, but I'm not sure, because I got off the Firaxis boat after IV.  And I don't really know if anyone proved that ICS dominates in IV anyways.

[bvanevery]

Ok!  3.1 looks like an improvement for tech trading.  Didn't see anything about probe teams though, not that I was expecting to.  Probe teams ala the original game bug the hell out of me, so I'm proceeding with the Frankensteining.  It turns out that there really aren't more Thinker.ini options to set.  Just have to make sure I use a new Thinker.ini format.  Going over it carefully with WinMerge, I am using the following options differently from Thinker 3.1 defaults.  I'm aware that some of these weren't strictly necessary to specify, but it shows clarity of intent on my part.

social_ai_bias=1000
revised_tech_cost=0
cheap_early_tech=0
counter_espionage=0
new_world_builder=0
nutrient_bonus=0
removed all 3 skip_faction lines

Huge map.  30%..50% oceans since we're using my world generator.  Average settings.  Transcend difficulty.  Random opponents.

Details central start

central start

Definitely looks like my kind of world generation.  If there's any fault in my options, it's that supercontinents that cut Planet in half, are common.  You can't necessarily get from the northern to the southern hemisphere.  Well, Earth had real obstructions too, so I'm in good company!

Details no aliens

no aliens

So, nobody should be directing their research.  They should be following the research priorities I've given them.  Every faction in my mod has a slightly different set of priorities.  There are exactly 14 combos if you don't count choosing everything and choosing nothing.  The tech tree weights have been adjusted so that every faction's Agendas, Aversions, and technical foci actually work.  When I realize the tech tree is keeping a faction from being able to do its play style, I either change the tech tree or the play style.  That's like knitting a sweater and it's a lot of work.  I've been at it 3.5+ years so I'm pretty confident in my results.  I have done numerous random faction games to verify that things proceed as I expect, as well as AI vs. AI games to see who does / doesn't get clobbered.

So I'm likely to notice, if something's off.

• Gaians - Explore, Discover
• Pirates - Build
• Spartans - Conquer
• Cyborgs - Discover, Build
• Free Drones - Explore, Build, Conquer
• Believers - Build, Conquer
• University - Discover

It should be noted / reminded that the research foci are mostly "hard" divisions in my mod.  If you want military anything, you research Conquer.  If you don't, you don't get anything.  There aren't any weapons or armors sprinkled around elsewhere.  Some chasses are cross-listed with Explore, to the extent they actually help you explore Planet at that stage of the game.  Colonization, growth, and citizen happiness are primarily Explore techs.  Growth and happiness are secondarily listed in Build, about half as much emphasis, because more and happy workers does equal more minerals and energy.  Build is primarily about minerals and energy.  Discover is about making your research go faster.

Explore is also the "mindworm tech" stuff.  Regrettable that it's overloaded like that, but I can only work with the original game binary and its categories.  Usual policy on weighting such techs, is to set them growth=4 so probably have to do Explore, but also power=1 if it's a weapon, like a mindworm.  That way, factions interested in Conquer have a chance to discover a really deadly Planet weapon system.  But they are not expected to be climbing up that tree of capability rapidly, compared to an Explore focused faction.

These fairly "hard" divisions, are how I'm more likely to know, that someone is cheating.  If you're an AI, you have to play with your statically set research priorities.  That's how AI factions retain their balance, stay in character, and keep from becoming generic "national" opponents.  I'm not interested in games where 7 generic factions all build thermal boreholes and the luck of the map determines the winner.  Different factions have slightly different ways of doing things, and they are meant to fill different ecological niches.  Some factions may do well up close to you.  Others may do well very far away from you.

Human players are the ones who can choose their research priorities dynamically.  And they're still beholden to their turn-by-turn choices.  They cannot turn their research around on a dime.  That would be cheating.  You wanted the Planetary Energy Grid instead of defensive armor?  Fine, your choice.  Better hope Santiago or Yang don't overrun you meanwhile, 'cuz they're learning how to fight.

Details local pond

local pond

In the middle of this "bay" looks like about as good a capitol location as I'm going to get.  I don't even know if pushing it to the northwest is worth much.  Could all be open ocean in that direction, as far as making "perfect circles" around the capitol are concerned.  This game is not likely to be diplomatically isolated.  I'm probably going to be right smack in the middle of a bunch of land factions interacting.  I won't make the mistake I did the other game, of establishing a broad and indefensible coastal empire.  I'm not Rome.  Not yet.