SE choices for AI - suggestions

[Lord Avalon]

Are you saying the code has 1 pac drone for each 2-n military units away from base at Police -3?  Per manual it seems like there should be only 1 pac drone.

At Police -4 it goes up to extra pac drone for each military unit away from base.

[Earthmichael]

Lord Avalon is correct below, and I modified my post to try to give the correct info.  Sorry for the initial mistake.

Police -4 gives one drone for each unit out of the area AND one drone for each aircraft built that is not an intercepter (regardless of whether the aircraft is in your area or not).  There are no "free" units; every single unit out of the area adds a drone.  Police -3 says it give one free unit, but I have never tested it. 

Furthermore, these pacifism drones are added AFTER most other drone handling facilities have had their effect, so they are not stopped by these facilities.  Which makes pacifism drones particularly hard to deal with; the only way I know to deal with it is to create enough talents or specialists to offset the drones.  But I typically use the "tainted city" trick I discuss below to avoid having this problem except in a single city.

Police -5 DOUBLES this to two drones per unit and per aircraft.  This is usually where I am at when playing FM.

As a human, I take care not to move any units out of my area except the independent units (typically these are only units at the start of the game, or from pods popped far enough away from a city).  I use some tricks to help deal with pacifism drones.  First, it is best to have one city to be set as the home for any offensive military unit.  But that city will need a lot of crawler support, since this city can support no workers at all.  You may need a crawler or two for food so that you can grow your base to size 5 to get your choice of specialists, but most crawlers will be mineral.  Since each non-clean unit homed to the city requires one mineral, you will need to crawl minerals to support every offensive unit, including every aircraft.  In theory you do not have to home intercepters to the city, but in practice sometimes an intercepter will move out of your area and create drones anyway, so it is best to home all aircraft.  Then you can have a problem with ecodamage if you are crawling a lot of minerals into the city.  At some point, if you have enough offensive units, you may need a second city due to ecodamage of supporting them all in one city.

Once you get the tech you can build a punishment dome so that any population can work the squares, but this does not make that much difference, since the minerals gained this way will probably not help all that much in terms of reducing crawler support.

I am not sure you can very easily program this kind of strategy into an AI, which is why I said it was probably best for the AI to avoid FM.

[Lord Avalon]

Hmm, another that's-not-what-the-manual-says moment.  Supposedly it's Police -5 that gives 2 drones per external military unit.

[Yitzi]

By the way, this is vaguely off-topic, but once you've solved the big AI problems I'm wondering if you might be interested in making a version of your patch without the AI beelines?  The beelines are going to throw things off horribly if the tech tree is changed in a mod, and I get the idea they aren't really that difficult to do anyway in alphax (just increase the value of the relevant techs for the relevant foci.)

[kyrub]

I checked again and this is how Pacifism drones work:

1) POLICE = -3
Every unit after the first one outside of your territory causes +1 pacifism drone in your base.
(This should really be corrected in the new Datalinks)

2) Pacifism drones are added in the "police phase", the one before the last phase. That's why they are not nullified by classic facilities. For the rank of phases, you may look in to your "detailed" view in the base unrest window.

3) The last phase is the Special project phase. This means that Human Genome Project, The Longevity Vaccine and the Clinical Immortality SPs can stop pacifism drones even after they are created.

4) Punishment sphere is included in Special project phase.

5) AI does not check for pacifism drones when trying to make SE choice.


---------- Beelines -----------

By the way, this is vaguely off-topic, but once you've solved the big AI problems I'm wondering if you might be interested in making a version of your patch without the AI beelines?

I have no problem with it and I find it desirable.

As far as numbers go, I actually stripped off the original AI from about 1/5 of beelines. (I am not a big fan of AI beelines, unless they are really sophisticated, I dislike formulaic AIs.) The only thing I really changed (IIRC), was a very strong push for Centauri Ecology. I think I included Industrial Automation beeline, as well as the tech lifting mineral/nutrient limits. Reactors, as well (not sure). These were important, I thought.

You may look yourself. The tech_value AI fonction starts at 1d3f90h.
The IsInBeeline fonction is 1d3f10h. Arg4 is tech (number according to alpha.txt). Arg8 is beeline depth.
If you put these in alpha.txt and make them customizable, I'll be grateful, in fact. At least people get some material to tinker and mod AI.

! - Please remember, that "Blind research" option now uses these AI beeline routines, in fact. It's not very blind at all. The modders should know that as well, it should be mentioned in your new alpha.txt file.

[ete]

As far as sharing of disassembled database, I understand your interest in testing and probing AI. I love studying current AI algorithms and finding new ones and better, same as you, ete.
But the short answer to your question is: not now.

The longer answer: I will most probably disclose my IDA database later, in months to come, to wider community for any use. I did so in all my other projects so far (bar one that was first and is still unfinished). So you may more or less rely on the fact.
Right now, I am doing the AI business myself, in the pace I set to myself, without any pressure and enjoying all the surprise and fun it offers. It's a bit egoistic but it's well deserved at the same time (see below). When I am done with my effort, I'll open the database to the community and you may improve it or build a new concurential model. You may try to create a scripted AI as well, if you wish and have abilities to do so.


To explain my stance a bit further: the ground disassembling is the really hard part, the rest are the fruits. When you disassemble a game, the first stage is "simple findings", very fruitful (like combat bonuses or POP limits locations). This is short. The second stage is very hard and can take a hundred of hours time, because you are trying to understand the non-obvious in the code. It also brings few fruits. After that, you may try to understand the AI. This is the hardest, because you must penetrate something that is not visible in the game AT ALL: how the AI uses its own data, what analysis it does for its goals, how it communicates in AI-AI mode. Also, without understanding the AI more than 80%, you fail to improve it. That's another hundreds hours thing (for SMAC I mean, other games have much simpler AI).

I have put this effort in the game, and that's why I tend to think I can enjoy a small time for tinkering with it, before I feed to the player's community. I am trying to do my work to help the players, but, for now, I do it privately, myself. - Hopefully that does make some sense to you and others here.

Wanting to play around with code yourself given the effort required to get that far is is entirely understandable. I look forward to being able to take a look, and see what other programmers may find and improve so I'm very happy that you plan to release it at some point, but you seem to be doing great things and if having the code with your notes to yourself improves your motivation and enjoyment then by all means keep it to yourself until you're happy to share.

Also, could you clarify your work on SMAX/SMAC? How much of your research can be applied directly/almost directly to SMAX, and are you currently still working almost entirely on SMAC?


On topic: "1) POLICE = -3
Every unit after the first one outside of your territory causes +1 pacifism drone in your base.
(This should really be corrected in the new Datalinks)"
Checked in SMAX, and corrected.

5) AI does not check for pacifism drones when trying to make SE choice.

Giving them this check properly could well be the key to making them handle FM drones properly, or learn to avoid FM unless they can. I'd discourage entirely dissuading AI from FM unless there's no reasonable way to prevent them incurring far too many drones, since FM is extremely helpful to a faction if used correctly. If EM's methods are too complex to program in as they may be, perhaps adjusting build priorities so no non-Air Superiority fighters are made if police is low and encourage the AI to keep all units in borders? Perhaps that too would be extremely complex.

[kyrub]

Wanting to play around with code yourself given the effort required to get that far is is entirely understandable.

Thanks for that, ete.

Also, could you clarify your work on SMAX/SMAC? How much of your research can be applied directly/almost directly to SMAX, and are you currently still working almost entirely on SMAC?

I am using SMAC for changes, since my knowledge was gathered in SMAC exe database (the postSMAX version 4.0). To project the changes into SMAX requires some time and energy, the SMAX exe, while being extremely similar, has different addresses. - So I avoid it until I am sure the changes are tested and valuable. Once we have a whole AI module (like: SE choices, or building decisions, or terraforming) ready, tested, approved , it can be transferred to SMAX.

5) AI does not check for pacifism drones when trying to make SE choice.

Giving them this check properly could well be the key to making them handle FM drones properly, or learn to avoid FM unless they can. I'd discourage entirely dissuading AI from FM unless there's no reasonable way to prevent them incurring far too many drones, since FM is extremely helpful to a faction if used correctly.

I'd try the same thing. I have seen AI Morgan keep his units inside his territory for whole periods of his game, so there is some space for cautious optimism.

[Lord Avalon]

Should pacifism drones come after regular facilities?  It's a pretty strong penalty if (nearly) every military unit is causing a drone, and very strong for two.  If you have unused calming potential, why shouldn't that be applied?

Don't you hate it when you get drones because a unit that was inside your borders, but due to a border change, now is not, or you pop a unit that gets assigned a home base - and on top of that, it takes a few turns to get back to your territory?

[Earthmichael]

Actually, Lord Avalon, what you mean to say is that Pacifism drones should be assessed first, then all drone management facilities, projects, etc. should apply.

I agree, but I am not sure this is something that can be modded.

[Yitzi]

Actually, Lord Avalon, what you mean to say is that Pacifism drones should be assessed first, then all drone management facilities, projects, etc. should apply.

I agree, but I am not sure this is something that can be modded.

It probably can be, but would be fairly tough to give people the choice.  It usually won't make that much difference in terms of drone riots (for a large base, if you've got enough psych that the facilities get rid of all your drones and have some left over, you've probably got plenty of spare talents as well), so it really just makes it very hard to get a golden age with pacifism drones...and I'm not so sure that's a bad thing.

[ete]

Should pacifism drones come after regular facilities?  It's a pretty strong penalty if (nearly) every military unit is causing a drone, and very strong for two.  If you have unused calming potential, why shouldn't that be applied?

If they were applied before facilities, pacifism drones would be almost no penalty, and Free Market (already extremely useful) would lose its largest downside: Not being able to fight wars. I often get to the stage where all or almost all of my citizens start off as drones, and still suppress them with facilities/SPs/Psych. It'd be a significant gameplay change improving the power of already the best social engineering choice.. I'm not keen on it.

Plus, changing it does not really make sense thematically. People generally bored and unhappy (normal drones) can be distracted easily enough by Rec commons or hologram theaters, but angry anti-war protesters (pacifism drones) are much harder to deal with.

[Lord Avalon]

Actually, Lord Avalon, what you mean to say is that Pacifism drones should be assessed first, then all drone management facilities, projects, etc. should apply.

I agree, but I am not sure this is something that can be modded.

No, I meant what I asked, which was to open debate about changing the game to what you said vs status quo.

Would it really be "almost no penalty," like ete says?  You can get Free Market pretty early, when bases aren't that large and have Rec Commons, or maybe RC + Hologram Theater.  How well can they deal with extra drones, even if pacifism drones are assessed with other drones?  (Off the top of my head, I don't know when the 1st pop drone turns up, and the 2nd.)

What if all drones were assessed first, but pacifism drones are super drones?

[Yitzi]

No, I meant what I asked, which was to open debate about changing the game to what you said vs status quo.

Would it really be "almost no penalty," like ete says?  You can get Free Market pretty early, when bases aren't that large and have Rec Commons, or maybe RC + Hologram Theater.  How well can they deal with extra drones, even if pacifism drones are assessed with other drones?  (Off the top of my head, I don't know when the 1st pop drone turns up, and the 2nd.)

The problem is that total drones before psych and facilities (except from bureaucracy) are capped at the number of nonspecialists at your base.  So on Transcend, 10 pacifism drones and playing as University is only 1 drone more than with no pacifism and not as the University.  (And if you have a specialist, there's no difference at all.)

What if all drones were assessed first, but pacifism drones are super drones?

Now that seems it'd work better (even if pacifism only makes superdrones after there are no more non-drone non-specialists left); I'm planning part of my next patch to make it possible to do that sort of thing in terms of the superdrones, so it might be possible to also include an order switch...once you do that, though, what difference does it make what order it's in?  The only difference I can see is that pacifism makes it much harder to get a golden age...which still seems like a good thing.

[ete]

How many drones you start off with depends mostly on your number of bases (more=more starting drones) and efficiency rating (higher=less starting drones) via this: http://alphacentauri2.info/mediawiki/Bureaucracy but there are other factors: http://alphacentauri2.info/mediawiki/Drones_%28Advanced%29 (i love having a wiki, will make it better though, plenty to fix)

As I understand it, superdrones are only harder to suppress via psych, facilities turn them into citizens as easily as normal drones. Base when "bases aren't that large" with the anti-drone facilities should be able to handle an all citizens start as drones scenario with moderate psych investment, especially if you get an anti drone SP or two. It does mean you've gotta build a couple of facilities and direct a bit into psych, but compared to the current "base is going to massively riot if you try to fight/explore under FM" it seems likely to be very minor.

[Earthmichael]

I think one of the problems with pacifism is that Aircraft that are not intercepters cause the penalty if if they have never moved a single square from the city where they were built.  So that makes it very difficult to create aircraft even for purely defensive purposes.

With pacificsm drones coming as late as they do, almost nothing can help against them.  So people are forced into the tainted city strategy, even if they would rather avoid it.