SE choices for AI - suggestions

[Yitzi]

Here's a better view of the city-looking thing - and an uncaptured one stacked with another unit.  Attack it with the active unit, and reload the attached save over until you capture those two.  It shouldn't take all night.  This is how the game normally behaves - it's not capture-able because the game's gone buggy.



scient wants me to get the game to crash, and I've still not finished the other thing I was working on, and it's late, so...

Ok, thanks.  I'll try to take a look at it, and see if I can easily figure out what's going on or if it needs to wait for when I'm focusing on just that.

Re: Boils:

Yea maybe it's different in your patch.  I've seen games where boils progress to 20+ stacks of Elite Locusts.  These stacks could not be captured and took no collateral damage..  It seems like this was after only a dozen pops or so.

How many ecological facilities were built in that game?  There's a bug (fixed in my patch) where it treats facility-building as pops for certain purposes.

Re: Eco facilities:

300 faction minerals is mid game faction-wide production.  Certainly not early-mid.  That's 10-15 bases, around size 7 with 2 crawled boreholes each, and no mineral multipliers. 

Exactly; and by that point you should have Centauri Preserves to help keep the ecodamage down.  Or you could just deal with a pop every other turn.

I forsee two problems.  Nanoreplicator, Temple, and Pholus Mutagen are very late game.  In addition, facilities reduce eco damage way too much.  As they are, each eco facility reduces eco damage as follows:
#1: -50%
#2: -66%
#3: -75%
#4: -80% (Pholus Mutagen with all 3)

Yes, they're effectively essential for high-production bases; I don't see how that is a  problem, seeing as they're equally available to everyone.

While I think Planet rating and facilities should matter, the effects of running FM and/or no facilities will be too devastating to even contemplate these options. 

Only in the later game when going for high mineral production.  If you ditch the boreholes and most mineral-boosting facilities and build condenser/farm everywhere, you're looking at far less.

And in the later game, requiring ecological facilities if you're getting production facilities as well is IMO not such a big problem.

What is the cap on +Planet?  I assume it's +3, as there's no benefit past that on the SE page.

+2 for ecodamage actually; my proposal would increase it to +5.

---

Yea I butchered the numbers really badly on the city size idea.  My head's been a bit off today.  What I meant was that a base would have its eco damage reduced slightly by a function of its size, which is anti-ICS.

The pollution in a base would scale down by a factor of [N/(N^1.2)], where N is the city size.

Ah, so the actual exponent would be 0.2.  That makes more sense...but if so, your proposal would be even harsher than mine in the late game for mineral-focusing factions; a 300-mineral size-50 base would produce 5X(300/50^(0.2))*(3/8)-8=5X137.19X3/8-8=249.23, rounds up to 250, and that's before applying techs.

[Buster's Uncle]

Actually, when I opened that game a tried the capture, NOW I was getting the "vastly more powerful mind controlling" message, at which point captures never seem to happen.  It might be possible to find a stack to capture in the first save I posted which was a turn earlier and when I captured that stack - there had been a lot of fungal pops, and I doubt I found anything like all of the ecodamage worms.

On reflection, I think this was originally a SMAC game, and that's why it's so buggy.  I did succeed in crashing it - by attacking a worm two turns later, with that captured city thing...  scient can tell you more, but it had a reactor strength of zero.  You CAN duplicate the crash effortlessly by moving it up and over from the right in the last save posted, and attack that worm pictured in place of the active unit.

[Yitzi]

Actually, when I opened that game a tried the capture, NOW I was getting the "vastly more powerful mind controlling" message, at which point captures never seem to happen.  It might be possible to find a stack to capture in the first save I posted which was a turn earlier and when I captured that stack - there had been a lot of fungal pops, and I doubt I found anything like all of the ecodamage worms.

On reflection, I think this was originally a SMAC game, and that's why it's so buggy.  I did succeed in crashing it - by attacking a worm two turns later, with that captured city thing...  scient can tell you more, but it had a reactor strength of zero.  You CAN duplicate the crash effortlessly by moving it up and over from the right in the last save posted, and attack that worm pictured in place of the active unit.

So it seems the "capture ecodamage worms" is a bug that has since been fixed anyway, so it's not a concern.

[Buster's Uncle]

I'm not aware of it being fixed, but then the save is a borked game only demonstrable of instability...

[Nexii]

I'm not aware of it being fixed, but then the save is a borked game only demonstrable of instability...

What version are you guys playing?  I've seen mass captures happen in my games.

Ah, so the actual exponent would be 0.2.  That makes more sense...but if so, your proposal would be even harsher than mine in the late game for mineral-focusing factions; a 300-mineral size-50 base would produce 5X(300/50^(0.2))*(3/8)-8=5X137.19X3/8-8=249.23, rounds up to 250, and that's before applying techs.

Yea it's very off, I had an error in the formula.  It was more of an idea to reduce the pollution a bit for non-ICS strategy.  Though with more thought, I think the current formula is very good but just needs some logical tweaks in addition to removing clean minerals (a bad mechanic, as it is an invisible value).

+2 for ecodamage actually; my proposal would increase it to +5.

With a quick combat test it seems that there is no cap on +Planet.  So the game does not just set the user's Planet to +3 if you are over.

+5 Planet would be 0 pollution at 20% per Planet.  I'm not so sure that's balanced, Gaia and Cult can hit +5 and +6 respectively with Green+Cyber.  Green+Cyber will be pretty much a requirement to get +4 when they are already very strong SE settings due to +Efficiency.  As well Believers/Usurpers would only be able to hit +3, which is double the pollution of +4. 

I would put pollution effects at more like 10% per Planet or cap it at -60% pollution.  Consider that +Planet rating is already good where it gives +10% attack to and with native life, free native life, and easier fungus movement.  It's probably a known bug but the Planet combat modifier should be the differential between attacker and defender rather than just the attacker's +Planet.
 
Here's what I would want:
- Keep eco facilities as is, and a formula similar to the current where it scales by tech.
- Eco damage modified by Planet 
- Boils scaling by tech and/or faction size, rather than linearly out of control.  I will have to test this as well, to see how it scales in the patched version.
- No clean minerals.  Clean minerals just encourages smaller bases and thus ICS.
- Modified values for eco damage from terraforming.  How difficult would it be to change the terraforming portion of eco damage?

Currently terraforming is calculated as follows:
"Terraforming = [(2*# worked (not crawled) improvements other than kelp farms)+(# of unworked improvements) + 8*Boreholes + 6*Echelon Mirrors + 4*Condensors +1 if a Seabase -#of Forests]/8.
Divide by 2 for presence of a Tree Farm and reduce to 0 for presence of a Hybrid Forest."

It seems highly exploitable that crawled tiles do not count as terraforming eco damage.  For example I could create several boreholes outside a city radius and crawl them with 0 terraforming eco damage?  I will have to test this in my next game.

I would argue that all tiles crawled should add for the improvements on the tile.  Further, uncrawled improvements should add at half the rate to the nearest base for eco damage (likely much harder to implement).  For example, you crawl a mine with a road, that counts as both a mine and road.  An uncrawled borehole outside a city range adds eco damage to that city at half the rate.

I think Boreholes should be much more eco damaging and maybe a little quicker to terraform.  If a Condensor is 4 and a Mirror is 6, a Borehole should be like a 20.  Boreholes seem to be a staple of early game ICS.  What if Boreholes also only got -25% pollution from Tree / Hybrid?  Or if Tree / Hybrid only mostly reduced terraforming eco damage for all improvements.  My concern is that Tree Farm / Hybrid Forest will become even more 'must build first in every base' than they are now.

As for Echelon Mirrors and Condensors, I'd reduce their Eco impact.  As well as take out the negative to terraforming from Forests, they're plenty good enough as is.

Only in the later game when going for high mineral production.  If you ditch the boreholes and most mineral-boosting facilities and build condenser/farm everywhere, you're looking at far less.

Replacing forests only seems worth it after Hab domes, and even then I think it's debatable.  You're giving up a lot of minerals for extra specialists.  Right now there's not much downside to heavy mineral strategy even late game.  High minerals are needed to build a satellite every turn.  Perhaps this is a side issue where satellites are way too good/cheap relative to Formers, and tend to end the game very quickly.  Formers and crawlers are more viable with low mineral strategy and this is something to consider when balancing.  I've always felt the pacing of the game is a bit off in that the early game techs come a bit slow, and the late game ones come very, very fast. 

I was thinking late-game pollution could be a good incentive to get out of mid-game Forests.  The option of high minerals would still be there I suppose, and you could keep a few 'mineral bases' with eco facilities for high-mineral things like satellites and Secret Projects.  The low mineral, high-pop/energy bases would make 1 turn crawlers / formers / army units.  In turn, late-game techs would take more labs.  I'll have to do out the math to see what 1 late game energy = in terms of average energy credits, then convert it back against modified minerals.  Usually by this point the game is won and I pay little attention.

To me this seems like the most interesting end game, though a bit contrived if only due to the 1 unit/facility a turn limitation.  It does seem a little odd that Forests will also pollute a lot (2 mins each) when we they are supposed to be the 'greenest' land with thematic facilities like Tree Farm and Hybrid Forest.  I feel it's a bit strange that Nutrients take over in the late game, rather than Energy.  But I guess it works, and it seems to be the developer intent with facilities like Hab Dome allowing population to go to 99, Enrichers as the last terraforming upgrade at B7, and no real upgrade to Solar.  Maybe if Echelon mirror doubled Solar Panels in the late game, raised Farm/Solar would blow away Forest.

[Yitzi]

What version are you guys playing?  I've seen mass captures happen in my games.

Apparently he was playing an unpatched game; if someone can provide a game with the latest update with mass captures or (more importantly) ecodamage worms being captured, that might help with tracking down and fixing the problem.

Yea it's very off, I had an error in the formula.  It was more of an idea to reduce the pollution a bit for non-ICS strategy.

As Earthmichael will tell you, ICS has enough weaknesses anyway; all that's needed is a method of reducing ecodamage that doesn't favor ICS.

Though with more thought, I think the current formula is very good but just needs some logical tweaks in addition to removing clean minerals (a bad mechanic, as it is an invisible value).

Actually, the 16+pops is noted; only the facility bonus is "extra".  But even the 16+pops is a problem in that it encourages ICS.

With a quick combat test it seems that there is no cap on +Planet.  So the game does not just set the user's Planet to +3 if you are over.

Yes; for captures it maxes out at +3, for ecodamage it maxes out at +2, and for combat it has no max.

+5 Planet would be 0 pollution at 20% per Planet.  I'm not so sure that's balanced, Gaia and Cult can hit +5 and +6 respectively with Green+Cyber.  Green+Cyber will be pretty much a requirement to get +4 when they are already very strong SE settings due to +Efficiency.  As well Believers/Usurpers would only be able to hit +3, which is double the pollution of +4.

Keep in mind, though, that:
1. Even +4 would reduce ecodamage to quite a manageable amount even in the late game.  Not 0, but fairly low.  Even +3 would cut ecodamage to a quite manageable level, especially if you're using lower-production terraforming methods.
2. The competitors of Green and Cybernetic also have advantages.  Planned and Eudaimonic give +Growth (quite important if you can keep satellites up), FM and Eudaimonic give +Economy (quite important as well, especially with a lot of trading partners), and Thought Control is great for the warpath.
3. The Cult and Gaians paid for it in the earlier part of the game, by being unable to run FM for +2 ECONOMY.
4. EFFIC does decrease fairly substantially in value once you get a lot of it; the difference between +4 and +6 is far smaller than between +2 and +4.

Even so, I think cutting Cybernetic to +1 PLANET would be a good change with that, as it's pretty strong anyway.  The real losers would be the Drones, who can't run Green; changing their aversion to Cybernetic might help fix that (as +2 PLANET would probably be enough to manage, especially since they can then get +5 INDUSTRY.)

I would put pollution effects at more like 10% per Planet or cap it at -60% pollution.

I'd say that at 10% it doesn't need a cap, as -60% would already be the best you can get.
However, 10% may be a bit low; perhaps 12.5%?

Consider that +Planet rating is already good where it gives +10% attack to and with native life, free native life, and easier fungus movement.

On the other hand, getting it isn't cheap; until the latae game, you have to either give up that +1 energy/square (or +2 GROWTH/+1 INDUSTRY if you'd go Planned) and take an additional -2 GROWTH, or play a faction that can't get +1 energy/square until the late game.

It's probably a known bug but the Planet combat modifier should be the differential between attacker and defender rather than just the attacker's +Planet.

Is this documented anywhere?
 

- Boils scaling by tech and/or faction size, rather than linearly out of control.  I will have to test this as well, to see how it scales in the patched version.

Use one of my patches.

- Modified values for eco damage from terraforming.  How difficult would it be to change the terraforming portion of eco damage?

My current patch already allows it to be changed somewhat, but I'm not sure that a patch is needed.

It seems highly exploitable that crawled tiles do not count as terraforming eco damage.  For example I could create several boreholes outside a city radius and crawl them with 0 terraforming eco damage?

That's what I thought, but then Earthmichael pointed out that those things take a whole lot of former-turns to create; since crawling only provides one resource, it generally won't be worth it.

I think Boreholes should be much more eco damaging and maybe a little quicker to terraform.  If a Condensor is 4 and a Mirror is 6, a Borehole should be like a 20.  Boreholes seem to be a staple of early game ICS.  What if Boreholes also only got -25% pollution from Tree / Hybrid?  Or if Tree / Hybrid only mostly reduced terraforming eco damage for all improvements.  My concern is that Tree Farm / Hybrid Forest will become even more 'must build first in every base' than they are now.

I've gone through these sorts of ideas too, but as Earthmichael pointed out, the lengthy time to terraform does a lot to balance things out.  Even without terraforming ecodamage, things tend to be pretty balanced out.

Replacing forests only seems worth it after Hab domes

Not necessarily, but even if that's true, 300 minerals to a base isn't going to happen until substantially after that point anyway.  At the "shortly before hab domes" point, you're probably looking at no more than 60 minerals per base if not crawling minerals, or 80 minerals if crawling.

Right now there's not much downside to heavy mineral strategy even late game.

Actually, right now there's a huge one, in the form of absurdly high ecodamage.

High minerals are needed to build a satellite every turn.  Perhaps this is a side issue where satellites are way too good/cheap relative to Formers, and tend to end the game very quickly.

Yes, satellites need reworking.

I was thinking late-game pollution could be a good incentive to get out of mid-game Forests.  The option of high minerals would still be there I suppose, and you could keep a few 'mineral bases' with eco facilities for high-mineral things like satellites and Secret Projects.  The low mineral, high-pop/energy bases would make 1 turn crawlers / formers / army units.  In turn, late-game techs would take more labs.  I'll have to do out the math to see what 1 late game energy = in terms of average energy credits, then convert it back against modified minerals.  Usually by this point the game is won and I pay little attention.

I'd be interested in seeing what you get.

Maybe if Echelon mirror doubled Solar Panels in the late game, raised Farm/Solar would blow away Forest.

Raised farm/solar already is competitive forest in the mid-late to late game; raised farm/solar with mirrors and condensers will tend to be something like 4/0/6 or 4/1/6, which is quite competitive with 3/2/2 even at a substantially higher terraforming time.

[Nexii]

As Earthmichael will tell you, ICS has enough weaknesses anyway; all that's needed is a method of reducing ecodamage that doesn't favor ICS.

True, and I'd agree.  In fact these changes hurt ICS even more as-is, because they make Eco facilities more valuable.  ICS tends not to run many facilities.

Keep in mind, though, that:
1. Even +4 would reduce ecodamage to quite a manageable amount even in the late game.  Not 0, but fairly low.  Even +3 would cut ecodamage to a quite manageable level, especially if you're using lower-production terraforming methods.
2. The competitors of Green and Cybernetic also have advantages.  Planned and Eudaimonic give +Growth (quite important if you can keep satellites up), FM and Eudaimonic give +Economy (quite important as well, especially with a lot of trading partners), and Thought Control is great for the warpath.
3. The Cult and Gaians paid for it in the earlier part of the game, by being unable to run FM for +2 ECONOMY.
4. EFFIC does decrease fairly substantially in value once you get a lot of it; the difference between +4 and +6 is far smaller than between +2 and +4.

Even so, I think cutting Cybernetic to +1 PLANET would be a good change with that, as it's pretty strong anyway.  The real losers would be the Drones, who can't run Green; changing their aversion to Cybernetic might help fix that (as +2 PLANET would probably be enough to manage, especially since they can then get +5 INDUSTRY.)

You could drop Cyber to +1 PLANET.  I'd argue that +PLANET doesn't even make sense for Cyber.  But it would be difficult for everyone to agree on what 'makes sense'.  Eudaimonia is much stronger for a builder until +2 ECON becomes diminished.  Thought control is decent but I consider it weak by the time you get it.  This is because PROBE, POLICE, SUPPORT are not all that important (other than perhaps -5 POLICE).  For the same reasons you rarely see Power, Police State (other than for Yang), or Fundamentalism picked.

I'd say that at 10% it doesn't need a cap, as -60% would already be the best you can get.
However, 10% may be a bit low; perhaps 12.5%?

12.5% to eco damage per +/- Planet level is reasonable.  FM would thus pollute about twice as much as Green (137.5% vs 75%). 
 

On the other hand, getting it isn't cheap; until the late game, you have to either give up that +1 energy/square (or +2 GROWTH/+1 INDUSTRY if you'd go Planned) and take an additional -2 GROWTH, or play a faction that can't get +1 energy/square until the late game.

This is true.  I don't feel that Gaia is too strong right now, probably about right.  And Cult is definately weak.  -1 IND is too much of a hit on top of not being able to hit +2 ECON. 

It's probably a known bug but the Planet combat modifier should be the differential between attacker and defender rather than just the attacker's +Planet.

Logically native life should scale in both attack and defense with +Planet rating.  Morale works this way.  But again, I think there's a treading into making FM useless and Green possibly too good.  I would argue that in the later game FM gets diminished as is, when more production is off base and +1 energy/sq is less of a % increase to total energy.  On the other hand,  there's also SPs and unit abilities that hard counter native life.

That's what I thought, but then Earthmichael pointed out that those things take a whole lot of former-turns to create; since crawling only provides one resource, it generally won't be worth it.

If clean minerals are removed, then this exploit becomes more worth it (to avoid early eco damage).  Losing even one crawler or other unit to eco damage would likely outweigh those former turns.  I'll try and do some analysis on this one to see what I come up with.  Boreholes are certainly slow at 24 former-turns.  And losing out on the energy is also a big drawback.

Actually, right now there's a huge one, in the form of absurdly high ecodamage.

Well you can exploit around eco damage as is (the Tree farm trick).  If you're at 300 minerals a base, yes you'll have absurdly high eco damage.  But by the time you reach that, the game is over.  Usually you only need around ~60-80 clean mineral limit to pretty much have 0 eco damage in the late game.

Raised farm/solar already is competitive forest in the mid-late to late game; raised farm/solar with mirrors and condensers will tend to be something like 4/0/6 or 4/1/6, which is quite competitive with 3/2/2 even at a substantially higher terraforming time.

Yea I'll try to run some analysis to prove this.  A lot comes down to the 'value' of nutrients, minerals, and energy, which is the first step.  There are various terraforming layouts possible with raising.  It's fairly complex, because multiple mirrors affect the same solar panel and you need a certain amount of condensors to keep it rainy.  Further the condensors produce 6/0/0. 

My first thought is that 'all condensors and no solar' might be superior to farm/solar raising post Hab domes.  It only takes 12 turns to make a condensor.  It takes 12 turns to raise just once, and 12 for an Echelon mirror.  2 nutrients feeds a Transcendi specialist, which gives 4 labs and 2 econ (and 2 psych, as an added boost.  you can sell off pretty much all psych facilities and still pop boom, at a certain point).  As well each +1 population can give 1/1/1 if you build the satellites.  So a transcendi is essentially worth half another transcendi, and so on.  The effect is powerful - I think you can get to 99 pop without even crawling any nutrients (123 base nutrients, and 99 from satellites).  The only thing holding this strategy back is that you can only pop boom 1 citizen a turn.  The very late game always seems so quick that you'd be unlikely to actually reach 99 size on most bases.  Maybe on a tech stagnation game or something.

[Yitzi]

You could drop Cyber to +1 PLANET.  I'd argue that +PLANET doesn't even make sense for Cyber.  But it would be difficult for everyone to agree on what 'makes sense'.  Eudaimonia is much stronger for a builder until +2 ECON becomes diminished.

Keep in mind that Eudaimonia is the latest tech available; by that point, ECON is pretty close to as diminished as you can get.

Thought control is decent but I consider it weak by the time you get it.  This is because PROBE, POLICE, SUPPORT are not all that important (other than perhaps -5 POLICE).  For the same reasons you rarely see Power, Police State (other than for Yang), or Fundamentalism picked.

The reason those are rarely picked is because people play maps that are meant for a builder's game.  With a more balanced structure, MORALE and PROBE become substantially more important (MORALE is the other strength of Thought Control; SUPPORT is its weakness); POLICE remains fairly weak in the late game for most purposes, but can help in keeping a newly captured base under control long enough to hurry back its psych facilities.

If one person is going Eudaimonic or Cybernetic, and the other is going Thought Control, and they start the war on an even footing, the side with Thought Control will probably win.

This is true.  I don't feel that Gaia is too strong right now, probably about right.

Yeah; I'd say that things that boost them should come with a small hit on top of it; how does increasing their fairly irrelevant -1 POLICE penalty to -2 sound?  (The Angels probably could also use the same treatment; while not the easiest faction to play, they seem they'd be very powerful in a 7-player game, since they can keep around the middle in tech even if they neglect it entirely, or become one of the best techers if they put stuff into tech and simply avoid the usual beelines.)

Logically native life should scale in both attack and defense with +Planet rating.  Morale works this way.

I don't really consider that enough to change the rules, though it could be made an option once I'm ready to add requests.

But again, I think there's a treading into making FM useless and Green possibly too good.

Considering that the consensus now seems to be that FM is the best for a skilled player, and Green never used until the late game unless you're Deidre, Dawn, or Morgan, I don't see that as such a concern.

I would argue that in the later game FM gets diminished as is, when more production is off base and +1 energy/sq is less of a % increase to total energy.

True...of course, if you're running Wealth (and maybe Eudaimonic) as well, it's worth a bonus to commerce, which can be quite the boost when you've got several pact brothers and a global trade pact.

If clean minerals are removed, then this exploit becomes more worth it (to avoid early eco damage).

Not really, as you can build a mine+road on a rocky square at half the cost (less if you were planning to make a road anyway) and crawl that instead.

Losing even one crawler or other unit to eco damage would likely outweigh those former turns.  I'll try and do some analysis on this one to see what I come up with.

I've found that a former-turn can be estimated at around 0.2 resources per turn (depending on various things such as tech level; this is fairly rough).  At 20 minerals/former, that means that a mineral-turn is worth around 0.01 minerals/turn, implying a per-turn return of 1/10, so a former-turn is worth about 2 minerals.  At 24 former-turns=48 minerals, it's not worth it for a single crawler, but would be worth it for 2.  Keep in mind, though, that a single borehole doesn't produce such extreme amounts of ecodamage; under standard rules it's a bit over 1 mineral's worth, and even with my proposal it's only 6.25 minerals' worth when worked.

But by the time you reach that, the game is over.

Yeah, that's another annoying thing: The game pretty much never plays out to the end.

Yea I'll try to run some analysis to prove this.  A lot comes down to the 'value' of nutrients, minerals, and energy, which is the first step.  There are various terraforming layouts possible with raising.  It's fairly complex, because multiple mirrors affect the same solar panel and you need a certain amount of condensors to keep it rainy.  Further the condensors produce 6/0/0. 

Good luck.  (Also, IMO 6/0/0 is a bit much; see what happens if it's 5/0/0 instead.)

My first thought is that 'all condensors and no solar' might be superior to farm/solar raising post Hab domes.

With transcendi and satellites, "all condensors and no solar, crawled" is probably superior to fungus with the Manifold Nexus and +3 PLANET.  It is seriously overpowered, as you say.  That's a large part of why I think cutting it to 5 nutrients would be better.

[Nexii]

If one person is going Eudaimonic or Cybernetic, and the other is going Thought Control, and they start the war on an even footing, the side with Thought Control will probably win.

Thought Control is decent, and probably balanced enough.  I'd want to see it at +3 POLICE, and/or some higher POLICE benefits.  I like the idea of 'conquer' SEs being able to more easily put down drones of captured bases (without nerve stapling).  I would say Thought Control is much better than say Power, Police State, or Fundamentalism.  Even in a small warring map, I couldn't see picking any of these 3.  The early techs are too much of a power increase.  Maybe if Fundamentalism was +2 MORALE, Police State had +3 POLICE (PS/FM combo would be more interesting at -2 POLICE), and Power was -1 IND, I might consider them.  I do feel they should be more viable options, right now it's all about staying in 'builder' SEs even when warring. 

yeah; I'd say that things that boost them should come with a small hit on top of it; how does increasing their fairly irrelevant -1 POLICE penalty to -2 sound?  (The Angels probably could also use the same treatment; while not the easiest faction to play, they seem they'd be very powerful in a 7-player game, since they can keep around the middle in tech even if they neglect it entirely, or become one of the best techers if they put stuff into tech and simply avoid the usual beelines.)

-2 POLICE is quite crippling at the very beginning.  Much worse than -2 ECON or -1 INDUSTRY.  The second citizen always has to be allocated to Specialist.  Police State comes too late.  Rec Commons are too much of an early investment.  I'm not so sure Gaia is stronger than say University or Morgan either, even if you fix eco damage.  Believers definately need some help, though.

[Considering that the consensus now seems to be that FM is the best for a skilled player, and Green never used until the late game unless you're Deidre, Dawn, or Morgan, I don't see that as such a concern.]

Agreed, FM is very strong.  Though once airpower comes out, it seems like you can't run it anymore.  To me the whole -POLICE of FM doesn't make a lot of sense.  That seems like something that should be tied to Democracy. 

[With transcendi and satellites, "all condensors and no solar, crawled" is probably superior to fungus with the Manifold Nexus and +3 PLANET.  It is seriously overpowered, as you say.  That's a large part of why I think cutting it to 5 nutrients would be better.]

Although one can argue it's the Transcendi specialists that are just as game-breaking.  2 nutrients into 8 energy, and a satellite cap increase.  What were they thinking? Lol

I'll get to it over the next while, its a decent sized problem.  I think it will come out that even 5 nutrients win out, crawled or not. 

[Yitzi]

Thought Control is decent, and probably balanced enough.  I'd want to see it at +3 POLICE, and/or some higher POLICE benefits.

Even +2 is pretty good, especially as there's a good choice you're going Police State and Power with it.

I would say Thought Control is much better than say Power, Police State, or Fundamentalism.

Future societies tend to be strong.

Even in a small warring map, I couldn't see picking any of these 3.  The early techs are too much of a power increase.

I think the idea is after you get the techs you need for your rush; you don't want to run fundie right away, but once you've got the ability to build those impact rovers, it's a nice boost (or for Santiago an extremely strong boost, as combined with command centers and monoliths you can hit elite and get +1 movement for all your units.)
Police State seems it should be actually not that bad for a builder in the early game; that early, efficiency isn't as important, and -2 drones per base is quite nice (especially on Transcend).
And as for Power...morale lets your forces win battles, so you can send them back (or into captured bases) to repair, vastly outweighing the industry effect if you're going for full-fledged war.  The ability to support more non-clean units is also fairly nice, as clean units are expensive.  (A more builder-ish game will probably find it not worth it, though.)

I do feel they should be more viable options, right now it's all about staying in 'builder' SEs even when warring. 

I suspect a lot of that is because people play on maps designed for builder games, with factions designed for builder games.  Although nerfing the advantage of early-game tech slightly might be a good idea, perhaps by nerfing beelines by making the three resource-lifting techs all be on different paths (rather than in a line one after the next), with none of them requiring Centauri Ecology.

-2 POLICE is quite crippling at the very beginning.  Much worse than -2 ECON or -1 INDUSTRY.  The second citizen always has to be allocated to Specialist.  Police State comes too late.  Rec Commons are too much of an early investment.

I do see the concern (though on the other hand, Transcend is supposed to be very hard.)  Any alternative ideas?

I'm not so sure Gaia is stronger than say University or Morgan either, even if you fix eco damage.

True; those are quite strong.  Although there are other ideas that I've been considering that would weaken them (fixing drones so that University's drone penalty actually means something, and nerfing Democracy to make pop booms difficult* for everyone and impossible for Morgan and Aki before Eudaimonia)

*Usually around Hive level.

Believers definately need some help, though.

I suspect the help they need is simply not playing on maps designed to hurt them, plus nerfs to a few of the strongest beelines.

Agreed, FM is very strong.  Though once airpower comes out, it seems like you can't run it anymore.  To me the whole -POLICE of FM doesn't make a lot of sense.  That seems like something that should be tied to Democracy.

 

I think the idea is one of social unrest.  As for airpower, the usual trick is to base all the air units from a single base (or two if you really have a lot) which has a punishment sphere.

Although one can argue it's the Transcendi specialists that are just as game-breaking.  2 nutrients into 8 energy, and a satellite cap increase.  What were they thinking? Lol

On the other hand, the idea of a third tier of specialists does make sense as a late-game/endgame thing; I think a better approach would be to reduce the value of pure-condenser spaces, make it possible in the late-game/endgame to crawl all three resources in the base square (so that producing only one resource isn't an advantage that way), and make satellites a lot easier to shoot down than to build.

I'll get to it over the next while, its a decent sized problem.  I think it will come out that even 5 nutrients win out, crawled or not.

5 nutrients not crawled will not win out except maybe with satellites, which do need a nerf.

[Earthmichael]

Police State is not a good builder choice.

1. If you are running Planned, Police State -2 EFF will cripple energy production.  Only Hive can do this, because of immunity to EFF.

2. If you are running FM, Police State's police bonus is not that useful.  And the -2 EFF still hurts a lot (but not crippling).  +2 Support can be worth up to 2 minerals per city, but I would usually prefer the growth (and EFF) bonus of Democracy.  The main problem with Democracy to me is losing the 10 minerals to start a new city (which allows me to rush build Recycling Tanks), so I usually pick nothing in the top row until I have finished my first wave of expansion.

[Yitzi]

Police State is not a good builder choice.

1. If you are running Planned, Police State -2 EFF will cripple energy production.  Only Hive can do this, because of immunity to EFF.

2. If you are running FM, Police State's police bonus is not that useful.  And the -2 EFF still hurts a lot (but not crippling).  +2 Support can be worth up to 2 minerals per city, but I would usually prefer the growth (and EFF) bonus of Democracy.  The main problem with Democracy to me is losing the 10 minerals to start a new city (which allows me to rush build Recycling Tanks), so I usually pick nothing in the top row until I have finished my first wave of expansion.

Ah...and in a builder game you're getting one of those (probably both) before Doctrine: Loyalty, and usually it's more important to get one of them than to get the extra POLICE.  Basically, Police State isn't worth getting because Frontier/Planned is better than Police State/Simple, and Police State/Planned is horrible unless you're Yang (or maybe Deidre or Aki, but they tend not to work well with that combo anyway.)

Although Police State might still have niche uses in hybrid games (where you want a substantial standing army but don't want to sacrifice as much research as fundie would imply)...of course, that's not a very good approach when playing on a map like Veterans.

[Nexii]

Even +2 is pretty good, especially as there's a good choice you're going Police State and Power with it.

+2 POLICE from POLICE is not enough to offset -2 EFF.  As EM stated it's only ever worth it for Yang.  It should be +3 POLICE or have -1 EFF to make it a more interesting choice.  FM/Police would be -2 POLICE which I think is interesting.  Yang could run FM/Police but IMO Planned is still every bit as good for him (where +GROWTH and +IND get better the more you have). 

I feel that PS/TC is not worth going because there's no added benefit to +4/+5 POLICE.  Likely you'd see Demo/TC or Fundamentalism/TC.  POLICE needs a +4/+5 modifier or its rather useless late game. 

Something like:
+4, 3 units function as police, police effect tripled!
+5, 3 units function as police, police effect quadrupled! (only reachable with Ascetic Virtues or as Spartans)

By the time you hit Thought Control, the builder SEs don't seem to have much drone problems anyways.  Thoughts?

On the other hand, the idea of a third tier of specialists does make sense as a late-game/endgame thing; I think a better approach would be to reduce the value of pure-condenser spaces, make it possible in the late-game/endgame to crawl all three resources in the base square (so that producing only one resource isn't an advantage that way), and make satellites a lot easier to shoot down than to build.

I agree, specialists should get stronger late game.  I do like that they get more powerful...it's just that Transcendi are ~4x more powerful than previous Specialists.  It's really hard to balance around 2 N -> 8 E.  Triple crawling is an interesting idea.  If you really want to benefit farm/solar late though I would consider making it double crawling.  Perhaps to limit Forest and Borehole power late, have the double crawling work only for Nutrients+Energy. 

I suspect the help they need is simply not playing on maps designed to hurt them, plus nerfs to a few of the strongest beelines.

Believers get smashed even harder early game on small maps.  They take too long to get Impact Laser / Rovers.  The +2 SUP is decent for early large armies but not enough on its own.  At the least I think they should have IMPUNITY on Fundamentalism. 

[I think the idea is one of social unrest.  As for airpower, the usual trick is to base all the air units from a single base (or two if you really have a lot) which has a punishment sphere.

Interesting.  This really seems like an exploit to me.  SE Settings under 0 POLICE really should not be able to punishment sphere (it's pretty much like nerve stapling). Though p-drones don't work all that great either.  It seems they are calculated after facilities so that you pretty much always get riots from them.  IMO air units at home shouldn't cause p-drones.  I assume they made it this way to 'balance' choppers.

I think the idea is after you get the techs you need for your rush; you don't want to run fundie right away, but once you've got the ability to build those impact rovers, it's a nice boost (or for Santiago an extremely strong boost, as combined with command centers and monoliths you can hit elite and get +1 movement for all your units.)
Police State seems it should be actually not that bad for a builder in the early game; that early, efficiency isn't as important, and -2 drones per base is quite nice (especially on Transcend).
And as for Power...morale lets your forces win battles, so you can send them back (or into captured bases) to repair, vastly outweighing the industry effect if you're going for full-fledged war.  The ability to support more non-clean units is also fairly nice, as clean units are expensive.  (A more builder-ish game will probably find it not worth it, though.)

Yea I may be underestimating/misunderstanding Morale.  Hitting +3 SE morale seems to be the big breakpoint.  I will have to play more games aiming for high morale as I thought troop rank was determined at the time of troop production.  Therefore Power switching isn't that good.  -2 IND is a lot less troops.

Hitting Elite is definately huge against human players.  +1 move is absolutely insane, imo even better than the +% modifiers, as a lot of battles come down to positioning.  You can pretty much deadzone the enemy backwards a tile a turn and there's little they can do to counter it.

I do see the concern (though on the other hand, Transcend is supposed to be very hard.)  Any alternative ideas?

Put Gaia to +1 EFFIC for a small nerf.

[Yitzi]

+2 POLICE from POLICE is not enough to offset -2 EFF

Why not?  If you were previously at +0 or better and get it in the early game, 2 extra non-drones could be worth 4 energy per base, which could easily be more than the EFFIC penalty is worth.  Later on, it becomes less useful, though SUPPORT can still help a lot in wartime.

Yang could run FM/Police but IMO Planned is still every bit as good for him (where +GROWTH and +IND get better the more you have). 

More importantly, FM only raises him from -2 ECONOMY to +0, which really isn't worth it.

I feel that PS/TC is not worth going because there's no added benefit to +4/+5 POLICE.

But there is to +3, especially in a newly captured base.  And if you're playing Believers or got the Living Refinery (but didn't manage to grab the Cloning Vats), the SUPPORT boost of PS can be quite nice as well to offset the penalty of TC and allow you to get a nice large number of troops without cutting into your production capacity or paying extra for clean. 

Likely you'd see Demo/TC or Fundamentalism/TC.

Fundamentalism/TC might happen if you're fighting the Data Angels or something (and aren't playing Believers), but usually you're going to want to combine TC with Power for the morale boost, which makes Fundamentalism not so useful.  Demo/TC seems unlikely, as TC usually means you're planning to go for the big offensive soon, which makes the long-term benefits of Demo less useful.

By the time you hit Thought Control, the builder SEs don't seem to have much drone problems anyways.  Thoughts?

True usually due to all the psych-boosting facilities, but newly captured bases could be different.

I agree, specialists should get stronger late game.  I do like that they get more powerful...it's just that Transcendi are ~4x more powerful than previous Specialists.

No, just 1.6-2X more powerful than the previous, which were ~1.6-2X more powerful than the first tier.

It's really hard to balance around 2 N -> 8 E.

Not really; just accept that nutrients increase in power as the game progresses.

Triple crawling is an interesting idea.  If you really want to benefit farm/solar late though I would consider making it double crawling.  Perhaps to limit Forest and Borehole power late, have the double crawling work only for Nutrients+Energy.

Farm/solar is already competitive with forest (it'd be stronger except that forest is a lot easier to terraform), and boreholes have been left far in the dust by this point. 

Believers get smashed even harder early game on small maps.  They take too long to get Impact Laser / Rovers.

Even without impact, Believer laser troops can beat enemy synthmetal, and their gun troops can beat enemy unarmored.  They will need to go pod popping and maybe do some trading (or extortion), though.  But they really shouldn't have small maps; everyone is going momentum then.  A better situation for them is the natural one: Medium sized maps where the factions start at random distances from each other.  That way, everyone will tend more toward their natural tendencies, and everyone has a chance.

The +2 SUP is decent for early large armies but not enough on its own.  At the least I think they should have IMPUNITY on Fundamentalism. 

IMPUNITY on fundamentalism wouldn't really help here, as they're not going to go for fundamentalism until they have the techs needed for a proper attack force.

Yea I may be underestimating/misunderstanding Morale.  Hitting +3 SE morale seems to be the big breakpoint.

Generally, it's probably +3 for land (which can use monoliths) and +4 for sea/air (which can't).

I will have to play more games aiming for high morale as I thought troop rank was determined at the time of troop production.  Therefore Power switching isn't that good.

When you switch SE, it does affect the morale of units already created.

-2 IND is a lot less troops.

16% less, to be exact.   But a 25% boost to effectiveness is quite nice (remember, higher-effectiveness troops can be worth more by more than the effectiveness boost if you use a "rolling repair" strategy), and if you get high enough that your infantry are as mobile as your opponent's speeders, then you have the production advantage.

Hitting Elite is definately huge against human players.  +1 move is absolutely insane, imo even better than the +% modifiers, as a lot of battles come down to positioning.  You can pretty much deadzone the enemy backwards a tile a turn and there's little they can do to counter it.

What's "deadzoning"?

Put Gaia to +1 EFFIC for a small nerf.

It's an idea, though I don't really like it that much.  I think the question is more: How can a POLICE penalty be made significant but not crippling?

[Nexii]

Yea I've really gotten on a tangent regarding many relatively small balance tweaks.

Generally I think the AI builds well in SMAC.  But I can appreciate trying to fix things like their SE settings, lack of crawlers, not making satellites, etc.  Ideally the AI would play this side well without cheating.

If I had one wish for SMAC/X though it would be for the AI to use military units better and consider 'deadzones'.  It just does not fight well at all.
 
A 'deadzone' is the area in which troops will decisively lose to the opponent's next move. 

Here's a simple example:
I have a 2/1 infantry unit, and so does my enemy.  It's my turn and they are separated by 1 tile.  If I move into the tile, my unit will die.  Therefore the tile between us is a 'deadzone' for me.  I cannot go there.  Conversely, neither can my enemy because I will kill them if they move beside me.  The tile is therefore a 'deadzone' for both of us, meaning a stalemale.  Neither side can advance.

Now let's instead say I have a 2/1 infantry, and my enemy a 2/1 rover.  There is still one tile between us and it's my turn.  My unit is now on a 'deadzone' because if I don't move backwards, my unit will die.  I cannot move forward because I cannot attack his unit.  So naturally I retreat backwards out of my 'deadzone'.  There is no sense in losing my infantry to nothing.  My enemy can now move forward one square (but not two, because that's a 'deadzone' for him).  I lose one square of territory.  And so this repeats until I get more troops.

What does this mean?  Since offense vastly overpowers defense in SMAC, +1 movement generally puts the enemy into a deadzone.  You can generally force the enemy to retreat indefinately.  This is also why airpower is so good.

I'll go more into the implications this has for effective combat tactics for 'invaders' and 'invadees' in my next posts.  Most of the time two sides have equal movement, and this is the more interesting case.