Post by: bvanevery on May 11, 2018, 07:27:10 PM
social engineering in 1.57 |
From the included readme_mod.txt:
SMACX AI Growth mod
Copyright 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 by Brandon Van Every
Contact: bvanevery@gmail.com
Version 1.57, June 20, 2023
see CHANGELOG at end of this file
I began this mod in mid-April of 2018. Its design, and all the playtesting needed to improve it, has taken 15 PERSON MONTHS of full time work to produce. In some other universe where I made money, this could have been more than a year's salary. It was 2.5 years of psychological engagement. Now the project is stable, mature, and in maintenance mode. I still play my mod, and I trickle out a "long tail" of minor improvements over time.
This mod aspires to professionalism, to be substantially better than the original game. I hope people will try and enjoy it, as that validates the effort spent. Please let me know if you find any bugs or omissions. Thanks to playtesters fihttf, gehennaliving, zoneplate, ih8regin, kaminiwa, Douglas, Rocky, Jade Dragon, Vidsek, and Esper for finding important bugs! And to modders Douglas, Nexii, Tim Nevolin, JNM444, vonbach, PvtHudson, and Mart for ideas borrowed from their own work.
INSTALLATION
- Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri with Alien Crossfire expansion is required.
- This mod contains alphax.txt, the 14 faction *.txt files, and this readme_mod.txt
- Unzip the files and drop them on top of your SMAC installation, overwriting ANY existing files that have the same name.
COMPATIBILITY
- To play THIS mod, use the alphax.txt and faction *.txt files I have provided. Do not use anyone else's. That's someone else's mod, not mine.
- This mod will work with unofficial binary patches, if they do not REQUIRE changes to alphax.txt.
- Some unofficial binary patches messed with alphax.txt and changed how various things are encoded. For instance, Yitzi's patch is broken in 3 places and one of them causes a crash.
- Some unofficial binary patches did a good job NOT messing with alphax.txt. For instance, Scient's patch is known to work because all its changes to alphax.txt are optional. The PRACX graphics patch works fine, because it doesn't affect gameplay and doesn't use alphax.txt at all.
- Some unofficial binary patches are in active development and what they will do is unknown. YMMV.
- I do bugfixing support and playtesting of the official game binary. My goal is to get the most I can out of it, without any unofficial patches at all. If you see my mod causing a problem in the official game binary, then I want to fix it.
- I don't playtest or do bugfixing for unofficial binary patches.
- You can have many installations of SMAC on your computer. They're small and won't interfere with each other.
- If you try out multiple combos of binary patches and various mods, I suggest you install the game separately for each of them, in distinctly named directories, to keep them all straight.
DESIGN SUMMARY
- I changed the faction research foci because they determine AI early game colonization.
- I made Social Engineering choices that the AI actually likes, uses, and does well with.
- I got the AI to stop overproducing defensive units by adding other predefined units.
- Factions are better rounded, and most don't have penalties. This helps the AI.
- Aliens are no longer overpowered. They are no better than normal factions.
- The world generator is tweaked to give the AI factions more land to grow in.
- Choosing 30%..50% land mass yields substantial continents, but still plenty of ocean for the Pirates.
- This mod is designed for a Huge map with 30%..50% land mass.
- Enormous 80x160 and Giant 128x256 maps are also defined.
- On a Standard map, 2 factions on average will not have room to grow. That can be you!
- Facilities, abilities, and units are assigned to Explore, Discover, Build, or Conquer according to what they actually do.
- Techs, facilities, units, abilities, and Secret Projects are completely reordered to delay the game breakers.
- Costs of overpowered units, facilities, and Secret Projects are greatly increased.
- Clean Reactors are available at the beginning of the game. This helps the AI with SUPPORT.
- No Secret Projects are available until Tech Tier 3, and they start at 300 minerals.
- Armor has been strengthened to match weapons at the same tech level.
- Sensors give more defense. Infantry isn't special against bases.
- The Chopper chassis is not available for unit designs, as its multi-fire is overpowered.
- Mind Control costs are substantially higher. The AI can no longer buy you for cheap.
- The AI uses Foil and Cruiser Probe Teams now. Watch your sea bases!
- Future Society choices become available in late midgame and are not overpowered.
- Planet Busters and Conventional Missiles can hit anywhere on Planet.
- Completing the entire tech tree is required to Transcend.
LICENSE
Firaxis made a statement in each of the modified *.txt files, that permission is granted to modify their work. So, this work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, PO Box 1866, Mountain View, CA 94042, USA. That means, if you make substantial use of this work, you must credit me as the author. And you can't make money from it.
DESIGN DETAILS
Some people release complete, if trivial, commercial games in the time I've spent on this. Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri is a decidedly non-trivial game, one whose complexities have kept me occupied for over 20 years. So it takes much longer to mod it, in any substantive way. I am at times amazed, when various game developers do "game jams" and claim to produce quality in a short amount of time. It has never happened with any mod I've worked on. Adjusting all the variables of a complex wargame, requires LOTS of design iteration and playtesting. It has "long tail" effects, when you don't realize something is a problem until a playtester tells you 3 months later. And when you change something, like the narrowness or breadth of the tech tree, the AI behavior can change unexpectedly for the worse.
This mod started as an attempt to model "realistic" growth in the social engineering choices. Unfortunately the "realism" didn't survive the cold, harsh reality of game mechanics, nor the AI's fixation on GROWTH as a choice. For instance Green used to have a GROWTH penalty, but the AI would not choose it, even in the original unmodded game! Only if the AI had learned how to make Locusts of Chiron would it finally accept the penalties of Green, and that was way too late in the game to be acceptable for an AI faction. To work around this, I made Green not have any penalties. To try to balance this "free lunch", I minimized the number of bonuses it gets.
"Explore" techs, I decided, are fundamentally misnamed. Internally, the game files actually talk about "colonization and growth". Consequently, anything that makes citizens happy, or raises population limits, or increases GROWTH rate, is now considered primarily an "Explore" tech. Secondarily they are Build techs, because more happy citizens means more squares worked, increasing minerals and energy. In my opinion the "Explore" category should really be called EXPAND. But if I could rename it, I wouldn't, as it's unnecessarily confusing to veteran SMAC players.
The assignment of various techs to Explore, Discover, Build, or Conquer has been completely gutted, with no respect paid to the original divisions of the game. Weapons, armor, and military abilities are strictly for conquering, and they comprise the vast majority of techs in the tree. Firaxis actually wrote a game with a lot of conquering gewgaws, regardless of any narrative or marketing spin they put on top of it. Discover techs attempt to be "pure", awarding either new lab facilities, Secret Projects that double lab output in a city, or a free tech to the 1st discoverer. Build techs directly increase either energy or minerals output. Happiness and population increasing techs are considered primarily Explore, but they are given a secondary Build weight, since they indirectly result in more minerals and energy.
Because Explore, Discover, Build, and Conquer now reflect the realities of what's actually in the tech tree, the research priorities of many factions have changed. The choice of Explore, Build, or Conquer also seems to change how the AI colonizes in the early game. Explore factions seem to spread out more, and Build factions seem to cluster in a tighter group. Conquer seems to allow for adequate early colonization, but Discover is not so good. Still, the relationship between these and the rest of the tech tree is not clear, and has shifted over time. It may be that certain techs also change AI colonization behavior, and I've never known which techs those actually are. Colonization seems to be working pretty much ok lately though, and factions have a lot more variety in their strategies than they used to. At some earlier point in my modding, an Explore Conquer focus seemed to be the only "good" choice. This is what the Believers have in the original game.
The world generator options have been tweaked to produce large solid continents, not scattered archipelagos. Increasing the amount of land in the game, increases AI performance, because the AI is smarter at moving and fighting on land than at sea. I recommend Huge maps and playing with 30%..50% land mass. There's still tons of ocean for the Pirates. Small islands are not usually generated. They are terrible places to start, and making sure they don't exist, is another way AI performance is improved.
1x1 islands are almost never generated on Huge maps. I also defined an Enormous map size of 80x160. This is the maximum size that doesn't have 1x1 islands, or other kinds of bad faction starts. I arrived at this size empirically, by trying many different map sizes until factions weren't starting stillborn. Past that size, the faction placement algorithm gets buggy and I can't change it. Strictly speaking, it's possible to have a 160x160 map, but it looks terrible in the minimap window.
I also provide a Giant map size of 126x252. They are interesting to play on, but factions may get bad starts on 1x1 islands and may never be able to do anything. On a Giant map, if you look at an early game power graph and see a faction that has almost no rating, that's what happened to it. Time to restart the game. At least by looking at the power graph a few turns in, you don't have to reveal the map itself to know whether things are ok or not.
Ships are now given for free at the start of the game. I've played too many games getting stuck on a darned island, falling behind everyone else technologically as I struggle to free myself from the trap. There's nothing about human history that justifies ships coming AFTER land vehicles. Historically, ships came first, and so will you. Also important, mag tubes are available fairly early in the game. This is not Civilization II, these are spacefarers who already know how to build some kind of railroad. Hovertanks come earlier in the game, because it's annoying to wait so long for them. My hovertanks are based on Organic Superlubricant. They're GREASY, sliding a mere inch above the ground!
Fundamentalist has been renamed to Theocratic, as the latter is slightly less negative. To an American audience, Fundamentalist automatically means Fundamentalist Christian, as that's a major political movement here. This certainty of association, I'd like to avoid. And although fundamentalism doesn't have to imply religion, in this game's diplomatic dialogue, it clearly does. It's very specifically about God and being saved by the Lord. This renders the dialogue of ungodly "but fundamentalist" factions completely nonsensical. For awhile I renamed it to Extremist, to be more inclusive, but it didn't solve the dialogue problem. So now I've made the name, exactly match the dialogue.
The original Fundamentalist play mechanic was mainly about getting a MORALE bonus. In the interest of early game balance, that's gone now. The AI factions liked it way too much, so their RESEARCH would stagnate. The RESEARCH penalty is also lessened, as it's harmful to AI performance. I also got rid of the PROBE team bonus, as religious people aren't any better at covert ops, and they're plenty capable of being brainwahed. Theocratic is instead about birthing lotsa followers! It gets a modest GROWTH bonus.
Police State doesn't give a SUPPORT bonus anymore. Instead it gives a PROBE bonus and has very little penalty for choosing it, so that the AI will in fact choose it. The PROBE team bonus is deliberately minor, to make the early game predictable. None of the social engineering choices have probe penalties anymore, so there's no need for big PROBE bonuses. Thought Control is now the only choice that provides a major PROBE bonus.
Free Market has been renamed to Capitalist, as the diplomatic dialogue has always referred to it that way. The POLICE penalty was egregious and didn't make any sense at all. For instance, consider that the USA has the highest number of incarcerated persons per capita of anywhere on Earth, and it has no problems whatsoever being the world's policeman with the world's largest military.
POLICE penalties have been moved to Democratic, Knowledge, and Eudaimonic, where antipathy to police repression and anti-war sentiments are far more reasonable. Half of the ECONOMY bonus has been moved to Democratic as well, as modern industrial democracies do actually make more money than other governmental structures. I found in playtesting that once all the severe penalties were removed, Capitalist was giving way too much money for nothing.
Planned has been renamed to Socialist. In addition, EFFICIENCY has been renamed to JUSTICE. Stopping corruption by building a Courthouse was the original play mechanic in Civ II, and that's what SMAC is based on. I dislike the term efficiency because it begs the question, efficient at what? Wage slavery? Automating jobs out of existence? Globilization and offshoring? Social welfare programs? Corporate welfare? Magically ending corruption in politics?
The main player visible effect upon the game, is people becoming unhappy due to the Bureaucracy penalty as one's empire gets bigger. In addition to stopping graft, why not have this also be about social justice, about providing essentials for a burgeoning population? SMAC's Planned economy clearly refers to socialism in the diplomatic dialogues, but it insists on a kind of Revolutionary Socialism found in historical totalitarian Communist regimes, that is not allowed to work. It completely ignores the experience of Social Democracy in Western countries when a socialist party comes to power. I have modeled Socialist economy as something that doesn't give you anything 'except' more, happier people, and it costs money.
The Values choices have all changed. They are mostly available with Tier 4 techs, which tend to appear in early midgame. Future Societies have changed some as well. They are mostly available with Tier 6 techs, which tend to appear in the late midgame, and they are not overpowered. It is expected that players will play a lot of the game with 4 social engineering choices, not 3.
All factions have been adjusted to be better rounded, i.e. Morgan is no longer a crippled weakling runt. Factions previously considered weak, are plenty strong now. The Aliens have been stripped of various bonuses and don't get any free armor. They are no stronger than anyone else. To help the AI, faction penalties have been removed.
A few factions have quite different social engineering compulsions. The Cult of Planet is now Eudaimonic, which has become the Planet-friendly endgame. The Pirates now want Wealth, because that's what pirates actually want. They have this enormous energy rich, minerals rich defensive moat around them called the ocean. They can do whatever they want in that, they don't need to conquer anybody. The Usurpers now want Thought Control, as having 3 Socialist factions in the game was boring. The Data Angels no longer want anything in particular at all, as they're a bit anarchist.
The theme that "Christians are zealots who can't do research" has been seriously toned down. Frankly, Isaac Newton was a devout Christian, and at least one strongly Christian playtester pointed out the various cartoonish, anti-Christian biases of the game. The Believers now suffer no inherent research penalty at all, so if a human wants to play kinder, gentler, smarter Christians, they can. When the AI plays them, they go Theocratic, which has a mild RESEARCH penalty. References in their dialogue to extremism and fanaticism have been removed. Their -1 PLANET penalty was removed as well, as there's no other part of the story that talks about Miriam being hostile to Planet or deluded about its nature. They can now pursue Knowledge just fine, but they can't go Cybernetic. This is true to the lore of the game, where Miriam complains endlessly about cyborgs and nanorobots.
Frankly I think in general, the faction dialogues read as an "early draft" of SMAC's story, with a lot of cartoonishness and one dimensionality about factions and leaders. The technology quotes and Secret Project videos are the excellent narratives of the game, not the faction descriptions and dialogues.
The tech tree has been majorly reshuffled. Any given technology or facility, you cannot count on it being where you expect, or following a sequence you're used to. I tried to make various guns come later, in sequence, and not be so pointless. I packed the tree quite densely, so that a Tier N+1 technology is always preceded by two Tier N technologies. All technologies lead to another technology, and completing the entire tree is required to Transcend.
You can count on more powerful units being much more expensive than you're used to, and taking longer to get. You won't be getting factories, supply crawlers, thermal boreholes, or Fusion Power anytime soon either. Be careful about building expensive units, because they may not be worth it. Mindworms and a high PLANET rating, might be your best weapons. Alternately, legalize chemical warfare and commit atrocities early and often!
Clean Reactors are now available from the beginning of the game. The AI has a horrible habit of building way too many defensive garrison units and running itself out of SUPPORT. To mitigate this, several Clean garrison units are defined, as well as Clean Former units and Clean Scouts. The AI still builds many units that cost SUPPORT, and having more SUPPORT is still valuable, because most Clean units take longer to build than regular units. The exceptions are Colony Pods and Sea Colony Pods, which get their Clean Reactors for free. This helps the AI with SUPPORT at the beginning of the game.
Early Secret Projects now cost 300 minerals to build and they are all moved later in the tech tree. Some projects that some people consider overpowered, like the Empath Guild, The Planetary Energy Grid, and the Cloudbase Academy, are moved substantially later. Most projects are more expensive, in accord with the great benefits they give. Many projects are so expensive, that you will really have to choose which ones you want, and which ones you're willing to forego. The AI is going to build the ones you don't. For instance if you build the Hunter-Seeker Algorithm, in the real world someone else will probably build the Planetary Energy Grid. They both cost that much. Nobody starts the game with the ability to build a Secret Project. Most factions don't start with bonus technologies either. This is to discourage early and rapid tech trading between the factions.
In the original game, probe teams were overpowered. A single team could take over an entire base, for very little money, no matter how many units were in it! And every unit in the base's radius would be taken over too. You'd be invading an AI faction, and it would be all but dead, but it would still take bases back from you this way. This is unrealistic and completely ridiculous. I've rage quit SMAC more times because of this one issue than any other thing I can think of!
So, Mind Control now costs 2x as much as in the original game. For factions with an inherent +1 PROBE ability or higher, it costs 1.5x as much. This stops the nonsense in the early game. You can still get your bases taken over in the mid to late game, but it will cost a lot more money, which is how it should be.
The AI gains the use of Foil Probe Teams. It's never been fair that I can grief the AI by sea, and it can't return the favor. Expect the AI to probe your sea bases a lot. It really likes to use these things, even crossing Enormous maps just to bother you.
Missiles can now hit anywhere on Planet, even on a Giant map. There is no safety from a Planet Buster in the early days of orbital spaceflight. Anti-missile technologies come earlier, but it's hard to obtain them quickly, because so many other Conquer techs are available. Energy and minerals satellites come much later, as these are extensive orbital and logistical facilities compared to shooting down a missile. Conventional Missiles can also hit anywhere on Planet, and so their cost increases accordingly. Unfortunately there's no way to add a new Chassis type to create missiles with different ranges. The AI can't spam them now though, because they cost too much, and frankly that's a relief.
If you made it this far in my design notes, I hope it helps!
- Brandon Van Every
Post by: bvanevery on May 13, 2018, 03:46:49 PM
I'm going to take 3-Res armor away from the Aliens in the next version. They will finally be de-fanged and more comparable to other factions.
The Explore / ai-growth settings aren't working out as well as I thought they would. I'm adding Conquer to everyone. Except Zhakarov, who is just stomping everyone with his tech advantages, now that he doesn't have extra drones to hold him back anymore.
The attachment limit per post is 5, and I eventually ran out of room at the top of the thread. Consequently, this becomes the new home of version 1.0. It was downloaded 12 times before I moved it here.
Post by: bvanevery on May 15, 2018, 04:25:21 PM
Changed from version 1.0 to 1.1:
- All factions except the Morganites, the Usurpers, and the Pirates focus on Explore to promote empire growth. The Morganites, unlike any other faction, focus on Build to make the most use of their energy credits. The Usurpers are so aggressive and dominant that they do fine as a pure Conquer faction. The Pirates, with the ocean at their back, seem to do fine as a more laid back pure Conquer faction.
- All factions except the University and the Cybernetic Consciousness focus on Conquer. Conquer techs comprise the bulk of the tech tree and are needed to survive in a rough world. The exceptions are 2 Discover focused factions with faster research rates. They seem to discover enough Conquer techs anyways.
- Morganites: removed MORALE penalty. Now he's Erratic, not Pacifist.
- Cybernetic Conciousness: removed GROWTH penalty. They were doing doing poorly against other factions. Made them Aggressive since they can steal techs by conquering bases.
- The Free Drones: removed RESEARCH penalty. They were doing poorly against other factions.
- The Hive: removed INDUSTRY bonus. Added +1 SUPPORT instead. Without Police State available at the beginning, they were colonizing very poorly. They often founded their first 2 cities, built a lot of Scouts, and then ran out of minerals. It's as though they expected to start with more SUPPORT than they had.
- Data Angels: 2 Probe Teams given at start, to make up for not yet knowing how to make new ones.
- Aliens: no longer get a free Recycling Tank. They were having too easy a time growing bases and then killing humans. Many things can't be taken away from them because specifying "ALIEN" hardwires a lot of stuff, but this one was removeable.
- Gene Splicing: was missing a 2nd prerequisite. Now also requires Ethical Calculus.
- Aliens: they are hardwired to have Progenitor Psych and Field Modulation at the start of the game. It is unmoddabe. Reshuffled the tech tree to compensate:
--> Progenitor Psych: now a C2 tech, with no useful attribute other than talking to the Aliens. It is deliberately made a Conquer tech so that an Explore focus doesn't automatically trigger Alien interaction. Social Psych and Doctrine: Flexibility are prereqs.
--> Field Modulation: now a C3 level tech, and a prereq for Adaptive Doctrine.
--> Moved Hypnotic Trance ability from Progenitor Psych to Field Modulation.
--> 3-Res armor, Trance Plasma Garrison, Trance 3-Res Garrison: moved to Adaptive Doctrine, so aliens can't have them at beginning of the game. Aliens have so many other advantages they don't need armor as well.
--> Changed various prereqs to make up for hole left by moving Field Modulation.
- Social Psych: set wealth=3 to make it discoverable by Build factions. It is difficult to create wealth when stuck at size 2.
- Industrial Base: made Social Psych a prereq instead of Doctrine: Flexibility, since Social Psych is now partly a Build tech.
- Centauri Empathy: now Doctrine: Flexibility is a prereq instead of Social Psych.
- Doctrine: Loyalty: set power=4 making it a Conquer tech. set growth=3 as Fundamentalism greatly increases population growth.
- Planetary Networks: set power=4 making it a Conquer tech. set growth=3 as Police State increases police, making people happier.
- Adaptive Economics: set power=3 f to make it discoverable by Conquer factions. Increase in SUPPORT is useful for militaries.
- Adaptive Economics: set wealth=2 to make it discoverable by Build factions. WEALTH and EFFICIENCY go down, but INDUSTRY and SUPPORT go up. The latter are effectively an increase in minerals, which is a kind of wealth production.
- High Energy Chemistry: made it a C1 tech with no prereqs. The AI was obsessing about building Scouts and Trance Scouts at the beginning of the game. Having Synthmetal armor available sooner slows it down.
- changed various prereqs to make up for hole left by moving High Energy Chemistry.
- Trance Scout: when specified as a Defensive unit, AI builds them obsessively and runs out of minerals. AI doesn't understand the idea of building 1 such unit to fend off mindworms early in the game. Now specified as a Reconnaisance unit.
- Troop Crawler: incorrectly specified as a Naval Transport unit. This caused the AI to build obsessive numbers of them in sea bases. Now specified as a Reconnaisance unit.
- Troop Crawler: now available with Doctrine: Flexibility since that's when Troop Transport becomes available. It's not particularly mobile anyways, so Doctrine: Mobility seemed inappropriate. It remains to be seen whether the unit is useful to anyone. It was put in by someone's request, but the AI doesn't know what to do with it.
- Heavy Artillery: AI was building 2-1-1 artillery units obsessively at the beginning of the game. Moved it from C1 Applied Physics to C3 Nonlinear Mathematics to slow the AI down.
- Telepathic Matrix: Changed ai-fight interest from Aggressive to Erratic. It's mainly about making people permanently happy, which is useful to more than just Aggressive / Conquest factions. Also made it of interest to ai-growth factions.
- The Cloudbase Academy: set ai-infra=2 and ai-colonize=2 since free Aerospace Complex allows for full resource bonuses from satellites.
- The Space Elevator: set ai-colonize=2 since cheaper Sky Hydroponics Labs grow colonies faster.
- Clinical Immortality: set ai-colonize=2 since it makes people happy. Set ai-mil=2 since it doubles votes. Set ai-infra=0 as it doesn't produce wealth.
- The Self-Aware Colony: set ai-colonize=2 since it makes people happy if police are available.
- The Cloning Vats: set ai-colonize=2 as it produces lots of people.
- The Nano Factory: set ai-mil=2 as in-field repairs are for conquest.
- The Dream Twister: set ai-fight=1 and ai-mil=2 as psi attacks are for conquest. set ai-growth=0, it does nothing for growth.
- The Longevity Vaccine: set ai-colonize=2 because Planned and Green choices make people happy.
- The Ascetic Virtues: set ai-mil=1 because increased police allows more conquest with fewer consequences. set ai-infra=0 because it does not produce wealth. set ai-colonize=2 because population limit increases, and increased police make people happier.
- The Planetary Datalinks: set ai-mil=1, ai-tech=1, ai-infra=1, ai-colonize=1 because old techs are of mild interest to all factions. ai-tech is only 1 because a Discover faction is probably in the tech lead and won't increase that lead by building The Planetary Datalinks.
- The Neural Amplifier: set ai-mil=1 because Trance is of mild interest to conquerors.
- The Xenoempathy Dome: set ai-mil=2 because quick fungus movement is of major interest to conquerors. Set ai-colonize=1 because it's only mildly helpful for colonization.
- The Planetary Transit System: set ai-infra=0 and ai-colonize=2 since it's about bigger colonies and making them happier, not wealth.
- The Virtual World: set ai-infra=0 and ai-colonize=2 since it's about making people happier, not wealthier.
- The Empath Guild: set ai-mil=2 since it doubles votes and infiltrates factions. set ai-infra=0 since it does not produce wealth.
- The Weather Paradigm: set ai-colonize=2 since faster farms and earlier Condensers allow more growth.
- The Human Genome Project: set ai-infra=0 and ai-colonize=2 since it's about happier people, not wealthier people.
The attachment limit per post is 5, and I eventually ran out of room at the top of the thread. Consequently, this becomes the new home of version 1.1. It was downloaded 15 times before I moved it here.
Post by: bvanevery on May 21, 2018, 06:13:02 PM
Post by: Green1 on May 21, 2018, 07:51:43 PM
I found a minor bug: Gene Splicing is lacking a 2nd prereq.
I'm going to take 3-Res armor away from the Aliens in the next version. They will finally be de-fanged and more comparable to other factions.
The Explore / ai-growth settings aren't working out as well as I thought they would. I'm adding Conquer to everyone. Except Zhakarov, who is just stomping everyone with his tech advantages, now that he doesn't have extra drones to hold him back anymore.
The Aliens were never supposed to be balanced.
When you play a game with an alien in it, you are signing up for a play style. An unstoppable monster is on the loose. Can you do something about it? Tech up and fight back? Form a temporary alliance to stop it? Try to survive? Hope you do not have "Do or Die" checked off in the rules panel if you start next to them?
When you defang and declaw monster and paint it's nails it ceases to be a monster.
I'd say keep their 3-res armor and recycle tanks.
Post by: bvanevery on May 22, 2018, 01:37:26 AM
The Aliens were never supposed to be balanced.
I don't really care what things were ever supposed to be in SMACX. I am making them into what I think they should be. You could argue that Morgan was supposed to be a crippled faction, just as easily as the Aliens were supposed to be overpowered. I'm having neither!
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When you play a game with an alien in it, you are signing up for a play style.
Perhaps you are. Perhaps you will hate this more "centrist" mod. I still think the Aliens are powerful, because they have Directed Research and nobody else does. They seem to be doing just fine and still dominant in all the short test games I've played with them so far.
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When you defang and declaw monster and paint it's nails it ceases to be a monster.
Yep. And for the record, I am not now, nor have I ever been, interested in "monster" faction mods. You can of course figure out how to load any custom faction into whatever game you wish. That sort of thing won't be in anything I ship or support.
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I'd say keep their 3-res armor and recycle tanks.
And I wouldn't. The Aliens are interesting because they are allowed Directed Research, and have advantages and disadvantages compared to other factions. They do not operate the same way as a human faction - no UN, no Commerce, they have an Energy Grid, they hate each other permanently, human and alien bases have mutually exclusive populations. They have a tremendous vulnerability to nerve gas, because there's no punishment for using it against them. Although they start slightly later than other factions, they get 3 colony pods and a Battle Ogre. These are reasons to keep the Aliens in the game, and have them interact with other factions. I am sure you are aware that some players would like the Aliens out of the game completely.
BTW also for the record, I think anyone who plays with the Directed Research option turned on for all the factions, is cheating. Full stop. Nobody gets my sympathy if that's how they want to play the game. So in my universe, an Alien faction with Directed Research is a huge advantage.
Post by: Green1 on May 22, 2018, 03:27:47 AM
Post by: bvanevery on May 22, 2018, 04:10:51 PM
Post by: bvanevery on May 22, 2018, 04:15:18 PM
Changed from version 1.1 to 1.2:
- Morganites: removed city size penalty. In this mod, Hab Complexes are obtained substantially later in the game. It's an E5 tech, comparable in difficulty to obtaining Hybrid Forests. Morgan simply cannot make a beeline for it to solve his problem. Having a reduced base size for that long is far too harsh a penalty.
- Believers: gave Social Psych back to them as a starting tech. They often flounder badly at the beginning to the point of dropping dead, and it's not easy to research Social Psych even with a normal research rate.
- Hive: gave IMPUNITY to Planned economy. Changed incorrect Datalink entry from INDUSTRY bonus to SUPPORT bonus.
- Police State: removed Economy penalty because it hurts a lot, and other bonuses don't make up for it. In an unmodded game, people are made a lot happier with Police State. Now you only get a little bit happier.
- Free Market: added +1 Efficiency. It had too many penalties and not enough benefits compared to other economies.
- Green Economy: reduced Efficiency from +2 to +1. It had too many benefits compared to other economies, and it is not realistic anyways.
- Progenitor Energy Grid: added description back to Caretaker and Usurper HELP entries. I had incorrectly deleted them as I thought it was flavor text about Recycling Tanks. Changed the description because it is poor, and added a hyperlink to the HELP entry for "Energy Grid".
- Copter chassis: reduced speed from 8 to 6. They get way too many attacks in the standard game.
- Command Center: moved to C2 Planetary Networks.
- Perimeter Defense: moved to C3 Advanced Subatomic Theory. When it was a C1 tech, Believers obsessed about building them early, crippling their growth.
- The Citizens' Defense Force: moved to C4 Adaptive Doctrine.
- The Command Nexus: moved to C4 Advanced Military Algorithms.
- The Empath Guild: moved to C6 Homo Superior.
- The Neural Amplifier: moved to C5 Neural Grafting.
- The Human Genome Project: moved to D3 Gene Splicing.
The attachment limit per post is 5, and I eventually ran out of room at the top of the thread. Consequently, this becomes the new home of version 1.2. It was downloaded 8 times before I moved it here.
Post by: bvanevery on May 25, 2018, 12:19:39 AM
Why quit? Well, I just didn't seem to have the right force mix to make effective incursions against the Spartans. They couldn't, or didn't, do anything to me, but I didn't do much to them. Took 1 city in their far north. Soon lost it, as it wasn't that easy for me to reinforce. My productivity rate seemed relatively low, so choosing the right force mix is important, and I didn't do that well. I, uh, don't know how to play my own mod! Spartans go Elite and that kinda hurts.
Technology also went slooooowly. I kept the Pirates' default "Conquer only" focus. I find that various Explore (Growth) technologies never get discovered that way. Nor did anyone else discover them, because Sparta was too busy warring with the Believers. Sooo for instance no Hologram Theaters, ever. There's something about the density at which I've packed the tech tree, and the preponderance of Conquer techs, that can prevent Explore (Growth) techs from being discovered. You keep getting new weapons and armor, which is fine, as that's what you said you wanted... but it has consequences. Like not having enough money to afford more Command Centers. Well, uh, yeah, I went for Power. New version of Power penalizes Economy. Granted just a HQ penalty, but it means I wasn't making money either.
Guess Morgan could have provided relief from those problems. But he got killed.
I think next time I try Huge maps. Just not enough land area for everyone to survive and thrive. The world settings were originally designed with Enormous 80x160 maps in mind.
Yes I spent time defanging the Caretakers and Usurpers. I'm not currently playing test games with them. I'm wondering if I've created new monsters, changing the faction settings. Are the Spartans going to be overpowered now? Or are they just overpowered if they get the Monsoon Jungle? What about the Hive? I wonder if they don't have enough penalties anymore. Time will tell. I should probably put the 2 of them in a game together to see who dominates.
Post by: bvanevery on May 25, 2018, 10:49:43 PM
Changed from version 1.2 to 1.3:
- Police State: is back to giving +2 POLICE. -1 ECONOMY is reinstated to offset the happiness gained from POLICE. The PROBE bonus is removed. The idea of a "lighter weight" Police State that would be easier for other factions to choose, didn't work. A Police State needs to keep a certain number of people happy or it's just not worth choosing as a government. There is no Political choice for PROBE bonuses now. If you want more PROBE, you'll need Power or Thought Control.
- Democratic: changed POLICE penalty from -2 to -1. -2 doesn't allow the use of police, it is too harsh for early factions. -1 merely doesn't allow the use of nerve stapling.
- Hive: removed +1 POLICE bonus, as when combined with Police State it would be overpowered.
- Pirates, Peacekeepers: removed -1 EFFICIENCY penalty. It creates a lot of difficultly picking an early government. Most other factions had one of their penalties removed, and these factions didn't.
- Gaians: changed back to +2 EFFICIENCY. Making it +1 wasn't a good idea; the Gaians aren't especially strong and don't need to be weakened.
The attachment limit per post is 5, and I eventually ran out of room at the top of the thread. Consequently, this becomes the new home of version 1.3. It was downloaded 10 times before I moved it here.
Post by: Green1 on May 26, 2018, 05:47:17 AM
I am not wanting to post feedback or play test data I feel my suggestions would be cast aside or marginalized.
You say not to list changelogs.. just "try", but like Yitzi, you fail to know the reasons why...
I am a patient man and will go through it with you if you if you would like.. A community service really. You pissed off the MPers, but to be honest, you are not a pure MPer of any game unless you are pissed and elitist in some form. BU SLANDER!!!At least the 4x guys are merely passive aggressive. Hell, the MOBA guys would tell you to asphyxiate yourself with a lap top cord...
Post by: bvanevery on May 26, 2018, 02:50:18 PM
I am not wanting to post feedback or play test data I feel my suggestions would be cast aside or marginalized.
When you give feedback to someone who has designed a game, or a mod, you have to accept the fact that their design priorities might be different from your own. Things you don't like, might be deliberate on the designer's part, and very much intended to give a different experience. A designer might not act on a particular piece of advice you give. Indeed, much of designing is ignoring things that people have to say, as well as listening. The designer is the Keeper of the Vision and has to use his / her judgment about what that vision is. It's not mob rule.
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You say not to list changelogs.. just "try",
I said not to worry about changelogs without actually trying the changes 1st. Specifically I would say, don't complain about the Aliens until you've fought them. From where I sit, they seem to spam an awful lot of 4-2-1's. Now, as we discussed before, if you think the point of having Aliens is to have this godawful, painful, "Monster" faction to fight, as a designer I don't agree with you and I'm not going to do it. Such pleas fall on deaf ears. You can of course make any mod you like if you want "Monster" factions. There are large archives of such things available; don't get me started on issues of curation.
I would also note, when interacting with designers of any game: if you start off not playing something, and with a complaint, designers don't like that. Unless it's some bug or egregious oversight or gross imbalance where they were half asleep, when you've really saved them from some unnoticed foible. Whereas, if your 1st reaction to their stated design intent is "negative, and I haven't even played it!" well guess how much consideration that buys you? I'd say it buys patient reiteration of design intent, and no more. I've put a month into this; your complaint took you what, 10 minutes? You get out what you put in. If you had playtested my mod and then complained, I'd take it more seriously. You'd probably also have better feedback about how the Aliens have been "weakened".
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I am a patient man and will go through it with you if you if you would like..
You need to do what you like, what you believe in. I'm not here to twist your arm.
This mod changes a lot of stuff. Mostly when things happen, that's 90% of it. What, usually stays the same, although there are some exceptions like the Social Engineering Choices, lessening faction penalties, and how (I hope) the AI works. I've written extensively about what has changed, it's like it says in the readme_mod.txt. I don't expect anyone to play this mod "blind", with no idea what has changed. Now if you read all of that, and you aren't actually inspired to try, because the changes aren't speaking to your needs as a SMAC player, well maybe it's not the mod for you. Why play something you think is likely to be a drag? If you think "SMAC is great as is" then you wouldn't need any mod. Or if you think "what SMAC really needs is more uber difficult Monster factions" well you can download those, it's not this mod.
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Hell, the MOBA guys would tell you to asphyxiate yourself with a lap top cord...
I have wondered about the tenor of modding communities, especially when $0 is transacted. So far, here's what I've seen. Some people on Reddit have thanked me for even working on this, for such an old game. Some people have downloaded my mod, that's a good sign. Each new version has been downloaded, so interest hasn't dropped to zero. I do not know if anyone has played it other than myself, because nobody has commented to say they did so.
You opened up with a complaint, without playing it. Now you are talking about "MOBA guys" being extremely rude to some hypothetical designer who gives away their work for free. Frankly at this point, I think anyone who thought they had a right to express such hostility about "free beer", doesn't have a leg to stand on. I've chewed people out after playing their mod / campaign / whatever. Then I ended up joining some guy's campaign team and dumping 4 months of my life into polishing up his work. I got out what I put in. Too much in that case; long time since I've done a campaign or mod at this scale, because it doesn't help me put food on the table.
Post by: bvanevery on May 28, 2018, 01:08:03 AM
Changed from version 1.3 to 1.4:
- Bio-Engineering: changed it from an E5 to an E4 tech. It enables Hab Complexes and the Ascetic Virtues. I like delaying Hab Complexes some, but waiting for an E5 tech takes way too long.
- Intellectual Integrity: changed it from an E4 to an E3 tech.
- Single-Sided Surfaces: changed it from an E5 to an E6 tech.
- Advanced Ecological Engineering: changed it from an E6 to an E5 tech.
- Monopole Magnets: changed it from an E3 to an E4 tech.
- Polymorphic Software: changed it from a C3 to a C4 tech.
- Centauri Meditation: set wealth=3 because Empaths increase energy, and the Xenoempathy Dome removes fungus faster.
- The Xenoempathy Dome: set ai-infra=1 because it removes fungus faster.
- Centauri Psi: set wealth=3 because the Pholus Mutagen makes more minerals possible without eco-damage.
- The Pholus Mutagen: set ai-mil=2 because it gives combat bonus in fungus.
- Changed various dependencies to fill holes and balance the tech tree.
- Temple of Planet: was unavailable! Now available with Eudaimonia.
The attachment limit per post is 5, and I eventually ran out of room at the top of the thread. Consequently, this becomes the new home of version 1.4. It was downloaded 15 times before I moved it here.
Post by: Esper on May 28, 2018, 07:43:35 PM
Post by: bvanevery on May 29, 2018, 03:05:59 PM
Post by: Esper on May 29, 2018, 04:41:49 PM
Just another minor thing is that if you choose democratic on the social engineering table, Yang will eventually pronounce vendetta on you, but rant about your "brutal police state".
Post by: bvanevery on May 29, 2018, 10:55:36 PM
I'm willing to credit you in the Changelog for having found this bug. Do you want to be credited as "Esper" or something else?
As for the Democracy vs. "brutal police state" complaining, I have no idea. Unless there's an "accidental paste" error somewhere from fumbling my keyboard, I didn't change any dialog lines for that. I looked at the differences with a diff tool to make sure, and I found no dialog differences. What faction were you? Did you have a positive POLICE rating, say from building the Ascetic Virtues, or choosing Thought Control? Maybe the game just looks at your stats and decides what kind of society you're closest to.
Post by: Esper on May 30, 2018, 01:32:18 AM
As for the Democracy vs. "brutal police state" complaining, I have no idea. Unless there's an "accidental paste" error somewhere from fumbling my keyboard, I didn't change any dialog lines for that. I looked at the differences with a diff tool to make sure, and I found no dialog differences. What faction were you? Did you have a positive POLICE rating, say from building the Ascetic Virtues, or choosing Thought Control? Maybe the game just looks at your stats and decides what kind of society you're closest to.
I was playing as the Drones, standard 0 police rating, no projects that affect police rating. He said the same when using Fundamentalist politics too. It's odd but no big deal.
I'm willing to credit you in the Changelog for having found this bug. Do you want to be credited as "Esper" or something else?
I don't need any crediting, but if you want to, Esper works fine.
Post by: bvanevery on May 31, 2018, 02:29:33 AM
Changed from version 1.4 to 1.5:
- Missiles: playtester Esper discovered that missiles with a speed of 99 hang the game when the AI tries to use them. Reduced speed to 64 and refueling range to 2. This seems to prevent hangs and is still enough range to hit anywhere on a Giant 256x128 map.
- Planet Buster missile: changed cost to 300 minerals, equal to many Secret Projects.
- Conventional Missile: changed cost to 100 minerals, due to increased range, and to stop the AI from spamming them so easily.
- Tectonic Missile: changed cost to 150 minerals due to increased range.
- Fungal Missile: changed cost to 120 minerals due to increased range.
- Missiles: added as basic unit types so that they have accurate costs in the Datalinks. The entries for Chassis types and Payloads are misleading because some odd formulas are used to calculate final cost. Also, permanent unit types ensure that they don't disappear as unit workshop designs fill up. I've had fission Planet Busters, gotten rid of them, discovered Quantum engines later in the game, but had no design slots free, so suddenly I didn't know how to make Planet Busters anymore.
- N-Space Compression: set growth=3 because Tectonic Missiles create new land and access to land, which can be colonized.
The attachment limit per post is 5, and I eventually ran out of room at the top of the thread. Consequently, this becomes the new home of version 1.5. It was downloaded 16 times before I moved it here.
Post by: bvanevery on June 01, 2018, 12:54:03 AM
The theme of the AAR is a Pirate faction being extraordinarily violent ala the great dictators of history, and sinking all land masses with a plethora of Planet Busters. I say "a" Pirate faction because they are named the Aquatic Hegemony. I won't reveal the name of the pirate leader at this time, because it may change, but it isn't Svensgaard. I've always hated that mamby pamby boy. Only thing he's got going for him is a funky eyeball.
Post by: bvanevery on June 01, 2018, 02:39:13 PM
Meanwhile I'm just learning how to play the Pirates properly. I started out with a pure Conquer research focus, which is the default for that faction anyways. This seems well advised because there are so many Conquer techs now, and it's important to keep up. However there comes a point at which one really needs the Explore techs to keep people happy. I didn't make a good transition on that. Instead I just tried having "Doctor layabouts" while I continued with business as usual. Typically I'd have size 6 bases with 2 Doctors. I had enough food from all the kelp that this is doable, but my roleplay of "loathing the land" was counterproductive for actually destroying enemy cities on land. Better luck next time.
Post by: vonbach on June 01, 2018, 09:26:25 PM
I've never been a fan of them. Drones with no research penalty is interesting. In the right hands that faction
is exceedingly powerful to begin with.
Post by: bvanevery on June 02, 2018, 02:32:09 PM
I played another Pirate game last night and did much better with the transition from Conquer to Explore. However, I've repeatedly experienced an interesting research phenomenon compared to the unmodded game. If you don't choose Discover at some point, you will never learn Information Networks. This is a consequence of my "pure research" approach to the Discover track, at least trying to be as pure as the various lab facilities actually allow. You can't count on getting Information Networks out of a pod, I popped tons of pods and never got it. You can't count on the University or the Cybernetic Consciousness being willing to sell it to you. You can steal it, if they're in the game, but what if you don't want to? Or what if you do, but they're so far across the board that it's too tedious to push a foil probe team that far? Well I guess at some point, a lack of research facilities becomes a real bottleneck, so you get more motivated to do something about it. At midnight I just quit that game, lesson learned.
Probe teams BTW have nothing to do with Information Networks etc. You get them from Planetary Networks, but the prereqs are Doctrine: Mobility and Doctrine: Flexibility (which is an E1 tech, no prereqs). The idea is that probe teams are considered to be Conquer technologies. If you think about it, an information network does not have to exist for something to be hacked. What about units? Mobility and Flexibiliy were chosen so that I could guarantee a Foil Probe Team was an appropriate thing to enable with Planetary Networks. And yes, the AI does use them. They will come all the way across an Enormous map just to bother your sea bases. I've been building armored infantry chassis probe teams in my sea bases, defensive units that aren't expected to go anywhere.
Post by: vonbach on June 02, 2018, 08:05:39 PM
which I always found stupid. The way you balanced the factions is interesting. The Hive is especially interesting. The Cyborgs are overpowered now though that crippling growth
penalty was the only thing that kept them balanced.
As far as the social engineering changes. Free Market penalties are a bit extreme and Planned seems to good. Green is interesting.
Power the Industry penalty is crippling. I simply tried making life easier for the AI by removing most the penalties.
Post by: bvanevery on June 03, 2018, 01:03:34 AM
Minus the planet penalty which I always found stupid.
I retained it for narrative flavor. The idea that they think it's Eden, and not what it actually is, appeals to me. It is reminiscent of the old Star Trek episode The Way to Eden (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Way_to_Eden). Juicy ripe grenade fruits indeed!
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The Cyborgs are overpowered now though that crippling growth
penalty was the only thing that kept them balanced.
I disagree. You may not have noticed that their RESEARCH is only +1 now. Zhakarov is the only "on steroids" research faction with a +2, and these are the only two bonus research factions in the game. Hmm, steroids don't sound like the right drug, what do those lab rats take to keep working? Gotta be more than coffee. Besides, Roze surely monopolizes the coffee trade.
The only faction I'm wondering if it's really overpowered now, is the Spartans. They seem to kick major booty. I will be watching them. I haven't actually fought them yet, as playtesting has tended to reveal "yet another thing that needs changing" before actually getting across an Enormous map to them.
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As far as the social engineering changes. Free Market penalties are a bit extreme
In my mod they are less than the penalties of the original game. And you get +1 EFFICIENCY, because let's face it, Free Markets are more efficient in some brutal sense of the term.
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Power the Industry penalty is crippling.
Not as crippling as it was. It's only -1 now.
Post by: bvanevery on June 03, 2018, 01:09:28 AM
Changed from version 1.5 to 1.6:
- Information Networks: changed it from a D1 to a D2 tech. It explicitly requires a "Discover" focus to research it. Failure to do so, causes prohibitive delays in one's research. I don't mind having SOME delay compared to an unmodded game, but it was too much. By giving it some prereqs, it is farther along the Discover research path, and doesn't interfere with other tech paths as much. Removed it as a dependency for Industrial Economics, since it's not a Build tech and such a severe bottleneck.
- Biogenetics: changed it from a D2 to a D1 tech. It is not a "pure" Discover tech, it also has a Conquer component due to the alien lifecycle bonus. As such, it is better suited to be a "no prereqs" tech. Every AI faction in the game focuses on either Conquer or Discover, so every faction will eventally research it. It gives a small, constant bonus to Labs output, which is appropriate at the very beginning of the game.
- changed various dependencies due to the reshuffling of these techs.
- University: removed Information Networks as a starting tech, since it's now a prereq for important Secret Project techs. He still gets a free Network Node at every base, so he doesn't need to start with that tech.
The attachment limit per post is 5, and I eventually ran out of room at the top of the thread. Consequently, this becomes the new home of version 1.6. It was downloaded 12 times before I moved it here.
Post by: vonbach on June 03, 2018, 03:08:30 AM
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I retained it for narrative flavor. The idea that they think it's Eden, and not what it actually is, appeals to me.By that logic they should get a plus to planet not a penalty. Its just the anti Christian bias again.
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The only faction I'm wondering if it's really overpowered now, is the Spartans.Spartans always do well because they're aggressive and they bring rovers. Its more that than anything else.
Drones always did poorly because their AI is passive. The cyborgs took forever to build for the AI but if left
alone were obnoxiously powerful. Its the Research paired with Effic.
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In my mod they are less than the penalties of the original game.Free market economics penalties in the base game were just stupid. Your mod makes it better but I think the penalties are still too much.
I just solved the problem of penalties by removing most of the penalties for everything.
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Not as crippling as it was. It's only -1 now.
I never liked the industry penalty. The problem is Power is actually quite good.
Unfortunately I could not get this mod to work.
Post by: ultimo on June 03, 2018, 05:42:22 PM
Post by: bvanevery on June 04, 2018, 04:08:44 AM
By that logic they should get a plus to planet not a penalty. Its just the anti Christian bias again.
Umm maybe you didn't watch that STTOS episode, but the ringleader died from eating poison fruit in the "garden of Eden". Because, as Spock attests, this cult leader is actually insane.
The question is to what degree the Believers are completely delusional about what Planet actually is. Narratively, the story doesn't actually talk about it all that much. Maybe not at all? I can't think of a single quote where Miriam rattles on about "we think it's Eden". Of course the original SMAC opens with the passage from the Conclave Bible, but there's nothing about that reading which suggests the Believers take it literally. All we really have is 1 line of text in the Faction description: "Believe Planet is their promised land."
Talking about Planet seems to be Deirdre's schtick. Then in SMACX, the Usurpers get to fantasize about becoming gods. I think the Believers' viewpoint on the Planet sentience is actually unknown and uncommented upon, other than that 1 line.
The Believers go on and on a lot about God really existing, "just behind the last theorem". Zhakarov and Yang present the atheist points of view. The Believers also get really worried about various "false gods" being elevated above humanity, whether nanorobots or self-aware colonies.
Then for the Universal Translator movie we get thrown a loop where there's something seemingly Biblical on a Monolith somewhere. WTF? Little too gratuitously X Files or Ancient Alien Astronaut theory for my tastes, mainly because it wasn't really set up to be intelligible. I feel like someone just made a SP movie with a curve ball thrown in. Narratively in terms of the entire story, it strikes me as pretty weak.
It might be an interesting exercise to write a more religiously themed story, as SMAC is being played. I'm not sure if those occasional narrative "screens of text" can be modded or not, to put more meat in a narrative. I'm not willing to do voice acting even if it could technically be done. Writing is "cheap" and expensive enough in terms of doing a good job. Voice acting, I think that's more appropriate for one's own intellectual property. Frankly if I made my own 4X TBS I don't think I'd voice act it at first. I think I'd make it an expansion pack and make people pay for it, either as an addon or crowd funded.
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Spartans always do well because they're aggressive and they bring rovers. Its more that than anything else.
I took away their starting Rovers. They have to research Doctrine: Mobility just like anyone else. Basically the Spartans are now +2 Morale, that's it. No bonuses, no penalties. They do get their free prototyping as before. Something seems to be a bit messed up with prototyping in general now though. Maybe because I included basic unit designs? Oh well, I'll investigate later.
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I never liked the industry penalty. The problem is Power is actually quite good.
Social engineering choices are supposed to be tradeoffs, not just new free stuff. I thought -2 Industry sucked hard, so I changed it to -1 Industry -1 Economy. I general I find that all these -1 Economy penalties I put in lieu of other things, do end up hurting as they accumulate. You start noticing you don't have enough money.
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Unfortunately I could not get this mod to work.
I'm not sure what the problem would be? You drop the .txt files on top of a plain SMACX installation. I use the Good Old Games version myself. If you are using something patched like Yitzi that also changes alphax.txt, then yes it's going to be completely hosed. Install a clean vanilla SMACX in a different directory, then drop the .txt files on top of that.
Post by: bvanevery on June 04, 2018, 04:19:45 AM
Hello there! Very nice mod indeed! But any chance to make it compatible with Yitzi's unofficial SMAX patch?
I'm not willing to do that unless there's an automated, scripted way to do it. I'm not going to develop 2 versions of this mod.
If you yourself came up with an automated script to make it work, I'd be willing to test your script as part of my release cycle. Assuming you have it properly in a GIT repository or otherwise readily released, available, and maintained.
If you wanted me to come up with such a script, well unfortunately, I haven't seen any indication of substantial value add from the Yitzi patch, for my purposes. The bottom line is it doesn't improve AI performance at all. The main modding features I noticed, are adding lots of options for controlling eco-damage. My own mod doesn't deal with that. It's about trying to improve the AI, different Social Engineering choices, more well rounded factions, and trying to make the pacing of the tech tree "better" with respect to how soon or late you get stuff. My version of "better".
In various threads we've debated the merits and demerits of Yitzi patch. I honestly haven't been bitten by any standard SMAC bugs lately. So for what I've been doing, I don't really need a patch. Some people have commented that Yitzi may fix some bugs, at the cost of making other things unstable, in essence giving you new bugs. Since I'm doing just fine with the old bugs, I'm inclined to avoid fixing what isn't broken from my standpoint.
YMMV. I'm sure Yitzi had his reasons for pursuing such an extensive effort, but the visibility of the "fixes" just hasn't been apparent to me personally.
Bear in mind that if you do try to make an automated scripter, Yitzi actually changed the encodings for a few of the game's values. I've actually wondered about "unpatching" these and releasing a Yitzi patch 3.5e. However, Yitzi anything isn't currently worth me doing the work. I've just gotten as far as noting, he created a minor problem for standardized modding.
I am curious, and should ask, why do you personally want Yitzi patch? Is it for abstract feel-good reasons of thinking it's a "good" patch? Or is there something very specific that it's doing for you, that you can't get any other way?
Post by: bvanevery on June 04, 2018, 04:54:58 AM
I had trouble with growth and cash flow. The various -1 Economy penalties I've added to the game, really do end up hurting you after awhile. I'm wondering whether or not I should tone it down, but for now, I'll continue to playtest. I'd be interested to hear about other people's experiences with running low on money. On the positive side, it's a kind of challenge.
As for AI performance, the Hive stomped the University pretty early. The latter survived, but was a crippled sea based weakling that never recovered. The Drones started near or in the Monsoon Jungle and were the dominant power of the game for awhile. They made a long distance land campaign against the Cult of Planet. Who also annoyed me, and so was summarily invaded on 2 fronts. The Cult still sucks, they always get trounced and don't build anything any good, so in 1.7 I will be removing their -1 Economy penalty. They need all the help they can get.
The Believers started on a modestly sized island. They should not have had any trouble getting off the island, as Doctrine: Flexibility is an E1 tech now. The whole "Believers are gonna grow" thing, that this mod basically started out trying to implement, simply doesn't work! The Believers suck at growth. I'm going to have to do things to try to fix this. First is abandoning the idea that "population booming" is even useful to the AI, it isn't, it doesn't understand how to do it. I'm going to try to make the Believers go after SUPPORT instead of GROWTH. Maybe Miriam can make a horde? We'll see.
The other problem is it's too hard to get Economic social engineering choices in 1.6. The Believers never learned how to do a Planned economy, for instance. Because of all these Conquer techs in the tree now, it can take a surprisingly long time to get anything else. For 1.7 I'm going to make all the Political and Economic social engineering choices into Level 2 techs, with no Secret Projects blocking access to them. So hopefully, Miriam will figure out how to do a Planned economy. Or Green, whatever, anything other than just stagnating.
I myself never learned how to do a Free Market. Granted, I was in violent war a lot of the game and didn't want a Free Market, so my technologies did reflect my intents. But when you're running out of money you start thinking hey, where's Free Market??! Keeping the 4 research foci "fairly pure" and separated from each other, has the ultimate effect of making everything take far longer to get, if you weren't explicitly looking for it. That's really hard on any faction with stunted technology, or a bad start on the map.
At midgame, it was 3 ways between the Drones, the Hive, and myself as the Pirates. All equal in power on the graph. I was trying to build a rail to get to the Hive, but it was taking forever. My bloated navy arrived first and shelled the crap out of the abundant Hive forests. Sort of fun to watch things get torn up, but after awhile, I start feeling it's a waste of mouseclicks and doesn't really matter. Probably had something to do with why I quit. I was slowly taking the Cultist bases that the Drones took over, emphasis on slowly. I'd have to send these Speeders all the way across the map, fortunately with a rail for half of it, but then across some water with sped up Isles of the Deep, then through Cultist / Drone territory. The Drones of course were really spammy, and I had trouble getting enough Speeders together to do the jobs. I did eventually do them but it was slow.
Clearly, I could have used a big boost in minerals output. But I deliberately made Supply Crawlers a Level 5 technology, which means you ain't gettin' 'em for a long time. And you don't get Fusion engines either, until nearly the end of the tech tree. So units are expensive and decisions have to be made. I don't think this is bad per se... but it did wear me out this game. Maybe the Pirates aren't that enjoyable a faction to play on an Enormous map after all.
I intended to nuke everybody, and be waterborne when the flooding started. But I had to take land bases to conquer the Cultists, and I wanted some nice rails on my coastlines as well. I had a few inland bases to make my land claims, back when I was at peace with the Cultists. The bottom line is, I got somewhat committed to terraforming projects on land, and I didn't see myself wanting to sink them. Assuming I would have even had the minerals capacity for the nukes, which I very much doubt. I think by the time I could crank out nukes readily, I would have been able to conquer by other means.
Post by: bvanevery on June 05, 2018, 01:41:09 AM
The question is to what degree the Believers are completely delusional about what Planet actually is.
I had a night to sleep on it. I decided, in this mod the Believers are not fools. Nor cartoon cutouts, to the extent I've been willing to change their story and dialogue, which admittedly hasn't been all that much. So the -1 PLANET, and the throwaway line about thinking this is Eden, are going away. The narrative will not miss it and that's the bottom line, narrative consistency.
There's also the subtext that "Planet friendliness" is treated as a proxy for Environmentalism in this game. The idea that Christians are generally opposed to environmental stuff, is wrong, and smells rather 1990s dated to be honest. Living in the Bible Belt next to the Pisgah National Forest, I know better. Republicans generally speaking have been anti-environment, but this is driven by big corporate interests in fossil fuels, not religion. The various potential differences between Republicans, Conservatives, and Christians are left as an exercise to the reader.
Post by: vonbach on June 05, 2018, 01:30:24 PM
Post by: bvanevery on June 05, 2018, 03:06:43 PM
Roze is puny on a smallish island at some distance to the east. She seems to have no enemies though, and might have the time to grow into something worthwhile.
The Hive has wiped out the Cult of Planet. I haven't met either faction, despite having 1 Foil Probe Team probing the vast oceans of the Enormous 80x160 map. I'm not ready to reveal the map to see what the starting conditions were. My own situation hasn't become boring yet. I'm tempted to say the AI has no idea how to play the Cult of Planet and needs an intervention somehow. Maybe being a cult, it could use some SUPPORT.
I'm wondering about rails and hab complexes taking too long to acquire. I might make them earlier.
Post by: bvanevery on June 05, 2018, 05:35:17 PM
Changed from version 1.6 to 1.7:
- Split this readme_mod.txt into INSTALLATION, DESIGN SUMMARY, and DESIGN DETAILS sections.
- Green economy: moved to Centauri Empathy, which is an E2 tech and not associated with a Secret Project. When economic choices are associated with Level 3 techs and Secret Projects, factions with bad research or a bad start will never discover them. The new plan is to make all Political and Economic social choices accessible as Level 2 techs and not have any Secret Projects obstruct them from being traded.
- Free Market: moved to Industrial Base, which is an E2 tech and not associated with a Secret Project.
- Adaptive Economics: changed it from an E3 to an E2 tech. It allows a Planned economy.
- Monopole Magnets: changed it from an E4 to an E3 tech.
- The Planetary Transit System: moved from Adaptive Economics to Monopole Magnets.
- Unified Field Theory: set wealth=4 because Corporate Lab increases energy.
- Changed various dependencies to fill holes in the tech tree and keep research foci more pure.
- Cult of Planet: changed their Social Priority from PLANET to SUPPORT. They already choose a Green economy, which already gives them a total of +3 PLANET, the maximum that provides any benefit.
- Cult of Planet: removed ECONOMY penalty. Added +1 SUPPORT. Cha Dawn keeps getting killed by other factions, especially the Hive. The Cult needs to be stronger.
- Believers: changed their Social Priority from GROWTH to SUPPORT. Population booming was intended to be the "new" weapon of the Believer faction, but in the hands of the incapable AI, it basically doesn't work. Instead, try to make the Believers a teeming horde.
- Believers: removed -1 PLANET penalty, and removed +1 PROBE bonus. A strongly Christian playtester pointed out that the PLANET penalty is nonsensical and merely an anti-Christian bias. I have to admit, when I first played the Believers, it didn't make a lot of sense to me either. Could they really be that dense? I also had trouble remembering that they have a PLANET penalty because there's nothing else in the story of SMAC to support it. Miriam talks about false gods and being ruled by nanorobots, not Planet. The Planet penalty is really not core to the narrative and pretty much a throwaway. Removed the PROBE bonus to compensate, so that the Believers don't become a faction of too many bonuses.
- Fundamentalist: reduced GROWTH bonus from +2 to +1, and added +1 PROBE bonus. The AI simply doesn't understand early population booming and the extra growth is not that useful. Even a human player is going to have trouble making use of early population booming, due to the amount of time it takes to build the necessary infrastructure. It's more of a mid to late game concern and by then, one could use Eudaimonia for growth, or the Cloning Vats. As for PROBE, the Believers will go Fundamentalist, at least when the AI is playing them. They will thereby still have a +1 PROBE advantage, it's just not an inherent factional advantage. I don't want the Believers to have +2, that's reserved for the Data Angels.
The attachment limit per post is 5, and I eventually ran out of room at the top of the thread. Consequently, this becomes the new home of version 1.7. It was downloaded 15 times before I moved it here.
Post by: bvanevery on June 07, 2018, 02:54:20 AM
The problem I was trying to solve, is the Hive seemed to be getting killed awfully early. I thought giving extra SUPPORT would fix that. Well, I'm noticing that any faction that starts too close to me, performs very poorly completely stupid at initial colonial spread. Like they'll found their 1st city, then wander excessively far away for their 2nd city, with tons of turns of lost productivity. Possibly also, if they go to war with anyone immediately, they forget to expand. I think this might happen any time factions start too close to each other. Unfortunately I already modded the heck out of the world generator, maximized the land available to factions, greatly increased the odds that factions are "seeded" somewhere appropriate. I don't think I can do any more from alphax.txt.
The randomness of the faction placement algorithm, probably guarantees that some AI faction will die somewhere, a stunted runt. But by that some token, some other AI faction will be completely left alone and unmolested. For instance, in the last game I played, Cha Dawn got a continent to himself. I guess adding that +1 SUPPORT helped his cause some. He didn't die; he sure sprawled! Bases were ridiculously far apart. I see that a lot with the Spartans too, and they don't have any SUPPORT bonus. They seem to always end up with a "main" enclave and then a "satellite" enclave. Maybe that's what happens when that 2nd colonist is sent a super long distance away. If it runs into an enemy soon, that faction is toast. But if it doesn't, then it develops a good number of cities in 2 separate places. From an EFFICIENCY standpoint I think that's a really bad plan, but I'm not sure if the AI has to care about EFFICIENCY the way a human player on Transcend does.
Anyways I can only do so much to boost factions, before they become overpowered toys. Maybe also the Hive doesn't need as much help now, since all of the Political and Economic choices are now much easier to get. I will play some more against the Hive before deciding whether they need a downgrade. I didn't fight them very long in my last game before quitting, as I hadn't really geared up properly for it, but they seemed awfully spammy.
Post by: bvanevery on June 09, 2018, 07:57:07 PM
Post by: bvanevery on June 10, 2018, 10:04:33 PM
Changed from version 1.7 to 1.8:
- Democratic: added +1 ECONOMY. Increased POLICE penalty to -2, bringing the number of bonuses and penalties in line with other Politics choices.
- Fundamentalist: removed PROBE bonus. Added +1 POLICE bonus. I believe that *all* fundamentalist societies are police states. It's only a question of flavor.
- Simple economy: increased GROWTH bonus to +2. The system had too much GROWTH removed from it, noticeably slowing down the game. This is the easiest fix. A starting faction now has a net +1 GROWTH, due to the -1 GROWTH penalty from Frontier politics.
- Free Market: reduced POLICE penalty to -1. Reduced PLANET penalty from -3 to -2. Free Market simply had way too many penalties compared to other economic choices.
- Green: reduced GROWTH penalty to -1. Added -1 SUPPORT penalty. Really shouldn't have so much stuff if you're recycling.
- Knowledge: reinstated +2 RESEARCH bonus. Added -1 POLICE penalty. Free flow of information, right?
- Wealth: removed POLICE penalty. Reinstated -1 MORALE penalty. Added +1 EFFIC. Wealth didn't have enough bonuses compared to other Value choices.
- Power: removed PROBE bonus. Power had too many bonuses compared to other Values choices.
- Cybernetic: reduced POLICE penalty to -1. Added -1 PLANET penalty. A machine orientation is not conducive to gardening.
- Drones: set ai-power=0, and ai-wealth=1, making them an Explore, Build faction.
- Believers: removed GROWTH bonus. Added +1 PROBE bonus.
- Hive: set ai-fight=0, ai-growth=0, and ai-build=1, making them an Erratic, Build, Conquer faction. Removed SUPPORT bonus. It was too easy for them to get support equal to base size with only Level 2 techs.
- Usurpers: changed social priority from {Economics, Planned, MORALE} to {Values, Power, nil}. Marr is a Conquerer, not an economist. The MORALE granted by Power should be enough for their purposes. Instead of slavishly chasing more MORALE, maybe the AI will make more useful choices.
- Caretakers: changed social priority from {Economics, Planned, PLANET} to {Economisc, Planned, nil}. This will hopefully give the AI more flexibility about what to do. Also I've noticed when playing the Caretakers myself, I can acquire truly vast numbers of mindworms with only +1 PLANET. I'm not certain there's much benefit to getting more than that.
- Morganites: set ai-fight=-1, ai-power=0, ai-tech=1, and ai-growth=1, making them a Passive, Explore, Build faction. So many factions focus on Conquer techs, that the market for those is saturated. It shouldn't be difficult for Morgan to acquire them through trade.
- Gaians: removed POLICE penalty. Set ai-fight=-1, ai-power=0, and ai-wealth=1, making them a Passive, Explore, Build faction. When playtesting, any faction that isn't provably overpowered is getting penalties removed, unless there's a strong thematic reason for a penalty. Otherwise, stronger AI performance is more important than "flavor" penalties.
- University: set ai-fight=-1, making them Passive. Reduced PROBE penalty to -1.
- Data Angels: removed POLICE penalty. Changed social priority from {Politics, Democratic, PROBE} to {Future Society, Thought Control, nil}. Now allowed to make Power social choice. Set ai-wealth=1 and ai-grow=0, making them a Build, Conquer faction. This is a darker version of Roze that is corrupted by her ability to take over people's minds and gadgets. PROBE is redundant because Thought Control is the only thing that gives more PROBE.
- Cult of Planet: changed social priority from {Economics, Green, SUPPORT} to {Politics, Fundamentalist, nil}. May now choose Wealth; may not choose Free Market. In this mod, Green is about an economic model, not recruiting the most mindworms possible. Deirdre can be expected to be quite strident about economic policy, but it is out of character for Cha Dawn. He is a cult leader and an aggressive conqueror, not an economic policy wonk.
- Spartans: changed social priority from {Values, Power, MORALE} to {Values, Power, nil}. As long as the Spartans obtain Power, they will have +4 Morale for most of the game. That's the maximum MORALE boost that one can have, so there's no need for them to chase additional MORALE. Hopefully by not tying the AI's hands, it will make more useful choices.
- Pirates: removed GROWTH penalty. Changed social priority from {Values, Power, MORALE} to {Values, Wealth, nil}. Set ai-fight=-1, ai-power=0, ai-wealth=1, and ai-growth=1, making them a Passive, Explore, Build faction. Like true pirates, they are more inclined to steal than fight. The ocean gives them a solid defense against early enemies, so they really don't need to conquer anyone. They can probably get all the conquer techs they need through trade or theft. Their mineral bonus on the water actually makes them a very good Build faction in the hands of a human player, so we'll see if the AI can do likewise. They don't particularly care about being a planetary mogul like Morgan, personal aggrandizement is fine for them. So they're free to have an unstructured and haphazard approach to getting rich, but they do think people should fixate on wealth, so that's what they go to war over.
The attachment limit per post is 5, and I eventually ran out of room at the top of the thread. Consequently, this becomes the new home of version 1.8. It was downloaded 19 times before I moved it here.
Post by: bvanevery on June 15, 2018, 06:02:05 PM
My own Morganic civilization is completely underwater now. A fair number of foreign bases have drowned, although not enough to seriously knock anyone out of the game. It has definitely spared me the effort of nukeing more Spartan cities though. Mindworm assaults on my territory were horrific for awhile. I did fend them off, with substantial losses in a couple of cities, but didn't completely lose any cities. Going Green and building Centauri Preserves ended the mindworm attacks. Due to drastically declining minerals production, I have not been able to launch nearly as many nukes in my 2nd and 3rd waves. I'm in a slow process of building up sea minerals to regain my former hybrid forest based productivity.
Meanwhile Deirdre, who is as far away as the Spartans and I chose to leave alone, has advanced and built a substantial number of Secret Projects. The Data Angels and Pirates are nearby and also powerful, if backwards. I've been trying to get Advanced Spaceflight forever, which in my mod, confers Orbital Defense Pods. There are so many Conquer techs in the tree though, that even with a Conquer focus, and Knowledge, and Industrial Labs, and having fulfilled the prereqs eons ago, I just can't seem to get that tech. I need a nuclear shield, because it's been a long time and the Data Angels have Orbital Spaceflight now. Maybe Deirdre as well.
It should be noted that Supply Crawlers come late in this mod, and I still haven't discovered them. Similarly, sky hydroponics labs, orbital power transmitters, and Nessus mining stations come very late. There is no superpowered fast track to whizz through this stuff. You're working with fission engines, and so far AFAIAC, that's been a correct modding choice. I actually have to think about unit designs and their expense, rather than just being granted piles of new toys.
Post by: bvanevery on June 16, 2018, 02:51:42 AM
I suppose I could have gone the "support to the size of the base" route. That might have been a good idea. Generally that sacrifices money though, and I was playing the Morganites. However I'm realizing they're not ideal for a nuclear confrontation, because everybody hates and goes to war with you, and you get no Commerce. Morgan's main advantage is being able to jack the Commerce ratings up. He's really more designed for peaceful trade and perhaps mind controlling bases, not hurling nukes. Not that anyone is necessarily designed for nukes, but I'd say it isn't Morgan.
I found some minor bugs and am kicking a new version out the door, so the exercise was not a total loss. I do have an awful lot of "nuke porn" you're not going to see though.
Another odd thing revealed in testing, is it can take forever to get from Orbital Spaceflight to Advanced Spaceflight. Even when you've had the prereqs forever! There are just so many Conquer techs to research, that you can spend your time discovering everything else and never getting Advanced Spaceflight. Which is really important in this mod because that's what gives you Orbital Defense Pods. In short, I never got a nuke shield, and I eventually realized that I probably wasn't going to.
It's probably better to build up enough nukes to completely destroy your victim faction in 1 turn, rather than "building and launching what I could", as I could. Some cities did sink due to the drowning though, so I didn't have to nuke those. That was mildly satisfying. It would be better if I could count on it to completely wipe a faction out, rather than just weaken them.
Post by: bvanevery on June 16, 2018, 02:57:05 AM
Changed from version 1.8 to 1.9:
- Synthetic Fossil Fuels: changed from an E4 to an E2 tech. Shouldn't take so long just to wipe out fungus.
- Centauri Genetics: removed D2 Information Networks as a dependency, instead using E2 Synthetic Fossil Fuels. Information Networks is a "pure" Discover tech, and thus really hard for factions not focused on Discover to obtain.
- Changed various dependencies to fill holes in tech tree.
- The Neural Amplifier: actually moved it to C5 Neural Grafting. Was supposed to be done in version 1.2!
- Removed many convenience units from the game. They were making it unnecessary to prototype, which can matter a great deal. Changed the order of the few remaining convenience units. In total, this will mess up old saved games going from 1.8 to 1.9. Be sure to start fresh.
The attachment limit per post is 5, and I eventually ran out of room at the top of the thread. Consequently, this becomes the new home of version 1.9. It was downloaded 23 times before I moved it here.
Post by: bvanevery on June 16, 2018, 06:58:05 PM
I'm in a major land war with Sparta. We started far enough apart that I was able to build a substantial empire before we made contact and Santiago became hostile. We've also got a huge lake between us that has only seen minor skirmishing action, as neither of us has many seaside bases. The Spartans have generally been the heaviest hitters in my mod so far, at least when AIs fight other AIs. They go Elite awfully easily, it seems, and they don't have the stock production impediments. I've also got the Hive, the Pirates, the Caretakers, and the Usurpers in the game. In short I wanted to mostly test all the most violent factions at once, with the Cyborgs thrown in to see if they could handle it. So far they're doing fine. I'm not sure they've got an active front with anybody, they may just be sitting back and collecting buckets of research unimpeded.
Post by: bvanevery on June 16, 2018, 07:07:01 PM
Post by: bvanevery on June 17, 2018, 01:16:34 AM
I'm in a major land war with Sparta. We started far enough apart that I was able to build a substantial empire before we made contact and Santiago became hostile.
Sparta arrived in force, but I had built a decent empire and there was a lot of land and fungus between us. I took some unit losses, which the Believers can certainly afford, and never really had my cities seriously threatened. This was however contingent upon playing correctly, and also gaining Advanced Military Algorithms from the Cyborgs. Sopoforic gas pods are awfully useful against the Spartans. I cut down some of the initial assault with 4-1-1 gas units. They also brought a lot of artillery though, which took longer to clear, and was almost a threat. Eventually I got smart and countered with a lot of cheap Recon Rovers.
While Sparta was attacking me, it lost at least one base to the Hive, maybe more. In fact, it was the one sea port they had on our lake, so I got to infiltrate and steal from the Hive. I'm glad the Hive did ok against Sparta, because I was worried that they wouldn't. It seems that Sparta is not the supreme land force after all, at least if a human player is well prepared and using up some of Sparta's productivity.
The Cyborgs took some Usurper bases, proving that at least in some circumstances, they can be their equal. That is good as well. I was intending for the Alien factions to be closer in power to normal factions, and I may have succeeded. I never bothered to reveal the map to find out exactly what everyone started with. I honestly don't exactly care, as long as it isn't always the same factions trouncing everyone else. Bad starts equal out for all, I figure.
After beating off the big Spartan assault, I came to a point of internal stagnation though. The Cyborg largess for selling me techs dried up, and they went to war with me. They were sufficiently far away that pushing foil probe teams to them was a PITA. In fact I never managed it before I quit. That was a historical weakness of the classical Believer faction: they were supposed to steal things. Not much of a plan on an Enormous map, where it's often going to be too tedious for a human player to even get to another faction.
I thought the Believers had a really straightforward and useful strategy until bases get to be about size 5 or 6. Garrison everything, lotsa Formers, work the land. Problem is, then the land becomes sufficiently worked, assuming you don't have advanced terraforming options. Which you aren't likely to have, because other factions research techs long before you do. The Believers aren't that great on an Enormous map if you don't have someone next door to trounce. The Spartans were near enough to me for the AI to be willing to attack, but trying to return the favor, there was quite a bit of land and fungus in the way. It's almost like one-way access of tedium; the AI doesn't get tired as easily as I do. I mean, I'd already hand worked a large land empire with a bunch of tiles, now I"ve gotta get through fungus and light enemy resistance just to invade? It was a groaner.
Buttoning up and developing internally would have been a good idea. Except the Believers aren't really suited for it. They've got the support for all the terraforming, but that was done already. With the +1 Police for Fundamentalism, it's tempting to slide along with that path of development. The problem is, you arrive at a point where you feel you need the +2 for Police State. And then your economy suffers. Yeah sure so you go Free Market, but then your Police suffers. Then you go Democratic and forget that it toasts your Police, so you end up having to play that turn over. It all felt pretty uncomfortable with no clear way to go. So I quit.
In a future game, I'd probably know more in advance how all the social engineering choices work, and what kind of techs are going to be key to me surviving in isolation. Just setting it to Conquer and forgetting about it isn't good enough with the Believers.
I'm questioning my treatment of the Cultists, making them Fundamentalist "like the Believers". I'm not entirely convinced that factions can handle being Fundamentalists, and I've yet to see the Cultists do a good job no matter what settings I give them. It's just not clear to me what they should be doing to survive and thrive. I don't think marching mindworms all over the map really helps a faction. Deirde seems to prosper just fine, because she builds lotsa useful things and does research. I'm not sure if the Cultists have an AI specific to it, but it plays pretty poorly.
Post by: bvanevery on June 18, 2018, 04:21:37 PM
Ocean touring pretty much stopped happening entirely. The Caretakers were on the water and usually violent. They even took my few sea bases with foil probe teams. It was trivial to take them back the same way, and mostly just gave me an opportunity to steal from them, although they really only had a map at that point. Putting out a few sea bases as bait for long distance probes, is an effective way to infiltrate a violent enemy.
I deliberately accepted a period of Truce with the Hive once, even though I was starting to have the military advantage. He was fighting the Caretakers on the other end of his large empire, and I wanted to give him the opportunity to withdraw all those units facing me and send them to the Caretakers. It worked! We did eventually go to war again, with far fewer units coming at me the next time. The Caretakers are slowly getting crushed by the Hive, but the Hive has slipped a great deal in the overall faction rankings. I'm considered stronger, neck in neck with 2 other factions in a 2nd tier of strength. I think the Pirates are considered the best.
The various POLICE penalties in the Social Engineering choices are proving to be effective at constraining my behavior. Going to -1 POLICE is doable, ala Free Market. You still get 1 unit as police, just no nerve stapling. I did this for quite a long time, just Free Market, no other social engineering choices.
Going Democratic is a hard choice because it guarantees at least -2 POLICE. That means no more police units to keep people happy, so I waited quite awhile before I did that. Democratic Free Market Knowledge is the worst POLICE rating at -4, which gives 1 drone per military unit away from your territory. It's irritating, but I don't think it's unrealistic. I actually think a bunch of academics would be the least likely people to want POLICE looking over their shoulder.
I never bought the idea that corporate capitalist regimes are averse to using POLICE. Just look at the USA, we've got free speech and all of that, but we've also got the prison industrial complex. I think I read that we incarcerate more people per capita than any other nation. This is why Wealth imposes a MORALE penalty, not a POLICE penalty, and Free Market only gets a mild -1 POLICE penalty.
I have pursued a pure Discover research focus. I've noticed an interesting phenomenon: I get all kinds of non-Discover techs anyways, like various Conquer or Explore techs. This is not because my research speed is so amazingly fast, as I initially supposed about research factions played by the AI. It's because the Discover techs are extremely "thin and vertical" in the tech tree. The Discover techs aren't always fed by another Discover tech, because there are not enough of them to do that. So the techs you get can become pretty random. Since there are more Conquer techs than anything else, and after that more Explore techs early in the tech tree, that's what you end up with. I'm ok with this behavior for now, not sure that I'll do anything to change it.
I managed to build The Virtual World. I didn't have any real competition for that. I was surprised that I didn't get Gene Splicing for a long time, which gives Research Hospitals and The Human Genome Project. Eventually I did get it, possibly from The Planetary Datalinks, and did manage to get the HGP done. This delay with a pure Discover focus, demonstrates how it's pretty close to pure blind research! But you eventually get things that other factions aren't going to get, because they don't try to Discover.
Surprisingly, an AI that focused purely on Discover might do just fine, simply because of the randomization effect of discovering other techs. I may test this, changing the University to pure Discover and see how it plays.
We had sunspots for a long time and I've been preparing for an invasion of the Hive. I went Green for fear that my eco-damage might be getting severe in one of my cities, and I need it to produce The Ascetic Virtues uninterrupted. I may not actually get that as Sparta has been working on multiple copies for awhile, but I will try. Also to lower my POLICE to -3, which is "a drone for more than one unit away from territory". Basically a Republic in Civ II terms. That should be sufficient for taking the nearest Hive city. I'm nearly done building an internal rail network, and will soon be driving a rail head into the Hive. I thought I had enough Gatling Speeders to wipe the Hive, but we actually had enough border skirmishing, that I never even crossed into Hive territory the whole time. Lotta Hive spam to keep killing; then my units get wounded and I have to bring them back to heal them. Consequently, I've also been building a wave of mindworms to break through some of these unit slog stalemates.
Yep, the University is not overpowered. I'm doing fine locally, but the Spartans and the Pirates have become rather strong, with nobody to constrain them. The Caretakers are dying, and I don't think the Usurpers are doing much better. The Believers are the runt civilization, having been eradicated early by Sparta and restarting somewhere else.
Post by: bvanevery on June 19, 2018, 03:59:08 AM
I do seem to have a ridiculous amount of Efficiency, as a Democratic Green Knowledge Cybernetic faction. That's +2 +1 +1 +2 = +6. Problem is, there are only so many bonuses you can give a faction. It's inappropriate to give Cybernetic people more Economy, I think. I like the thematic choice of saying that going all cyborg is actually bad for talking to Planet, and making Eudaimonic the mildly pro-Planet choice. I mean, Paradise Gardens are a Deirdre sort of thing in my view. So I'm not giving a Planet bonus for now, which is a pretty significant change from the standard game... if Future Societies were significant anyways, and for the most part they weren't. Now they're mid-game choices and you're expected to juggle 4 Social Engineering choices. I will definitely await actual playtesting feedback, if I get any, before changing it again.
I guess there's the completely unused "give a TALENT" social engineering advantage, but I'm reticent about that. Sounds overpowered.
I've found it is actually possible to get to -5 POLICE. That would be Democratic Free Market Knowledge Cybernetic, resulting in -2 -1 -1 -1 = -5. I chose Green primarily to avoid Planet problems, secondarily because it lets my army tromp around more. I did succeed in building The Ascetic Virtues, even though competition had it in progress.
Yang is hapless now. He spends most of his time exterminating the Caretakers, also a weak faction in the standings. This tussle occupies the immediate large lands to the northeast of me. Every once in awhile, Yang pipes up and declares war on me again. So I take 1 or 2 more cities to shut him up. Then I get back to research and infrastructure. I've got Photon armor available now, what's he gonna do? Heck I should make some cloaks while I'm at it, Photon also gives you cloaks in my mod. The general principle is, put "interestingly different" techs earlier, put boring techs (bigger guns, bigger engines) later.
The real contenders are the Pirates, the Usurpers, and the Spartans. They are far away and I don't have the logistics yet to take them on. Lotta water separating us. I did complete The Maritime Control Center at the last minute, but previous experience on Giant maps, is pushing ships to a distant enemy is extremely painful, even with the MCC. I've quit games from getting tired of all the pushing, so I won't try it this time.
I've built Industrial Labs and Research Hospitals almost everywhere. Most cities are working on Hybrid Forests. I'm filling in the empty patches of my interior with brand squeaky new settlements, since there's a lot of naturally spread forest to take advantage of. I figure I've certainly got the Efficiency to be quite large. I'm just naturally filling out the corner of the continent that was contested between Yang and myself.
If I get done with all of that and still don't have enough to do, I could make a shell of sea bases in the vicinity of my capitol. It's inland but quite near water, basically 1 city away is water. I have a few sea bases in shallow water, but I wasn't naturally gifted with lots of shallow water. I'd have to raise it all manually. I do have Advanced Ecological Engineering, which is required for raising or lowering land in this mod. You also need it for Boreholes. I figure those are big engineering projects, they shouldn't be easy. I like the idea of putting the brakes on "boreholes everywhere" people unless they've put time into getting The Weather Paradigm. Then they can get started substantially earlier. Otherwise, natural terrain features are going to be a barrier until late midgame.
Maybe once I don't need money to build stuff anymore, like Secret Projects at the last minute, I'll just put most of my budget into Labs and get techs a lot faster. We'll see. I think I just achieved tech parity, having stolen the last missing tech from Santiago. That was easier with my Maritime Control Center accelerated foil probe teams. Even so, it has taken a long time for Santiago to get anywhere remotely near me. I have no idea how big she is, and my last probe is going to try to steal her map. It's a long open ocean journey to get to a new base of hers.
Nobody has discovered Orbital Spaceflight or Supply Crawlers yet. In theory, maybe I could have. In practice, I went pure Discover and wanted Digital Sentience, which I got. These are all Level 6 techs, and don't come into play until late midgame. You don't get to make Sky Hydroponics Labs anytime soon either. Those are *way* later. The Cloudbase Academy is way later too.
Post by: bvanevery on June 20, 2018, 01:38:58 AM
impressive contempt for human life |
Mission Year 2350. Santiago nukeing the Pirates really took me by surprise. I didn't think the AI was much capable of that sort of thing.
hands on buzzers doh |
Sextant Cove was vaporized. Looking at a previously saved turn, the city had no strategic importance and merely contained a bunch of Transports. Nor did the Spartans have a decisive nuclear inventory, they just had that 1 nuke. I don't see how this profits Spart and I suppose I can expect *that* from an AI. Both Sparta and the Pirates have 1 nuke in production, with 20+ turns to complete either.
I'm only now working on my 1st nuke myself. I could have it done in a few turns if I want. I only discovered Supply Crawlers recently and have been throwing them at Secret Projects I needed to complete, then prototype units. With this wakeup call, I've switched my research focus from Discover to Conquer. I have the prereqs for Advanced Spaceflight, which confers Orbital Defense Pods and The Cloudbase Academy. However my experience in a previous game is it still can take forever to get it. Being the University I do have the option of dumping nearly my entire budget into Labs, so perhaps I can speed that up. I hope I don't have to sweat too much too soon, as I'm hoping that Santiago's next nuke is directed at the Pirates again, not little old me. And that the Pirates will likely return the favor.
I'm also starting to build submarine carriers, on the idea of hiding some missiles out in the deep ocean and building a retalliation strike force. Previous gameplay suggests that it's best to eliminate the enemy in 1 turn, then deal with the mindworm hordes and flooding. Also one needs to have sea minerals available, as minerals will reduce to near zero as a hybrid forest economy is flooded out. This time I've taken that precaution, so to the extent I've built anything at sea, I've built mining platforms. I'm 95% land empire though.
I find that I'm questioning my decision to make Fusion engines come so late in the tech tree. Some techs are prohibitively expensive and near useless without them. For instance, I put hovertanks pretty early hoping that would jazz things up. However at current prices I'd probably not use them for more than recon units. It also becomes not straightforward to retire weapon designs. Sure I might want the biggest and baddest weapons, but they're costly, and thereby tempt me to keep less expensive designs around. This creates a lot of clutter in the workshop, a side effect I didn't anticipate.
The problem is that factories are also coming rather late in the game. With my pure Discover focus, I haven't learned any factory technologies yet, and I'm substantially ahead of my adversaries on tech. So it's starting to seem like everything will be painfully expensive for a very long time, which I'm not sure is all that much fun. Also I wonder if the eco-damage will become prohibitive from factories once I do get them. Or from supply crawlers: I'm starting to work all my rocky squares to make mines. Well, I'll play on for now. I do have a production route forward with supply crawlers.
As for the politics, the Hive came to understand my inherent military superiority, and eventually offered me a Treaty without me even having to take over any more of his cities. I think it had something to do with consistently wiping out all the units he sent my way, and then not having any more to send. The Usurpers offered me an alliance for reasons mysterious to me, as Marr was Noncommittal about it. I took it, but I doubt it'll hold as he's now Belligerent towards me. We don't have compatible political values, as in my mod, Marr fixates on Power. He and Santiago would have gotten along just fine, if she hadn't nuked Svensgaard. Nobody actually likes my politics, it's a burden.
I've been harassing the Caretakers' paltry sea bases off my west coast. My sea bases occupy the good continental shelf area, and hers are just out in useless water. These are relics of her probe team operations against my sea bases back when I didn't have the Hunter-Seeker Algorithm. Every time I'd retake a base, its population would drop to 1 and she'd get a sea colonist to go settle somewhere. She'd just do it nearby, not anywhere terribly useful. These sea bases have been launch platforms for needlejet incursions, but aside from shooting those down easily, I think her hands have been busy with the Hive nearly exterminating her from the other direction. Nowadays I just harass her with 2 locusts of Chiron and call it good. These sea bases are a liability, and if I'm to do any heavy duty land raising it'll be with my own sea bases first. These are prime candidates for extermination, but I'm not ready to commit atrocities against the Caretakers yet.
Post by: bvanevery on June 20, 2018, 01:47:16 AM
that was quick |
MY 2351. Got pretty much the best case, immediate progress. Ok off to build a nuke shield!
MY 2355. The Caretakers offer a Treaty and I take it. Guess they didn't like locusts in the face. I contact the Believers and they sign a Truce.
MY 2361. I complete Flechette Defense Shield in all my cities. I have 1 Orbital Defense Pod launched. I've also got 1 nuke.
aarg its nukes me hearties |
MY 2363. Svensgaard retalliates!
AAAARRRG! |
The Nano Factory is no longer part of this world. At least Svensgaard had more brains than Santiago about taking out something valuable. It really makes me think I should wrestle various Secret Project cities away from Svensgaard before they're obliterated forever. Problem is, I'm not sure how I'd pull that off. I think they're far away and at the dead center of the strength of his empire. Really expensive probe teams maybe?
I think I'm also in a better position to wrestle away the Governorship now, since both Santiago and Svensgaard are now universally reviled. However I have to wait a few years for the election to be available again. I made the mistake of trying to install myself in 2350. Svensgaard easily outvoted me at the time, even with me having the Empath Guild.
Post by: bvanevery on June 20, 2018, 03:27:59 PM
some like it hot |
Elvis like jelly doughnut |
MY 2370. I bribe Yang with The Will To Power to win the election. I then propose a Global Trade Pact, seeing as how Svensgaard and Santiago will be permanently at war with everyone due to their atrocities. Unfortunately everyone votes against me.
but they are just little insects |
frying ants with a magnifying glass |
tough to train at high kelvin |
there was an earth shattering kaboom |
Post by: bvanevery on June 21, 2018, 05:25:20 AM
steaming magma tubes |
Here is 1 unusual screenshot however. I'm wondering if the peak of this volcano gets double bonuses?
Had a bit of a scare when a storm destroyed all of my Orbital Defense Pods. No nukes came my way though. Other factions don't have much inventory, and they've been using it up on each other. I suspect Sparta's AI pattern is to try to rope all factions into retalliatory atrocities, so that it's the new diplomatic norm. I'm the only human faction that hasn't nuked anyone yet. I don't think the aliens have nuked anyone, they've merely been nuked.
I finally got some Genjack Factories and Robotic Assembly Plants. I've definitely shifted too many minerals out of the early game, with removing Supply Crawlers, Fusion Power, and possibly delaying factories as well. Something has to go back in. I'm going to look at shifting factories earlier. I really haven't gotten much chance to use my new mineral output much yet. I've got 50..90 minerals coming out of various cities, and minimal eco-damage in only my most productive city. No hordes of mindworms, just the occasional big stack with 1 solo nearby. Easy to kill with the Elite units I've had around forever.
Mild flooding has started, but nobody's hurled enough nukes to really ruin things yet. I couldn't propose solar shade due to sunspots. Only a small amount of coastline eroded, no big deal.
I'm working on the Space Elevator. I think I may do piles of Sky Hydroponics Labs and eventually declare Diplomatic Victory. I may bombard the Pirates with fungus missiles to ruin their ability to make stuff. Or not, we'll see. But it's a good use of the mod, to strike very long distances with missiles. I probably now have the production capacity for it, even with fission warheads.
In unrelated news, I've figured out how to solve the problem with the Cultists. I'm going to give them IMPUNITY to Fundamentalism. The excuse will be, they have abundant experience with native biology. I'll remove their SUPPORT bonus and see how they do.
Post by: bvanevery on June 21, 2018, 08:05:16 PM
Next up, I will play some kind of Builder faction, and put the Cultists in the game to see how they do with my new changes.
Post by: bvanevery on June 22, 2018, 09:50:31 PM
Changed from version 1.9 to 1.10:
- Cult of Planet: gave IMPUNITY to Fundamentalist social engineering choice. Cannot make Democratic social engineering choice. Can now make Free Market social engineering chioce; deeply cynical, yes I know. Cult leaders are capable of that.
- Cybernetic Consciousness, University: changed to pure Discover focused factions. Discover techs are so "thin and vertical" in the tech tree, that when prerequs for Discover techs haven't been researched, non-Discover techs are researched at random. Thus, it is not necessary to have a secondary research focus. It is better to have them make every effort to research Discover techs.
- The Living Refinery: moved it from Biomachinery to B7 Industrial Nanorobotics.
- Biomachinery: changed it from a B6 to a B4 tech. Between supply crawlers, genejack factories, and fusion power, I removed too many minerals increasing or minerals cost reducing techs from the early tech tree. Need to put something back in.
- Changed various dependencies to fill holes in the tech tree and keep research foci more pure.
The attachment limit per post is 5, and I eventually ran out of room at the top of the thread. Consequently, this becomes the new home of version 1.10. It was downloaded 17 times before I moved it here.
Post by: bvanevery on June 24, 2018, 04:04:55 PM
Boy was I wrong! She kept sending massive numbers of ships down. I built so many ships and so many foil probe teams, and she just kept destroying everything as I sent it. Her horde was unending, and there was seemingly no ship formation I could use, where she would not exhaust me. The amount of my production she chewed up, as well as the number of mouseclicks, was sheer ridiculous. Eventually I did take the base back, then tried to push a fairly substantial flotilla northwards to steal more from my tormentor. All the ships get killed, leaving only the foil probe teams. I think the AI probably just cheats about those, as it seems to always just zero in on them no matter where they are, like in the fungus, or how they've been positioned. I quit the game in frustration, this was way too tedious to deal with.
I guess this is what coastal artillery is for, to keep such hordes at bay. Straight battling in the ocean is just a recipe for despair. The AI does not get tired of this, and you do. The AI had not achieved +3 SUPPORT yet, in fact she was just Fundamentalist Simple Survival. Lots of size 7 cities though, she was really spamming those units out. Maybe I could have out-spammed her if I put everything in my civilization into the task, but naval spam is a tedious way to make progress.
Post by: bvanevery on June 25, 2018, 09:51:27 PM
Post by: bvanevery on July 01, 2018, 03:19:51 AM
Changed from version 1.10 to 1.11:
- Simple economy: lowered the GROWTH bonus to +1. Other economic choices give 3 bonuses and 2 penalties, in a sense a "net 1" bonus. A Simple economy shouldn't offer better than that.
- Free Market: reduced PLANET penalty to -1. Now it gives the same number of bonuses and penalties as Planned and Green.
- Wealth: removed MORALE penalty. Added -1 PLANET penalty.
- Hab Complex: moved from E4 Bio-Engineering to E3 Monopole Magnets. It was taking too long to get past size 7 cities on Enormous maps.
- Bio-Engineering: moved to B4 Biomachinery slot, taking over Biomachinery's role. This restores Chairman Yang's narrative about Genejacks.
- Intellectual Integrity: changed from an E3 to an E4 tech.
- Ascetic Virtues: moved to Intellectual Integrity.
- Biomachinery: changed to an E7 tech. Now it makes The Cloning Vats available, instead of Nanometallurgy.
- Changed various dependencies to fill holes in the tech tree and keep research foci more pure.
- Troop Slider: removed. I don't think it's helpful in an age of mag tubes, and it gives away a free Hovertank prototype.
- Troop Crawler: removed. I don't think it's helpful and the AI doesn't know how to use it.
- Slider Probe Team: removed. It gives away a free Hovertank prototype, and I haven't seen the AI actually build one anyways.
- Cruiser Probe Team: removed. It gives away a free Cruiser prototype, and I haven't seen the AI actually build one anywas.
The attachment limit per post is 5, and I eventually ran out of room at the top of the thread. Consequently, this becomes the new home of version 1.11. It was downloaded 18 times before I moved it here.
Post by: bvanevery on July 02, 2018, 07:29:57 AM
What does this game say about version 1.11? Are the Drones overpowered, or am I just that good? There aren't really any "weak" factions anymore, I took care of that. So I can't just, say, pick Morgan to make life harder on myself. I should probably play another game with myself as "whatever", let the AI play Domai, and fill out the rest with random opponents. I expected Santiago to do much better, as she has dominated many test games I've played. But in this one, she was summarily crushed by the Believers. She must have gotten a really lousy start right next to them.
Post by: bvanevery on July 03, 2018, 04:31:21 PM
I started right next to the Gaians. We both had superior quantities of land available to us, so no need for immediate war. The Gaians however put Gaia's Landing right next to me though, and I think they might have gotten their 2nd colony pod killed somehow. That takes talent when you're Planet friendly! I wish I could fix the stupidity of the AI's opening game at times, but I don't know of a way. When I infiltrated, I saw that they were very nearly "mineral locked" on this 1 city. I expanded around Gaia's Landing, cutting it off to either side, so it came to be a bulge in my own empire. I allowed the Gaians to exist peacefully, even doing a Democratic Green society for awhile. It's a viable choice, as you get +2 ECONOMY so 1 extra energy every square, but you get a GROWTH and a SUPPORT penalty.
Eventually Deirdre stole something from me, unprovoked. I cancelled our Pact and went Free Market. Much later, Deirdre declared war on me. By that time I was totally built up with all sorts of mindworms, spore launchers, and gatling troops for this coming day. Full rail network and probe teams protecting every city. I hit Gaia's Landing with something like 10 pieces of artillery and 10 mindworms, it was a total cakewalk. My speed of conquest will likely be limited only by how fast I lay rails. I'm so confident in my built up forces that I'm not even building new units for now, I'm building Tree Farms that I just stole from Deirdre. I will continue my campaign until I obtain her Secret Projects, which include The Weather Paradigm and the Planetary Energy Grid. Then I'll see whether she surrenders or not.
I've been building a bunch of Network Nodes. A major characteristic of my mod right now, is that D2 Information Networks is a "pure" Discover tech, a really serious barrier to anyone's progress. If there are no Discover factions in the game, as in this one, then nobody's getting that tech for a long time. This might be a problem. Am I inhibiting AI growth with this policy? The intent was to hide The Virtual World behind a series of successive Discover techs, and that works. But the Human Genome Project is also in there, from D3 Gene Splicing, and I'm not sure I like that. Maybe I should move it to an Explore tech.
The Build research path is similar in that "you must reseach Build" to get stuff, but it's not quite as severe as Discover. Svensgaard has had no problem coming up with Secret Projects from Build. I can't get to him to infiltrate him. He's on the other side of the Enormous 80x160 map, past a significant water choke point. Every time I try to sail foil probe teams through it, his ships destroy my teams. I will have to come through in force, or eventually get past the Gaians, build a rail, and settle a new port city over land.
Or finally secure the Governorship. Cha Dawn is strong, the IMPUNITY to Fundamentalism definitely works for them. There were times on the graph when they were claimed to be the strongest. Now they are in the same tier of strength as all of us, meaning we're all doing well. Except Domai, who was eXterminated. Anyways, he's Governor. In our 1st election, which I didn't call, the votes were deadlocked between us. In our 2nd election, he beat me out by a small margin. There aren't enough human players in this game to bribe, so there was nothing I could do about it. People have hated me for awhile, so I can't win Governor. There was a time when Cha Dawn and Svensgaard were fighting, and that's when I should have called an election. But I didn't, I forgot. It was a mistake. Oh well.
Once I crush the Gaians, I may have the raw population to win an election. I concentrated on Explore forever, eventually obtaining my goal, the Ascetic Virtues. I built Hab Complexes before that, so I've got a lot of cities that can get big.
That has to be done a somewhat slow, old fashioned way though, just growing. I've taken a lot of GROWTH bonuses out of the social engineering table, so I'm not even sure that Pop Booming is possible from the table right now. For a single player game, one can eventually discover The Cloning Vats, so I don't think it's a dealbreaker issue. But I do wonder if the original impetus for the mod, the very thing that makes it "SMACX AI Growth mod", will turn out to be ultimately misguided. Time will tell.
In 1.11 I changed Simple economy to merely +1 GROWTH, as I thought +2 GROWTH was way too good for not having researched any tech. A rational change, needed to be done, but now only +3 GROWTH is possible from one's social engineering choices. That would be Fundamentalist, {Simple or Planned}, and Eudaimonic. The easiest fix would be to abandon the realistic "Wealth decreases population growth" idea, change all the game design text to protect the guilty, and put a +1 GROWTH under Wealth.
Alternately, I could put +2 GROWTH under Eudaimonic. However, GROWTH is only useful for a time, and I don't like the idea of "watering down" Eudaimonic's benefits that way. I suppose I could just allow Eudaimonic to award 5 benefits instead of 4, recognizing that GROWTH isn't the equal of various other benefits.
Post by: bvanevery on July 03, 2018, 11:02:15 PM
Post by: JMN4444 on July 06, 2018, 10:12:31 AM
Also another thing that I appreciated is that you removed the PLANET penalty for ;miriam;.
I see no reason why a PLANET penalty should be necessary since it just seems rather bizarre to think that the Christian faction would end up having that. It was even stated in The Bible that God made us the caretakers of Earth since the beginning (I'm pretty sure the Believers know that, being devout Christians and all), and yet in the end, the last folks who truly believe in God (Should others not go Fundamentalist as well) tend to innately rape the planet in the beginning harder than a no economy model ;morgan; ???? Also at the same time, it would put them at the mercy against ;deidre; and ;cha; should such unfortunate event befall upon them.
Post by: bvanevery on July 06, 2018, 03:32:02 PM
I'm in the middle of a test game as the Spartans on an 80x160 Enormous map. I'm doing well, but so are the Pirates and the Hive. We're in the era of Level 5 techs. I share a continent with Miriam and every time she gets uppity with me, I take one more city to make her settle down. We started off right next to each other. I was friendly for awhile, but eventually went Democratic and of course she lost her mind. New Jerusalem was in a vacuole waiting to be devoured. I'm proud of myself for having out-spread the Believers at the beginning, it usually goes the other way. Well, maybe my mod makes her not so spammy at the very beginning now.
Post by: bvanevery on July 07, 2018, 02:23:57 AM
Perhaps 2 can play at that game. I've contemplated the world destroying nuke idea, but it would take a lot of nukes to eliminate everyone at once, which would pretty much have to be the object of the exercise. I could instead crank out enough Conventional Missiles to bring Yang to his knees. Unless he's got so much unit spam that that's impossible. Maybe it could help my ally Morgan invade him though. They're next door and under heavy assault. I've got the Elite military units, and my production is really ramping up now, but they're both really far away and I haven't wanted to do the unit pushing. The unit pushing approach, would be a Marine invasion of the Hive. Maybe I do missiles instead.
Post by: bvanevery on July 07, 2018, 05:46:25 AM
In 1.12 I'm taking away his IMPUNITY to Planned economy. He still gets it for Police State, he wouldn't be Yang if he didn't get that. I think it's a bit overpowered for him to have 2 IMPUNITYs though. So, likely for the first time ever, the Hive will be able to have negative EFFIC if it really wants to. That's not such a bad future for it, with Free Market being far less onerous, and Green being a viable economic choice. I also took away their secondary choice preference for POLICE. They already have a lot of POLICE, they don't need to obsess. If they want to blow their POLICE on Free Market and researchy stuff, I say let them. It might make the AI Hive more interesting.
Meanwhile the Pirates are also winning. Not so defense pod oriented, yet, but they have put up a few. They're out-researching most everybody, including me. Thing is, I designed them to do this. I designed the map with enough ocean to allow them to do this. They're a Wealthy terror. They're also too far away for me to want to spend the mouse clicks beating them up. I don't even want to go after the Hive! The Enormous map protects them with mouseclicks. Just can't stand pushing units that far.
The University, on the other hand, is uppity, weak, next door, and declared war on me again. They have a few Secret Projects worth having, so they're going down for good. No more tolerance of harassment and insubordination. My mainland is fully "built out", I even made Echelon Mirrors this game, something I never do. Genjack Factories are online and humming. Nasty ships and Amphibious Hovertanks will be ready soon. The University occupies a small island to the northwest. I figure those tanks will deliver the maximum number of strikes per boatload.
I'm Democratic Free Market Power Cybernetic. And I am Elite! With my pop booming earlier, thanks again to 1.12 rules, I secured the Governorship.
Post by: bvanevery on July 07, 2018, 02:26:54 PM
I have stolen Advanced Spaceflight and am now putting up a screen of Flechette Defense Systems. I'm slightly behind on tech and need to steal some important Secret Project stuff. I don't really want Zhakarov to complete The Network Backbone, I want it in my own capitol. I've got my Hovertank Marines ready for the invasion, and I've launched some warships to screen my approach, but I haven't created all the needed Transports yet. I could also stand to steal better armor and upgrade. I have a lot of money due to my Free Market, but I have a number of disparate expensive concerns and will probably have to make choices for the next few turns.
the Hive are eco weenies |
My effort to raise a land bridge to the continent that has my Manifold Nexus on it, has been a bit of a morass. I just raised the most spectacular of resource bonuses, 3 at once, totally cutting off my approach. So now I'm going down to the South Pole again. Meanwhile Yang has triggered mild flooding. It's not much so far, only estmated 66 meters, but that's enough to wipe out the South Pole. Most of my rail was not built on the South Pole, but a land strip next to it, knowing that this could happen. I will reconnect my rail when the flooding settles. If it's not obvious, the reason I adopted this circuitous route to begin with, is I fully developed those coastal shelf tiles before I had the excess Former capacity to make a bridge. There's nothing to do on my mainland anymore.
Post by: bvanevery on July 07, 2018, 04:57:27 PM
what Fundamentalist research looks like |
Oh my God! I really didn't expect this. Miriam just completely cold cocked Zhakarov. Isn't it interesting that I'm the only faction not obligated to go to war with her? Doubly amusing is that only 2 new factions declared war. The rest were already trying to get her. If Yang decides to nuke Miriam, this is very good for me.
Unfortunately The Planetary Datalinks was a casualty of this atrocity. Nice knowing it.
Yang tossed Conventional Missiles at those 2 outposts I took over recently, with my own Conventional Missiles. The AI has no problem contemplating orbital bombardment warfare.
Post by: bvanevery on July 08, 2018, 06:06:28 AM
only time I ever liked this event |
Well that's one way to gain parity in an Orbital Defense Pod race. I didn't have a thing in the sky. Too busy building Secret Projects I stole or researched. Now that's done, I still have to build Hab Domes to make good on The Cloning Vats I built.
I've taken all 3 of Zhakarov's Secret Project cities, but my forces are barely alive for having done so. Chaos Hovertank Marines aren't any good against ECM Photon armor behind a city wall. Even with Elite units, many died. My idea of getting multiple shots from the Hovertank platform was false economy. They're horribly expensive units and I really needed that +25% infantry assault bonus against cities.
Zhakarov has got a substantial reserve in 1 city that could take it all back, if he had half a brain. Fortunately he doesn't. Yang occasionally peppers me with missiles though, making my situation even more strained. I'm trying to build a land bridge to the island, but it will be awhile before it connects, or even gets within paradrop range. I've got ok command of the ocean and could probably ferry units back and forth, if I have time to make ships before everything collapses.
I said I would have to make choices. I did get all my Secret Projects done, and I think growing my population is more important even than holding the island. The Pirates are unrestricted and they're the one I stole the Hab Domes from. Their cities aren't as maxed as mine, and I don't think the AI is smart enough to do a pop boom.
A turn later... Yang wipes my feeble defenders with his air force. I'm on my last legs, but I have the last laugh! With one remaining probe team, I take the 3400 credits generated from that solar storm, and buy the last University stronghold! How's that for pulling it out of nowhere? And it was cheap too, only 625 credits, because I long since wiped out his Headquarters. It's Zhakarov, you can buy him. He has 2 dismal cities left in the water. Still this fool won't surrender.
Garrisoning problem totally solved now. Got fresh University donated troops to fortify everything. When I get this land bridge finished, Yang's dead.
Post by: bvanevery on July 08, 2018, 01:57:25 PM
Changed from version 1.11 to 1.12:
- Fundamentalist: removed GROWTH bonus. Added +1 SUPPORT bonus. Reduced RESEARCH penalty to -1. Added -1 ECONOMY penalty. I find that a -2 RESEARCH penalty really cripples the AI factions. Fundamentalist is deliberately made very similar to a Police State. Historically, considering Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, cult behavior was a key part of their regimes.
- Democratic: reduced EFFIC bonus to +1. Added +1 GROWTH bonus. I want the Peacekeepers to be able to pop boom.
- Survival: removed MORALE bonus. The Spartans can research C2 Doctrine:Loyalty, go Fundamentalist, and get Elite units. That's way too early. They should have to research C4 Advanced Military Algorithms and learn Power.
- Knowledge: reduced RESEARCH bonus to +1. Added +1 PLANET bonus.
- Wealth: removed GROWTH penalty. Added -1 MORALE penalty. I made it too difficult to start a population boom.
- Eudaimonic: removed PLANET bonus. Raised GROWTH bonus to +2. I need to make it possible to pop boom.
- Cybernetic: removed PLANET penalty. Added -1 PROBE penalty. The Network Backbone has a bug. It is supposed to cancel the negative effects of Cybernetic, so having it and the Manifold Nexus should yield +1 PLANET. But it doesn't, it yields 0 PLANET. As I don't know how to fix the bug, the simplest solution is to remove the PLANET penalty.
- Biogenetics: set growth=2 so that an Explore focus can research it. It improves alien life cycles and those have traditionally been regarded as Explore techs.
- Information Networks: set power=1, wealth=2, and growth=2 so that non-Discover foci can research it. It's too much of a bottleneck when nobody else figures it out.
- Optical Computers: set power=2, wealth=2, and growth=2 so that non-Discover foci can research it. The Planetary Datalinks make every kind of tech available and is of interest to all research foci. Optical Computers should be treated similarly.
- Digital Sentience: set power=2. Reduced because all it does for conquering is increase probe team morale.
- Changed various tech dependencies to keep research foci more pure.
- Cult of Planet: removed SUPPORT bonus. They already have IMPUNITY to Fundamentalist and now that gives a +1 SUPPORT bonus.
- Believers: removed SUPPORT bonus. Changed secondary social priority from SUPPORT to nil, giving them more options to make social engineering choices. Fundamentalist now gives a +1 SUPPORT bonus, so the Believers don't need that boost anymore.
- Hive: removed IMPUNITY to Planned economy. Changed secondary social priority from POLICE to nil. Giving them IMPUNITY to 2 choices seemed a bit overpowered. They don't need to obsess about getting more POLICE, they can already use a lot of POLICE freely.
- The Citizen's Defense Force: moved to C3 Advanced Subatomic Theory. It was taking way too long just to get some free Perimeter Defenses.
- Punishment Sphere: made cost and maintenance equivalent to a Recreation Commons. No regime has ever spent a great deal of money on torturing people. It is a cheap way to make people behave. Punishment Spheres cut research in half, that's sufficient reason not to use them.
The attachment limit per post is 5, and I eventually ran out of room at the top of the thread. Consequently, this becomes the new home of version 1.12. It was downloaded 12 times before I moved it here.
Post by: bvanevery on July 08, 2018, 09:35:40 PM
that was a lot of mouseclicks |
Mission Year 2338. I complete my causeway to the conquered University cities, the same year I complete the Space Elevator. I have a lot of options for invasion. None of them do me immediate good against the Pirate empire, who have a quite thorough moat around them that I can't orbital drop into. The Hive is in the way by land. The Hive is strong, fielding many Orbital Defense Pods and destroying whatever the Pirates and I launch to oppose him. However with the Space Elevator my satellite costs become much cheaper, and that will turn the tide. Messing with the Hive on the ground isn't going to help him any either.
To be honest though, my military machine has been constrained by the need to pacify the University cities, trying to build them into something worthwhile. It's been expensive, and maybe I should have just put Punishment Spheres everywhere and called it a day. I'm thinking Yang's citizens might be at home in a Sphere though. Plus his cities are so far away from my capitol, they will likely never yield any energy or research.
The Pirates actually lead in research in some respects. At least, they're building a Secret Project I don't have. Those 2 little black dots on the screen, near the Pirate dots, are my attempt to throw my last 2 Cruiser Probe Teams at his lead city and get that tech. I've stolen from this base a few times before, so there's a good chance they'll just die. If so, then I'll need to do some kind of drop probe team, maybe with a drop vehicle to protect them from injury upon landing. It's been awhile since I've done orbital combat, or frankly had any need of it. I don't remember it going terribly well last time, hence my tendency to build massive causeways.
I have access to a lot of exotic armor and weaponry, including antimatter, and now Plasma Shards which do 14 damage in this mod. But these weapons are so expensive to produce, I question the utility. I could have built a bigger round of factories, but I haven't, for fear of the eco-damage they'll do. Lack of fusion engines really ups the stakes on how many minerals you have to cough up, which makes global catastrophe pretty likely if you give into the impulse. I will think about cheapening the unit mineral costs to make this all less painful. On the other hand, I'll think about forcing people to build big factories if they want this badass stuff. This is an area where playtester feedback would be most appreciated.
Post by: bvanevery on July 09, 2018, 05:42:55 AM
I'm thinking that hovertanks should be cheaper to build. There's no point putting them earlier in the tech tree, if they're too expensive to build in practice.
I don't have any good way to steal from the Pirates. They killed the 2 Cruisers I sent their way, it was pretty sad. If Probe Teams could be amphibious, then I could drop and steal from coastal cities. If I make that possible, unfortunately the AI will never figure it out, so it'll only be a player advantage. I could predefine a unit, then maybe the AI would use them.
Units seem to completely stop their movement when they orbital drop, so this isn't going to be all that useful for drop and infiltrate anyways. Units dropped in a Drop Transport still have all their moves used up. I could have sworn there was some circumstance where one still gets moves remaining. I can't seem to come up with that now though.
Militarily I may be stalled, but votewise I'm tremendous. If I got Clinical Immortality I think I would win the game.
Post by: bvanevery on July 09, 2018, 08:44:59 PM
I'm also able to make land Transport units that can move into coastal sea bases. That may seem weird, but it's a situation that does come up. You want some kind of Transport available in your coastal sea base, because you want ordinary units without amphibious capability to be able to move to and from the base onto land. Such as for terraforming, or for defense or assault. Yet, you may not be able to get a Transport there by an ocean route, due to geography or intervening dangers. So now, you can come by land. If you have orbital insertion, you can land an Amphibious Drop Transport next to the base, then move into the base next turn. So now my main, highly productive empire, has a way to supply distant outposts, without having to invade the Believers or drive a rail head to the distant site.
I'll be allowing Amphibious Pods for ships as well. I expect that for combat units, it will be useful for attacking land units on the coast. I wonder if it will allow me to invade coastal land cities with a ship as well? This will need some playtesting, to see if allowing "invasion ships" is a good idea in terms of fairness or not. My current thought is, since you have to research Doctrine:Initiative anyways, why not?
I'm building a Sea Former with amphibious capability to see if it allows me to do anything interesting. I think it would be great if I could move such a unit on both land and sea! Bet it doesn't do that though. Need to make sure it doesn't crash the game, for being weird.
I'm going to look at expanding Drop Pod capabilities as well, such as for air and sea units. I'd like to be able to drop such units from orbit, then have them sail in and attack. I don't see why not. It's the Future.
Post by: Brunost on July 13, 2018, 12:26:04 AM
Will try this one for sure.
I have been deciding for a while what unofficial patch I would stay with in the long term. I appreciate
Yitzi's work but it looks as if it introduces some new bugs and technical problems with it as well. Kyrub's patch for SMACX is probably more stable but lacks a bit in the AI department compared to his SMAC patch. What I really want is to play SMACX as close to vanilla as possible but with a more balanced AI. What is nice about your mod is that it doesn`t touch the exe, and that I believe is a good thing.
Post by: bvanevery on July 13, 2018, 03:04:16 AM
Post by: bvanevery on July 13, 2018, 07:22:47 PM
Changed from version 1.12 to 1.13:
- Amphibious Pods: now allowed for non-combat units such as Probe Teams and land Transports. Good for probing Pirate coastal sea bases! Also useful for one's own coastal sea bases, as land Transports can move back and forth from the base.
- Foil, Cruiser: cut costs of chassis in half. Now equivalent to Speeder and Hovertank costs, respectively. With no Fusion engines until the end of the game, it's very expensive to outfit acceptable ships. Moving by water is inherently faster than moving on land, in the absence of roads, so sayeth human history. It should be a better deal to move with ships than with land units.
- Pulse 3 Armor, Resonance 3 Armor: reduced cost from 5 to 4, equivalent to Silksteel Armor. These armors have the strength of Plasma Armor, which only costs 3. In a mostly Fission game, these differences in cost matter quite a lot, and it shouldn't be so expensive for what it provides.
- Pulse 8 Armor, Resonance 8 Armor: reduced cost from 11 to 10, equivalent to Antimatter Plate. They have the strength of Neutronium armor, which only costs 8.
- Resonance Laser: reduced cost from 8 to 7. A Chaos gun has strength 8 and costs 8. A Missile Launcher has strength 6 and costs 6. A Resonance Laser has strength 6 and gives a 25% bonus to attacks in psi combat. It should cost more than a Missile Launcher, but not much more.
- Resonance Bolt: reduced cost from 16 to 14. Same reasoning.
- Cloaking Device: now allowed for Sea and Air units.
- Drop Pods: now allowed for Sea and Air units.
- Nerve Gas Pods, Sopoforic Gas Pods: now allowed for Sea units. I don't see any reason why they shouldn't be.
- Drop Pods, Empath Song, Clean Reactor, Dissociative Wave: reduced cost from 2 to 1. This is equivalent to 50% unit cost increase vs. 25% increase. In a mostly Fission game, a 50% increase results in extremely expensive units, so I want to shave these costs where I can. These are all "interesting" abilities, that players had to do a lot of research in the tech tree to gain. I'd like players to actually use them, rather than waiting even longer to use them, because they cost too much without Fusion engines.
- Comm Jammer, Hypnotic Trance: changed to a straight cost of 1, instead of a variable cost of 0, 1, or 2. As amusing as it's been over the years to design all kinds of units "so I can get zero cost for Trance or ECM" out of a weapon and armor combination, it's tedious as a game mechanic, and wastes a lot of unit design slots. In a mostly Fission game this is a problem, because old unit designs aren't obviously obsolete, being much cheaper to produce than newer designs. It's also super annoying when playing the Cult of Planet, because everyone else has piles of units that have a free defense against your primary offense. If players want a defensive advantage against mindworms, they can pay for that. They also now have a more reasonable offensive advantage against mindworms, as Empath Song costs less now. I think this grand experiment in simplifying the mechanics, will work out.
- Heavy Artillery: now costs 0 no matter what kind of combat unit it is. It's simply a choice of how you want your gun to work. I see no military reason why an armored or fast artillery piece should have egregious cost. It should simply cost more, and you are already paying more for armor or a faster chassis. Interesting thing to note is, armor won't help you in an artillery duel at all. It will help you if some other kind of unit attacks your artillery though.
- Heavy Artillery: now allowed for Air units. I think flying bombardment is a really good idea, and so did people in World War II. This can be especially useful against a big stack of Isles of the Deep that pops up at sea. If combined with Air Superiority, it can be useful against a big stack of Locusts of Chiron that pops up in the air.
The attachment limit per post is 5, and I eventually ran out of room at the top of the thread. Consequently, this becomes the new home of version 1.13. It was downloaded 15 times before I moved it here.
Post by: bvanevery on July 23, 2018, 03:14:10 PM
Changed from version 1.13 to 1.14:
- Fusion Power: now a C6 tech. Putting Fusion and Quantum engines at the end of the tech tree didn't work. Game played fine before that, but then you got update spam for Fusion, Quantum, and Singularity engines all in a row. No point bunching them up like that. Had to either take them out of the game, or spread them out more like the original game. I chose the latter.
- Quantum Power: now a C9 tech. Removed Quantum Laser.
- Reshuffled endgame techs and changed various dependencies to fill holes in tech tree.
- Weapons: restored attack power ratings and costs of the original game. The weapons artwork is tied to attack power, and I think it's better if the weapons look unique. Fortunately armor doesn't have this problem.
- Armor: defense and cost is now equal to attack of weapons at the same tech level. The strongest armor in the game is now the Singularity Shield with a strength of 30. I found that in late game, an enemy's Chaos Gun (attack 8 ) was cutting my Neutronium Armor (defense 8 ) to shreds. It takes a lot more research to get Neutronium Armor, so that's just not right. Combat seems to favor the attacker too much, so armor needs to be beefed up. For years I've heard people complain that armor isn't even worth putting on units, because it doesn't do any good.
- Believers: set their research focus to Conquer only. They need to research Fundamentalist as fast as possible to get more SUPPORT. Otherwise they risk stagnation. Once they go Fundamentalist, they probably can't afford to spread out their tech efforts in multiple categories.
- Cult of Planet: set ai-fight=0 making them Erratic. Before they were Aggressive, but the mindworms they accumulate from beating the bush aren't a decisive force. They need to take their time to build up and not just make enemies fast.
- Gaians: got rid of incorrect text about them having a POLICE penalty. They don't; that was removed quite awhile ago.
- Doctrine:Flexibility: set power=4 and growth=3, making it a C1 tech. Ships are more important to combat and conquest than I had acknowledged. Aside from rapid force projection, they are the earliest form of artillery. That's really useful against Spore Launchers and enemy Scouts. Ships need to be rapidly researched by all factions, as stillborn tiny island starts are still possible, if rare. Some factions have a pure Conquer focus, but no factions have a pure Explore or Build focus, so having it as a Conquer tech will help more factions.
- Orbital Spaceflight: set growth=3 because missiles can be used to scout large areas of Planet.
- Advanced Spaceflight: set growth=3 because Orbital Defense Pods reveal all of Planet.
- Fusion Power, Quantum Power, Singularity Mechanics: set wealth=3 and growth=3. Bigger reactors cheapen unit build costs and make air and sea units move faster.
- Mind/Machine Interface: made Digital Sentience a prereq instead of Homo Superior. It had the same prereqs as The Will to Power.
- Secrets of Alpha Centauri: set power=3 and wealth=3. It increases energy production in fungus squares. The Telepathic Matrix gives probe teams +2 morale.
- Graviton Theory: set growth=3 because Antigrav Struts make units move faster.
- Battle Ogres: gave them Trance, Empath, and High Morale abilities. Changed their AI "plan" from 0 "Offense" to -1 "Autocalculate", hoping it might improve their suicidal tendencies. The AI wastes Ogres at the beginning of the game, marching them into fungus until mindworms kill them. The extra abilities will help them hold up slightly longer against mindworms. Even with these settings, defending against a mindworm larva and then attacking a spore launcher, will knock the Ogre down to 80% wounded.
- Terraforming Unit: reduced cost from 6 to 4, equivalent to a Troop Transport module or a Particle Impactor weapon.
- Carrier Deck: removed cost increase for land units. A Drop Carrier can be a useful land unit for orbital insertions. It allows drop air units to return to orbit without building an Airbase. Generally speaking, I'm not interested in penalizing interesting unit designs with extra costs. The game takes long enough as it is, and everything is expensive with Fission power.
- Antigrav Struts: now allowed for Sea and Air units.
The attachment limit per post is 5, and I eventually ran out of room at the top of the thread. Consequently, this becomes the new home of version 1.14. It was downloaded 17 times before I moved it here.
Post by: bvanevery on July 30, 2018, 09:30:37 PM
Changed from version 1.14 to 1.15:
- Believers: now immune to MINDCONTROL. May now use Knowledge; may not use Cybernetic. Added +1 GROWTH. The Believers had become the most uninteresting, most penalized faction of the game. A 25% attack bonus isn't enough to get excited about, nor is +1 PROBE actually helpful for anything. I want them to have something that makes them worth playing as a faction, instead of the "please make my research go slow, for no benefit" faction. The GROWTH bonus gives them more flexibility for pop booming. The prejudicial concept of space Christians being anti-knowledge is done away with, so Isaac Newton can rest easily in his grave now. However, the lore of the game indicates that Miriam clearly hates the idea of merging with machines, or having them run any aspect of civilization. Denying the Cybernetic choice is actually more of a RESEARCH penalty over the long haul. Also, Knowledge gives +1 PLANET, and I don't think the Believers should be denied a pro-Planet lifestyle.
- Drones: increased NODRONES to 2. Added +1 GROWTH. Changed secondary social priority from INDUSTRY to nil. The Drones need to keep up with the bonuses of other factions, and now the AI has more flexibility in its social engineering choices. I've played Drones as either Free Market or Planned, it often depends on where I'm at in the game.
- Hive: removed ECONOMY Penalty. Reinstated +1 GROWTH bonus. They need to keep up with the bonuses of other factions. Pop booming is usually impossible without Democratic, so now they have the capability.
- Morganites: added +1 EFFIC. Raised ECONOMY bonus to +2. Changed secondary social priority from ECONOMY to nil. Most factions can now do Free Market the beginning of the game without any serious consequences, readily achieving +2 ECONOMY. Having the Morganites get merely +1 ECONOMY is underpowered. Many factions get 3 social engineering benefits, so now the Morganites follow suit. He has the flexibility to make money almost no matter what. His bonus and Free Market alone put him at +4 ECONOMY, so he is freed from slavishly pursuing even more ECONOMY.
- Peacekeepers: added +2 GROWTH bonus. Changed secondary social priority from GROWTH to nil. The Peacekeepers need to keep up with the bonuses of other factions. Previously the AI was compelled to try to pop boom. Hopefully it will still try to do so, with more flexibility, but it is not compelled to.
- University: corrected text about PROBE penalty. It's only -1.
- Nerve Gas Pods: moved to C2 Doctrine: Loyalty. I thought Advanced Military Algorithms was too crowded with stuff. The prereqs for Doctrine: Loyalty are Applied Physics and High Energy Chemistry, i.e. political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. Science-wise, it's appropriate for nerve gas to be the next development. Let the atrocities begin early and often!
- Soporific Gas Pods: moved to C2 Progenitor Psych. Previously if the Aliens weren't in the game, it was a useless technology.
- Heavy Artillery: back to not allowed for Air units. The keystroke "F" for long distance Fire, doesn't actually work for Air units and I don't see a way to fix it.
- Biogenetics: set power=1. A Biology Lab increases alien lifecycle, so it is nominally a conquest capability. However at the beginning of the game, the player can't make mindworms. So as conquest techs go, this has marginal value. Conquer focused factions with weak research, such as the Believers, end up researching this instead of something more useful for conquest. However I don't want to set it to 0, because those same factions need a very basic way to improve their labs output.
- Centauri Ecology: set power=2. Roads are important for land conquest.
The attachment limit per post is 5, and I eventually ran out of room at the top of the thread. Consequently, this becomes the new home of version 1.15. It was downloaded 27 times before I moved it here.
Post by: bvanevery on August 12, 2018, 07:38:17 PM
Changed from version 1.15 to 1.16:
- Cybernetic Consciousness: set ai-fight=-1 making them Passive. They nuked me in a test game, unprovoked! That in and of itself might not be bad, but their society was Police State Planned Power Cybernetic. They were way ahead on tech. I think they would be even more dangerous if they concentrated on tech, instead of arms industry build-em-ups. An unprovoked nuke makes enemies with everybody. That hurts their trade, and research benefits from trade. They really should sit back and relax, it's to their advantage. I made them Aggressvie because they can steal a tech when they conquer a base. But they never need to steal a tech, they always have the best research anyways. In the LONG term, Passive is better for them than Aggressive.
The attachment limit per post is 5, and I eventually ran out of room at the top of the thread. Consequently, this becomes the new home of version 1.16. It was downloaded 21 times before I moved it here.
Post by: bvanevery on August 20, 2018, 03:37:10 AM
Changed from version 1.16 to 1.17:
- Cybernetic Consciousness: removed IMPUNITY to Cybernetic social engineering choice. The Consciousness had too many advantages over other factions. This IMPUNITY is much more advantageous than in the unmodded game, because Cybernetic becomes available much earlier in the game.
- Cult of Planet: removed the free Brood Pit bonus. They had too many advantages.
- Gaians: added 20% PSI combat bonus. Now they have a unique capability, enabling them to keep up with other factions. Otherwise as a high EFFIC faction they were always inferior to the Cyborgs. As a PLANET faction they were always inferior to the Cultists.
- Free Drones: removed documentation mistake about +1 GROWTH bonus. Said I added that bonus in 1.15, but didn't actually do it. Turns out they don't need it.
- Sensor Array: can now build on sea squares.
- Mind Worms: reduced cost from 5 to 4. Mind Worms are too expensive for what they do. I'd like to see the PLANET oriented factions (Cult of Planet, Gaians, Caretakers) build more of them.
- Spore Launcher: reduced cost from 5 to 4.
- Isle of the Deep: reduced cost from 8 to 6. Cost of a Cruiser chassis was reduced from 6 to 3 in version 1.13, so this is a similar change.
- Locusts of Chiron: reduced cost from 10 to 8. Cheapened because I'd like to see PLANET oriented factions build more of them.
- Unity Mining Laser: now a 4-1-1 unit and called a Unity Mining Drill. A 2-1-1 unit is offensively too wimpy to take seriously.
The attachment limit per post is 5, and I eventually ran out of room at the top of the thread. Consequently, this becomes the new home of version 1.17. It was downloaded 21 times before I moved it here.
Post by: Vidsek on August 20, 2018, 06:08:58 AM
Your overall philosophy and goals are essentially the same as what I've been doing with modding for myself, but tested much better with more understanding of what you are doing.
I've been watching for you to get a build that you think is reasonably balanced and successful so I can try my hand at blending it into Yitzi's work (since I do like the vast majority of those .exe changes).
It'd be easy to set up a separate install to play around with your work (and I'd like to do that) but just haven't found a place in my time budget yet. And you seem to be retuning so frequently I'm not sure when to jump in.
I guess I'm just letting you know your efforts are appreciated and ....eventually... I'd like to join in.
Post by: bvanevery on August 21, 2018, 04:14:54 AM
...PvtHudson had to go and tell us all about all the mod stuff he's been working on. Amidst all those things, I found 2 items that seemed "conservatively sensible" to include. Make Sensor Arrays available on water, and cheapen the cost of PSI units. Ok...
...and then while playtesting, I realize the Consciousness is too powerful, the Cult of Planet is too powerful, and the Gaians aren't powerful enough. So I make 3 more changes. So, 1.17 is not a lot of changes, but I've often put this many changes in a new release. "Enough to be worth shipping."
The reality is, I may yet discover things that need minor tweaking, because I've not played enough RANDOM games to see how all factions play. Little changes could dribble out for quite awhile yet.
But I don't think there are any big changes to be had anymore. Knock on wood.
With Yitzi, doing some kind of scripted merge would be much better than manually copying stuff, I think.
Post by: Vidsek on August 21, 2018, 10:45:41 AM
I've just relied on the ancient line-by-line edit, with some cut and paste of blocks. As long as I watch the line numbers and the necessary commas, etc. it has worked just fine so far. Slow...yes indeed, but on the good side, I have a much better understanding of Alphax and the faction dossiers now.
Don't worry, I haven't been waiting for your "final version" before I try it: projects like this are widely considered to never be finished, with the final version actually being the "Good Enough" version, or the "I'm sick and tired of doing this" version.
You've done the lionesses' share of the work already (reorganizing the technologies and reweighting their values to the AI for instance). It looks like you are now mostly fine tuning the faction balance, with a few other tweeks and "nice things to add" thrown in.
It's certainly a great time for folks like me to jump in and give it a try, my delay is purely from time budget issues unrelated to SMACX.
Thank you for posting all the after-engagement reports and updates on what you are doing and how.
That's been a huge help in understanding, and been entertaining at times as well ;)
By the way, I've been using sea sensors/buoys for years now. Have had no idea if the defense bonus is being applied or not, but my focus has been on the early-warning aspect (fog-of-war always).
A couple extra spaces/time to get my picket ships on the intruder(s) is nice.
Post by: bvanevery on August 21, 2018, 04:21:54 PM
Hmm, yes, a scripted merge probably would be better and easier. Shame I haven't a clue how to do that ;).
I have a clue how to do that, but my policy has been and remains, I personally am not going to do that. I've already invested plenty of person hours into release and maintenance as is. I'm willing to test and cooperate with someone else who wants to make such a merging script, but I'm not going to develop it. Nor manually cut 'n' paste, as that would double my workload every time I release.
The basic problem is, Yitzi's patch doesn't do anything that I personally want or need. The main thing I want / need is for the AI to play better. I tried it in a number of games, and I could perceive no difference in AI performance at all. I've looked through what it says it fixed or improved, and I didn't see anything about AI performance in all that stuff. And while it may have fixed a game bug here and there, it also introduced some new bugs. The old bugs haven't been harming me all that often, with the exception of my own Interceptors causing the game to crash and die. So I guess I have to bloody the AI before it's ever attacking my cities with Penetrators lol. At least I know how to work around that one. Worst case I disband the offending Interceptor and accept the loss of something, typically a Former.
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the lionesses' share of the work
Haha, that phrase is so naturally true. What does a lion do except sit around killing cubs and fighting the occasional other lion?
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It looks like you are now mostly fine tuning the faction balance,
I think that's basically correct. I can really only fine tune that by playing a lot of RANDOM opponent games. I have not quite played enough of them, to feel I have 100% coverage or understanding of the consequences.
I certainly consider the social engineering choices to be "baked". I'm even getting good at the tradeoffs in my own mod now.
I haven't felt the need to change a tech in the tree for quite awhile. Only thing that occurred to me, was not having Pulse and Res armor become available from the same tech. But that was necessary to strip the Aliens of their armor, and give them Trance at the same time. If I figure that one out, fine. If I don't, the status quo is definitely acceptable.
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Thank you for posting all the after-engagement reports and updates on what you are doing and how.
That's been a huge help in understanding, and been entertaining at times as well ;)
Well, glad to hear someone read it and cared. I suppose if that's the case, I'm due to make another one soon. I didn't want to make one for awhile so as not to "crowd out" the AARs I already did. And some testing stuff was in flux. In my current game, I'm kicking the snot out of everyone as the Cultists. IMPUNITY to Fundamentalist is a really powerful capability in my mod. I'd say the Cultists are now as tough as Yang used to be. I wonder if Yang is still a butt kicker now? He's got IMPUNITY to Police State so it should be really similar. Maybe I should play a Yang game, after all this time.
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By the way, I've been using sea sensors/buoys for years now. Have had no idea if the defense bonus is being applied or not, but my focus has been on the early-warning aspect (fog-of-war always).
A couple extra spaces/time to get my picket ships on the intruder(s) is nice.
Yes frankly even if they gave you a penalty they'd probably be worth it!
Post by: Vidsek on August 21, 2018, 06:40:05 PM
As for writing my own....well I probably could do that if I can figure out where to start (maybe probably..).
In either case, a script or line editing, I was (and am) looking at it as MY project, done for my reasons and to my benefit, undoubtedly customized to my personal tastes and playing style.
It would probably take longer to explain my thinking to someone else than to just do it myself (which is what I was planning to do anyway. Besides, it might be kinda fun in a mentally ill sort of way... ;lol
And you are right that Yitzi has not addressed the AI with his work. From what he and others have said (and my own rudimentary understanding of what programming an AI involves), modifying or rewriting it in the .exe would be the largest and hardest problem any of the .exe patchers could tackle.
Your tactic of using the Alphax and faction texts to trick the existing AI into giving a better result may not be as elegant, but it's a heck of a lot more practical and likely to actually happen.
By the way, I forget if you have mentioned it, but has your mod made any headway with the 'spamming-obsolete-garrison-troops-till-the-minerals-run-out' issue? It's one of my all time top peeves.
What's this about Interceptors crashing the game? That may have been happening to me now and then...if so, how do you go about identifying which one it is?
And yeh, the "Lion's Share" is such a myth. If some gluttonous sperm donor starts to starve the mommas and their kits, the ladies just gang up and kick him to the curb. The species would have gone extinct if they didn't.
Post by: bvanevery on August 22, 2018, 06:02:09 AM
Your tactic of using the Alphax and faction texts to trick the existing AI into giving a better result may not be as elegant, but it's a heck of a lot more practical and likely to actually happen.
I dunno, I don't see anything elegant about mucking around in assembly code in a binary! Pretty darned grungy. Modding alphax.txt and faction.txt files is clean as a whistle by comparison. And yes, it did happen already, I saw to it. To the extent it could be done. "Only" 3 person months of work... that's why I don't think anyone has done a mod that extensive before. Maybe someone did in the past, in some archive somewhere, but I'm not currently aware of such. In any event, things have to be kept alive and maintained.
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By the way, I forget if you have mentioned it, but has your mod made any headway with the 'spamming-obsolete-garrison-troops-till-the-minerals-run-out' issue? It's one of my all time top peeves.
Short of giving everyone egregious SUPPORT bonuses, nothing can be done about this at the modding level. It takes direct mucking with the AI code. Induktio is actually doing that right now BTW. Hopefully when the dust settles, our work turns out to be compatible.
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What's this about Interceptors crashing the game? That may have been happening to me now and then...if so, how do you go about identifying which one it is?
Well first, one has the hunch that this is the problem, because one has seen it happen often enough. Then, when you're watching the game just before it crashes, any kind of Penetrator attack would be a telltale sign. Sometimes I think I see the plane flying towards me and attacking. Other times I don't, but I might be able to guess that it's "air activity" because the enemy has got planes it's been using. My basic defense against the bug, is not using Interceptors as God intended them to be used. I have to keep them a line farther back, and use them as a counterstrike force. No bug from shooting down an enemy plane next turn. I just can't actually intercept anything, or the game dies.
Another longstanding bug, has something to do with the Secret Project movies on Windows 10. Possibly with DirectDraw=0 to use the game on a wide screen. Saw that a lot of times. The workaround is never to watch SP movies, just turn them off. Not a problem for me, I've seen 'em a zillion times.
These 2 bugs are worth patching, and Yitzi probably fixed them. Yitzi was probably as aggressive about fixing stupid bugs like this, as I am about reordering the tech tree, the factions, the social engineering choices, and basically all of the gameplay. Yitzi's patch was quite ambitious. It's just ambition directed at a lot of things that weren't much affecting me personally. Maybe the multiplayers got a benefit out of it, I don't know. I never do that, so there could be even more bugs that multiplayers thought were important to address.
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And yeh, the "Lion's Share" is such a myth. If some gluttonous sperm donor starts to starve the mommas and their kits, the ladies just gang up and kick him to the curb. The species would have gone extinct if they didn't.
I will cheer for the females killing a lousy male. I've never liked male lions ever since I heard about the cub killing thing. Male dolphins do the same thing.
Post by: Vidsek on August 22, 2018, 11:44:50 PM
There was nothing to merge with the Faction files, so yours are good to go as-is.
Scrutinizing the alphax did allow me to discover some aspects I'm curious about. Might start a separate thread one of these days, but for now:
In the (predesigned) Units section, is it know what all the flags are/do? I've never found any documentation for them.
Post by: bvanevery on August 24, 2018, 03:39:10 AM
Post by: Vidsek on August 24, 2018, 07:43:00 AM
The flags are just for the special abilities, in order of their appearance in alphax.txt.Ahh, thank you. Nice when something turns out to be semi-reasonable and understandable :)
Progress report on the merge: Bug-hunt phase initiated.
:Voluntary advice from the AC II community welcome
:What does work (most all of it, usually) seems to work as intended.
Question for the general community here: If the game crashes when you click on the Production Queue or Change Current Production buttons, where in alphax.txt would the problem likely be?
And what sort of error should you look for, other than missing commas and other typos?
Hitting U for the Unit Edit window, and working within it, functions normally.
@Bvanevery: In the Weapons section of your v. 1.17 alphax, did you intend for Tachyon Bolts to cost 2, or was that a typo for 12? I assumed the latter and edited it in the copies I'm working with.
Post by: bvanevery on August 24, 2018, 03:41:35 PM
:Voluntary advice from the AC II community welcome
Yitzi did something screwy with the encoding of Conventional Missile attack strength. I'm not sure how he reformulated it or what the game mechanical consequences are. Be on the lookout for overpowered or underpowered CMs.
Yitzi changed the "Stockpile Energy" encoding somehow. I'm not sure if there are game mechanical consequences to that.
Those are the 2 items I remember off the top of my head. There may be a 3rd. I know there are no more than 3 places that Yitzi "messed with" how things are encoded, thereby causing a compatibility / intent problem for other modders. Fortunately, these wouldn't exactly be game wreckers.
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Question for the general community here: If the game crashes when you click on the Production Queue or Change Current Production buttons, where in alphax.txt would the problem likely be?
Three possibilities:
1) you have predefined a kind of unit that makes the game barf for some reason. Have you added units, or done something weird with their flags?
2) you have created some kind of pathological interaction between an old saved game and your change. This could be due to Workshop units getting new / displaced values or something. Start a brand new game and see if the problem is still there. When testing, I generally give new units a tech requirement of "None" so that I can build such new units immediately.
3) The bug has nothing to do with alphax.txt and everything to do with Yitzi's patch. To test that, see if you have the problem in a stock GoG .exe (assuming that's what you're working with).
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@Bvanevery: In the Weapons section of your v. 1.17 alphax, did you intend for Tachyon Bolts to cost 2, or was that a typo for 12? I assumed the latter and edited it in the copies I'm working with.
Thanks for paying such attention! but no such entry in my copy of alphax.txt. I have:
Code: [Select]
Tachyon Bolt, Tachyon, 12, 1, 12, -1, Tachyon,I believe you created your own typo while editing somehow.
Post by: Vidsek on August 27, 2018, 03:51:47 AM
Next is some game testing to see if it holds up through mid-game at least.
One issue that will take some thought and experimentation is determining which settings of the additional features Yitzi has implemented will not distort how your mod works.
Pretty much all of them can be disabled or set to work the same as the original game, which is what I will probably do at first. And there are a few that don't affect faction balance or AI function.
When I checked, my fresh-from-the-ZIP stock copy of your alphax does have a 12. Clearly, one of the ferrets must have slipped in a stealthy keypress while passing. They do that now and then, since I forbade them actually *dancing* on the keyboard.
Post by: bvanevery on August 27, 2018, 07:17:48 AM
I remember Yitzi's patch having a lot of stuff about eco-damage. That really has nothing to do with my mod, it's a personal taste issue. I guess I could bother to read what his options are and consider whether they have any impact. BRB.
Looking at PatchReadme.txt, it would be tempting to give the Data Angels an IGNOREPREREQ for building Probe Teams. However, I'd worry about that allowing chassis designs that aren't available yet. I solved that by making Doctrine: Mobility and Doctrine: Flexibility the immediate prereqs for Planetary Networks, which grants probe teams. Ergo, both Speeders and Foils are available when you get probe teams, assuming no weird tech trading at the beginning of the game. So although it might be tempting, it's not an imperative.
Reading New alphax variables in Yitzi's patch (http://alphacentauri2.info/wiki/New_alphax_variables_in_Yitzi%27s_patch), only the alternate unit cost formulas look like they conflict with the intents of my mod. I greatly simplified the costs of all Special Abilities, making almost all of them cost 1, and calculating only a straight cost increase. The only exceptions were Artillery, which now always costs 0 and is merely a weapons choice, and Deep Radar, which costs 0 on sea and air units as usual.
I think what I've done, works. I feel justified having done a lot of playtesting, but someone else could come to different conclusions. I definitely wouldn't support a whole pot of new unit cost variations as somehow "my work", absent evidence that I broke something or seriously overlooked something. You'd need to just call it your own mod, if you go down that road, and give credit where credit is due. i.e. a variation on what I did, not like you substantially gutted the tech tree I made or something. Boy tech trees are a lot of work....
Otherwise, an awful lot of stuff available for modding looks like what I'd call "Yitzi-isms". You can try them, but I think the vast majority of them are unnecessary, and have no effect on my work at all. You could experiment and tweak with the Yitzi-isms for an awfully long time. To be honest, I could easily see you iterating through your own 3 person months, with all the potential changes at your disposal. I'm not convinced of the actual value in most cases, but of course, I'm biased by having iterated for 4+ calendar months until I pretty much fixed everything I thought was broken. If you do go down the dark, dark road of tweaking and deciding the relative merit of all the Yitzi-isms, you will definitely have created your own substantial corpus of modding work! So you'd attach your name to all of that appropriately. It's quite a project to decide what, if anything, of all those options has real value and impact to play.
Yitzi did a lot of bug fixing (http://alphacentauri2.info/wiki/Yitzi%27s_patch) as well. Although none of them are critical in my view, many of them are on the "nice to have" side of the ledger of concerns. I support the Official game mainly because at this time, that's the least complicated thing for a noob to set up and go to town with my mod. If some exotic packaging regime rendered that concern obsolete, such that Official games and Yitzi games existed side by side easily without installation fuss, then I really wouldn't care. I see it as an infrastructural burden, to arrive at that place. At this time, I'll be working on all my own game programming projects that potentially have money at the end of them, before worrying about such infrastructure. It would be great if someone turns out to be very motivated and up and solves those packaging / merging / infrastructure issues.
BTW, as far as my own mod stability goes, I've started an After Action Report for version 1.17. I'm expecting to find nothing that I feel I need to change, in the course of playing it. But of course my expectation could be proven wrong by something. Really doubt it though. That's why I decided to do an AAR. I think I can just showcase the mod, once and for all.
My previous game before the AAR, I've all but beaten the snot out of everyone as Cha Dawn. Could have declared Diplomatic Victory, but got greedy with some outstanding Secret Projets and voted a Global Trade Pact instead. Which means I can't win for another 10 years. D'oh! Maybe I'll never finish that game and will just do my AAR, even though I was an inch from finishing it. I made it to the R-bolt stage of technology, and didn't find anything in all that time that needed to be changed, or should in any circumstances be changed. Pretty "baked" at least that far through the game. It's only the late game / endgame where I expect surprises now, for lack of having gotten that far all that many times.
Post by: bvanevery on August 28, 2018, 06:14:24 AM
Post by: bvanevery on September 03, 2018, 12:09:26 AM
Changed from version 1.17 to 1.18:
- Democratic: removed +1 ECONOMY bonus. Raised EFFIC bonus to +2. The game had too much easy money in it. It made AI Morgan super powerful: it spent a mere 1000 credits to try to corner the energy market in mid-game! I beat it, barely, but nobody should have a cheap shot like that available. I've also felt for some time now, that it's hard to get EFFICIENCY in this game if you don't go Cybernetic.
- Intellectual Integrity: only had 1 prerequisite, E3 Monopole Magnets. It is a growth=4, power=3 tech, so I chose C3 Advanced Subatomic Theory as the other prereq.
- Deep Radar: moved it back to Advanced Military Algorithms. Got tired of needing to research Doctrine: Initiative to get radar for Needlejets.
- Repeal U.N. Charter: now available with Doctrine: Loyalty, which is when Nerve Gas Pods become available. The use of chemical weapons is the main thing it pertains to, although it also covers obliterating bases and nerve stapling. This only covers minor atrocities, and not the major atrocity of using a Planet Buster. I see no reason for societies to wait a long time to make a decision about minor atrocities. On Earth we made such decisions in the 19th and 20th centuries! Most AI factions don't want to repeal the prohibitions anyways. It takes some vote buying to pull it off, and getting the money together isn't easy for a warmongering, non-money-grubbing faction.
- Reinstate U.N. Charter: now available with Ethical Calculus, which is when Democratic politics become available.
The attachment limit per post is 5, and I eventually ran out of room at the top of the thread. Consequently, this becomes the new home of version 1.18. It was downloaded 21 times before I moved it here.
Post by: Vidsek on September 03, 2018, 01:22:40 PM
Note: now done.
In my last test I found most of the gameplay to go well. Had the Angels, Hive, Drones, University, Cyborgs, and Cult with me playing a custom faction.
All the factions performed well, and in differing and interesting ways, except the Cyborgs, who seemed handicapped by being both non-agressive and interested only in research. They had no motivation to build new cities or facilities and were lagging *way* behind everyone else.
However, that's from only two test runs with them in, so not exactly hard science. I'll try them again with a different starting location.
I know you've thought through most everything carefully, so I'm not going to argue for any changes on the (nonexistent) basis I know better. Of course, there are some things I wonder about and would like your opinion on.
First, some facility costs. Several factions, including my own struggle with drones, even early on. Perhaps making the Recreation Commons a bit cheaper might be a plus? And in the same vein, reducing the maintainance cost of the Holo Theater?
Second, since EFFIC is hard to obtain, reducing the cost of relocating the Headquarters might help a little bit?
Third, would making Recycling Tanks a bit cheaper affect anything negatively?
Fourth, certain very potent facilities and Secret Projects seem a bit cheap, considering what they provide. Examples being: Command Nexus, Maritime Center, Empath Guild, Cyborg Factory, Cloning Vats, and the Cloudbase.
And just as a jest: when's the full-color chart of your Tech tree coming out? Or should I make that my next project? ;lol
Post by: bvanevery on September 03, 2018, 04:13:07 PM
In my last test I found most of the gameplay to go well. Had the Angels, Hive, Drones, University, Cyborgs, and Cult with me playing a custom faction.
All the factions performed well, and in differing and interesting ways,
How did the Data Angels do? Based on my own games, I think they've become the runt of the litter. I've got a solution in mind for them, but I haven't playtested it yet.
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except the Cyborgs, who seemed handicapped by being both non-agressive and interested only in research. They had no motivation to build new cities or facilities and were lagging *way* behind everyone else.
What size maps are you playing on? I've tested every Cyborg game so far on Enormous maps, and they've been the leading technical powerhouses of those games. They've even kept up with the University, which surprised me. You don't want an Aggressive Cyborg, they will nuke you! They did it to me unprovoked in one game, there's a writeup about it in the Changelog. When Miriam or Santiago wants to nuke you, it's ok because it takes a long time for them to get the tech. When the Cyborgs want to nuke you, they get the tech quickly and do it. So they are never, ever going to be put back to Aggressive.
My jury's out on whether Passive vs. Erratic creates different colonization behavior. The Caretakers, Cyborgs, Gaians, Morganites, and the University are all Passive and in my games have been doing just fine. Again, Enormous maps.
What kind of geographic start did those Cyborgs have? Any faction that gets bottled up too much behind some other faction's expansion path, does poorly. Doesn't matter what faction it is.
Factions that start on islands often do poorly, although not as bad as in the unmodded game, because I made Doctrine: Flexibility have no prereqs. It still takes time to research it though. I haven't tried making Transports always available, because then players could use the Workshop to make warships available. I don't want to enable that cheat. Similarly, I don't want players to just start with Doctrine: Flexibility already known.
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However, that's from only two test runs with them in, so not exactly hard science. I'll try them again with a different starting location.
Are you testing them with AIs vs. AIs and you not actually playing the game yourself? I never do that. All my test games, are me playing against 6 AI factions. I don't choose where anyone starts. So, all factions are inherently calibrated against my own play style. I wonder if your play style is substantively different than mine somehow? Oh, and sanity check: you are playing on Transcend, right? Anything less than that, well IMO any faction is allowed to do poorly.
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First, some facility costs. Several factions, including my own struggle with drones, even early on. Perhaps making the Recreation Commons a bit cheaper might be a plus? And in the same vein, reducing the maintainance cost of the Holo Theater?
Third, would making Recycling Tanks a bit cheaper affect anything negatively?
I think those are reasonable ideas, as long as the cost reductions aren't by much. If they become a powerful bargain, then whoever researches those techs first gets a major advantage. I'm forever annoyed that when I conquer something, I have to build a Recreation Commons and a Recycling Tank, that these always get destroyed. But I don't think these should pop into existence basically for free.
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Second, since EFFIC is hard to obtain, reducing the cost of relocating the Headquarters might help a little bit?
A cost reduction is reasonable, but I don't think players should be able to get an insta-capitol wherever they want. Now that you mention it, I do wonder why the AI can take so long to build a new one when their old one gets trashed.
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Fourth, certain very potent facilities and Secret Projects seem a bit cheap, considering what they provide. Examples being: Command Nexus,
It now costs 300 and used to cost 200 in the unmodded game. So no, this will not change. Your view, or my view, on what it's worth and how much it costs, has to be balanced against all the people familiar with unmodded SMAC who expect things to be the old way. I'm not driving the cost of this one off a cliff. Aside from the fact that I don't personally think it's warranted, I can envision a lot of unhappy people gnashing teeth at me for an egregious change. The next logical tier would be 400, which is double the cost in the regular game. You put double cost in front of someone who thinks it should be the old way, and they're gonna say, how dare he!
In general, bear in mind that you're paying for these things by having to do the research. Nobody starts the game with the ability to make a Secret Project anymore. Nobody starts SPs at all until they get to Level 3 techs. SPs chew up at least 6 Alien Artifacts. I can tell you, the hit on your hoarded pool of Artifacts is noticeable, and IMO appropriate. Nobody gets Supply Crawlers until late midgame, you don't have any substitute for Artifacts.
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Empath Guild,
Well the big debate is, is it really as powerful as some people say? I put it way later in the tech tree. You don't get it until late midgame, and you have to seriously earn it, there are so many techs in the way. The cost went up from 200 to 300. There are people who think this is the worst most grossly unfair SP ever. My question is, are they a bunch of whiners? Like the Command Nexus above, is it worth doubling the cost of this thing? That said, the Command Nexus now comes from a Level 4 tech. The Empath Guild comes from a Level 6 tech, and I have noticed it seems "cheap" by that point in the game. I'd like to hear why this thing is supposed to be so godawful evil, to be deserving of this continual ire and elevation of importance on the part of some. If I do nothing, well it's not like Deirdre is couging it out early game.
It's given by Homo Superior, a C6 tech. Its peers are: Universal Translator (400), Longevity Vaccine (300), Nano Factory (400). I'm inclined to say the Longevity Vaccine is too cheap, the Nano Factory is too expensive. The UT, eh, don't care much, could cheapen it.
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Maritime Center,
Doctrine: Initiative is a C5 tech. The MCC costs 300; it is "Command Nexus for ships" plus a movement bonus, which is actually more significant IMO. What are its peers among Level 5 techs? Hunter-Seeker Algorithm (300), Neural Amplifier (300), Pholus Mutagen (400), Supercollider (300). I don't think the MCC is any more powerful than those. While we're looking at this, I'd say the HSK is too cheap. The PM might be too expensive, it's only another lifecycle bonus + eco-damage reduction.
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Cyborg Factory, Cloning Vats, and the Cloudbase.
They're all Level 7 techs, they come late. Costs are 400, 500, and 400; note that Cloudbase cost was raised. Peers are Network Backbone (500), Living Refinery (400), Self-Aware Colony (500), Dream Twister (400). Of those, Living Refinery is clearly too cheap. +2 SUPPORT is a huge bonus. That's going to 500 right now. Cloning Vats, it's already 500. Not sure if it should be more. I could see raising Cyborg Factory and Cloning Vats, but should either get 450 or 500? Not sure. Dream Twister, well it gives a 50% PSI attack bonus, which is large. Mabye 400 is too cheap.
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And just as a jest: when's the full-color chart of your Tech tree coming out? Or should I make that my next project? ;lol
Who the heck has a printer to scroll print such a thing anyways?
More seriously, I just counted 86 active techs in the tree. Let's say you insist on printing this on one 8.5"x11" piece of paper. Let's say it's possible to specify 0.25" margins left, right, top, and bottom in a portable way, and I don't know that it is. That's an 8"x10.5" working surface. Let's say you allocate 2" wide cells, 4 per row. You will need 22 rows to cover all the techs, implying less than 0.5" height per cell. I suppose it's within the realm of the doable, if you are satisfied with just text, boxes, and connecting lines. If you want icon artwork, that's going to be a tight fit. Feasibility of that is left as an exercise to the reader.
I suppose it could be landscape oriented. A row could be conceptualized as 5 cells, 2" wide, with a little blank space between them already built in. 18 rows would be needed, again implying less than 0.5" height per cell. A tradeoff has to be made on cell width vs. height, one way or another.
Post by: bvanevery on September 04, 2018, 12:09:47 AM
Recreation Commons - drop build cost to 30
Recycling Tanks - no change, stays at 40. Getting a food, mineral, and energy is valuable.
Hologram Theater - drop build cost to 50 and maintenance cost to 2.
A maintenance cost of 3 is really hard on a civ. I've noticed in many games that if I build too many Research Hospitals, I go bankrupt. I've been leery of Hologram Theaters for simlar reasons. That and just being cheap about well, uh, I'll take over that Virtual World I didn't build, any turn now. :D Somehow it never happens and I end up having to build the damn things, and I don't like it. Just to make it less of a sharp stick in the eye, would be a reason to lower the cost. I do think Research Hospitals should stay as is though.
For relocating a HQ, the build cost is only 50. I'm thinking it shouldn't be any cheaper than the price of, well, Netflix.
I'm finding other things to change. Like, a Skunkworks is too cheap. 6 to build, 1 to maintain. Should be at least as much as a Research Hospital. Bumping it to (12, 3) and calling it a day.
A Genejack Factory only costs 10 to build and 2 to maintain. Why so cheap? Yeah, ok, you get drones. Still too cheap. Making it 12 to build, 3 to maintain, same as a Tree Farm.
Robotic Assembly Plant, Quantum Converter, Nanoreplicator, are not in a good progression. Their maintenance costs are 4, 5, 6. Changing their build costs to match: 24, 30, 36.
Why is the maintenance on a Subsea Trunkline so godawful expensive? It's 4, same as a Robotic Assembly Plant. Dropping it to 3. I could have really used the extra cash after the planetwide deluge!
Paradise Garden, why 4 to maintain? It's a late game facility that costs 12 to build. Is this some kind of tax on the successful? Screw that, dropping maintenance to 3.
Ok, I've eyeballed the base facilities quite a bit now. That's what I found to change.
I've noticed that sometimes the Datalinks display incorrect Maintenance costs. Not sure why. The Budget stuff that you get from hitting F3 seems to be correct.
Post by: Vidsek on September 04, 2018, 07:15:32 AM
Bear in mind that I've not played past early mid game as yet, so much of the Tech tree is a semi-mystery to me. Nor have I seen what the factions are like with a full head of steam up.
My map is an Enormous (oh gods, could it be merely a Huge? I so don't want to count tiles...).
Anyway, it is quite large, with lots of ocean, but no truly vast expanses. One large continent, two medium, and several large, but enriched, islands. A few smaller islands and some scattered atolls, the last for nice sea bases, give some places for expansion but arn't intended as starting spots.
The base map was random generated with the settings I have in alphax, but I extensively renovated it to even out the advantages/disadvantages of the landmasses. The sizes and arrangement of them was partly inspired by the early advent of sea transport in the AI Growth mod.
Overall, it's a fairly lush world, rather wet and rugged, with probably too much food, minerals, and energy, but my thought was to not bottleneck those and instead see how the factions would hobble themselves.
To remove some of the random variance from the testing, Unity pods do not give artifacts, monoliths, or resource bonuses (the latter two I placed sparingly and evenly distributed). They do give credits, completing current production, occasional tech and comm, angry wildlife, and rude tectonic events.
(one of my fond .exe editing wishes is being able to set all of the pod results, and their %/frequency).
There was still the real possibility that the AI would dump factions on one of the lesser islands, or in a crappy starting location. Plus the very real possibility that factions would dither about deciding where to settle, loose part or all of their units, and so on. To forestall that I run the game as a scenario, place the factions on excellent (and pretty much equal) spots, and start their first base there.
I can switch around which landmasses each is on in later games to see if that makes a difference.
Yeh, yeh, sounds like an experiment conducted at CERN, eh? Um, well....I *am* a scientist....sorry..
Oh, and insanity check, I was playing on Thinker level, because the first game I played on Trans the wildlife was brutal to several factions. I will tone down the critters a tad and go Trans from now on.
And yes, I play the custom faction (which isn't OP, just different) and don't mess with the six regulars through the editor.
Also, long ago I found the Artifacts to be way too much of a crutch in getting Tech once you had Network nodes, and never thought of them as raw materials, hence my banning them from the pods.
A matter of playstyle, true, but do you think it affects the function of your mod as intended to eliminate them? If you don't go the Scenario route, I'm not sure you always get the opportunity to set what the pods puke out, either...
Since my test conditions were so different from yours, no real comparison or conclusion about the faction performance is valid.
But within my tests, the Angels were formidable, Yang quite effective, Domai all around excellent, the Cult capable in relatively harsh landscapes (ok, I might have thrown him a curve ball just because he did so well in regular games, and I don't much like him...soo not scientific :D), Zak and Deidre average good, and the Cyborgs slow starters in the early game.
Further tests will hopefully remove some of the inconsistencies, tho I despair of evening out every difference between Yitzi and non-Yitzi. Of course, that's actually the point of what I'm doing: seeing how your mod works under Yitzi parameters.
Now, as to the facility costs: as I mentioned, I don't have a good feel for your tech tree yet, except maybe the very earliest part, so my questions were just questions.
I don't see any reason to balk at your answers and reasoning, and I'm going to go with your conclusions, and the adjustments in your second post. <urk...more editing....><no, no, it's all good ;)>
Actually, you've clarified some things I was unwittingly confused on, so you have my thanks again.
Finally: who says you have to have the *whole* tech tree on one sheet? I was thinking of doing it like I did the original one, on four (or even six) sheets that you just tape together. If you set them up right, the worst is that you might have to trim the margin off a couple of them.
Changing titles and such, matching fonts, and drawing in all the go-to lines between them would be the hard part for old-school, paper and colored pencil me ;lol
Post by: bvanevery on September 04, 2018, 02:33:22 PM
Oh, and insanity check, I was playing on Thinker level, because the first game I played on Trans the wildlife was brutal to several factions. I will tone down the critters a tad and go Trans from now on.
I think you may have identified "the problems". As I said before, Thinker is likely not a favor to the AIs and could conceivably harm the Cyborgs. But the other major point: if you're playing with Abundant native life, it is certain that some factions are going to be harmed. They can't handle it, it's an AI crippler. However much it may seem to be a challenge for you the human player, it is far worse on them. I gave up ever doing Abundant native life about a year ago. Played a lot of games where I kept seeing the same thing happening to at least a few of the AI factions.
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Also, long ago I found the Artifacts to be way too much of a crutch in getting Tech once you had Network nodes, and never thought of them as raw materials, hence my banning them from the pods.
A matter of playstyle, true, but do you think it affects the function of your mod as intended to eliminate them? If you don't go the Scenario route, I'm not sure you always get the opportunity to set what the pods puke out, either...
My mod doesn't depend on Artifacts for anything. In the past I've played many games with no pods at all, because getting all the Artifacts from them is indeed a crutch. Having beefed up the AIs though, I worry less about that lately. I mean, the AIs did nuke my 2 best cities last game, causing me to quit out of boredom! Granted that's more about atrocities than pods. I used 5 of my Artifacts that game to get a jump on tech, which barely got me Neural Grafting and the ability to build the Neural Amplifier at a time when I desperately needed it. The rest of the Artifacts got used for Secret Projects. I would probably have been a lot more grievously harmed if I hadn't had the Artifacts and hadn't built the NA.
I would suggest you play more games on Transcend before deciding just how negatively you feel about Artifacts. One thing I do notice, is the AI doesn't seem to do anything with them. They sit around in bases forever, it seems. Some of my Artifacts have been captured from taking bases.
I could not endorse a mod as "my work" that doesn't allow players to have Artifacts at all. It should be their choice. You can of course call anything your own work, in that regard. Reducing the frequency with which Artifacts appear, is another way to go, if you have control over that. Just remember, Secret Projects are consuming at least six Artifacts nowadays in my mod, and there are no Supply Crawlers for a long time. I think this really cuts down on Artifact abuse.
I don't endeavor to get rid of things when I make a mod, much as I may dislike them as game mechanics. The most obvious pet peeve IMO would be the Probe Teams, since I don't know how to balance them. Their ability to buy out cities full of military units is ridiculous! To be honest though, once I took the +2 PROBE away from Fundamentalist, the game seems calmer about probe teams. I don't seem to be getting hammered as much anymore, which is fine by me. They can still just completely ruin your game because you forgot to bring them along though.
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I don't see any reason to balk at your answers and reasoning, and I'm going to go with your conclusions, and the adjustments in your second post. <urk...more editing....><no, no, it's all good ;)>
Unless you're in a hurry, I'd suggest waiting a week until I issue an official 1.19. It would save you some typing. I can't in good conscience do things any faster than once per week at this point. Trying to put a fig leaf on looking chaotic and indecisive. :D That's not what happened here, of course. I proceeded very methodically and stably, issued 1.18... then you brought up a whole new axis of concerns that were worth addressing, that weren't even on my radar.
This morning I'm pondering the Secret Projects. My attitude towards making changes there is conservative. They're all worth something... there's a slippery slope of getting dragged into raising all their costs. At some point it becomes "I'm punishing you for building any Secret Projects." Which is not fun. I like ticking off my Secret Projects and don't want the game to become some huge PITA that way.
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Finally: who says you have to have the *whole* tech tree on one sheet?
I do! I find the idea of scotch taping several sheets together to be kind of crass. But you can go that way if you want, of course. At least if you did do that, the techs are all in very clearly defined Levels of power. I was very methodical about that. Looks like the widest part of the tree is Level 5 with 11 techs. On an 8.5" x 11" sheet, that's something less than 1" height per tech, progressing sideways in a multi-page portrait layout. I'm going to guess it will all fit on 3 sheets of paper, in columns per Level, tweaking and zigging on the last sheet for the endgame.
Post by: bvanevery on September 04, 2018, 06:41:36 PM
Post by: bvanevery on September 04, 2018, 09:57:12 PM
Now 300: Universal Translator.
Now 350: Maritime Control Center, Xenoempathy Dome, Pholus Mutagen, Nano Factory
Now 400: Planetary Energy Grid, Hunter-Seeker Algorithm, Empath Guild
Now 500: Cyborg Factory, Cloudbase Academy, Living Refinery, Nethack Terminus
Now 600: Cloning Vats, Clinical Immortality, Space Elevator
Others are unchanged. At this point, I'm pretty sure that's deliberate on my part, not an oversight. Feel free to debate anything I didn't change, except the Command Nexus, which is staying at 300. A test question I asked when contemplating this stuff is, "If the enemy built X instead of me, would I lose sleep over it?" If the answer is "yes", price goes up! If "no", price stays the same or goes down.
Also noteworthy: I'm moving the Planetary Energy Grid to Planetary Economics. For one thing, the name match-up sounds a lot better. But mainly, Morgan was building the Grid too early IMO. Like, I should have a chance at it myself! and not have to be Morgan to do so.
Living Refinery is moving to N-Space Compression because the video shows space. Earlier I said game mechanics overrides narrative and just accepted the wart. But on further contemplation, possibly due to other changes since then, I don't see a problem moving it.
I might move the Cloning Vats even later in the tree than it already is. Need to stare at it a bit.
Post by: Vidsek on September 04, 2018, 10:03:45 PM
Transcend....uh huh, much better for the AI. At least on food and materials, they have 7 units per row, so what costs you 40, only dings them for 28. I forget what other bonuses they get.
Not that that bothers me, I'll still whup their butts. Probably....well, or die trying. If they can come back as a lone colony pod to settle in some godsforsaken wilderness, why can't we?
Actually, the major, almost only, source of hostile wildlife seems to be from popping the pods. Perhaps restricting the variety of what they produce increases the likelihood of fungus blooms and worms? Seems that way to me.
Since the AI doesn't seem to use artifacts to get tech, at least very often (and I've come to that conclusion on my own as well), one can just choose to not abuse them that way. At the least, it might make you feel better about yourself and enjoy the game more.
As of now, I've only made the changes you mentioned to the alphax I'm using in current tests. I'll wait for the official to update the stock one.
Meanwhile, I'll try to think up other things that'll make you reconsider whole chunks of the game :D
I know, deep in your heart, that you enjoy doing this more than making a few bucks to buy food. (and of course, who of us wouldn't eat vacant lot weeds and rats before letting the electricity be cut off, eh? I hear even fig leaves are edible).
Btw, being an Archaeologist, among other things, I sorta love crass :) At least when it means ancient tech and basic make-do cleverness. Actually, scotch tape seems disturbingly high tech to me, I fondly remember the days when glue was queen :P
Addenda: the Secret Projects look properly covert to me. And do remember to rest your eyes occasionally between all the staring.
Post by: bvanevery on September 05, 2018, 08:29:38 AM
Not that that bothers me, I'll still whup their butts. Probably....well, or die trying. If they can come back as a lone colony pod to settle in some godsforsaken wilderness, why can't we?
So you believe. It's actually been possible for the AI to nearly whip me at times. Of course, that typically revealed an egregious bug in my modding, har har har! Seriously though, 1000 credits for Cornering the Energy Market cannot generally be allowed. Spartans with Elite troops before even getting Advanced Military Algorithms couldn't be allowed either.
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Meanwhile, I'll try to think up other things that'll make you reconsider whole chunks of the game :D
It's been a violent cascade today, but I think I've got it righted now.
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I know, deep in your heart, that you enjoy doing this more than making a few bucks to buy food.
I don't make any bucks. I buy my food with food stamps. In a sense, Uncle Sam is funding half of this mod work. The other half would be my sweat equity repairing my own car that I live out of with my dog.
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(and of course, who of us wouldn't eat vacant lot weeds and rats before letting the electricity be cut off, eh? I hear even fig leaves are edible).
Recently I've learned the joys of eating luffa. It is a prodigiously productive plant!
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Btw, being an Archaeologist, among other things, I sorta love crass :)
I took my required archaeological area course for my B.A. in Sociocultural Anthropology. Chose Mesoamerica.
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At least when it means ancient tech and basic make-do cleverness. Actually, scotch tape seems disturbingly high tech to me, I fondly remember the days when glue was queen :P
Various things like obsidian are nothing to laugh at. You can tear a horse's head off with one of those obsidian clubs the Aztecs used, it's been demonstrated (on a dead horse). I hate, hate Ancient Astronaut Theory more than all the other ridiculous conspiracy theories that people come up with. It's a bunch of people who can't wrap their heads around copper saws, sand, and water. You've got people's cultural biases as to why they don't understand this stuff, and also their ignorance or stupidity. Sometimes the ancients took pains to tell us how it was all done, and people still goof it up for centuries. Seen this one?
sandslide640 |
3 guesses what the "sprinkling water out of a jar" thing is about, if you need that many.
Post by: Vidsek on September 05, 2018, 01:10:15 PM
I wonder who the twelve guys standing behind the statue are? Sidewalk supervisors? I'm sure the Egyptians had those as well.
I'd been wondering if you were coming up with all these great ideas on your own. Smart dog, eh?
Swiss Chard is another crop that's almost a free lunch. Little care, lots of good quality food. Winter hardy. Don't forget bugs for that all important protein input. I'll try to get the recipe for the absolutely scrumptious fried crickets that I had in Cambodia. Crickets are much less crunchy than grasshoppers.
Post by: bvanevery on September 05, 2018, 04:04:09 PM
Yeh, who'd have guessed the ancient Egyptians knew about "greasing the skids"? :D
It's not grease, though. It's water. The intent is the same. At the right level of dampness, friction on sand is greatly reduced. Not that hard to discover or contemplate either, when walking along a beach when the tide has gone out.
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I wonder who the twelve guys standing behind the statue are? Sidewalk supervisors? I'm sure the Egyptians had those as well.
I figure just supervisors. You know, supervising! Important stuff!
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I'd been wondering if you were coming up with all these great ideas on your own. Smart dog, eh?
Contrary to popular belief, I'm not actually copying these game design improvements off an Egyptian scroll. Despite the popularity of the ancient 4X TBS game of MEHKUT, where one levels up various degrees of chariot warfare.
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I'll try to get the recipe for the absolutely scrumptious fried crickets that I had in Cambodia. Crickets are much less crunchy than grasshoppers.
I have wondered about the palatability of various things. Scorpions from the Southwest USA, apparently, are one of the most awful things you can eat. But you can do it to survive. Saw it on a survival show called "Fat Guys In The Woods".
Post by: Vidsek on September 09, 2018, 03:34:42 AM
Transcend level, fairly large map (which I think is the same size as your Huge Planet), tho I am still placing the starting bases manually. Native life is normal abundance, pods produce everything except monoliths and resources (tho I could change that to no restrictions).
Factions are Angels, University, Drones, Cyborgs, Gaians, and Cult.
I'm made all the changes from your v. 1.17 alphax.txt that you've noted in this thread, but not, of course, the ones that you are currently testing and haven't posted. I did change Aki Zeta-5's Cyborgs from passive to erratic. Currently, about 30 turns in, all the factions are running neck and neck on development (and matching me) with no contact or conflict as yet.
Now it's back to get another century on it to see what happens when they encounter each other.
Post by: bvanevery on September 09, 2018, 05:53:17 AM
I wonder, who can stand up to Marr now? Lately, I haven't seen anyone manage it on land. I've seen factions do it at sea, especially Svensgaard. A long time ago, at the beginning of all of this, someone complained about me defanging the Alien monsters. I stuck to my guns because I hate the way they are in the unmodded game, as do some other people I've run into. I thought defanging them was better than eliminating them. And yet here we are, many months later, and at least one of the Alien factions is still powerful. Perhaps Directed Research is worth that much. Or perhaps it's DR combined with Aggression.
I could test that theory. Do some Caretaker only games, see if they get slaughtered or not. Recently I seem to remember them getting slaughtered. In the unmodded game, the Caretakers are actually Aggressive. I didn't like that, I wanted there to be more of a "sort of good guy" dynamic. Umm, maybe I went too far... seems I made them Passive. Gosh who else?
Morgan and Svensgaard are Passive. They're doing great. They're also deeply at war, this whole game. Morgan did great last game too, although that's because I chose to leave him alone for a long time. So there are circumstances where Passive does work. Svensgaard has his moat, so it'll probably always work for him. For the others, is it about quality of the land start? Morgan I think started on a big island up north. I've not managed to steal his map so I don't know for sure.
University is Passive. They were getting creamed my previous game, by the Usurpers and also the Cultists. They almost died. Then I flooded the world in a chemical holocaust, and they were given Second Life! So much so, that they eventually nuked me. They did! Passive my foot! Evidence is that water slows invasions down and helps factions survive.
Gaians are Passive. Don't recall a recent test game.
Post by: bvanevery on September 09, 2018, 06:40:58 PM
Changed from version 1.18 to 1.19:
- Data Angels: no longer needs infiltration to gain techs known to 3 factions. Removed free probe teams from starting units. The Angels kept getting whipped by everyone else and needed to be tougher. Infiltration on any large map is difficult, and the AI seems to forget to infiltrate even when it can. The AI probably used the 2 free probe teams badly, getting them killed quickly. This means the AI starts with basically no advantages, especially on larger maps, and that's why they get creamed. A human can use the probe teams to much better effect, as they can pop pods on flat / rolling ground and then get out of the way. However, the impossibility of infiltration is still quite noticeable on a Huge map. Having the equivalent of the Planetary Datalinks from the beginning of the game is a powerful ability, so the free probe teams are removed, to keep the Angels from becoming overpowered. With their new ability, they will research Planetary Networks and gain probe teams much quicker, so they don't need them at start.
- Cybernetic Consciousness: changed to Erratic personality. Playtester Vidsek, said they were doing poorly, and they also performed poorly in one of my test games, so perhaps Passive wasn't a good change for them. I'm not going to make them Aggressive again, because I don't want a research powerhouse getting early nukes and then nukeing me!
- Caretakers: changed to Erratic personality. Previously I made them Passive, which might be affecting their competence, and is also a thematic mistake. They expect to be at war with the Usurpers. I wanted them to be nicer with humans, to have a contrast, but they shouldn't be singing kumbaya.
- Centauri Empathy: now increases NUTRIENT production in fungus. In the unmodded game there are 2 techs that grant this bonus: Centauri Ecology and Centauri Psi. Now I have 2 techs as well: Centauri Empathy and Centauri Genetics. I'm making the 2nd food available a lot earlier because my psi unit tech sequence is different than the original game. I repurposed Centauri Genetics earlier in the tree, so there isn't an appropriately themed tech later. My Centauri Psi is used to give a minerals bonus, comparable to what Centauri Genetics does in the unmodded game.
- Matter Transmission: no longer increases ENERGY production in fungus. The original game doesn't do this. A long time ago I added this to free up Temporal Mechanics for other uses. I might have mistakenly moved the bonus twice. The original game only had 3 techs that gave this bonus: Centauri Meditation, Secrets of Alpha Centauri, and Temporal Mechanics. Now I also have 3 techs that give this bonus: Centauri Meditation, Secrets of Alpha Centauri, and Secrets of Creation.
- Centauri Genetics: set wealth=0. It has no Build application.
- Advanced Military Algorithms: set growth=2. Deep Radar is useful for exploration.
- Industrial Automation: now a B4 tech. Supply Crawlers were coming too late in the game.
- Single Sided Surfaces: now a B5 tech.
- Centauri Psi: set wealth=3. It was supposed to be set that way a long time ago, because it gives a mineral in fungus patches, and the Pholus Mutagen makes more minerals possible without eco-damage. But somehow that change didn't actually get made.
- Neural Grafting: set wealth=0. The only "no additional cost" abilities nowadays are Deep Radar for sea and air units, and Heavy Artillery. It can't really be said to be cheapening unit costs anymore, so not really a "wealth" tech. Rather, you can pay to pack more military capabilities into a single unit.
- Organic Superlubricant: set wealth=2 and growth=3. Hovertank formers can work on fungus and rocky terrain much more quickly, so counts as both wealth and growth. Hovertanks can explore and colonize faster.
- Nanominiaturization: set wealth=2. The Nano Factory cuts unit upgrade costs by 50%, so counts as a "wealth" tech. Nanominiaturization is also a prerequisite for Industrial Nanorobotics, so this removes a non-Build research barrier.
- Homo Superior: set wealth=3 because the Empath Guild can win the Governorship, which is worth a lot of money from commerce.
- Industrial Nanorobotics: set power=0 because the Living Refinery has been moved elsewhere.
- N-space Compression: set wealth=3. The Living Refinery is now available here. Also, raising land instantly with missiles is an important Build capability after a planetwide flood!
- Unified Field Theory: now a D7 tech.
- Cyberethics: now a D8 tech. The Network Backbone removes the penalties of D6 Digital Sentience, and I don't want it to be available too quickly.
- Biomachinery: now an E8 tech. The Cloning Vats remove the penalties of Power and Thought Control, and I don't want it to be available too quickly.
- Nanometallurgy: now a B8 tech and set power=0. SUPPORT bonus from Living Refinery is considered Build, not Conquer.
- String Resonance: now a C8 tech.
- Sentient Resonance: now a C9 tech.
- Matter Compression: now a C9 tech.
- Super Tensile Solids: now an E9 tech with set growth=5. It now gives Habitation Dome.
- Secrets of Alpha Centauri: set power=0 because it no longer gives the Telepathic Matrix.
- Temporal Mechanics: now a C10 tech and set growth=3. It now gives Clinical Immortality. It already mistakenly had wealth=3, but this is correct now.
- Applied Gravitonics: now a C11 tech.
- Matter Editation: set power=0. It doesn't have any Conquer application.
- Singularity Mechanics: now a C12 tech.
- Controlled Singularity: now a B13 tech.
- Threshold of Transcendence: now a D14 tech and set power=3 and growth=3. It now gives the Telepathic Matrix.
- changed various dependencies to purify the Explore, Discover, Build, and Conquer research paths.
- High Morale: moved back to E4 Intellectual Integrity. This makes it thematically appropriate for Intellectual Integrity to be a prerequisite for Bioadaptive Resonance. Centauri Meditation was previously being used for that, and it was becoming a prereq for too many things.
- Soporific Gas Pods: moved back to C5 Bioadaptive Resonance. It's boring for humans having Progenitor Psych empty, especially if there are no Aliens in the game. However, it's a bad idea to put anything interesting or worthwhile in it. Anything made available, the Aliens get at the beginning of the game. So we just have to live with a boring tech.
- Skunkworks: moved to B5 Single-Sided Surfaces. It saves mineral costs when building units, which makes it a Build tech.
- Neutronium Armor: moved to C8 String Resonance.
- Sky Hydroponics Lab: moved to E8 Biomachinery.
- Orbital Power Transmitter, Nessus Mining Station: moved to B8 Nanometallurgy.
- Habitation Dome: moved to E9 Super Tensile Solids.
- 12-Pulse Armor: moved to C9 Matter Compression.
- Transcend citizen: moved to D14 Threshold of Transcendence
- Universal Translator: lowered cost from 400 to 300. Getting 2 free techs is not that exciting. That's just 2 Artifacts linked to Network Nodes, and it takes at least 6 Artifacts to build a Secret Project!
- Nano Factory: lowered cost from 400 to 350. Repairing units in-field is not that exciting. Reducing unit upgrade costs is nice, but who actually remembers to do that? I just disband them in cities to get the minerals.
- Xenoempathy Dome: raised cost from 300 to 350. Zooming through the fungus is a powerful conquest capability.
- Maritime Control Center: raised cost from 300 to 350. Zooming through the oceans is a powerful conquest capability.
- Pholus Mutagen: lowered cost from 400 to 350. A lifecycle bonus and lowering eco-damage is not that exciting. The fungus combat bonus is interesting but I haven't found it to be a big deal in practice.
- Planetary Energy Grid: raised cost from 300 to 400 and moved to Planetary Economics. It's worth an awful lot of money, and in test games I've found that Morgan is building it too early.
- Hunter-Seeker Algorithm: raised cost from 300 to 400. Being able to attack and defend without fear of probe teams is a powerful conquest capability.
- Empath Guild: raised cost from 300 to 400 and set ai-infra=2. It's a game winner. Aside from winning by Diplomatic Victory, gaining the Governorship is worth a lot of money from extra commerce.
- Cyborg Factory: raised cost from 400 to 500. It's a powerful conquest capability.
- Cloudbase Academy: raised cost from 400 to 500. It's way powerful for conquest, wealth, and growth.
- Living Refinery: raised cost from 400 to 500 and moved it to B8 Nanometallurgy. It gives +2 SUPPORT, which is hugely powerful. The video for it shows that it's a space tech, so it was a bit annoying not having it in the space part of the tech tree.
- Nethack Terminus: raised cost from 400 to 500. Too cheap in its peer group.
- Cloning Vats: raised cost from 500 to 600. Not only does it give permanent population boom, but it removes penalties for Power and Thought Control. That's powerful!
- Clinical Immortality: raised cost from 500 to 600, set ai-infra=2, and moved to Temporal Mechanics. Like the Empath Guild, it's a game winner. Winning the Governorship is worth a lot of money from extra commerce.
- Space Elevator: raised cost from 500 to 600. Cheap satellites are way powerful.
- Telepathic Matrix: moved to Threshold of Transcendence. It's a sort of "I don't have to do anything anymore" capability, more appropriate for sandboxing than the game itself.
- Recreation Commons: dropped build cost from 40 to 30.
- Hologram Theater: dropped build cost from 60 to 50 and maintenance cost from 3 to 2.
- Skunkworks: raised build cost from 6 to 12 and maintenance cost from 1 to 3. Why should it be cheaper than other "serious" facilities?
- Subsea Trunkline: dropped maintenance cost from 4 to 3. You really need some sea minerals after a planetwide deluge!
- Paradise Garden: dropped maintenance cost from 4 to 3. It's an advanced tech, how hard can it be to maintain a garden?
- Genejack Factory: raised build cost from 10 to 12 and maintenance cost from 2 to 3. That's the same as a Tree Farm or Research Hospital.
- Robotic Assembly Plant: raised build cost from 20 to 24. Same as a Hybrid Forest.
- Quantum Converter: raised build cost from 20 to 30. Not enough of a progression in factory costs.
- Nanoreplicator: raised build cost from 32 to 36. Not enough of a progression in factory costs.
The attachment limit per post is 5, and I eventually ran out of room at the top of the thread. Consequently, this becomes the new home of version 1.19. It was downloaded 24 times before I moved it here.
Post by: Vidsek on September 10, 2018, 06:01:47 PM
V. 1.19 has now been Merged, with the Faction files along for the ride, since there is nothing to merge there.
I got my latest game test up to 2150 or so before I saw the post of AIG 1.19. I can provide a summary of the factions' performance under the v. 1.17 rules if still useful.
There were no dramaticaly lame or OP factions, just different ways of advancing through the early build/expand stage.
Now I'll see whether the new rules break the old game or will let me continue on. Perhaps I should just restart anyway? I think Zak might have discovered a tech you changed...
Edit: Took a look at the game and your changelog and answered my own question. Since several of the Techs have been re-weighted, including some early ones, even the earliest research by the AI factions may be affected and need a restart from the begining. Ok, I'm on it. (it rained last night, good excuse to shirk my yardwork).
Post by: bvanevery on September 11, 2018, 05:30:26 AM
I'm stalled on my own 1.19 game. Having kicked 1.19 out the door, I'm a lot less motivated to keep playing! But for sake of AAR form I will keep playing it. I try not to quit unless I've decided the game sucks. Which is what happened with Yang and the flooding. Might be a bit slow getting my AAR done though. I've got some real world car brake problems I've been fighting the past few days.
The main thing I'm worried about now, is whether some Passive factions get killed or not. I'm sure that Svensgaard won't get killed and he shall remain Passive for all time. It is so much more pleasant playing a game where he isn't spamming you with ships on your coast. And he is a threat, the new way. He's just a distant "gonna do better than you at building a big powerful researching civ" threat. Rather than a never ending coastal pest.
Post by: Vidsek on September 11, 2018, 05:57:22 AM
Two of my opposing factions (Gaians and University) are passive, the other four erratic. Didn't actually plan that, just picked ones I hadn't played with much, or ones I wanted to see perform under your mod.
In past games of mine, Zak was pretty effective in both building and war, Deirdre much less so. Zak was a good ally, Deirdre rather fickle.
Post by: bvanevery on September 11, 2018, 06:11:48 AM
Post by: Vidsek on September 11, 2018, 07:05:26 AM
Actual conflict would still require building sea units.
Gaians, University, Angels, Cyborgs, Drones, and the Cult. Plus me. Should be some snit-worthy interactions there.
I specifically avoided the alien factions, since only having one sort of ruins the story, and with both (in past games), they went into unending war the instant they made contact. Wore them both down and prevented any development by either, making them the lame ducks in the game. In a later game, it'll be interesting to see what they do under your mod.
Post by: Dewbacca on September 11, 2018, 02:37:26 PM
AI is growing FAST! In 2 different tests AI had outpaced my population despite my efforts to maximize my growth.
Shuffling the techs around is messing with my zen, but it seems fairly balanced.
AI hasn't been aggressive even to the point of defending itself. Morganites spawned next to me and I took out all 3 cities without seeing a defensive unit built, or active aggression.
Enjoying the new map sizes immensely.
Post by: bvanevery on September 11, 2018, 02:55:37 PM
AI is growing FAST! In 2 different tests AI had outpaced my population despite my efforts to maximize my growth.
Some factions should. The Drones, for instance, can go to size 4 now without any unhappiness. The Hive was given its +1 GROWTH bonus back because it can't use Democracy for pop booming. The Believers were given this as well, as they can go Democratic but the AI won't. The Pirates grow tremendously because the oceans have a lot of food, and he has very little competition from anyone for occupying the oceans. The University doesn't have any special growth bonus, but the impediment of having a drone every 4 population, was removed. The Consciousness and the Pirates don't have growth penalties anymore either. Any faction that lands on the Monsoon Jungle is going to grow like crazy and be the dominant power of the game, until someone shows up to take it away from them. I'm looking at you, Morgan!
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AI hasn't been aggressive even to the point of defending itself. Morganites spawned next to me and I took out all 3 cities without seeing a defensive unit built, or active aggression.
The AI can't defend itself at point blank range from a competent player, that's just reality. The game lets such victimized players restart elsewhere via an escape pod. If you're feeling really mean or controlling, don't wipe out the victim's last city. Keep it around until later in the game when annihilation counts for good. Sometimes I've done that, other times it's just too annoying being in my way and I get rid of it.
Also you took out Morgan, who is Passive Explore Build. He's not going to be the 1st kid on the block with military hardware. He becomes dangerous later when he's allowed to grow. Looking back over my CHANGELOG, I finally realized why! In 1.15 I upped his ECONOMY bonus to +2. That's why he tried to corner the energy market for only 1000 credits in that one game, and why I had to take the easy money out of Democratic. I totally forgot that he starts the game with +1 energy per square! Time will tell if it's too much. I should play a test game with Morgan and see how long it takes me to corner the energy market.
Post by: Dewbacca on September 11, 2018, 03:20:49 PM
Enjoying the new map sizes immensely.
You should release a separate patch for those or generally based around superior map options.
Post by: bvanevery on September 11, 2018, 03:44:24 PM
I suppose that's not a crazy idea, although my question is, how do I create visibility for something like that, so that people find and use it? With SMACX AI Growth mod, I have forums I inhabit, threads established, a release schedule, and a track record. Every time I make a release, I update here, Reddit, CivFanatics, and Realms Beyond. Forgot that I recently started doing Apolyton, guess I'll tell them about 1.19.
The world map changes, in contrast, are long since done. I'd release once and its over. Any thread about it in any forum, will sink to the bottom of the pile, because I wouldn't have a reason to keep pumping it.
The visibility of mods, is a reason to write a proper mod manager and packager. This issue is actually what got me blown out of the Battle for Wesnoth community. I'd spent 4 person months working on the best campaign ever, polishing up this other guy's work, basically functioning like some kind of Editor or Script Doctor. It was really exceptional work, an order of magnitude above what anyone else had done. That's why I joined his project, to bring it to its logical conclusion, since he had fumbled on things like basic game design balance. I wanted this great work to be readily visible in the Wesnoth add-on manager, to get air time. But they'd only give that to their canonical main campaigns, leaving better authors like us out in the cold! We had sharp words and their forums were administrated by rather young hotheads, so I got the boot. One of my main goals in doing SMACX AI Growth mod, has been to not get sucked into 4 person months of work. I'm at that threshold now, but at least I'm in control of the destiny.
I've started thinking about the mod manager / packager problem in the past few days, but not hard. I had intended to keep quiet about it until I decided what is strategically best. I also have enough "real world" stuff on my plate this week not to be embarking on any committments or setting any expectations.
So, your request is a general issue of curation. How does the best stuff become visible? How is it prevented from sinking into obscurity? Currently I'm providing the visibility by driving the visibility. Manually. It doesn't scale.
In Wesnoth, their add-on system is modularized. Map changes would just some module, that one would fork off from SMACX AI Growth mod. It just becomes a dependency. That's a much more ambitious idea of mod management than I originally had in mind though. It means not just shuffling different alphax.txt about, it means having fine tuned control over merging things into alphax.txt. Lotsa ways to get such merges wrong.
Now of course, anyone who's taking an active interest in modding, can just cut and paste my world settings out of my alphax.txt and call it a day. So there is somewhat the question, who is the audience served by creating a standalone release, in the present technical conditions? It's not like I've prevented the need to do modding, with such a release. I've only prevented the need to do copying and pasting.
A mod manager / packager, in contrast, is designed to eliminate the need for modding. Modders release mods, players consume them easily without them stepping on each other. At least, that's the design goal.
Post by: Dewbacca on September 11, 2018, 04:22:56 PM
I like the Advanced hydro mechanics mod, used it years ago, found this forum hunting it down once again. The map mod would be similar. Something simple with enough significance to have avid players keeping it close at hand for every reinstall.
For visibility, make "Gigantic" the "Bvanevery size", they'll see you at the start of "Bevery" new game.
Post by: bvanevery on September 11, 2018, 04:47:05 PM
I like the Advanced hydro mechanics mod, used it years ago, found this forum hunting it down once again.
Um, what is it and where is it? I have no clue.
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For visibility, make "Gigantic" the "Bvanevery size", they'll see you at the start of "Bevery" new game.
But the standard terms Enormous and Giant are already the bvanevery sizes. :D As much fun as it would be to have my name in lights for such a thing, the important goal is to have standard map sizes that people are used to, use frequently, and refer to when speaking about the game. Giant was an easy term to come up with, but it took me awhile to come up with Enormous, which is between Huge and Giant. Enormous is the last size that doesn't throw the faction placement RNG into fits. On Giant it may work, it may not. That would definitely be .exe patch worthy if I had the skill or time.
Post by: Dewbacca on September 11, 2018, 07:56:55 PM
It might not work for EVERY mod in the community, but would be a neat way to install/ uninstall YOUR mods from a single left click.
Advanced Hydromechanics:
"The creator describes: "In this patch, several new game concepts are introduced that add a more interesting element to sea warfare and terraforming:
1. Advanced Hydromechanics tech (E7) [see below]
2. the Sea Sensor Array (same defensive bonus as land Sensor Array)
3. the Minefield (functions as a Bunker in the sea, not visible on map)
4. the Kelp Enricher (functions same as a Soil Enricher, not visible on map)
5. Altering alpha.txt to have Adv.Hydromechanics be the requisite tech for +1 mining platform production in sea squares"
http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?action=downloads;sa=view;down=16 (http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?action=downloads;sa=view;down=16)
Post by: bvanevery on September 11, 2018, 08:28:59 PM
2nd, it begs the question of curation. I'm not personally interested in shoveling every SMAC mod ever made out to people, sight unseen. My stuff works, it's tested, the quality is assured. The same can be said of maybe a few other recent modders, although I haven't actually tried their work. Extant authors could ensure their own curation, in a distributed setup like Wesnoth has. That kind of system works over time, whereas, packaging everything dies the minute the uber-packager moves on with his life.
3rd, it looks like a Windows only installer. SMAC does nominally run on 3 platforms, so to me, that affects logical choice of how a mod manager would be implemented. I have been assuming latest greatest Python and some kind of cross-platform GUI.
I'm mainly interested in deploying my mod, the mods of extant modders that I'm currently aware of, and important patches like Yitzi and PRACX. I don't really understand whether Scient's work has survived well into the present or not, but that should be considered. I'd also like such a mod manager to be geared towards ongoing .exe patch work, so that new .exe patches aren't just stepping on everyone else's toes. So that there's some order, discipline, and maintainability to such endeavors. (That's why my new avatar says FUNDAMENTALIST PLANNED btw.)
If someone wanted to dig through all the old mods and curate them, making sure they work, making sure they offer something and aren't just steaming piles of half-baked crap, well that would be a worthy endeavor on someone's part. And the goal of such a person doesn't have to be to find all mods, just to find some good ones, that they want to support and maintain. I'm not going to do that work, personally. Doesn't matter to me if someone may have already done something similar to what I did, 10 years ago or whatever. I just did it. I don't need a different version of what I did. I'm doubting anyone did what I just did anyways, although who knows, I didn't check.
I expect that recapturing old artwork would be the most valuable kind of ancient mod hunting. Wesnoth is sophisticated in that regard as well. They have art assets, factions, rulesets, and campaigns all neatly separated out from each other.
We have one major advantage over the Wesnoth community: SMAC itself is not under active development. That means the game isn't going to break modders' work over time. Sure someone can make a new .exe patch that breaks stuff, but people can always go back to the original game. Over time, it actually remains to be seen if anyone's .exe patch work is maintainable. The infrastucture for that, at this point, is poor. Left as is, I firmly expect all .exe patchers to burn out before anyone else is capable of maintaining their work. Yitzi's gone, for instance, and delving into his work is not a joy.
Post by: Dewbacca on September 11, 2018, 09:50:55 PM
Also, check out the BotF forums and the repackager Thunderchero uses for packing all mods into a single download.
It might not work for EVERY mod in the community, but would be a neat way to install/ uninstall YOUR mods from a single left click.
Post by: bvanevery on September 12, 2018, 12:23:00 AM
The most important point is, an installer doesn't help with my mod and someone else's mod stepping on each other. That's what a mod manager would do.
In some kind of ideal mod packaging universe, another feature I'd like to have is, the ability to mark someone else's package as incompatible with one's own work. Because frankly, that's why I even started thinking about this recently.
Post by: Brunost on September 12, 2018, 02:40:59 AM
The funny thing is that no attempt of a remake comes even close to this original and probably never will. Back in the good old days one could really make a great game in a package less than 1 gigabyte, compared to the modern approach of gigantic bloatware packages and bugfests. Strategy games is still a niche game and is often driven more out of passion than big money and it`s obvious that Firaxis had the right people on the job back in the day. I remember even the game packaging was a real treat with a fold-out on the front cover with descriptions of the factions. AAHhhhh... nostaaalgia
Looking forward to zip 1.19 into the game directory and get going:)
Post by: bvanevery on September 12, 2018, 04:14:07 AM
The funny thing is that no attempt of a remake comes even close to this original and probably never will.
Hey, don't count me out just yet. I already attempted "Ocean Mars" back in 2000-ish. Went bankrupt. There's a reason I'm doing what I'm doing now, it's prototyping. But I'm of course not going to do a "remake", there's no intellectual property reward for trying to do that. It would be whatever I decide as my stories, my themes. So far I've read a biography of Mao Tse-Tung and now understand exactly who Chairman Yang really is, no question in my mind. I'm working on Stalin. Hitler after that.
The potential to do far better than SMAC has been there, these ~20 years. They didn't nail everything. They just did enough things well, and not many have really tried since. Maybe nobody. I keep hanging out in the 4X Reddit forum and I keep not ending up playing other games. 4X itself has some really hard problems in it, like the most basic one of unit pushing. Really hard problems. 20 years, I still haven't solved it, or I would have written that game already. Narrative problems aren't easy either. But at least that means there's something to think about, and a basis to compete, if one arrives at an answer.
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Back in the good old days one could really make a great game in a package less than 1 gigabyte, compared to the modern approach of gigantic bloatware packages and bugfests.
Smaller packages can still happen. It has happened in other genres, for instance the RPG work of Spiderweb Software (https://spiderwebsoftware.com/), historically mostly the work of Jeff Vogel. Only an indie is going to take such risks shifting the business model around though. For example, not offering your 100 artists worth of eye candy, or 100 game gewgaws, in favor of an AI that can actually beat you without cheating.
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Strategy games is still a niche game and is often driven more out of passion than big money and it`s obvious that Firaxis had the right people on the job back in the day.
From what I've read of the history, they also had the right conditions. They were between "big" companies who would otherwise seek to control and limit their destiny. So they went ambitious, achieved critical success... and didn't make as much money for having done so.
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I remember even the game packaging was a real treat with a fold-out on the front cover with descriptions of the factions. AAHhhhh... nostaaalgia
Looking forward to zip 1.19 into the game directory and get going:)
Heh! Now for me, there is some nostalgia. How much open source code have I obtained that way once upon a time? More recently, how many abandonware titles? People should know how to unzip. Especially since the OS does it for you nowadays, you don't even have to know how to use an unzip tool.
Post by: Brunost on September 12, 2018, 04:55:24 PM
Not surprisingly no one else knew either back then :D Quite on my own I eventually figured it out. Commonly people just didn`t have their own computers, apart from a computer at work or at school. The only people I knew that was kind of used to computers where people doing electronic music. I sometimes wish I had more knowledge of how to deal with programming but I`m probably a too lazy person. So eventually I am very happy that some people commit themselves to make a product\mod and share their work. Probably that have saved a lot of games, espec strategy games.
Post by: bvanevery on September 13, 2018, 01:54:34 AM
I sometimes wish I had more knowledge of how to deal with programming but I`m probably a too lazy person.
If you mean, learning the very basics of programming, a popular public interest and a market for that has sprung up in recent years. I'm not sure what is offered in that area though. It doesn't apply to me as I learned to program at age 11, on an Atari 800 whose system fit into 64K. That's a mere jpeg photo now. I'm so far in the other direction, that I"m trying to design a programming language for games, and not succeeding much with it so far. But I haven't given up yet.
If you mean, you know the basics of programming and don't relish it enough to do the work for a game, I feel you! I think it sucks hard. That's why I need to make a programming language for games, so it will stop sucking. However in doing so, it's only going to stop sucking hard for the kind of programmer that I am. Some kind of assembly code and pattern matching thing I think.
Jonathan Blow is supposed to finally have his Jai programming language come out with a beta within months. I hope that happens. It's been about 4 years since he started. He's the only "high visibility" guy I know about who's taken on the problem of programming sucking in games. His philosophy of programming language design definitely agrees with some of my own, enough that I would try his language and see if I can get something non-trivial done with it.
Post by: Brunost on September 13, 2018, 08:01:10 PM
Post by: bvanevery on September 14, 2018, 05:12:54 AM
You can't rely on the open source people for backwards compatibility at all. They think everyone's got source, everyone should recompile, and nothing should ever stand in the way of "duh progress!" Meaning, young whippersnappers come along looking to make careers for themselves, and break everything in sight. Nobody holds them accountable for it, open source just rolls merrily along.
I'm unclear on what Apple has supported long term. I dropped them as a platform when Sculley was still in charge and Jobs hadn't come back yet. They haven't recaptured me because their goal is to be everyone's walled garden / slavemaster. They were also anti-games for a long time, I don't know about now. Games succeeded on iOS in spite of Apple.
The Android ecology is a mess for developers. The dark side of more openness of vendors is lotsa different versions of OS, and lots of variable quality as to how things are implemented. Not fun problems for game developers at all.
I'm not seeing room in the marketplace for more competing business models. You have MS, Apple, Google, and Amazon. They all push things differently for different reasons. I don't see why there's going to be any air left in the room for a newcomer, they've sucked all the air out.
Consoles are stable for game developers within their lifespans. But once the lifespan's over, how are things going to get run? You run into the problem of the console company controlling the platform.
Post by: Brunost on September 14, 2018, 08:29:30 PM
I have never owned an Apple computer and probably never will. But I think their ideology of make their own full platform helps with the problem of compatibility issues and keeping things run smooth. The way computers are assembled is a different story. They actually make them in a way that it is certain they will brake down in a few years. Looking inside a laptop is almost scary. A toaster is more sturdy built than a laptop. But all this of course boil down to that it is all business and I just have to accept that fact. But you can bet if MS saw any competitors trying a revolutionary move they would be sure to buy the company, whatever the price. MS is so big that even gigantic antitrust fines dont`t hurt them. But I choose to be optimistic for the future and I do believe something will change things around eventually.
Post by: bvanevery on September 15, 2018, 03:06:30 AM
You're right about Apple. They just go do something. Unfortunately then having done it, they decide they're going to straitjacket you.
Post by: Dewbacca on September 16, 2018, 02:38:53 PM
Back to your growth mod, really enjoying it. Certainly seeing lots of large pop's from the AI in my game playing the Gaians, even the University has grown to 20+ cities hemmed in by Morgan and Sparta.
While the rearranging of the research has messed with my zen, I can see some of it is logical, other adjustments game balancing... mag tubes came early but have been useless on my game of many islands.
Late coming larger transports have kept warfare to a minimum between myself and others... they can't get a decent force to my shores. Of course that plays both ways and I can't get one to them either.
Game is still young, I will keep you posted.
Post by: bvanevery on September 16, 2018, 02:55:55 PM
I have found what I consider to be a late game problem. The Corporate Lab comes a lot earlier than Quantum Power and I'm not convinced having so many labs available is a good idea. I'm thinking of repurposing "Secrets of Alpha Centauri" to be some kind of tech that gives a Quantum Lab. Or maybe I'll just move it back to Quantum Power, saying eh, it's the end of the game who cares. I do think separating Fusion Labs from Fusion Power was a good idea earlier in the game though.
Upon further reflection, I'm going to leave the Corporate Lab as is, for now. I don't know that it's actually a problem for the game. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. I think it should be playtested for awhile before deciding.
Post by: bvanevery on September 19, 2018, 02:29:14 AM
First I got rid of the whole PROBE faction thing, leaving that only to the Data Angels. Then I refactored SUPPORT to be something you choose, not something any faction gets. The Believers were the biggest SUPPORT faction and basically I pulled their teeth out. It had to be done, because it wasn't balanced at all. But what have I given them in return? Softened their RESEARCH penalties, but they're still the most backwards faction in the game. In fact, the only backwards faction in the game now. I figured it just wouldn't be the Believers if they weren't taking RESEARCH penalties.
Recently I gave them the minor advantage of being immune to Mind Control. I don't think the AI cares overly much about this though. Bases change hands, it doesn't seem like a big deal to AI progress or tactics. It's really more of a convenience to a human player, to not have to deal with probe team spam if you don't want to. That said, in my mod the probe team spam is not nearly as bad anyways. I think disallowing easy PROBE bonuses until you get to Thought Control, has made it much less of a "golden tactic" that the AI would want to use a lot. I just don't see the squares full of 3 to 8 probe teams like I used to.
What to give the Believers? I haven't really thought of anything yet.
Meanwhile, the Cybernetic Consciousness is still under review. They did poorly as a Passive faction. Now they are Erratic. I haven't yet tested whether this helps them. Both the Consciousness and the Believers will be in my next test game.
Post by: bvanevery on September 19, 2018, 04:22:52 AM
New happy wealthy militant Believers |
I'm testing them in an almost original SMAC matchup. Cybernetic Consciousness replaces Morgan, to see if they survive ok with merely a personality change to Erratic. I play the University, to find out whether I've made getting to the end of the tech tree too trivial with earlier access to Corporate (nee Quantum) Labs and Nanohospitals.
Post by: Vidsek on September 19, 2018, 05:13:23 AM
In other news, a summary of faction performance in my current game will be forthcoming as soon as I gather the energy to study what happened and make some guesses as to why.
Your ET Call Home AAR was entertaining and informative. I'm sure it took a lot of time to do, so thanks for the effort :)
Post by: bvanevery on September 19, 2018, 08:24:55 AM
The Consciousness did better than I did! They beat me to the Virtual World. We were allies much of the time, although I dissed them when they stole from me at the beginning.
How long did I take to do that AAR anyways? I don't even remember. Checking on it... 13 days! Not continuous play but that was definitely more than a 1 week project.
EDIT: the fix turned out to be adding the Explore focus. I didn't end up doing any of that other "New Believer" stuff. The Spartans are still tougher than everyone else, but I've decided that for now, that's ok.
Post by: bvanevery on September 24, 2018, 06:26:44 PM
Changed from version 1.19 to 1.20:
- Believers: set research foci to Explore, Conquer. Adding Explore substantially improved their performance. It may trigger the AI to expand more.
- Cybernetic Consciousness: set research foci to Discover, Conquer. They seem to do better with this than just pure Discover, and it's thematically appropriate.
- Free Drones: set personality to Passive. Their cities can go to size 4 without anyone becoming unhappy, so they are better off growing than making war.
- Gaians: set research focus to Explore only. In an automated test game they fought the Hive to a standstill, using the power of their mindworms. Now that they have a 20% PSI bonus, they should focus on that weapon.
- Hive: set research foci to Explore, Conquer. This made them do a much better job than Build, Conquer against other AI factions.
- Peacekeepers: set personality to Passive. Lal is supposed to be a Pusillanimous Wimp. More importantly, he gets into wars fairly indiscriminately when he's Erratic. Maybe it helps him, but it's unpleasant to the rest of the political economy of Planet. Let's have him sit back and develop a real civilization, one based on democracy and voting for planetary control!
- Pirates: set personality to Passive. Said I did so in version 1.8 but didn't actually do it, they were Erratic.
- Spartans: set research focus to Conquer only. They often wipe out any faction near them, and do not need Explore encouragement to get bigger or find new enemies. In fact I wonder if I should bring back their INDUSTRY penalty but I will leave it alone for now.
- University: set research foci to Explore, Discover. Now gets free Biology Lab at every base. They were getting wiped out by every faction. Their +2 RESEARCH advantage just doesen't seem to mean that much on Transcend difficulty. The Biology Lab ensures that every base will contribute substantially to research, so that they can get ahead of factions who want to stomp them. Explore helps them expand, instead of getting squished by factions that don't give them enough room to breathe. With per city research bonuses now guaranteed, it's also a good idea for them to make more bases.
- Comm Jammer: now not allowed for fast-moving units. The original game allowed it for speeders and hovertanks, which seems like a mistake.
- ECM Probe Team: added as a predefined unit, so that AI will use them for defense.
The attachment limit per post is 5, and I eventually ran out of room at the top of the thread. Consequently, this becomes the new home of version 1.20. It was downloaded 28 times before I moved it here.
Post by: Vidsek on September 25, 2018, 04:40:28 AM
I have one suggestion on predesigned units: A Rover Former, same as the regular, but with a speeder chassis.
I've found them to be far superior to the slow ones, saving many many moves in doing the same work, but for some reason, with most factions, the AI never designs them, even when it is designing several other new speeder based units. It *will* make Sea Formers on a foil hull without hesitation and it *will* build rover formers if I give them the design, so this omition may be a flaw in the AI that the predesigned unit would work around.
Edit: I took a look at adding that unit and hit a snag: the speeder chassis is from Doctrine: Mobility, the former equipment from Centauri Ecology. Both are early techs, and there is no certainty which will be discovered first.
Can a pre-designed unit be given *two* tech prereq's? All the existing ones have just one.
Otherwise, adding it in would be simple.
Post by: bvanevery on September 25, 2018, 12:58:08 PM
The basic problem with handing over predesigned units, is they make the chassis type available for free in the Unit Design Workshop. If you've got Speeder Formers, you've got Speeder Kill-Yous. A partial answer to this is to pick a later tech than what you strictly need to cook it up. I did this with Planetary Networks for probe teams. I made it dependent on both Doctrine: Mobility and Doctrine: Flexibility, so that giving out Speeder and Foil versions of probe teams wouldn't be a free lunch. That could still be subverted by tech trades, or by sheer laziness in making prototypes, but I'm willing to accept those warts.
Making a chassis, weapon, or armor available as a predesigned unit, does have the undesirable effect of making a prototype of that capability available immediately. This is why I've at times "given up" about offering predefined units, and just accepted that the human has an advantage that the AI does not.
My doctrine on Fission Rover Formers is to make very few of them. They're good for laying roads, that's their main benefit. I then send conventional Formers along those roads. They're useful for reassigning terraformers to various parts of one's empire, but that is traded off against their additional expense of production. The latter could impact the AI negatively.
Fusion Rover Formers have no cost issue. Lately I haven't paid attention as to whether the AI makes them.
Cruiser Formers are desirable over Foil Formers, especially because in my mod, these chasses are half the cost. They're comparable to speeders and hovertanks on land. The main problem here is giving away a Cruiser prototype prematurely. I suspect that sea terraforming is not actually a problem for factions, due to the higher movement rates of sea units, so I've let it be. The Pirates, for instance, mine out all kinds of ocean stuff. They know how to take advantage of their +1 sea minerals bonus, so much so, that I don't give them bonuses that other factions get. They're pretty over the top!
Hovertank Formers are very useful for clearing fungus and building rails over rocky terrain. As with many other useful Hovertank unit variations, the problem is giving away the Hovertank chassis without prototyping. In the case of probe teams, I decided I don't even like being pestered by AI probe teams, so I let it slide.
What to do? Well, I gave up on predesigned units for human convenience rather a long time ago. There are a few nifty designs possible, but they're not worth giving free prototypes away. The kind you can actually make available without penalty, is when only an ability is added. That's why I've added an ECM Probe Team, and not armored probe teams or especially an ECM 3-Pulse probe team. Sure it's better, but I don't want the player getting 3-Pulse armor without having to prototype it.
Sometimes some weapons are available without needing to prototype them, and I'm not sure why. I think if you already know R-Lasers, you don't need to prototype a Chaos gun once you get that tech. Tachyon and Shard guns often seem to show up without needing prototypes, don't know why.
I think for me, the test of whether to include more predefined Former units in the mod, would be whether they actually improve AI terraforming in some readily observable way. If they don't, then no point. It just becomes more expensive units in the fission era, a handicap. So if you want to test this, feel free.
Post by: Vidsek on September 25, 2018, 10:35:38 PM
If fission rover formers are available, the AI does design similar fusion versions, at least for the player's faction. I'll need to check if that is also true for AI factions and if any factions actually build them.
I should clarify that *some* factions *do* make rover formers when they can. It's just that the majority do not. Perhaps that is due to the cost.
On the "killer formers" or "wall of formers" issue, I find noncombatant units being so potent in combat unrealistic and harmful to gameplay (at least as I want the game to play). Therefore, in alphax, I make them *much* weaker by modifying the line:
50, ; Combat penalty % -> Non-combat unit defending vs. combat unit
to
90, ; Combat penalty % -> Non-combat unit defending vs. combat unit
and am thinking of making it 95 or 100%.
They still attack with light weapon ("hand weapons") strength, but that isn't terribly unrealistic.
Turning them into a "wall of tissue paper" makes them a resource to be defended, not a defence in themselves.
Post by: bvanevery on September 26, 2018, 03:29:54 AM
I'll look over your tech tree and see if there is a choice that doesn't have negative impact.
To summarize, since I made such a wall of text previously: the issue is not whether a spot in the tech tree can be found. If desirable enough, it can be. The issue is whether it actually helps AI factions to terraform better. If it doesn't, I'm going to leave it alone.
I wonder if clean reactors were available much earlier in the game, if the AI would use it much? It could alleviate the problem of the AI running out of minerals.
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On the "killer formers" or "wall of formers" issue,
This is an issue? I've often used mere Scouts to kill mere Formers. Scouts take wounds but hey, I figure they're shooting all the drivers of the Formers in the head or some such. A Former's defense might be a little too good on Rocky terrain, but otherwise I haven't seen a big problem with them dying appropriately. Anything more than hand weapons is cake.
Are you disgruntled about the defense of Fusion Formers later in the game, against fission units?
If someone wants to pay extra to have a Former be armored, I think that's a legitimate tactic. Although I wonder if some kind of combat unit or combat cost distinction should be made. I wonder if Former armor can have exhorbitant cost. Hmm, doesn't look like it... an ability can have exhorbitant cost due to speed and/or armor. Such as for a Super Former or Fungicidal Former. But a straight Former, I don't think anything can be done about tough armor.
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They still attack with light weapon ("hand weapons") strength, but that isn't terribly unrealistic.
I got confused by the double negative. I think you're saying it's somewhat realistic. I myself figure that Planet is a violent place and lots of people are carrying hand weapons. Various parts of a terraforming crew could also be used as improvised armor, explosives, or catapults. I mean, they're Planet wreckers... they're not just tractors.
Post by: BFG on October 02, 2018, 03:49:18 AM
1. You mentioned reorganizing the tech tree. I don't suppose you also reintroduced the two missing techs, Inertial Damping and Global Energy Theory? (I always like to reintroduce those in my game so all 4 branches have the same number of techs total. It also gives an excuse to add the unused perk, Heavy Chassis, and makes maxing out the tech tree take just a bit longer. So...just curious.)
2. Pet peeve of mine, as I like to stretch games out: does the AI have any idea yet how to use Gravship Formers?
3. Personal philosophy: I agree the alien factions shouldn't be OP versus the human factions, but, I would expect them to get some healthy initial perks - both to counter the 10 turn delay, and realism (I'm sure they could salvage SOME of their tech...) Is that what you did here?
4. I've never seen AI use Orbital Insertions or aerial troop carriers. Both could be highly effective if used correctly. Don't suppose either is addressed here?
Think that's it for now...thanks...
Post by: bvanevery on October 02, 2018, 04:53:22 AM
I do not make any changes to the .exe at all and do not provide an .exe. A side effect of this, is my work is fully legal and permitted by Firaxis. Statements to that effect were made by Firaxis at the top of all the various .txt files I actually modified. Not that much of anyone cares about the legalities, but I thought it interesting to mention the distinction.
1. Inertial Damping and Global Energy Theory... I looked at them at one point in the modding. I could swear that in doing so, they broke something, like the game crashed. So I quickly undid it. I could look into this again, particularly if you yourself have a track record of enabling these and not seeing bugs / crashes as a result.
2. I haven't even used a Gravship Former myself! I've used Hovertank Formers plenty, but didn't teach the AI about them. Nor about Rover Formers. The general problem is that giving predesigned units, also means those chasses don't have to be prototyped. As you may know, we've had other recent discussion about "Former problems" in this regard. I'd like to know, if the AI is given these things, does it have any observable effect on their ability to terraform? If not then there's no point providing them, because it just becomes a way of giving away a chassis.
3. I powered down the Aliens. An early set of complaints was made about them, by someone who never actually played my mod, and I find those complaints completely unjustified. The Usurpers are still the leading faction for stomping everyone, even with my nerfs. Directed research is that powerful. At least, compared to other AIs. I don't think the Usurpers are some uber threat to a real human player anymore, but that was the point of my changes, I didn't want them to be. I wanted them to be "just a faction among factions", and I've achieved that. The Aliens may be weaker now, but all other factions are also stronger now. TBH the one I find myself puzzling over the most lately is the Pirates. As economic competition at least, they uh, often get ahead of me now. And it's such a morass to deal with them militarily, because they spawn all over the oceans and you can't just build rails between things.
4. I have not playtested the AI trying to make use of orbital insertion tactics. TBH I knock the crap out of the AI long before then. I see orbital insertion as an advantage that a real human player enjoys at AI expense. Even so, it can get old. By that late in the game, isn't it less effort to just win? I haven't made it to enough late games to really have strong opinions on this. I can make the game tap out with Marines if I want to, so...?
One thing I can confirm, is that my delay of Sky Hydroponics Labs etc., does allow the AIs to build plenty of Orbital Defense Pods to completely block you from getting easy access to space resources. It is extremely tedious to fight their never ending screen of ODPs. The only real answer IMO is ground intervention, or Treaties. If you try to have satellite battles, well the AI doesn't get tired and you do!
ICBM combat is similar in that the thrill of being able to hit anything on Planet will quickly wear off. It becomes too much whack-a-mole.
Post by: BFG on October 02, 2018, 09:23:45 PM
1. No, there's no instability inherent to these two technologies. I've enabled them on my games and never had any problem. The key is to make sure the tech tree is set up correctly...and, because the icons for those texts are duplicates of used icons, I've created my own. They're uploaded on this site and you are welcome to them.
2. The biggest problem with Gravship Formers is that the AI treats them like land based formers: the AI never develops sea squares with them, despite their being capable of both land and sea modifications. Plus, they have the highest move rates, and no move limitations, so are effectively the "best" Formers possible. (Same with Supply Gravships etc. Now if only Probe Gravships were possible...) They are more efficient for the AI than building separate land and sea units, which is why I asked.
Also, one other I just remembered...have you tried giving the AI Needlejet Colony Pods? That's fun :)
Post by: bvanevery on October 03, 2018, 02:14:12 AM
1. No, there's no instability inherent to these two technologies. I've enabled them on my games and never had any problem. The key is to make sure the tech tree is set up correctly...and, because the icons for those texts are duplicates of used icons, I've created my own. They're uploaded on this site and you are welcome to them.
Ok, I will look at what they do.
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2. The biggest problem with Gravship Formers is that the AI treats them like land based formers: the AI never develops sea squares with them, despite their being capable of both land and sea modifications.
I have no way of changing that behavior at the .txt mod level. Ergo, it is pointless to add them as predefined units, as the AI will never use them differently than a cheaper Hovertank Former. I'm presuming that the movement rate of a Hovertank is plenty good enough for terraforming, having used as many as a hundred of the things at a time. Rail power! Actually that's another reason to blow off Gravship Formers: they don't follow rails.
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Same with Supply Gravships etc.
If you have not built a real rail network by this point in the game, your empire is stupid! Or if you don't have cash coming out your ears to insta-buy Secret Projects, your empire is stupid. I have made various denominations of Hovertank crawlers, and just various expensive crawlers, so that I can soak up the maximum production of a base when turning it into a crawler. However this consumes more unit design slots than I think is appropriate to withhold for predesigned units, and I seriously doubt the AI knows how to utilize precise denominations of crawlers anyways. So it's an optimization that I leave to the humans.
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Now if only Probe Gravships were possible...
I believe Probes cannot be used on air units. I think I tried to play with this, and got canned dialog boxes about how it could not be done. Not sure if I tried to make a predefined unit to get around this. I thought I tried and the unit simply didn't work, but I can go back and check on this again.
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Also, one other I just remembered...have you tried giving the AI Needlejet Colony Pods? That's fun :)
I haven't even tried it for my own empires. I'm aware of the possibility, but by the time I could do that, I've long since created enough cities with enough stuff in them. I don't even use Fusion Rover Colony Pods anymore, they come too late in the game to be of any importance to me.
Post by: BFG on October 03, 2018, 03:33:19 AM
The Aero Colonies do have two practical uses though: first, settling distant no-road points in far fewer turns than traditional Colonies, even when additional build time is factored in; second, settling tiny islands or polar caps quickly. It's also (rarely) possible to place a colony on a new land mass with one before being informed it's already owned, thus avoiding AIs getting upset over encroachment. The AIs I've given them to seem to utilize them well.
And you're right about aerial probe teams not being possible; that was my point. It'd be fun if they were :)
Post by: bvanevery on October 03, 2018, 05:02:40 AM
I've got Global Energy Theory and Inertial Damping working without any errors. Of course, they are empty techs, so now I have to contemplate how or why I'd insert them into a tech tree that's already been through 5 months of refinement. I'm not going to change their icons, for reasons of deployment convenience.
I found acceptable places in the tech tree to put Rover Former, Cruiser Former, Cruiser Probe Team, Hover Former, and Hover Probe Team. In most cases I put them 1 tech later than when the chassis appears. Rover Former is 2 techs later in Monopole Magnets.
EDIT: got Global Energy Theory and Inertial Damping squeezed into the tech tree.
Post by: BFG on October 03, 2018, 04:28:06 PM
Yes, I meant “heavy transport”. Going off of memory here. I thought it made sense for that one to be paired with Inertial Damping but that was in the vanilla tech tree. For Global Energy Theory I usually gave an energy production bonus, but again, that may only make sense in vanilla.
Thanks, as before, for your hard work on this!
Post by: bvanevery on October 03, 2018, 06:16:56 PM
I thought it made sense for that one to be paired with Inertial Damping but that was in the vanilla tech tree.
Where did you put Inertial Damping? The point of using that tech at all, IMO, is to gain Santiago's voiced dialog. It talks about ordinance simply stopping in mid-air. The default icon is a Singularity icon and considering these 2 things together, it's an endgame technology of some kind. I decided to use it for strength 30 armor, which I already had in my tree. They were called "Singularity Shields" before and have the artwork of the old Stasis Generator armor, which in my mod doesn't exist. Basically, I just made Inertial Damping one of the prereqs for Threshold of Transcendence. That's as late in the game as it gets!
So in my tech tree, there's no reason you'd wait all the way to the end of the game to get an increase in transport capacity. You'd already have Singularity engine transports by then anyways, giving you 16 units on a boat! If you can't wipe someone out with that kind of cargo capacity, well I don't think you deserve to be playing the game anymore. ;lol
I've questioned the wisdom of providing the extra transport capacity as early as I have, with Silksteel Armor. Which incidentally in my mod is strength 5 armor, to match the prevailing weapons at that time. Photon armor is strength 8, etc. Armor is more significant in my mod, it's worth something. Anyways, I decided to just throw it in there and have people playtest it. I bet people don't even remember to use it, and I don't think it's going to break the game. If some consensus of players in the far future says it's overpowered, I'll deal with it then.
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For Global Energy Theory I usually gave an energy production bonus, but again, that may only make sense in vanilla.
I had a cramped situation with Orbital Power Transmitters and Nessus Mining Stations in the same tech. So I uncramped it. I wish Morgan's dialogue wasn't so boring though. Sounds like a placeholder.
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Thanks, as before, for your hard work on this!
You're welcome!
Post by: BFG on October 04, 2018, 01:52:37 AM
In my modded game I put Inertial Damping after Photon/Wave Mechanics and Unified Field Theory, which put it at Conquer 8 (midlevel) if I remember right. Global Energy Theory I put after Planetary Economics and Pre-Sentient Algorithms, which made it a Discover 6. (I hated assigning Global Energy Theory to Discover instead of Wealth, but Discover had to have it to make sure all 4 branches had 22 techs apiece.)
And, just for fun, here are the icons I designed.
Post by: bvanevery on October 04, 2018, 03:14:03 PM
Code: [Select]
;Unfortunately the AI won't build the following units even when enabled,
;and even when given earlier in the tech tree. Left here for reference.
;Rover Former, Speeder, Formers, Scout, 9, 0, 0, Magnets, -1, 00000000000000000000000000
;Cruiser Former, Cruiser, Formers, Scout, 9, 0, 0, Orbital, -1, 00000000000000000000000010
;Cruiser Probe Team, Cruiser, Probe Team, Scout, 11, 0, 0, Orbital, -1, 00000000000000000000000010
;Hover Former, Hovertank, Formers, Scout, 9, 0, 0, NanoMin, -1, 00000000000000000000000000
;Hover Probe Team, Hovertank, Probe Team, Scout, 11, 0, 0, NanoMin, -1, 00000000000000000000000000Some good news though: the AI will build a Fission Super Fungicidal Rover Former of its own accord without any help. I saw Morgan do it. This makes me wonder if adding Super or Fungicidal to a unit would get the AI interested. Problem is, the guaranteed intersection of "Super" and the other chassis types would come rather late in the tech tree. Not a problem for Fungicidal though, so I'll experiment with that.
I think a general problem of the AI, is it will build a few Formers at the beginning of the game, then get preoccupied with building all kinds of other stuff, never really revisiting the priority of making more Former units.
Post by: bvanevery on October 08, 2018, 10:53:45 PM
Changed from version 1.20 to 1.21:
- placed my work under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
- Biogenetics: set wealth=1 and growth=3. Lifecycle improvements shall be considered Explore techs. Make it of slight interest to Build researchers so that Synthetic Fossil Fuels is not blocked.
- Doctrine: Mobility: set wealth=1 and growth=3. Clearly it helps Exploring. Make it of slight interest to Build researchers so that Synthetic Fossil Fuels is not blocked.
- Synthetic Fossil Fuels: now has Centauri Ecology and Doctrine: Mobility as prereqs. Made Fungi Rover Former predefined unit to help AI. This completes a Speeder chassis prototype, so is done later than Doctrine: Mobility.
- Centauri Empathy: set wealth=3 because Green economy increases ECONOMY.
- Ethical Calculus: set wealth=2 because Democratic politics no longer gives an ECONOMY bonus. The EFFICIENCY bonus is worth some money.
- Progenitor Psych: set power=0 and growth=1. This tech only allows one to communicate with the Progenitors, who may not even be in the game. Talking to them does not help Conquer anybody. NOT talking to them is often the safest option for humans, so it is given a low chance of discovery.
- Field Modulation: set power=2 and growth=4. This tech only gives Hypnotic Trance, which is only good for defending against mindworms. It's not that useful for Conquering and is mainly useful for Exploring without getting killed so easily.
- Polymorphic Software: changed from a C4 to a C3 tech.
- Neural Grafting: changed it from a C5 to a C3 tech and set wealth=3. Decided that Super Fungicidal units really do help Build after all.
- Adaptive Doctrine: set growth=3 because it gives defenses against mindworms. Moved the Neural Amplifier to this tech. Changed ECM Probe Team predefined unit to ECM 3-Pulse Probe Team. This tech has Advanced Subatomic Theory as a prereq, which makes Plasma armor available. Completing a Plasma armor prototype also completes 3-Pulse and 3-Res prototypes, so it's ok to immediately use 3-Pulse here.
- Organic Superlubricant: changed it from a C5 to a C4 tech.
- Doctrine: Initiative: changed it from a C5 to a C4 tech. Moved Deep Radar ability to this tech.
- Advanced Military Algorithms: set growth=0 as it no longer gives Deep Radar ability. Moved High Morale ability to this tech.
- Single-Sided Surfaces: changed it from a B5 to a B4 tech.
- Bio-Engineering: changed it from a B5 to a B4 tech.
- Retroviral Engineering: changed it form a C6 to a C4 tech.
- Nanominiaturization: changed it from a C6 to a C5 tech.
- Doctrine: Air Power: set growth=3 as it does help Exploring.
- Silksteel Alloys: moved Deep Pressure Hull and Carrier Deck abilities to this tech. Made Doctrine: Initiative a prereq. Made Submarine Probe Team and Cruiser Colony Pod predefined units to help AI. This completes a Cruiser chassis prototype, so is done later than Doctrine: Initiative.
- Homo Superior: moved Bioenhancement Center to this tech.
- Global Energy Theory: enabled as a B8 tech. Set wealth=4, other settings 0. Moved Orbital Power Transmitter to it.
- Inertial Damping: enabled as a C13 tech. Set power=4, other settings 0. Moved Singularity Shield to this tech, and renamed it as Inertial Damper.
- changed many prereqs to fill in holes and keep continuity of research foci.
The attachment limit per post is 5, and I eventually ran out of room at the top of the thread. Consequently, this becomes the new home of version 1.21. It was downloaded 29 times before I moved it here.
Post by: Vidsek on October 11, 2018, 11:58:07 AM
I too found the AI wouldn't use some of those former varieties in distant past games, but do love basic fungicidal and super ones.
I'll update my Yitzi/Growth merge and look forward to a game or few with it. I am sorry I haven't been able to test enough to be much help to you, but so far you seem to have caught all the things I would have mentioned. Rest assured that I will return some feedback. Eventually.....;)
Post by: bvanevery on October 11, 2018, 10:19:26 PM
I did use the excuse of wanting to know the exact method of combat resolution, to play the very beginning of a game. I started randomly as the Peacekeepers. Got a Battle Ogre. The Spartans showed up literally right next to me. I was unfriendly and stomped them. I uncharacteristically let my reputation drop to Faithful, because I had the Battle Ogre, and all these AI vs. AI test cases in my head where the Spartans end up being the dominant land power. Kill them kill them kill them now now now!!! So after performing that surgery I had luxurious unchallenged space to make a 20 city empire. Then I decided I'd stared at enough combat resolutions to know I wasn't getting the answer I sought, and quit the game.
So yeah, uh, if I get any external playtesting feedback on whether something is broken now, that would be good. Cuz, uh, it's just not likely to be self-generating from here on out. Psychologically, I'm working on my game programming language design, and on what my own 4X TBS title should be. This has definitely been enough of a practice run. I've definitely explored a lot of "the good and the dull".
Post by: vonbach on October 14, 2018, 06:29:19 PM
Update got it to work after some work.
Post by: bvanevery on October 15, 2018, 12:45:36 AM
Post by: vonbach on October 15, 2018, 04:37:26 PM
Post by: bvanevery on October 15, 2018, 05:30:09 PM
Post by: vonbach on October 15, 2018, 10:37:43 PM
Post by: bvanevery on October 16, 2018, 01:30:06 AM
Nobody in my mod gets a SUPPORT bonus, and nobody will. It has been democratized. Everyone has to choose Police State, Fundamentalist, Planned, or Power to get SUPPORT. Or someone can build the Living Refinery. That's it, no other ways.
Oh crap. Just realized I said I gave the Believers +1 GROWTH in version 1.15, but didn't! That's a flat out bug. I even changed their Help entry to say they get the bonus, and they don't. Well I guess there will be a 1.22 release. What else will I put in there? This isn't going to fundamentally change their performance.
I wonder if giving them an extra Colony Pod would be too over the top? Generally, only Aliens get 3 of them. The excuse would be "lots of followers". That could make them pretty terrifying in close quarters early game. On the other hand, the AI might just misue an extra colonist and it might not matter much.
Now I'm remembering I had this "new Believers" thing a few versions ago. But I scrapped it. Let's see what I came up with, it's a few posts back. Ah yes here it is:
proposed happy wealthy militant Believers |
Post by: vonbach on October 16, 2018, 03:14:57 AM
Have you ever considered giving the Believers a PSI defense bonus? It seems like it might be appropriate.
Post by: bvanevery on October 16, 2018, 04:12:09 AM
I don't think there's a setting for only PSI defense anyway is there? PSI combat, yes, but I'm not seeing one for just defense.
Post by: vygov on October 16, 2018, 11:20:51 AM
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Oh crap. Just realized I said I gave the Believers +1 GROWTH in version 1.15, but didn't! That's a flat out bug. I even changed their Help entry to say they get the bonus, and they don't. Well I guess there will be a 1.22 release.Yes, +1 Grouth is not added. We are waiting for version 1.22.
Post by: vonbach on October 16, 2018, 12:51:08 PM
Make them a growth and defense powerhouse. Especially with no mind control.
Post by: bvanevery on October 16, 2018, 01:34:16 PM
Make them a growth and defense powerhouse.
But that's the Peacekeepers, especially now as I have them. Peacekeepers get +2 GROWTH, still have their extra Talent, and their relaxation of population limit by +2 citizens. In addition I made them Passive, despite an Explore, Conquer focus, same as the Believers! Lal is a pusillanimous wimp, and the payoff for this behavior is Diplomatic Victory.
The Believers don't have any special benefit for sitting back and relaxing. Although I'm willing to give them a +1 ECONOMY tithe, that hardly makes them into an optimal "sit back" faction. I don't think they should be, in the sense that, I wouldn't want to create the Mary Sue of factions. Generally speaking I'm willing to make factions better rounded because it helps AI play and is important if a faction starts out isolated. The only faction I've really stuck it to in that regard, is the Spartans. They pretty much need to find someone to overrun, because they have no advantages just sitting back building stuff. This is pretty much why the Spartans are an Aggressive faction in my mod.
The Believers and the Usurpers are the only other Aggressive factions in my mod. I made the Caretakers merely Erratic because thematically, I wanted to see some contrast between the Alien personalities instead of them both being horrible cartoon cutouts of each other. The Caretakers are now anti-Police State and the Usurpers are anti-Democratic. Both can be Fundamentalist.
My view is that now, there are lots of factions available if one wants to sit back and defend. My Drones are good for it, with their +2 happy people instead of just +1. The Pirates are good for it, and that's now how the AI plays them, being Passive and pursuing Wealth. Aggressive factions are almost an endangered species, and I don't want to divest the Believers of their historic role in that regard.
In addition to fixing the +1 GROWTH bug, I think I will give them +1 ECONOMY and kick it out the door. Unlike most factions now, they start the game with a tech, Social Psych. They can make people happy if they want to. I'm leery of piling up too many bonuses for them too quickly, as it's not clear to me that they're all that weak compared to other factions. I'd like to see humans playtest them with those 2 abilities before adding anything else.
I'm realizing that my proposed Believers faction also had +1 MORALE. I think I will skip that for now, but will consider it in the future if they're still not strong enough.
Post by: bvanevery on October 16, 2018, 02:18:16 PM
Changed from version 1.21 to 1.22:
- Believers: added +1 GROWTH and +1 ECONOMY. I said I gave them the GROWTH bonus back in 1.15 but actually failed to do so. ECONOMY is to keep them competitive with other factions. In essence it cancels the ECONOMY penalty when the AI chooses Fundamentalist. Or a human player could go Democratic and make more money.
The attachment limit per post is 5, and I eventually ran out of room at the top of the thread. Consequently, this becomes the new home of version 1.22. It was downloaded 33 times before I moved it here.
Post by: vonbach on October 17, 2018, 09:23:21 PM
The game is significantly harder, at least it seems to be. The Moraganites are now
a very powerful faction. Probe teams are very annoying and the AI seems to be better
with their use. The early game actually feels early and feels like I'm going something other than waiting
to the same old techs. Overall I like the changes so far its a new fresh take on an old game.
Post by: bvanevery on October 18, 2018, 02:03:14 AM
The game is significantly harder, at least it seems to be.
That of course was intended, but it's good to hear it's actually happening for someone else, and isn't just my own perceptual bias from having slogged at the thing.
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The Moraganites are now a very powerful faction.
Yes, maybe not among the strongest factions in the game, but strong in the 2nd tier. They aren't crippled by any lack of SUPPORT anymore, they don't have base size restrictions, and they get +2 ECONOMY not just +1. Also, Free Market doesn't tie anyone's hands just by itself, so Morgan is perfectly free to make war if he wants. Although, he is still Passive so it's not the 1st thing he goes for. I think the only downside is the AI for the most part doesn't know how to use spare cash.
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Probe teams are very annoying and the AI seems to be better with their use.
Hm, I actually think there's a lot less probe team activity than there used to be. I took out all of the probe SE bonuses except for Thought Control. I believe the AI decides that probe teams aren't superpowered, so doesn't make nearly so many of them, or use them as much. On the other hand, I habitually play on Huge maps or larger, so it could be an artifact of my map choice. What size map are you playing on?
I did of course give the AI foil probe teams, and those get used. Yes, you'll lose a few sea bases, even at great distances on an Enormous map, because the AI is pesky that way. But it's also an opportunity to infiltrate and steal from a distant enemy that otherwise you wouldn't get to on an Enormous map so easily.
The intent of the ECM 3-Pulse probe team is for the AI to use them defensively, but I'm not yet sure if they really get used that way or not. The Cruiser Submarine probe teams do get used, but I'm not sure how much because they haven't been around all that long.
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The early game actually feels early and feels like I'm going something other than waiting
to the same old techs. Overall I like the changes so far its a new fresh take on an old game.
Happy to oblige! I made it a policy to push any "feature" earlier in the tech tree that wasn't obviously and compellingly advantageous. So, you don't have to wait around forever to get Fungicidal Tanks, or mag tubes, things like that. The open question is whether earlier Hovertanks breaks the game or not. I haven't played enough games to know yet.
Post by: vonbach on October 18, 2018, 01:15:44 PM
I typically play on my own maps either Earth or Venus. Large or huge I believe. I stopped playing on non custom maps because I got
sick of seeing factions with three bases sitting on a tiny island. I noticed the AI seems to have no difficulties there
it simply builds sea bases. The probe teams aren't spammed like they used to be but the AI seems smarter with their
use. The sea probes they seem to enjoy playing with.
The Government and economy choices is one of the best features. It actually seems far more balanced.
Just as an aside if you were going to give an equivalent bonus to the + fugal nutrient what would it be?
I like to make my own factions and modify some others.
Post by: bvanevery on October 18, 2018, 02:36:28 PM
I stopped playing on non custom maps because I got sick of seeing factions with three bases sitting on a tiny island.
I fixed the pathological 1x1 island starts up through Enormous map size. Giant maps could still have that problem.
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I noticed the AI seems to have no difficulties there it simply builds sea bases.
I wouldn't say "no" difficulties, in that an island start can still put an AI behind the growth curve. But it's far less of an impediment because Doctrine: Flexibility is a C1 tech. The only way I could do better than that, would be to give away ships at the beginning of the game. Due to Workshop abuse I don't think it's possible to give away non-combat ships and not give combat ships.
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The probe teams aren't spammed like they used to be but the AI seems smarter with their
use. The sea probes they seem to enjoy playing with.
Heh, whatever makes the AI happy.
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The Government and economy choices is one of the best features. It actually seems far more balanced.
Yeah, after all those design iterations, I think that one's a big win! The ultimate principles ended up being "give the same number of bonuses and penalties for nearly everything," "give +1 instead of +2 whenever reasonable", "penalize -1 and -1 in 2 categories instead of -2 in 1 category," "SUPPORT is earned", "PROBE sucks", and "Police State and Fundamentalist have been nearly the same thing in all real world governments."
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Just as an aside if you were going to give an equivalent bonus to the + fugal nutrient what would it be?
I like to make my own factions and modify some others.
I'm confused. The only thing equivalent to the FUNGNUTRIENT, 1 that the Gaians get, is exactly that. Yes you can give FUNGMINERALS or FUNGENERGY, but I predict those will be severely unbalancing. My evidence is the new Passive, Wealth focused Pirates are arguably the strongest faction in the game now, and that's largely due to their +1 Minerals on every sea square bonus. I never found a need to give the Pirates any bonuses, I merely removed their penalties and changed their AI behavior and politics. When they make good use of what they've got, which is pretty much an infinite ocean of defense, they do ridiculously well!
It should be noted that everyone unlocks additional fungal nutrients in the course of any game, even the original unmodded. In my mod however, this happens fairly early. E2 Centauri Empathy and E3 Centauri Genetics are the techs that give more fungal food. Whereas in the original game it's E3 Centauri Empathy and E8 Centauri Psi. I unlocked the food earlier on the basis that fungal food is not all that exciting. AFAICT it's not basically useful and is no substitute for proper land development, it'll just keep you from starving in some cases.
Post by: vonbach on October 18, 2018, 07:25:05 PM
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I'm confused. The only thing equivalent to the FUNGNUTRIENT, 1 that the Gaians get, is exactly that. Yes you can give FUNGMINERALS or FUNGENERGY, but I predict those will be severely unbalancing. My evidence is the new Passive, Wealth focused Pirates are arguably the strongest faction in the game now, and that's largely due to their +1 Minerals on every sea square bonus. I never found a need to give the Pirates any bonuses, I merely removed their penalties and changed their AI behavior and politics. When they make good use of what they've got, which is pretty much an infinite ocean of defense, they do ridiculously well!
It should be noted that everyone unlocks additional fungal nutrients in the course of any game, even the original unmodded. In my mod however, this happens fairly early. E2 Centauri Empathy and E3 Centauri Genetics are the techs that give more fungal food. Whereas in the original game it's E3 Centauri Empathy and E8 Centauri Psi. I unlocked the food earlier on the basis that fungal food is not all that exciting. AFAICT it's not basically useful and is no substitute for proper land development, it'll just keep you from starving in some cases.
I was more curious what you thought an equivalent tier bonus would be. Like maybe giving them something else instead.
The pirates always were very strong simply because of the ocean start. I'd like to go and rename their cities just because
I always found their base names stupid.
Post by: bvanevery on October 19, 2018, 03:24:51 AM
I was more curious what you thought an equivalent tier bonus would be. Like maybe giving them something else instead.
I think the Gaian FUNGNUTRIENT bonus is probably inconsequential. That said, I've never played the Gaians with "farming the fungus" in mind. I'm not convinced that growing and food is particularly important, aside from the obvious act of spreading enough at the beginning to have enough cities. Eventually you get enough tech to make enough food and enough people happy. Before then, you settle where the best resources are, and not elsewhere. Fungus really doesn't start to do anyone any good until mid to late game, when there might be some minerals and energy for the trouble. Any empire worth its salt will long have since settled into a pattern of land profitability before then. I'm not even sure it's icing on a cake, I think the cake is elsewhere and wholly different.
So in short, I'm cynical enough to think an equivalent bonus, would be to give someone nothing at all. But if someone has managed to invent a very specific play style to somehow exploit Gaian food in a way I haven't thought of, well ok, I guess school on that. For the rest of us, I think this is pointless thematic stuff.
You could experiment with giving large FUNGNUTRIENT bonuses, to see what happens. Like perhaps an Alien faction that finds the fungus quite tasty?
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The pirates always were very strong simply because of the ocean start. I'd like to go and rename their cities just because I always found their base names stupid.
I hate Svensgaard; in particular, his voice acting is awful. He sounds like a pretty boy wearing a sweater. Not a pirate, and not like an intellectual Captain Nemo character either. Also his lines aren't all that good, the subject matter is ok, but the lines are a bit dumb.
It remains to be seen if I ever have the energy to redo any of that. I have to be careful about what I spend my energy on now. For instance, I work on two 10 year old laptops. One of them blew up 2 days ago, something wrong with the screen hardware I think. I've ordered a used ccfl inverter for a pittance on ebay, hoping that might be the problem, and only out a few bucks if it isn't. I've got stupid things in my life to contend with like that. Gotta prioritize.
But Svensgaard and Cha Dawn totally bug me.
Post by: vonbach on October 19, 2018, 12:54:38 PM
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I think the Gaian FUNGNUTRIENT bonus is probably inconsequential.There is a specific strategy involved but I've never tried it. The problem is it takes place even later than full forest.
Forests and farms are just easier. Not to mention they look better.
I like the idea of using mind worms but its almost easier to simply build your own. The problem is leveling them.
I'm not sure you even need to have +planet at all.
I've thought about making an alternate base list for the pirates but have never gotten around to it.
Post by: bvanevery on October 19, 2018, 01:29:26 PM
Post by: vonbach on October 19, 2018, 01:37:22 PM
Post by: bvanevery on October 19, 2018, 07:02:36 PM
I could do the Fission, Fusion, Quantum, Singularity engine scaling idea. They would be sized 3, 4, 5, and 6, so that a Singularity engine is merely double the power of a Fission engine. All sorts of armor and weapon costs would have to be redone to make this work. Oops, just realized a fatal flaw: the blast radius of a nuke would become as large as the reactor size! Darn, it otherwise seems like a good idea.
Post by: vonbach on October 20, 2018, 03:30:30 AM
Or maybe some Viking and Norwegian themed ones.
Post by: bvanevery on October 20, 2018, 04:08:32 AM
I'm not in favor of riffing on Svensgaard being Nordic, because this is the far future, such distinctions don't matter that much to the human race anymore, and factions in SMAC are separated by ideology not nationality. What I would like, is for the Pirates to come across as the kind of people who like a big freaking treasure chest of gold. They like easy targets, not warfare. They are indifferent to Economics, they care about Wealth.
Post by: Vidsek on October 20, 2018, 06:39:19 PM
The original ones were thought up by (I assume) tech nerds somewhat lacking in the fields of history, sociology, anthropology, (and English studies), who relied overmuch on the topics and stereotypes current in the 1990's.
I'd be happy to share the few I'm sorta pleased with, and explain the guiding concepts and attempts at humor.
It's a fun pastime for when it's raining outside and you're bored with the usual distractions. Plus, getting a good take on modeling, say, Yang's 'color' on North Korea/Mao's China or the Drones' on the labor/union struggles of the early 1900's, can lead you into researching some interesting parts of history that have real value in understanding our world as it is today.
Oh yeh, a while ago there was some talk about voice acting for custom factions in these forums. I don't know where that stands as of today or what it would take to do it yourself. Another fun diversion for a rainy day, perhaps.
Post by: bvanevery on October 20, 2018, 08:12:38 PM
Oh yeh, a while ago there was some talk about voice acting for custom factions in these forums.
It wasn't that long ago. But I have a serious money barrier for buying decent recording equipment. Consequently, I'm currently trying to get a simple mono Logitech USB mike into shape. With that, I can at least work on the acting part of voice acting. But it may not be adequate for producing a final cut of acceptable quality.
Aside from other fires of Life I find myself putting out, my laptop speakers are buzzing when certain sounds are played. It might be a problem precipitated by a Windows 10 update (https://appuals.com/windows-10-buzzing-sound/). I am investigating.
Post by: bvanevery on October 22, 2018, 11:27:52 AM
I played a game as the Hive against random opponents. I kept the default Explore, Conquer focus to see how it goes. I played on a Huge map and made a big empire. I eventually colonized a distant, fungus infested Monsoon Jungle. I made it to midgame before getting utterly bored with all the administration. I quit at 6 AM. I don't think I need to worry about Hovertanks breaking anything, because I didn't manage to research them. My opponents had only gotten Secrets of the Human Brain, which in my mod is done instead of Cyberethics. It was a really slow research game.
I did Police State Free Market for quite awhile. Once I got Industrial Economics, I switched to Police State Green Wealth, so as not to take a POLICE penalty. Both of these resulted in +2 ECONOMY. I ended up occupying the "Morganite" niche of the game, because there weren't any strong economic factions. The Drones could have been, but they got a lackluster start and got bottled up by the Peacekeepers. Maybe they shouldn't be Passive.
The Aliens got creamed. The Caretakers had a stillborn start, got stuck behind Cha Dawn and never really expanded. The Usurpers expanded fine, but surprisingly, Cha Dawn was beating on them when I quit. Cities were changing hands but I think the Cultists were giving better than they got. I guess they're tough!
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 22, 2018, 04:05:49 PM
Overall much better than vanilla but still curious why you don't use a smooth numeric progression when you could. Like in weapons you have 2,4. It's a 100% jump. You could use smoother progression 2,3,4. For the same purpose you could modify values for special weapons like R-Laser and R-Bolt to occupy free spots instead of just repeating same values. It would add some variability. Like you may give them weaker basic rating in lieu of special power that makes them stronger against psi. Same story with armor. Look at 5,8,10 progression. Your second step is smaller than first one. Not that such small differences are critical but still.
Regarding keeping 1:1 ratio. I've analyzed technology research index and your progression seems more or less keeping to that on all path except first quarter of the research path when you have armor 3 for quite a long time while you already have weapon 5 and it takes some time until armor catches with weapon at 8 both.
Regarding accelerating progression. This is a mistake they did in Civ 2 and repeated in SMAC. With increasing reactor strength and number of HPs the winning odds tilt to the stronger unit even stronger. With the same rate of proportional difference in faction developments their absolute difference grow bigger and so is the technological difference. With increasing reactor power and accelerated weapon progression this technological race gives stronger faction relatively more and more powerful units. That pretty soon makes stronger army unstoppable regardless of all possible defensive measure weaker side can apply. Game turns into cakewalk. I guessed this is what you are trying to avoid. Vanilla game breaks around 50-100 turn. With your adjusted weapon to armor ratio it breaks around 200-250. That is an improvement but you can do better.
How to fix this inevitable breakage? I see these possibilities.
# Disable healing.
# Disable reactor progression.
# Decelerate weapon and armor progression.
# Make armor progress faster than weapon.
Out of these former two are pretty difficult exe modding. Latter two are easily implementable in txt. It seems kinda counter intuitive from RPG game style where you need to accelerate your growth to fight tougher and tougher monster. In strategical game it is fine. Especially if you remember that by decelerating the progression you are actually compensate for reactor boost. Reactors alone increase unit strength 4-fold to the end of the game. If you despise decelerating progression you can keep it more or less linear. That's fine as long as you also make armor grow a little bit faster. That account for the fact that more advanced faction tend to attack. So this reversed ratio will keep it in check. Besides, SMAC somehow manage to increase overall level of aggression toward the end of the game turning it into total war. Reversed weapon to armor ratio will keep weaker factions from quick total annihilation maintaining overall game power balance.
See attachment chart on your weapon-armor progression by average technology sequence index. That is how soon it is expected to be discovered providing you have no research preferences and you discover technologies at about same speed all the time.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 22, 2018, 05:50:24 PM
Post by: bvanevery on October 22, 2018, 06:23:49 PM
Overall much better than vanilla but still curious why you don't use a smooth numeric progression when you could. Like in weapons you have 2,4. It's a 100% jump. You could use smoother progression 2,3,4.
For early game weapons, it's the progression of the original game though. I wasn't under the impression that there was any problem that needed correction here. Bear in mind, the current approach uses all the weapons artwork that's available. There isn't new artwork for a 3 gun, it'll probably look like a 2 gun.
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For the same purpose you could modify values for special weapons like R-Laser and R-Bolt to occupy free spots instead of just repeating same values.
Those slots are hardwired with the 25% anti-indigenous life form bonus. Any size gun you make with them, they will have that ability attached.
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It would add some variability. Like you may give them weaker basic rating in lieu of special power that makes them stronger against psi.
The ability to change that doesn't exist at the .txt mod level. It's hardwired into the binary. In general, Firaxis was fairly generic but not perfectly generic about how they implemented stuff. To me it's a big lesson how to write or not write a game's data files.
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Same story with armor. Look at 5,8,10 progression. Your second step is smaller than first one. Not that such small differences are critical but still.
The problem is there isn't any more unique artwork for armor. I think I can add more armor, but it's going to look the same as some other kind of armor. I'm not sure this is worth it, as it's going to create more pressure on the limited number of Unit Design Workshop entries. I will contemplate it though.
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Regarding keeping 1:1 ratio. I've analyzed technology research index and your progression seems more or less keeping to that on all path except first quarter of the research path when you have armor 3 for quite a long time while you already have weapon 5 and it takes some time until armor catches with weapon at 8 both.
Not sure if your analysis is a static analysis of the tree, or dynamic in terms of actual length of time to gain armor as measured in a game you played. Silksteel is strength 5 in my mod. In the real world it could take a long time to gain Silksteel, maybe longer than Superconductor, because there are so many Conquer techs. You would get other things of equivalent value in the same C5 tier of tech though.
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# Disable healing.
I'm not aware of any .txt mod for that. Also I don't see why it helps. The issue is determined by who wins combat.
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# Disable reactor progression.
That's possible, but I haven't committed to doing it. I've wanted to hear from multiple playtesters whether they think the current state of affairs is a problem or not. Fusion Power does at least seem to come later in my mod, in practice.
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# Decelerate weapon and armor progression.
This would have to be severe to work. Basically, weapons and armor would have to stop progressing by midgame, leaving the job of progression to the reactors only. It would completely mess up the unit artwork for weapons, making the cure worse than the disease.
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# Make armor progress faster than weapon.
It won't matter. Bigger reactors will still blow the armor to pieces.
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Out of these former two are pretty difficult exe modding.
Incorrect: reactor types are easily disabled in alphax.txt.
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Reversed weapon to armor ratio will keep weaker factions from quick total annihilation maintaining overall game power balance.
Although I do not want the game to turn into a cakewalk, I also do want the game to be over at some point, and not drag out forever in a WW I style trench warfare stalemate. This is especially true in Single Player, where between my quality of life and the AI's quality of life, only 1 matters! The game has often penalized the player for having the temerity to try to win it, such as dire consequences for using chemical weapons or nukes.
The footrace doesn't have to go on forever. It's ok to be badder ass than everyone else and wipe them out easily at some point. To me it's all a question of how much work and challenge you had to do to get there.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 22, 2018, 07:06:54 PM
I didn't mean to add a new one. Merely rearranging existing ones. Like making the one 4 to have 3 rating and 5 to have 4 rating, etc.Overall much better than vanilla but still curious why you don't use a smooth numeric progression when you could. Like in weapons you have 2,4. It's a 100% jump. You could use smoother progression 2,3,4.
For early game weapons, it's the progression of the original game though. I wasn't under the impression that there was any problem that needed correction here. Bear in mind, the current approach uses all the weapons artwork that's available. There isn't new artwork for a 3 gun, it'll probably look like a 2 gun.
Same applies to armor. Just rearrange their ratings to make the progression look better. Just a single number change in alphax.txt. Easy and flexible.
Who mentioned the ability? Keep the ability! I meant to lower its attack rating keeping the price. This way you have the extra ability but lower attack rating and fill up in the gap at the same time.QuoteFor the same purpose you could modify values for special weapons like R-Laser and R-Bolt to occupy free spots instead of just repeating same values.
Those slots are hardwired with the 25% anti-indigenous life form bonus. Any size gun you make with them, they will have that ability attached.
It's static, of course. Dynamic changes with every game. It gives the rough understanding of what follow what, though. See also my comment in next post regarding actual research rate. You can keep it in mind while looking at the chart. I am sure you have your own sense of technology discovery rate at different game stages being played so many games already.QuoteRegarding keeping 1:1 ratio. I've analyzed technology research index and your progression seems more or less keeping to that on all path except first quarter of the research path when you have armor 3 for quite a long time while you already have weapon 5 and it takes some time until armor catches with weapon at 8 both.
Not sure if your analysis is a static analysis of the tree, or dynamic in terms of actual length of time to gain armor as measured in a game you played. Silksteel is strength 5 in my mod. In the real world it could take a long time to gain Silksteel, maybe longer than Superconductor, because there are so many Conquer techs. You would get other things of equivalent value in the same C5 tier of tech though.
This is exe mod required for that, obviously. That what I mentioned below.Quote# Disable healing.
I'm not aware of any .txt mod for that. Also I don't see why it helps. The issue is determined by who wins combat.
The issue is not about who wins a single combat. It is about how much each side invest to advance a front line. But this is completely different and much bigger discussion. If you like to have on it - go to my recent combat discussion topic.
I don't see what artwork has to do with it. Do you mean the way weapon look affects game strategy??? O_oQuote# Decelerate weapon and armor progression.
This would have to be severe to work. Basically, weapons and armor would have to stop progressing by midgame, leaving the job of progression to the reactors only. It would completely mess up the unit artwork for weapons, making the cure worse than the disease.
You probably confused "decelerate" with "decrease". It definitely should increase but the advancement speed should decline in term of discovery time. In other words, you should invest more and more time (or more and more labs) to discover same incremental improvement. That would compensate to kaleidoscopic technology research rate toward the end.
Common, man! Why are you feeling yourself obliged to criticize my every single sentence even if you cannot find a descent argument??? Don't you have better things to think of? If you feel like it is not important - just leave it alone. I am not a robot, you know. I am trying to formulate my thoughts to the best of my abilities to make it clear to you and other listeners. NOT to make them right. I am just thinking out loud, you know. Trying to offend me and showing how stupid I am for every letter I wrote is not constructive dialog and is boring. Let's keep it interesting.Quote# Make armor progress faster than weapon.
It won't matter. Bigger reactors will still blow the armor to pieces.
Regarding the question itself. I does matter. Everything matters. Every single detail. All of them combined improve or break balance. The question is about quantity and proportion. Make armor progress at about the rate of reactor and voila! Nothing stops you. Make it even stronger and reactor won't be enough to penetrate it.
Damn. I didn't even try to be correct all the time! There are things I don't know. You could just point me to where it can be done in alphax.txt, for example. I would appreciate that.QuoteOut of these former two are pretty difficult exe modding.
Incorrect: reactor types are easily disabled in alphax.txt.
Although I do not want the game to turn into a cakewalk, I also do want the game to be over at some point, and not drag out forever in a WW I style trench warfare stalemate. This is especially true in Single Player, where between my quality of life and the AI's quality of life, only 1 matters! The game has often penalized the player for having the temerity to try to win it, such as dire consequences for using chemical weapons or nukes.Err, you confused me. Why are you working on your mod then? ANY game is like that you just described. ANY game gives you a chance to end it at some point. Why did you complain about vanilla SMAX when you can practically "end the game" at about 100-150 turn? Enjoy. Somehow you claimed that you don't like it and want it to last longer. Not in these words, I know. Please don't argue with wording - I won't reply to it anyway. You says "balance" but it is the same. Generally more balanced game = less benefits from exploits = better AI playing = more challenging game = longer game. If you are working on more challenging but specifically shorter game - that is completely different story and different game. If so, make it explicit and I won't waste your time anymore.
The footrace doesn't have to go on forever. It's ok to be badder ass than everyone else and wipe them out easily at some point. To me it's all a question of how much work and challenge you had to do to get there.
My problem with SMACX and Civ 2 is that they were advertised to be played for 400 turns and they target Ascent to Transcendence as an ultimate goal and method of victory. It even cost 800 points more than any other victory in SMACX. That is what I want to fix. To make achieving that type of victory to be not boring and rewarding in term of scoring, for example.
Post by: bvanevery on October 22, 2018, 07:12:18 PM
Keep also in mind that the research rate is generally increasing throughout the game. It is something 10-20 per tech at the beginning shortening to 2-3 at the end. So the accelerated weapon-armor progress that you see on a chart gets awfully more accelerated in practice.
I have realized that one consequence of eliminating reactor sizes, is your nukes, tectonic loads, and fungal loads won't have nice blast radii anymore. That IMO is a serious consideration. I may not use these things in every game, but when I do play a game where I want to use them, I want them to work.
I wonder if I made advanced weapons or armor disproportionately expensive, if it could even out the disproportionate cheapness of the advanced reactors. You'd still have units that would wipe the floor with everyone else, but they could cost you a pretty penny to obtain. That would mean your manufacturing infrastructure would have to be pretty robust to make advanced units. It might also make mindworms the best possible deal, since they don't have reactors.
Post by: bvanevery on October 22, 2018, 08:15:23 PM
There isn't new artwork for a 3 gun, it'll probably look like a 2 gun.I didn't mean to add a new one. Merely rearranging existing ones. Like making the one 4 to have 3 rating and 5 to have 4 rating, etc.
The weapons artwork cannot be readily changed like that. The "5" currently looks like a Gatling gun. If you change it to "4", it looks like a Particle Impactor. There's a fixed numeric range where the weapon looks like what it's going to look like, until the next weapon type appears. You simply cannot have something that looks like a Particle Impactor and is strength 3, nor strength 5. In those cases it will look like a simple Laser or a Gatling Gun, respectively. The weapons artwork is hardwired into the binary, you can't change it. You can only adjust it within ranges. I believe the permissible ranges are:
1, 2..3, 4, 5, 6..7, 8..9, 10..11, 12, 13..15, 16..19, 20..23, 24..29, 30+
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Same applies to armor.
Armor fortunately does not have this problem. You can assign any number to the armors that you like. However, there are substantially fewer armor art assets than weapon art assets. This requires compromises for spreading them over the entire game. I'm not sure if a new armor can be added, or what artwork it will have. If for instance it has to look like the Temporal Stasis shields, well that's simply not acceptable to stick anywhere earlier than the late game. In that case I could add another armor to the late game and push armor back 1 slot, all the way to the beginning, and that might help alleviate "armor pressure". But that may be all that can be done. I will check if it's even possible.
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Just rearrange their ratings to make the progression look better. Just a single number change in alphax.txt. Easy and flexible.
Don't be quick to assume that anything is easy and flexible unless you've actually modded it yourself. :D The implementation is quirky.
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Who mentioned the ability? Keep the ability! I meant to lower its attack rating keeping the price. This way you have the extra ability but lower attack rating and fill up in the gap at the same time.
That might be reasonable. It irritates me that Missiles are basically useless because of R-Lasers now. The artwork for the Resonance attachment is generalized. Any weapon can be made into a Resonance weapon. It superimposes a module on top of an existing gun.
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It's static, of course.
How do you account for different probability of discovery according to Explore, Discover, Build, Conquer weights?
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I don't see what artwork has to do with it. Do you mean the way weapon look affects game strategy??? O_o
It affects mod enjoyability. I'm not going to get in the business of throwing out the game's art assets without exceedingly good reasons to do so. I'm not just trying to perfect progressions, I'm trying to get as many people as possible to play my mod. People can rightly object to the stuff they like about SMAC, being taken out of SMAC. They say "this mod sucks", stop playing, tell other people it sucks. Or maybe they don't say any of that, they just stop playing, and don't think to say anything positive in the future. That hurts my cause as well.
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In other words, you should invest more and more time (or more and more labs) to discover same incremental improvement.
Any game fixing that relies on "more and more research" is doomed. It is not possible to control a player's research. It will exponentially increase. There are simply too many ways to become tech powerful to avoid this.
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That would compensate to kaleidoscopic technology research rate toward the end.
It is not possible to compensate for this at all. It's a fool's errand. Not without severe "tech stagnation" changes, making the game pretty much unrecognizable. Mart did something vaguely like that in the last scenario contest I participated in, some time ago. There was this guy named Kirov, I think, who creamed the crap out of the tech regardless of all the super slow tech impediments that Mart put up. Kirov and I got mad at each other, and I actually floated the idea that he might be cheating. In hindsight, no, that wasn't the problem. He's just an indefatiguable calculator and knew better ways to exploit the game than I did. Part of his secret sauce was recognizing the Governorship is worth a lot of money, something that isn't high priority in my usual play styles. Then I figure he did satellite abuse. And he built like every lab you can think of. These things are harder in my mod, but still not impossible. It's all going to happen eventually.
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QuoteIt won't matter. Bigger reactors will still blow the armor to pieces.Common, man! Why are you feeling yourself obliged to criticize my every single sentence even if you cannot find a descent argument???
First off, if you're wrong, you're wrong. If you think you're right, you can mod a test case yourself, and then in the course of events find out that you're wrong. I've been at this a long time. Although I can be proven wrong on some things, I'm most usually not. Due to that 1+ year of AARs and 4 full time person months of modding and all that. I've got a lot of coverage of issues already.
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Don't you have better things to think of? If you feel like it is not important - just leave it alone. I am not a robot, you know. I am trying to formulate my thoughts to the best of my abilities to make it clear to you and other listeners. NOT to make them right. I am just thinking out loud, you know. Trying to offend me and showing how stupid I am for every letter I wrote is not constructive dialog and is boring. Let's keep it interesting.
I appreciate feedback, and you can ascribe all sorts of imagined motives for why I respond to a specific comment. My responses are of the sort: "this might work... this is clearly not going to work." Hey if you think you can brainstorm as a form of giving feedback, I don't see why I shouldn't be answering in turn. You speak, I don't, what kind of arrangement is that?
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Damn. I didn't even try to be correct all the time! There are things I don't know.
Right. So... don't ascribe negative motive too quickly to me. I just may know more about the "endgame" of some approach than you do, since I've been at this awhile.
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The footrace doesn't have to go on forever. It's ok to be badder ass than everyone else and wipe them out easily at some point. To me it's all a question of how much work and challenge you had to do to get there.Err, you confused me. Why are you working on your mod then?
Modding is authorship. Games are not likely to be made or broken on one narrow concern, like whether the weapons progression has exactly perfect numerical intervals. A proper analogy is writing a book. There is no analytic formula that determines what a correctly written book is, you have to actually write the book. Once you've done a draft, you see what you've got. Then you might have to redraft, a lot. In game design, certainly, your most basic tool is iterating on the design over and over again. Until you personally find it to be "good". And you get some corroboration from others that what you've done is good.
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Somehow you claimed that you don't like it and want it to last longer. Not in these words, I know.
"Last longer" is a highly material design dimension here. It is not a term I've generally used. At the extreme limit, there are people who want the game to last forever. They sandbox, because that's what they like to do. I'm not into that. The vast majority of the years I've spent playing SMAC, have been about optimizing my path to victory. I have to experience the path in order to win, I have to make choices along it. My mod is about being able to make more satisfying choices. Not about artificially extending the life of the game.
Sandboxers, BTW, want bigger reactors. And I want big nukes and tectonics and fungus, when I choose to do that in a game. So I think this means they have to stay in. I will consider the feasibility of adjusting various costs to compensate.
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Generally more balanced game = less benefits from exploits = better AI playing = more challenging game
With you so far.
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= longer game.
Nope. Furthermore, one must distinguish between game time and real wall clock time. It's Turn Based Strategy. You could think for an hour about one game turn, if you were so inclined. Actually in very long games, that can happen organically, just due to all the units you're pushing around. I think of this all in terms of "the mouseclick budget". If a game is wasting my mouseclicks, I am not happy.
So for instance, some of your design ideas in some threads have been of the flavor, hey, let's "solve" problems by more turtling up! Well I've played enough Civ-style games where turtling up was the order of the day. The early game of Freeciv was heavily that way, a city wall on a hill is basically impregnable. Pretty much had to wait until you got Cannons. Catapults were too expensive for not enough firepower and would tend to die en masse. This has the effect of reducing choice, your realistic choice is to put all your civilization energy into getting better tech as fast as you can.
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If you are working on more challenging but specifically shorter game - that is completely different story and different game. If so, make it explicit and I won't waste your time anymore.
This mod is not "abbreviated SMAC". I have imagined writing that mod, but realistically, I'm only ever going to write and champion one mod. It is too much work to get a mod adopted by players, to split their attention 2 ways. Let alone my development energy. Any "abbreviated SMAC" ideas are going into a new game, to try to make money. SMAC has lots more crap in it than is needed.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on October 22, 2018, 08:52:17 PM
You didn't share how to disable reactor in alphax.txt, though.
:)
Post by: bvanevery on October 22, 2018, 10:04:33 PM
I wonder if the game barfs if I change the prereq to Fission reactors to something other than "None" ?
Setting it to another tech, like Industrial base, doesn't do anything. Units are still shown with Fission reactors, but the Fission reactor choice in the Unit Design Workshop is greyed out.
Setting it to "Disable", completely removes the reactor from the available choices. It isn't even greyed out, it is completely gone. Units still have Fission reactors though.
I just tried adding a weapon and an armor to their respective tables. It doesn't work, they are ignored. So, have to distribute the ones that exist as best as I can.
Verified that a strength 3 weapon does indeed look like a Laser.
Post by: bvanevery on October 23, 2018, 08:53:54 PM
Changed from version 1.22 to 1.23:
- Free Drones: changed personality back to Erratic. When they were Passive, I saw them get bottled up unnecessarily by the Peacekeepers, who are also Passive. The Drones clearly should have fought for territory.
- Pirates: removed incorrect Faction Help entry saying they get +1 PROBE and -1 GROWTH. They get neither.
- Heavy Artillery: moved to C1 Applied Physics.
- Bioadaptive Resonance: changed it from a C5 to a C3 tech.
- Soporific Gas Pods: moved to C4 Retroviral Engineering.
- Resonance Laser: now has attack strength 3 and cost 3.
- Silksteel Armor: now has defense strength 4 and cost 4.
- Photon Wall: now has defense strength 6 and cost 6.
- Probability Sheath: now has defense strength 8 and cost 8.
- Progenitor Psych: set power=4 and growth=3, making it a C2 tech. Need it as a Conquer prereq. Previously it only had growth=1, making it gratuitously hard to discover, which is probably not a good idea after all.
- Field Modulation: set power=4 and growth=3, making it a C3 tech. Need it as a Conquer prereq.
- Nonlinear Mathematics: changed it from a C3 to a C4 tech.
- Silksteel Alloys: changed it from a C5 to a C4 tech.
- Carrier Deck: moved to C5 Doctrine: Air Power.
- Cruiser Colony Pod: moved to C5 Doctrine: Air Power.
- Submarine Probe Team: moved to C5 Doctrine: Air Power.
- Superconductor: changed it from a C4 to a C5 tech.
- Missile Launcher: moved to C6 Orbital Spaceflight.
- Chaos Gun: moved to C7 Probability Mechanics.
- Superstring Theory: changed it from a C6 to a C8 tech.
- Phaser: moved to C8 Superstring Theory.
- String Resonance: changed it from a C8 to a C9 tech.
- Sentient Resonance: changed it from a C9 to a C10 tech.
- Matter Compression: changed it from a C9 to a C10 tech.
- Clinical Immortality: moved to Matter Editation.
- Matter Editation: set power=3 and growth=3 due to Clinical Immortality.
- Temporal Mechanics: changed it from a C10 to a C11 tech. Set wealth=0 and growth=0 due to removal of Clinical Immortality.
- Applied Gravitonics: changed it from a C11 to a C12 tech.
- Singularity Mechanics: changed it from a C12 to a C13 tech.
- Controlled Singularity: changed it from a B13 to a B14 tech.
- Intertial Damping: changed it from a C13 to a C14 tech.
- Threshold of Transcendence: changed it from a D14 to a D15 tech.
- changed many prereqs
The attachment limit per post is 5, and I eventually ran out of room at the top of the thread. Consequently, this becomes the new home of version 1.23. It was downloaded 60 times before I moved it here.
Post by: vonbach on October 25, 2018, 03:13:58 AM
Post by: bvanevery on October 25, 2018, 05:53:50 AM
I think it's been eons since I've seen any city revolt and change hands. It's not generally something I allow my own cities to do. Haven't really seen Drone Riots inflicted by foreign meddlers in a long time either, probably because of the way I changed PROBE bonuses. I think the AI doesn't value probe teams all that highly anymore. It'll make some but not tons, which is fine by me!
Post by: vonbach on October 25, 2018, 01:54:08 PM
But the computer never did well with them at all. It was far to passive and unless left alone for a long time
they simply got flattened. Try making them as aggressive as Santiago and they would be far more formidable.
Post by: bvanevery on October 25, 2018, 03:03:12 PM
The Peacekeepers, Morganites, University, and Pirates are all getting away with Passive just fine. Doesn't mean they won't make war. It means they tend to concentrate on getting huge, get big factional resource advantages, and then decide they will clobber somebody.
Post by: vonbach on October 25, 2018, 08:57:33 PM
Post by: bvanevery on October 26, 2018, 01:20:58 AM
Post by: bvanevery on October 27, 2018, 04:24:29 PM
I'm not sure of any pattern with C2 techs, but it seems like Doctrine: Loyalty is more likely to be researched first. The net effect is that learning how to make Command Centers is rather random, with some factions possibly gaining it much earlier than others. Maybe it has made faction potential lopsided, I'm not sure, as I've never paid close attention to this issue. But as a player I find it a bit frustrating, wondering "Where are my !@#$#!$ Command Centers??!"
I will move them back to Doctrine: Mobility and do a 1.24 release. I will keep the "no more than once a week" rhythm and release on Oct. 30th. If anyone has any other suggestions / issues, now would be a good time to make them known.
Once upon a time, I was worried about the AI building Command Centers obsessively in the early game. The AI also seemed to obsess about building artillery, if it was available early. The latter doesn't seem to be a problem anymore, so perhaps the former isn't either. I actually enjoyed the delay in Command Center availability for awhile, but now it's taking too long. It's as though a Conquer 1.5 tier of techs is needed. It probably means tier 1 has gotten broader, and tier 2 as well, so just harder to get any particular tier 2 tech.
Post by: bvanevery on October 29, 2018, 05:00:10 AM
I had lots of allies and peace, except for Deirdre. Who proceeded to send a foil probe team across the board and take over one of my sea bases! And then Svensgaard, my newly made ally, took that over. So I don't even get to liberate my own base. It's like allying with the Soviets in WW II. The whole point of me putting that base there in the 1st place, was to constrain Pirate expansion into my waters. I quit.
I made some more changes for 1.24. I split out all the strength 3 armors into different C3 techs that are discovered in parallel. I made Lasers and Synthmetal Armor into C2 techs. Marines and Marine Detachments come at C3 now. Progenitor Psych is now C1 and it's how you get Nerve Gas Pods. I figure if you have to talk to Aliens, you should be able to kill 'em! Ecological Engineering and Advanced Ecological Engineering take over for getting more food and minerals out of fungus squares, instead of some more conquesty rampaging techs they were previously associated with. These changes seem to test fine, to the extent I played them.
Post by: Vidsek on October 30, 2018, 09:59:03 AM
Your latest changes all sound good to me.
I'm looking forward to merging 1.24 with Yitzi's. I may have some time soon to game test a bit.
Post by: bvanevery on October 30, 2018, 04:01:28 PM
Part of what's driving these changes, is I've been pushing all the "interesting" gewgaws as early as I think they can reasonably go. Like why wait around for Marines or Marine Detachments? They will now be C2.
Post by: bvanevery on October 31, 2018, 04:22:29 PM
Changed from version 1.23 to 1.24:
- Command Center: moved back to C1 Doctrine: Mobility. The Tier 1 and Tier 2 techs have increased in number, so any Tier 2 tech can take a surprisingly long time to acquire.
- Information Networks: changed it from a D2 to a D1 tech. Set power=0, wealth=0, and growth=0. It doesn't provide these benefits. Even with "bread crumb" settings, the AI factions can easily take 150 years to research this tech. Making it Tier 1 should alleviate that, because some factions will discover it earlier, it can be popped from a supply pod, and it will be perceived as less valuable to trade.
- Progenitor Psych: changed it from a C2 to a C1 tech. Set growth=0 as it doesn't grow anything. Tier 1 techs can be found in supply pods, so less concern about not being researched.
- Nerve Gas Pods: moved to C1 Progenitor Psych. If you have to talk to the Aliens, you should be able to kill them!
- Social Psych: set wealth=0. It doesn't provide wealth.
- Doctrine: Mobility: set wealth=0. It doesn't provide wealth and isn't needed as a Build prereq.
- Centauri Ecology: set wealth=3 and growth=4, making it an E1 tech.
- Industrial Base: changed it from a B2 to a B1 tech. Need more Tier 1 techs.
- Synthetic Fossil Fuels: set wealth=4 and growth=3, making it a B2 tech.
- Free Market: moved to Synthetic Fossil Fuels.
- Doctrine: Flexibility: set wealth=0. It doesn't provde wealth.
- Biogenetics: changed it from a D1 to a D2 tech. Set power=3 and wealth=0. In addition to a lifecycle bonus, it increases resistance to genetic warfare. It doesn't provide wealth, and it wasn't actually a prereq for Synthetic Fossil Fuels in version 1.21.
- Field Modulation: changed it from a C3 to a C2 tech.
- Ethical Calculus: set wealth=3. Greater EFFIC from Democratic and Children's Creches can add up to a lot of credits. It's also the only advanced Politics that doesn't penalize ECONOMY.
- Adaptive Economics: set wealth=3. The INDUSTRY bonus is definitely a form of wealth.
- Adaptive Doctrine: changed it from a C4 to a C2 tech.
- Marine Detachment: moved to C2 Adaptive Doctrine.
- Amphibious Pods: moved to C2 Adaptive Doctrine.
- Applied Physics: changed it from a C1 to a C3 tech.
- Laser: now has attack strength 3.
- High Energy Chemistry: changed it from a C1 to a C3 tech.
- Plasma Steel Armor: moved to C3 High Energy Chemistry.
- Perimeter Defense: moved it to C3 High Energy Chemistry.
- Resonance 3 Armor: moved to C3 Bioadaptive Resonance.
- Resonance Laser: now has attack strength 2.
- Comm Jammer: moved to C3 Advanced Subatomic Theory.
- Pulse 3 Armor: moved to C3 Advanced Subatomic Theory.
- ECM 3-Pulse Probe Team: moved to C3 Advanced Subatomic Theory.
- Ecological Engineering: now gives +1 NUTRIENT in fungus squares.
- Centauri Genetics: set power=4 and growth=3, making it a C3 tech. No longer gives +1 NUTRIENT in fungus squares.
- The Citizen's Defense Force: moved to C3 Centauri Genetics.
- The Command Nexus: moved to C3 Polymorphic Software.
- The Neural Amplifier: moved to C3 Neural Grafting.
- Ecological Engineering: added Rover Former predefined unit to help AI. The Speeder chassis is not in the path of this tech, but since it's an E3 tech, I figure it's ok to research it by now.
- Fungi Rover Former: removed. It is expensive. Combining fast Rover Formers to lay roads, and slow Fungicidal Formers to clear fungus, is a better strategy.
- Submarine Probe Team: added Deep Radar ability.
- Centauri Psi: no longer gives +1 MINERAL in fungus squares.
- Advanced Ecological Engineering: now gives +1 MINERAL in fungus squares.
- changed many prereqs
The attachment limit per post is 5, and I eventually ran out of room at the top of the thread. Consequently, this becomes the new home of version 1.24. It was downloaded 70 times before I moved it here.
Post by: bvanevery on November 01, 2018, 09:22:23 AM
Post by: bvanevery on November 07, 2018, 02:45:10 PM
Changed from version 1.24 to 1.25:
- Heavy Artillery: moved to C1 Doctrine: Mobility. Naval artillery is available with C1 Doctrine: Flexibility, so this is parallel and equalizing.
- Information Networks: set growth=2. Although it doesn't provide this benefit, a "bread crumb" is needed to ensure it is researched by someone. Few factions have a Discover focus, but many have an Explore focus. Someone needs to research it, as supply pods do not necessarily produce this tech.
- Biogenetics: set power=2. Although it does offer a lifecycle improvement and increased resistance to genetic warfare, neither are immediately useful.
- Perimeter Defense: moved to C2 Doctrine Loyalty.
- Deep Pressure Hull: moved to C3 High Energy Chemistry.
- Heavy Transport ability: moved to C3 High Energy Chemistry.
- Skunkworks: moved to B4 Industrial Automation.
- Clean Reactor: moved to B4 Bio-Engineering.
- Single-Sided Surfaces: set power=4 and wealth=0. Changed it from a B4 to a C3 tech.
- Cloaking Device: moved to C3 Single-Sided Surfaces. Now allowed for Probe Teams.
- Improve fungus squares: now available with B5 Advanced Ecological Engineering, instead of C5 Centauri Psi.
- changed various prereqs
- special tech flag 000000010: changed comment from "Improves Probe Team success rate" to "Improves Probe Team base morale". The former is wrong, the latter is right. Removed this flag from all techs. Command Centers, Bioenhancement Centers, Cover Ops Centers, Secret Projects, Social Engineering choices, and inherent faction advantages already offer plenty of ways to buff up a probe team.
- Comm Jammer: now available for Combat units only. Not for probe teams, terraformers, or other non-combat units. The AI is quite happy to use ECM probe teams offensively. When combined with armor they are surprisingly difficult to kill, as probe teams defend as combat units. Such units can even be used as garrisons with no support cost paid on them! Removing ECM reduces this exploit somewhat. There's no way to take away probe team armor.
- Hypnotic Trance: now available for Combat units only.
- Dissociative Wave: now available for Combat units only.
- Blink Displacer: now available for Combat units only.
- Polymorphic Encryption: now not allowed for Probe Teams. It's nonsensical: probe teams fight, they never get subverted.
- Clean Reactor: now not allowed for Probe Teams. They don't require support anyways.
- Algorithmic Enhancement: turned off "Allowed for Terraformer units", and turned off "Allowed for Combat units". Neither makes any sense. A probe team is considered a Noncombat unit with regards to Abilities.
- Light Artillery: new predefined unit to help AI. Available with C1 Doctrine: Mobility. Without this cheap (1)-1-1 unit, the AI produces excessive numbers of (1)-2-2 units. They cost twice as much and are no better at artillery duels. To keep this unit from being produced excessively as well, it is given an AI Plan of 3 = Reconnaissance
- Heavy Transport Foil: new predefined unit to help AI. Available with C3 High Energy Chemistry.
- ECM Synthmetal Probe Team: removed.
- ECM 3-Pulse Probe Team: removed.
- Synthmetal Probe Team: created as new predefined unit to help AI. Available with C3 Advanced Subatomic Theory. The AI never uses armored probe teams defensively, so it's on a Speeder chassis to be used offensively.
- 3-Pulse Probe Team: created as new predefined unit to help AI. Available with C4 Silksteel Alloys. Speeder chassis.
- Submarine Probe Team: removed Deep Radar. It no longer has Neural Grafting as a preceeding tech.
- Battle Ogres MK1, MK2, MK3: set unit cost to autocalculate.
- Battle Ogre MK2: set weapon to Missile Launcher and armor to Photon Wall. I got the old version of the MK2 on turn 46 of a test game. It was clearly overpowered.
- Battle Ogre MK3: set weapon to R-Bolt and armor to 12-Res. Added Blink Displacer.
The attachment limit per post is 5, and I eventually ran out of room at the top of the thread. Consequently, this becomes the new home of version 1.25. It was downloaded 134 times before I moved it here.
Post by: Brunost on November 11, 2018, 02:09:34 AM
Post by: bvanevery on November 11, 2018, 02:19:10 AM
For millions of laughs I'll try this exercise in a moment and tell you what I find.
You might be grumbling about the need to haul out a diff tool to play something. "Exactly". This is why I don't support patches in my mod. It would greatly increase the work I'd need to do with each release. The "slick" answer to this would be some kind of automated script, and content installer, but the SMAC community hasn't made it to such sophisticated tools yet.
Post by: bvanevery on November 11, 2018, 03:18:50 AM
Post by: Brunost on November 11, 2018, 04:14:47 AM
I had a session yesterday with the Scient 2.0 patch but it became quite boring. Playing as the Angels I ended up on a semi-large island all alone with almost no encounters until late in the game. As always I ended up with a troubled relationship with everyones nemesis, Charman Yang, but he gave in to a truce shortly after I sunk some of his navy outside my shores. Usually he continues on with no mercy, so this was a rather unlikely behaviour from him. The "weak" factions ended up eradicated quite early in the game(as always) and the usual suspects was the only factions left (Spartans, Hives etc). So definetely your mod is needed in the mix.
Post by: bvanevery on November 11, 2018, 05:10:01 AM
Post by: Brunost on November 11, 2018, 09:46:47 PM
Post by: bvanevery on November 12, 2018, 12:06:18 AM
Post by: Brunost on November 12, 2018, 02:53:40 AM
Or you can just try my mod and see if my newer arrangements of continent, water, and island ratios work out for you.
That didn`t cross my mind. Thanks for the reminder ;b;
Post by: bvanevery on November 12, 2018, 03:04:32 AM
Post by: vonbach on November 18, 2018, 07:06:31 AM
If theres one government that has +growth it should be them and not Democracy or at least more than Democracy.
Post by: bvanevery on November 18, 2018, 12:54:53 PM
This is entirely comparable to my version of Police State, which gives +1 SUPPORT and +2 POLICE, at the cost of -1 ECONOMY and -1 EFFICiency. From a gaining or losing abilities standpoint, they are a choice, an equal trade.
You might be feeling weakness because the Believers do not have +2 SUPPORT as a faction advantage anymore. Excessive SUPPORT is a game killer and I don't allow anyone to obtain it easily / gratis anymore. You have to make choices on the SE table and you have to take the negative consequences of those choices.
Unless you have IMPUNITY to some SE choice, and even then, it'll only be for that 1 choice. The Hive has IMPUNITY to Police State. The Cult of Planet has IMPUNITY to Fundamentalist. No research penalty! The Believers don't have that, but they do have +1 ECONOMY, which cancels half of the penalty you get from Fundamentalist. Also if the Believers don't go Fundamentalist, they can make money. Consider that +1 ECONOMY is what the Morganites get in the stock game. No other faction in my mod gets +1 ECONOMY. Morgan gets +2 ECONOMY so he can really make money.
Fundamentalist doesn't give any PROBE benefit anymore and that's by design. If you had a probe team heavy play style then yes, you would definitely feel that it's weaker than the stock game. I have nerfed the propensity of AIs to take over everything with probe teams, by taking away its ability to have a gigantic PROBE rating.
I don't think Fundamentalist is weak, and I've done a lot of playtesting by now.
If you think the Believers are weak, that's a different issue, one that I've worried about and struggled with. Nowadays, they can make money and they are immune to enemy mind control. Those aren't trivial abilities, as only 1 other faction has an ECONOMY advantage, and no other factions are immune to mind control. Of course, the latter probably doesn't seem like that big a deal compared to the stock game, because Fundamentalist Believers would have a +3 PROBE rating anyways, which gives the same ability. But you can be Democratic Believers and still have that ability, and make money, in my mod.
I don't think the Cult of Planet is weak. You may not be used to them as "the other Fundamentalist faction".
The Aliens have always had a propensity to go Fundamentalist. Their directed research is still a major advantage, even though I've nerfed them in other respects. I don't think the Aliens are weak.
Other factions may go Fundamentalist as a matter of circumstance. I don't think it's been harming them.
Myself, I've done Fundamentalist and Green a fair amount. My Green gives +1 ECONOMY, so that cancels the -1 ECONOMY of Fundamentalist. Similarly, SUPPORT bonuses and penalties are canceled. I've done similarly with Police State and Green.
Post by: vonbach on November 18, 2018, 02:04:29 PM
The main issue I have is having to go planned Democracy to have
+Growth which is silly. Never mind the fact that planned economies
actually shrink growth (just look at Europe or the USSR). Fundamentalist should
have a +Growth in there somewhere. If theres anything that should give Growth its that.
Its penalties are very high. Both Police State and Democracy are simply better.
I was thinking something along the line of a hybrid of Democracy and Police state
offering growth and population control at the cost of research.
I usually play custom factions actually. Usually based on one of the main factions just modified.
Believers do ok in most of their games.
Post by: bvanevery on November 18, 2018, 03:15:54 PM
The Cult of Planet does not get a GROWTH bonus, and unlike the Believers, they are not allowed to use Democratic. They have a number of advantages, but this is one of their disadvantages. They are unlikely to give up their IMPUNITY to Fundamentalist. They would have to get a pop boom by making people really happy, or by building the Cloning Vats.
The Hive gets +1 GROWTH, same as the stock game. They cannot choose Democratic. Their bonus makes up for that, so they can pop boom just fine. They have to choose either Simple or Planned economy, and Eudaimonic, and Children's Creches, to get a pop boom.
My mod actually did pass through some versions where Fundamentalist was giving a GROWTH bonus. However, I eventually needed it to have other bonuses, and I'm not willing to violate the "3 bonuses, 2 penalties" paradigm. +1 POLICE is definitely worth more than +1 GROWTH, especially since I made the Believers have +1 GROWTH to compensate. I think if you want to grow a lot as a Fundamentalist faction, you should play the faction that was designed for that play style. I gave my Believers options. Democratic is viable strategy for them.
From a realism standpoint, per my design notes, I had to give up GROWTH realism in favor of acceptable game mechanics. At least the GROWTH stuff is not quite as goofy as the original game.
Post by: vonbach on November 18, 2018, 06:35:29 PM
Especially with the Research penalty. I'm testing the games ability to terraform and it seems much improved.
Post by: bvanevery on November 19, 2018, 12:40:34 AM
I could remove the Believers' inherent research penalty completely. I would only do that if I also changed the Fundamentalist penalties to -2 RESEARCH, so that the net effect as the AI plays the Believers is the same.
I'm an Atheist. I don't have anything against Christians per se. But I think it's totally fair that if you go Fundamentalist, you're going to do bad science. There's a Creationist museum in Ohio, for instance, that has got people and dinosaurs walking next to each other contemporaneously. There are fundamentalist movements to stop kids being taught evolution in schools.
From a game mechanical standpoint, I think the ability to make plenty of money in a Fundamentalist government, might be interesting. And as more of a contrast with Police State. However it's also a big change, so I think I'd like to hear someone else's opinion too.
Of course it is not a big change from the original game.
Post by: vonbach on November 19, 2018, 03:43:08 AM
Quote
I'm an Atheist. I don't have anything against Christians per se. But I think it's totally fair that if you go Fundamentalist, you're going to do bad science.
Many of the people that started science were monks and nuns actually. Thats what monasteries and convents were for.
This game is very anti-christian. Miriam is literally the "church lady" from Saturday night live.
She's basically every atheist talking point rolled into one. Mind controlled followers (silly),
hyper aggressive (like Christians are muslims, the crusades were actually a defensive measure)
and backwards (research penalties).
The changes made to Miraim and Fundamentalist are nice but theres only so much you can do.
Post by: bvanevery on November 19, 2018, 05:36:38 AM
Many of the people that started science were monks and nuns actually. Thats what monasteries and convents were for.
But were they Fundamentalist? What does it mean? I have no doubt that ISIS is Fundamentalist, for instance, and mostly harmful to the world. The only thing positive I can say about them, is they've brought a kind of order to a chaotic part of the world. It still seems a very dangerous place, regardless. They're also dominating and exploitative, treating women like @!#$ and throwing gays off of minarets. Is it correlated with bad scientific research?
Quote
This game is very anti-christian.
I think we agree on that. You're even acknowledged in my release notes, because of your contributions of thought on this issue. It's a question of to what degree we agree.
Quote
Miriam is literally the "church lady" from Saturday night live.
She's basically every atheist talking point rolled into one. Mind controlled followers (silly),
hyper aggressive (like Christians are muslims, the crusades were actually a defensive measure)
and backwards (research penalties).
The changes made to Miraim and Fundamentalist are nice but theres only so much you can do.
I have a bold proposal. What if I got rid of Miriam's RESEARCH penalty entirely? No inherent disadvantage to being a Christian. And, remove the AI's compulsion to play Miriam as Fundamentalist. Maybe they choose that. Maybe they go Democratic. Maybe even Police State. I already have a faction in the game now that's an absolute dedicated Fundamentalist, that's the Cult of Planet. They're a cult, they're awful, they sacrifice people to mindworms.
I think I'd even be willing to edit Miriam's faction dialogue, to the extent I have access to her lines in believe.txt.
Fundamentalist though, has to mean something. I'd leave the -1 RESEARCH penalty intact. And upon further contemplation, I think -1 RESEARCH -1 ECONOMY is still better than -2 RESEARCH. I'm not interested in protecting the identity and sensibilities of Fundamentalists. These are people who believe in burning people at the stake. Inquisitions. Stoning to death.
Post by: vonbach on November 19, 2018, 05:55:10 AM
Quote
But were they Fundamentalist? What does it mean?
Thats actually a good question really. Fundamentalist is a holdover from civ 2 and I never liked it. I usually remove it for something like "nationalist".
Fundamentalist in game terms seems to mean a repressive religious state and thats not what Christianity is.
Quote
I have a bold proposal. What if I got rid of Miriam's RESEARCH penalty entirely? No inherent disadvantage to being a Christian. And, remove the AI's compulsion to play Miriam as Fundamentalist. Maybe they choose that. Maybe they go Democratic. Maybe even Police State. I already have a faction in the game now that's an absolute dedicated Fundamentalist, that's the Cult of Planet. They're a cult, they're awful, they sacrifice people to mindworms.Thats a good idea actually. I would and I sometimes do when modifying my own game. Power is one thing she seems interested in. Eudianomia is actually a decent ideology for her as well.
Quote
I'm not interested in protecting the identity and sensibilities of Fundamentalists. These are people who believe in burning people at the stake. Inquisitions. Stoning to death.So do communists they just do it through doxxing or gulags really.
Post by: bvanevery on November 19, 2018, 06:13:03 AM
So do communists they just do it through doxxing or gulags really.
That's why Police State and Fundamentalist are deliberately similar in my mod. You really couldn't tell the difference in Mao's China.
I think the Believers would be more interesting, if they're the only faction that doesn't have a Social Engineering compulsion. They have an aversion in my mod, that's to Cybernetic. That fits all of Miriam's lines in the tech blurbs and Secret Project videos. But I don't see a reason why they'd have to prefer Eudaimonic over Thought Control. Christians have gone both ways.
Inventory of compulsions:
Hive - Police State
Peacekeepers - Democratic
Cult of Planet - Fundamentalist
Morganites - Free Market
Caretakers - Planned
Gaians - Green
Spartans, Usurpers - Power
University - Knowledge
Pirates - Wealth
Cybernetic Consciousness - Cybernetic
Free Drones - Eudaimonic
Data Angels - Thought Control
Pretty well got compulsions covered by everyone else.
Suddenly makes me wonder: why would the Believers ever acknowledge Planet and Transcend with it? It's not God. Seems like Transcend shouldn't even be allowed as a Believer victory condition. But, there's no way to deny a victory condition in the official game on a faction basis, that I know of. I think one of the unofficial patches does allow that sort of thing, but I'm not going to require a patch for my mod.
Post by: vonbach on November 19, 2018, 06:27:12 AM
Quote
Suddenly makes me wonder: why would the Believers ever acknowledge Planet and Transcend with it? It's not God. Seems like Transcend shouldn't even be allowed as a Believer victory condition. But, there's no way to deny a victory condition in the official game on a faction basis, that I know of. I think one of the unofficial patches does allow that sort of thing, but I'm not going to require a patch for my mod.
The Gaians and Planet Cult worship the planet as a goddess. The idea is blasphemous to any Christian.
Heres a question how do the Spartans actually do? They seem a little weak to me.
Post by: bvanevery on November 19, 2018, 02:38:06 PM
In AI vs. AI testing, the Spartans were utterly destroying everyone around them for quite awhile. I'm not sure about lately, in my most recent releases. A major change in their AI behavior is now they are Aggressive. In the stock game they are merely Erratic. They are not weak compared to stock Spartans, as they do not have the -1 INDUSTRY penalty. I did take away their +1 POLICE though. No faction gets a POLICE bonus, not even the Hive, although I did experiment with that at one point. Instead the Hive gets IMPUNITY to using POLICE.
Post by: vonbach on November 19, 2018, 02:55:28 PM
Quote
In AI vs. AI testing, the Spartans were utterly destroying everyone around them for quite awhile.Really? I'm surprised actually. On paper they seem weak.
How do you do AI vs AI testing?
Post by: bvanevery on November 19, 2018, 03:21:57 PM
On a Huge map, with 30%..50% land mass per my recommendations, AIs have room to do their thing and results are pretty consistent from run to run.
On a Standard map, 2 factions are likely to be "runted". That is, stuck behind other factions on land masses, with too small an amount of land to expand. They eventually get killed. This can happen to any faction, nobody is tough enough to be guaranteed to break out of that.
So if you were playing on a Standard map, and you saw the Spartans lose, you need to consider what their starting conditions were.
Post by: bvanevery on November 20, 2018, 04:27:16 PM
The game's equivalence of Police State = Atheist is nonsensical. I realize that in the original game, it was a contrast between Yang's character and Miriam's character. It also has overtones of historical Communist states being atheist, and that "Police State" is the game's synonym for Communism. They did reskin Civ II after all. But the Nazis were certainly a Police State and they were certainly not atheist. The modern Taliban and ISIS are easily recognized as Police State and Fundamentalist.
So, what to do? I could accept occasional nonsensicality, or I could get into seriously rewriting some game dialogue in xscript.txt.
This isn't the only nonsensical bit. The Usurpers start speaking like humans in conversations about their new Power compulsion. The Cultists talk about the good Lord when they're worshipping mindworms and Planet.
What I might do, however, is release game mechanical changes for a version 1.26, and save dialogue changes for a version 1.27. I'm looking at longer release cycles now. My metric of when to do a release, is when downloads of a given version stop happening. Posting a big message to /r/4Xgaming definitely increased my number of downloads, pretty much doubling them. I'm not sure if more downloads are trickling in now or not. If I haven't seen any more in about a week, I'll conclude that I've gotten what there is to get. I'd say at least a 2 week cycle now, and a month cycle may be justified.
I suspect that including an After Action Report with a release also helps. So there is the consideration of how frequently I wish to do those. Not too frequently! They take work.
Playtesting might reveal that the AI doesn't choose Police State in practice all that often anyways though. After all, the Believers are an Aggressive faction with an attack bonus. The AI might want the MORALE bonus from Fundamentalist.
Hrm, just realized the Believers could / will choose Democratic as well. I bet this results in nonsensical complaints about religion as well. Well for now, I guess I'll playtest and see what it's like to interact with them.
Hey wait a minute, maybe I'm off the hook! In my mod they're only going to complain about Cybernetic. I don't think I actually have a dialogue problem in this case.
I still could get into the business of changing anti-Christian / assuming Christian dialogue. I'd like to fix the Cult of Planet to talk about mindworm horrors, not God.
Post by: vonbach on November 20, 2018, 11:24:45 PM
I buffed Fundamentalist by removing the support for growth. If you need to get rid of one of Miriam's buffs just get rid of the probe it never made any sense anyway.
Post by: bvanevery on November 21, 2018, 02:11:48 AM
I'm changing dialogue in believe.txt that describes them as inherently fanatic or fundamentalist, to something else. Some of the insults will still have that flavor, just as Deidre gets called a nature loony. But Miriam's designation will no longer be "The Fundamentalist". It will be "The Christian".
Let everyone who plays the game, contemplate what it means to believe in God in this future. Isn't it interesting, that if you take the "Church Chat Lady" dialogue away from the .txt files, that Miriam is actually a rather nuanced character? None of the Secret Project videos communicate basic hostility, lack of sympathy, or one-dimensionality to a Christian point of view. A person may not believe or agree with what Miriam says, but it isn't put on any lesser footing than, say, Yang's or Zhakarov's atheism. The Christian philosophy is one of the philosophies thrown into the big hat of this universe.
The game starts with Miriam. She friggin' teaches you High Energy Chemistry.
In general, I've noticed the diplomatic dialgoue has cartoonishness for various factions. One-dimensionality, shrillness. Consider Santiago's "right wing lunacy" for instance. I wonder if all that stuff was done earlier in development? The writing may have become more nuanced as time went on, but they may not have wanted to change what that had already written. The Believers may not be the only dialogue I edit.
It may also be, Miriam's role was simply positional. In the original game, there were 7 factions. In the expanded game, there were 14. Cha Dawn wasn't interpreted as a Fundamentalist religious leader, even though he obviously is one. So now, I have the Cult of Planet taking up the role that the Believers had. That leaves the Believers room to be something else.
Post by: vonbach on November 21, 2018, 01:01:35 PM
Honestly I always thought Miriam was the wisest out of all the faction leaders. Now that you mention it.
The polarization of all the factions was done on purpose I think. Just to make all the factions despise one another most of the time.
Just on another note I sometimes like to relabel Fundamentalism something else. I was thinking "Traditionalist" something that could mean
many things but basically growth and stability at the cost of slower progress. Without a police state. Something in between Democracy and Police state.
Post by: bvanevery on November 21, 2018, 02:42:40 PM
I can't think of a better term than Fundamentalist, so much better that it's worth changing what an experienced player is familiar with. I didn't come up with any greatly new category of what it's supposed to mean. I did create a near equivalence, that Police State and Fundamentalist are very similar to each other. Other games have used the term Theocratic, but that's less inclusive than Fundamentalist. I've always figured that Lal is Fundamentalist about obeying U.N. bureaucratese, not that the Peacekeepers get a religion if they go Fundamentalist. The Aliens don't worship a god either if they go that way, they're just even more wound up about the ideologies their factions already have.
Post by: vonbach on November 22, 2018, 03:30:53 AM
Post by: bvanevery on November 22, 2018, 05:18:59 AM
The Problem is the Believers without thier fanatic bonus will probably get destroyed.
Gonna quote my own release notes in response to that.
Quote
I began this mod in mid-April of 2018. Its design, and all the playtesting needed to improve it, have taken 4 PERSON MONTHS of full time work to produce. In some other universe where I made money, that could have been a third of a year's salary! This mod aspires to professionalism, to be substantially better than the original game.
The next release will be 1.26. That's twenty seven releases, and a month of work before I even made the 1st release. This is a verified and tested act of game development, not some random crapshoot about what will or won't work. Every single faction has what it has at this point, because it works. At least, it works in my testing, under the conditions I designed things for.
Even with the changes I've made for 1.26, the AI may choose Fundamentalist for the Believers. I've found that my version of Fundamentalist is a very popular choice for the AI. Many factions do it at some point. I'm not clear on what the effects will be on the Believers, as I haven't done the testing yet. But the main key to Believer strength is probably the Explore focus. It's possible that Aggressive might prove more important than I thought, but neither of these have anything to do with choosing Fundamentalist.
Post by: vonbach on November 22, 2018, 09:42:22 AM
One thing I noticed is if you start out on a continent by yourself the AI goes nuts. As in start playing like its iron man or a level higher at least.
Post by: bvanevery on November 22, 2018, 12:45:44 PM
I've seen some factions improve for being made Aggressive. I think it's appropriate when a faction should be making war, like the Spartans or the Usurpers. When the Believers had a fanatic attack bonus, it made sense for them too. However I've also seen Aggressive not be helpful for a faction, not playing to its developmental strengths.
It can also be damn annoying for a player. For instance, I'd never give Aggressive to a prolific RESEARCH faction because they're gonna get Planet Busters and use them on you. Had the Cybernetic Consciousness as Aggressive at one point in my modding and that's exactly what they did to me. Hadn't committed any atrocities on them! Aggressive factions are nuke hurlers.
Explore focus is a big factor in how well factions do. They tend to make much bigger empires. It's as though that research focus has code that triggers empire expansion, and other foci don't. For instance, the University performs much better with an Explore, Discover focus than just a pure Discover focus. Even though I have their personality as Passive.
Post by: vonbach on November 22, 2018, 04:50:40 PM
Post by: bvanevery on November 24, 2018, 08:00:41 AM
The Morganites were the other neighbor on the main continent. They were my ally, although they kept complaining because I went Green. The Believers did attack them, but I asked the Believers to call off the offensive. The Believers didn't have animosity with the Hive or the Peacekeepers, because they don't insist on any particular Politics. Neither of those factions was as powerful because they didn't get as good a land start as the Believers and the Morganites did. Still, I think they were geographically positioned to survive for awhile.
I didn't bother to find out, I'd had enough of that game. Provisionally, the new Believers seem to be ok. I won't kick 1.26 out the door yet though, because people are still downloading 1.25.
Post by: vonbach on November 24, 2018, 08:19:59 AM
Heres a silly question what exactly does the tree farm actually do? Does it just buff forests? Or does it have some other effect?
Post by: bvanevery on November 24, 2018, 03:37:05 PM
The Gaian's are probably the second most powerful faction behind the Morganites in my opinion.
Well neither of these have ever won the AI wars! Usually the Usurpers destroy everyone on land. The Spartans were also doing that for awhile but I'm not sure about lately. Meanwhile, my version of the Pirates are clearly better than either the Gaians or the Morganites, as far as getting into the future is concerned.
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I think the Psi attack bonus is unnecessary.
I didn't want them to always be inferior to the Cult of Planet.
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Heres a silly question what exactly does the tree farm actually do? Does it just buff forests? Or does it have some other effect?
It increases food production in forests, lowers eco-damage, and provides a 50% PSYCH bonus to the base.
Post by: vonbach on November 24, 2018, 05:18:49 PM
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Well neither of these have ever won the AI wars! Usually the Usurpers destroy everyone on land. The Spartans were also doing that for awhile but I'm not sure about lately. Meanwhile, my version of the Pirates are clearly better than either the Gaians or the Morganites, as far as getting into the future is concerned.The Pirates will always dominate just because of water starts. I avoid playing them just because its too easy.
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I didn't want them to always be inferior to the Cult of Planet.
Interesting. I would think the efficiency alone would make them superior. The problem is the psi bonus is either too much or would get them in trouble if removed. Maybe dropping it might be in order. It seemed overpowered in my hands and the Gaian's always do well in my games. The cult of planet or aliens is one thing i never play with. I always mod out the aliens.
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It increases food production in forests, lowers eco-damage, and provides a 50% PSYCH bonus to the base.Thanks! I've experimented with giving factions a Tree Farms just so i can do my "forest and forget" terraforming from the start sometimes.
I'm playing my first long game right now with a personal faction +2 efficiency +1 research and fanatic. Doing the land bridge of doom right now.
One thing I do like a lot about your mod is short of modding in immunities (something I dislike doing) there are no easy choices in the social engineering tree.
Post by: bvanevery on November 24, 2018, 09:13:16 PM
QuoteI didn't want them to always be inferior to the Cult of Planet.
Interesting. I would think the efficiency alone would make them superior.
Nope. Efficiency isn't a significant attribute for who's going to dominate. All that Efficiency did in the original game, is enable a faction to pay for things that are inefficient. Like the Gaians or the Cyborgs paying to have a Police State. In my mod there are no -2 EFFIC penalties, it's always -1 EFFIC -1 ECONOMY, so having a pile of Efficiency isn't even that helpful. I think the AI probably doesn't even suffer all that much from EFFIC penalties anyways, since they're so jacked up with bonuses from Transcend.
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The problem is the psi bonus is either too much or would get them in trouble if removed. Maybe dropping it might be in order. It seemed overpowered in my hands and the Gaian's always do well in my games. The cult of planet or aliens is one thing i never play with. I always mod out the aliens.
A human player can always do well with pretty much any faction. The question is what the AI can do well with. I'm not sure if the Gaian PSI bonus is helpful in that regard or not. I used to think so, but I don't know about now. Changing settings around tends to change who's dominant or not. I suppose now I should test with the Gaians played by the AI to see how they do. Perhaps turn the PSI bonus off and see what happens.
Actually, I know what I'm going to do. Ditch the PSI bonus. Give them free Biology Labs instead.
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Thanks! I've experimented with giving factions a Tree Farms just so i can do my "forest and forget" terraforming from the start sometimes.
All factions or just 1 faction? All factions would be similar to modding the terrain so that forests output 2 food. Which would pretty much make it the One True Terrain Type, whoever has the most forest wins. 1 faction, well I certainly wouldn't give them any other bonuses if they got a free Tree Farm, and they might need some penalties.
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Doing the land bridge of doom right now.
How many of those have I built...
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One thing I do like a lot about your mod is short of modding in immunities (something I dislike doing) there are no easy choices in the social engineering tree.
Yeah that's mostly a consequence of the uniform "3 benefits, 2 penalties" regime plus some balancing over time.
I've found there's a negative consequence to making the Believers have no Politics preference. You never hear Miriam's Bible thumping dialogue. I find I don't like that. It makes her character more bland.
I do, however, however, favor the idea of the Believers having no inherent RESEARCH penalty just for being Christian. And I like my removal of references to assumed extremism. I'm going to make it so that you get "Believers as usual" if they go Fundamentalist, but not otherwise. Fundamentalist will carry a -2 RESEARCH penalty instead of -1 RESEARCH -1 ECONOMY. As you said, no easy choices. I'm going to take away their Fanatic attack bonus, and also make them Erratic rather than Aggressive. They will get a NODRONE, 1 bonus. So if a human player wants to go Democratic, they can, and all the dialogue will be in character for that. I prefer the message that you choose what to do with religion, that religion isn't inherently one dimensional.
Post by: vonbach on November 24, 2018, 09:25:45 PM
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All factions or just 1 faction? All factions would be similar to modding the terrain so that forests output 2 food. Which would pretty much make it the One True Terrain Type, whoever has the most forest wins. 1 faction, well I certainly wouldn't give them any other bonuses if they got a free Tree Farm, and they might need some penalties.
Just mine. Honestly I just like to plant forests everywhere. Even with the free tree farm it wasn't that bad. It might help with food and production but not with energy.
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How many of those have I built...
I've been playing on my slightly modified planet map. I subdued the Gaian's and invaded the continent to the right and forced a pact with the Feminine Union (Brittany Spears faction) and have a treaty with the Valhallans for now. The peacekeepers are untouched for now.
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I've found there's a negative consequence to making the Believers have no Politics preference. You never hear Miriam's Bible thumping dialogue. I find I don't like that. It makes her character more bland.
Thats the one problem, I'm so used to the Believers being so aggressive I cant imagine them any other way.
Post by: bvanevery on November 24, 2018, 09:34:54 PM
Thats the one problem, I'm so used to the Believers being so aggressive I cant imagine them any other way.
There's a difference between expansive and aggressive though. In my mod they're still expansive. When someone is swallowing the map, it does tend to lead to conflict. Especially when a faction gets so big that they think they should own everything.
Post by: ChaDawnFanatic on November 25, 2018, 03:48:58 AM
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Actually, I know what I'm going to do. Ditch the PSI bonus. Give them free Biology Labs instead.
No! Don't do that!
:mad:
I love the PSI bonus. It helps a great deal when you are playing on abundant life forms. It gives the Gaians a fair chance against other factions, especially the aliens.
Don't be so suggestible!!!
Remember, this is your mod!! We're just the consumers...
Post by: bvanevery on November 25, 2018, 06:15:04 AM
As it happens, I'm playing a game as the Hive where I immediately got the Manifold Nexus. So I've got a mere +1 PLANET, like the Gaians get to start with. On a Huge map I've collected a respectable number of mindworms, and an embarrassing number of Isles of the Deep. I was capturing them so consistently for awhile, I wondered if it was a bug or an exploit. This isn't the only time I've captured massive numbers of indigenous life forms with a mere +1 PLANET either. I remember that being true of playing with the Caretakers as well.
In short, I don't think any of the PLANET factions need help flushing mindworms out of the fungus. It's kind of cake, even with the new 4:3 odds. And, 4:3 might actually help you settle abundant fungus, because when mindworms ambush your bases, they don't do as much damage.
Now, Gaians vs. other factions, I don't have a firm judgment on that yet. In my current game, the Spartans seem to be hurting them. However the Spartans started on the Monsoon Jungle, so that's to be expected. I don't know how badly they're hurt because they're all the way across the map and I don't have map info yet.
Post by: ChaDawnFanatic on November 25, 2018, 03:55:10 PM
Biology Labs give a lifecycle bonus though. So that's +10% for mindworms and spore launchers once you can make those. Granted, that's not as good as +20% for all units at the beginning of the game. However a pile of free science isn't exactly peanuts.
To me, early game is important. With the Gaians, even more so. Biology labs may seem a viable alternative, but will never make up for lost performance in early and middle game. The early combat bonus is important. Don't ditch it!
Post by: ChaDawnFanatic on November 25, 2018, 04:22:10 PM
Post by: bvanevery on November 25, 2018, 05:16:03 PM
Biology labs may seem a viable alternative, but will never make up for lost performance in early and middle game.
I dunno, what if they make up for it by whipping you through all the other techs you need to survive and thrive? I will try playing this new version of the Gaians on a Standard size map and see what happens. Standard will ensure early conflict.
Frankly I got bored of my Huge map game. The Monsoon Jungle driven Spartans were definitely going to wipe out the Gaians though.
Post by: bvanevery on November 25, 2018, 06:34:28 PM
the efficacy of Scouts |
I'm in a bloody rock fight with the Data Angels. I'm also nominally at war with the Cyborgs, but the Peacekeepers are in the way. Just had one interloping Scout, which probably died on its own somehow. It did curtail my eastward expansion for a bit, until I could bring up a mindworm to check out The Ruins.
I had the worst luck with mindworms starting out, I couldn't find any! My feet tread too softly on the fungus, they didn't stir anything up. Eventually one ambushed a Former and I counterattacked with a Scout along a road to capture it. Similarly a spore launcher started destroying roads and I sent a Scout to go get it. That's all I've got, 1 spore launcher and 1 mindworm. And the mindworm is on the wrong side of my empire right now, although it's coming back.
Even if I'd had a PSI bonus, I wouldn't have been able to use it!
At least I'm "only" fighting the Data Angels. That said, in my mod they get any tech known by 3 factions, without needing to infiltrate anybody. A long time ago, I concluded that it was way too much to expect the AI to perform infiltration missions on Huge maps. I made life substantially easier for them. I don't know what techs they've got, but not any armor or weapons yet. They do have probe team ability though, which is disheartening. They don't start with that, so they either got lucky on research, or a bunch of other factions figured it out.
When they first declared war, they had a probe team in range of one of my cities and there was nothing I could do about it. They stole Information Networks; at least that wasn't terribly consequential.
Subsequently, they mind controlled one of my cities! Fortunately they were stupid on the follow-up and put a probe team right next to one of my advancing Scouts. I was able to kill it.
A 2nd probe team, I shelled with my spore launcher. That made it take 90% wounds and reduced its movement next turn to 1 square. Thus, the spore launcher can stay next to it, as probe teams have no effect on native life. I've brought up a Scout Rover to finish it off.
This mod has the new 50% defense bonus for Sensor Arrays, so I'm fortifying a front line. After that, I suppose it's going to be guerilla stalling tactics. I'm going to stick to my Explore only focus to see what the AI would have to deal with. Without the ability to get more tech, I'm thinking the AI would just die. However I do have free Biology Labs, and it's not that difficult to get into contact with other factions.
Case in point, Lal is trading me Doctrine: Loyalty which gives Synthmetal armor. Perhaps the Labs have provided me some tech trade commodities, even though they don't have direct military value. I acquire Centauri Empathy in exchange for my Industrial Base, putting me in range of Centauri Genetics and making my own mindworms. I've also got Cha Dawn's comm frequency.
All this trading gets me a Pact with Lal, another unexpected benefit of the Labs. I sign a Truce with the Cyborgs, who are neighbors with the Peacekeepers. I sign a Treaty with the Cult of Planet, but they won't trade techs.
I'd say I'm a lot better shape now for dealing with the Data Angels, but they probably get techs from all the trading I've just done. Oh well, getting closer to Centauri Genetics is worth it!
Post by: vonbach on November 25, 2018, 11:10:09 PM
Once you can make the things though you can go berserk and make zillions of the things.
Post by: bvanevery on November 26, 2018, 02:00:59 AM
piles of 3 Res soaking up mindworms |
The Data Angels have outclassed me in technology due to their sucking in of all the world's basic tech, and they're outproducing me too. Every single one of their units has 3-Res armor. The last straw for me, is the unit I just lost was a Great Boil attacking from a fungus patch. Yet the enemy lives through it. Granted that unit started the turn as a Commando, but that just says to me that it's easy for the enemy to come up with Commandos. Much easier than for me to come up with Great Boils, which don't win.
At a minimum, I think the idea of changing the odds ratio from 3:2 to 4:3 has to be scrapped. The Gaians need to be able to use mindworms offensively, otherwise they're not really worth it compared to other units. Also, the new ratio does nothing to change the ease of capturing a mindworm army. In fact I found that no ratio changes the reality of that at all. It just makes it better or worse to attack or defend when trying to capture them.
Post by: vonbach on November 26, 2018, 03:11:05 AM
Post by: bvanevery on November 26, 2018, 08:47:11 AM
It isn't actually all that helpful to have +2 EFFIC in my mod, because I don't have SE choices that have a -2 EFFIC penalty. It's always -1 ECONOMY -1 EFFIC. So if you take 2 of those, like Police State and Planned, you'll end up with -2 ECONOMY which sucks. Well, maybe that's not the end of the world, but it is annoying. Anyways +2 EFFIC won't get you out of that, so it's basically wasting a faction bonus. Cash it in for RESEARCH!
Making the Gaians into researchers, fits the dynamics of the original game, as they tended to get ahead with their Centauri Empathy exclusive Biology Labs. It also fits the lore of the game just fine. I now have differentiated the Gaians and the Planet Cult, so that the latter is not simply a better and more powerful version of the former.
I'm thinking of adding xscript.txt to my modded files. The Christian-specific dialogue for Fundamentalist bothers me. I tried adding various xscript.txt dialogues to the Cult of Planet's fungboy.txt file, changing things to be appropriate to the Cult, but it doesn't work. I'd have to make dialogue that's generic enough for everybody who insists on Fundamentalist politics. Replacing things like God and The Lord with more generic things like "The Faith" might work.
Game mechanically I find the Christian Free Will version of the Believers to be more interesting than the Fundamentalist Believers. For one thing, they can be anybody's friend, because they don't get in a snit about anything! So you have Yang, Lal, and Cha Dawn trying to kill each other, with the Believers as a wildcard. Given how much they sprawl, they might become the land version of the Pirates. A faction that just keeps growing until it's really a problem.
Post by: vonbach on November 26, 2018, 02:05:56 PM
Post by: ChaDawnFanatic on November 26, 2018, 05:13:21 PM
I've decided that barring more egg on my face from playtesting, I'm going with the "Gaians as scientists" theme. I'm going to give them free Biology Labs and +1 RESEARCH, putting them on par with the Cybernetic Consciousness. I will remove the PSI bonus, and I will reduce their EFFIC to +1.
It isn't actually all that helpful to have +2 EFFIC in my mod, because I don't have SE choices that have a -2 EFFIC penalty. It's always -1 ECONOMY -1 EFFIC. So if you take 2 of those, like Police State and Planned, you'll end up with -2 ECONOMY which sucks. Well, maybe that's not the end of the world, but it is annoying. Anyways +2 EFFIC won't get you out of that, so it's basically wasting a faction bonus. Cash it in for RESEARCH!
Sound reasoning on your part. Implementation is the next step..
:danc:
Post by: bvanevery on November 26, 2018, 05:51:50 PM
Post by: bvanevery on November 26, 2018, 07:13:15 PM
instant mindworms |
The Biology Labs, RESEARCH bonus, and Explore fast track have yielded Centauri Genetics (my Explore 3 mindworm tech) in 56 turns. Granted I had a wide open land start with only the Believers competing for the space. I seriously out-colonized them, I guess because they had another direction to expand towards. Well I shouldn't say I out-colonized them, as they're rated equal to me on the power graph. Rather, we have out-colonized everyone else.
These are the new Christian Believers, not Fundamentalist, and merely Erratic. We have no political hangups but they don't like me anyways. They threatened war already, but they backed off when I told them to stuff it. I had supposed that's just because I'm a large proximate land empire. But I'm also realizing, lack of a Social Engineering compulsion, means you don't have a SE choice to ingratiate yourself to a faction.
Despite this big mass of land, I have only captured 2 mindworms. To me this confirms that getting to the point of being able to produce your own mindworms, is more important than having a PSI bonus.
I'm also testing a 200% prototyping penalty. It hasn't really cramped my style, but then my starting empire is pretty big.
Post by: vonbach on November 26, 2018, 08:57:19 PM
Post by: bvanevery on November 26, 2018, 11:11:18 PM
Mindworms aren't currently any harder to learn how to breed in captivity, than it is to get strength 3 armor, a strength 3 laser, or a strength 2 R-laser. So in a sense yes, I thought of that. By making weapons and armor a bit harder to get. Everything is locked to tech tiers. Tier 3 = strength 3 armor and weapons. Mindworms and spore launchers are on tier 3.
I don't think mindworms should be more of a giveaway than this. You should need to be a PLANET friendly faction if you want early mindworms. It's also not that hard to research Green in my mod, it's a tier 2 tech. Of course it comes at a price, the -1 SUPPORT and -1 GROWTH penalties are harsh for fledgling factions. On the other hand, all the various types of Politics are tier 2 as well, so some of those penalties can be offset. You'll be living with something though.
Mindworms are cheaper in my mod than they are in the stock game. I believe that was PvtHudson's suggestion.
Post by: vonbach on November 27, 2018, 01:51:22 AM
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worms are cheaper in my mod than they are in the stock game. I believe that was PvtHudson's suggestion.I was wondering why I could make them so fast.
Post by: bvanevery on November 27, 2018, 12:16:36 PM
Rather than continuing to fight, I signed a Truce. I could have kept going, but in the balance of world power, I didn't feel like there was any advantage to taking over more Believer stuff. I figured I'd be better off building up my own stuff, and I'm mildly curious to see how the Monsoon Jungle driven new Believers do over a longer period of time. I've got a picket of mindworms to keep them from bothering me, and I'm planting a solid wall of fungus on my border.
Post by: vonbach on November 27, 2018, 02:12:04 PM
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I don't think it's excessive though. I actually needed all of that when the Believers and I came to blows.I don't think it is either. They are actually quite weak without facilities or monoliths. Even then they aren't overpowering just so so.
The best part is with a decent sized city and tubes you can funnel them to the front constantly and they are totally disposable.
Is there anything you needed me to test for you?
Post by: bvanevery on November 27, 2018, 04:29:50 PM
Is there anything you needed me to test for you?
Hmm, presently no. 1.26 has been a longer release cycle than previous, so a lot of things have been tested already. For instance, the various tweaks to combat odds that tnevolin was interested in. Most worked out ok, some did not.
I'd be interested in your experiences playing a game with random factions, including your own. That's a good way to shake out unforeseen problems, although I'm not expecting any.
Post by: bvanevery on November 28, 2018, 10:09:17 AM
Post by: vonbach on November 28, 2018, 03:15:57 PM
Using infantry or mind worms is a much viable strategy thanks to the tubes showing up so early.
Making the Peacekeepers an aggressive faction is actually dangerous they can be very nasty.
Those trance scouts are actually very obnoxious when you're doing a mind worm swarm.
Post by: ChaDawnFanatic on November 28, 2018, 04:43:17 PM
Post by: bvanevery on November 29, 2018, 12:16:55 AM
Some things I have noticed. The Ai is much better at terraforming and is a better opponent as a result.
I did make Rover Formers a predefined unit. The AI does produce them, but not very many of them. I don't know if they're responsible for any AI success.
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Using infantry or mind worms is a much viable strategy thanks to the tubes showing up so early.
I'm all about the rails, to a fault! It's the only way you can move large numbers of units across a large map without driving yourself crazy. I have found it also works just fine as an invasion method on Standard size maps as well. Get a surplus of Formers, build a rail to the enemy's front door, blow the city away. Wet lather rinse repeat. Really too easy, the AI doesn't know what to do about it.
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Making the Peacekeepers an aggressive faction is actually dangerous they can be very nasty.
But they aren't. In fact they are Passive. Their research foci are Explore, Conquer, so what you're interpreting as "aggression" is probably Explore driven expansionism. Historically it's the secret to the Believers' wildfire spread. Many factions in my mod have an Explore focus for this reason, it just seems to drive the AI into making substantial empires. This phenomenon is in fact the main reason my mod is still called "SMACX AI Growth mod". Explore really means colonization and growth.
The Peacekeepers have a Conquer focus as well because they expect trouble. Lotsa nasty undemocratic factions afoot. Also, the Empath Guild is considered a Conquer tech, so that keeps the Peacekeepers heading in that direction.
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Those trance scouts are actually very obnoxious when you're doing a mind worm swarm.
I've somewhat noticed that, although it hasn't been too bad. I've rearranged the tech tree for Trance 3-Res Sentinels now. Time to test it. I hope the AI actually makes those units.
Post by: vonbach on November 29, 2018, 12:22:21 AM
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But they aren't. In fact they are Passive.
I switched his aggression to max. I like to do things like this in my own games. After awhile you need something new.
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I've somewhat noticed that, although it hasn't been too bad. I've rearranged the tech tree for Trance 3-Res Sentinels now. Time to test it. I hope the AI actually makes those units.
They build anti-worm units for sure. I'm not sure the 3 res ones came into play. The game was about over at that point.
Post by: bvanevery on November 29, 2018, 02:39:10 AM
I switched his aggression to max. I like to do things like this in my own games. After awhile you need something new.
Fair enough, but my mod is something "new". Personality settings have been put the way they have for various reasons. In my mod, by making Lal Aggressive I actually think you're making life easier on yourself, with respect to him. If he's Passive, he works on the things he's supposed to. Like getting big cities and getting lots of votes. Aggressive, he probably wastes his energy on pointless wars. It's not like he has the inherent military potential to steamroller everyone, i.e. he's not the Usurpers.
Similarly, the Pirates are Passive because they are more of a strategic threat that way. They just grow and grow and grow, harvesting all those minerals in the ocean, with almost nobody to bother them. Until they finally decide they want to bother you.
Not having all the AIs at each others' throats, also allows various factions to grow side by side without wasting effort, on a Huge map where they have room for it.
In other news, I've had a curious phenomenon in my testing. Huge map, I start as the Free Drones. The University is on my modestly sized island continent with me. They get uppity and immediately declare war. They have probe teams, but they're always afraid to use them on me. Perhaps that's due to the University's -1 PROBE. They make tons and tons of probe teams, it must have consumed the bulk of their production effort. I just killed them with impunity.
The University never discovered how to make any armor or weapon. Their research foci are Explore, Discover. There is indeed a categorical purity to my allocation of weapons and armor, but I've never really seen a faction not make any before. Between a few Scouts marched all the way down the continent, and a large number of Scout Rovers made from 1 Command Center sitting next to a big mine, I conquered them. They had made it all the way to E3 Monopole Magnets, not like they hadn't done any research.
Maybe the early tech tree is too broad. Maybe the AI has no idea how to fight if it isn't handed some weapons and armor. Maybe it's ok to cakewalk any faction that starts right next to you on a Huge map.
I've decided not to continue that game, and to remove the University's -1 PROBE penalty. I'd like to know if they would have done ok with probe teams, or at least better. The geography favored me, there was a long strip of land they had to march up to get to me. All I had to do was double up my units even if they were coming for me. But that would have at least made me move less freely, so maybe I wouldn't have conquered as rapidly.
The Spartans established a good enclave. Somehow they managed to get Free Market and Synthmetal armor, without trading anyone for either. Since they have a pure Conquer focus, getting the armor isn't surprising, but getting Free Market is downright weird. In my mod it's available with B2 Synthetic Fossil Fuels, a (Build Explore) tech.
The Peacekeepers got caught behind the Spartans and had no room to expand, despite having C1 Doctrine: Flexibility to get out of their predicament. The Cyborgs were next to the Spartans, blocking Spartan access to an even larger land mass. The Cyborgs didn't do as good a job of spreading as the Spartans, but they were sitting on the Garland Crater, so maybe they had their reasons.
The Morganites and the Pirates were both going nuts, unopposed on land or sea respectively.
Post by: vonbach on November 29, 2018, 01:03:01 PM
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Fair enough, but my mod is something "new".Its quite good too. Sometimes I play random personalities and Ideologies as well. Lal doesn't do that bad because he builds huge cities pretty quickly. I've seen the mass probe teams before last time it was the Gaian's as I recall with the same result. Though at other times I've had them used on me to great effect. Some time they like to stash them for some reason.
Post by: bvanevery on December 04, 2018, 09:40:31 PM
Changed from version 1.25 to 1.26:
*FACTION changes:
- Believers: removed RESEARCH penalty. Removed Fanatic attack bonus. Removed PROBE bonus. Removed Social Psych starting tech. Changed personality from Aggressive to Erratic. Removed AI compulsion to choose Fundamentalist and did not add any new compulsion. Changed faction description from "The Fundamentalist" to "The Christian". Altered faction dialogue to eliminate references to extremism or fanaticism.
- Cybernetic Consciousness: reinstated IMPUNITY to CYBERNETIC.
- Data Angels: altered faction dialogue to reflect Roze's darker late game propensity towards Thought Control.
- Gaians: removed PSI attack bonus. Reduced EFFIC bonus to +1. Added +1 RESEARCH bonus. Added free Biology Lab at every base. Changed personality from Passive to Erratic.
- Morganites: minor change in wording of COMMERCE bonus.
- Spartans: altered faction dialogue to eliminate references to being right-wing or speaking of God. Instead Santiago's dialogue focuses on being a Citizen's Militia leader and training an elite combat force called the Warhawks.
- University: removed PROBE penalty. In an early skirmish against the University, I saw them produce tons of probe teams, and they never used them against my units. Neither of us had weapons or armor, it was a Scouts and Scout Rovers war. They should have mind controlled some of my units. They also failed to research any weapon or armor, despite getting all the way to E3 Monopole Magnets. Alternate tactics are important for non-Conquer factions, so I don't think they should be suffering when trying to use probe teams. In the original game various weapons were partly Discover techs, but now they aren't, so the University doesn't have as much of an advantage.
*SOCIAL CHOICES changes:
- Fundamentalist: removed ECONOMY penalty. Increased RESEARCH penalty to -2. The game had too many ECONOMY penalties, and this also makes it a different game mechanical choice from Police State.
- Police State: moved to E3 Intellectual Integrity.
- Free Market economy: moved to B3 Industrial Economics. It's too powerful at making money to give away earlier.
- Green economy: moved to E3 Centauri Genetics.
- Thought Control: removed ECONOMY and EFFIC penalties. Added -2 RESEARCH penalty. Most penalties for Thought Control are not realistic because people can be made to do whatever is wanted. Also, mind controlling cities takes money, so the previous penalties were counterproductive for that strategy. Whereas, if a faction cared about research, they'd choose Cybernetic.
*MINDWORM COMBAT sequence:
- Centauri Ecology: set wealth=4 and growth=3, making it a B1 tech. Not sure why I changed it in version 1.24.
- Progenitor Psych: set power=0 and growth=4, making it an E1 tech.
- Aquafarm: moved to E1 Progenitor Psych.
- Nerve Gas Pods: moved to D2 Biogenetics.
- Hypnotic Trance: moved to E2 Centauri Empathy.
- Centauri Empathy: set power=3 because Trance is useful for combat.
- Centauri Genetics: set growth=5, making it an E3 tech. Set wealth=3 due to Green economy. Explore needs to be restored as the "mindworm combat" tech tree path, so that an Explore-only faction such as the Gaians can quickly learn to produce mindworms.
- Secrets of the Human Brain: set growth=4 because Knowledge gives +1 PLANET. It's still a Discover tech because tech=5.
- Centauri Psi: set power=3 and growth=4, making it an E5 tech.
- Homo Superior: set growth=4 because Thought Control increases POLICE. It is still a Conquer tech because power=5. A strong growth setting will also call the Empath Guild to the attention factions trying to get more votes.
- The Will To Power: set power=3 and growth=4, making it an E7 tech. Psi attacks are considered mindworm stuff.
*LONGER ARMOR sequence:
- High Energy Chemistry: now a C1 tech.
- Synthmetal Armor: moved to C1 High Energy Chemistry. Having armor in Doctrine: Loyalty irritated me.
- Applied Physics: now a C2 tech.
- Laser: now has attack strength 2 and cost 2.
- Perimeter Defense: moved to C2 Adaptive Doctrine.
- Advanced Subatomic Theory: now a C3 tech.
- Plasma armor: moved to C3 Advanced Subatomic Theory.
- Heavy Transport: moved to C3 Advanced Subatomic Theory.
- Deep Pressure Hull: moved to C3 Advanced Subatomic Theory.
- Bioadaptive Resonance: now a C4 tech. Set growth=3 because Resonance weapons and armors help Psi combat. The AI was obsessively making 3-Res armor. The game doesn't need 3 armors available on the same tier. This makes the choices more of a progression.
- Resonance Laser: now has attack strength 3 and cost 4.
- Field Modulation: now a C3 tech. Set growth=0 as it no longer gives Hypnotic Trance.
- Cloaking Device: moved to C3 Field Modulation. It fits the lore of the hard-to-see Aliens.
- Single-Sided Surfaces: now a C4 tech. This is being repurposed to make a longer sequence of armors.
- 3-Pulse armor: moved to C4 Single-Sided Surfaces. The game doesn't need 3 armors available on the same tier.
- Comm Jammer: moved to C4 Single-Sided Surfaces.
- Silksteel Alloys: now a C5 tech.
- Silksteel Armor: now has defense strength 5 and cost 5.
*DIFFICULT SOCIAL CHOICES sequence:
- Planetary Networks: set growth=0 because it no longer gives Police State.
- Monopole Magnets: now an E2 tech.
- Adaptive Economics: now an E3 tech.
- Hab Complex: moved to E3 Adaptive Economics.
- The Planetary Transit System: moved to E3 Adaptive Economics. Nobody will trade Planned economy until it's completed.
- Industrial Economics: set wealth=5 due to Free Market being moved here. Nobody will trade Free market economy until the Merchant Exchange is completed.
- The Neural Amplifier: moved to E3 Centauri Genetics. Nobody will trade Green economy until it's completed.
- The Command Nexus: moved to C3 Doctrine: Loyalty. Nobody will trade Police State or Fundamentalist politics until it's completed.
- Doctrine: Loyalty: now a C3 tech. Set power=5 and build=3. It gives the Command Nexus and makes Fundamentalist available. It gives SUPPORT, which is a kind of wealth.
- The Citizens' Defense Force: moved to E3 Intellectual Integrity.
- Intellectual Integrity: now an E3 tech. Set power=2 and wealth=2. The Citizens' Defense Force is more defensive than offensive. Police State gives SUPPORT but also has EFFIC and ECONOMY penalties.
- Repeal U.N. Charter: moved to E2 Ethical Calculus.
- E2 Ethical Calculus: no change, still gives Democratic, no Secret Project associated with it. Democratic politics may be freely traded, because it is simply not valuable in the early game. It becomes valuable when an empire becomes large enough to need more EFFIC, and also has enough happiness facilities to overcome the -2 POLICE penalty. That takes awhile.
- The Ascetic Virtues: moved to B4 Environmental Economics. Nobody will trade Wealth until it's completed.
- Environmental Economics: set wealth=5 and growth=4. It lifts the energy restriction. Tree Farms grow food. The Ascetic Virtues relaxes the population limit and raises POLICE rating.
*DISCOVER sequence:
- Optical Computers: set power=1, wealth=1, and growth=1 to make it harder for non-Discover factions to research. Now has non-Discover prereqs for better thematic continuity. Making a strict chain of Discover techs in the tree probably doesn't matter, because they were all bottlenecked by non-Discover prereqs anyways.
- Applied Relativity: now a D4 tech. More Discover techs are pushed earlier to reduce the hurdles of getting to them, and to make faster research possible sooner.
- Digital Sentience: now a D5 tech. Set power=0, wealth=3, and growth=2. This tech no longer improves base probe team morale. The EFFIC bonus can be worth some money. It can also help with happiness, but the POLICE penalty works against that.
- Unified Field Theory: now a D6 tech.
- Mind/Machine Interface: now a C6 tech.
- Bioenhancement Center: moved to C6 Mind/Machine Interface. This tech no longer increases probe team base morale, so needs a benefit when the Cyborg Factory has been completed by someone else.
- Cyberethics: now a D7 tech.
- Secrets of the Manifolds: now a D8 tech.
- Secrets of Alpha Centauri: now a D9 tech. Set growth=1 because it reveals the map, but the map is probably known by now anyways.
*IMPORTANT TECHS:
- Planetary Economics: set wealth=5 because it's needed for Economic Victory, Global Trade Pacts are worth lots of money, and it gives the Planetary Energy Grid.
- Homo Superior: set power=5 because Thought Control and the Empath Guild are really good for Conquer.
- Orbital Spaceflight: set power=5 because it's required for Diplomatic Victory and it gives Planet Busters.
- Changed many prereqs to maintain continuity of research foci.
*COMBAT MECHANICS:
- Extra percentage cost of prototype LAND, SEA, and AIR units: changed from 50% to 200%. This makes it actually an effort to prototype. A Skunkworks was made more expensive to build and maintain in version 1.19.
- Land based guns vs. ship artillery: removed bonus for this. From a realism standpoint, it's nonsensical.
- Artillery bonus per level of altitude: removed bonus for this. It affects ship to ship artillery battles, so that a ship in an Ocean Shelf square has an advantage over a ship in an Ocean square. That's nonsensical. The altitude mechanic on land is mildly interesting, but it's also yet another factor for people to fuss and stress about. Forget it!
- Bonus for ships caught in port: removed this. It even affects ships defending sea bases, and that's nonsensical.
- Defend in range of friendly Sensor: changed bonus from 25% to 50%. This makes "fortifying by terraforming" more of a game mechanic.
- Heavy Artillery: changed back to "Increases w/ armor+speed value". The AI likes to produce artillery spam and this will slow it down a little.
- Hypnotic Trance: now allowed for non-combat units, but not for probe teams. Mindworms are pretty much the anti probe team technology, and they should stay fully effective against armored probe teams.
*PREDEFINED UNITS:
- Light Artillery: changed AI unit plan to "2 = Defensive".
- Rover Former: moved to C2 Monopole Magnets.
- Trance Scout: moved to E2 Centauri Empathy.
- Trance Colony Pod: new predefined unit, available with E2 Centauri Empathy. The AI is extremely stupid about blundering into mindworms.
- Marine Scout: new predefined unit, available with C2 Adaptive Doctrine.
- Cloaked Scout: new predefined unit, available with C3 Field Modulation.
- Clean Scout: new predefined unit, available with B4 Bio-Engineering.
- Trance 3-Res Sentinel: new predefined unit available with C4 Bioadaptive Resonance. Plasma armor is already available with C3 Advanced Subatomic Theory, so this doesn't give away a prototype.
- ECM 3-Pulse Sentinel: new predefined unit available with C4 Single-Sided Surfaces. Plasma armor is already available with C3 Advanced Subatomic Theory, so this doesn't give away a prototype.
- Radar Transport Foil: new predefined unit available with C4 Doctrine: Initiative. The game doesn't automatically make Transports Foils with Deep Radar even when it's free for ships.
- Radar Destroyer Transport: new predefined unit available with C5 Doctrine: Air Power.
- Submarine Probe Team: added Deep Radar because C3 Neural Grafting is now an ancestral prereq for C5 Doctrine: Air Power.
The attachment limit per post is 5, and I eventually ran out of room at the top of the thread. Consequently, this becomes the new home of version 1.0. It was downloaded 132 times before I moved it here.
Post by: Vidsek on December 05, 2018, 01:48:55 PM
An integrated version of the best of Yitzi's and Inductio's stuff would definitely catch my attention.
Of course, that would change the basic parameters and probably require a UI Growth Mod adjustment to conform.
Post by: bvanevery on December 05, 2018, 07:07:50 PM
ACK!! My finished 1.25 merge is rubbish!
In fairness, I did release 1.25 almost a month ago, and I've been communicating many of my intents the whole time since then. This is the reason I don't personally support Yitzi or other patches that require alteration to alphax.txt. The right way to handle the problem, ongoing, is with an automated rules based merge script that simply replaces whatever Yitzi needs to be happy, every single time. And to ship that script with some kind of updated Yitzi package, like bundle it with Python or Lua or whatever, so that it runs when the user installs.
Pracx already has some scripted install infrastructure in it, BTW. It's proof of concept, it alters some files, I forget whether just the Alpha Centauri.ini. That might be worth looking at if you really want to solve "the Yitzi problem" once and for all.
Another approach is to alter Yitzi to not need any change to alphax.txt in the 1st place, but that would require going up a learning curve about what he did. Not worth it to me personally. I don't need his mod features, and I'm not victimized enough by the bugs he fixed to care.
By contrast, I checked on Scient 2.0 recently and it is compatible with my modding, as any changes it makes to alphax.txt are optional or unimportant. Scient added the ability to specify the reactor size for predefined units, but you don't have to do that. He changed some of the short facility and secret project descriptions to be more helpful, but those aren't necessary.
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An integrated version of the best of Yitzi's and Inductio's stuff would definitely catch my attention.
Don't plan on that. I do skim Induktio's development posts occasionally. Last I looked, he wasn't interested in that as a priority. He has very good engineering reasons to hold that view, i.e. lotta work figuring out what Yitzi did, not a lot of obvious payoff for bothering. If he did change his mind about that, I would still expect him to put it at much much lower priority than his own new changes.
In the real world, that means it won't happen. This is the sort open source problem that gets solved when someone who really wants something, steps up and does the work themself. I fully expect Induktio mostly wants Induktio's work, not Yitzi's work. I think if anyone with "ASM mucking chops" really wanted to follow in Yitzi's footsteps, they would have done so already. It's a difficult arena to get into, much harder than writing new C/C++ code.
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Of course, that would change the basic parameters and probably require a UI Growth Mod adjustment to conform.
There's never going to be any "conformance" on my part for Induktio's work. We do not have a good working relationship. If he chooses to design a patch that will work with anybody's alphax.txt, no changes required, and he doesn't violate core assumptions about how alphax.txt works in the process, then we may finally have an entente. Engineering-wise it's the Right Thing To Do when working in a community with other people, rather than assuming one's own work is the only thing that counts.
I don't know what Induktio's views are nowadays, nor what he's implemented in that regard, nor what his implementation priorities are. I suspect he has his hands full with basic AI design, testing, and stability issues, because he bit off a lot to chew in that regard. I know how many bugs or misfeatures I typically come up with per X number of changes on my part, and I think he's working at a factor of at least 10x mucking things around. So unless he's a godlike release engineer, which frankly I have no reason to believe based on past interaction with him, I expect him to be stabilizing and polishing for several months yet.
I do think he may get there eventually, if he doesn't burn out, or something doesn't intervene in his life that prevents him from doing more work. He's basically competent at shoveling out large quantities of work, i.e. he's made releases, he hasn't quit. Engineers who keep that up, do eventually reach an endgame, a sort of "maintenance mode" rather than developing lots of new features. And then they tend to exhale deeply and say, good grief, where's my time, where's my money....
I don't trust anyone to actually get to that point, until they've actually gotten there. I've been through enough open source debacles to know what the lifecycles of people's energies are. The main variables are 1) how much previous experience someone has doing "large scale" $0 work for. Like if it's your 1st time doing something big, something is probably going to clobber you at some point. 2) how young the person is. Financial realities become seriously pressing for most people as time goes on. Where's my car, where's the roof over my head, where's my Significant Other....
I'm an outlier and not immune to the financial pressure problem myself. I definitely am feeling a pressure that I need to move on from this, to start a real commercial project. 1.26 could be my last release, I'd be perfectly happy if it was. I'd feel I'd crossed some kind of finish line. But people have this way of showing up and saying, "What about this?"
Changing the Fundamentalist dialogue in xscript.txt so that it doesn't assume we're talking about God, is something I'd like to do. However I already had enough stuff for 1.26, it was time to kick all that out the door. The Usurpers talking like humans when berating people about Power, is another wart I'd like to fix. But if my life moves on and these don't happen, then they don't happen.
What I can guarantee, at this point, is I'm moving to a 1 month release cycle at the earliest. This has to do with getting views and downloads. /r/4Xgaming got me 2.5 times more traffic than previous forums I tried, and the downloads seemed to keep coming for basically a month. I cleared 70 downloads, a new high for me. I'm doubting there are more forums to be had, but I haven't managed to make a Steam Community post with a proper URL in it. They were blocking those, I think because I didn't have a posting track record, or at least I hope so.
The next frontier is YouTube. In coming months, I will probably be focusing a lot less on developing the work, which I already did and it's good / fine. I'll be focusing a lot more on getting exposure for the work. I figure this is part of my learning curve as a game developer, something I can justify and has future value for me.
Post by: Vidsek on December 08, 2018, 08:58:37 PM
The rest of my comment was actually never-gonna-happen-in-this-world wishful thinking. I'm a semi-old guy with utterly trivial coding skills who's ok with being resigned to playing with whatever more competent people graciously offer :)
I only referenced Inductio's work since he seems to have a bug-fix or two not in Yitzi's work that looked useful.
Adjustments to preserve the intended balance and function of your AIGrowth mod I consider a proper and necessary part of any "merging", and to be done by the merger (eg. myself) as a part of that process. Fortunately, with Yitzi's patch, it has so far been no more than setting some of his new parameters to match those of basic SMACX.
I've found your insights, opinions, and advice to be informative and interesting, and to have given me a better understanding of the game mechanics. For me, that makes actually *playing* the game more fun for various reasons.
Much as I've enjoyed following you through your practice/learning experience here (with the bonus of a decent mod to play with), at this point I'm actually more interested in the game or games you'll produce yourself in the future. Do keep us informed on progress, you know many of us would be delighted to discuss aspects of it with you.....obsessively. Hmmmm, then again maybe you should keep us some of us out of the loop, just for sanity's sake ;lol
Post by: bvanevery on December 09, 2018, 05:21:18 AM
I think you're going to find 1.26 plays rather differently than some previous releases. Moving all the social engineering choices (except Democracy) to Tier 3 has a pretty substantial effect on gameplay. I find I have to spend more time coming up with solutions for basic early game stuff, without a pile of tools and gewgaws to do it. I'm ok with that, I think it's a good thing. If ever it was a goal to get rid of the boring "here's another weapon, here's another armor" dynamic, well I've certainly done that. I did relent from making it into a total rockfight though, there's Synthmetal Armor at Tier 1 and strength 2 Lasers at Tier 2. Particle Impactors really do feel like the supreme weapon though, because they're strength 4 and are typically shooting at strength 3 armor.
I'm going to start my own game effort soon. I'm just putting out real life fires right now, with my car having gone to Transmission Heaven unfortunately. Almost got a really sweet replacement, a 2003 Toyota Avalon in immaculate condition, but for sentimental reasons the owner decided they're not ready to part with it. So it's back to the drawing board.
Post by: Vidsek on December 09, 2018, 05:23:12 PM
Condolences on the Avalon. I'm fresh out of anti-sentiment drugs or I'd send you some to slip to that owner.
Post by: bvanevery on December 09, 2018, 08:37:45 PM
In modding news, I hereby claim that earlier hovertanks is not in fact overpowered. They don't fight any better than other stuff, particularly when attacking cities. I'm really kind of bored with them. I consider them grossly inferior to building rails right up to a city's doorstep.
Barring that, mindworms and a high PLANET rating are mostly more effective at attacking cities, unless the defender starts building Trance and Trance 3-Res units. The AI doesn't do so much of that, probably because I made the predefined Trance 3-Res Sentinel unit a Tier 4 tech.
I think it's kind of dumb that I can't really do strategic bombing. The distances I have to cover on a Huge map are too large for Penetrators to be viable. Well I suppose I could build a bunch of air bases but it all feels so tedious.
Post by: vonbach on December 10, 2018, 01:17:15 AM
Post by: bvanevery on December 11, 2018, 06:40:01 AM
Actually, I suppose my guarding of all the government models with Secret Projects is "working". It doesn't just stop the trade of those specific techs, it tends to shut down trade in general. Not exclusively so; sometimes, I've even gotten a Secret Project bearing tech because the AI wasn't thinking clearly enough. But generally, the tech trading economy feels very much cooled off compared to previous versions of my mod.
One thing I did differently this time around, is I put weights of "5" on various "important" techs. For instance, Environmental Economics gets "build=5" because it removes the energy restriction. This tends to make discoveries have more depth than breadth. This means Planetary Networks tends to get missed along the way.
With the much more focused and somewhat wider Explore tech path, I'm finding it's really easy to not learn Build techs. Last game as the Cybernetic Consciousness I kept the default Explore, Conquer focus. I never learned Industrial Economics! I eventually quit the game out of boredom. So many Missile Hovertanks, but my growth came to a standstill.
This game I'm the Gaians with a pure Explore focus. Fortunately the Pirates were my ally and they traded me Industrial Economics early on. I said I would be more flexible this game and just change my research focus if I needed to, rather than trying to play the game "as the AI sees it". However I find myself wanting to hold out for Centauri Psi, so I can get the new Locusts of Chiron and completely ruin everyone else's day.
I'm not sure if any of these things are problems. However it's definitely making some things awkward and once again, I'm learning how to play my own mod. Morgan blitzed me with a whole pile of unexpected Probe Teams, seeming to move right past my border of Formers very quickly. Maybe they were Elite teams, I'm not sure. Maybe my border facing his direction wasn't as good as I thought. Thought I had enough Sensor Arrays but whatever. He trashed one of my cities with 2 big mindworms in it, and grabbed a lot of my Formers, which was an annoying dick thing to do.
I slaughtered everything in response, then "doubled the guard" anywhere I left units in the open field. I had a lot of leftover Trance Scouts from a previous Police State phase of my existence, so they provided the anti Probe Team bulk. It paid off, he sent one of those stupid piles of 4 Probe Teams after me and I slaughtered the whole stack. I don't have Synthmetal Probe Teams in this version, only 3-Pulse Probe Teams, and he doesn't have that tech yet. Probably won't for awhile either as it's a pure Conquer tech.
Admittedly, I could be trashing Morgan with high PLANET rating mindworms, if I weren't so greedy for making the Tree Farms I recently discovered how to make. I'm fighting a defensive war presently, waiting to complete the Xenoempathy Dome and get the lifecycle bonus. Then I'll stop doing Wealth, which penalizes my PLANET rating, and really let Morgan have it.
The Believers have been angry at me the whole game. They're across the pond, and they're starting to put movement 12 Cruisers into effect. Fortunately I've already built all the kelp and tidal harnesses I need off my coast, so if they start killing my Sea Formers now, it really won't matter. I'm not sure I even know how to make artillery! But I do know how to make Spore Launchers, so no matter. Also I do have the Pirates as a maritime counterforce.
Post by: vonbach on December 11, 2018, 02:02:09 PM
Fundamentalism is very interesting.
Post by: bvanevery on December 11, 2018, 07:24:41 PM
On the other hand, all she's really doing is pestering my coastline with long distance Cruisers. Granted, that's 1.27 stuff. Not released, won't be until January. Gotta make sure I haven't overdone it on the Cruiser and Needlejet movement. I definitely like Foils that move 6 though. So much less painful.
Trade may be one of those relative perception things again. Comparing 1.26 to 1.25, I think the AI factions are trading less, because of the Tier 3 Secret Project barriers for important technologies. But compared to stock SMAC, they might seem to be trading more, because there are no Secret Projects until Tier 3. Ergo, Tier 1 and Tier 2 techs are traded freely. Whereas in the stock game, there are a number of Tier 1 and Tier 2 Secret Projects to block up the works.
Post by: vonbach on December 12, 2018, 02:32:10 PM
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In 1.26?? The Believers aren't Fundamentalist at all in 1.26. Kinda wish they were. Once you get on Miriam's bad side now, you can't butter her up with sycophantic Politics.You misunderstand I've been experimenting with the same build and fundamentalism. The faction plays interestingly, its good for expansion and war. The Growth and Economy are nice. Fundamentalism with the -2 research is interesting. It's actually is better than the old version in my opinion. You can deal with the research penalty without much difficulty and the bonuses it gives are nice. Not as good as Democracy but easier to deal with. It's also popular with the AI.
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Trade may be one of those relative perception things again.
It very well could be. The AI seems very willing to trade tech to me. At least more than the original game.
Post by: bvanevery on December 12, 2018, 02:49:19 PM
Sometimes with the EFFIC vs. POLICE bonuses or penalties, for Police State or Democratic, it seems like six of one, a half dozen of the other. Granted, I never made any use of Non-Lethal Methods, because I anticipated going back to Democratic in the near future. But ultimately I got bored, from too much destroying of Morganic border cities.
Post by: Vidsek on December 13, 2018, 09:40:41 AM
While I intrinsicly prefer game mechanics that follow real-world physics (eg. ships are never as fast as highway land vehicles), the "physics" of SMACX isn't realistic in many many ways, I've given up on that bias in favor of decent gameplay. So I encourage everyone to go wild exploring what the game can be tricked into doing. We can make up rationales for how it 'works' after.
Speaking of transportation, I have a suggestion for Avalon acquisition:
1) Convince the granddaughter to accept the car.
2) Buy the car from her.
Win-win, right?
Post by: bvanevery on December 13, 2018, 12:53:12 PM
The point is moot. I am solving the problem by making Graviton Theory a Tier 7 tech. Orbital insertion will also be Tier 7, and drop pods are going to be expensive. Tier 7 already takes a long time to get to in my mod, so I don't know that this will change the game that much, but late game is better than the very end of the game.
With troops, you have to consider the logistical distances that units can cover, not just highway speeds. And remember that land units are faster than sea units when they ride the mag tube.
I seriously doubt the teenage girl is going to be given title to the car anytime soon. Nor would she necessarily be offered a new car by her parents, if she sold that one to me. Probably would be punished for bucking the deal.
Post by: vonbach on December 14, 2018, 01:56:06 AM
Post by: bvanevery on December 14, 2018, 05:05:41 AM
So, what is your play style when this occurs? Faction, tendencies in your strategy, what the competition is up to, etc.
Post by: vonbach on December 14, 2018, 09:26:37 PM
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So, what is your play style when this occurs? Faction, tendencies in your strategy, what the competition is up to, etc.
Same as it always is be fruitful and multiply. I build cities until I can fill the map. I'm playing on mid tier difficulty until as I test/play with the mod.
The factions generally don't do that bad. But I'm always quite a bit ahead of the AI factions as far as power. Oddly enough It was the same city.
Post by: bvanevery on December 15, 2018, 06:01:40 AM
I build cities until I can fill the map.
Well that's a big difference between your play style and my current play style. Back when I was getting asteroid hits, I was playing on much bigger maps and probably building a lot more cities. I suspect that if you've got cities in excess of some number, the game decides you can afford to have one blasted to smithereens. Which personally I don't think is much fun, as the new Crater minerals bonuses are usually not worth as much as the facilities destroyed.
Lately I just tend to follow a combo of Bureaucracy and technology curves. When I get a Bureaucracy warning, I go more vertical. I get my cities up to some point of happiness. Then I go for some social choice that gives me more EFFICiency. Then I expand until I get a Bureaucracy warning again. Tech keeps going and typically I've got a bunch of things to build in that regard by then. I'm usually ahead of the AIs but not always. If I get big enough, my next expansion is going to be by conquering a neighbor, not by building any of my own cities. And I don't like to conquer neighbors unless they have bases that are "worth something", like they have a Secret Project in them.
Post by: vonbach on December 15, 2018, 11:07:27 AM
Post by: vonbach on December 22, 2018, 04:48:04 PM
You either have to go pure research just to get the tech or go pure war just to have a chance.
Trying the pirates this time.
Post by: bvanevery on December 22, 2018, 06:30:42 PM
Remember that Huge is the recommended map size, not Standard. The AIs need the room to become an effective challenge, and you often need the room as well. If you're "locked in a small room" with a deadly enemy at the beginning, unable to expand, you're likely to have a miserable time. Unless you're rather good at every single detail of this game and don't really need any kind of advice on how to fight in any situation ever. I think that kind of "crippled start, behind the 8-ball" is tedious as all get, so I tell people to play on Huge maps. You're really not supposed to be forced into conflict on a Huge map. Worst case, you might need to garrison some border cities so the enemy bounces. Set up kill zones to wipe out hordes of incoming units all at once, that sort of thing.
You are going to need to destroy enemy Sensor Arrays now. You can blame Tim for that one, although I took his idea and ran with it. Sensor Arrays have serious value for defense. I have tested this a lot and I think it's a good improvement to the game. I'll put a note in the Design Summary about this new reality. Don't know that people read the top of this thread, or my readme_mod.txt, but at least it'll be there if someone starts digging.
"Defense is too strong" is possible, but I haven't observed it lately. My typical play style is to invade by rails, building them right up to the door of a victim city in 1 turn, then hitting it with unarmored infantry, which gets the +25% vs. base bonus. If you are insisting on building armored infantry for your assaults, then this style of combat may be too expensive for you, and thus ineffective. I usually don't have a problem gaining enough of an offensive advantage to making this sort of thing work. I don't rely on any kind of pure research approach to do it.
Remember that at some point, Soporific Gas Pods become available. These can help you crack open a city that's garrisoned with trained defenders. Sufficiently large artillery, done often enough, can also weaken a base's defenders.
Finally if you are really stuck, consider chemical weapons. If you're worried about the mindworms punishing you, go to the Planetary Council and legalize the chemical weapons 1st. There are no mindworm consequences when the UN Charter has been repealed. Planet cares so much for the ways of humans!
I actually think mindworms are possibly overpowered in my mod now. I find offense with them to be rather easy, and I'm wondering if I need to adjust it somehow.
Speeders are going to bounce on city walls. That's by design. You simply cannot rush well defended bases with speeders. That only works against bases without a Perimeter Defense. Probe teams can be used to destroy walls first.
When it is not possible to actually penetrate a city, making lots of cheap units, pillaging and shelling the enemy, and killing whatever they send into the open against you, are useful strategies.
I do not believe in taking over every base out there. All that does is invite Bureaucracy penalties and create a mouseclicking burden for me, dealing with all the unhappness. Distant conquered cities aren't worth anything compared to cities I build myself close to my capitol. I take enemy cities when there's profit in it, like it contains a Secret Project. I often only take 1 city form an enemy, then ask them for a Truce. That's to get their attention so they leave me alone.
Post by: vonbach on December 22, 2018, 07:08:15 PM
Especially if you play with random research as I always do. You end up with equal defense and attack strength and it simply becomes pointless.
Mindworms are nice but the AI builds trance units all over the place. Thats not good because worms are often the only solution.
I'm trying an aquatic faction right now and its just an exercise in frustration.
I'm going back to normal factions.
Post by: bvanevery on December 22, 2018, 07:57:30 PM
Infantry is my go to thing to crack open cities. The problem is that you need to be quite a bit ahead to be able to do so.
I don't agree. If you're at parity, then you need artillery to soften the base up, and probe teams to destroy the Perimeter Defenses. If you are slightly above parity, you don't need to do as much of that. I've provided rails as a Tier 2 tech, so getting right up next to the base without getting wounded is not an issue. Similarly, mindworms can attack a fungus connected base without issue.
If you don't have a good victim base in front of you, if the enemy has a strongpoint due to garrisoning and terrain, bypass it. That's what real armies have to do, go tear the enemy up somewhere where they actually can. I learned how to bypass in Freeciv, because that game was full of bitter little pills. Walled cities on hilltops that you can't reduce until you get Cannons. Building Catapults to take those out was economic suicide even if you could do it, and you often couldn't.
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Especially if you play with random research as I always do.
For human factions, I consider turning on directed research to be cheating. In my mental universe if you want to direct your research, play an Alien and take their disadvantages along with it. If I were writing a game like this from scratch, I wouldn't even give the players an option to have such a baby choice. I'd rebalance the tech tree, I'd make the blind aspects of research more balanced or whatever, but I wouldn't give the players the ability to say I want this, and this, and this and this and this. This is not Oprah Winfrey.
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Mindworms are nice but the AI builds trance units all over the place.
Trance or 3-Res? 3-Res are not tough enough to stop +PLANET mindworms. Trance are though. I made Trance 3-Res Garrisons as a predefined unit in 1.26 because I thought it was getting too easy to steamroller the AI when I have a +3 PLANET rating. I didn't see the AI producing excessive numbers of the things. Trance ability is not free in my mod, it costs 1. Now Trance Scouts are pretty much getting it for free, but I haven't seen excessive numbers of Trance Scouts. It used to be standard drill for the Aliens, but then I gave them Cloaking Device instead of Hypnotic Trance, so they don't do Trance Scouts much now.
Well if you are actually finding using mindworms to be a challenge, it tells me I should think twice about trying to nerf them again in 1.27. I guess that's what playtesting is for! My playtesting says they're overpowered, your playtesting is saying they're weak. You do crank your PLANET high when going on a mindworm offensive, right?
It also makes me think that writing an AAR on how to crack bases in 1.27, might be a good idea.
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I'm trying an aquatic faction right now and its just an exercise in frustration.
I'm going back to normal factions.
Ummm an Aquatic faction should be cake under any circumstances. You've got this huge Minerals advantage over everyone else, on top of abundant food and energy. You've got a moat, nobody is likely to make their life on the water the way you do. My Pirates sit back and pursue Wealth when the AI is playing them, they have no inherent need to conquer anybody. They become a huge threat that way, because it's not easy to dislodge them at all. They spread out everywhere and are pretty much like "map cancer". It's not worth taking their bases, because you won't gain the Minerals advantage that they do.
Please reveal to me why you're having problems with Pirates. They're pretty easy even in the stock game, and my version of the Pirates doesn't have any faction penalties. making it even easier. On top of that, I also made Foil and Cruiser chasses substantially cheaper than the base game. It sounds like there's something way different about your play style or habits than what I would expect.
I can think of one serious weakness regarding life on the water nowadays. The Foil Probe Teams. Best plan is a solid Probe defense. You can build Sensor Arrays on water too. Sometimes you have to accept "easy come, easy go" with sea bases. If they've mind controlled your base, well at least now they've made themselves easy to infiltrate and steal from. They might have even done you a favor that way, if they were otherwise all the way across the map, too tedious to reach.
Post by: vonbach on December 22, 2018, 10:58:08 PM
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For human factions, I consider turning on directed research to be cheating.Honestly so do I.
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Trance or 3-Res? 3-Res are not tough enough to stop +PLANET mindworms. Trance are though. I made Trance 3-Res Garrisons as a predefined unit in 1.26 because I thought it was getting too easy to steamroller the AI when I have a +3 PLANET rating.Both actually. I don't mind that much it makes it something of a challenge.
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Ummm an Aquatic faction should be cake under any circumstances. You've got this huge Minerals advantage over everyone else, on top of abundant food and energy.Yes they should but for some reason I find the opposite. I get unlimited room to expand and for all that I can't get anywhere.
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Please reveal to me why you're having problems with Pirates. They're pretty easy even in the stock game, and my version of the Pirates doesn't have any faction penalties. making it even easier. On top of that, I also made Foil and Cruiser chasses substantially cheaper than the base game. It sounds like there's something way different about your play style or habits than what I would expect.Honestly I'm not sure. Its like the game decides I'm playing with too much of an advantage and just throws stumbling blocks in my way.
The only thing I can think of is maybe the AI thinks I'm expanding too fast. I gave up in frustration twice early in the game.
Post by: bvanevery on December 23, 2018, 12:41:50 AM
I get unlimited room to expand and for all that I can't get anywhere.
Let's assume you made a civ of sufficiently centralized density, that inefficiency and bloat in your empire is not a problem.
When I'm "not getting anywhere", I have usually suspected that the game itself is filled with a lot of base facility gewgaws, that are ultimately pointless. That it's all a charade, that doling out all these seeming benefits to you as a human player, is just a smokescreen to keep you invested in the game. Thinking you got "40 hours of entertainment" out of your game purchase or some such rubbish.
In the modern game development context, you would be right to suspect that games are deliberately designed this way. There are known methods, and they generally fall under the rubric of "Skinner boxes". It's a bit of a pushbutton moral issue in the game industry right now. 20 years ago though, I don't know that they deliberately designed anything this way, or sorta accidentally empirically arrived at it. Could have been what titles were doing well, what game production and art delivery processes teams went though, etc. More of an evolutionary walk, feeling their way towards "player investment, profits, and sales", rather than a deeply sinister application of human psychology.
I think playing on Transcend, on Huge maps or larger, makes these patterns of utter uselessness much more apparent. I play a game like that, I do all the right things building my Tree Farms, Hybrid Forests, various Labs, etc. And still it seems like I make no great profit, I don't get anywhere, other civs just get bigger. Then I start to wonder how many egregious bonuses the AI gets, how artificial it all is. I may scrap the game, start another one, and vow to be a lot more violent this time. Because clearly, sitting back and building all the gewgaws you're supposed to, doesn't seem to work.
I have likened it to a giant game of Whack-A-Mole. The idea that you should be building stuff in your cities, could be one big distraction. You do that, the AI does that, the AI simply gets bigger and it just gets worse.
Very few people have ever tried cut down a 4X game. Instead, each generation, more bloat is added. It's the same logic as putting more check boxes on the back of a box, more marketing / publisher "tick points". Oh, there are 80 facilities you can add, or whatever it actually is, goody! Must be a better game! Firaxis went the way of bloat in Civ IV. They added 6 religions. I knew then that they would never attempt to solve the problems of the genre. They were the problem, and they'd continue to keep making these problems, in the name of most profits. After playing Civ IV extensively, I destroyed my copy in anger. I played the demo of Civ V and said, more of the same, not buying.
The short course on Skinner boxes is, make the payoff for player effort random. A random reward, maximizes the amount of work that an organism will perform to get the award. First demonstrated with B. F. Skinner's chickens. A good example of such design in action, was item drops in Diablo II. Every once in awhile, you get a rare, powerful item. So players drive themselves nuts trying to get item drops over and over again. Every single crate or jar will be smashed open.
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Honestly I'm not sure. Its like the game decides I'm playing with too much of an advantage and just throws stumbling blocks in my way.
What specific forms do they take? I have suspected that the AI might market crash you, or Planet Blight you, or the worst one, asteroid hit you, based on how well you're doing. If those are the problem, turning random events OFF is an answer. I don't consider that cheating, because I think the game design for these events is unfun and egregiously bad. I have played many games where I was quite sure, that the abuse the game dishes out via random events, never ever remotely equaled the few paltry random rewards it would offer in compensation. For some reason this hasn't been a problem for me as much recently, so I've left the random events turned on. I went through about a year of play with it turned off though, before I started modding. Energy market crashes were the biggest offender, just wiping out thousands of credits of accumulated advantage, 'cuz, game designers.
Post by: vonbach on December 23, 2018, 03:47:00 AM
Every single pod a mind worm the AI getting stupid buffs like just the tech it would need to stymy any attack that sort of thing. This in the beginning of the game. Basically playing like it was two levels higher at least or Im playing Iron man or something.
I'm going to try again on that map and see if it does the same thing.
Post by: bvanevery on December 23, 2018, 05:53:05 AM
I tried on a random map and the game was much better behaved. I cant think why that would be.
I can. My randomly generated land masses may be much larger than yours. My continents more shapely and continental than yours. There are no 1x1 islands on maps that I generate, and no tiny islands. All this has the effect of giving everyone more room, including you.
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Every single pod a mind worm
After a time, you do mostly pop mindworms. That's just the game, nothing I did. Now if you're using mindworms yourself to pop the pods on land, it doesn't matter because they're not going to attack you.
If you're sufficiently savvy and skillful at sea, you can avoid being hit by the Isle when it surfaces. My early game drill is plain movement 3 Transports. Park next to a pod that's not on sea fungus. Next turn, move onto the pod. You will have 1 move to pull away from an Isle. You can often predict which way the Isle is going to go, it's generally towards the nearest city with a pulse. Sometimes you guess wrong, or you just don't have enough room, and then you die. Well it was a cheap Transport, the loss is affordable. I used to use Trance Transports, but ever since I made Trance cost something, I've preferred the cheap ones.
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the AI getting stupid buffs like just the tech it would need to stymy any attack that sort of thing. This in the beginning of the game. Basically playing like it was two levels higher at least or Im playing Iron man or something.
I'm going to try again on that map and see if it does the same thing.
Hmm, that sounds weird. If you're fighting an Alien, they could indeed do that, but I don't know that they do.
Anyone else... any chance it's selective observation? What may really be happening, is they may be getting the early Tier 1 and Tier 2 techs rapidly. Especially the Data Angels, will get them very fast because they have the equivalent of the Planetary Datalinks built into their faction now. They don't have to infiltrate anymore, they get everything that 3 factions have. So they go craaazy with tech at the beginning. The University will also go crazy with early tech, just bang bang bang bang bang with the AI playing it. The Cyborgs and the Gaians can go pretty fast early on as well, if not quite that ridiculously fast. If there are enough of these "lit up tech" players early in the game, they could superheat the early tech economy, pretty much putting the early techs in the hands of everyone who wants them.
Tier 3, the AIs stop trading because many of those are guarded by Secret Projects. When an AI has a SP in progress, they may trade a lesser tech with you, or they may refuse to trade anything at all until their SP is done. Maybe it applies to other AI factions as well. I wouldn't be surprised to see the door slam shut on tech trading around Tier 3.
Tier 3 and later, the AI really shouldn't be going very fast at tech at all. Doesn't seem to, in the games I've played. YMMV if you're facing off against the University on Transcend. Also the AI often likes to choose Fundamentalist, which nowadays slows down tech.
Post by: vonbach on December 23, 2018, 12:26:59 PM
so I think hat might be the issue.
Post by: bvanevery on December 23, 2018, 10:58:28 PM
Post by: vonbach on December 24, 2018, 02:41:49 AM
Theres a gap early in the game where the AI has nothing to build but colony pods and formers so it'll spam those
endlessly. I think that was the issue. I never automate formers though unless its sea formers.
Post by: davcapoccia on December 28, 2018, 10:02:18 PM
On my recent playthrough on version 1.26, however (on huge map of Planet with CX factions on Librarian), I noticed after datalink infiltration that the AI is spamming transport ships. Cha Dwan, Svensgaard, and Rose have many sea bases and are at war but just keep on building transport ships. I noticed an older version of the mod had the same problem reported on reddit. Was the issue never fixed?
Post by: bvanevery on December 29, 2018, 01:54:10 AM
If it's making armored Transport units though, then that's just the AI doing as it does. It might be due to excessively cheap Foil and Cruiser costs. They're going up a bit for 1.27, and the movement is going to increase. I will keep my eye peeled for whether I see excessive Transports, as it is kind of baffling and annoying to witness. Of all the possible spamming strategies, I think I'd rather see it spam something more obviously combative.
Post by: vonbach on December 29, 2018, 01:58:44 AM
it will spam them until you run out of minerals.
Post by: davcapoccia on December 29, 2018, 02:09:59 AM
Post by: bvanevery on December 29, 2018, 01:33:08 PM
I wonder if I allowed armed transports, if that would improve the situation any. Although, that might be impossible. Yeah, every chassis has a defined transport capacity. You still need a Transport module for it to actually become a transport, and that precludes a weapon. The Isle of the Deep is coded as a special case. Yeah, I can have one kind of predefined armed transport in the game. I'm not going to give up the Isle of the Deep to have something else.
Post by: vonbach on December 29, 2018, 07:30:09 PM
Post by: bvanevery on December 30, 2018, 07:04:55 AM
If I made a SAM, I think I'd want it to be a lot cheaper than a typical Conventional Missile. A SAM needs to be at least as cheap as a plane to be worth using. Otherwise you'd just use an Interceptor.
I'm concerned that if I make any kind of SAM, the AI won't really use it against planes. It'll start pestering me by shooting at my units on the ground. I don't like being spammed by the AI that way. It's not a problem in my mod currently because Conventional Missiles are expensive enough that the AI doesn't produce very many of them.
A really weak SAM that can't do anything against armored ground units, might work. But I'm not sure I can have a really weak SAM and a regular strength Conventional Missile at the same time. They both would be using the same conventional warhead. I can experiment with increasing the "Air Superiority vs. Ground Unit" penalty tremendously. I wonder if affects attacks against ships?
I can also only make Fission predefined units. A SAM would need to be strong enough to take down a Fusion aircraft. Otherwise it would be a bit silly in my mod. If it wasn't effective against a Quantum aircraft, I think I could live with that.
Post by: vonbach on December 31, 2018, 11:00:59 AM
Post by: Mart on January 01, 2019, 02:42:20 PM
Also, land unit would not attack a needlejet above sea tile, but on land tile it was ok.
There might be more weird things, but I do not remember now.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on January 08, 2019, 04:33:58 PM
I was thinking about better tree structure and analyzed yours and mine as examples. Certainly there are more approaches to that including completely chaotic box version. Do you mind me polluting your thread with picture and findings and opinions? It seems to belong this more as I am thinking about switching to your structure and thus analyzed and compared it to mine.
Fission Armor structure: each level technology depends on one technology from the below level and one from two level below. Level 1 technologies do not depend on anything and level 2 technologies depend only on level 1. The opposite is also true. Each technology allows exactly two other technologies. Each level has six technologies. These rules apply up to level 12 something. Above that number of technologies per level decreases as they all converge to a single target.
AIG structure: each level technology depends on two technologies from previous level. Number of technologies per level is not fixed. Number of technologies allowed by each technology is not fixed.
Below are two charts for technology appearance time. There is an average value and min-max those depict boundary of standard deviation (60% of the cases). The wider standard deviation the more often and more stronger appearance time in specific game can deviate from the average value. Technology values do not change this picture much. The order of technologies may change slightly but deviations stay about the same.
As I guessed initially, the AIG structure is much tighter in a way that it prescribes more or less narrow path of research. I was thinking to use this structure but now I am reluctant due to this exact consequence. I believe it'll narrow the field of stealing and trading techs. Not completely, of course but to some extent.
Instead, I narrowed down tech per level to six thus effectively channeling research but leaving some room for selective beelining and variety for trade/steal. I have 12 levels by 6 techs in each + 3 more levels narrowing down to the top level technology.
Tried to apply 1+1=2 structure to my tree (picture #3). Quite expected result. It became tighter.
Post by: bvanevery on January 08, 2019, 07:34:51 PM
I'm still testing my 1.27. I am experiencing a most curious phenomenon. I have pushed so many techs to earlier in the tree, down to Tier 2 and even Tier 1, that the tree is now quite broad at the beginning. This makes it entirely possible to completely miss certain key techs at the beginning. For instance I'm approaching midgame and have not learned how to do probe teams. I don't think anyone else has either! My Planetary Networks is merely a Conquer 2 tech, there are no Secret Projects in the way, nothing to stop anyone from learning it. A lot of factions simply haven't learned it, just due to all the other Conquer techs they could be learning instead.
Maybe it's because only 2 factions have a pure Conquer focus: the Spartans, and the Usurpers. Explore, Conquer is the most common AI research pattern, with one Discover, Conquer and I can't remember if there's a Build, Conquer. I think what happens is, the techs that are Explore, Conquer hybrids tend to get researched first. That's positive in some ways, because it means mindworms and new chasses get researched. But it leaves some of the weapons development impoverished, with probe teams being considered an early pure Conquer weapon.
I could consider a probe team to be mildly Discover oriented, because you can steal techs with it. However adding a Discover component isn't going to help most factions research it. Only the Cybernetic Consciousness and the University have Discover as part of their focus. Also, the Discover part of the tree is deliberately bottlenecked by a pure D1 Information Networks. Most factions will never research it themselves, they will either trade for it, or find it in a supply pod eventually. That's how I got it in my current test game, after a long time.
If the AI were in the habit of stealing money with probe teams, I could call it partly a Build tech. But it isn't, so I'm not going to call it that. And probe teams definitely don't help with Exploring much, as they're fragile.
So I guess this interesting phenomenon is here to stay. I can't put it any earlier in the tree. The whole problem is I've put everything earlier, that I wanted earlier. There's just a whole lot of stuff that's coming sooner rather than later. Something gets randomly pushed to later, just by accident.
So, I've managed to discuss tech tree structure. The other major thing I haven't tested, is air combat with longer range Needlejets, and earlier orbital insertion warfare. At the rate my game is going though, it may not really come that much earlier. That's part of why I've moved it up. It's like I've taken my tree, assigned a heavier weight to all the stuff that I want to come earlier, then given the tree a huge shake. All the heavy bits fall down to the beginning of the tree. It's almost like I've got a heavy sack of steel ball bearings on a table, maybe with 1 hand still holding the bag up.
I guess I've inadvertently achieved blind research. You really don't know what mix of early abilities you're going to get. If you're used to "well I'm gonna get my this and then a this and then I'll do that", it's likely to be derailed.
Post by: ChaDawnFanatic on January 10, 2019, 08:26:53 PM
;cha;
Post by: bvanevery on January 10, 2019, 08:31:18 PM
I'm not sure I even know how to replay a game. I will look at 2 different installations and see what happens.
Well, actually just 1. I tried it on my SMACX AI Growth mod installation, version 1.27 still under development. I activated the Scenario Editor, then selected View Replay. It worked just fine on my installation. I am using the GOG version on Windows 10. Generally when people have had problems, I've recommended they use this version and problems have often gone away. YMMV.
Post by: ChaDawnFanatic on January 11, 2019, 11:59:12 PM
Post by: bvanevery on January 12, 2019, 07:39:03 AM
Post by: bvanevery on January 15, 2019, 06:44:46 PM
Changed from version 1.26 to 1.27:
*SOCIAL ENGINEERING NAMES:
- Free Market: renamed to Capitalist. The lore of the game has always referred to it as such.
- Planned: renamed to Socialist. The lore of the game clearly refers to Socialism, if not by name. The name change is to stop people from conflating the modern Socialist concept with the behavior of historical Communist regimes. In the game's terminology, the latter were Socialist Police States. Democratic Socialist countries are readily observed in the First World today, i.e. France, Sweden, when a Socialist party wins an election. This can't happen in some countries; for instance, the USA is always Democratic Capitalist because of its two party system.
- EFFICiency: renamed to JUSTICE. Changed flavor text in social engineering table to match. 'Efficiency' is a bad label because it just connotes 'betterness' without giving a clear description of what is supposed to be better. The main player visible effect of this choice is to make more people happy as one's empire gets bigger. The secondary effect is loss of credits due to corruption. JUSTICE covers both social justice, i.e. making people happy, and rooting out corruption. It provides clearer guidance on what one is going to get out of a particular political choice, i.e. you're not going to get JUSTICE from a Police State. Rather, POLICE are used to repress unhappy people.
*SOCIAL ENGINEERING EFFECTS:
- Police State: moved to E2 Biogenetics. Now gives +2 SUPPORT and -2 JUSTICE. When combined with Power, this is going to be how most factions get free unit support up to the size of the base. It costs money and requires cruelty.
- Democratic: moved to B2 Industrial Base. Now gives +1 ECONOMY and +1 JUSTICE. GROWTH bonus removed. Free Market was overpowered when it had +2 ECONOMY, so I moved half of it here. A lot of repression can still happen under a Democracy, so the JUSTICE bonus is modest. Moving GROWTH from Democratic to Socialist, makes it easier for undemocratic factions to pop boom.
- Fundamentalist: now gives -1 JUSTICE. The moral system is deemed to be not quite as bad as a Police State, as people who share the dominant ideology are well treated. Mainly though, this is to provide a play mechanical difference. I might get rid of Fundamentalist in a later version of this mod. It has always duplicated and confused the concept of a Police State.
- Capitalist: moved to B2 Synthetic Fossil Fuels. Now gives +1 ECONOMY, +1 INDUSTRY, and -3 PLANET. JUSTICE bonus removed. POLICE penalty removed. Capitalists don't care about social justice. They care about getting rich and will exploit anyone or anything needed to get there. Industry does actually work better when a pro-Capitalist government is in power. I wanted to stiffen the PLANET damage some, it was kinda weak compared to the unmodded game. Capitalists have no objection to using police forces to repress people. Aversion to police repression is a trait of Democratically minded people.
- Socialist: moved to E2 Adaptive Economics. Now gives +2 JUSTICE, +2 GROWTH, and -1 ECONOMY. INDUSTRY and SUPPORT bonuses are removed. Socialism tries to make more people happy and it costs money. It doesn't make industry work especially well, nor does it magically pay for maintenance. With the GROWTH incrase, this becomes a major part of how a faction will pop boom.
- Green: moved to E2 Centauri Empathy. Now gives +2 PLANET. ECONOMY bonus removed. I've gone back to the idea that this is about chucking out the mindworms. A better Economy can now be obtained by going Democratic at the same time. JUSTICE remains +1. It is not as high as a Socialist economy because people will be controlled and marginalized if they're damaging the planet in any way. Environmentalism is first and foremost planet-centric, not people-centric.
- Power: now gives +1 MORALE, +1 PROBE, -2 GROWTH, and -2 JUSTICE. INDUSTRY and ECONOMY penalties removed. There are lots of ways to increase the morale of a unit, and PROBE has been a bit impoverished in this mod. GROWTH is penalized because people are getting killed in wars and purges. Tyrannical empires aren't interested in justice. Industry and economy really shouldn't suffer during a war mobilization, if anything they'd get better. Just look at the USA in WW II.
- Knowledge: now gives +2 RESEARCH. PLANET bonus removed. PROBE penalty removed. The University often became a pseudo-Gaian faction, and I don't think that improved the game. I'm tired of Knowledge meaning you get probed. Why wouldn't Knowledge make you better at cryptography algorithms? More than anything though, having vulnerability to probes is a tiresome game mechanic. Probes are overpowered as is.
- Wealth: removed JUSTICE bonus. Removed PLANET penalty. MORALE is now -2. Rich people don't care about justice, they just convince people to get rich and join the country club. The stiffer MORALE penalty makes this more of a tradeoff with a consequence, like in the original game. It also gives PLANET friendly factions a way to make money, if they want to forego conventional forces.
- Cybernetic: now gives -2 POLICE. PROBE penalty removed. It really doesn't make any sense that Cyborgs would be more vulnerable to probes. The POLICE increase picks up the slack from Capitalist not having a POLICE penalty. It is possible to reach the maximum of -5 POLICE by choosing Democratic, Knowledge, and Cybernetic.
- Eudaimonic: added +2 JUSTICE bonus. Removed ECONOMY bonus. This is essentially futuristic socialism that works pretty well. It's not going to make anyone rich, but people will be happier, it won't lose money, and more stuff will be produced.
- Thought Control: unchanged.
*FACTIONS:
- Believers: removed GROWTH bonus. Added +1 MORALE. Set AI personality to Aggressive. Even if they don't choose to be Fundamentalist, I want them to be more threatening. It's pretty easy to get GROWTH from Socialism in this version, so GROWTH doesn't mean much as a bonus.
- Cult of Planet: removed IMPUNITY to Fundamentalist. Added IMMUNITY to RESEARCH going below 0. I want the Cult to suffer the new -1 JUSTICE effect from Fundamentalist. This can work out better for them in the late midgame if they chose Thought Control.
- Cybernetic Consciousness: JUSTICE bonus reduced to +1. Cyborgs are not presumed to simply be "better at everything".
- Data Angels: now starts with Planetary Networks, so can build probe teams immediately. Starts with 1 probe team. Added +1 ECONOMY. Changed personality to Passive. Removed Conquer research focus, leaving only Build focus. Added secondary compulsion to pursue ECONOMY. The Data Angels need to make more money to be more effective with mind control. The only conquer tech they actually need is a probe team. Since it does not enable them to make any Secret Projects, nor any social engineering choices, they are given it immediately. They will acquire large numbers of Conquer techs through SHARETECH, so they really don't need to research any of that themselves. It's not to their advantage to make much war, they can frame more people if they're at peace. They should sit back and make as much money as they can without getting into unneeded conflicts. Roze is a reject from the Morganites so having an ECONOMY bonus fits the game's lore.
- Morganites: removed JUSTICE bonus. Capitalists such as Morgan are interested in making money, not legal or social justice. Greasing palms is considered ok. "I felt compelled to have them nerve stapled" makes this pretty clear in the game's lore.
- Free Drones: reduced NODRONE to 1. Added +1 JUSTICE bonus. May now use Green economy. Cannot use Police State. The Free Drones are essentially proto-Socialists who freed themselves from the tyranny of factions like the Hive. Eudaimonia is basically futuristic Socialism that actually works and has no disadvanatage, save lack of willingness to warmonger. Factory workers that inevitably pollute is a stereotype that ignores modern notions of Environmental Justice and intersectionalism. Do people really believe that coal miners in, say, West Virginia, are incapable of understanding what pollution does to the lungs of the working class? A lot of factions now have Politics confrontations, but that's ok because we play with 14 factions and only 7 are in the game at a time. Democratic vs. authoritarian behavior is a key theme of the game, and FREE Drones are clearly on the anti-authoritarian side of that ledger. They're NEVER going back to their former masters, and revolting cities know that about them.
- Hive: now gets +1 POLICE. Removed IMPUNITY to Police State. Removed GROWTH bonus. Democratic no longer gives GROWTH, so the Hive doesn't need to be compensated for its inability to use Democratic. Researching Police State takes time, and benefits that are available at the beginning of the game, are better than benefits that one has to wait for. Rather than make Chairman Yang magically immune to Police State problems, I make his method explicit. He's just better at suppressing people! When he gets Police State he'll be at +3 POLICE, making his police twice as effective as anyone else's. Everyone else needs the Ascetic Virtues to get to this level of police effectiveness.
- Peacekeepers: now gets +1 JUSTICE. Lal is always trying to do the right thing for humanity.
- Pirates: may not choose Thought Control future society. They value the freedom to roam the waves.
*EXPLORE CHANGES:
- Children's Creche: moved to E2 Biogenetics.
- Biogenetics: set power=3, tech=0, wealth=0, and growth=4, making it an E2 tech. Children's Creche gives a morale bonus and reduces vulnerabilty to mind control. Police State gives a SUPPORT bonus, but penalties for ECONOMY and JUSTICE, creating no wealth. POLICE makes people happy.
- Adaptive Economics: now an E2 tech. Set power=0 and wealth=0. It has no military application. Socialist economics gives a JUSTICE bonus but an ECONOMY penalty, thus producing almost no wealth.
- Centauri Empathy: set power=0, tech=3, and wealth=0. Lifecycle improvements shall be considered Explore, not Conquer. Biology Lab gives tech. EFFIC bonus can be worth money, but SUPPORT penalty penalizes production, so not much wealth.
- Centauri Genetics: set power=3, wealth=0, and growth=4. Mindworms shall be considered Conqer-ish. It no longer gives Green, so no wealth. Having growth=5 creates too much of a beeline effect for Explore.
- Ethical Calculus: now an E3 tech. Set power=0 and wealth=0. It only makes people happy.
- Hab Complex: moved to E3 Ethical Calculus.
- The Planetary Transit System: moved to E3 Ethical Calculus.
- Intellectual Integrity: now an E3 tech. Set power=0 and wealth=0. It only makes people happy.
- The Ascetic Virtues: moved to E3 Intellectual Integrity.
*DISCOVER CHANGES:
- Information Networks: set growth=0. A bread crumb to get to Biology Lab is no longer needed.
- Biology Lab: moved to E2 Centauri Empathy.
- Secrets of the Human Brain: now a D2 tech. Set power=0, tech=4, wealth=0, and growth=0.
- Cyberethics: now a D4 tech.
- The Virtual World: moved to D4 Cyberethics.
- Knowledge: moved to D4 Cyberethics.
- Thinker: moved to D4 Cyberethics.
- Applied Relativity: now a D5 tech. Set tech=4 because every Discover tech gives some major benefit and this one isn't particularly special compared to the rest.
- Nanohospital: moved to D5 Pre-Sentient Algorithms.
- The Universal Translator: moved to D5 Pre-Sentient Algorithms.
- Pre-Sentient Algorithms: now a D5 tech. Set power=0, tech=4, and growth=3. Nanohospital makes people happy.
- Digital Sentience: now a D6 tech. Set wealth=2. The Cybernetic JUSTICE bonus can make some money but it's not worth wealth=3.
- The Network Backbone: moved to D6 Digital Sentience. Following the theme of allowing Discover stuff to be learned earlier.
- Unified Field Theory: now a D7 tech. Set tech=4 and wealth=3. Every Discover tech gives some kind of advantageous research facility, so no reason to set tech=5 for this one in particular. The Corporate Lab is not as good as various Build facilities.
- Secrets of Creation: now a D10 tech.
*EARLIER BUILD SECRET PROJECTS:
- The Planetary Energy Grid: moved to B4 Environmental Economics.
- Environmental Economics: set growth=3. It now gives the Planetary Energy Grid, not the Ascetic Virtues.
- Planetary Economics: set wealth=4. It no longer gives the Planetary Enegy Grid.
- The Longevity Vaccine: moved to B4 Bio-Engineering.
- Bio-Engineering: set growth=3. The Longevity Vaccine can make people happy.
- The Space Elevator: moved to B6 Eudaimonia.
- The Living Refinery: moved to B7 Industrial Nanorobotics.
- Matter Editation: now a B9 tech. Set power=0 and growth=0. Now increases MINERALS production in fungus. It no longer gives Clinical Immortality.
- Nanoreplicator: now costs 30 and maintenance 5, because it comes before a Quantum Converter.
- Quantum Converter: now costs 36 and maintenance 6.
- The Bulk Matter Transmitter: moved to B10 Quantum Machinery.
*EARLIER WORLDWIDE COMBAT:
- Foil chassis: now has movement 5 and cost 3.
- Cruiser chassis: now has movement 8 and cost 6.
- Needlejet chassis: now has movement 10 and cost 10.
- Gravship chassis: now has movement 12 and cost 12.
- Missile chassis: movement reduced to 30, but range is now unlimited. No longer uses fuel.
- Copter chassis: removed from the game, except for Locusts of Chiron. No longer uses fuel. Its multiple attacks are too powerful, and it's pretty useless when its speed is reduced.
- Locusts of Chiron: now based on Copter chassis instead of Gravship chassis, so that it can remain a fairly slow air unit. Multiple attacks aren't that helpful for Psi combat as attacking units typically take lots of damage. Even Demon Boil mindworms with a +40% Psi attack advantage can get surprisingly chewed up attacking a mere Scout.
- Orbital Insertion: now available with C7 Advanced Spaceflight.
- Graviton Theory: now a C7 tech.
*INCREASED ABILITY COSTS:
- Heavy Transport: moved to C1 Doctrine: Flexibility. Now costs 2. If the player wants to spend a lot more production to get a ship with bigger capacity, I say let 'em. In the real world, moving lots of units around on ships simply doesn't matter.
- High Morale: now costs 2. Shouldn't give offensive advantages cheap.
- Soporific Gas Pods: now costs 3. This offensive debuff messes up the carefully orchestrated balance between weapons and armor. It's like getting 1..2 weapon levels higher than normal. Also the AI never builds them, so it's a human player's exploit.
- Drop Pods: now costs 2. Earlier orbital insertion makes them more advantageous.
- Fuel Nanocells: moved to C5 Mind/Machine Interface. Now costs 2.
- Dissociative Wave: now costs 3. Offensive debuffs need to cost more to keep the game from being ruined. At least this one isn't that useful in practice, because infantry gets the biggest bonus attacking cities, and there's no such thing as an anti-infantry defense.
- Antigrav Struts: now costs 2.
- Blink Displacer: moved to D15 Threshold of Transcendence. Now costs 4. There is no point in having a progression of weapons and armor all the way to strength 30 if this is simply going to ruin it. This is a toy to be played with when the game is effectively over anyways.
*DEFENSIVE BEGINNING:
- Intrinsic Base Defense bonus: increased to +50%. I want bases to be a refuge for defenders, and to mean something if someone has gone to the trouble of establishing them.
- Infantry vs. Base bonus: removed. In a test game, I had a Disciplined Spartan Scout defending Sparta Command, get destroyed by a Green University Scout. I don't think that should ever happen.
- Perimeter Defense: moved to C1 High Energy Chemistry. AI factions need to be able to get a defense going against possible invaders.
- Applied Physics: now a C3 tech. I tried making it a C1 tech, but that allowed factions to overrun nearby defenseless factions. Later offense is better for AI growth.
- Laser: now has strength 3 and cost 3.
- Heavy Artillery: moved to C3 Applied Physics. It isn't that necessary for defending against early ships. Other ships can be used against ships.
- The Citizens' Defense Force: moved to C3 Advanced Subatomic Theory.
*CONQUER CHANGES:
- Nerve Gas Pods: moved to C1 High Energy Chemistry. If anyone wants to wipe out the Aliens, it's available.
- Deep Pressure Hull: moved to C2 Adaptive Doctrine. I think the AI cheats and can see all units anyways, in which case this isn't an interesting tech. If a human player wants to play with this, they can.
- Field Modulation: now a C2 tech.
- Doctrine: Loyalty: now a C2 tech. Set power=4. Don't make it special compared to other Conquer techs.
- The Command Nexus: moved to C3 Polymorphic Software.
- Retroviral Engineering: now a C3 tech. I had way too many C4 techs. If someone wants to do early gene warfare, I say why not.
- Covert Ops Center: moved to C4 Advanced Military Algorithms.
- The Hunter-Seeker Algorithm: moved to C4 Advanced Military Algorithms.
- 2 abilities per unit: moved to Industrial Automation.
- Industrial Automation: set power=3. The Skunkworks is important for new military unit designs, and 2 abilities per unit helps with some military units.
- The Neural Amplifier: moved to C4 Neural Grafting. It might be interesting to have Psi defense techs not all be in the Explore path, so that PLANET friendly factions can't just cakewalk everyone else.
- Bioenhancement Center: moved to C4 Neural Grafting.
- Neural Grafting: now a C4 tech. Set wealth=0 as it doesn't give 2 abilities per unit anymore.
- Mind/Machine Interface: now a C5 tech. Set growth=3 as Fuel Nanocells extend range.
- Nanominiaturization: set wealth=3 and growth=0. The Nano Factory gives 50% discount on unit upgrade costs. It doesn't give Fuel Nanocells anymore.
- Missile Launcher: moved to C6 Photon/Wave mechanics. Even though the lore doesn't make sense, it's a pure conquer tech and others are Explore or Build hybrids. I want to keep pure Conquer techs together in one place.
- Self-Aware Machines: now a C6 tech.
- Sentient Resonance: set growth=3 because Resonance weapons and armors help Psi combat.
- Controlled Singularity: set power=3 because it gives the Black Hole Gun.
*EARLIER DIPLOMATIC VICTORY:
- Homo Superior: set power=3, making it an E6 tech. Thought Control does as much to keep people happy as it does for conquest, and an Explore tech is needed at Tier 6. This can guide the Peacekeepers better to the Empath Guild.
- Paradise Garden: moved to E9 Biomachinery.
- Clinical Immortality: moved to E9 Biomachinery.
- Biomachinery: now an E9 tech. Set power=3, wealth=3, and growth=4. Winning the Governorship is worth money. No longer gives the Cloning Vats.
*LATER CLONING VATS:
- Super Tensile Solids: now an E8 tech. Set power=0, wealth=0, and growth=5 because it doesn't give the Space Elevator or Habitation Dome anymore.
- Sky Hydroponics Lab: moved to E8 Super Tensile Solids.
- Habitation Dome: moved to E8 Super Tensile Solids.
- The Cloning Vats: moved to E10 Matter Transmission.
- Matter Transmission: now an E10 tech. Set power=4, wealth=0, and growth=5. No longer increases MINERALS production in fungus. The Cloning Vats grow the population endlessly and make Power and Thought Control have no penalties. Psi Gates are the last form of transportation. It no longer gives the Bulk Matter Transmitter.
*PREREQS:
- changed many prereqs for continuity of research foci.
*PREDEFINED UNITS:
- Marine Scout: removed. They were meant to attack coastal cities that only have Scouts defending them, but I've never seen the AI do it.
- Submarine Probe Team: removed. The faster Cruiser chassis is more expensive, making a Deep Pressure Hull not a good choice.
- Destroyer Probe Team: added in its place. It's cheaper. It relies on speed rather than invisibility.
- Cruiser Colony Pod: removed. The faster Cruiser chassis is more expensive, making it not a good choice. The Foil chassis is now faster, so ordinary Sea Colony Pods should work fine.
- Heavy Transport Foil: removed. The AI doesn't actually need the capacity for anything.
- Rover Former: removed. It was giving away a Speeder chassis prototype too quickly.
- Light Artillery: removed. Heavy Artillery now comes with C3 Applied Physics. A pea shooter isn't that useful by then.
- Clean Fungicidal Formers: removed. The tech to have 2 abilities is no longer a prereq for B4 Bio-engineering.
- Clean Fungicidal Sea Formers removed.
- Radar Transport Foil: removed. The AI probably cheats about where other units are anyways. The game clutters the Workshop with non-radar designs even when this is available.
- Radar Destroyer Transport: removed.
- Clean Scout: removed. By the time a Clean Reactor is available, building a mere Scout is probably not useful. Telling the AI that it can build these, is probably just wasting a small amount of its production time.
- Police Scout: removed. The AI doesn't use them as police, it just marches them around in the wilderness.
- Trance Colony Pod: moved to C4 Bioadaptive Resonance. Added 3-Res armor. A colony pod with only Trance suffers the -50% non-combat penalty. It is not tough enough to stand up to mindworms, making it a waste of production. However with 3-Res armor it no longer suffers the non-combat penalty and has a total of +75% against mindworm attacks.
- Unity Air Supply: takes the place of the Unity Scout Chopper. Uses a Needlejet chassis, has a supply pod instead of a gun, and Deep Radar.
- Cloaked Laser Speeder: new predefined unit, available with C4 Nonlinear Mathematics.
The attachment limit per post is 5, and I eventually ran out of room at the top of the thread. Consequently, this becomes the new home of version 1.27. It was downloaded 141 times before I moved it here.
Post by: ChaDawnFanatic on January 17, 2019, 01:24:26 AM
:danc:
Post by: bvanevery on January 17, 2019, 03:20:11 AM
Post by: ChaDawnFanatic on January 18, 2019, 04:23:32 AM
www.avsgs.us (http://www.avsgs.us)
It's about planet.
;deidre;
Post by: bvanevery on January 18, 2019, 06:28:18 AM
I'd be happy to eat 'meat' grown from a vat, but we don't seem to be quite there yet. '3D printed meat' is an area of active research though.
Insectivorism would be a rational choice. Unless you grow your own crops and allow insects to rampage a lot of it, billions of insects are going to die for the vegetables you buy anyways. That's the cost of outsourcing the labor.
My attempts to go vegetarian, not even vegan, have always been complete failures. Within 2 days my brain stops working. I don't know what the missing ingredients are, other than I get them from meat. No amount of various supplements has helped. I think a core problem of vegan movements, is some people's biologies don't seem to take it well. I think I am one of these. I did not choose my biology, so that's part of how I think about the moral calculus of these things.
I think Nature is evil, not neutral. The evolution of predator species is based on violence and destruction. I am part of the evil. Nature also produces good though. Good is usually reserved for your own family group. Evil is an expense borne by others.
Post by: bvanevery on February 18, 2019, 06:47:14 AM
Changed from version 1.27 to 1.28:
ATROCITIES:
- Repeal U.N. Charter: moved to C2 Doctrine: Loyalty. It should be with Fundamentalist politics.
- Reinstate U.N. Charter: moved to B2 Industrial Economics. It should be with Democratic politics.
- Retroviral Engineering: now a C5 tech. Genetic plagues in combo with chemical weapons attacks are extremely effective in wiping out bases. It's not that difficult to Repeal the U.N. Charter. Planet doesn't retalliate when minor atrocities are legal, so this strategy becomes consequence free. Before it was a Tier 3 tech, which is too soon for such power.
PROBE TEAMS:
- Probe team module: moved to D1 Information Networks.
- Information Networks: set power=3. Having it as a pure Discover tech is too difficult a barrier for non-Discover factions. It's possible for all factions in the game to be non-Discover. This creates de facto tech stagnation. It's highly unlikely to have only non-Conquer factions in the game.
- Polymorphic Software: now a C2 tech. Basically swapping places, so that this slot gives something other than just a probe team.
- Planetary Networks: now a C3 tech. Basically swapping places. The Command Nexus is global, so it sounds more appropriate.
- The Command Nexus: moved to C3 Planetary Networks.
- Probe Team predefined unit: now available with C2 Polymorphic Software.
- Foil Probe Team predefined unit: moved to C2 Adaptive Doctrine.
- C2 techs that give probe teams, now take D1 Information Networks as a prereq.
- Slider Probe Team: new predefined unit available with C5 Retroviral Engineering. Hovertank chassis.
FACTIONS:
- Data Angels: set research foci to Explore, Build. Removed free Planetary Networks tech. They get every tech that any 3 factions have, so they will learn how to make probe teams fairly quickly. Although a pure Build focus might enable them to make more money sooner, Explore tells the AI to put more effort into growing an empire, which will probably also make money. The Explore tree has gotten fatter, making it a distraction from other concerns, but factions with only a pure Build focus do not have a good performance track record.
MINDWORM TECHS:
- The Neural Amplifier: moved to C4 Bioadaptive Resonance. This consolidates mindworm oriented techs better.
- Centauri Preserve: moved to E5 Centauri Psi. Reducing eco-damage shall be considered more of an Explore / Psi tech, even though it does also help Build.
- Neural Grafting: now a C6 tech. Set growth=0. It no longer gives a mindworm oriented tech. I don't want Bioenhancement Center available early, it throws off the defensive balance.
- Brood Pit: moved to E7 The Will To Power. Previously it was too easy to get.
- Temple of Planet: moved to D9 Secrets of Alpha Centauri. Previously it was too easy to get.
- Secrets of Alpha Centauri: set growth=3, as it now gives the Temple of Planet.
WEAPONS TOO CHEAP:
- Particle Impactor: now costs 5. 25% cost increase.
- Gatling Laser: now costs 7. 40% cost increase.
- Missile Launcher: now costs 9. 50% cost increase.
- Chaos Gun: now costs 16. 100% cost increase. Fusion reactors come late midgame and make everything far too cheap. The Chaos Gun seems to be a game ending weapon in practice, so its cost is doubled.
- Phaser: now costs 22. 120% increase.
- Tachyon Bolt: now costs 30. 150% cost increase. Quantum reactors come late game and make everything too cheap.
- Resonance Bolt: now costs 35. 150% cost increase.
- Plasma Shard: now costs 35. 150% cost increase.
- Chronoton Gun: now costs 40. 150% cost increase.
- Graviton Gun: now costs 50. 150% cost increase.
- Singularity Laser: now costs 72. 200% cost increase. Singularity reactors make everything way too cheap.
- Black Hole Gun: now costs 105. 250% cost increase over attack rating.
- Needlejet chassis: now costs 20. It was way too cheap with fusion reactors.
- Gravship chassis: now costs 30. It was way too cheap with fusion reactors.
- Conventional Payload: now costs 15. It was way too cheap with fusion reactors.
- Tectonic Payload: now costs 10. It was way too cheap with fusion reactors.
- Fungal Payload: now costs 6. It was too cheap with fusion reactors, but it's not a very good weapon.
- Unity Jet: new predefined unit which replaces the Unity Air Supply. The latter became far too valuable with the change in chassis cost.
ARMOR TOO CHEAP:
- Silksteel Armor: now costs 8. 60% cost increase over defense rating.
- Photon Wall: now costs 12. 100% cost increase.
- Probability Sheath: now costs 16. 100% cost increase.
- Neutronium Armor: now costs 24. 100% cost increase.
- Pulse 12 Armor: now costs 28. 100% cost increase.
- Resonance 12 Armor: now costs 28. 100% cost increase.
- Antimatter Plate: now costs 40. 100% cost increase.
- Inertial Damper: now costs 60. 100% cost increase over defense rating.
BUFFS AND DEBUFFS:
- High Morale: moved to C3 Planetary Networks.
- Fuel Nanocells: moved to C5 Nanominiaturization.
- Nanominiaturization: set growth=3. Fuel Nanocells increase movement range.
- Mind/Machine Interface: now a C7 tech. Still has growth=0. Wasn't actually changed in version 1.27. Doesn't give Fuel Nanocells now. I don't want the Cyborg Factory available early, it throws off the defensive balance.
- Soporific Gas Pods: moved to C7 Mind/Machine Interface. Now costs 4. They're exteremely effective. I don't want them available early, they throw off the defensive balance.
- Dissociative Wave: now costs 4. Debuffs are gonna be 100% extra cost.
TERRAFORMING:
- Rover Formers: new predefined unit available with B3 Ecological Engineering.
- Drill to Aquifer: now available with B3 Ecological Engineering. It shouldn't be hard to make an artificial river, even in real life.
- Thermal Borehole: now available with B4 Industrial Automation. This is for lore, as the quote is about the borehole pressure mines.
- Organic Superlubricant: set wealth=3. Hovertanks are rather useful for terraforming.
- Fungicidal Slider Formers: new predefined unit available with C5 Nanominiaturization. Hovertank chassis, good for removing and building over fungus.
- Bio-Engineering: now a B5 tech. I didn't have enough Build techs later in the tree.
- Soil Enricher: now available with B5 Planetary Economics. I want to spread the improvements out some.
- +1 Mining Platform bonus: now available with B5 Planetary Economics. This is in sync with availability of Subsea Trunkline.
- Advanced Ecological Engineering: now a B6 tech. Set power=3 because it builds roads and rails faster, and allows land to be raised and lowered. I didn't have enough build techs later in the tree.
SPACE:
- Missile Launcher: moved to C6 Orbital Spaceflight. The lore fits better here.
- The Space Elevator: moved to B7 Industrial Nanorobotics. Gaining this before Orbital Spaceflight didn't make any sense. Now it is a prereq.
- Industrial Nanorobotics: set power=3 and growth=3. The Space Elevator allows movement by drop pod to anywhere on Planet.
- The Living Refinery: moved to B8 Nanometallurgy. It fits the lore better, as the Secret Project video is of asteroid mining.
MISC:
- Industrial Economics: set wealth=4. It shouldn't be exaggerated with a 5.
- Optical Computers: set power=3, wealth=3, and growth=3. It does provide all these techs. The Discover focused factions already have a sufficient head start obtaining the Planetary Datalinks, it doesn't need to be a giveaway for them.
- Eudaimonia: set wealth=3, making it an Explore tech. It doesn't give the Space Elevator, nor does it give an ECONOMY bonus anymore, so it's more about growth now.
- Homo Superior: set power=4 and growth=3, making it a Conquer tech again.
- Sentient Econometrics: set growth=3 because The Self-Aware Colony gives an extra police unit.
- changed many prereqs to keep continuity of research foci.
The attachment limit per post is 5, and I eventually ran out of room at the top of the thread. Consequently, this becomes the new home of version 1.28. It was downloaded 148 times before I moved it here.
Post by: ChaDawnFanatic on February 27, 2019, 12:07:42 AM
Post by: bvanevery on February 27, 2019, 05:36:50 AM
Post by: dweeze on February 27, 2019, 05:58:31 AM
One other odd one - just had a probe foil return after a successful infiltration mission and it got put in a base that has a 2 square lake (that is not connected to the sea), rendering the foil useless. Not sure if this is a generic game bug or mod related. I ran a test by building a Heavy transport on a Rover chassis (thinking that it might be like a boat trailer) but could not load the boat. Would this be possible in a future release? If not, guess I'll have to disband this veteran spy boat.
Post by: bvanevery on February 27, 2019, 06:27:41 AM
Could I get planes before crawlers?
Yep. Planes are primarily Conquer, secondarily Explore. Crawlers are primarily Build, secondarily Conquer, and it's preceded by a pile of Build techs with no Conquer component to them. If you haven't been focusing on Build, you're not going to get crawlers. Similarly, if you haven't been focusing on Conquer, you're not going to get planes.
Quote
Still don't have probe teams either.
If you are playing version 1.28, that should not be happening. The probe team module is available with D1 Information Networks, and it's a Discover + Conquer technology. Ok, if you didn't focus on either of those, maybe it's possible not to get it, but that would be your choice.
Quote
One other odd one - just had a probe foil return after a successful infiltration mission and it got put in a base that has a 2 square lake (that is not connected to the sea), rendering the foil useless. Not sure if this is a generic game bug or mod related.
Generic game problem. Enjoy your well defended lake.
Quote
I ran a test by building a Heavy transport on a Rover chassis (thinking that it might be like a boat trailer) but could not load the boat.
Heavy Transport simply increases the capacity of a Transport module. A Transport module does not load boats, ever. It loads land units. So you can have a truck that carries a land unit over land, but you can't carry a boat. If you make the Transport into a carrier, then it can carry air units. Land units or air units, that's all you get to do. It's hardwired into the game and can't be changed by .txt modding.
Quote
If not, guess I'll have to disband this veteran spy boat.
You don't have to disband it. It's not costing you any support. You could leave it there to defend against probe team incursions. Now of course if the minerals from disbanding are useful to you, by all means do so. If you want to be goofy, you could wait until you get Psi Gates at the very end of the game, and get it out of there that way. Or sooner, you could dig a canal.
Post by: dweeze on February 27, 2019, 07:48:14 AM
Gotcha. I've had my favourite pattern of IA for crawlers >> Cruisers (& Maritime project) >> Air Power >> ==DOMINATE for years. I haven't really followed Conquer / Explore / etc trees in the past. I might have to look at this one differently.
Yep. Planes are primarily Conquer, secondarily Explore. Crawlers are primarily Build, secondarily Conquer, and it's preceded by a pile of Build techs with no Conquer component to them. If you haven't been focusing on Build, you're not going to get crawlers. Similarly, if you haven't been focusing on Conquer, you're not going to get planes.
Quote
If you are playing version 1.28, that should not be happening. The probe team module is available with D1 Information Networks, and it's a Discover + Conquer technology. Ok, if you didn't focus on either of those, maybe it's possible not to get it, but that would be your choice.Yes - 1.28 it is. Probes did come up, but only once & I picked something else. Ditto as per above re different approach required perhaps...
Quote
Generic game problem. Enjoy your well defended lake.:)
Quote
Heavy Transport simply increases the capacity of a Transport module. A Transport module does not load boats, ever. It loads land units. So you can have a truck that carries a land unit over land, but you can't carry a boat. If you make the Transport into a carrier, then it can carry air units. Land units or air units, that's all you get to do. It's hardwired into the game and can't be changed by .txt modding.Ok, hardwired it is then.
Quote
You don't have to disband it. It's not costing you any support. You could leave it there to defend against probe team incursions. Now of course if the minerals from disbanding are useful to you, by all means do so. If you want to be goofy, you could wait until you get Psi Gates at the very end of the game, and get it out of there that way. Or sooner, you could dig a canal.We'll see...
Post by: bvanevery on February 27, 2019, 06:07:16 PM
You might be interested to know that Drop Pods are available on ships and planes now. I figure it's the future, why not?
Problem is, dropping a ship onto land will get it killed. It'll sit there like nothing's wrong, then next turn it'll vanish because it's a ship on land. So that sounds pretty useless, doesn't it? Not quite. You can drop ships onto a coastal land base. This can get your ships to bodies of water that are otherwise landlocked or inconvenient.
It can also rescue a Drop Destroyer Probe Team from a landlocked city like you've been stuck with. See, all you have to do is get Doctrine: Air Power and spend more time in the factory, then all is good!
Post by: vonbach on February 27, 2019, 11:35:57 PM
Mostly because the weapons seem to keep level with armor the whole game.
Post by: bvanevery on February 28, 2019, 05:23:07 AM
I'm not really worried if the player is challenged by this. That's by design. I do worry if I've made it too hard for the AIs, if they'll just stalemate on these difficult bases. My jury is out on that.
One could of course resort to chemical attacks and genetic plagues. They're very effective in tandem. Chems are available at the very beginning, but plagues take a long time to get the tech. It was too cake when plagues were early. You'll probably also want to legalize the minor atrocities, as otherwise Planet will destroy you in vengeance for your transgressions.
I'm finally testing Thinker mod with my mod. The early returns are, I'm the dead last faction. But despite that, I'm safe, nobody's bringing war to me, and I've built just as many Secret Projects as anyone else.
I'm the Data Angels, which in my mod get any tech that 3 other factions have discovered. No need to infiltrate, as it's unrealistic to expect the AI to ever do that. I may have lucked out in the faction I got, in that the Data Angels do somewhat well when other factions are doing really well. Not sure if I'd do ok with a different faction, short of building the Planetary Datalinks to get the same result. But I haven't really been in any serious military conflict, so don't even know if the AI poses a credible military threat. It definitely can't threaten me at a distance, when I deliberately made alliances with my next door neighbors early on.
Even before I started, I wondered to what degree Thinker relies on exploits in the stock tech tree. Like thermal borehole and supply crawler abuse, for instance. Not gonna happen so easily in my mod, because I made those come substantially later. Then again, the AIs have got Industrial Automation now, which provides both crawlers and boreholes. So now it's just about how Thinker prioritizes.
Post by: vonbach on February 28, 2019, 02:24:45 PM
trance units and your good. I don't even bother with building conventional units anymore. I doubt the AI gets in cities that well though.
Its a challenge for me at least. I've never used genetic plagues or chemical warfare at all.
I'm curious on how your mod and the thinker mod will integrate. Good luck.
Post by: bvanevery on February 28, 2019, 03:21:55 PM
In my test game, Thinker is ramping up its borehole thing now. Got some nasty Morganic cities with 40 minerals production coming at me now. So far it's not using that output well though. Morgan has got -3 PLANET and -3 MORALE, those are his weaknesses. As the Data Angels I've got probe team strength, but not enough money to take over Morganic bases. Although maybe I could steal a lot of Morgan's money...
Post by: ChaDawnFanatic on March 02, 2019, 01:52:12 AM
Post by: bvanevery on March 02, 2019, 07:12:19 AM
Where's the smoking hub??? ::)
What on Planet are you on about? ;nuke;
Post by: ChaDawnFanatic on March 14, 2019, 07:53:26 PM
:D
Post by: bvanevery on March 15, 2019, 12:27:49 PM
Post by: vonbach on March 15, 2019, 09:06:38 PM
The buffs to make fungus farming viable appear very late in game and I was thinking of making them appear earlier.
I've never tried fungus farming.
Thanks.
Post by: bvanevery on March 16, 2019, 01:51:15 AM
Code: [Select]
; flags = Special tech flags
; 000000001 = "Secrets": first discoverer gains free tech
; 000000010 = Improves Probe Team base morale
; 000000100 = Increases commerce income
; 000001000 = Reveals map
; 000010000 = Allows gene warfare atrocity
; 000100000 = Increases intrinsic defense against gene warfare
; 001000000 = Increases ENERGY production in fungus
; 010000000 = Increases MINERALS production in fungus
; 100000000 = Increases NUTRIENT production in fungusIn my mod, the same total amount of nutrient, minerals, and energy production is available as the stock game. However I allow the edible fungus bonuses much earlier than the stock game. You get them for E2 Centauri Empathy and B3 Ecological Engineering. In the stock game it's Centauri Ecology and Centauri Psi. The latter occurs rather late.
If you want to farm fungus roughly in the style of the original game, but you want to have an easier time of it, you should just play my mod and do it. You would of course pick the Gaians, because +1 nutrient on fungus is one of their faction powers, and nobody else has that power.
If you want to play a game where it's substantially easier to farm fungus, you would either increase the number of techs that give a fungus nutrient bonus, or you would mod a faction to make their FUNGNUTRIENT bonus higher.
Post by: vonbach on March 16, 2019, 11:42:48 AM
I might mod my game just so fungus farming takes place earlier than the end of the game.
Post by: bvanevery on March 16, 2019, 12:10:25 PM
Post by: vonbach on March 16, 2019, 12:26:21 PM
I was going to make the buffs occur much earlier.
Post by: bvanevery on March 16, 2019, 12:32:52 PM
Makes me wonder about moving "Secrets of the Manifolds" out of the Discover tech tree and into the Explore tree. Seems more like a "Deirdre tech" than a "Zhakarov tech". Similarly with "Secrets of Alpha Centauri". It gives the Temple of Planet, why have that be University oriented?
Well I looked over my versions of "Secrets...". They're already cross-listed between categories, and there is not a lot of room for changing techs around that late in my tree. In the progression of Explore techs, I don't actually want Secrets of the Manifolds to come before The Will To Power, and that's already a Tier 7 tech. I think I'll be leaving my tree alone.
Post by: Vidsek on March 18, 2019, 08:06:59 AM
First: the player/AI disparity with ecodamage. Seems seriously gameplay important to me. So....
On Transcend, the AI's special dispensation on ecodamage is coded somewhere in the .exe and hasn't yet been located, right? Or has it been found but is not amenable to adjusting? Either way it does not seem solvable by pure .txt modding, either with alphax.txt or the faction files (eg. by giving player factions an ecodamage grace not allowed to AI factions), without essentially removing ecodamage from the game entirely. Is this correct?
Second: brute-force removal and replacement terraforming verses working with the existing biota (fungus utilization).
I see this as a technological and philosophical choice, which could be available as either/or but probably best as a mix-and-match. The balance of benefits and downsides and when each are available in the tech tree looks like yet another matter that would require extensive testing to discover the fallout on players and the AI (big surprise there).
Since it is a basic (if somewhat underdeveloped) feature of the original game, refining it to be more useful as a strategy without dramatically changing the game would be something I'd be willing to work on/assist with.
And yes, I do see that it would have to be implemented separately for the basic game and each and every mod to the tech tree <heavy sigh>.
Oh well, just some current thoughts. I'll try to come up with a few better insights tomorrow.
Post by: bvanevery on March 18, 2019, 02:14:00 PM
On Transcend, the AI's special dispensation on ecodamage is coded somewhere in the .exe and hasn't yet been located, right?
Induktio doesn't know where it is. I don't know if anyone else knows or knew where it is.
Yitzi isn't around to ask, and I'm doubting his work is structured in such a way that you could just examine his code to figure it out. It would definitely be a project.
Scient is around to ask. He's also been working on some kind of map of SMAC functions for a long time, but he never gets around to making a public release of it.
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Either way it does not seem solvable by pure .txt modding, either with alphax.txt or the faction files (eg. by giving player factions an ecodamage grace not allowed to AI factions), without essentially removing ecodamage from the game entirely. Is this correct?
That is correct. In Induktio's March development release of Thinker mod, he's shipping an alphax.txt that cuts eco-damage in half for everybody. For the AI that's half of almost nothing. For the human player that's half of what you'd usually experience on Transcend. I don't know if that removes eco-damage from the player's experience entirely. TBH I'm not that interested in testing it, as the design trajectory is "well we'll just make it a lot easier for the player", rather than make the AI pay anything for all the abuse it's doing.
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Second: brute-force removal and replacement terraforming verses working with the existing biota (fungus utilization).
I see this as a technological and philosophical choice, which could be available as either/or but probably best as a mix-and-match. The balance of benefits and downsides and when each are available in the tech tree looks like yet another matter that would require extensive testing to discover the fallout on players and the AI (big surprise there).
Since it is a basic (if somewhat underdeveloped) feature of the original game, refining it to be more useful as a strategy without dramatically changing the game would be something I'd be willing to work on/assist with.
Well here's how it currently is. Fungus starts out as not good. Even the Gaians, with their faction's +1 nutrient bonus, can't start an empire by relying on fungus. They have to make forest and farms same as anyone else. Fungus is a security risk when it's right next to your cities. Mindworms can attack your cities directly, and faction enemies can use it to sneak up on you. So removing some fungus is a good idea for most factions. If you are a PLANET friendly faction, then you aren't so concerned, as you'll probably be actively patrolling the fungus with early captured mindworms.
In my mod by the time you get B3 Ecological Engineering, fungus produces 2 food. If you're Gaian, that's 3 food. I have found it will actually help empire growth. In my just completed test game that I wrote up, when I'd click on the middle of my city's picture to have the computer allocate all the workers, it would often choose to work 1 fungus square. It was typically offsetting my forests, which produce more minerals but not so much food. I've never seen this happen with a faction other than the Gaians though. And it's only 1 square. I see it as a buffer or reserve of food. Gaians are not likely to be driven to starvation by anything.
As time goes on, fungus starts being worth minerals. You get +1 mineral at B5 Advanced Ecological Engineering. You get +2 at Matter Editation, although in the course of explaining all of this, I've found a bug where it's not currently happening. I'll have to fix that. I was wondering where all the minerals went, now I know. Anyways you get +3 at Threshold of Transcendence. My timing on this is a bit different than the stock game, but the total amount of minerals you get out of fungus by the end of the game is the same. Once you've got AEE, every faction will use fungus. It's typically giving you 2-1-1, the value of an early game farm without having to do any work. It may even give you 2-1-2, depending on what other tech's you've got.
I notice it a lot in ocean squares I haven't terraformed yet. Since the ocean is minerals poor for most factions, it's often a good policy to just leave that fungus alone. However if you're in the ocean, you need to eat kelp. That kelp eventually displaces the fungus. I've never really tried deliberately colonizing next to a large patch of fungus after AEE and then never planting kelp. By that point in the game, I've probably long since established all the cities I'm going to. I may conquer cities, but they will have terraforming around them that the AI did. There's going to be kelp.
On land, the fungus is useful enough that I don't typically make Mines anymore. I have all these various jobs to do with my Former fleet. All kinds of game pressures, particularly with Thinker mod. I typically send 1 Former onto a piece of Rocky terrain to cut a road, so that I'm not wasting movement for a lot of Formers trying to get to that dig site. I think of that road cut as a "deferment". I don't build a Mine yet, that does eco-damage, and I often don't have the food to work anyways. I've established a place where I could build a Mine later, if I have the Formers and the interest in doing so. Quite often, in the real world, I never get around to making the Mines at all. I find we're entering late game, and I just go back to all those Rocky places and plant fungus on them. It's like I planted a farm, although I can't put a solar collector on it, or a soil enricher.
But there's a reason I don't care. If I build the Manifold Harmonics and go +3 PLANET, I get another +1-1-2 on top of all that. Fungus becomes crazy good land! I think by game's end you can get 5 minerals off these damn things. Better than a Mine and doesn't do eco-damage for the existence of a Mine, although you may do eco-damage for minerals increase.
So that's the progression of what fungus does for you. Starts out bad, becomes low effort ok, and by the end of the game is better than any other land out there.
So the question becomes, what would you want to do differently? Making it easier to profit from fungus, can easily just throw the game, especially when we're talking about making minerals easier.
Fission Armor mod makes the Manifold Harmonics available fairly early in the game. That's a pretty big giveaway. I currently have it at the more boring late game time. One of my concerns is, there are a lot of Explore techs in front of it. I think there are aspects of the narrative that don't make any sense if the Manifold Harmonics comes too early.
I went back and studied the mineral progression of the stock game. It's +1 at Centauri Genetics, +2 at Matter Transmission, and +3 at Threshold at Transcendence. I use Advanced Ecological Engineering instead of Centauri Genetics, as it came at a similar point in the game and is more clearly minerals oriented. I use Matter Editation instead of Matter Transmission, as I've moved things around a little at the end of the game. In short from a minerals progression standpoint, my changes are pretty minor. When they're not bugged. :D
Post by: dino on March 18, 2019, 04:16:06 PM
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In Induktio's March development release of Thinker mod, he's shipping an alphax.txt that cuts eco-damage in half for everybody.It doesn't change ecodamage in the cities at all, neither frequency of fungus pops. It only changes how much ecodamage across the whole globe has to be accumulated, before sea level rises.
It's done to counter that thinker AI generates a lot of ecodamage, compared to almost nothing vanilla AI does, for which default drowning pace was designed.
Post by: bvanevery on March 18, 2019, 04:32:48 PM
Post by: Vidsek on March 19, 2019, 09:49:02 AM
I'll be watching with interest any workarounds folks come up with for this problem (while I wait to see if humanity actually colonizes a planet in the Alpha/Beta Centauri system before the terranx.exe code for ecodamage is unearthed).
Apparently I've been neglecting my fungus as well as not watching what the AI does with it. The use of fungus *is* strategic both in the original game and your AIG mod, I just wasn't paying proper attention.
I blame my (illogical) attachment to my hard-won terraforming making me subconsciously resist considering fungus appropriately, even when it is an equal or better option.
In the real world, turning alien biomass into human food would almost certainly be difficult and not quickly mastered, while extracting minerals and energy from it would be much less challenging. Applying this reasoning to the game (early minerals and energy, rather late food from fungus) would definitely change how fungus was viewed by both the player and AI. Whether or not it would be a viable situation from a gameplay perspective is another matter.
In my experience, the AI prioritizes food over either minerals or energy when choosing squares to work and rarely if ever picks a square with less than 2 food, even if the minerals and/or energy from it would actually be of greater value to that base (eg. when population is currently capped). Players can be more flexible.
Somewhere along the line, when I'm more familiar with how things work as is, I might play around with this out of curiosity as to what would happen.
Post by: Vidsek on March 19, 2019, 10:43:33 AM
I'm not planning to try the Thinker thing anytime soon, but am still working with my AIG/Yitzi merge where I want to be using your pure mod in the form you wish to present it to the game world in general.
I'll start my next trial (tonight) without those cost changes, as I can always add them in (shouldn't have much affect in the few turns I'll likely complete). And I can always just start over, anyway.
Post by: bvanevery on March 19, 2019, 02:54:25 PM
I blame my (illogical) attachment to my hard-won terraforming making me subconsciously resist considering fungus appropriately, even when it is an equal or better option.
It's not just a previous investment fallacy. Forests are also more aesthetically pleasing than fungus. My standing policy is to retain all previously completed forests, even when fungus becomes a better deal. Hey it's partly a builder game, like SimCity.
The one I really have a lot of trouble with, is farms with solar collectors on them, vs. Hybrid Forest forests. There's a point at which you should just throw away those old farms and go all forest. Also the conundrum of Rolling Moist land that I've saved "in case I want to farm it". Lately once I get Tree Farms, I just accept that it's not actually going to be useful to farm, so I forest it. I don't like covering up a mineral but that's the reality of forests being better by then.
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In the real world, turning alien biomass into human food would almost certainly be difficult and not quickly mastered, while extracting minerals and energy from it would be much less challenging. Applying this reasoning to the game (early minerals and energy, rather late food from fungus) would definitely change how fungus was viewed by both the player and AI. Whether or not it would be a viable situation from a gameplay perspective is another matter.
Why would you get enough minerals or energy to be worth it though? From a realism standpoint.
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In my experience, the AI prioritizes food over either minerals or energy when choosing squares to work and rarely if ever picks a square with less than 2 food, even if the minerals and/or energy from it would actually be of greater value to that base (eg. when population is currently capped). Players can be more flexible.
Mostly true. You have to have a substantial surplus of food. The AI is more interested if the mineral has to be very valuable i.e. a Mine on a minerals special. Sometimes though I've had to manually adjust the workers to have Stagnant food, so that I can work my big Mine.
Post by: vonbach on March 19, 2019, 09:09:45 PM
Post by: bvanevery on March 19, 2019, 10:52:38 PM
But I do hear your vote that "this is a drag". I haven't really heard enough votes one way or the other, and I'm not settled on whether I've overdone it or have done the right thing.
One thing I like about the more defensive cities, is early enemy Scouts can't just come and summarily kill me in the crib. Nobody's tough enough at the beginning to do that.
Post by: bvanevery on March 20, 2019, 03:20:27 AM
I like that Infantry doesn't get any kind of bonus for attacking cities anymore. As fun as it might be to do that to someone's city while on offense, it's really irritating when on defense. Typically it's some beginning of the game Scout vs. Scout battle. Scouts are on an Infantry chassis so boom, suddenly they're some kind of urban siege engineers. I really don't like that. I'm glad I did away with that. I don't feel like futzing with whether infantry, speeders, or hovertanks are best for attacking a city. There's still a reason to use infantry: they're cheaper. Especially when combined with rails, they can be very cost effective for blowing someone away.
I like that Sensor Arrays are worth more and take some thinking about wiping them out before making an assault. I've come up with various tactics for sneaking around to get the job done. Only just now I've realized, this would be a good use of the Cloaking Device, which I make available early in the game. Not so much for being invisible, because the AI cheats on that anyways, but because it allows you to ignore zones of control. Usually I've been either escorting with probe teams or with Gun Jets. I should try making other Cloaked units.
I do not like that I'm using piles of probe teams to sabotage everything in a base over and over again, just to get at the Perimeter Defense. I've been doing it because I felt like maybe I was morally obligated to do it or something. I do think it is a drag. Perimeter Defenses make a huge difference in a base's defensability, +100%. My mod punishes probe teams pretty hard, you can't just get PROBE bonuses unless you are the Data Angels. So it's taking piles of probe teams to bring down those walls. I find that targeted attacks just have too low a success rate, you're better off wrecking everything until you finally get to the Perimeter Defense.
So a logical solution would be to cut the Perimeter Defense in half, to +50%, right? And make it cost half as much. Problem is, there's nowhere in alphax.txt to do that.
So I'm back to the drawing board. I guess I have to come up with either +25% or +50% to cut off the defense buffs. I have to assume the Perimeter Defense is going to stay put, if I don't want to have to mess with Probe Teams all the time. That means I can't take off Sensor Array buffs, because I already destroy Sensor Arrays. Base defense is still stiff. I've already eliminated the infantry bonus. I don't want to retool the weapons and armor ratios and progressions in the tech tree. It takes a long time to figure that stuff out.
So really this only leaves the intrinsic base defense as something to waffle upon, prevaricate, and go back to how things were before. I currently have ibd = +50%. In the stock game it's +25%. Going back to +25% would be easy enough. Is it enough? I don't know. I suppose I can change it, keep playing my test game, and see if it helps.
If it isn't enough, I could do ibd = +0%. That's helpful if a base has a Perimeter Defense, as it makes the combo 25% weaker than the stock game. But it also means a newly established base is really vulnerable. The old Scout vs. Scout problem at the beginning of the game.
I will try ibd = +25% and see how it goes.
Actually upon further consideration, since something clearly must be done, I will just do this for version 1.29. I'm not ready to leave bases inherently defenseless. I need to hear how people react to the change, before dialing it back even more. I don't want to get rid of the stronger Sensor Arrays. I already destroy Sensor Arrays when on offense. It's a bit of a drill but it makes me think tactically about offense, how to get behind a base to eliminate difficult Sensor Arrays. I think that's a good thing.
Post by: Vidsek on March 20, 2019, 05:44:43 AM
I also thought the infantry base attack bonus was nonsensical (what? Cities require room by room clearing maybe? That would really mean that vehicular units should have an attack penalty).
I removed that bonus from my games.
The AI does use sensors fairly well, but I try to one-up them by not only spamming them around and within my empire (partly for early warning and to dispel the fog of war from unsettled interior areas) but also by doing a little trick I read about in some Civ forum or other: build a sensor where you want a base and then pop the colony pod right on top of it. The sensor is not destroyed and becomes significantly harder to get at and destroy. The delay in starting the base is a downside, but with some forethought (such as building a lot of rover formers as soon as possible) you can toss the sensors in good squares before the colony pods are even finished constructing.
This obviously works best if you have some early unmolested build time from a larger map, and now, the AI Growth Mod.
If early game Perimeter enhanced bases are making the game unpleasant to play, downgrading the IBD is certainly worth looking into, and easy to do.
Another possibility might be to make Perimeter Defense come later (maybe early mid-game?). I'm sure you have a much better sense than I as to whether that would cause more problems than it solves. And I apologize for even suggesting something that requires messing with your carefully crafted tech progression ;lol.
Post by: Vidsek on March 24, 2019, 02:53:34 AM
So I was wondering if you could spare the time to point out the ones you think should go in your version of AIG?
The changes to the Peacekeepers, Pirates, and Believers seem to fall into this bin, and I can see their value outside of Thinker from my earlier non-Thinker game tests.
Same goes for the changes to Defense techs and facility costs, the cost changes to Terraforming and moving Condensers to EcoEng2.
It looks like much of your most recent (Attempt #10) changes to the Build techs and facilities will also have general utility.
So I guess the real question is if there are any that are specific to the Thinker testing and won't make it to the next AIG version.
To get my testing of AIG on a Yitzi substrate closer to your current work-in-progress version of AIG, it would be useful to know a few additional things:
Perimeter Defense - *which* tier 3 Tech is it in now? (I really like this change since I too have seen the AI obsess over it to the detriment of things more valuable to them in the earliest stages of the game)
Supply Crawler cost - crawler chassis costs 10, so will the Supply unit now cost 70 for a total of 80? Currently that unit costs 80, so is this a decrease in total cost? Or have I missed something?
You're moving Adv. Eco. Engineering, Industrial Auto., and Bio. Engineering which means their pre-reqs and what they are pre-reqs for will change. I know detailing all of it for me will be a time sink you might not want at the moment and I can wait if that's true. If I did have that info, my current tests of the Yitzi/AIG merge could also be evaluating those changes.
Yitzi's patch/mod seems to make fewer fundamental changes to the game mechanics than Thinker and practically none to the AI. This has been viewed as a sad lack by many folks, but it does mean the AI behaves pretty much as in the basic unmodded game. The Merge tests therefore have some relevance to how AIG works with an un-modded alphax.exe. Or so my non-expert opinion currently is.
Post by: bvanevery on March 24, 2019, 04:14:41 AM
So I guess the real question is if there are any that are specific to the Thinker testing and won't make it to the next AIG version.
There's no such thing as me designing anything for Thinker mod's benefit. I currently have no plan to recommend the use of Thinker mod with my mod at all.
Rather, Thinker mod is a form of stress put on the game. It validates whether various things in the game are exploitable or out of balance. It does a fair job of approximating an expert minimaxing powergamer. Or as I called someone once, "an indefatigable calculator". I've learned that some popular strategies are overpowered, and that some of my factions are overpowered. Those things haven't been previously apparent to me, because they are outside my own play style, and nobody's offered up a demo game showing just how much Borehole stomping one can do in SMACX AI Growth mod.
Ergo, all adjustments are for what I feel will ultimately make a better game, regardless of who's binary is being used. Assuming the binary merely implements AI or bugfixes and doesn't change how the game works. I'm trying to harden my tech tree against these major exploits. Yes in the upcoming version 1.29 you can still do all the stuff, but it will cost more and you won't be able to get started on it until much later in the game. That may tick some people off, but I think it's a good thing. It means there isn't a One True Borehole Strategy to get through the game. While someone is waiting around to get enough tech to stomp everyone with Condensers and Boreholes, someone else might just build cheap Hovertanks and pillage the crap out of someone's terraforming fantasy. Or someone might build Super Former rail heads just before someone else was going to get cranking on the Boreholes and Supply Crawlers.
I wouldn't necessarily call such midgame tactics a "rush" but I'm trying to give players more of a window for a military solution. This whole "Thinker AI crushes you with productivity" thing kinda sucks, and it seems in the cutthroat multiplayer arena, some human beings do exactly the same sorts of things.
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Perimeter Defense - *which* tier 3 Tech is it in now?
I moved it back to C3 Advanced Subatomic Theory, same place you get Plasma armor and the Citizens' Defense Force.
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Supply Crawler cost - crawler chassis costs 10,
To be clear and exact, an Infantry chassis costs 1. In version 1.29 a "Supply Transport non-combat package" will cost 30. By some formula that I absolutely do not understand, this results in a Fission Infantry version that costs 80 and a Fusion Infantry version that costs 50. The latter is the same as an Artifact and that's the design goal, to keep that "by 50" method of counting. Of course that only works if INDUSTRY is 0, so I probably shouldn't get too hung up on it.
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You're moving Adv. Eco. Engineering, Industrial Auto., and Bio. Engineering which means their pre-reqs and what they are pre-reqs for will change. I know detailing all of it for me will be a time sink you might not want at the moment and I can wait if that's true. If I did have that info, my current tests of the Yitzi/AIG merge could also be evaluating those changes.
I never, ever specify prereq changes in detail. 8) Not even in my CHANGELOG. What I can do is attach draft 1.29 files for your contemplation. You can diff them against 1.28 versions if you like. They are not final, as I'm still playtesting and conceivably, I could find out I did something wrong / bad. However most of it is considered ready to release and unlikely to change. I just can't say it's tested until it's tested.
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Yitzi's patch/mod seems to make fewer fundamental changes to the game mechanics than Thinker and practically none to the AI. This has been viewed as a sad lack by many folks, but it does mean the AI behaves pretty much as in the basic unmodded game. The Merge tests therefore have some relevance to how AIG works with an un-modded alphax.exe. Or so my non-expert opinion currently is.
My memory is Yitzi changed 3 encodings in alphax.txt. Conventional Missile strengths, stockpiling energy, and there's some 3rd thing I have trouble remembering off the top of my head. So the consequences are what, overpowered CMs? Game crashing because stockpiling is messed up? And what about Naomi?
The most significant change still needing a test, is the new -1 INDUSTRY -1 SUPPORT for the Pirates. Both whether stock AI does a reasonable job with it (I expect it will), and whether it's fine or sucks for a human player.
I'm good with the Peacekeepers losing their +2 GROWTH without any testing. There were many versions of my mod where they didn't have that ability. Maybe it'll turn out they need a further boost, but it's not going to become unplayable or suck.
I don't think the Hive or Believer changes require testing, but it'll be interesting to know how human players feel about those factions.
I just realized that giving the Hive any kind of MORALE bonus is really against the lore of the game. They should all be miserable and depressed! I'm not including my hive.txt, I need to reconsider. There's a 5 file limit anyways.
EDIT: found a bug in alphax.txt. Super Slider Former was supposed to be given by EcoEng2. Reuploaded, fixed now.
Post by: Vidsek on March 24, 2019, 06:36:37 AM
The draft alphax.txt is fine for my purposes, since I'm theoretically evaluating AI Growth in a (somewhat feeble) attempt to assist you with your testing.
About a third of our community here claims they are using Yitzi's patch so I thought it might be worthwhile to see how it performs in that environment, imperfect as it is.
So far it seems to be co-habitating very well, and I'm very pleased with the superior AI performance as well as the overall gameplay. Making the "one best way to win" tactics just one way to win, no better or worse than others, is possibly the aspect that I approve of the most. There is no strategy if you have no choices.
With my Hive faction file I've changed a lot of the "flavor" parts (base names, diplomacy text, etc.) using primarily North Korea as an inspiration with a touch of Mao. They're now the Peoples Hoard with a Great or Beloved Leader.
And so I must agree with you that +MORAL is simply unthinkable. I might shy away from FANATIC as well.
More fitting for them is the comment attributed to Joe Stalin: "Quantity has a quality all it's own". Tho precisely how to implement that effectively I'm vague on at the moment.
Post by: bvanevery on March 24, 2019, 07:30:07 AM
I just gave the Believers a SUPPORT bonus. That's true to the original material. I don't really want the Hive to have that as well, as it starts to feel generic.
In theory, +3 SUPPORT lets you support units up to the base size. In practice, if your bases are big, you don't care about SUPPORT anymore because you have lots of minerals.
I could give the Hive free Recycling Tanks. From a lore standpoint, one might wonder why. Yes one of my favorite quotes is about that, leading to the phrase "Into the tanks!" and I don't mean the kind you drive. But why should the Hive be more into recycling than anyone else?
Post by: Vidsek on March 24, 2019, 10:29:09 AM
I could give the Hive free Recycling Tanks. From a lore standpoint, one might wonder why. Yes one of my favorite quotes is about that, leading to the phrase "Into the tanks!" and I don't mean the kind you drive. But why should the Hive be more into recycling than anyone else?
Rename them Soylent Green Kitchens?
Between the limited number of options, and being somewhat faithful to the lore, most of the better choices are gone.
Perhaps some IMMUNITY/IMPUNITY to one or more categories or something similar could let them have bonuses in the same ones as other factions without being exactly the same. If they can be rationalized with the lore.
Balancing them is the goal, I wouldn't be terribly put out if that required bending logic into odd shapes.
Post by: bvanevery on March 24, 2019, 01:07:29 PM
I guess there are actually 2 questions that aren't necessarily the same:
- Is the AI underperforming with this faction? Is there a specific reason for that?
- Is the faction actually weak in the hands of a human player, compared to other factions?
I strongly feel like (1) is true from my playtesting. Yet the Hive has Explore, Conquer as its research foci. Explore is the basic stimulus for forming more cities and covering more land.
There was a time when I suspected the stock AI wanted to play the Hive and the Believers as though they had +2 SUPPORT, when in fact they did not. I never figured out whether that was a real problem or not. I remember versions of my mod where I thought the Hive was doing quite well. Also the Spartans did quite well at some point. Then they somehow became less impressive.
I thought it would be seriously funny to give the Hive a Punishment Sphere at every base. However game mechanically it doesn't work. It defeats the purpose of the +3 POLICE play style, and it forces the player to play with a research retarded faction. Making Yang bad at research is also totally against his lore.
I could give the Hive a free Children's Creche. That does fit the lore, particularly as I now give it with E2 Biogenetics. Yang has the quote for that: "We hold life to be sacred, but we also know the foundation of life consists of a stream of codes not so different from the successive frames of a watchvid." That said, completing your 1st Children's Creche gets a quote from Santiago. Won't usually happen with the Hive since they would start with them, but they could capture a base and need to build one.
Giving a Children's Creche shouldn't empower the Hive the way +2 GROWTH empowered the Peacekeepers, because it's pretty much a given that you must build a Children's Creche for pop booming. You still have to come up with +4 GROWTH from somewhere else. That could be Socialist and a Golden Age, but Police State gives -1 ECONOMY -2 JUSTICE. Socialist gives -1 ECONOMY +2 JUSTICE, so you're dealing with a net of -2 ECONOMY. That's not so easy to get a Golden Age out of.
A Children's Creche also solves some of the Hive's JUSTICE problems for a human player. You'll still get the same Bureaucracy warnings because the JUSTICE is so bad, but the actual effect won't be as severe.
The defensive MORALE bonuses, and whatever resistance to probe teams one gains, are in keeping with the defensive nature of the Hive and its lore. I think I'm going to put this into test. If it overpowers them, I could give them -1 MORALE.
Post by: vonbach on March 24, 2019, 04:52:27 PM
The social engineering was quite unbalanced really. Democracy was frankly overpowered and everything else weak. Green wasn't much better.
Honestly I don't like the chance to "justice". I also like the old choppers.
Post by: bvanevery on March 24, 2019, 05:56:31 PM
The term JUSTICE is here to stay. As my design notes say in readme_mod.txt:
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Planned has been renamed to Socialist. In addition, Efficiency has been renamed to Justice. Stopping corruption by building a Courthouse was the original play mechanic in Civ II, and that's what SMAC is based on. I dislike the term efficiency because it begs the question, efficient at what? How about efficient at meeting people's needs and spending on social welfare programs? The main player visible effect upon the game, is people becoming unhappy due to the Bureaucracy penalty as one's empire gets bigger. In addition to stopping graft, why not have this also be about social justice, about providing essentials for a burgeoning population? SMAC's Planned economy clearly refers to socialism in the diplomatic dialogues, but it insists on a kind of socialism found in historical totalitarian Communist regimes, that is not allowed to work. It completely ignores the experience of socialism in Western democracies when a socialist party comes to power. I have modeled Socialist economy as something that doesn't give you anything 'except' more, happier people, and it costs money.
Bold added. How about being efficient at deploying death squads and disappearing people? How about being efficient at throwing corpses into a hopper to utilize their fats and other organic products? No, I want JUSTICE.
As for Choppers, I hate their multiple attacks, and I like having Gravships as a playable integrated part of the late game. Play with the new Gravships for awhile, then get back to me about whether Choppers are missed. The only thing I miss about Choppers is the goofy artwork, the crazy propeller thing.
Post by: bvanevery on March 24, 2019, 06:14:39 PM
I think I'm going to put this into test. If it overpowers them, I could give them -1 MORALE.
Under Thinker mod this is a disaster. Giving a faction +2 GROWTH in every city at the start of the game, what could possibly go wrong? Thinker mod coughed up 20 cities in the time it took other leading factions to produce 10.
This points out a big problem in trying to please 2 masters. What works ok for the stock binary, can be seriously amplified and twisted by Thinker mod. Sometimes a middle ground can be found, such as only bumping Condensers and Thermal Boreholes 2X, not 3X. But Thinker mod's middle ground threatens to change at any time. One can never be sure how something will be amplified in the future. Still, it's clear enough that a free Children's Creche is not a good idea, it's way more powerful than I expected.
I'm not going to give Yang his INDUSTRY bonus back. I'm quite settled on that. Firm.
The original game gave him +1 GROWTH, but is it really going to help? I suppose it could offset the GROWTH penalties of Green and Power. It's not what I'd call a "big whoop" for a human player though. Well, maybe it'll help the AI and maybe that's all it has to do. I'll test it.
Post by: vonbach on March 24, 2019, 06:36:46 PM
The Problem with yang is I don't know any other way to make him work. Other than the idea of giving him immunity to both police state and planned and be done with it. Then give him something like +growth or something.
Choppers are what AAA is for. Another thing you might try is making a Surface to Air Missile.
Post by: bvanevery on March 24, 2019, 07:01:38 PM
"Justice" reminds me entirely too much of "social justice" one of those nice little orwellian terms that in practice means the exact opposite of what it means in real life.
Politics are a matter of perspective, and since I'm the modder, you get mine. 8) I'm not going to apologize for using Socialist or Social Justice as positive words. I'm quite aware of the contemporary alt-right pejorative "Social Justice Warrior", and I'm doing my part to act against their twisting of language. In real life I just went to court, I had a public defender, and a jury trial. I'm not going to get into the details of what it was about, but I'm very clear on what's at stake for poor people in the USA, and the world generally. Need me some JUSTICE!
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"Social welfare" in reality just means oppressing people with opposing views.
I can find you instances of verbal oppression in any news media political outlet. I don't care if you're Right, Left, or even Center. I have a B.A. in Sociocultural Anthropology, which gives me a pretty good lens with which to analyze social control. People attempt to control you with language because they want the world to be their way. Whether that's fair nor not, depends entirely on what you personally believe in. Why you believe it, depends on many historical accidents of your environment and how you make your own personal decisions. Talk to me sometime in real life about how to get your opinion across to a jury, to get them to understand your point of view. Over a beer would be preferable; I'm generally in either Asheville or Winston-Salem, NC.
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Or bleeding people dry to pay for government programs. It's just a term I personally dislike.
Most wealthy people have very little concept of the infrastructural advantages they enjoy on the backs of others. The basic problem of Socialist revolutions isn't the Capitalist injustice they fought against. Their basic problem is they were revolutions, with violence, merely empowering a new goon squad that changes the terms around as to how people are going to be exploited.
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"Corruption" might be a better choice but efficiency works. We can agree to disagree i suppose.
The problem is the factor in the game is stated in the positive, not the negative. If you got more bad stuff the higher the factor got, then indeed I could have followed the Civ II precedent and called it CORRUPTION. But that's not how it is. You build a Courthouse to end corruption. What does a Courthouse give you? JUSTICE. Who do you go in front of, in a courthouse? A Justice.
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Another thing you might try is making a Surface to Air Missile.
I haven't forgotten the concept, nor of making chemical SCUD missiles. But there's enough on the plate for 1.29, with all the terraforming changes, that I'm very much willing to leave missiles to some imagined 1.30. Would hate to run out of things to do and actually be done with the mod. ;lol
It speaks to a general development imperative of trickling out content. There's the reality that it takes time to actually make stuff. Especially to test it, to make sure it doesn't suck. That's something I've done a lot for this mod, I daresay as opposed to other mods. No mod has put the level of testing effort into it that I have, unless we're talking about mods that have been around for a very long time. Binary Dawn is the only one whose name I've heard enough times, that could possibly rise to that level today, and I haven't played it.
If I trickle out the content, in chunks that say, "There's enough here that it's worth you downloading again," then I can command top post attention on Reddit and so forth. I've settled on 1 month intervals for dribbling out the content. This current instance actually arose naturally. I got bored, then I finally tried out Thinker mod to deal with the boredom. I saw problems, blind spots in my own play style compared to what other powergamers do. So I've gone on a crusade against the Borehole.
Post by: vonbach on March 24, 2019, 08:05:53 PM
"Social justice warriors" like to dox people ruining their lives or simply beating them over the head then
getting away with it. Its a term out of Orwells 1984.
Socialism works until you run out of other peoples money. Wealthy people create jobs. You can't make people rich by taking other peoples money.
I just mod it back to Effic honestly.
I've made the SAM missiles before. That would be a good defense against choppers.
Post by: bvanevery on March 24, 2019, 09:14:27 PM
"Social Justice" just means oppressing people with views you don't like. Its not a twisting of words either.
"Social justice warriors" like to dox people ruining their lives or simply beating them over the head then
getting away with it. Its a term out of Orwells 1984.
"SJWs" is a pejorative term to make sweeping generalizations about people who tend to fall on the liberal end of the political spectrum. There's no substance to claims that "SJWs are doxers". Doesn't matter if you got doxed by a SJW once. I've been doxed by someone who was probably just a cyberbully and didn't have any particular political agenda. He just didn't agree with me about game design stuff in a Usenet newsgroup. Doxing is something that people do to each other on the internet because they want power over someone else. There is no political creed that limits the behavior.
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Socialism works until you run out of other peoples money.
Money is a social construct. There are all kinds of ways to abuse this construct, particularly if you are the one holding the bulk of the capital. I firmly believe that all the evils and wars in human history, arose during the Neolithic due to trade surplus. For instance if you've got all the food and other people around you don't have it, you can enrich an elite to conquer other people and take all their land. You can enslave them, put them in the fields, and make them produce more food for you. This isn't ancient history either, serfdom was still going on in 19th century Russia. It has occurred with Jim Crow in the USA, and we still see versions of this in the prison industrial complex. Money and labor are intimately related. If you have wealth, historically you can force other people to labor for you, and much of the time there wasn't anything even remotely fair about it.
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Wealthy people create jobs.
Wealthy people usually have it due to privileges gained by birth, not their actions. It is very difficult to bear all the costs of material productivity oneself. Wealthy people often take for granted the embodied material costs of objects that enrich them, such as machinery, technology, public roads and infrastructure....
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You can't make people rich by taking other peoples money.
So you're a Morganite. There are other philosophical voices in the game:
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##Adaptive Economics
#TECH81
Humans : correct in making the leap from wealth as currency to wealth as
energy. But logic failure : wealth ultimately is extension of desire, fluctuating
with emotions and state of mind. Desires : when all are supported in purely adaptable
system, true wealth is achieved.
^
^ -- Usurper Judaa Marr
^ "Human : Nature"
In my mod it gives Socialist. That's not an accident.
Bugs me that the quote is attributed to Conqueror Marr though. There's nothing Socialist or adaptively economical about him at all. He wants godhood. He will kill anything that gets in the way of that. That's why in my mod he does not want Socialist or Planned, he wants Power.
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I just mod it back to Effic honestly.
Doesn't trouble me. Most people won't, and my message will get through to the vast majority of people who try my mod.
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I've made the SAM missiles before. That would be a good defense against choppers.
This mod doesn't need a defense against Choppers, it doesn't have any Choppers. 8) What I need is a Chopper that can only shoot once or twice, not every single time it can move.
Post by: vonbach on March 24, 2019, 09:54:52 PM
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"SJWs" is a pejorative term to make sweeping generalizations about people who tend to fall on the liberal end of the political spectrum.
Its also an accurate one.
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Wealthy people usually have it due to privileges gained by birth, not their actions. It is very difficult to bear all the costs of material productivity oneself. Wealthy people often take for granted the embodied material costs of objects that enrich them, such as machinery, technology, public roads and infrastructure....
Most rich people get rich through hard work and effort.
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So you're a Morganite.
No what I am is not a communist. The best way to make people more prosperous is to let them help themselves.
Also given the behavior of communist regimes that quote being from Judaa Maar is apt.
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What I need is a Chopper that can only shoot once or twice, not every single time it can move.
lower the movement on it. Or make a SAM unit to defend against it.
Post by: bvanevery on March 24, 2019, 10:11:51 PM
lower the movement on it.
Been there done that. Many earlier versions of my mod had that kind of Chopper in it. It was boring. I never made the things.
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Or make a SAM unit to defend against it.
The stock AI never does this. Also you don't need Air Superiority to attack an enemy Chopper on your turn. If it's out in the open, it's sitting on the ground and vulnerable to ground attack.
If you meant "make AAA units" to defend against it, well frankly I get bored having to make a special defense unit everywhere for all the different unit types. The real problem is an air unit that can attack 8 times in a row.
Needlejets are still in the game, you can make AAA units all you like to defend against those. But my mod's current regime, is a Needlejet chassis is expensive. I may have overdone it, but I wanted it to feel like you're paying a military defense contract for a freakin' Bomber, not some cheap Speeder jalopy of the skies. The stock AI would make mountains of the damn things and fly them all over the place to almost no purpose, save for destroying your Formers. Now the game is pretty light on bothering with planes, or at least it has been.
I probably need some "Air Corps nut" to test my mod, because I'm certainly not one. Can't be bothered. I'm all about the rails.
Post by: vonbach on March 24, 2019, 10:33:03 PM
Post by: bvanevery on March 24, 2019, 10:56:18 PM
In the stock game, one tended to put a Chaos gun on the end of the Copter and systematically murder all the peons on the map, such as the Believers had spewed out. Are you familiar with this play mechanic?
Post by: vonbach on March 25, 2019, 02:39:47 AM
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In the stock game, one tended to put a Chaos gun on the end of the Copter and systematically murder all the peons on the map, such as the Believers had spewed out. Are you familiar with this play mechanic?
Yes, that's why giving the AI a AAA spec to use might be nice. Or an unlimited range SAM.
Post by: bvanevery on March 25, 2019, 03:19:41 AM
Post by: bvanevery on March 26, 2019, 06:17:47 AM
The Hive did ok with +1 GROWTH, but it wasn't a leading faction. I think the change is minor and therefore ok.
-1 INDUSTRY -1 SUPPORT seems to restrain the Pirates, but I don't know if both are necessary. I feel obliged to test it more. Maybe run some AI games to see what happens. I could make them all Pirate games!
I've decided to change the Cult of Planet's personality to Aggressive and to have them seek to increase their PLANET rating. +4 PLANET is actually pretty dangerous.
Post by: Vidsek on March 26, 2019, 04:11:59 PM
I've decided to change the Cult of Planet's personality to Aggressive and to have them seek to increase their PLANET rating. +4 PLANET is actually pretty dangerous.
The Cult has consistently underperformed in my tests. Making them Aggressive should step them up to the plate, and feels right for their lore. Also agree that high PLANET rating is powerful, if used well.
(Between the stock alphax and Yitzi's additions, I have several ways to adjust the quantity and types of affects PLANET has. For testing, of course, I stay at or close to the stock defaults. Later on I can play with changes to the parameters)
Giving the Believers +1 SUPPORT didn't improve the AI performance in Thinker mod. I found that odd, but there it is. I'm inclined to not give this buff, as it'll just make it easier for the human player, and I don't think that was a problem before.
The Hive did ok with +1 GROWTH, but it wasn't a leading faction. I think the change is minor and therefore ok.
-1 INDUSTRY -1 SUPPORT seems to restrain the Pirates, but I don't know if both are necessary. I feel obliged to test it more. Maybe run some AI games to see what happens. I could make them all Pirate games!
I read this as: don't SUPPORT the Believers anymore, let the Hive procreate, and watch the ARRRR!!!! series on the bvanevery channel for the latest on Pirate misbehaviour.
Post by: vonbach on March 26, 2019, 07:30:27 PM
I thought about replacing fundamentalism with a "middle tier" on the oppression scale. Something like autocratic
or "corporate."
The believers were never that strong of a faction to begin with. The +support is nice but it would depend on what else they have.
They should be a +growth faction. Be fruitful and multiply and dangerous if left alone.
The reason the pirates were aggressive was a balancing factor in itself. The Pirates AI would spam military units until it
ran out of minerals. I thought making them passive would break them. Making them passive basically turned them into
sea morganites.
Post by: bvanevery on March 26, 2019, 11:24:34 PM
Heres a question. You were thinking about replacing fundamentalism with another government. If so what one?
I never really came up with a clear idea on that. Game mechanics aren't the only consideration, one should also consider the original lore of the game. Changing Free Market to Capitalist, and Planned to Socialist, is mostly a change of name and not so much of substance. I think the idea of a Theocracy is worth having in the game, whatever it is called. It's just difficult to see why a theocracy is any different from a police state. A debate to be had with the Iranians, the Taliban, and ISIS I suppose.
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I thought about replacing fundamentalism with a "middle tier" on the oppression scale. Something like autocratic
or "corporate."
It's not a bad idea in principle, but my Democratic is already corporate. It makes money. I think that's an accurate reflection of what industrial democracies do, as compared to alternatives. I also have Socialist government, which loses money. Again, accurate. Capitalist is already corporate, you don't get any JUSTICE. So I'm not seeing where a "make mo money" political choice would fit in, as I think I've already got it covered.
One basic game mechanical difference between choosing Police State or Fundamentalist in my mod, is one screws your money, the other screws your research. Which do you prefer? You may prefer either at different times of the game. I have several Undemocratic factions: the Hive, the Usurpers, and the Cult of Planet.
If I were being honest, I would call them "Police State" and "Different Kind of Police State", but that's not catchy.
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The believers... should be a +growth faction. Be fruitful and multiply and dangerous if left alone.
I believe I tried that at one point to some degree, although it was only +1 GROWTH, not +2. The pop booming play mechanic is already owned and dominated by the Peacekeepers. I don't think it's a good idea to just duplicate play styles.
I arrived at a hybrid for the Believers: they are Christians who could go Democratic and sit around making money, with their new +1 ECONOMY. They're stronger than the Morganites of the original game, although of course the Morganites were completely pathetic, so that's not saying much. The Data Angels also got +1 ECONOMY, so the Believers are not the only faction that has gone "Morganite lite". In the case of the Believers, I like to think of them as possibly televangelists who are worshipping the Almighty Dollar. I don't put that into their lore though, I leave it up to the player to imagine. I do say, "Tithings keep the Church solvent."
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The reason the pirates were aggressive was a balancing factor in itself. The Pirates AI would spam military units until it
ran out of minerals.
And it got so old. Ship after ship after blessed ship, bothering me on my coasts! And the AI never gets tired of this drivel, it just keeps sending the ships. Screw that, I'm not going to be pestered into submission.
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I thought making them passive would break them. Making them passive basically turned them into
sea morganites.
They are quite a bit worse than sea Morganites. They are the economic superpower of the game. That's saying a lot as the Morganites get +2 ECONOMY in my mod. Ocean "land" is that good!
Post by: vonbach on March 27, 2019, 12:01:01 PM
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It's not a bad idea in principle, but my Democratic is already corporate. It makes money.
Thats not quite what i had in mind for a corporate. I don't mean a government designed to make money.
I mean a government that doesn't so much rule the state as manage it like a corporation. Something like Singapore.
Or maybe Technocracy might be a good term. A middle ground between oppressive police states and Democracy.
As far as fundamentalist government goes it depends on what your idea of a fundamentalist government is.
The USA for most of its history was essentially a protestant fundamentalist state. Perhaps instead of Fundamentalist
you could call it a traditionalist system.
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They are quite a bit worse than sea Morganites. They are the economic superpower of the game. That's saying a lot as the Morganites get +2 ECONOMY in my mod. Ocean "land" is that good!
I was afraid of exactly that when you made them passive wealth seekers.
Post by: bvanevery on March 27, 2019, 04:16:33 PM
I'm not sure there is a middle ground between oppressive Police States and Democracy. What would be a modern day example of such? For instance, Russia. It's simply not a Democracy, it's the Vladimir Putin state. Anyone who thinks otherwise is ignorant and doesn't know Russian history. A Putin state is not as bad as a Stalinist state. It might not even be as bad as a Khruschev or Brezhnev state, but it's in a similar category of government behavior. If you say the wrong thing about Putin, you get a grenade tossed in your apartment.
I suppose a sequence could be Democracy, Autocracy, Totalitarian. However this interferes with game lore. It's correct to talk about the Hive as being Totalitarian, but the narrative emphasis is about all his "Taoist ascetic woo" stuff. Turning your mind off from the stimulus of pain and so forth. I don't think Totalitarian as a buzzword helps that at all.
Also, other factions do typically go Police State. Notably the Gaians, because in the stock game they have the Efficiency to afford it. In my mod, they do it because they're a strong research faction, Fundamentalist harms research, and they don't need a MORALE buff to make mindworms effective. Police State is located in the Explore part of the tech tree because it makes more people "happy". Anything that makes people happy, is "Explore" in my mod.
The Cybernetic Consciousness often goes Police State in the stock game, because they have the Efficiency to pay for it. When I changed EFFICIENCY to JUSTICE, I lowered the Cyborgs to +1 JUSTICE. I'm not willing to regard them as "categorically better at everything". I think we've all watched enough Star Trek to know that a logician's world view has some limitations and downsides. It might be logical that the individual "has to" die for the good of the many, for instance.
Mainly though, I wanted to make Domai's "Freedom Workers Party" or whatever it's called, the faction with the most JUSTICE. And I wanted that to be at most +2.
The Gaians got demoted as well. You can argue back and forth about whether a Green economy is more efficient, but whether it's more just for the individual, that's a "yes and no" sort of thing. The planet is deemed more important than you are, at least in this game. And in real life, the needs of poor people in the developing world are often pitted against environmental concerns.
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Perhaps instead of Fundamentalist you could call it a traditionalist system.
Police State, Democratic, Traditionalist wouldn't mean anything. The political tradition of what? In the USA, the tradition is Democratic. In Russia, the tradition is a Police State.
I'm still stuck at Democratic, Police State, Some Other Kind Of Police State.
One of the contrasts between Police State and Fundamentalist is the latter is a bit more militaristic. I think it's a false distinction made for game mechanical reasons. It's like, which choice are you going to give the MORALE bonus to? I suppose, the one that doesn't flog people as much, so not Police State. But doesn't ISIS flog people? So does the Taliban. Why do people get charged up to fight, vs. being dejected and moving along at the front of a punishment batallion? If you try to retreat, we shoot you...
Post by: vonbach on March 27, 2019, 05:57:43 PM
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To most people, Technocracy would imply that you do better research.Not necessarily, it means a government run in an efficient, scientific manner. Not that it gives better research.
Traditionalist could cover a lot of things. But the general idea is a government system that sacrifices progress for stability.
Less repressive than a police state but more stable than a democracy. This could cover many systems but its more the attitude
behind the system thats important. Possibly a Republic, Corporate or an oligarchic system or even a neo feudal system.
Basically the idea with any of these is to make a "middle tier" something thats not as good at growth as a democracy and not as good a
police state at keeping order but can do either. Just not as well.
Post by: bvanevery on March 27, 2019, 09:46:24 PM
Not necessarily, it means a government run in an efficient, scientific manner. Not that it gives better research.
If scientists are running the government, you're going to get better research.
If the government is going to be run "scientifically", well just whose science are you talking about? Is this like Tobacco Lobby science or Clean Coal science? I can see the research grant papers now: The Perils of Unionization on the Human Genome. Yeah, uh, the Nazis had "science" for how the government and society should be organized.
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Traditionalist could cover a lot of things. But the general idea is a government system that sacrifices progress for stability.
In SMAC, RESEARCH is the metric of "progress". It doesn't really have a metric of stability. It has things that make people happier or unhappier, including forced happiness.
Galactic Civilizations II had the concept of a Mercantilist government, that focuses on industrial production, not research. Very similar to Domai and the Free Drones, who have -2 RESEARCH in the original game. I got rid of that in my mod, and I also downgraded his INDUSTRY bonus from +2 to +1.
Game mechanically I don't need a Mercantilist government in my mod though. You already have the Values tradeoff between Wealth, Knowledge, and Power. Additionally, in my mod Capitalist is production oriented. I think that's realistic. You get more money, and you get better industry, by frying the planet. You don't get any social justice.
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Less repressive than a police state but more stable than a democracy.
What's a modern real world example of that? Personally I can't think of any such thing. I can think of political parties within Democracies that want to believe in such a thing, but they do not control the polls.
In Civ II you had Monarchy. But Civ II also deals with ancient to early modern human history. I think it's worth noting that when WW I began, many people in the U.K. still couldn't vote! Says a lot about who you can conscript. SMAC is quite beyond all of that.
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Possibly a Republic,
The Civ II game mechanic of a "Republic" happens when your POLICE rating is at -3. You can have 1 military unit per city out on campaign without getting any unrest.
I don't think trying to contrast the labels "Democratic" and "Republican" government would mean anything when trying to describe government systems. It also risks sounding like US political parties. Which is historically pretty goofy anyways, as the Republican party platform has completely switched since Lincoln's time. The Southern Democrats of the 1960s also have nothing to do with the Democrats of today, they were segregationists. The party labels have pretty much completely flipped!
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Corporate or an oligarchic system
Don't need this. Already covered by Capitalist, Wealth, and JUSTICE.
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or even a neo feudal system.
What would it mean in a 22nd century space game? What would it be called? "Police State, Democratic, Feudalist / Neo-Feudalist" sounds dumb in a science fiction game.
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Basically the idea with any of these is to make a "middle tier" something thats not as good at growth as a democracy and not as good a
police state at keeping order but can do either. Just not as well.
Well game mechanically I already have that. +1 MORALE +1 SUPPORT +1 POLICE -2 RESEARCH. It is called "Fundamentalist" for legacy reasons of game lore. I'm not going to mess up the lore unless I can come up with a much better, more appropriate term for "halfway between a Democracy and a Police State".
You are of course aware that referring to the Believers as "Fundamentalist" has been banished in my mod. The AI does not have it as a compulsion anymore, and does not insist that anyone be anything. It's the only AI faction in the game with complete free will that way. I plan to reinstate the FANATIC attack bonus, but the Believer description text doesn't say that it's for Fanatics. It says it comes from "the strength of their convictions". Well I could have Mel Gibson style convictions in that movie of his, "The Patriot", couldn't I?
Militarism and cults are things to think about when trying to find a label.
I think the term "Nationalist" has too many racial negatives associated with it, for me to want to use it in the game. It also doesn't make all that much sense in a 22nd sci-fi game that very deliberately states the factions are separated not by nationality, but ideology.
Post by: vonbach on March 28, 2019, 12:51:12 AM
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If scientists are running the government, you're going to get better research.No its bureaucrats trying to run a government in a efficient "scientific" manner. There is a difference.
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What's a modern real world example of that?
A Republic for example. Almost anything is more stable than a Democracy. Theres a reason the founding fathers wanted a Constitutional Republic and not a Democracy. Universal suffrage democracies don't work.
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I'm not going to mess up the lore unless I can come up with a much better, more appropriate term for "halfway between a Democracy and a Police State".
Fundamentalist was a relic from civ 2 I just thought it might be refreshing to change it to something else.
I'm not trying to argue with you just hopefully give you a little inspiration.
I figured Technocracy might be good because frankly it fits in the lore and its never been tried.
Post by: bvanevery on March 28, 2019, 02:09:05 AM
No its bureaucrats trying to run a government in a efficient "scientific" manner. There is a difference.
Bureaucrats don't know jack !#$$ about science. Nor do police officers. They will tell you they know all about science though, to make themselves sound good. So that they have authority, so that they can be in charge, stay in charge, and collect more money. Same for bureaucrats and police officers. What their behavior actually is, in the eyes of scientists who actually spend their careers dealing honestly with peer reviewed journals, is pseudoscience. Aka witchcraft, witch hunts, and woo. More charitably, "their biases" as to how they see the world, how they think it works.
I remember the words of my Russian fighting instructor back in Seattle, after some bureaucrat at the front desk of the gym gave him a hard time for some reason. About the potential deadliness of things in his pockets or some such. He said, "We must never help such people."
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A Republic for example. Almost anything is more stable than a Democracy.
Pick a real government. A real country that has this government, whose recent political experience we can look at. Not an idea about what could or should be. Where is this example of a government that's "more stable", that isn't a police state, that isn't just different parties coming into power and then going away in a typical industrial democracy? When you've got some guy running a "democracy" that has been "elected" for 20+ years, that's a police state. May not be as nasty as a Stalinist state but it's still one.
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Universal suffrage democracies don't work.
You'd have to define what "works" means. "I want other people to shut up" doesn't mean you have a defensible notion of what "works", it just means you want to have more power than some other group does.
Some people don't seem to appreciate that a modern democracy such as we have in the USA, is a power sharing arrangement. Power sharing means you don't get your way all the time. People oppose you. Things slow down and grind to a halt. That's by design. The Founding Fathers knew about sharing power, that's why we have the Executive, the Legislative, and the Judicial branches. This is grade school civics stuff. We should never, ever be interested in a government where these arms of government move in unrestricted lock step with each other. That is the road to dictatorship.
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Fundamentalist was a relic from civ 2 I just thought it might be refreshing to change it to something else.
It's not completely a relic. The Believers were shipped in SMAC as the poster children for the Fundamentalist way of doing business. You and I just happen to think that a one dimensional representation of Christianity isn't interesting. It's not even true to the game lore as portrayed in the Secret Project movies. It's more true of the canned caricatures that pervade all of the faction diplomatic dialogue, on all kinds of subjects.
Like Santiago being a "right wing nut job" because she's pro guns and armament. Guess what kind of news segment I heard on NPR this afternoon? It was about with all the violence escalating in Portland Oregon, between the far left ANTIFA movement and the far right white supremacist movement, that leftists are going the shooting range and arming up. People like the transgendered are doing things I've said was a good idea for a long time. If you are a minority group of some kind, capable of having a hate crime perpetrated on you, you should be armed to the teeth. Don't be even slightly afraid or apologetic about shooting someone for your own valid self-defense. That's half of the reason the guns are available to us, that's half of our right under the Second Amendment. So say fairly recently decided case laws in the USA.
People don't seem to understand that historically in the South, a lot of the anti-gun rhetoric was about disarming blacks. So that lynchings would go the way that various white people thought they should go. The South is a region where otherwise, lotsa people have guns. It's more rural and agrarian and people shoot deer and stuff.
Anyways I got rid of Santiago's stupid dialogue on that point. Well, the dialogue said about her. One dimensional 1990's political drivel is not something I cherish about the game, or think important to preserve.
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I'm not trying to argue with you just hopefully give you a little inspiration.
Well if only we could think of a better word than we've come up with. So far, nothing is good enough to replace Fundamentalist. I'm happy to replace it with the right word, but it hasn't occurred to me what that word would be.
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I figured Technocracy might be good because frankly it fits in the lore and its never been tried.
Technocracy offers no explanation for +1 MORALE.
Post by: vonbach on March 28, 2019, 02:34:16 AM
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Bureaucrats don't know jack !#$$ about science.
Hence the word trying. Basically its a didfferent philosophy of government. Honestly I just thought it sounded interesting.
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Pick a real government.
A republic is a real form of government such as the USA prior to the civil war.
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You'd have to define what "works" means.
Democracy is a farce just take a look at Brexit. You can vote as many times as you want so long as you vote the right way.
Or in the USA we have the courts deciding for us what we need in our country. Like abortion.
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Well if only we could think of a better word than we've come up with.
Republic or Nationalist? Found this on google.
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Some examples of fundamentalism are; Fascism, Nazism, Socialism, Communism, Marxism, Islam, Christianity and Judaism. Fundamentalism is not limited to a theistic belief, but references any form of belief that mandates a strict obedience to a particular set of beliefs.
What are examples of religious fundamentalism? - Quora
https://www.quora.com/What-are-examples-of-religious-fundamentalism (https://www.quora.com/What-are-examples-of-religious-fundamentalism)
Post by: bvanevery on March 28, 2019, 04:49:32 AM
A republic is a real form of government such as the USA prior to the civil war.
But that's not modern. It's not terribly helpful to coming up with terms for a 22nd century space game. Also it's not clear to me off the top of my head, how one would distinguish between a Republic and a Democracy in that era anyways. Sounds like variations on a democratic theme.
There's also very much the risk and danger, for us old timers with long memories, of confusing the issue with the Civ II notions of a Republic vs. a Democracy. The former is "what the Romans did", the latter is "what the USA did". They are modeled as having increasingly strict attitudes towards warmongering, as compared to a Monarchy. One really has to wonder, in historical and game design hindsight, what crack they were smoking about the Romans? Those guys went out and killed people, they didn't have protesters. I think us old timers swallowed a complete game mechanical fiction because we didn't know any better. The real contrast is between Monarchy and Democracy. Much like we are struggling to come up with a term for "something in the middle" right now, they invented "Republic" as a fictional halfway house.
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Democracy is a farce just take a look at Brexit. You can vote as many times as you want so long as you vote the right way.
I've heard a lot on NPR lately about British politicans "making sausage". It's not clear to anyone at this point where their political spinners are going to land. A few more days or even a week may provide more clarity. There are clearly people in Parliament who are resisting the idea that the previous public vote should count. I think that kind of resistance is inevitable when the vote was close and the consequences are high. This is further compounded by the many "slight variations" of how they could be doing the Brexit. It seems that different contractual things happen if they agree to stuff with the EU vs. just exit without various agreements. And of course the possibility of calling the whole thing off. But I'm under the impression there are at least 3, maybe even 4, major scenarios in play right now. With who knows how much wrangling over minor scenarios.
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Or in the USA we have the courts deciding for us what we need in our country. Like abortion.
Or health care. [Sleezebag] now wants to abolish all the Obamacare stuff. That wasn't quite his position before, but it's his position, or at least rhetoric, now. So the Courts can change stuff, the Executive can change stuff, and the Legislature can change stuff. One party does something, then another party gets into power and tries to sabotage the whole thing. Look at the farce we've had in the EPA under [Sleezebag] for instance.
This squabbling doesn't mean Democracy is broken though. It means that Democracy is about squabbling. It's frustrating, but whaddya gonna do? Line everybody up that you don't agree with and shoot them? That's actually what the Romans did, in the Senate. If you dislike the opposition enough, you murder them in cold blood.
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Some examples of fundamentalism are; Fascism,
Fascism was a Civ I term. It was not used in Civ II. It has historically been associated with the Nazis even though Italian Fascism arose earlier and provided a model for the Nazis. As a term, it is too strongly associated with the Nazis to be used casually or loosely. It is not topical to SMAC, there are no space Nazis in the game. The Fascist movement mostly got crushed in WW II, which is why we don't have additional decades of political discourse about it. Communism of course survived and thrived for awhile, and is still going in China and some other countries, so we still talk about it.
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Fundamentalism is not limited to a theistic belief, but references any form of belief that mandates a strict obedience to a particular set of beliefs.
This idea is fine, and was always thematic to SMAC. For instance, Lal can become a Fundamentalist about the Sacred UN Charter. I imagine a sort of Sacred Bureaucracy where forms must be signed the right ways to retain people's "freedom".
The Cult of Planet is a cult, 'nuff said. In my mod they've taken over the ecological niche of being horrible religious freaks. Christianity is debatable, but these guys, they clearly throw people to mindworms. In my mod they are not allowed to choose Democratic, it's not in them to let anyone have a choice about lovin' on the mindworms. They're like ISIS, they'd throw people off of tall buildings to see a horde of mindworms devour them below. I also envision them as being pretty much liars, TV evangelist types on steroids. They can choose Capitalist, they'll turn a buck and poison Planet in the name of Cult revenues! Compare Scientology.
Post by: bvanevery on March 28, 2019, 05:08:45 AM
I'm playing the game of looking for synonyms of various things and so far, nothing is leaping out. Lotsa stuff means the same thing as Police State. Synonyms for Authoritarian for instance are Tyrannical, Despotic, Totalitarian....
As synonyms to Fundamentalist, I've found the terms Dogmatic and Fanatical. However nothing about such terms is exclusive of Police State. And they're not particularly catchy terms.
Post by: vonbach on March 28, 2019, 12:15:59 PM
serve the people in it. Where Fascism is better termed as a merger of state and corporate power.
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I'm playing the game of looking for synonyms of various things and so far, nothing is leaping out. Lotsa stuff means the same thing as Police State. Synonyms for Authoritarian for instance are Tyrannical, Despotic, Totalitarian....
As synonyms to Fundamentalist, I've found the terms Dogmatic and Fanatical. However nothing about such terms is exclusive of Police State. And they're not particularly catchy terms.
Nothing really does does it? Authoritarian might be a better name for police state though. I cant think of any alternatives right now for fundamentalist. I'm off to bed. Thanks.
Before I go Theres always the term Ecclesiarchy. But its not especially catchy.
Post by: bvanevery on March 28, 2019, 12:50:29 PM
Authoritarian might be a better name for police state though.
I believe one of the Civs used that term. However it's not really "better" as far as SMAC's lore and history go. We've had Police State and POLICE for 20 years. Now the betterness of a term can be a matter of taste: I think Capitalist is better than Free Market, and Socialist is better than Planned, and that both terms are true to the original material.
Random terms that come to mind that might be interesting to make a SE choice about, but don't help with the present problem: Anarchist, Gynarchist. There's also the somewhat obscure Syndicalist (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syndicalism) movement.
The hand that will rule the world |
It occurs to me that Militarist wouldn't be a wrong description for part of the game mechanics. But it's not exclusive of a Police State, and doesn't explain a RESEARCH penalty.
Demagogic could be useful, but again isn't exclusive of a Police State. It's often what a demagogue implements.
Perhaps we are forgetting the historical importance of Islamic Fundamentalism to Civ II's game design. Civ II's Fanatics unit animations unapologetically lambasted Islamic Fundamentalists. Arguably it was even racist, in the Civ II: Test of Time version of the game at least. Little guys out in the sand with scimitars make that Arabic (?) trilling noise when they attack, then summarily die! It's pretty funny to watch, they're basically cartoons of killing themselves.
The contrast was never about democracy, totalitarianism, and something in between those two. It was about world religious movements taking on the role of government. This was readily seen in the power vacuum that arose after the end of the Cold War, with the USA and USSR no longer exerting firm control over Radical Islamic regional interests. 2 years after SMAC gets written, we get 9/11!
So yeah, uh, you could understand SMAC's 1999 political voice as "Christians are just as bad as Muslims". Or at least they have been in the past, and could be again in space. Whatever. The point is they were trying to talk about Theocracies, a term that later Civ games adopted I think. Fundamentalist is a slightly broader term than that, able to encompass stuff that's not strictly religion.
Well I might invest a little more energy in looking for a different word. But all this research is reinforcing my stance of "a distinction without much difference" between Police State and Fundamentalist.
Post by: vonbach on March 28, 2019, 07:12:26 PM
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So yeah, uh, you could understand SMAC's 1999 political voice as "Christians are just as bad as Muslims". Or at least they have been in the past, and could be again in space. Whatever. The point is they were trying to talk about Theocracies, a term that later Civ games adopted I think. Fundamentalist is a slightly broader term than that, able to encompass stuff that's not strictly religion.
The only reason they had Miriam in the game is so that they could make fun of Christians and pretend we're as bad as Muslims.
Miriam is basically the church lady from saturday night live.
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The contrast was never about democracy, totalitarianism, and something in between those two.
I usually just changed it to something else entirely. Something like republic, nationalist or even autocratic. I usually ditch the research penalty as well. I usually added a plus probe to police state because it weak to begin with.
Militarist might be a good term I suppose. I also liked traditionalist. Looking to preserve order at the expense of progress while not simply opressing its people. It doesn't matter if its a republic with a religious bent or a neo-feudal system.
Post by: bvanevery on March 28, 2019, 08:45:14 PM
Miriam is basically the church lady from saturday night live.
Her diplomatic dialogue definitely is. She's one dimensional in that. I think it was an earlier round of writing, before they got a "real writer" involved. The medium also limits what can be said. They wanted all diplomatic dialogue to be partly generic and easily modded on a per faction basis. This menas they typically only give half a sentence for saying some faction specific catch phrase or buzzword. Factions are going to sound equally stupid when such strict limitations are imposed, with rare exceptions. For instance I think Santiago "polishing her beloved artillery pieces" is a great line.
I think once they got a "real writer" and did the quotes and Secret Project video scripting, they gave Miriam an actually nuanced world view and complex character. Miraim does not suck. The Believers suck, as far as narrative goes.
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I usually just changed it to something else entirely. Something like republic, nationalist or even autocratic. I usually ditch the research penalty as well.
In trying to produce "better SMAC than SMAC", it is incumbent upon me to preserve sensibilities of the original game, and not just ditch them without very good reasons. I did rearrange Fundamentalist, in particular I got rid of it being "that PROBE thing". That's because I think probing is stupid, overpowered, and not critical to the lore of most factions. What's so important about the Believers being super spies? Seemed like a game mechanical contrivance to me, not something narratively credible. Heck I eventually got rid of the Believers being research retards. But the idea that you can make yourself into a research retard, I kept.
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I usually added a plus probe to police state because it weak to begin with.
I went down that road early on, making Police State into "the probe team faction" but it didn't work in the real world. I couldn't very well buff them up with PROBE and also let them keep all their other stuff. But I found that running a Police State without at least +2 POLICE is painful and pointless. You don't keep people happy enough for the negatives you suffer. So at that point I got rid of PROBE entirely, except for Thought Control. And the AI probe teams have been mercifully quieter ever since. I think when the AI can't jack things up to +2 or +3 PROBE, it's not as enthused about spamming probe teams.
Post by: vonbach on March 28, 2019, 08:49:05 PM
The only problem is Power comes a bit late.
Post by: bvanevery on March 28, 2019, 09:29:39 PM
Post by: vonbach on March 28, 2019, 09:44:10 PM
Heres a question how does the AI get immunity to probe teams or just make the cost
of subverting a city prohibitive without +Probe?
Post by: bvanevery on March 28, 2019, 11:10:11 PM
Post by: vonbach on March 28, 2019, 11:47:20 PM
I don't mind it keeps the probe teams from becoming over relied on.
Post by: bvanevery on March 28, 2019, 11:56:29 PM
Nobody's paying big costs for subversion in my mod. The AI simply doesn't seem to be as enthusiastic about spamming probe teams if it can't get to +2 or +3 PROBE. I'm thankful for the respite! I have rage quit SMAC over the AI abusing me with probe teams, more than any other thing in the game.
Post by: vonbach on March 29, 2019, 12:06:43 AM
Post by: bvanevery on March 29, 2019, 12:23:41 AM
Changed from version 1.28 to 1.29:
FACTIONS:
- Peacekeepers: removed +2 GROWTH bonus. Being able to do a pop boom from nearly the beginning of the game is overpowered.
- Hive: added +1 GROWTH. They were underperforming, and they have this in the original game. It doesn't make much difference but it might help a little.
- Believers: removed MORALE bonus. Reinstated FANATIC attack bonus. Changed personality to Erratic. They have been underperforming, but I haven't found a solution for it. I tried giving them a SUPPORT bonus but oddly, it didn't help. These changes at least give them more flavor than a "generic fighting" faction.
- Cult of Planet: changed personality to Aggressive. Changed secondary social priority to PLANET. I've come to understand that +4 PLANET is actually pretty dangerous on offense. They should take more advantage.
- Spartans: changed research foci to Explore, Conquer. In version 1.20 I switched them to Conquer only, and they've been consistently underperforming ever since. Explore stimulates the AI to colonize better at the beginning of the game. Now every faction but the Usurpers has it as part of their foci. The Usurpers don't seem to need it for some reason; maybe the AI code for an ALIEN faction is diffferent? Or maybe starting with 3 colony pods avoids problems.
- Pirates: changed description text about prototypes and ocean / trench squares. They don't start the game with the ability to make Sea Formers, they have to learn Centauri Ecology. They do start the game with Gun Foils and Transports because they know Doctrine: Flexibility. Talking about "Enhancements" made me think I could build advanced enhancements like Condensers and Echelon Mirrors. Now it says "Enhancements for OCEAN SHELF squares" and that getting to build these on OCEAN and OCEAN TRENCH squares is the point.
BASE DEFENSE:
- Intrinsic Base Defense: reduced from +50% to +25%, the same as the unmodded game. Playtesters said that in version 1.28, bases became too difficult to crack open. That it was painful to the point of being boring. Several things affect base defense, and this is the easiest one to lower.
- Perimeter Defense: moved to C3 Advanced Subatomic Theory. When it was available at the beginning of the game as a Conquer 1 tech, the AI would obsess about making them. That limits AI expansion, as they should be making colony pods, Scouts, and perhaps a Synthmetal armor prototype. Similar problems have been seen with the AI obsessing about Heavy Artillery, if given too early in the game. Nowadays that's at C3 and that solved the obsession problem, so Perimeter Defense now follows suit. This will not change the midgame AI defense, as it likes to build lots of Perimeter Defenses. Bases will still be difficult to crack then. However if a human player gets caught in close quarters with an AI, it allows the human player to rush and overcome them, instead of having all their early game time wasted on an unproductive war.
BUILD TECHS:
- Skunkworks: moved to C3 Applied Physics. Making prototypes is much more difficult in this mod, and the Skunkworks is expensive. I'd like it to be available earlier and not be tied to Industrial Automation, which has other issues. I'd prefer it to reside in a combo Build, Conquer tech, but getting new prototypes ready has always been primarily a military concern, and I don't have an appropriate combo tech at Tier 3.
- Technology to allow 2 special abilities for a unit: moved to C4 Organic Superlubricant. I don't want it tied to Industrial Automation, which has other issues. I would like it to be available when Super Formers become available, and it's also a prereq for C5 Doctrine: Air Power.
- Advanced Ecological Engineering: now a B5 tech. I need a prereq for Build techs I've moved to B6.
- Super Slider Former predefined unit: replaces Fungicidal Slider Former. Now available with B5 Advanced Ecological Engineering. Has both Super Former and Fungicidal Tanks abilities.
- Industrial Automation: now a B6 tech. Set power=0 as it doesn't give Skunkworks anymore. Supply crawlers and Thermal Boreholes are extremely powerful build facilities, easily abused by both players and AI patches. This slows down the abuse and requires the player to think about other means of boosting their civilization's productivity.
- Sea Supply predefined unit: now has Deep Radar.
- The Longevity Vaccine: moved to E6 Eudaimonia. I want a Secret Project to block the AIs from trading Eudaimonia, as it's the key to pop booming. This project is more about making people happy than making money, although it can make money.
- Bio-Engineering: now a B6 tech. Set growth=0 as it no longer gives the Longevity Vaccine. The Genejack factory is a powerful build facility. I want all the big minerals buffs to come later in the game. The Robotic Assembly Plant comes next, followed by the Nessus Mining Station.
- changed various prereqs for continuity of research foci
TERRAFORMING:
- Supply Transport non-combat package: increased cost from 8 to 30. That means an Infantry chassis Supply Crawler with a Fission reactor now costs 80 minerals. With a Fusion reactor it's 50 minerals, the same as an Artifact. Supply Crawlers are made very expensive to curb the abuse of working Mines with them. A typical strategy is to make Supply Crawlers, work Mines, get lots of minerals from it, make even more Supply Crawlers, and on and on and on, in a sort of exponential cascade. This slows it down. A similar kind of abuse is convoying energy to one's capitol, and putting a lot of research buffs in the capitol to make one's research go crazy. Another major use is rushing Secret Projects. This is not much affected, as one has always been able to make expensive Supply Crawlers and get their full value when applying them to a Secret Project. A final use is speeding up unit prototypes, particularly important in this mod because they're 3X more expensive than the stock game. Unfortunately it is now more difficult in the Fission reactor era. Most players will design a cheap unit that only costs 60 minerals to prototype, and the Fission Supply Crawler costs more than that. Fortunately this problem goes away in the Fusion era. 50 minerals is a very good size for instantly completing the cheapest unit prototypes. Alternately one can build a Skunkworks, which is now available much earlier in the game.
- Soil Enricher: reduced cost from 8 to 6. I have always hated waiting 8 turns for something that only provides +1 food.
- Condenser: increased cost from 12 to 24 turns and moved to B5 Advanced Ecological Engineering. In addition to providing a lot of food in their own square, they make many squares get more rainfall. Soil Enrichers are cheaper now, so use those first. Getting food from a Condenser is deliberately more expense per unit of food, depending on how well or poorly you place them. Condensers are easy to abuse in conjunction with Mines, Boreholes, and Supply Crawlers. Furthermore an AI faction suffers almost no eco-damage for this abuse, basically getting a free ride on global warming and flooding compared to a human player. At least one AI binary patch is abusing this to the hilt becuase it is so profitable. These changes are designed to slow down the abuse to something that's actually playable, rather than having SMAC become an "AI builds and wins everything" game.
- Thermal Borehole: increased cost from 24 to 48 turns. It is severely underpriced for the amount of minerals and energy it produces with only 1 worker. Nothing else in the game provides 12 benefits per square. They are equivalent to building oneself a resource special that does double duty. Some players and AI binary patches exploit this to the hilt, as it's basically the most profitable thing you can build in the game. In addition an AI faction suffers almost no eco-damage for this abuse, basically getting a free ride on global warming and flooding compared to a human player.
- Raise/Lower Terrain: increased cost from 12 to 24. This may force more strategy and consideration about bridging continents and raising ocean floors, without making it impossible to do.
- The Weather Paradigm: now costs 400 minerals. It cuts terraforming speed to 2/3rds time, and it enables terraforming capabilities that otherwise take a long time to get in my mod. Thus it is quite a valuable project and its cost has to go up. I find that AI factions complete the project rather easily when it only costs 300, before I can do anything about it. This gives a human player more of an opportunity to grab and finish it, if they really want to focus on a Builder game.
- Airbase: reduced cost from 10 to 6. 10 is a strange number when trying to allocate Formers, and there's no particular reason an Airbase should be more difficult than other things a player might build. Surely not any harder than a Solar Collector or Soil Enricher. Airbases can be important to orbital insertion combat, and they shouldn't be a drag to make.
- Echelon Mirror: raised cost from 12 to 18. It's an obscure game feature, but surely worth as much as as an Aquifer or 3 Soil Enrichers.
- Level Terrain: reduced cost from 8 to 4. Usually used when an Energy or Nutrient resource special appears on Rocky terrain. It's a drag waiting for that to get done, and there's not a lot of realism in it taking so long. Farmers have been blowing up rocks and stumps in their fields for a long time. It permanently destroys Rocky terrain, lowering available minerals, so it does have a consequence other than its turn cost.
- Matter Editation: now increases MINERALS production in fungus. My CHANGELOG says it was supposed to happen in version 1.27, but somehow it didn't actually happen. That's a bug and now it's fixed.
SECRET PROJECT WEIGHTS
- The Ascetic Virtues: set ai-mil=0. It doesn't help combat, it just makes people happy and makes cities bigger.
- The Maritime Control Center: set ai-colonize=2. Faster Cruisers speed up the exploration of Planet. They make it especially easy to fish supply pods out of distant oceans, or return Artifacts home from distant lands.
- The Neural Amplifier: set ai-colonize=2. It buffs Psi combat, and that's regarded as an Explore tech.
- The Xenoempathy Dome: set ai-colonize=2. It buffs the indigenous lifecycle, and that's regarded as an Explore tech. It also greatly speeds up land movement in the wilderness.
- The Pholus Mutagen: set ai-fight=1 and ai-colonize=2. It confers the same combat benefit in fungus as indigenous life forms get. It buffs the indigenous lifecycle, and that's regarded as an Explore tech.
- The Empath Guild: set ai-infra=2. Winning the Governorship is worth a lot of money.
- The Nano Factory: set ai-infra=1. It allows half priced unit upgrades.
- The Dream Twister: set ai-colonize=2. It buffs Psi combat, and that's regarded as an Explore tech.
- The Self-Aware Colony: set ai-mil=0. It doesn't help combat, it jsut makes people happier.
- The Telepathic Matrix: set ai-fight=1. +2 Probe is a combat capability.
The attachment limit per post is 5, and I eventually ran out of room at the top of the thread. Consequently, this becomes the new home of version 1.29. It was downloaded 156 times before I moved it here.
Post by: Vidsek on March 29, 2019, 02:11:34 AM
Nicely documented with clear explanations of the reasoning.
I'll postpone any conclusions on how and whether the changes are good for gameplay until I've game tested the full release a few times, but from testing the preliminary versions and reviewing the release notes, I see no problems and several potential improvements.
Post by: Vidsek on March 29, 2019, 04:39:09 AM
In the process I noticed two typos in the AIG 1.29 alphax.txt:
In Techs, Nonlinear Mathematics: the prereq Physic is missing the comma that should be after it.
In Facilities, Energy Bank: the first prereq, IndEcon has an erroneous space in the middle of it.
Otherwise, all looks good, and I'm looking forward to working with it tonight.
Post by: bvanevery on March 29, 2019, 07:03:03 AM
In Techs, Nonlinear Mathematics: the prereq Physic is missing the comma that should be after it.
Not present in my version of alphax.txt:
Code: [Select]
Nonlinear Mathematics, Chaos, 4, 0, 0, 0, Physic, Subat, 000000000Quote
In Facilities, Energy Bank: the first prereq, IndEcon has an erroneous space in the middle of it.
Not present in my version of alphax.txt:
Code: [Select]
Energy Bank, 8, 1, IndEcon, QuanMac, Economy BonusI think you have acquired 2 merge errors. I'm thinking your alphax.txt wouldn't even work with such errors. Mine works.
Post by: Vidsek on March 29, 2019, 07:46:05 AM
I'll download another copy and see what it shows.
Ok, new copy was flawless. No idea what happened to the first, but you are right, it almost certainly would have crashed the game.
My merge (without those two flaws) is performing perfectly, so I'll call it a false alarm with no harm done except to unnecessarily bother you......my apologies.
Post by: bvanevery on March 29, 2019, 07:54:41 AM
Post by: Vidsek on March 29, 2019, 06:42:41 PM
I truely do strive to do precise, rigorous, flawless work, but stuff can happen anyway and since there is no other clear reason, I'll give up and say it's all my sloppy fault, and sorry for the bother.
Post by: bvanevery on March 29, 2019, 08:23:15 PM
Now if you were using an editor with goofy command sequences, like arguably a vi (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vi) based editor, I'd be willing to say that the expected editing sequences are so silly, that making human errors is likely, and that's the problem. I'm sure there's probably some dyed-in-the-wool vi aficionado out there who will cry foul for me saying so, and how dare I??? but I've never been one of those. I've been forced to use enough vi over the years that I can hum a few bars, and know that the full editor learning curve is steep and not mere mortal friendly. I occasionally still encounter vi editing when on a unix terminal, am suddenly using the GNU Less utility to scroll a text file, and I use the limited vi commands to make things happen.
I've got plenty of Emacs experience and am not willing to call it a goofy editor, even if it has some funky keystrokes compared to Windows based editors. I can still do my C-k C-y drill from 25 years ago, probably. At least it would come back quickly.
A final issue worth noting: as keyboards greatly age, like for instance my 11 year old laptops, their circuitry can be less-than-perfect and they can cause editing errors. Have you ever looked back on your typing and thought WTF, am I going senile, did I really type that? Depending on what it is, it may not be you. Might be your keyboard is going senile.
Cats are also a known source of typing errors. And unexpected victories or defeats in games of SMAC.
Post by: Vidsek on March 29, 2019, 10:18:08 PM
I've trained the two housetigers to step over the keys, but the ferrets are having none of that censorship. They have things to say and games to play too, thank you very much.
I read a story in a pet afficionado forum where a guy's chinchilla ran across his keyboard and managed to neatly rename his computer in Windows. In Chinchillaese, of course.
Post by: vonbach on March 30, 2019, 01:37:40 AM
Planned being the only early choice for plus growth seems a bit harsh. Free market should have some growth in there.
Wealth is too strong I think. Power seems weak. Just my opinion.
Post by: bvanevery on March 30, 2019, 06:19:17 AM
The social engineering choices all seem a bit harsh. police state seems to have too many negatives.
It really only becomes useful when you crank to +3 POLICE. Then it's useful. Double police effectiveness is da bomb. The Hive can do that easily, because in my mod they start with +1 POLICE. Others can do it if they complete the Ascetic Virtues. That's not that hard to do if you're an Explore faction, like the Gaians. Police State is meant to be Yang's choice, or the choice of Yang wannabes. It's not meant to be a general purpose, all around great choice. I've used it transitionally, like with the Gaians at the beginning of the game.
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Fundamentalism isn't much better.
I have found in numerous playtests that it's genuinely useful in exactly the configuration given. The AI players all seem to agree with me too. It's very popular with anyone who wants to make war.
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Planned being the only early choice for plus growth seems a bit harsh.
I don't think so. I don't want anyone just pop booming willy nilly. You need to remember that as much fun as you may think it is for you to do it, there's Induktio's Thinker mod AI sitting around out there that will turn the game into an unplayable mess if it's got access to stuff like that. So anything that puts anyone on easy street, that becomes a quick golden strategy through the early to mid game, has to be nerfed and go away. You're not supposed to be able to pop boom early, not unless you can get some serious wealth together for the other +2. I bet it can't be done, but I'm not totally sure because I don't tend to jack my happiness through the roof at the beginning of the game either.
Also it's Socialist, not Planned. I don't just mean that pedantically, I mean that Planned crashes your EFFICIENCY. Socialist increases your JUSTICE. Of course it costs you money to do that, but "-1 energy at HQ" is a meaningless penalty, so there's that threshold where it's not such a horrible choice.
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Free market should have some growth in there.
I don't think so. It didn't have it in the original game, and being careful and specific about GROWTH is part of what SMACX AI Growth mod is about. Originally I tried to make it about "realistic" growth, but that didn't work out game mechanically. So I ended up with a system like the original game. Socialist (aka Planned) and Eudaimonic make you grow. Democratic does not make you grow, it makes you money. Various things keep you from growing. Most notably, throwing all your population away in Power wars.
Don't ignore the fact that I gave you +1 INDUSTRY in that new version of Capitalist. Go make some tanks or something, don't complain to me about needing to grow. It's the American way! Oh and that there's no POLICE Penalty for Capitalist whatsoever. You can kick any citizens in the teeth that you want. Like when they're protesting about all your tanks. Capitalist is a great, powerful choice now. The downside / Achilles heel is Planet can get you, and a PLANET friendly faction can really stomp you.
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Wealth is too strong I think.
It's the same as the original game.
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Power seems weak. Just my opinion.
Yeah, but I don't want it to be a bonanza. Doing Power this way is probably the most recent and least tested change in the table. It's been this way since version 1.26. It should work fine with the Spartans, because all they need is Fundamentalist Power to get the additional +2 MORALE. Then all their units go Elite. It might not be so attractive for other factions. I needed something that would give +1 PROBE other than Thought Control and that was the logical place to do it.
To be honest, none of my recent test games have made it to a military conquest stage. I kept testing Thinker mod AI and I kept having to restrict its minerals techs. The games would be stupid loopy runaways with no point playing them any longer.
On the other hand, sometimes I think we convince ourselves that we need all this stuff to fight a war, when we don't. I mean in my current test game, I'm harassing the Believers and I've got -3 MORALE. Yes I've got powerful mindworms but I'm not even using them, they're sitting at home on defense. I just have all these air units that were given to me and I keep blowing things up with them.
I could try testing Power with +2 MORALE and nothing else changed. I do think the -2 GROWTH -2 JUSTICE penalties are harsh. But, Power always had a harsh penalty of some kind or another. -2 INDUSTRY is horrible and doesn't make any sense either. Quick history quiz, what happened to US and Soviet industry in WW II? That's right boys and girls, it turned them both into superpowers. An INDUSTRY penalty is like the dumbest thing ever, from a realism standpoint. But killing everyone? Yep, really happened.
Post by: vonbach on March 30, 2019, 11:46:41 AM
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I don't think so. It didn't have it in the original game, and being careful and specific about GROWTH is part of what SMACX AI Growth mod is about.
The original game was very anti free market. It was just as bad as its treatment of religion. Free market should be a growth alternative to planned or socialist whatever.
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Also it's Socialist, not Planned. I don't just mean that pedantically, I mean that Planned crashes your EFFICIENCY. Socialist increases your JUSTICE.
The thing is neither of them increase population in real life actually they decrease it.
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It's the same as the original game.It was too strong there as well. Free market in the original game had ridiculous penalties. Wealth should be where those penalties are.
Free Market should be more balanced I was thinking some variation of +Growth +Economy with a police or support penalty.
I think the negative penalties for nearly all of the choices are too harsh. Except socialist which is very overpowered.
Post by: bvanevery on March 30, 2019, 02:45:15 PM
Free market should be a growth alternative to planned or socialist whatever.
Why? Industrial democracies decrease population growth rate. I've studied UN data on this. The basic contrast is, agricultural societies have people birthing many many children. They want more field hands. In industrial societies, people have more career opportunities and it takes longer to amass the skills necessary for the higher paid jobs. Especially, women choose to do something other than get barefoot and preggers. This is why in my mod, Democratic and Capitalist don't get you any growth rate increase at all.
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QuoteAlso it's Socialist, not Planned. I don't just mean that pedantically, I mean that Planned crashes your EFFICIENCY. Socialist increases your JUSTICE.The thing is neither of them increase population in real life actually they decrease it.
Don't conservatives complain about welfare state babies on racist grounds all the time? I don't actually know if it's a substantial population effect.
The Socialist I've put in the game is an imagined Socialism, and for all I know you may be right, an increase in GROWTH may be unrealistic. But I already know that claiming Capitalism increases GROWTH is totally unrealistic, I've seen that UN data, so...
So one ends up having to make a game mechanical decision. Some choice has to give you GROWTH. I'm not going to make Capitalist your best favorite category that gives you all the kewl stuff and it's a one stop shop, never choose anything else again. Any given choice has to give you advantages and disadvantages. So in my mod "Socialist is the way you turn the GROWTH on".
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QuoteIt's the same as the original game.It was too strong there as well. Free market in the original game had ridiculous penalties. Wealth should be where those penalties are.
I already spread out the -5 POLICE penalities to Democratic, Knowledge, and Cybernetic, which is IMO is where they should be. I've tested that play mechanic for a long time now and IMO it works.
Wealth gets -2 MORALE. That's a serious penalty. It makes your combat kinda suck. In particular, it makes it pretty easy for mindworms to chew you up. Capitalist Wealth is -3 PLANET -2 MORALE, basically sitting ducks for mindworms. You try to kill some mindworm with a Scout or whatever and it's like aaack! I just died! Or you sprouted a Scout garrison for that population 1 city out on the frontier and a mindworm just blows it to smithereens.
If you think Wealth needs even more penalty than -2 MORALE, I'd like to hear why, and how you'd do it. But I'll probably keep the pairing of +1 ECONOMY +1 INDUSTRY because they realistically go with one another.
I mean really, what's this rubbish about Planned / Socialist / Communist governments producing better INDUSTRY? They don't. They never did. Capitalism produces better industry, it's historically obvious.
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Free Market should be more balanced I was thinking some variation of +Growth +Economy with a police or support penalty.
I'm perfectly happy with Capitalist getting the -3 PLANET penalty nowadays. It's realistic. I did a lot of playtesting of versions of Free Market with a nerfed PLANET penalty, only -1 or -2. I eventually came back to the way the original game did it, as I realized that floods, getting your cities trashed by mindworm hordes, and inability to fight mindworms effectively, were important parts of the game that mitigated the strength of the choice.
Capitalist is not anti-police, there is no realism in that at all. Democratic is anti-police, that's very realistic. I decided that academics are also against the police.
Why would Capitalist have a SUPPORT penalty? Capitalism is all about chucking out massive numbers of goods and services. I have a SUPPORT penalty for Green, which is totally realistic.
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I think the negative penalties for nearly all of the choices are too harsh.
The penalties are there to make it actually a choice, not just some free gewgaw giveaway without consequences.
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Except socialist which is very overpowered.
I've found my Socialist to be completely useless in the earlier part of the game. +2 GROWTH just isn't worth losing all possibility of getting to +2 ECONOMY. Choosing Socialist and Eudaimonic at the same time is what's useful, as with a Children's Creche it triggers a pop boom. Eudaimonic doesn't come until late midgame.
Post by: vonbach on March 30, 2019, 08:02:59 PM
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Why? Industrial democracies decrease population growth rate. I've studied UN data on this.
Yes and our industrial democracies are riddled with social welfare programs.
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The Socialist I've put in the game is an imagined Socialism, and for all I know you may be right, an increase in GROWTH may be unrealistic. But I already know that claiming Capitalism increases GROWTH is totally unrealistic, I've seen that UN data, so...
Capitalism does increase growth, Giving people opportunities instead of social programs paid for with other peoples money helps economies and populations grow. Socialism works until you run out of other peoples money. It also decreases population growth. Theres UN data on that.
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I mean really, what's this rubbish about Planned / Socialist / Communist governments producing better INDUSTRY? They don't. They never did.They never produced much of anything except corpses and oppression really. Or in the modern European socialist economies oppression and lack of children because no one want to pay for someone else's kids.
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Wealth gets -2 MORALE. That's a serious penalty. It makes your combat kinda suck. In particular, it makes it pretty easy for mindworms to chew you up. Capitalist Wealth is -3 PLANET -2 MORALE, basically sitting ducks for mindworms. You try to kill some mindworm with a Scout or whatever and it's like aaack! I just died! Or you sprouted a Scout garrison for that population 1 city out on the frontier and a mindworm just blows it to smithereens.Just build Trance and trained units and morale and planet minuses don't matter at all. Wealth is the go to choice for values its a no brainer.
Post by: bvanevery on March 30, 2019, 09:05:42 PM
Capitalism does increase growth,
Provide your data, from whatever academically credible source. When you do, I'll provide the UN data I used. It's on the UN website and wasn't difficult to find 15 years ago. Bet it's still pretty much right there.
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Giving people opportunities instead of social programs paid for with other peoples money helps economies and populations grow.
Do not conflate populations and economies. GROWTH means that more people get born. The longstanding trend of the UN data is that industrialization decreases population growth rate. Sure wealth goes up, that's the point. Less people, delaying births, working on careers to get paid more money, longer and longer times in education for those careers, and machines to do work, means more wealth per capita.
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Just build Trance
Trance isn't a free lunch in my mod. Have you noticed? Every unit is more expensive if you put Trance on it. Yeah you can "just build" Trance, but aside from the almighty Trance Scout (which I do use heavily), you will be paying something for your pursuit of WEALTH. Having Trance Scouts everywhere isn't a free lunch either, because it's a weak unit that costs SUPPORT. Tradeoffs tradeoffs tradeoffs.
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and trained units
Building Command Centers is a cost. If you only build them in a few "military unit spewing cities", you still have to walk those units to other places in your empire. If you want to move everyone quickly by rails, well building rails takes awhile, that's a cost.
If you're talking about the High Morale ability, it's substantially more expensive in my mod. It costs 2, meaning it's a 50% increase in a unit's cost. I never use it. I hardly ever used it in the original game when it only cost 1. I increased the cost so that players won't have any easy way to override the rigid weapons = armor progression. You wanna have a big offensive advantage? You're going to have to research a lot of Conquer, there's no easy way to get a weapons advantage.
Except mindworms. ;hippy They do require a commitment to something other than Capitalist though. Capitalist mindworms pretty much suck! They can be used to pop pods, as they won't get attacked after they do it. But they can't kill whatever comes out of a pod, they'll die if they try.
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planet minuses don't matter at all.
You don't consider global flooding to be a problem??! Haven't you played games where you were trying to get other things done, and every turn it's mindworms, mindworms, mindworms, pop, pop, pop? Then you look at your SE and think, hmm, maybe my Free Market / Capitalist is out of control. So you switch to something less polluting, which is a cost.
Post by: vonbach on March 31, 2019, 08:22:33 AM
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Provide your data,Look in a history book of the USA. Before the current cleptocracy. Or for that matter of Europe when they actually had healthy economies. The EU is the EUSSR. The UN also says that climate change is a problem. The UN is a joke.
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Do not conflate populations and economies. GROWTH means that more people get born. The longstanding trend of the UN data is that industrialization decreases population growth rate. Sure wealth goes up, that's the point. Less people, delaying births, working on careers to get paid more money, longer and longer times in education for those careers, and machines to do work, means more wealth per capita.It's not industrialization that is tanking out societies growth rate it's how poisonous our whole society is. Socialist governments do not provide growth.
Freedom and having opportunities provide it. And you can't make everyone equal nor should we want to. Things are so depressing and miserable that no one wants to raise kids just so they can be tax cattle.
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Except mindworms. ;hippy They do require a commitment to something other than Capitalist though. Capitalist mindworms pretty much suck! They can be used to pop pods, as they won't get attacked after they do it. But they can't kill whatever comes out of a pod, they'll die if they try.Mindworms are dirt cheap and yes you can use them with negative planet ratings. Especially with a monolith and a wonder or two. It's not hard to defend yourself against them either. I've never had any difficulties in doing so. Normally all I lose is some former and then I just build another.
The only problem with mindworms is same as infantry units they were slow but thanks to the early magtubes in your mod this means nothing.
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You don't consider global flooding to be a problem??!
I've only had it happen in a handful of my games. I spam build forests and rivers maybe a condensor or echlon mirror.
Every once in awhile I build a thermal borehole for my HQ but thats it. It's almost never an issue.
Post by: bvanevery on March 31, 2019, 02:56:29 PM
QuoteProvide your data,Look in a history book of the USA.
No no no, when a self-identifying Scientific Skeptic says provide your data, he means go find a specific book, article, whatever, that proves exactly what you are saying. Give the actual page number of the material. Then I will read it, assuming it's publicly available and doesn't cost me money. Don't ask me to go on some wild goose chase to do your research. I'm not trying to be obnoxious here, and I respect your intelligence, but telling me to go look at history books is not providing the data. I've already researched lots of stuff, I already have my own ideas and opinions formed from the hard data I've looked at. I wrote a game mod influenced by it, it even became part of the title. I don't need a whole 'nother "general" contemplation of various materials, I did that already and concluded what I concluded.
I'll go actually dig up the UN data and present it, since I suspect it'll still be easy to find. Once upon a time when working on my erstwhile Ocean Mars project, I used that data to calculate we have about 500 years until Earth fills up to the density of Singapore and Hong Kong today.
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It's not industrialization that is tanking out societies growth rate it's how poisonous our whole society is.
This isn't data. This is an idea about causality. I will admit, I do not have as much information on the causalities of industrialized societies having a provable decreasing growth rate.
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Mindworms are dirt cheap
I did cheapen them in my mod.
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and yes you can use them with negative planet ratings. Especially with a monolith
Guess I'll have to see if Pre-Boil to Boil is some kind of threshold of mindworm strength where they start being able to kill other mindworms, despite a -3 PLANET rating with a -30% Psi combat penalty. Pre-Boil mindworms definitely couldn't do jack out in the hinterland.
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and a wonder or two.
It'll take until midgame to get the Xenoempathy Dome or the Pholus Mutagen. If it takes that long to become "usable" under Capitalist, then I'd say -3 PLANET is doing its job.
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It's not hard to defend yourself against them either. I've never had any difficulties in doing so. Normally all I lose is some former and then I just build another.
You're a human player. Consider whether the AI can defend itself. I find when it has -3 PLANET and builds normal units, no it cannot! But when it builds Trance units, yes it can.
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The only problem with mindworms is same as infantry units they were slow but thanks to the early magtubes in your mod this means nothing.
It means a lot less. It can still take time to build a mag tube. Time which you may not have for other reasons. Like in the current Thinker mod test game I've been writing up, I haven't had time to make enough Formers to build anywhere near the number of mag tubes I'm used to. The Data Angels are hurling themselves too far and fast into the future.
And even with early mag tubes, I find in practice it takes me until midgame to completely connect my empire internally with mag tube lines everywhere. Formers gotta work terrain to improve it as well, and cities need to manufacture lots of things other than Formers early on.
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QuoteYou don't consider global flooding to be a problem??!
I've only had it happen in a handful of my games. I spam build forests and rivers maybe a condensor or echlon mirror.
Every once in awhile I build a thermal borehole for my HQ but thats it. It's almost never an issue.
I avoid building Mines for a long time because if I build them when I'd actually want them, fungus pops everywhere and the Mines get destroyed. Then the global flooding comes, destroying all my hand terraformed squares! I don't even think about Mines until after I've built Hybrid Forests. Well, maybe the Pholus Mutagen gives one more wiggle room, I'm never quite sure of the threshold. But in a Thinker mod test game, I'm not guaranteed to get that. In my current test game, somehow I managed it, but I'm pretty sure the leading faction started on it before I did. Anyways as the Gaians, I had a justification for building Centauri Preserves, so I actually haven't done many Hybrid Forests this game yet. Many bases made it to size 16 without them. I'm Green and only have slight pollution in a few places so far. Only just beginning to build Genejack Factories en masse. If I was trying to do all of this under Capitalist with -3 PLANET it would probably be POP, POP, POP, FLOOD.
Post by: bvanevery on March 31, 2019, 03:09:54 PM
Total Fertility in the United States of America |
So here we have in the USA, people stop spewing babies. There's a ripple, and one might wonder what the small upswing is about. But clearly, people don't do it like they did when they were all farmers.
Actually I am now remembering, Total Fertility Rate (TFR) must be what I knew as the Growth Rate when I did my research before. Because it's 2.1%. That's this magic threshold that countries fall to when they industrialize. My planetary population projections were based on all countries eventually dropping to this rate, like in the next 50 to 100 years IIRC.
Post by: bvanevery on April 01, 2019, 01:05:54 AM
The extreme difficulty of getting into these bases with Hovertank units, just because of one ECM defender, makes me revisit Tim Nevolin's idea of dropping the ECM buff to +25% defense. He also did that with Trance units, although I have less of an opinion on that at this time. I think the balance of power still favors Psi attacks, even if I haven't been able to utilize them presently. Finally there's the question of AAA defense. Maybe overpowered.
Post by: vonbach on April 01, 2019, 08:30:57 AM
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So here we have in the USA, people stop spewing babies. There's a ripple, and one might wonder what the small upswing is about. But clearly, people don't do it like they did when they were all farmers.
Of course they don't because no one has any hope for the future. It's not the industrialization is the death of our culture.
When people have hope they have more kids when they don't feel secure they don't have kids.
Industrialization actually increased population growth in the industrial revolution.
In any case I think we can agree to disagree.
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https://core-econ.org/the-economy/book/text/02.html
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https://core-econ.org/the-economy/book/text/02.html#subheadline
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Guess I'll have to see if Pre-Boil to Boil is some kind of threshold of mindworm strength where they start being able to kill other mindworms, despite a -3 PLANET rating with a -30% Psi combat penalty. Pre-Boil mindworms definitely couldn't do jack out in the hinterland.
Theres a strategy out there called the "Morgnaite mean green machine" I found once. You simply spam mindworms and eat the penalty. With a monolith, Biology lab, brood pit and maybe a wonder or two your mindworms start at decent level. Thenyou either eat the penalty or switch from free market and drown people in mindworms. I did this type of thing in an earlier version of your mod I think and it worked.
Just keep some conventional military units about just in case. The normal AI doesn't build trance units that much I don't think.
Post by: bvanevery on April 01, 2019, 09:33:04 AM
It's not the industrialization is the death of our culture.
I'm pretty sure the data is repeating in all countries that are industrializing, not just USA culture. To that point, I happened to look at graphs of India and China. They show the same trends. China's trend is more severe I think because of the One Child Policy. Still broadly speaking the same trend though.
You can look up African countries and you will see the same trends. You are going to have a hard time demonstrating any different trend anywhere. The UN data is very thorough.
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Industrialization actually increased population growth in the industrial revolution.
I haven't studied that subject much, but my limited understanding is that Sewer Systems were the biggest single reason for population growth. Just getting rid of that basic vector of disease. To what extent is urban planning an industrial undertaking? Probably people have written dissertations on that.
Textbook commentary when I have time. 4:30 AM here.
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Theres a strategy out there called the "Morgnaite mean green machine" I found once. You simply spam mindworms and eat the penalty.
Why Morgan, unless you are rushing mindworms with money? "Wealth" choice doesn't require Morgan in any way, and that's what gives you +INDUSTRY. Planned gives +INDUSTRY and Morgan can't use it.
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With a monolith, Biology lab, brood pit and maybe a wonder or two your mindworms start at decent level. Thenyou either eat the penalty or switch from free market and drown people in mindworms. I did this type of thing in an earlier version of your mod I think and it worked.
Is the point to use Morgan to get the needed techs faster? Why not the University?
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The normal AI doesn't build trance units that much I don't think.
I've seen them "here and there". I'm done with Thinker mod for a long time, I think.
Post by: vonbach on April 01, 2019, 04:15:08 PM
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I haven't studied that subject much, but my limited understanding is that Sewer Systems were the biggest single reason for population growth. Just getting rid of that basic vector of disease. To what extent is urban planning an industrial undertaking? Probably people have written dissertations on that.
Textbook commentary when I have time. 4:30 AM here.
Most cities were so small they didn't really need sewer systems in the past. The population increased first then the sewer systems were invented as I recall.
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Why Morgan, unless you are rushing mindworms with money? "Wealth" choice doesn't require Morgan in any way, and that's what gives you +INDUSTRY. Planned gives +INDUSTRY and Morgan can't use it
The reason its used with Morgan is because you can honestly. You don't need to rush mindworms with money. Spammed forests with a tree farm and rivers makes for a very powerful city. Even a normally terraformed city works pretty well. Morgan is a builder and a dangerous one if left alone. Just rush buildings if you have to. In your mod he's probably the most powerful out of the factions. You cant use planned (thats one reason a growth alternative would be nice.) but you can use Green if you have too. Other factions like the University might be better at tech and can get them faster but they aren't as good at building.
Just like the base free Drones are just disgusting if played right. You don't even notice the research penalty. The reason they cant use Green is if they could they would be stupidly overpowered.
Post by: dino on April 01, 2019, 05:54:03 PM
Contraception, legalised abortion, feminism.
Women in their 20s are showered with money, dik and attention by thirsty men and government. They believe they'll conquer the world, make a career and they will not let a baby ruin their life.
In their 30s all above rapidly vanish, fertility decreases each year, so it's the last moment to have a family, but even then 2 children is enough, more would be too much work.
Since they get around to start a family so late, many don't have enough time to get even these 2 babies, so fertility is slightly below replacement.
In partiarchal traditional societies women in their 20s can't fook around, but marry a man in his 30s, who wants and have means to provide for a family.
So they start this baby making bussiness almost decade earlier than western women. I don't say women don't have right to not have babies mind you, I just describe the end result.
Patriarchal society like Islam, that doesn't empower women have all the babies and will replace western societes demographically. Thankfully we won't live long enough to see that.
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Back to the in game social policies:
If some country with regulated economy like China set a goal to produce babies, it could tax into oblivion, or sent to goolag people who don't do baby quotas.
So, I'd say planned and fundamentalist/traditional should have GROWTH bonus. Not free market, or democracy.
Democracy could be understood as "free society", as opposed to police state and fundamentalism and have efficiency and science bonus.
Post by: bvanevery on April 01, 2019, 06:13:17 PM
In your mod he's probably the most powerful out of the factions.
I'm pretty sure that honor goes to the Pirates, but economically, Morgan is clearly #2 after that. Militarily, my jury is out. I don't know who is strongest anymore. The Spartans got their Explore stimulus back for 1.29, so we'll see how they do. And the Cult of Planet became Aggressive, so can they terrorize with +4 PLANET mindworms?
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You cant use planned (thats one reason a growth alternative would be nice.)
Morgan's rich. He can afford to put people into a Golden Age to get that last +2 GROWTH.
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Other factions like the University might be better at tech and can get them faster but they aren't as good at building.
Morgan is good at money, not production, which is why I don't understand favoring him for chucking out units. If you want a production advantage, the only actual choice in my mod is Domai with his +1 INDUSTRY.
Now of course in my mod, in recent versions, Capitalist is good at production. So maybe you're right about Morgan now. ;morganercise Historically though, why chuck units with Morgan? Doesn't make sense, he was the worst faction in the game for that.
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Just like the base free Drones are just disgusting if played right. You don't even notice the research penalty. The reason they cant use Green is if they could they would be stupidly overpowered.
Hm, my Free Drones can use Green, but of course they only get +1 INDUSTRY. And no other faction gets an INDUSTRY bonus at all. Most notably, Yang's was taken away.
Post by: vonbach on April 01, 2019, 06:29:57 PM
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Contraception, legalised abortion, feminism.Pretty much. Modern society is what tanks growth. Fundamentalist/traditionalist societies should have a growth bonus.
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Morgan is good at money, not production, which is why I don't understand favoring him for chucking out units. If you want a production advantage, the only actual choice in my mod is Domai with his +1 INDUSTRYNow of course in my mod, in recent versions, Capitalist is good at production. So maybe you're right about Morgan now. ;morganercise Historically though, why chuck units with Morgan? Doesn't make sense, he was the worst faction in the game for that.You don't need to have a +industry to be good at industry. Domi is simply better at it. All it takes is good terraforming and good planning.
Any faction can be turned into a builder faction if done right. Just because a faction is good at money doesn't mean
you cant warmonger with him. Or that you shouldn't. You don't have to play passive with a economic faction. Also bear in mind you can ride the economy penalties of police state with the Morganites. He was the worst at chucking military units not anymore though he has no support penalties anymore. Also mindworms in fungus cost no support.
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Hm, my Free Drones can use Green, but of course they only get +1 INDUSTRY. And no other faction gets an INDUSTRY bonus at all. Most notably, Yang's was taken away.Base Drones were weak if played by the AI but absolutely disgusting in the hands of a human player. Your mod is a bit weaker but has -2 drones which is nice. Basically the way to play the Drones is this. Big industry build lots of bases. Bases build lots of stuff. Big industry equals big army. Big army wins game. And it really is that simple.
Post by: bvanevery on April 01, 2019, 06:37:48 PM
So they start this baby making bussiness almost decade earlier than western women. I don't say women don't have right to not have babies mind you, I just describe the end result.
I'll provisionally buy your analysis without a lot of inspection or nuance on my part. I'm sure someone more invested would find some point to quibble with.
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Patriarchal society like Islam, that doesn't empower women have all the babies and will replace western societes demographically. Thankfully we won't live long enough to see that.
No it won't. This is what data and observational science are good for, as opposed to arm chair opinion making. It's not about "our values", or it's insufficiently so. Saudi Arabia (https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/FERT/TOT/) doesn't have a lot of our values:
Saudi Arabia |
People tend to forget that Indonesia (https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/FERT/TOT/) is the most populous Muslim country. They have the same decline in birth rate as everyone else:
Indonesia |
Frankly I doubt there is any country in the UN data, that exhibits anything other than this curve. You're free to poke through all of them and see what you can find. But data is data, it's not your opinion about what you "think" is going on. We aren't up to our ass in Muslims no matter how many racist people say so.
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So, I'd say planned and fundamentalist/traditional should have GROWTH bonus. Not free market, or democracy.
I actually did go down the "be fruitful and multiply" design path at an earlier stage of my modding. For some reason I didn't think it was working. I remember trying to empower the Believers as the "pop booming" faction, and it just didn't seem to work out. Then I remember feeling that I couldn't just pile lots of bonuses into Fundamentalist, I can't have a "giveaway" choice where you get everything and have no liabilities. I was specifically working against the self-imposed constraint of "3 benefits, 2 liabilities" at the time.
I have subsequently abandoned that constraint in favor of a more qualitative appraisal of what different buffs and debuffs are worth. They are not all created equal IMO. In particular, I decided that +1 ECONOMY and +2 EFFIC / JUSTICE are roughly equal in power. I thought +2 GROWTH was as well, but now I've come to see it can have skewing effects on early game pop booming. In 1.29 I nerfed Lal, he lost his +2 GROWTH factional advantage. Last test game I played he did fine anyways. Granted it was a Thinker mod game. I don't think I've tested him with stock binary, but I'm not that worried for him.
I can revisit the question of Believer pop booming, but first I need to see some playtesting of them. It's been a struggle for me to figure out a pro-Christian or at least neutral Christian game mechanical role for them. The religious wack job role, that's been taken over by the Cult of Planet, even down to being Aggressive now. I don't think we need to belabor that throwing people to mindworms is bad, m'kay?
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Democracy could be understood as "free society", as opposed to police state and fundamentalism and have efficiency and science bonus.
I'm not going to give people a RESEARCH bonus at the very beginning of the game. You have to work for it and gain Knowledge. Even then, you only gain +1. But you only have to take -1 POLICE to get it, so it's a tradeoff that way.
Democratic in my mod gives +1 ECONOMY. You can plow that extra energy into your Labs budget if you like, and also take the consequences of not being able to use police.
Democratic in my mod already does give a mild +1 JUSTICE bonus. Socialist gives more JUSTICE, +2.
Post by: vonbach on April 01, 2019, 06:49:59 PM
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No it won't. This is what data and observational science are good for, as opposed to arm chair opinion making. It's not about "our values", or it's insufficiently so. Saudi Arabia doesn't have a lot of our values:
You do realize how bad the muslim invasion of Europe is don't you? Europe will be minority European by 2050.
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I actually did go down the "be fruitful and multiply" design path at an earlier stage of my modding. For some reason I didn't think it was working. I remember trying to empower the Believers as the "pop booming" faction, and it just didn't seem to work out. Then I remember feeling that I couldn't just pile lots of bonuses into Fundamentalist, I can't have a "giveaway" choice where you get everything and have no liabilities. I was specifically working against the self-imposed constraint of "3 benefits, 2 liabilities" at the time.
I'd just ditch the +Support or +Police for a +Growth. Fundamentalist societies aren't always repressive or warmongering.
The morale bonus could also get replaced by a +Growth but it seems apt.
Post by: dino on April 01, 2019, 07:40:28 PM
Meanwhile, no go zones in western Europe have 2-3 times higher ferility than local population. Islamic populations in western countries tend to radicalise and originate from poor countries.
Generally if you give people freedom to not have babies, they don't want more than 2, and some will fail at that, or don't want any.
In the past people didn't have an option and only level of prosperity and development determined how many could survive.
The only way to force a free society that can control conception to have more babies, is to take freedom of choice away by cultural indoctrination/ societal pressure, or stright up enslavement by goverment.
The second one was never tried, but since China is one of the most hit by fertility crysis, some officials started talking about introducing baby quotas already, it'll be interesting to see how it'll work.
My society bonuses were meant as a part of an interesting offtopic discussion, what I'd give if my goal was to simulate reality, not as an argument for doing it in your mod.
But you are vastly overestimating research bonus, it's one of the weakest bonuses, first at the beginning it applies only to like 40% of energy output, second tech cost grow exponentially, so flat 20% research bonus doesn't translate to much advantage in actually researched techs, +1 industry easily outweights +2 research for example.
> Europe will be minority European by 2050.
No, but 2100 ? possibly. We are safe, our grand-grandchildren may have to convert.
Post by: bvanevery on April 01, 2019, 08:07:35 PM
You do realize how bad the muslim invasion of Europe is don't you? Europe will be minority European by 2050.
It's basically driven by war in Syria. Secondarily, a lot of economic migration under the guise of being refugees. Separating the two isn't easy. We have similar phenomena in the USA with Hispanics coming up from various countries. There really are some violent, failed states down there that are threatening people's lives. Like El Salvador is run by the gang MS-13 mostly, for instance. Venezuela is in shambles although I don't know if anyone's coming up our way because of that.
The bigger picture point is, none of this stuff is because of population growth rate. All of these embattled countries show pretty much the same declining fertility curve we see in all the other countries of the world. For instance, Syria (https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/FERT/TOT/). There's something bigger than people's culture or religion going on here. It's probably all global economics and advances in medicine. Some countries are just at earlier stages of being dragged forwards into the future than we are.
Syrian Arab Republic |
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I'd just ditch the +Support or +Police for a +Growth.
+1 GROWTH isn't interesting or all that helpful compared to the other benefits as they currently are. +2 GROWTH has some serious early game pop booming problems that need to be thought about.
Remember that no faction has a SUPPORT bonus in my mod. They have to get SUPPORT from somewhere if they want it.
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Fundamentalist societies aren't always repressive or warmongering.
I dunno, name a real one, modern day, that isn't. The one that first springs to mind is Saudi Arabia. They may be getting a little better but they still do beheadings and hand choppings over there. If you're a journalist and say the wrong things, the Crown Prince has you killed!
I think we are back to arguing / struggling over "a label that isn't negative". When there are definitely many examples of societies out there that are negative. Iran is Fundamentalist. When any of the progressive reform minded elements get uppity, the police start smacking them around. Maybe killing them too, I get tired of following Iranian politics.
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The morale bonus could also get replaced by a +Growth but it seems apt.
I'm quite sure that the MORALE bonus is the reason AI factions choose Fundamentalist. When they have the freedom to do so: Yang is compulsively Police State, and Lal is compulsively Democratic. I don't actually have a faction that "cannot use Fundamentalist". The typical prohibitions are cannot use Democratic or cannot use Police State.
What's Santiago going to do?
Post by: bvanevery on April 01, 2019, 08:31:20 PM
Meanwhile, no go zones in western Europe have 2-3 times higher ferility than local population.
That's completely credible to me. As is the ease with which you can get an AK-47 in Brussels in a few hours if you have the money. European attitudes about gun control are a joke. The proverbial ostrich sticking the head in the sand, even though ostriches don't actually do that. The guns mostly come from Serbia and are smuggled in small quantities that no police force is ever going to be able to seize a large shipment of. The guns are easily sold in the no go zones and if someone wants to do violence with a gun, they can and will. Europe may have less murders overall but the level of non-murderous violent crime is higher. It's all a herd mentality. The herd overall does better, but the herd doesn't care if you are the victim.
This is why "God given right to keep and bear arms" and "Right wing lunatic" are out of the game, in my mod. I'm a political independent. I'm not a NRA member but I do understand why they exist. I think they are well funded and don't personally need my help. Meanwhile there are leftists in Portland finding a need to arm up, because they stand good chance of being victimized by the white supremacists. Guns are an equalizer!
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Islamic populations in western countries tend to radicalise and originate from poor countries.
The question is whether it's here to stay or will be a passing fad, in decades to come. The biggest strategic problem is the military industrial complex which likes to make the wars in the Middle East, over the flow of oil, but also just for the lucrative military contracts. The systemic violence causes people to flee the region, for Europe. Dependency Theory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dependency_theory) is one possible explanation of why this is happening. That rich countries have no interest in developing the Third World, rather they have every interest in keeping it poor and extracting resources for First World countries. Blowing stuff up is lucrative, so need a battleground somewhere to do it!
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China is one of the most hit by fertility crysis,
What's the crisis? Fear that the young won't be interested in supporting the old? They could watch Logan's Run for inspiration, har har har!
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But you are vastly overestimating research bonus, it's one of the weakest bonuses, first at the beginning it applies only to like 40% of energy output, second tech cost grow exponentially, so flat 20% research bonus doesn't translate to much advantage in actually researched techs, +1 industry easily outweights +2 research for example.
I have noticed that AI factions that go Fundamentalist, do actually stagnate on tech. Of course as you say there are multiple factors that determine final research rate. Fundamentalist doesn't give an ECONOMY bonus, and in my mod it never will.
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No, but 2100 ? possibly. We are safe, our grand-grandchildren may have to convert.
Newsflash, y'all gonna be atheist.
Post by: vonbach on April 01, 2019, 08:55:41 PM
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I dunno, name a real one, modern day, that isn't.
The USA prior to the civil war or the 1960s. Yes I consider the last 200 years "modern" by the way. The USA was essentially
a protestant traditionalist republic prior to Lincoln and the cultural revolution of the 1960's.
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The question is whether it's here to stay or will be a passing fad, in decades to come.There won't be a Europe by 2050. It will be a European Caliphate and the former inhabitants will either leave or die.
You cant have a welfare society with third world populations or open borders.
Post by: bvanevery on April 01, 2019, 09:37:06 PM
The USA prior to the civil war or the 1960s. Yes I consider the last 200 years "modern" by the way.
That's not a useful term for talking about the past 200 years though. Modernism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modernism#The_beginnings_in_the_late_nineteenth_century) refers to the late 19th century onwards. At some point we've become Postmodernist or Contemporary.
Lots of things have changed since the US civil war. Not the least of which is slavery. Slavery was darned oppressive to the slaves, and Westward Expansion to the indigenous peoples. Definitely worth at least +1 POLICE. :whip:
Graph says US fertility rate peaked in 1960 and then started going down. Didn't The Pill happen then? And plenty of other things.
Post by: bvanevery on April 01, 2019, 11:15:06 PM
I do not want a total of +3 GROWTH to be available in the early SE table either. In 1.29 Yang got his faction's inherent +1 GROWTH bonus back. If he can pick up another +3 somewhere, then he's got an early pop boom.
So if I'm determined to have only +2 GROWTH available in the early game choices, where am I going to put it?
- Only in Fundamentalist?
- Only in Socialist?
- Spread between the two?
If Socialist isn't about seriously kicking your GROWTH up, then what's it going to be about? JUSTICE isn't much reason by itself to choose it. I suppose some of you might say "well go back to it being about +INDUSTRY, like in the original game." But then what's Capitalist going to be about? And from a realism standpoint, why exactly does Socialist improve your INDUSTRY? I say it doesn't.
And what about Lal? His AI is always going to chose Democratic, never Fundamentalist. His strategy is to grow. He has a GROWTH imperative as his secondary compulsion. (I'm a little unclear from another thread on whether such secondary compulsions are bugged. I will see what I can observe in games.)
Post by: bvanevery on April 02, 2019, 12:08:46 AM
Quotehttps://core-econ.org/the-economy/book/text/02.htmlQuotehttps://core-econ.org/the-economy/book/text/02.html#subheadline
Ok, I think I see why you use terms like "industrialization" and "capitalist" as you do, and think they have various implications. There are some ways in which we are both right.
It might be sloppy of me to use the term "Industrialization". It refers to a specific historical period. Much as I said it was inaccurate of you to use the term "Modernism" to describe things 200 years ago. It's more recent than that. I will simply refrain from using the term Industrialization in order to prevent any further confusion.
What is SMAC about? SMAC is about the future. All of what has happened in our present day, has already happened by the time of the game. Technically things since the late 1990s may not have happened in SMAC's vision of the future, because the original game authors may not have anticipated them. But I think we can safely contemplate what visions of Free Market, Planned, and Green meant to them.
Free Market is the kind of economy that Industrial Democracies practice today. And were practicing 20 years ago. And will still be practicing 20 years from now. Farther than that, I'm not sure, but nothing's going anywhere in 20 years I think. Free Market is the baseline of what we are used to. We make money. We ravage the planet of its resources fairly irresponsibly. I think the POLICE stuff was goofy, I got rid of it.
Free Market is not about what people were doing in the 19th century. Not in a sci-fi game starting in 2100. These colonists did not get chucked back to the Stone Age to start everything all over again. This is not Civ II. 19th century versions of a free market economy simply aren't relevant. I've changed the term to Capitalist in my mod. I'm aware that some academics talk about Late Capitalism. That's what we're in right now. I'm not exactly sure what it means or implies, but I do know that it's time and development based.
Now, what is Green? It's a future looking government form, that doesn't exist right now. Well, ok, it doesn't exist in the USA. A nascent Green Party movement might like it to exist, but they won't get anywhere in the US political system. The US system is a duopoly. Green parties do get into power in Europe at times. I'm not up on exactly what they do. The Green of SMAC though, is a society where people like Deirdre have taken over. People are forced to stop damaging the planet, and you learn how to control mindworms to kill your enemies!
I added some realistic touches to my version of Green. I said GROWTH wouldn't be as bad as the original game said it would be. I make it only -1 GROWTH. I said you'd also get -1 SUPPORT. I think that's totally realistic. Green is not about conspicuous consumption, it's about conserving and regulating consumption.
The Planned of SMAC was backwards looking. It modeled places like the Soviet Union. It said such places had to be economic failures, grossly inefficient. Nonsensically, it said people would spew many babies under such conditions. It is a complete game mechanical contrivance that has no bearing on reality whatsoever.
I changed that to a version of Socialist that is forwards looking. My game doesn't talk about EFFICIENCY, it talks about JUSTICE. The goal of Socialism is more justice, at least, for those who aren't into revolutionary violence and think a lot of people need to be shot. Shooting people doesn't get you justice, it gets you Stalin and Mao. They're already covered by Police State. What does justice cost? Money. I agree that Socialism doesn't make people money, it costs a lot of money. It's a penalty, so I have -1 ECONOMY. But money isn't the only goal in life, and people like welfare benefits. Hence the +2 GROWTH.
It's an imagined Socialism. We don't have any realistic actual society that's done it this way yet. We've got people who talk about doing it, and sometimes a political party gets into power in Europe that suggests what is possible. Sometimes we hear about countries with a lot of Socialist policies, like Sweden or Finland, are having some kind of economic trouble and people are wondering whether they're on the right track. Sometimes we hear about the more wealthy of their citizens, going ex-pat because they can make far more money in places like the USA. Except that, some people like the guy who owns IKEA stay in Sweden and make piles of money just fine. So who knows? We could cherry pick whatever available evidence we want to see about something that is imaginary.
But I do know that Contemporary Free Market countries, i.e. modern day Capitalists, do not demonstrate population growth. That's UN data. It's hard evidence. Birth rates go down. People worry about fitting into the industrial society and turning a buck.
Now if we were interested in imaginary societies for game mechanical purposes, we could contemplate Fundamentalist societies. Real Fundamentalist societies are doing the same thing as every other country in the world is doing, which is having fewer babies. But in an imaginary society, we could contemplate a Hitler Youth program, trying to birth as many new Aryan soldiers as possible. I don't know what German fertility was like on the lead-up to WW II, but it was definitely State run.
Post by: vonbach on April 02, 2019, 12:51:54 AM
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Only in Fundamentalist?I would spread it out between the two. Realistically Fundamentalism should be
Only in Socialist?
Spread between the two?
the growth one but having growth in one place would affect gameplay too much.
I have capitalism modded so it gives +growth +effic and +economy. +Industry would be nice for capitalism but I thought it would be overpowered.
I made wealth were the serious penalties for the pursuit of money are. Thats ++economy +industry and --planet and --police.
I just wanted a growth alternative.
Have you ever thought of giving Socialism a +talent modifier?
Post by: bvanevery on April 02, 2019, 01:47:46 AM
I would spread it out between the two.
I will consider it.
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Realistically Fundamentalism should be the growth one but having growth in one place would affect gameplay too much.
I'm not afraid of having a "turn on GROWTH" social engineering choice. That's what Socialist currently is. I typically don't use it until Eudaimonic is also available. Although, it can be a good counterbalance to the penalties I've made for Power.
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+Industry would be nice for capitalism but I thought it would be overpowered.
I don't really know yet. In my mod, it hasn't been there that long in the scheme of things. I'm willing to revisit the decision if playtesters find it problematic in real play.
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I made wealth were the serious penalties for the pursuit of money are. Thats ++economy +industry and --planet and --police.
I'm not willing to put any more ECONOMY buffs in the game. My Morgan has +2 ECONOMY. I realized at one point in development that I had seriously overheated the ECONOMY and I had to take one out. I think it was the game where Morgan cornered the energy market for 1000 credits??!?
I don't think pursuing Wealth is antithetical to using POLICE in any way, shape, or form at all. I think the original game mechanic comes from Civ II, and the contrast was between Democratic / Republic and Communist / Monarchy. I think they botched the job when they made all those POLICE penalties for Free Market. Has nothing to do with a Free Market, look at China. Has everything to do with Democratic vs. Police State.
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Have you ever thought of giving Socialism a +talent modifier?
No realism in that. And in general, I dislike +TALENT modifiers because they have no actual visual depiction on the social engineering table. It creates a problem when deploying the mod, that something "goofy" is going on that players don't really know about, or appreciate. Whereas, POLICE fists, good game art assets!
Post by: bvanevery on April 02, 2019, 01:57:53 AM
siccing the Spartans on the Gaians |
I'm playing a stock binary game now. I wanted to see what happens with the new Explore imperative I've given Santiago, and the new Aggressive personality and PLANET secondary compulsion I've given Cha Dawn. I put them both in the game as AI players, with otherwise random opponents. I drew Domai. I allied with the Spartans and the Gaians have gotten uppity with me. The Spartans happen to be neighbors with the Gaians so here goes!
I count 7 cities for the Spartans. Gaians seem to have 6. Spartans do not have offensive weapons yet, but they do have Speeders and Synthmetal armor. Gaians have not gone Green, although E2 Centauri Empathy is not difficult to research and they'll presumably have it soon. I have it and so does my ally Cha Dawn, but neither one of us is using it. I don't know if that means Cha Dawn is ignoring his secondary compulsion to go GREEN, or if Socialist is just a much better deal as far as the AI is concerned.
Spartans have gone Socialist. I noticed this choice was popular with Thinker mod AIs as well. They seem to like growth. Maybe I should take a cue from that. However as the Free Drones, I realized I have a much easier time going Democratic early than other factions do. Without it, my cities can go to size 3 without unhappiness. With it, they go to size 2, like a normal faction at the beginning of the game. So I'm taking the extra money and running with it!
MY 2161. Santiago researches Applied Physics, which gives the strength 3 Laser, Heavy Artillery, and the Skunkworks. I trade her for it.
Post by: vonbach on April 02, 2019, 02:20:11 AM
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I'm not willing to put any more ECONOMY buffs in the game. My Morgan has +2 ECONOMY. I realized at one point in development that I had seriously overheated the ECONOMY and I had to take one out. I think it was the game where Morgan cornered the energy market for 1000 credits??!?
I don't think pursuing Wealth is antithetical to using POLICE in any way, shape, or form at all. I think the original game mechanic comes from Civ II, and the contrast was between Democratic / Republic and Communist / Monarchy. I think they botched the job when they made all those POLICE penalties for Free Market. Has nothing to do with a Free Market, look at China. Has everything to do with Democratic vs. Police State.
I always viewed pursuit of wealth as the problem not capitalism itself. I always liked the idea of placing most of the economy bonuses in wealth and
making capitalism a more balanced choice. Its no so much wealth driven societies are not given to using police its what those policies end up
causing that lower the police rating.
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No realism in that. And in general, I dislike +TALENT modifiers because they have no actual visual depiction on the social engineering table. It creates a problem when deploying the mod, that something "goofy" is going on that players don't really know about, or appreciate. Whereas, POLICE fists, good game art assets!
I thought it might be an option to keeping citizens in line other than +police reflecting social programs. Just a thought.
Post by: Vidsek on April 02, 2019, 03:01:24 AM
I suspect that, somewhere in the code, GROWTH is either given a higher rating than other socials, or is made the first selection and not allowed to be then overridden by others. Or some other sort of rigging.
Growth certainly is of paramount importance since since so many other factors vary directly with population. So I wouldn't be surprised if the AI was deliberately restricted from limiting it.
I think there is a reasonable chance that the designers didn't fully understand how all the variables in their game interacted for the AI, and went with outgrowing opponents as a reliable way to make the AI competitive.
Makes me wonder if the way some of them spam defensive units might be another (simplistic) designed railroad for them, rather than the bug/design error it appears to be.
Post by: bvanevery on April 02, 2019, 04:50:08 AM
I've consistently noticed the AI choosing social engineering on the basis of growth even when it conflicted with their ideological imperatives. Diedre, for instance, avoided going Green even late into games until I reduced the growth rate difference between Green and the other two.
I suspect that, somewhere in the code, GROWTH is either given a higher rating than other socials, or is made the first selection and not allowed to be then overridden by others.
HMMM. You make a disturbing point. In MY 2222, my Deirdre is currently Fundamentalist Simple Survival. She should have long since gone Green. And yet:
Gaians rock Spartans |
Not bad for a mere +1 PLANET, eh? But the fact that I give +1 GROWTH for a Simple economy, could be the big problem. Maybe I have to gut it, and just do a face palm that SMACX AI Growth mod never worked out in the real world of modding. Would get rid of the -1 GROWTH for Frontier as well, which I thought was so clever.
Post by: Vidsek on April 02, 2019, 05:50:48 AM
Hard info on how the AI works in this area would be helpful, so we're not just guessing and supposing.
I could set up a scenario to empirically gather data, I think, at least for the early game.
First, let the factions run for 5, 10, 20, whatever years then with the Scenario Editor assign them all the appropriate Techs for the social choices. One might have to watch them for a few years more just in case any of the choosing was delayed a bit.
Doing this for mid and end game looks to be impractical to me.
Maybe in a few months when the yard and garden calm down I'll find time to play with it.
Post by: bvanevery on April 02, 2019, 02:45:44 PM
If the AI is indeed fixated on anything with GROWTH, then I will definitely not spread it between Socialist and Fundamentalist.
Post by: Vidsek on April 02, 2019, 04:54:10 PM
AI Growth 1.29 merged with Yitzi's 35d, Angels, University, Believers, Cult, Peacekeepers, Hoard(Hive), and I'm playing my custom faction. Map is handcrafted from a good random Enormous with seven small continents/large islands, none connected except by water. Rather a lush environment overall.
Everyone is neck and neck, except ;miriam;, who's a bit ahead by dint of city sprawl and defender spam.
Oh, well, actually I'm ahead of her due to going seabourne early and gluttonizing Unity pods. I'm ashamed of my conduct, but more of theirs for not braving the placid, flat seas earlier.
Those who have discovered some SOCIAL options are making choices both obvious and obscure, and some of those are for something other than maximizing GROWTH.
Not enough choices yet to say if they are consistently choosing some GROWTH, just not all they can get. Some would be proper, of course.
I'll try editing the alphax socials so a favored one has 0 or - GROWTH and see if it gets abandoned.
For now I'm leaning toward discounting my hypothesis of a hard 'GROWTH uber all else' dictum.
Post by: bvanevery on April 02, 2019, 05:56:17 PM
the dogpiling of the Spartans |
MY 2249. The Gaians wipe out the Spartans! The Caretakers also went against the Spartans, but I don't know how much of a contribution that made. I'm betting the Xenoempathy Dome was part of Deirdre's success. Maybe the Spartans need some toughening up. I will be watching them in future games.
I tried eliminating the Frontier and Simple economy growth modifiers mid-game. It made no difference to Deirdre's choices, she still hasn't gone Green. Possibly the AI doesn't reload or recogitate anything mid-game and I'd have to start fresh. I'll be watching her some other time. I actually want to play out this game for now. I'm doing this Domai sea empire thing, owing to a small island start I got.
Possibly the AI strongly dislikes the -SUPPORT modifier I added to Green.
Cha Dawn is ignoring his secondary compulsion to increase his PLANET rating. He's Capitalist! Now granted, I did intend for him to be cynical that way, all the way back in version 1.7:
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- Cult of Planet: changed social priority from {Economics, Green, SUPPORT} to {Politics, Fundamentalist, nil}. May now choose Wealth; may not choose Free Market. In this mod, Green is about an economic model, not recruiting the most mindworms possible. Deirdre can be expected to be quite strident about economic policy, but it is out of character for Cha Dawn. He is a cult leader and an aggressive conqueror, not an economic policy wonk.
Thing is, in the meantime I went back to Green being more about conquering Planet. :-[ I didn't really understand the Psi combat advantage of Green back then either.
Post by: bvanevery on April 03, 2019, 02:58:57 AM
I put the +2 MORALE back into Power and am thinking it's more appropriate that way. In 1.27 I pretty much made a mistake, thinking +1 PROBE is worth as much as +1 MORALE. The -2 GROWTH -2 JUSTICE penalty is definitely enough to balance the +1 PROBE.
I've removed the Simple economy GROWTH bonus. I'm going to start another game and see if Deidre goes Green this time.
Post by: Vidsek on April 03, 2019, 03:45:29 AM
Possibly the AI doesn't reload or recogitate anything mid-game and I'd have to start fresh.
Reloading the game from a save has seemed to also reload alphax.txt for me.
However, changes to the Faction files require you to (in-game) use the Scenario Editor to 'Reload Faction' or it just continues using some saved version.
Perhaps Reloading all the factions would get them to start using the alphax changes? At the least, it shouldn't hurt anything.
Post by: bvanevery on April 03, 2019, 07:14:09 AM
I propose to change the name of a Missile Launcher to a Photon Mortar and move it from C6 Orbital Spaceflight to C6 Photon/Wave Mechanics. This will make the weapons progression easier and Orbital Spaceflight less crowded. Anyone think this is a horrible name for a weapon?
Post by: Vidsek on April 03, 2019, 09:34:56 AM
I propose to change the name of a Missile Launcher to a Photon Mortar and move it from C6 Orbital Spaceflight to C6 Photon/Wave Mechanics. This will make the weapons progression easier and Orbital Spaceflight less crowded. Anyone think this is a horrible name for a weapon?
It's a fine name for a weapon if it shoots light and is an indirect fire weapon. Light, of course, is a direct, line-of-sight thing. Photon Cannon (ie. a powerful pulse laser) would be less 'magical' but we already have lasers, so one might want to avoid redundancy/repetition.
What the so-called 'missile launcher' sounds like to me is a RPG or anti-tank missile. To have such old school weaponry come so late seems perverse, so I can agree with turning it into another type of weapon.
But which type? Hmmm. Energy seems apt for Photon/Wave Mechanics rather than a kinetic or missile type.
You could have the motive force of the projectile somehow electromagnetic or quantum wave theory related.
Or perhaps some odd or obscure aspect of wave theory that could theoretically be weaponized?
I just might have to give myself a crash refresher course in that part of Physics so I can be of more help. Actually sounds interesting....
K, a quick skim of the subject led me to two somewhat related phenomena of quantum wave physics that might be the basis of a new, high-tech weapon: the Uncertainty Principal and Quantum Tunneling.
Uncertainty has a nice sound to it, whereas Tunneling could easily be confused with mining activities.
So maybe "Uncertainty something", and yes I do know there is a tech or whatever with that name already.
Post by: bvanevery on April 03, 2019, 04:30:33 PM
It's a fine name for a weapon if it shoots light and is an indirect fire weapon.
Look at the unit artwork for a missile launcher. It can definitely be a mortar. It definitely doesn't look like a direct fire weapon.
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Light, of course, is a direct, line-of-sight thing.
In the beginning of the Star Trek TOS episode Arena (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arena_(Star_Trek:_The_Original_Series)) an indirect fire weapon was used. You launch something out of a mortar and over the horizon there's a huge burst of something that looks like area phaser fire.
a little close for one of these little jewels (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9py5EdVJdbo#)
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What the so-called 'missile launcher' sounds like to me is a RPG or anti-tank missile. To have such old school weaponry come so late seems perverse, so I can agree with turning it into another type of weapon.
Yeah, from a progressing future and weapons strength perspective, the original game's "missile" simply isn't working. The problem is I've got C6 Orbital Spaceflight and C6 Photon/Wave Mechanics occurring at the same time. This is just the weight of stuff that's actually in the tree, the content that Firaxis provided. Santiago has to do this huge hand wave for the Orbital Spaceflight quote about how they couldn't get orbital stuff done any sooner, and that we're all "fools" to think so. But it can't really take that long compared to inventing a Needlejet, so here it is. Armor gets unnaturally strong in the SMAC fiction, like the Plasma and Silksteel armors before you even get to Photon Walls. If they were being realistic about the time it takes to get back in orbit, they might have Synthmetal at best!
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So maybe "Uncertainty something", and yes I do know there is a tech or whatever with that name already.
Nah it's gotta have Photons in it. I've already got a Phaser for Probability Mechanics. Much later, the Chronoton Gun is another Star Trek homage. I actually started off thinking "Photon Torpedo" but decided that would be too Star Trek hokey.
The unit artwork is important. It has to not sound stupid for what it looks like. "Photon Cannon" doesn't work IMO. "Photon Battery" unfortunately sounds like it's a piece of heavy artillery. Confusion over direct vs. indirect fire is inevitable with this unit artwork, I think. They illustrated a missile launcher, so there's pretty much always going to be a choice with those.
"Photon Grenade Launcher" is a mouthful. It does describe how it works though.
"Photon Array" leaves a lot to the imagination.
I suppose "Wave Cannon" isn't awful, even if it doesn't have Photons in it. The name of the tech is Photon/Wave mechanics after all. You might need some weird shape to shoot waves. Makes the later "Dissociative Wave" a little confusing but not a dealbreaker.
Post by: Vidsek on April 03, 2019, 05:53:12 PM
I know! Go with pure military acronym insanity: EMP-RPG.
Post by: bvanevery on April 03, 2019, 06:17:23 PM
Oops, just realized I'll have a weapon that's a Wave, and an ability that's a Wave. The automated naming will be confusing.
Well I could call it a "Photon Wave Cannon" and the weapon name can be Photon for short. But am I going to have Photon weapon Photon armor? Geez!
I think I get out of this by calling it a "Photon Cannon" and having the short name be "Cannon". Cannon is an unused weapon name, so will only have 1 meaning. Cannon Speeder, Cannon Infantry, etc. Gagh this sounds inherently dumb.
I guess the basic problem is having a weapon and an armor with the same name, "Photon". I didn't have this problem when I combined techs for the Chaos gun and the Probability Sheath because they had different names. This seems to imply I need to come up with a weapon name that does not have "Photon" in it, or "Wave", but has something to do with photons and waves.
Too bad I already used Phaser. Well I guess I could conscript Disruptor for what's currently a Phaser and make the photon weapon a Phaser. However I feel like I'd be biting off Star Trek a little too hard. SMAC has a more militaryspeak feel to it. I also think I like the Phaser where it is, having association with probability.
I mean obviously a frickin' Laser is what has to do with photons and waves, so this is all pretty arbitrary.
Could rip off Star Wars and call it a Blaster. Blaster Speeder sounds dumb though.
Could think of it as a Beam weapon. Photon Beam, Beam Speeder. Well that still kinda sucks, just not as hard as some of the other options.
Could go Dungeons & Dragons and call it a Prismatic Cannon. But... would a Prismatic Speeder be too pretty to take seriously?
Hmm what about an Ion Cannon? Ion Speeder, Ion Infantry...
Post by: Vidsek on April 03, 2019, 10:43:13 PM
Names are important, they hold magic for us humapes.
Quantum Wave Theory has lots to do with atoms and ions, at least the electron 'orbitals'. Not sure if it applies to quarks, gluons, and the Strong Force, but Ion would work.
Ion Launcher? To go with the graphic.
See? This is why it takes me ages to start a role playing game: I get stuck in character creation at the name selection.
Post by: vonbach on April 04, 2019, 12:00:26 AM
Just as an aside have you ever thought that -Growth might be too harsh a penalty for Green?
Post by: bvanevery on April 04, 2019, 12:07:57 AM
the weapons of SMACX |
So what does this weapon really look like compared to all the others? I never thought it was all that great of a representation of a "launcher" anyways. It looks to me like a honeycomb array of little barrels. Like a kind of shotgun.
infantry mounted |
When rotated, you get a lighting effect which more clearly demonstrates the roundness of the barrels. Another way this weapon differs from all the others, is it's mounted at a 45 degree angle.
To be honest the thing looks a little like a Claymore mine. If it were a Napoleonic weapon, it would shoot grapeshot. Makes me think of a cluster bomb, but dispersed in a particular direction. Ion Blaster? Ion Barrage? Ion Belcher? If I keep the name format "Ion Something-or-other" then the short name for a unit will just be "Ion" and I'm off the hook.
Something Scattergun? Photon Blunderbuss?
Rainbow Gun? Pity the thing is charcoal grey.
Refractor Gun? Refractor Cannon? Bender Gun?
Photon Cluster? Cluster Speeder, Cluster Squad, ?
Ion Disruptor? Something-else Disruptor? I guess Photon Disruptor could have a Disruptor Infantry, Disruptor Speeder, etc. Come to think of it, the name Disruptor was taken by the String Disruptor, the strength 30 weapon of SMACX. But I renamed it to Black Hole Gun.
Civ IV had the hwacha (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hwacha) unit, basically a rocket cart. I don't think inserting Asiatic words fits the themes of SMAC though.
Hwacha |
CC BY 2.0 - https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1003522 (https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1003522)
Post by: bvanevery on April 04, 2019, 01:27:38 AM
Just as an aside have you ever thought that -Growth might be too harsh a penalty for Green?
The original game gave -2 GROWTH for Green, which was very harsh if you were the Cybernetic Consciousness or the Pirates and already had -1 GROWTH for your faction. -1 GROWTH is a substantial improvement. I've saved the harshness for Power nowadays, and none of my factions have a GROWTH penalty.
Green has to have some kind of penalty. Every choice has to have liabilities. What is Green going to mean if not less growth? It's true to the lore too. Deidre goes on and on about controlling population growth, both in the faction quotes and her diplomatic dialogue.
Post by: vonbach on April 04, 2019, 02:27:08 AM
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The original game gave -2 GROWTH for Green, which was very harsh if you were the Cybernetic Consciousness or the Pirates and already had -1 GROWTH for your faction. -1 GROWTH is a substantial improvement. I've saved the harshness for Power nowadays, and none of my factions have a GROWTH penalty.
Green has to have some kind of penalty. Every choice has to have liabilities. What is Green going to mean if not less growth? It's true to the lore too. Deidre goes on and on about controlling population growth, both in the faction quotes and her diplomatic dialogue.
Its a realistic penalty. I was just wondering if it was too harsh for gameplay purposes.
Post by: bvanevery on April 04, 2019, 02:35:49 AM
I had another weapon idea, I forgot to write it down... oh now I remember. Gamma weapons. Well, I don't know if that has so much to do with Photons. Also neutron weapons, as in a neutron bomb. Although I think it's really naming that "honeycomb of barrels" that's the problem at this point. It doesn't look like a cannon.
Ion Array? Ion Bank? Compare Phaser Bank.
Post by: Vidsek on April 04, 2019, 04:03:02 AM
Although I think it's really naming that "honeycomb of barrels" that's the problem at this point. It doesn't look like a cannon.
Ion Array? Ion Bank? Compare Phaser Bank.
Array works for me. So my vote's for Ion Array.
Post by: bvanevery on April 04, 2019, 07:11:25 AM
What about Ion Sprayer? Something-Else Sprayer? Neutron Blaster? Would call it Neutron Speeder, Neutron Squad.... Or could do Proton Blaster, Proton Speeder.... but I suppose a Proton Photon Squad would be lame. Neutron Photon Squad sounds lame too.
Ion Blaster? Then it's just an Ion Squad. Yeah, I think Ion Blaster is better than Ion Array.
In a new game, I just had a diplomatic conversation with Deirdre. She has E3 Centauri Genetics, implying that she has long since had E2 Centauri Empathy which makes Green available. She's not Green! She's Police State Simple Survival. You'd think with the extra +2 SUPPORT she gets from Police State, that she wouldn't care about -1 SUPPORT from Green. So maybe it's the -1 GROWTH that's the hangup. I'm going to try removing it and see if she switches. I still don't know if the AI will pick up on the changes mid-game.
Some time later, still Democratic Simple Survival. I'll try -1 GROWTH and no SUPPORT penalty.
Some time later, no change. Removing all penalties. Yep, when I remove the penalties, now she goes Green. So that proves the AI isn't hung up on stuff loaded at the start of the game.
Now, does she really prefer +1 GROWTH from Simple economy? Or did she just hate Green penalties that much? Adding the Frontier and Simple modifiers back. Yep, she went back to Simple economy. The AI does indeed fixate on GROWTH. When I remove it, she goes right back to Green.
Now, is there any penalty for Green that Deirdre will tolerate? Or is the AI allergic to penalties? Let's try -INDUSTRY. She seems to be tolerating this, so I guess that's gotta be the new negative.
Post by: vonbach on April 04, 2019, 01:13:25 PM
As far as green penalties go what about support or morale? It will weaken your conventional units but your minds worms will be ok.
Basically it would represent a lowering of military effectiveness from green policies. Industry seems appropriate but seems a bit harsh.
Post by: bvanevery on April 04, 2019, 04:11:15 PM
How about a molecular disruptor?
Molecular Speeder, Molecular Squad... don't think it's better than Ion. Also would like it to somewhat thematically go with Photon/Wave Mechanics.
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As far as green penalties go what about support
The AI barfs on -1 SUPPORT -1 GROWTH, -1 SUPPORT, or -1 GROWTH.
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or morale?
Illogical, and already given as a penalty for Wealth.
It would be logical for a Police State, but I have trouble imagining what further benefits I'd give to compensate. Or why, play mechanically, one would want to choose Police State if one can't fight well. I suppose PROBE, but I don't actually want more probe team play mechanics in the game. I think subverting cities sucks and is pretty much broken, it's way too cheap to do.
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It will weaken your conventional units but your minds worms will be ok.
When playing a Green faction, I often choose Wealth because I really don't need MORALE to fight effectively. But this is a player choice.
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Industry seems appropriate but seems a bit harsh.
Choices need to have penalties. Any -1 can be swallowed by itself. It's not like -1 INDUSTRY is somehow massively more powerful than +2 PLANET +1 JUSTICE.
If the player chooses Wealth too, then INDUSTRY bonuses and penalties cancel out. It's all about how badly you want to be Planet friendly. Maybe you prefer to belch out Secret Projects as fast as possible and have mindworms eat you under Capitalist.
Post by: bvanevery on April 04, 2019, 06:37:48 PM
Or is it that other things in the table have changed, like Democratic, and now the AI evaluates all of it differently? Because the sum of choices changes the calculus...
I wish this wasn't a black box that I have to reverse engineer by trial and error. It's unsettling to think that after months and months of authorship, I crafted an experience for the human player, only to belatedly realize that the AI is ignoring a lot of that experience. I could see having to go through every single faction, to see if they're actually choosing their primary compulsions at least, and then try to get them to do their secondary compulsions if any. Although, per another thread, secondary compulsions might be broken and ignored.
This all easily becomes enough work for a 1.30 release, justifying the minimum 1 month between releases. You think you're done, then you find out you're not.
Deirdre won't swallow +2 PLANET +2 JUSTICE -1 GROWTH in my current table. Let alone -2 GROWTH. She's Democratic. I wonder if only having +1 JUSTICE for Democratic is the problem? Or what if the Gaians only having +1 JUSTICE as their faction ability instead of +2 is the problem?
I wonder if renaming EFFIC to JUSTICE is a problem?
Even when I change Democratic to +1 ECONOMY +2 JUSTICE +2 GROWTH, I can't get the Gaians to accept Green with +2 PLANET +2 JUSTICE -1 GROWTH. Any -GROWTH in Green derails the deal. I've got the same primary and secondary compulsions as the original game: Economics, Green, PLANET.
This is baffling, and makes me wonder if there's a problem even in the original game. I'm going to have to go back to that, and start changing things one by one until I find what's causing this.
Well I'll be damned. The Gaians won't choose Green even in the original game. I'm filing a bug report about it.
Post by: Vidsek on April 04, 2019, 10:44:23 PM
If there is some part I can help with on this new exploration, count me a Lab. Ass. and assign it to me.
Oh, just occured to me: I remember a discussion about Dierdre refusing to wear GREEN in the forums here a couple three years ago. Now to try and find it so we can see what conditions it was under (stock, a mod, etc.) and what was said and tested then.
<minutes later> Fah. Tried several combinations of words in our search engine and got bugger all.
I'll play with it a bit more since I'm sure it happened and happened here.
Post by: vonbach on April 05, 2019, 12:19:25 AM
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Even when I change Democratic to +1 ECONOMY +2 JUSTICE +2 GROWTH, I can't get the Gaians to accept Green with +2 PLANET +2 JUSTICE -1 GROWTH. Any -GROWTH in Green derails the deal. I've got the same primary and secondary compulsions as the original game: Economics, Green, PLANET.Its probably he growth penalty. Growth is a very heavy penalty and the renaming of social values probably doesn't help.
This is baffling, and makes me wonder if there's a problem even in the original game. I'm going to have to go back to that, and start changing things one by one until I find what's causing this.
Well I'll be damned. The Gaians won't choose Green even in the original game. I'm filing a bug report about it.
Thats one of the reasons in my mod I would sometimes simply remove all the negative social values from governments and economic systems.
Post by: bvanevery on April 05, 2019, 02:10:23 AM
In my bug report thread I think I've found the answer. The AI will only choose Green with those penalties, if it has learned how to make Locusts of Chiron. It may also need to have life cycle bonuses. It had the Xenoempathy Dome and was working on the Pholus Mutagen when it started building an air corps of Locusts. 4 extant, 4 killed, 12 in production.
In short, the Gaian AI is thoroughly unprincipled. ;lol ;hippy Will not live within its means, only cares about war!
A good reason to mod this. I mean, the +20% Psi combat bonus is helpful, and you do acquire many more free mindworms if you've jacked your PLANET to +3. We need to hear less of Deirdre talking the talk. More walking the walk.
I wonder if I'm going to find out that they nerfed the Gaians deliberately? Well that would be ok. I could always take away the free Biology Labs I gave them.
Post by: bvanevery on April 05, 2019, 05:50:05 AM
prototype choices for 1 30 |
MY 2200 and still nobody will choose my new Green.
Deirdre is Police State only, completely ignoring her primary compulsion to go Green. She is trying to build the Xenoempathy Dome. She doesn't have Locusts yet. She's the leading faction on the graph, due to sitting on the Monsoon Jungle. I'm merely #2.
Cha Dawn is Socialist only, indicating that he's ignoring his PLANET secondary compulsion.
The Caretakers are building the Xenoempathy Dome. I haven't met them, but presumably they're Socialist since that's their primary compulsion.
I strongly suspect the AI hates my version of Power as much as it hates Green. I expect I'll have to rework it.
If I remove the INDUSTRY penalty from Green, Deirdre will choose it. Cha Dawn won't!
Post by: Vidsek on April 05, 2019, 06:47:13 AM
The problem definitely occurs in the stock, unmodified game and appears to have been unaffected by any of the *.txt or *.exe mods/patches that were around back then
Post by: bvanevery on April 05, 2019, 07:15:37 AM
Caretaker full choices for 1 30 |
Barring further testing explosions, I am adopting Vonbach's expedient of no penalties for Green. Since I don't want to treat any of the other choices that way, I have to do it with no bonuses other than the +2 PLANET. I try to draw a contrast with the rest of the choices; for instance, Green is neutral on JUSTICE, but Capitalist is slightly unjust. I actually believe that, and I think it'll also work game mechanically. I think the AI likes money and isn't going to balk at the added penalty.
I also adopted some of vonbach's ideas about Capitalist and Wealth being too strong, and Police State being too lame. Power needed reworking. Fundamentalist becomes a PROBE thing again, although not as much as the original game. Now there are now GROWTH penalties in the game. As the author of SMACX AI Growth mod, that makes me a little sad. But hey, gameplay is king, and you can't very well play with a broken AI! :dunno:
Post by: bvanevery on April 05, 2019, 04:20:11 PM
in fairness to Capitalism |
I found a better way to make the JUSTICE contrast between Capitalist and Green. Just get rid of INDUSTRY in Eudaimonic. Yes, Domai is gonna take care of Planet! ;lol You know, the original game didn't have the Free Drones in it. Eudaimonia was part of the Explore tech tree, and I don't think it was conceived as a Worker's State tech. I think they shoved it in because it was available, so I don't feel that bad about un-shoving them. Little green Planet friendly drones.
Post by: bvanevery on April 05, 2019, 08:21:18 PM
I hate you Deirdre |
I hate this AI!! :mad: I put 2 days of work into trying to make it obey my will, and it still won't! Green now has no liability whatsoever, there's no downside. And it still won't choose it. I just bought Centauri Empathy from her, so she's Green capable. Is +1 PLANET not enough to get the AI's attention? Is the original game broken too, even if I remove all penalties from Green? I'm going to go find out now.
Well the story with the original game is weird. Removing all penalties from Green, the Gaians learn it in MY 2172. They refuse to go Green. They keep this up through MY 2200. Suddenly in MY 2201 they go Green. There wasn't seemingly any change in relevant or profound circumstances. I'm wondering if the choice is on a timer, i.e. do not do this on or before MY 2200.
Well if so, I've got some waiting to do. Resuming my modded game, we're in MY 2135. That's a lot of early exploration missed opportunity for the PLANET friendly factions.
Heck, I am going Green, because there's no downside. That could be a problem with my fix, this lack of a tradeoff.
Post by: bvanevery on April 06, 2019, 12:36:31 AM
perhaps mindworm manufacture is key |
MY 2181. I notice that Deidre has gone Green. I will see if I can figure out exactly what turn it happened.
That dispels the "on a century timer" theory. Maybe it corresponds to obtaining Centauri Genetics, which in my mod gives mindworms and spore launchers. In the original game, it occurs later and gives locusts. That was the point at which it finally went Green in the original game, with a Green that had penalties. It would be amusing if it's actually tied to the name Centauri Genetics itself!
I find that I seriously dislike this "easy street" version of Green where there's no consequence for choosing it. Feels like a baby game. I will now try to find what the Gaians will swallow for a penalty, if anything.
I think the idea of only giving +1 PLANET has validity. That's all you actually need to get some mindworms. I think you end up with a lot more if you've got a higher rating, but I remember games in the past where I only had +1 PLANET the whole game, and I came up with some pretty fearsome mindworm armies. Recruitment might have more to do with map size and distance, and ongoing time, than how high your PLANET rating is.
My sampling of old saved games is limited. I know that in MY 2170 the Gaians do not have Centauri Genetics. In MY 2177 they do, but they have not gone Green. I don't know if they obtained it that turn or earlier. In MY 2178, they go Green.
Post by: vonbach on April 06, 2019, 01:23:45 AM
Besides if everything is overpowered nothing is.
Post by: bvanevery on April 06, 2019, 03:36:12 AM
a paucity of JUSTICE |
In this version I have Green providing very little benefit, although it's a rather important benefit. Capitalist becomes the moneymaker. Democratic becomes easier to accept as you can use police, you just can't nerve staple. The anti-police burden is taken by Knowledge and Cybernetic, which unfortunately are boring as they repeat each other.
I've realized that I can afford to insert +3 GROWTH into the early economy with triggering any pop booms. Democratic and Socialist are differentiated by how much GROWTH you can get out of them. Paying -1 POLICE for Democratic is cheap, it doesn't even hurt you. Paying -2 ECONOMY for Socialist is spendy. You'll lose -1 energy per base and you won't be going Capitalist. If you also choose Wealth then you can avoid -1 per base, but you won't be making any money.
Power is made easier to swallow, although the supply of JUSTICE is tightened so you are likely to experience JUSTICE penalties. The idea of a Police State whose troops have bad MORALE is explored. Fundamentalist goes back to being a lighter weight version of PROBE than the original game. This lets the Data Angels go to +3 PROBE rather quickly.
<sigh> The AI for the Hive won't accept -MORALE. It avoids Police State when I do that, even if -MORALE is the only penalty. Well I guess I can live without that idea.
Post by: vonbach on April 06, 2019, 09:25:17 AM
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I'm not willing to do that, because there have to be tradeoffs for the human player. For instance, I'm not willing to make Capitalist a free lunch. Planet should get damaged. In the limit of what you suggest, if there are literally no negative consequences to anything, then troops always fight well, mindworms don't get terribly upset when a city has lots of minerals, research is never slowed down, and police can always be used. You're throwing out a lot of the core game mechanics, in the name of making things easier for the AI.Like I said if everything is overpowered nothing is. The other option I've used is to halve the penalties for the negative effects.
Also Free market societies don't have that bad of a record on environmentalism. Nor are they simply about making mass amounts of money is about freedom of money and property. Wealth is about making money and where those penalties should be.
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In this version I have Green providing very little benefit, although it's a rather important benefit.The best version of Green was the one that had +economy and +effic along with it.
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Fundamentalist goes back to being a lighter weight version of PROBE than the original game.Probe is pretty much useless and morale is not much better. Besides societies like that tend to be worse at spying.
One thing I wish this game had is more values choices. I wish there more spaces for things like Eugenics values and Prosperity.
Post by: bvanevery on April 06, 2019, 03:58:26 PM
Also Free market societies don't have that bad of a record on environmentalism.
Deep Water Horizon <cough> Exxon Valdez <cough> Three Mile Island <cough> [Sleezebag]'s appointments to the EPA, are you kidding me? In NC the Governor just ordered Duke Energy to dig up all the coal leftovers they've had in unlined ponds and put them into lined storage. Finally, although I personally haven't quite figured out anthropogenic global warming to my satisfaction, I know there's definitely a difference between myself and a climate denier. The extraction industries spend all this time astroturfing a bunch of FUD so they can do business as usual. I'm not entirely sure if carbon dioxide is bad, but I know sulfur dioxide is bad. Acid rain and groundwater contamination are reasons enough to shut down a coal plant.
Did you know that historical pollution in Montana from mining operations is so bad, that delegations from other countries come to that state to study what not to do environmentally?
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QuoteIn this version I have Green providing very little benefit, although it's a rather important benefit.The best version of Green was the one that had +economy and +effic along with it.
Narratively it is better, but it cannot be balanced when no penalties are available. I'm not going to rewrite the whole SE table with no penalties. I don't believe in your approach to the design, because it sacrifices too many important tradeoffs and too much dynamic range of game behavior. Having all those different stages of POLICE is an important play mechanic. So is having your factories getting eaten by mindworms.
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One thing I wish this game had is more values choices. I wish there more spaces for things like Eugenics values and Prosperity.
Prosperity would inevitably be a derivative of other factors. You might think about what kind of prosperity, i.e. Wealth, Workerism, Technocracy, etc.
I'd probably model Eugenics as +1 TALENT +1 GROWTH -2 JUSTICE. In the real world it would basically be the Nazis or the Klan running things. Poor women of color were being forcibly sterilized in North Carolina as late as the 1970s. If genocide were an explicit factor in the game, with a range of genocidal options, then historical Eugenics movements could be readily modeled.
But as you say, only got room for 3 things in Values.
In other news, I was able to free up Synthetic Fossil Fuels. It's going to be a C6 tech and have Missile Launchers again!
Post by: vonbach on April 06, 2019, 09:42:26 PM
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Deep Water Horizon <cough> Exxon Valdez <cough> Three Mile Island <cough> [Sleezebag]'s appointments to the EPA, are you kidding me?
Go take a look at the damage the USSR did to the environment and get back to me. The worst thing you can do for the environment or most anything else really is get the government involved. The EPA needs to be gutted. They have people getting arrested for digging holes to collect rainwater on their own land. The problem with the EPA is they simply have no foundation in reality then they make up stupid regulations on a whim and they have no checks at all. With a socialist government its even worse. Just take a look at Chernobyl.
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Prosperity would inevitably be a derivative of other factors. You might think about what kind of prosperity, i.e. Wealth, Workerism, Technocracy, etc.Growth and happiness as opposed to simple wealth. Technocracy is something I'd like to add just because.
Post by: bvanevery on April 06, 2019, 10:03:56 PM
Go take a look at the damage the USSR did to the environment and get back to me.
Damage done under historical Communist regimes, doesn't absolve Capitalists of damage they have done and continue to do. Meanwhile you have modern China, which is both Communist and Capitalist, really more of a Single Party State system for mostly Capitalist activities. Workers are treated like crap, and pollution is so bad there are places where people hand pollenate their crops. No bees to do it!
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The EPA needs to be gutted.
The EPA keeps you from getting cancer, from heavy metals and other toxins in your drinking water etc. Without it, you'd basically have Victorian England. That's Capitalist in action, everything covered in soot. Or you could have modern China, can't breathe, lotsa people with respiration problems and wearing masks. Environmental regulation is pretty important to our survival, sorry if you don't see or understand that.
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With a socialist government its even worse. Just take a look at Chernobyl.
And Japan has Fukushima, in a country that's fairly Capitalist. And the USA had Three Mile Island. Communist countries don't "uniquely own" environmental damage. Perhaps you need a reminder of the USA's various Superfund cleanup sites (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Superfund_sites).
A map of Superfund sites as of October 2013. Red indicates currently on final National Priority List, yellow is proposed, green is deleted (usually meaning having been cleaned up). |
CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5573221
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Growth and happiness as opposed to simple wealth.
That's my Explore tree. Unfortunately it is also compounded with Psi combat techs. Anything that creates happiness or growth goes under Explore, because it really means "colonization and growth" to the AI. Expand would have been a more accurate term. The original game collapses eXplore, eXpand, and fight-with-mindworms into the same category.
Post by: vonbach on April 07, 2019, 02:48:56 AM
The EPA basically is a unelected federal bureaucracy that gets to tell you what you can do on your own land.
Post by: bvanevery on April 07, 2019, 06:37:17 AM
Post by: Vidsek on April 07, 2019, 08:17:21 AM
My observations: pretty much any and all economic systems have been associated with environmental
destruction.
This includes fairly early ones like the Maya, SW US pueblo ancestors (ie. Anasazi), peoples in the 'Middle
East', South Asia, East Asia, and Europe. Most of their damage was deforestation and overhunting.
The reasons for it occuring with them vary. Early societies may have simply been ignorant of the consequences
of their actions in some cases. Greed can explain a lot. Desire for control and power over other people is also
a factor and no doubt other things as well.
My point is that these causal factors for environmental damage are universal human characteristics and not
intrinsically tied to any particular economic system.
What is tied to the damage is lack of controls to curb people's excesses and selfishness, plus corruption
reducing the benefits of existing controls.
So: With economic systems, -PLANET should be a result of how prevalent corruption and selfishness are with
each system. (At least as we are imagining them to be in our future-history game).
Also to keep in mind is that many countries that have been called "Socialist" or "Communist" never fell under those categories as they were originally defined. I've seen the USSR/CCCP described as "State Capitalism" in several works, basicly a country being run like a vast corporation or such. It was also a Kleptocracy, and I don't see any reason the two can't occur together.
Just to complicate and confuse the issue further, a given country can (and many modern ones do) function with a blend of Capitalistic and Socialistic parts. The USA is actually one example, with much of the EU, China, and many others as well.
Post by: bvanevery on April 07, 2019, 03:29:56 PM
Not all dictatorships are created equal in that regard either. The island of Hispaniola has both the Dominican Republic and Haiti on it. The former was at one time run by a dictator with a serious Green thumb. The latter by people with no clue. Photos of the border between the two countries are stark, with incredible eco-damage on the Haitian side. This was commented upon in Jared Diamond's book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse:_How_Societies_Choose_to_Fail_or_Succeed).
SMAC has the virtue of offering a relatively simple, limited set of social engineering choices to contemplate. It's an open question whether a lot more choices, or greater dynamic range of choice, can be done well.
Post by: Vidsek on April 07, 2019, 07:29:31 PM
Has anyone swallowed your power yet? Um, that doesn't sound right....perhaps a quote will help:
Well the good news from last night's testing is so far, the AI factions are swallowing it. They'll do my new Fundamentalist, my new Socialist, and my new Green. Don't know about my new Power yet.
You've probably looked into this already, but can you make Green with a penalty appealing by making Simple even more onerous with, say, -GROWTH or -ECONOMY? Does that simply drive Dierdre to become a Robber Baron or Pinko?
I'm currently marking time in my "testing" by manicuring a map or two (I'm such a picky cartographer...).
If you happen to be happy with your current Tech tree changes, would you toss a copy of alphax with them to me so I can play with it while the Social dust settles?
Post by: bvanevery on April 07, 2019, 10:39:33 PM
Has anyone swallowed your power yet? Um, that doesn't sound right....perhaps a quote will help:
Tune in next week to the latest Gaian saga, "Behind the Green Door"...
Yep, the Hive fully embraced Police State, Socialist, and Power! They swallowed -3 JUSTICE and just use their +3 POLICE to overcome resistance, as intended. They're trashing the Usurpers, which is a double success as it means giving the Hive back their +1 GROWTH was effective. The Hive is going to win on land pretty soon
The Data Angels embraced Fundamentalist, Socialist, and Power. That raises them to +3 PROBE, and they've accepted -3 JUSTICE. However they had a really weird start with cities scattered and disconnected between both the Hive and the Usurpers, including Data DeCentral. They lost all of those cities and I'm not sure what they've got left. I see 4 cities far to the east, but I don't have a complete map. I don't know if their start was bad luck, or if their new Conquer only research focus interfered with early colonization. From a research standpoint it makes sense, because they're going to get other techs for free anyways, and they should try to beeline to Covert Ops Center. Further games will reveal whether they have an early settlement problem.
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You've probably looked into this already, but can you make Green with a penalty appealing by making Simple even more onerous with, say, -GROWTH or -ECONOMY? Does that simply drive Dierdre to become a Robber Baron or Pinko?
Hmm I actually never thought about that, especially since it's exactly the opposite of the kind of simulation I originally tried to do with SMACX AI Growth mod. Whether that would work, depends on whether aversion in Green is comparative or absolute. I don't know if the code says "if Simple is a better option than Green in such-and-such-way, then choose Simple" or if the code says "If Green has a penalty, barf." I can try and see.
A problem with -GROWTH as a penalty in the "None" options, is it'll require +GROWTH to balance it out somewhere else. That could become the new thing the AI fixates upon. Could be same problem with any penalty I think of.
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I'm currently marking time in my "testing" by manicuring a map or two (I'm such a picky cartographer...).
If you happen to be happy with your current Tech tree changes, would you toss a copy of alphax with them to me so I can play with it while the Social dust settles?
Sure. Actually I'm quite happy with how I've repositioned the techs. I've got Ethical Calculus at Tier 2 and doing Democratic again. Monopole Magnets is now Tier 3 and has the Planetary Transit System. I find I can't usually get around to building a serious rail network any earlier than that anyways. I've increased the cost of many Secret Projects. AAA defense is dropped to +50%, although I don't have an opinion on that as I've had no air wars. I've changed 3 factions. The Gaians had a bug where they were supposed to be at +1 JUSTICE awhile ago.
After I posted, I made Graviton Theory a Conquer 9 tech and re-uploaded 2 files. Looks like I did it before anyone downloaded anything.
Post by: Vidsek on April 08, 2019, 03:50:23 AM
Post by: bvanevery on April 08, 2019, 08:28:08 PM
I also thought about putting a negative in the table, and a positive in every faction.txt file. That would in effect give a positive for every SE choice that doesn't have a negative on it. Capitalist, for instance, would end up with an effective +1 GROWTH, which I don't want. So this doesn't solve the problem either. I can't really escape the fact that a negative in Green is a negative in Green.
industry bonuses removed |
In my playtesting I find I like the more expensive Socialist, but I dislike not having a choice about how to get my INDUSTRY up to +2. I also don't think it's important to make +3 GROWTH available before Eudaimonic. I can solve the balancing problem by getting rid of INDUSTRY bonuses. Too bad not to use a spiffy icon, but I think INDUSTRY has always been a game ruiner anyways. The price for balance has to be paid somewhere.
Post by: Vidsek on April 09, 2019, 10:40:07 AM
A negative in GREEN is what is needed, and lacking that, your Socials seem a decent workaround.
With no negative in GREEN, you've reduced the positive to a minimum to compensate. Would giving it +2 to PLANET, or +PLANET, +JUSTICE be excessive?
From recent examples (in the EU, mostly) I don't see Socialism as being quite so terrible to the economy or resulting in large population growth.
If it didn't unbalance the gameplay, would setting SOCIALIST to +GROWTH, +JUSTICE, -INDUSTRY work? It's rather bland, without the strong contrasts, but then, so is GREEN now.
What is it you like about the contrasty version in your testing? I'll squash my RL objections for better gameplay.
INDUSTRY's icon is a nice one, isn't it?
Post by: Geo on April 09, 2019, 11:00:40 AM
Post by: bvanevery on April 09, 2019, 04:04:18 PM
What's the reason for renaming "Efficiency" to "Justice" in this SE table?
"Efficiency" doesn't mean anything by itself, it's a nonsense word like "good" or "better". Efficient at what? If it's meant to mean "mo' betta at makin' money", well that's your ECONOMY, isn't it.
The original game mechanic in Civ II was "Corruption". You built a Courthouse to decrease Corruption. If you went to a Democracy, you magically ended all Corruption. Ha! Considering the example of a Courthouse, the opposite of Corruption is JUSTICE.
I have interpreted JUSTICE to encompass not just legal justice, but social justice as well. The idea that "people get more upset somewhere in your empire because of Bureaucracy" is a game mechanical contrivance that doesn't make any sense. However, the idea that people are upset because you smack their teeth out with billy clubs during riots, or disappear their families, or are constantly getting people killed in armed conflict, does make sense. Ideally the concept of Bureaucracy would be renamed to something more evocative, like Cruelty. But I'm not yet in the business of rewriting the Datalinks, and probably won't be.
Post by: bvanevery on April 09, 2019, 04:55:57 PM
With no negative in GREEN, you've reduced the positive to a minimum to compensate. Would giving it +2 to PLANET, or +PLANET, +JUSTICE be excessive?
I think they are. They have no penalty at all, it's a free ride. Remember the AI may hem and haw about what it's gonna do, but the human player is like, "Gimmie!"
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From recent examples (in the EU, mostly) I don't see Socialism as being quite so terrible to the economy or resulting in large population growth.
The actual game mechanical effect of -2 ECONOMY is "-1 energy at every base". It's a slap on the wrist. The effect of -1 ECONOMY is negligible, you get -1 energy at your HQ. I removed other ECONOMY penalties so there's nothing to stack. This amounts to perceived discomfort with a scary visual gravitas.
For population growth, the pop booming game mechanic is either going to be in the game or it isn't. Realism would say there's no such thing as pop booming, the whole idea is dumb and should be scrapped. I don't have that harsh of an attitude about it. Right now the basic game mechanic is "go Socialist, build a Children's Creche, go Eudaimonic, hey presto pop boom." It takes a long time to get Eudaimonic so I don't have a problem with it.
Another way you can do it is "go Socialist, build a Children's creche, make your citizens massively happy wealthy and yuppie to trigger a Golden Age. Hey presto pop boom." I think it's probably difficult to pull that off, and is likely not rewarding for the diversionary effort spent, but I haven't seriously tried. Nowadays the Believers would be the faction to try that with, since they have +1 ECONOMY.
Notably, Morgan can't do it. He can only build a Children's Creche, go Eudaimonic late in the game, and trigger a Golden Age.
Meanwhile, when the Gaians are played by the AI, they won't do it. A human player could have Socialist Gaians though.
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If it didn't unbalance the gameplay, would setting SOCIALIST to +GROWTH, +JUSTICE, -INDUSTRY work?
Narratively that's pretty bad. Domai and all his Workerists take over the State in order to... wreck industry? Bear in mind that the original game's Planned economy had +INDUSTRY.
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It's rather bland, without the strong contrasts, but then, so is GREEN now.
Green looks bland, because it doesn't have a bunch of juicy icons to make it visually "worth" something. But the actual play mechanical difference between +0 PLANET and +1 PLANET is huge. It's the difference between sweeping all the supply pods out of the early game and not. You can amass huge mindworm armies even on +1 PLANET, given enough time wandering around in the wilderness. Frankly for a long time during my modding, I seriously wondered what the point of ever going above +1 PLANET was. Eventually I realized there are Psi combat advantage and eco-damage reasons to do so. But +1 PLANET by itself is really really powerful.
Gameplay is king, so I accept the bad visuals on Green.
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What is it you like about the contrasty version in your testing?
I saw a pretty big difference in the money output of Capitalist, Socialist, and Green.
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INDUSTRY's icon is a nice one, isn't it?
We'll just have to admire Domai more often, because he's the only one that will be using it.
With my new PLANET friendly version of Eudaimonic, it would actually make more sense for Domai to be compulsively Socialist, and the Caretakers to be compulsively Eudaimonic. Although what I dislike, is Domai's version of Socialist is Workerism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workerism), and that's not the kind of Socialist I've simulated. Domai has this basic problem that his narrative is pretty narrowly focused. His version of Socialist would be +JUSTICE +INDUSTRY --ECONOMY. No GROWTH.
I bothered to make a change in the naming of stuff, in order to shed some light on what "Socialism" is really about, other than being an American swear word. A narrative where Socialism = Workerism is against my authorial agenda. Going that road, one might as well go back to Planned, insist that Socialism inherently doesn't work, always results in long lines for bread, cities covered in coal ash, a Single Party State kleptocracy, etc. That's not what I want. I want a more modern idea of Social Democracy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_democracy) to be represented, as it tends to actually appear in various wealthier European countries.
The historical terminology is really crap BTW. Aside from many Americans insisting that Socialism automatically means Communism, and that Communism means a bunch of thugs running a Single Party State, the terms "Social Democracy" and "Democratic Socialism" don't mean the same things!
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Criticism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_democracy#Criticism)
From a purely socialist point of view, social democratic reform is criticized because it serves to devise new means to strengthen the capitalist system, which conflicts with the socialist goal of replacing capitalism with a socialist system.[165] Thus, it fails to address the systemic issues inherent in capitalism. The American democratic socialist philosopher David Schweickart contrasts social democracy with democratic socialism by defining the former as an attempt to strengthen the welfare state and the latter as an alternative economic system to capitalism. According to Schweickart, the democratic socialist critique of social democracy is that capitalism can never be sufficiently "humanized" and that any attempt to suppress its economic contradictions will only cause them to emerge elsewhere. For example, attempts to reduce unemployment too much would result in inflation and too much job security would erode labour discipline.[166] In contrast to social democracy, democratic socialists advocate a post-capitalist economic system based on either market socialism combined with workers' self-management or on some form of participatory-economic planning.[167]
Post by: bvanevery on April 10, 2019, 05:32:08 AM
The Hive and the Spartans have gone totally nuts with more cities than I can readily count, probably on the order of 25. They each had large land masses in which they were unopposed. I would say that means I don't need to worry about tweaking those factions.
Post by: Vidsek on April 10, 2019, 07:29:46 AM
I understand your clarification that the hits to ECONOMY are not that onerous and withdraw my questioning of them. On the double bonus to GROWTH, I'll go with it as long as testing does not uncover any problems with it.
On the Data Angels' focus, which other one will you add to Conquer?
Post by: bvanevery on April 10, 2019, 04:17:27 PM
EDIT: actually I realized that's not true. The Cybernetic Consciousness is Discover, Conquer and they haven't been doing that well. I'll need to evaluate them.
Post by: vonbach on April 11, 2019, 03:23:38 AM
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I want a more modern idea of Social Democracy to be represented, as it tends to actually appear in various wealthier European countries.
The only reason states like that can exist in Europe is the USA basically foots the bill for their defense spending. Socalism works until you run
out of other peoples money.
Post by: bvanevery on April 11, 2019, 10:47:27 AM
So yeah, Europe and Japan aren't spending on big bloated Defense. The USA does it, not so much that we have to, but rather the MIC wants to.
What would the world really look like if the USA wasn't spending, spending, spending on military stuff? Well, the Soviets got their ass handed to them in Afghanistan. Chechnya hasn't been fun for them either. The Ukraine has probably been more fun, as well as messing with our elections. I've lost track of how they're doing in Syria. I think all these things demonstrate that Russian power has an effect, but it's limited.
Israel wouldn't be stomping Palestinians quite so hard if they didn't have all that juicy US aid. The Middle East would still be a mess.
China would be doing the same things it's doing. Mostly they can take over economically, they don't need to do things militarily.
Post by: bvanevery on April 11, 2019, 10:51:15 AM
EDIT: actually I realized that's not true. The Cybernetic Consciousness is Discover, Conquer and they haven't been doing that well. I'll need to evaluate them.
I'm gonna try setting them back to Explore, Discover. Also give them +1 PROBE and Polymorphic Encryption on all units. Deirdre's got +1 RESEARCH and free Biology Labs. Zhakarov's got +2 RESEARCH, free Biology Labs, and free Network Nodes. The Cyborgs definitely need something to keep up.
I think Explore, Conquer has fixed the Data Angels. Although my current game might not be a completely fair test as they started near the Monsoon Jungle.
I am wondering if the Pirates would do ok as a Build only faction, seeing as how they otherwise dominate everything.
Post by: bvanevery on April 11, 2019, 11:07:09 AM
Socalism works until you run out of other peoples money.
BTW you do know that the national debt of good ole' CAPITALIST USA is huge, right? The USA does not make this money / wealth. It spends money / wealth that does not exist. There was even talk, sometime in the past 10 years, of downgrading the USA's lending power status, I forget the exact term. Can't quite remember what happened. Probably around the time our housing bubble burst. Anyways, there's hardly any politician in the USA that we can take seriously as having fiscal discipline. The Republican attitudes towards spending in recent years are laughable, there's no credibility in that party of seeking to reduce debt or costs. They just bloat the budget on different things than Democrats do. This Monopoly Money the country runs on, this infinite slush fund of wealth that doesn't actually have to be made, is way too attractive to them.
I don't know if the country will collapse someday under the weight of this, but if it does, it won't be from being Socialist. Spending other people's money, and money that doesn't even exist, is something Capitalists know how to do all too well! Especially, those on Wall St. who have inside information on how the money supply is going to change, have all kinds of advantages over us mere mortals "downstream" many months later.
How does the country keep up this currency charade? I think the big military has something to do with it, the ability to bomb stuff. Also we're a large country with lots of natural resources. US manufacturing does just fine, contrary to some popular belief during [Sleezebag]'s election campaign. We have a certain amount of real military power and real goods we can produce.
Still, ya gotta wonder about these fictions of money and balance sheets.
Vonbach, do you really have any personal concept of the collective delusion of money? It's all a fantasy about whether people are willing to exchange or not. Go look at a country with hyperinflation, to see the delusion. You can live with ideas like "your money" and "Socialists are bad people who take your money", only because the currency system you live within hasn't collapsed. There's a sense in which it isn't your money, it's your position within a social construct. It can disintegrate.
Socialism is a set of various (varying) beliefs. So is Capitalism. Changes in what people believe, can cause people to die.
Like AIG. Do you remember the phrase, "too big to fail" ? Whose money do you think paid for that?
You familiar with the phrase "Corporate Welfare" ?
Post by: vonbach on April 11, 2019, 01:19:50 PM
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Don't be so quick to assume the USA is doing the world a favor.
I don't think we are doing the world a favor or our own country for that matter. I'd like the USA to return to being an isolationist republic but were not in charge of our own country.
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BTW you do know that the national debt of good ole' CAPITALIST USA is huge, right? The USA does not make this money / wealth. It spends money / wealth that does not exist. There was even talk, sometime in the past 10 years, of downgrading the USA's lending power status, I forget the exact term. Can't quite remember what happened. Probably around the time our housing bubble burst. Anyways, there's hardly any politician in the USA that we can take seriously as having fiscal discipline. The Republican attitudes towards spending in recent years are laughable, there's no credibility in that party of seeking to reduce debt or costs. They just bloat the budget on different things than Democrats do. This Monopoly Money the country runs on, this infinite slush fund of wealth that doesn't actually have to be made, is way too attractive to them.
I don't know if the country will collapse someday under the weight of this, but if it does, it won't be from being Socialist. Spending other people's money, and money that doesn't even exist, is something Capitalists know how to do all too well! Especially, those on Wall St. who have inside information on how the money supply is going to change, have all kinds of advantages over us mere mortals "downstream" many months later.
The USA is not a healthy capitalist society its a usury based debt system. Sooner or later all systems like this fail.
Thats why usury is forbidden in the Bible. Its debt slavery. Money should be treated like a public utility not the
reason for a society.
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You familiar with the phrase "Corporate Welfare" ?Yes I am. I do not agree with it.
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Socialism is a set of various (varying) beliefs.I will concede there is more than one kind of socialism. It depends on what type of socialism you are talking about.
Socialism had a very different meaning in the past. What the welfare state does now was done by religious charities
in the USA's past. You seem to view socialism as a benign welfare state and it can be set up that way I suppose.
But I simply don't trust the government to be in my best interests. I wish it was.
Post by: bvanevery on April 11, 2019, 03:44:52 PM
I don't think we are doing the world a favor or our own country for that matter. I'd like the USA to return to being an isolationist republic but were not in charge of our own country.
That is a basic problem of real systems rather than idealized ones. We are never fully in control. Even Stalin wasn't fully in control. Peasants revolted, Nazis invaded.
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The USA is not a healthy capitalist society its a usury based debt system. Sooner or later all systems like this fail.
Ha, agreement! Well, not sure if failures will be temporary or permanent, as we're still here. But the failures do happen and they cause tremendous misery. My circumstances now, are partly due to the dot.com bust, although that's not the only reason I live out of a car and give away a SMAC mod. The bust definitely trashed my early "career" though.
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Thats why usury is forbidden in the Bible. Its debt slavery. Money should be treated like a public utility not the
reason for a society.
But I say, no such system of "healthy capitalism" has ever existed. Wishing for it, wanting it to be that way... is the mirror image of Socialists saying "real Socialism has never been tried".
I wonder how it worked out for the Confucianists and the maritime expansionist Eunuchs, back in 1435-ish? The latter were all interested in expansion, trade, what we might in hindsight call the beginnings of Capitalism. Certainly, it proved to be the key to European domination of the globe within 100 years. But the Confucians believed in agrarianism and the land. They got in a civil war. The Confucians came out on top, and they burned the Eunuch fleets in order to do so. They ordered China to be closed to trade for the next 150 years, passing the initiative irretrievably to the Europeans. Even though the Chinese got out on the water first! They had treasure boats as long as a football field, off the coast of what's now Mozambique in 1435.
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I will concede there is more than one kind of socialism. It depends on what type of socialism you are talking about.
Socialism had a very different meaning in the past.
Well, Revolutionary Socialism was tried. And it was a complete failure. Just puts a new goon squad in charge. Lotsa people get killed, power and graft remain. Especially from what I've read in a biography of Stalin, the theoretical ideas just became cudgels to beat political opponents with. "Politically correct" views (that's the origin of the term) changed with whatever Stalin wanted to do at the time. He was completely unprincipled. Many bureaucratic officials living through these events knew this. They said, did, and responded to whatever kept them from getting killed. For a time there were these Party rituals of debate, where the opponents positioned each other according to conflicting ideologies. Ultimately, Stalin marginalizes and mostly kills them all, but there was a time when he had to play the "word dance", when he wasn't supreme yet.
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What the welfare state does now was done by religious charities
in the USA's past. You seem to view socialism as a benign welfare state and it can be set up that way I suppose.
But I simply don't trust the government to be in my best interests. I wish it was.
I don't trust government. Any government. But some things are not going to get done any other way. For instance, religious charities never defended the environment. I don't think they can handle various police functions on the big scale either. Religions also have biases about what is a crime or isn't, so I don't want them handling certain things. The separation of Church and State is a basically good idea.
Separation of powers and transparency are important principles for governments. Governments are run by people and people will commit crimes. So you need the tools to straighten them out. Expecting people to do anything nicely is a pipe dream. At some point, some kind of force has to be used.
Post by: vonbach on April 11, 2019, 08:25:15 PM
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But I say, no such system of "healthy capitalism" has ever existed.
Yes it has the revolutionary war was fought in large part to free ourselves from usury banking systems.
There were times in the past when we didn't have interest based banking systems.
Money is a tool no more no less.
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I wonder how it worked out for the Confucianists and the maritime expansionist Eunuchs, back in 1435-ish? The latter were all interested in expansion, trade,It worked out fine for the Chinese they chose order over profit. Something the oriental types are wont to do. Its also the reason the Chinese are so touchy about religious movements. They've had very bad experiences in the past.
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For instance, religious charities never defended the environment.You'd be surprised actually. Monks used to reclaim land from swamps and such back in the middle ages.
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I don't think they can handle various police functions on the big scale either.They do but in different ways. In a religious society (note that a religious society isn't necessarily called a theocracy, the USA was for most of its history a fundamentalist society) religious attitudes tend to lower crime in the first place.
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Well, Revolutionary Socialism was tried. And it was a complete failure.
Depends on how you measure success. The USSR was a clownish 1984 slave state keeping its rulers in charge through naked fear. So it worked pretty well in a satanic way. National socialism was also tried and such systems still exist today in small countries. Basically the government in a system like that exists to serve its dominant people.
Post by: bvanevery on April 11, 2019, 08:40:11 PM
Yes it has the revolutionary war was fought in large part to free ourselves from usury banking systems.
There were times in the past when we didn't have interest based banking systems.
Money is a tool no more no less.
Well that's not what I learned back in grade school but whatever. I will say, the system of straight up slavery was retained, so I really can't have a serious discussion about "usury" until Abolitionism is a thing.
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I wonder how it worked out for the Confucianists and the maritime expansionist Eunuchs, back in 1435-ish? The latter were all interested in expansion, trade,It worked out fine for the Chinese they chose order over profit. Something the oriental types are wont to do.
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Its also the reason the Chinese are so touchy about religious movements. They've had very bad experiences in the past.
Oh come now. They're touchy about religion because it was Communist doctrine that religion is bad. Look at Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. They're religious as @#$# now, to the point of being basically state sponsored. The Communists are still in charge in China so the official party line is still "religion is bad". Especially to the degree it challenges Communist authority, such as with the persecution of Falun Gong (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falun_Gong).
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You'd be surprised actually. Monks used to reclaim land from swamps and such back in the middle ages.
Find me some monks cleaning up an oil spill in the modern era and I'll believe it's relevant.
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Basically the government in a system like that exists to serve its dominant people.
Our government serves its dominant people as well. The scraps are just better in an industrial democracy.
Post by: vonbach on April 11, 2019, 08:48:35 PM
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Oh come now. They're touchy about religion because it was Communist doctrine that religion is bad.
No they are touchy about religion because there was a religious peasant revolt that killed 20 million people or so in their past.
It was the Taiping rebellion from 1850-1864 and it was one of the worst experiences in Chinese history.
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Our government serves its dominant people as well.The people in our government exist to serve the government actually.
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In modding news, I'm finding the -3 JUSTICE penalty for going Fundamentalist Green Power to be rather onerous. I had a hefty income and now I've got nothing! Considering the amount of economic infrastructure I've already developed, basically Tree Farms and the Planetary Energy Grid, I think this is too much. It was an achievement to get the AI to swallow these penalties, but the human player has to deal with them too. Ergo I'm going to try the +JUSTICE +GREEN idea, much as I dislike giving away more stuff without a penalty.
Will the AI swallow an industry penalty? If so maybe giving it an industry penalty is a good idea. Just make Green poweful enough
to compensate.
Post by: ChaDawnFanatic on April 11, 2019, 08:52:19 PM
Post by: bvanevery on April 11, 2019, 09:03:10 PM
It was the Taiping rebellion from 1850-1864 and it was one of the worst experiences in Chinese history.
Guess I'll read up about it, but "religion is the opiate of the people" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_of_the_people) is straight up Karl Marx. Stalin installed Mao, so....
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QuoteOur government serves its dominant people as well.The people in our government exist to serve the government actually.
I think many politicians get involved to serve themselves. They have allies in this endeavor: corporate lobbyists with deep pockets. The government isn't simply its own end in the USA. It is very much a tool of corporations, bought and paid for. Individual politicians like this gravy train, it's a way of getting rich. Sometimes despite the self-serving bureaucracy and the corporate lobbying, the People get served anyways. Other times they don't.
You can get very far in politics, if you can craft a message that stupid people will lock onto, that provides a simplistic explanation for everything. If it sounds like it'll benefit them. The best example from the last election cycle is Make America Great Again. [Sleezebag] never had the power to bring jobs back to America. Those jobs are gone because factories only need a few hundred workers now, not the thousands in eras before automation. There's nothing basically wrong with US manufacturing, it's as high as ever! It just doesn't need workers to do it, the jobs aren't there.
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Will the AI swallow an industry penalty? If so maybe giving it an industry penalty is a good idea. Just make Green poweful enough to compensate.
No the AI will not swallow any penalties in Green. Unless you think the AI should wait around until it gets Locusts of Chiron before going Green. I don't. It takes a long time to go Green even without any penalties.
Post by: bvanevery on April 11, 2019, 09:08:00 PM
About the Consciousness. Yes, it's weak. I would suggest you switch the "can steal technology when capturing base" bonus with something else. Spoils of War makes it redundant.
Playing with Spoils of War is cheating. 8) I intend the game to work with default rules. The stealing ability is weak. It doesn't need replacing, it's a non-event. The Cyborgs just need more stuff somehow. I don't really want to give them free Network Nodes and make them the new sub-University, that seems really flavorless and generic. I will try the probe related stuff.
I could make them ROBUST to POLICE penalties. They already have IMPUNITY to Cybernetic, so the lowest they can go is -3 POLICE. I think ROBUST would mean the lowest they could have is -1 POLICE. Which simply means no nerve stapling.
Post by: vonbach on April 11, 2019, 09:52:44 PM
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No the AI will not swallow any penalties in Green.That is very weird. Have you tried adding growth and see if the AI will pick it then?
That has to be some type of bug.
Heres a thought could you make Green a value and make another economic system in its place? Or move wealth there and make it an unfettered free market system or something. Or simply replace Knowledge and add planet bonuses to it.
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Playing with Spoils of War is cheating. 8) I intend the game to work with default rules. The stealing ability is weak. It doesn't need replacing, it's a non-event. The Cyborgs just need more stuff somehow. I don't really want to give them free Network Nodes and make them the new sub-University, that seems really flavorless and generic. I will try the probe related stuff.
Hmm. Maybe give them something to help them in combat. Make them a more aggressive science faction. Or give them sharetech or something.
Post by: bvanevery on April 11, 2019, 10:46:00 PM
QuoteNo the AI will not swallow any penalties in Green.That is very weird. Have you tried adding growth and see if the AI will pick it then?
A GROWTH bonus could indeed work, but it's totally inappropriate to Green. Deirdre's narrative about carefully controlling population growth is core to SMAC's story. I'm not going to mess it up.
I can't very well give Green a massive number of bonuses just to get the AI to see sense. There's still a human player who can choose Green. I also don't even know if massive numbers of arbitrary bonuses would even work. The code doesn't have to be "if all these add up to be more positive than negative, then choose it." It could be "if there's any penalty, barf."
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That has to be some type of bug.
It is. It exists even in the original game. I did a whole thread about it in the Bugs / Patches subforum.
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Heres a thought could you make Green a value and make another economic system in its place? Or move wealth there and make it an unfettered free market system or something. Or simply replace Knowledge and add planet bonuses to it.
That's actually an interesting concept, as it's possible that the Economy line has the bug, and the Values line does not. Or that the AI tolerates penalties in one area better than another. I threw all kinds of penalties at Politics for instance and the AI still pretty much swallowed it.
It's not easy to decide what to do with other social engineering choices though.
This might also require extensive rewriting of dialogue to keep it from turning into nonsense. I've been holding off on rewriting Fundamentalist and all "the Lord" stuff because it would require me to ship another file. A file that technically does not have a permissions statement on it for me to change. The legalese wouldn't keep me from doing it, but violating the purity of what I think I am (arguably) licensed to do, has caused me to keep deferring it. That and there have still been plenty of game mechanical things to change anyways, enough on the plate.
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Hmm. Maybe give them something to help them in combat. Make them a more aggressive science faction.
Been there done that. Discover, Conquer focus doesn't work. They have to have Explore in order to grow. And Explore, Discover, Conquer isn't really a focus.
I don't want to give them a MORALE bonus, as it doesn't fit the character of Cyborgs. Pointedly, the Politics that gives a MORALE boost - Fundamentalist - is not something they're allowed to choose. You can't get Cyborgs pumped up about much of anything.
When a faction doesn't have an explicit military advantage, like a MORALE bonus, I don't like making them Aggressive. It seems pretty stupid to attack attack attack when you don't actually have any special power to do it better than anyone else.
My Spartans, in contrast, are Aggressive because they've got +2 MORALE. It's worth noting that in the original game they are not Aggressive, they're Erratic. Also in the original game their research foci are Discover, Conquer. Which makes basically no sense, except to the extent that the original tech tree had some snazzy powerful weapons under Discover. Now they're all under Conquer, in my opinion where they should be.
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Or give them sharetech or something.
That's the Data Angels. They don't even have to infiltrate anymore. It's too much to expect the AI to push infiltration teams all the way across a Huge map. I find that the new Data Angels have enormous early advantages, then tend to lose tech power as some factions pull ahead and become the actual research leads. However with the new Explore research focus, they are triggered to grow a proper empire, so they can make up for it on sheer size.
I'm not sure if the Data Angels probe teams are a big threat or not now. I've been using Isles of the Deep to fend off their numerous foil probe team ships. They sent some regular ships at them as well, and I've had attrition, but I captured so many of the darned things at the beginning of the game that I had a lot to lose. I've scoured Planet almost completely clean of supply pods, and I have a large number of uncashed Artifacts to show for it.
In my current game, the Hunter-Seeker Algorithm costs 500 minerals and can take a long time to get done in the real world. I kept wanting to finish cheaper Secret Projects instead. Supply Crawlers come late midgame so you can't rely on that. I have numerous Artifacts but I want to pop them for a big tech rush. I'm just waiting to steal the last tech that the Data Angels have managed to cobble together for themselves.
Post by: vonbach on April 11, 2019, 11:24:29 PM
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A GROWTH bonus could indeed work, but it's totally inappropriate to Green.
It is but Its one of the few solutions I can think of other than simply removing all the penalties.
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That's actually an interesting concept, as it's possible that the Economy line has the bug, and the Values line does not. Or that the AI tolerates penalties in one area better than another. I threw all kinds of penalties at Politics for instance and the AI still pretty much swallowed it.
It's not easy to decide what to do with other social engineering choices though.
I experimented with something like that in the past years back. I think It should work.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_system
Maybe this can give you some inspiration. Maybe some variation on the three main types of economic systems.
Free market Capitalism. Planned and a Mixed economic system like Socialism or Corporatism.
Post by: bvanevery on April 12, 2019, 12:19:36 AM
QuoteA GROWTH bonus could indeed work, but it's totally inappropriate to Green.
It is but Its one of the few solutions I can think of other than simply removing all the penalties.
What if it's only the third slot that has the bug? Maybe if I swap Socialist and Green, things work?? I will find out.
What if I switched columns, like made the "Nones" all the way to the right? What if I switched rows, like Politics for Economics?
Post by: vonbach on April 12, 2019, 01:11:49 AM
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What if it's only the third slot that has the bug? Maybe if I swap Socialist and Green, things work?? I will find out.
What if I switched columns, like made the "Nones" all the way to the right? What if I switched rows, like Politics for Economics?
Thats something to test actually. Heres a thought try your standard Green with - growth penalty but put the negatives ahead of the positives and see if that works.
Post by: bvanevery on April 12, 2019, 03:37:18 AM
I wonder what happens if I put -GROWTH and +GROWTH in the same choice? Like could it get the code to take a different branch path?
Post by: Geo on April 12, 2019, 11:23:51 AM
Post by: Vidsek on April 12, 2019, 02:15:17 PM
Multiple OCD 'completionist' gameplayers instead of multiple CPUs: it'd be like a supercomputer :D
<suddenly realizes what he might have talked himself into and wishes he wasn't too lazy to delete this post....>
Post by: bvanevery on April 12, 2019, 05:20:24 PM
The simplest test is to swap the positions of Socialist and Green.
I'm just in the middle of a game now. I'd like to think I'm going to win it Real Soon Now. I popped like 18 Artifacts in 1 turn. But now there are all these expensive Secret Projects to build, and I don't have the productivity to just bang them out. As I take over my enemies with rails, I need garrison troops, so I've stopped making supply crawlers. I do make a lot of money at least, so eventually things will get done, but it doesn't feel like a blitz.
Post by: vonbach on April 12, 2019, 06:24:25 PM
Most are using simple economics though. You might want to remove any bonuses from it.
Post by: Vidsek on April 12, 2019, 07:03:21 PM
I've been using it to see how the various factions compare in early game preconflict situations.
It can be easily adjusted to rich or poor resources, and my tests with starting random placement games showed that the AI only puts two on the same continent about 40% of the time. The rest have them nicely separated.
Productivity is largely dependent on personal motivation. Give an OCD Completionist person a goal and you just have to clear the way for them.
If you want to make a new game you should start gathering a team now.
And no, I'm not exactly volunteering, my OCD is dedicated to the weeds on my property and these damn Argentinian pissants that are intruding in my house.
Post by: bvanevery on April 12, 2019, 08:14:05 PM
If you'd like a break from the same-ol-same-ol railway to victory, I've made a map that has seven small continents with decent ocean gaps between them.
What size is the map?
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If you want to make a new game you should start gathering a team now.
Oh hell no. You've obviously never read Fred P. Brooks' The Mythical Man-Month (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month). The only way I'll ever have a team is if I'm already making money hand over fist, so that I'm the boss and there's no (strategic) arguing over what direction the game is going in. Even then, it remains to be seen if I'll ever want a team.
Post by: bvanevery on April 12, 2019, 08:16:48 PM
Try reversing the negative values. I got one of my custom factions to use Green doing this.
Did they use Green as soon as they knew how to make mindworms? Because that's the point. Even in the original game, the AI will eventually use Green once they know how to make locusts. But that can easily be 150 years. All sorts of fungus walking opportunity squandered before then.
I wish I could make the AI use Green before knowing how to make mindworms, but that seems to be too much for the puny AI brain to handle. At least the Gaians already start with +1 PLANET, so they can capture mindworms. They really should take the combat bonus though. It's only like, their social fixation, what are they stalling for.
Even with no penalty, and even with Green being available as a Tier 2 tech, the AI will take 75 years to do it. That's because making mindworms is a Tier 3 tech and it takes that long to get there.
Post by: vonbach on April 12, 2019, 09:33:19 PM
Most however are using simple economics for the +growth.
Post by: bvanevery on April 13, 2019, 07:41:06 AM
Cultist marine assault |
I had so much more tech than everyone else I assumed I was invulnerable, right? Wrong. Never bothered to make Perimeter Defenses because I thought I'd be capturing the Citizens' Defense Force "any year now". Never had productivity because of all the Secret Projects I was trying to finish. So, made some Fusion ECM 3-Pulse infantry as a garrison in every city. Nobody else had fusion power so I'm good, right? Wrong. Pursuing Wealth really does make you weak, particularly when Elite troops show up.
They freaking clobbered my city. All of my cities are important too, they've all got a Secret Project in them. This one had the Planetary Energy Grid. I've been playing this game for a truly stupid number of hours and I'm not even going to bother retaking this, I'm done.
My increases in Secret Project cost are "effective". It's a more weighty decision to complete a project, at least when city production is low. And it does stay low for awhile, because units have accelerating cost increase as they become more powerful. This makes for a... rather... slow... ... ...game.
I don't think that's necessarily bad, but I obviously don't know how to deal with it. I had piles of Formers, and no army to send after them. I tried to put some fungus tendrils into enemy territory. My intent was to surround and choke their cities with fungus, but I found without a bunch of offensive units, I couldn't really do it. I did manage to make elaborate fungal barriers on my borders, which made it rather easy to defend my own lands. However the AI would keep spamming yet more units on my border. I'd always kill them, but they'd always keep coming. Without more productivity, it's a border stalemate.
So I guess popping roughly 20 Artifacts to get techs really didn't help me much. I could have used them for some early Secret Projects instead.
Chemical warfare did not seem advisable. Many of the factions started working on Planet Busters while I was trying to get all those Secret Projects done.
The moral of the story is less tech, more troops.
Post by: ChaDawnFanatic on April 13, 2019, 04:02:10 PM
Post by: vonbach on April 13, 2019, 04:39:23 PM
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I had so much more tech than everyone else I assumed I was invulnerable, right? Wrong. Never bothered to make Perimeter Defenses because I thought I'd be capturing the Citizens' Defense Force "any year now". Never had productivity because of all the Secret Projects I was trying to finish. So, made some Fusion ECM 3-Pulse infantry as a garrison in every city. Nobody else had fusion power so I'm good, right? Wrong. Pursuing Wealth really does make you weak, particularly when Elite troops show up.
Ouch thats a good example of why it's a good idea to invest in a powerful military. With mag tubes everywhere I like to build infantry and swarm the enemy.
My solution to an aggressive neighbor is to get them to declare on me first and hammer them so i don't get invaded in the first place. You can work with wealth but it takes some preparation. Trained units and monoliths and such.
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The moral of the story is less tech, more troops.Tech is fine just build troops as well.
Post by: bvanevery on April 13, 2019, 10:08:54 PM
Tech is fine just build troops as well.
In my mod nowadays there's not as much point to having advanced tech. The manufacturing costs are so expensive, you're going to pay a premium for the units. So you either take a long time to build troops, take a long time to build factories and then less time to build troops, or you build mindworms. Which I'm raising in expense, back to the level of the original game. The balance of power has clearly come to favor mindworms.
Post by: vonbach on April 14, 2019, 01:02:15 AM
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In my mod nowadays there's not as much point to having advanced tech. The manufacturing costs are so expensive, you're going to pay a premium for the units. So you either take a long time to build troops, take a long time to build factories and then less time to build troops, or you build mindworms. Which I'm raising in expense, back to the level of the original game. The balance of power has clearly come to favor mindworms.
Mindworms are nice. They also don't need support if you place them on fungus.
I just build me troops early and upgrade them (and try not to lose them). If all else fails just build infantry with
no defense at all and just spam them if you have to. Honestly I rarely have have problems building anything but I'm a builder.
Post by: bvanevery on April 14, 2019, 02:46:14 AM
Mindworms are nice. They also don't need support if you place them on fungus.
They don't? I've never noticed that. I thought you just got independent mindworms from capturing them reasonably far away from your territory.
Post by: vonbach on April 14, 2019, 04:45:54 AM
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They don't? I've never noticed that. I thought you just got independent mindworms from capturing them reasonably far away from your territory.I thought everyone knew that. Its one of the main reasons to use them. It's written down somewhere. I the wiki I think.
If you do it right you can raise huge armies of them in reserve.
Post by: bvanevery on April 14, 2019, 08:07:23 AM
I'm the Usurpers in my current game. I'm determined not to make the same mistakes as last game. The new reality for 1.30 seems to be, you really have to choose which Secret Projects you're going to work on, and be willing to skip some. Running the table with all the Secret Projects is not likely to happen. The Consciousness is the other major power in the game, and the graph says they're as good as I am. They've completed several SPs, as have I. I destroyed 1 of their cities that was near me and not anywhere near their homeland. I'm not even sure what their empire looks like, but I think it's mostly on the opposite side of the map from me. Hence their ability to grow and prosper. I just got done conquering the University and obliterating the Caretakers, using Police State Socialist Power. Now I've switched to Police State Capitalist Wealth. -4 PLANET, yeehaw!
I tried giving the Pirates a Build only focus. They did not do as well as usual. I wager that if I'd given them their usual Explore, Conquer focus, it would be a 3 way game instead of a 2 way game.
Post by: vonbach on April 14, 2019, 09:33:04 AM
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Seriously doubt "everyone" would know that, because I can't find anything in the Datalinks about it at all.
Really? I didn't know that. I think its on the Wiki or something maybe thats where I saw it.
Post by: bvanevery on April 14, 2019, 03:48:22 PM
In other news, -4 PLANET is really awful against mindworms. I was willing to sacrifice old Cloaked Scouts against them for awhile, until I started running out of them. Pretty much need to shell them and get them half dead before attacking. Maybe even more, like 2/3rds dead if they're sitting on fungus and getting a defense bonus from that.
Post by: bvanevery on April 17, 2019, 06:41:42 PM
Post by: bvanevery on April 17, 2019, 06:56:10 PM
Changed from version 1.29 to 1.30:
FACTIONS:
- Caretakers: removed POLICE penalty. Removed restriction against using Police State. They have been consistently underpeforming for a long time. The Usurpers, in contrast, have generally done just fine.
- Cybernetic Consciousness: changed research foci to Explore, Discover. Added Polymorphic Encryption as a free ability for all units. When they had Discover, Conquer focus they underperformed. I believe almost all the factions need Explore focus to ensure early empire growth. Encryption is to give them a different flavor from the other research factions.
- Data Angels: removed ECONOMY bonus. Changed secondary social priority from ECONOMY to PROBE. Changed research foci to Explore, Conquer. Changed personality to Erratic. They can now get +3 PROBE early in the game by choosing Fundamentalist, so I don't think they need an ECONOMY buff. They should pursue a research path that will actually lead them to Covert Ops Center, the Hunter-Seeker Algorithm, and Thought Control. I tried giving them a Conquer only focus, but in 2 test games they made very few cities.
- Gaians: actually reduced JUSTICE to +1. This was supposed to be done in version 1.26, and the faction's description text was changed, but the actual value was not.
SOCIAL ENGINEERING:
- Frontier: GROWTH penalty removed. It was meant to counterbalance the bonus in Simple economy, and now that's gone.
- Police State: removed ECONOMY penalty. Playtesters thought -1 ECONOMY -2 JUSTICE was too harsh for the benefits given.
- Democratic: moved to B2 Ethical Calculus. This is a better home for it.
- Fundamentalist: removed POLICE bonus. Added +1 PROBE. This becomes more like the original game, although with PROBE not as powerful. It does let the Data Angels get to +3 PROBE very early though.
- Simple economy: GROWTH bonus removed. The AI fixates on choices that have GROWTH in them. This was preventing factions from choosing their primary compulsion. For instance, the Gaians would not go Green.
- Capitalist: moved to B2 Industrial Base. Removed INDUSTRY bonus. It was overpowered.
- Socialist: increased ECONOMY penalty to -2. Other ECONOMY penalties in the table went away, so this has more of a penalty.
- Green: removed GROWTH and SUPPORT penalties. Reduced PLANET to +1. The Gaians are supposed to choose Green, but with any kind of penalty they refuse to do so, unless they've learned how to make Locusts. This bugginess is present in the original game! To work around it, Green has no penalties. Without penalties, the only way to balance it is to make it minimal. +1 PLANET is still valuable though, as it lets you capture mindworms. I tried removing the JUSTICE bonus as well, but the stacked JUSTICE penalties from other choices become too severe, so I relented.
- Power: increased MORALE to +2. Removed GROWTH penalty. Removed PROBE bonus. When MORALE was at +1, playtesters said this choice felt weak. The AI hates GROWTH penalties, it will avoid social engineering choices with them. PROBE bonus is moved to Fundamentalist.
- Knowledge: raised RESEARCH to +2. Removed JUSTICE bonus. Only getting +1 RESEARCH seemed feeble. JUSTICE was removed partly to balance this, partly to make a quantitative contrast with Cybernetic, and partly because knowledge doesn't guarantee it'll be used justly. For instance in the original game, Zhakarov was accused of amoral research on human subjects.
- Wealth: removed INDUSTRY bonus. It was overpowered.
- Cybernetic: reduced JUSTICE to +1. Thematically I want Eudaimonic to be more just.
- Eudaimonic: removed INDUSTRY bonus. Added +1 PLANET. I want the total available PLANET from all the social engineering choices to be +2, but Green can't do it and be balanced. Eudaimonia is already in the Explore tech tree, so this is a decent place to put it. It does a little harm to Domai's storyline but we'll just pretend all those workers, deep in their little Workerist hearts, really want to do the right thing for Planet. INDUSTRY bonuses are overpowered, especially when stacked.
EXPLORE TECHS:
- Biogenetics: set wealth=3. Police State gives +2 SUPPORT, which is a kind of wealth, and there's no ECONOMY penalty anymore.
- Monopole Magnets: now an E3 tech. Set power=3 and growth=4 as it now gives the Planetary Transit System. I find I can't actually get enough Formers together to build a serious mag tube network until Tier 3 techs are appearing anyways. Having the PTS with Ethical Calculus bugged me, and this is a better home for it.
- Homo Superior: set power=3 and growth=4, making it an E6 tech. The preceeding and following techs are about Psi combat, and it's weird having the flow of Explore techs be interrupted. Thought Control does make people happy, the same way Police State does. Making it an Explore tech makes it easier for the Peacekeeper AI to build the Empath Guild. Diplomatic Victory is arguably just as much about population growth as it is about abbreviating a Conquest victory.
- Eudaimonia: now an E7 tech. I wanted a more peaceful prereq to E8 Super Tensile Solids than E7 The Will To Power.
- Brood Pit: moved to D8 Secrets of the Manifolds. Now costs 160 and maintenance 4. It cheapens mindworm production by 25%, making this pretty much a factory specialized for native life. It also boosts a city's POLICE rating. When it's cheap, players will build it just because it's another happiness building. Raising the cost will make them think about whether it's worth it.
DISCOVER TECHS:
- Optical Computers: set power=0 and wealth=0. It now gives the Virtual World and no longer gives the Planetary Datalinks. The Virtual World only makes people happy.
- Cyberethics: set power=2, tech=4, wealth=2, and growth=2. It now gives the Planetary Datalinks and no longer gives the Virtual World. The Planetary Datalinks could help any category but there are no guarantees. Tech=5 was exaggerating the importance of Cyberethics. It used to come later and gave the Network Backbone.
BUILD TECHS:
- Ethical Calculus: now B2 tech. Set wealth=4 and growth=3 as it now gives Democratic. This is a better home for it.
- Reinstate U.N. Charter: now available with B2 Ethical Calculus. It goes with Democratic.
- Fungicide Tanks: moved to B3 Ecological Engineering. This frees Synthetic Fossil Fuels to be used elsewhere.
- Nanominiaturization: set wealth=0. It no longer gives the Nano Factory.
- Industrial Automation: set power=3. It now gives the Nano Factory, which heals wounded units in the field.
- Thermocline Transducer: moved to B5 Planetary Economics. Making it available with B4 Environmental Economics is overpowered, particuarly when a faction builds a lot of sea bases.
- Subsea Trunkline: moved to B6 Bio-Engineering. It's cheaper than a Genejack Factory and shouldn't be such an easy giveaway.
- Technology for +1 mining platform bonus: now B7 Industrial Nanorobotics. It shouldn't be so easy to get sea minerals, especially considering the Pirates get +1 minerals on Ocean Shelf squares anyways.
CONQUER TECHS:
- Air superiority unit vs. air unit: reduced to +50%. Weapon vs. armor ratios are lower, and Sensor Arrays are tougher. Units shouldn't be invulnerable to air attacks.
- Comm Jammer unit defending vs. mobile unit: reduced to +25%. With all the defensive advantages I've made, getting past one of these in a base was way too difficult.
- Technology to allow 2 special abilities for a unit: moved to C4 Doctrine: Initiative. It's useful here and precedes other techs where 2 abilities are very useful, such as C5 Doctrine: Air Power and B5 Advanced Ecological Engineering.
- Orbital Insertion: now available with C9 Graviton Theory. It was coming too early. On a Huge map it can take awhile to get within air strike range of an enemy. I want that time window to be longer, before one can just skip it.
- Geosynchronous Survey Pod: reduced cost to 80 and maintenance to 2. It's a glorified Sensor Array and shouldn't cost that much. Frankly I never build them, as I've long since got a Sensor Array grid by that point in the game.
- Doctrine: Loyalty: set growth=0. It no longer gives a POLICE bonus.
- Neural Grafting: set growth=3 as it now gives the Neural Amplifier.
- Soporific Gas Pods: moved to C5 Neural Grafting. I want it to have a benefit other than a Secret Project. This ability is expensive to keep it from ruining the defensive balance, so hopefully it is not harmful having it a bit earlier.
- Synthetic Fossil Fuels: now a C6 tech. Set power=4, wealth=0, and growth=0.
- Missile Launcher: moved to C6 Synthetic Fossil Fuels. C6 Orbital Spaceflight has been overloaded with too many things of value. If it does not give a weapon, the weapon sequence is easier.
- Organic Superlubricant: now a C6 tech. Having it available at Tier 4 was making the game way too easy. It was also a prereq for Needlejets and that's unrealistic.
- Mind/Machine Interface: now a C6 tech. This is due to repositioning Self-Aware Machines.
- Bioenhancement Center: moved to C6 Mind/Machine Interface. I don't want these available any earlier as they throw off the defensive balance.
- Self-Aware Machines: now a C7 tech. I want Algorithmic Enhancement and the Nethack Terminus to come later.
- Graviton Theory: now a C9 tech. On a Huge map, Gravships often become available before Needlejets have even had a chance to fight each other.
- changed many prereqs for research focus continuity.
SECRET PROJECTS:
- The Planetary Transit System: moved to E3 Monopole Magnets. This frees Ethical Calculus to go back to E2 and give Democratic.
- The Virtual World: moved to D3 Optical Computers. Hologram Theaters are not that expensive in this mod and that makes the Virtual World not as powerful or worthwhile. It should come earlier to save the bother of building Hologram Theaters.
- The Planetary Datalinks: moved to D4 Cyberethics.
- The Xenoempathy Dome: now costs 400. It's powerful. It gives tremendous tactical advantage in fungus and a native lifecycle bonus.
- The Maritime Control Center: now costs 400. It's powerful. It gives +2 ship movement and the training, healing, and defensive advantages of Naval Yards.
- The Neural Amplifier: now costs 400 and moved to C5 Neural Grafting. It's powerful. It pretty much puts a brick wall in front of a PLANET friendly mindworm spewing faction. Tier 4 is too early for it.
- The Nano Factory: now costs 400 and moved to B6 Industrial Automation. This is to consolidate Build techs, and to make the AI unwilling to trade Supply Crawler technology. It may not be the greatest Secret Project ever, but it needs to be priced appropriately for Tier 6.
- The Longevity Vaccine: now costs 400. It's later in the tech tree and needs an appropriate price.
- The Planetary Energy Grid: now costs 500. It's hugely powerful, a license to print money.
- The Hunter-Seeker Algorithm: now costs 500. It's hugely powerful.
- The Pholus Mutagen: now costs 500. It's powerful. It confers a combat benefit, a native life cycle bonus, and it lessens eco-damage.
- The Empath Guild: now costs 500. It's one of the keys to winning the game.
- The Network Backbone: now costs 600. It's powerful. Part of a general price increase to make everything not so easy to get.
- The Cyborg Factory: now costs 600. It's powerful.
- The Living Refinery: now costs 600. It's powerful.
- The Self-Aware Colony: now costs 600. It's powerful.
- The Nethack Terminus: now costs 600. It's powerful.
- The Dream Twister: now costs 600. It's powerful.
- The Cloudbase Academy: now costs 800. It's more powerful than a lot of other stuff.
- The Space Elevator: now costs 800. It's more powerful than a lot of other stuff.
- The Manifold Harmonics: now costs 800. With +3 PLANET it gives a huge resource boost.
- Clinical Immortality: now costs 800. It's one of the keys to winning the game.
- The Cloning Vats: now costs 1000. It's hugely powerful.
- The Bulk Matter Transmitter: now costs 1000. Lotta power in all those minerals.
- The Voice of Planet: now costs 1000. It's gonna take more to get Planet's attention nowadays.
- The Singularity Inductor: now costs 1500. It's game breakingly powerful.
- The Telepathic Matrix: now costs 1500. It's game breakingly powerful.
- The Ascent to Transcendence: now costs 3000. Modders differ on how the game should end. Some make this a prohibitively expensive project and a long industrial race to complete. If it's too long, even a faction in a hopeless position could come back from the grave. I think it should take longer than the original game, but that by now, the game should end.
PREDEFINED UNITS:
- Mind Worms: now costs 5, same as the original game. Weapons power has shifted too heavily in favor of Psi combat. Restoring costs can help even it out.
- Spore Launcher: now costs 5, same as the original game.
- Isle of the Deep: now costs 8, same as the original game.
- Locusts of Chiron: now costs 10, same as the original game.
- Sealurk: now costs 8, same as an Isle of the Deep.
- Super Cruiser Formers: new unit available with B5 Advanced Ecological Engineering.
- Super Slider Formers: moved to C7 Advanced Spaceflight.
- Slider Probe Team: moved to C7 Advanced Spaceflight.
The attachment limit per post is 5, and I eventually ran out of room at the top of the thread. Consequently, this becomes the new home of version 1.30. It was downloaded 179 times before I moved it here.
Post by: vonbach on April 17, 2019, 08:56:36 PM
Fundamentalism is now useless. Capitalist is now useless. Socialist is very overpowered. Green is mostly useless.
Power is decent if weak with the penalties. Knowledge is overpowered but then it always was.
Wealth is mostly pointless compared to power or Knowledge.
Post by: Vidsek on April 17, 2019, 10:38:13 PM
I can't form any other conclusions until I've run this through a test game or three, but I'm excited to give it a try.
Post by: bvanevery on April 18, 2019, 03:24:32 PM
Good Grief.
Fundamentalism is now useless.
You get +1 MORALE early in the game, which IMO is always what Fundamentalist was about. You also get +1 PROBE, which isn't completely useless, although it's probably mostly important to the Data Angels than anyone else. I suppose we'll wait and see what other people's opinions are. If people really think it's too weak, then I could bring back either +1 POLICE or +1 SUPPORT, but I don't think I'd bring back both.
I'm remembering that I went through a phase where Power was going to have +2 SUPPORT, Police State was going to have +1 SUPPORT, and Fundamentalist wasn't going to have any. Then it didn't work out and I changed most stuff back, but not Fundamentalist.
Ok, I am thinking that removing 2 bonuses, but only addding 1 bonus, can be construed as a bug or oversight on my part. I will pull the 1.30.zip, add +1 SUPPORT, and put out a new 1.30.zip without changing any version numbers. I think there's a reason I didn't announce anywhere but this thread yesterday.
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Capitalist is now useless.
In my experience, the ability to crank your ECONOMY up is key to completing Secret Projects. There's nothing useless about anything that gives you +1 ECONOMY. AFAIAC a +1 ECONOMY is worth +2 of most other stuff. And I stand by my judgment that INDUSTRY bonuses are overpowered. You said so yourself about Wealth, and that used to have exactly the same benefit as the original game.
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Socialist is very overpowered.
I've never personally been excited about things that give +2 GROWTH. Some other people, maybe yourself, seem to think that's the be-all end-all. I think it's an ingredient for an eventual pop boom and no more. -2 ECONOMY isn't a horrible penalty to bear by itself, as it's merely -1 energy from every base. But it'll keep you from making any real money, you can't offset it with anything to reach the vaunted +1 energy per square. Until Eudaimonia rolls around, you'll have to decide if money or growth is more important to you. You're not going to get both.
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Green is mostly useless.
No it's not! It's not easy to get offensive weapons early in the game in my mod, and captured mindworms are offensive weapons. You can also make vast quantities of money popping pods out in the wilderness. I even threw in a JUSTICE bonus, much as I didn't want to for balance reasons, because I wanted to retain the narrative idea that Green is more just than Capitalist, and Socialist is more just than Green. Finally, there are no penalties for Green. Personally I think it's a lot closer to being too powerful than being useless. You should see some of the mindworm hordes I've amassed from a mere +1 PLANET.
We might have rather different play styles, causing you to think it's useless. But it isn't. PLANET is the power! That's why I raised the cost of native life forms back up to the level of the original game. As this mod evolved, they became far too good a deal for trashing and spamming everyone else
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Power is decent if weak with the penalties.
You're going to find that stacking up all those JUSTICE penalties gets pretty severe.
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Knowledge is overpowered but then it always was.
At least it has a POLICE penalty, which can have a cumulative effect. It doesn't give a JUSTICE bonus anymore, since you can use knowledge to catalog people, spy on them, or disseminate propaganda. I don't feel as bad about Knowledge giving a RESEARCH bonus, because that's all it does for you, and you have to specifically focus on Discover to get to Cyberethics. It is not natural to simply acquire it, with my mod's strong divisions between Discover, Build, and Conquer. Explore tends to overlap Conquer some, particularly for chasses.
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Wealth is mostly pointless compared to power or Knowledge.
I think your play style doesn't embrace money.
Post by: bvanevery on April 18, 2019, 04:04:41 PM
Post by: vonbach on April 18, 2019, 09:30:43 PM
Honestly the one government that should get +probe is police state. Fundamentalist should get growth support is nice I suppose.
Capitalism needs something else besides economy.
Another question. If you were going to represent an Autarky, a closed economic system in the game what values/ penalties would you give it?
Note that Autarky can also be a government.
Post by: bvanevery on April 18, 2019, 09:51:02 PM
Here's a question did you get the AI to use GREEN?
Yes, the AI will use Green as soon as it discovers how to make mindworms. That was rather much the point of the exercise.
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Honestly the one government that should get +probe is police state.
I've been down that road before. What ends up happening, is Police State has too many toys in it. And I found at least back then, that +1 POLICE really wasn't worth having, for the penalties that Police State was suffering. I found I really needed to have +2 POLICE to make people happy enough to bother. Even now, I think it's really more about Chairman Yang cranking it to +3 POLICE, or another faction cranking it that high with the Ascetic Virtues.
Maybe I'd have a different view on +1 POLICE nowadays, since Fundamentalist was that way for a long time. But I'm really not looking to enable PROBE based gameplay. I hate the stuff. If some binary patcher would nerf the city takeover cost formulas, I'd consider that a huge feature. To me it's the single worst thing about the game, the thing that made me rage quit and delete countless times over the years. I put +1 PROBE in Fundamentalist because the Data Angels need it, and it's in accord with how the original game distributed the toys.
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Fundamentalist should get growth
I've been down that road as well. But there's no way I'm giving them +2 GROWTH nowadays, with what I understand about GROWTH now. The AI fixates on anything that gives GROWTH, it's a poison. Socialist has the early game +2 GROWTH role. I'm not seeing some other role for Socialist; Planned was, after all, the growth accelerator of the original game.
I don't want a Socialist based on an INDUSTRY bonus. Game mechanically I don't believe in INDUSTRY bonuses, I think they are game wreckers. Narratively, I don't believe in Socialism = Workerism. I'm quite aware that people like myself, the intelligentsia, were often shot and definitely marginalized under various Workerist regimes. The Khmer Rouge were the worst, they'd just turn your hands over to see if you had calluses or not. No calluses? Bullet.
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support is nice I suppose.
It was definitely proven useful in my earlier versions of Fundamentalist. It is also a progression towards Police State.
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Capitalism needs something else besides economy.
I disagree. I think you need to increase the amount of money grubbing you do in your games. My drill is to save up 1000 credits and outright buy Secret Projects.
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Another question. If you were going to represent an Autarky, a closed economic system in the game what values/ penalties would you give it?
I had to look up the term. I think you'd have to implement it as a faction. You'd give it -4 COMMERCE or something, so that it can never ever get a bonus from Treaties or Pacts.
Post by: Vidsek on April 18, 2019, 10:29:18 PM
I'll have time to playtest it today with a new game since the Weather Committee hung out at the water cooler too long yesterday and then peed on everything. They're such slobs.
Since I haven't done any game tests as yet, I can't base my opinions on the Social Engineering on anything but what has been posted in the forums here and my personal philosophy. I have no current issues with the AIG setup (and will test the Merge with it unchanged) except that I might have done the Economy section like this:
Simple, None,
Capitalist, Indust, ++ECONOMY, -JUSTICE, --PLANET
Socialist, AdapEco, --ECONOMY, ++JUSTICE, +GROWTH
Green, CentEmp, (-ECONOMY,) +JUSTICE, +PLANET
My reasoning:
1) I like the idea of Capitalist having a JUSTICE penalty to match my RL experiences. One PLANET minus moved to that might make Capitalist a little bit stronger, or just balance out. Without several tests I can't say for sure.
2) I just can't see Socialism being such a baby-booster compared to the other two, except that it might have more social wellbeing than they have (paid maternal and paternal leave, etc.). For vague and poorly supported reasons I'm not fond of pop-booming or the Planetary Transit System as game mechanics, hence the reduction in Growth I'd give it.
3)The - to ECONOMY for GREEN is just what I'd do if the Gaian bug wasn't present. Since it is, it's purely hypothetical. I have found in my testing that other factions will go Green early in the game even with a penalty on it, especially if it's the only alternative they have to Simple.
EDIT: I need to go back through saved games and see if they had the Mindworm breeding tech at the time they chose Green. I forgot to make a note of that at the time...oops.
Post by: vonbach on April 18, 2019, 11:47:27 PM
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Yes, the AI will use Green as soon as it discovers how to make mindworms. That was rather much the point of the exercise.
At least that little mystery is solved.
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I've been down that road before. What ends up happening, is Police State has too many toys in it. And I found at least back then, that +1 POLICE really wasn't worth having, for the penalties that Police State was suffering.It fits though. Maybe +2 Police +1 support +1probe.
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I've been down that road as well. But there's no way I'm giving them +2 GROWTH nowadays, with what I understand about GROWTH now.It fits though. It certainly fits better than probe. I like giving Fundamentalist +1 growth along with +1 Police and +1 Support.
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I disagree. I think you need to increase the amount of money grubbing you do in your games.
You'd be surprised actually. I just delay money grubbing until tree farms are researched then I have more money than I know what to do with.
But +1economy is not worth -3 planet in my opinion.
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I had to look up the term. I think you'd have to implement it as a faction. You'd give it -4 COMMERCE or something, so that it can never ever get a bonus from Treaties or Pacts.They already have one its called the hive. But an autarky should be good at growth and support or industry at the cost of money.
Post by: bvanevery on April 18, 2019, 11:55:38 PM
I've edited in the +SUPPORT to Fundamentalist
Be advised that Doctrine: Loyalty should also have a research weight of wealth=3, because extra SUPPORT is a kind of minerals making.
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All of the merging looks good and has no bugs that immediately crash the game ;lol.
This is always a plus. Last night I was wondering, did I just throw my Anniversary release out the door without actually checking whether it ran or not? I may have. I know that some of my cuts and pastes of the social engineering table worked fine, because I was doing that in order to test them. But I'm not 100% sure if I checked before kicking the thing out the door. I thought about how I must have nerves of steel, or what would old punch card programmers do? Anyways the point was soon moot as I played a game later in the evening and everything worked fine.
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I'll have time to playtest it today with a new game since the Weather Committee hung out at the water cooler too long yesterday and then peed on everything. They're such slobs.
Is that like Feline Empathy or something?
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Capitalist, Indust, ++ECONOMY, -JUSTICE, --PLANET
I did actually have -JUSTICE, when Green had +0 JUSTICE. But to me the most important thing is to have a relative contrast to Green and Socialist. Also Vonbach and I have debated a lot. Considering some of his points, I think the degree of oppression one gets from Capitalism proper, as opposed to say Undemocratic behavior of ruling elites, is debatable. I do think it's fair to say that Capitalism doesn't care how people are doing, and that's reflected in the lack of JUSTICE when choosing Capitalist. Now I don't think Democracy is the bee's knees for justice either, as it can mean a majority voting to oppress a minority. We've seen this for real in US history; laws are not the same thing as justice. But I do think some people are getting a better deal under a Democratic Capitalist system, more than just the ruling elites.
I don't want the PLANET penalty to be nerfed. I've been through versions of the game when it was only -2. I came to realize that -3 is an important thing to have to deal with. I also decided I didn't want to pollute Wealth with a PLANET penalty. This allows a PLANET friendly faction like the Gaians to pursue Wealth but not Capitalist. If they also choose Democratic then they can get to +2 ECONOMY and gain the 1 energy per square bonus. My play mechanical idea here, is to ask which categories of things are you willing to forego, in order to make more money? But not force you to forego a bunch of different categories at once. The tradeoffs between Democratic, Capitalist, and Wealth are POLICE, PLANET, and MORALE respectively.
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Socialist, AdapEco, --ECONOMY, ++JUSTICE, +GROWTH
+1 GROWTH doesn't mean anything game mechanically. You can hardly notice it. I learned that spreading GROWTH out to multiple categories, will cause the AI to fixate on anything that has GROWTH in it. I don't want that. So I put the poison of GROWTH in one place. It is a game mechanical contrivance, just like the original game. This is the choice you make if you want to pop boom. I'm not willing to take pop booming out of the game as a mechanic, even though it is not realistic.
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Green, CentEmp, (-ECONOMY,) +JUSTICE, +PLANET
I doubt that the AIs will swallow any penalty and still choose Green. I did not test that particular one. I'm not really interested in a Green economy that loses money, as either a play mechanical or a narrative concept. In many previous versions of this mod, Green actually gave +1 ECONOMY. I think Capitalist gave +2 ECONOMY back then. Unfortunately it turned out that I'd overheated the amount of ECONOMY available. Morgan tried to corner the energy market after only spending 1000 credits to do so! So I had to put all the ECONOMY stuff on a diet.
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I have found in my testing that other factions will go Green early in the game even with a penalty on it, especially if it's the only alternative they have to Simple.
But you are using Yitzi's patch and I am not, which could make a difference.
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EDIT: I need to go back through saved games and see if they had the Mindworm breeding tech at the time they chose Green. I forgot to make a note of that at the time...oops.
I'm expecting to see the Gaians get E3 Centauri Genetics by 2175 at the latest, and to go Green when they get it. I wish they'd wise up when they get E2 Centauri Empathy to begin with, but oh well.
Post by: bvanevery on April 19, 2019, 12:12:51 AM
It fits though. Maybe +2 Police +1 support +1probe.
Then how am I going to get +3 SUPPORT? SUPPORT is tightly rationed in my mod. I decided against Power being the thing that gives you +2 SUPPORT. Rather, you want zillions of peons, you choose Police State. If you want some peons, you choose Fundamentalist.
I used to have Planned as a thing that gave you +1 SUPPORT. When I changed it to Socialist, I got rid of that. The idea that either Planned or Socialist should give you more SUPPORT, was an irrational game mechanical contrivance.
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It certainly fits better than probe.
Probe doesn't basically fit anywhere. The original mechanic of "better spies" comes from Civ II, Communism vs. Democracy. Do you really think the USSR had better spies? I've seen a few documentaries and an episode of Deadliest Warrior, and I'm not exactly convinced. Probe Teams aren't just for spying on people like a Police State does. The USA has flat out bought all kinds of regimes all over the world. Part of the reason I nerfed PROBE bonus for Fundamentalist is I'm well aware this is a game mechanical contrivance with no realism in it. Previously, Power was carrying the burden
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I like giving Fundamentalist +1 growth
I'd like it fine if the AI didn't fixate on GROWTH. But it does, so no GROWTH for Fundamentalist.
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But +1economy is not worth -3 planet in my opinion.
Maybe you build a lot more Mines than I do. I find it doesn't have much of any effect until my cities are getting bigger.
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But an autarky should be good at growth and support or industry at the cost of money.
I think the idea of an isolationist economy being better at industry, is completely daft.
I don't see why it should have growth either. Actually pretty much nothing should have population growth for any realistic reason, so that's not saying much. But really, what's long lines for bread going to do for growth? The USSR did all of that, China used to do all of that. You get to eat a lot of winter cabbage.
SUPPORT, it's actually a pretty tiresome idea in terms of realism. Later Civ games don't do SUPPORT, they have things cost money. SUPPORT is best understood as Civ II Monarchy sort of twisted around and generalized. It doesn't mean anything.
Post by: vonbach on April 19, 2019, 12:15:33 AM
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I doubt that the AIs will swallow any penalty and still choose Green. I did not test that particular one. I'm not really interested in a Green economy that loses money, as either a play mechanical or a narrative concept. In many previous versions of this mod, Green actually gave +1 ECONOMY. .
I loved the green with +economy. I still like editing that in. I still think that changing knowledge to conservation or something and adding a planet bonus would probably work. Just make it show up resonably early.
Post by: vonbach on April 19, 2019, 12:24:21 AM
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Do you really think the USSR had better spies?
Yes they did. They were light years ahead of anyone else. It was the one thing they were actually good at.
The East German Stazi were so good at it they scared the Russians.
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Maybe you build a lot more Mines than I do. I find it doesn't have much of any effect until my cities are getting bigger.No I forest the entire map.
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Then how am I going to get +3 SUPPORT? SUPPORT is tightly rationed in my mod. I decided against Power being the thing that gives you +2 SUPPORT.I'm tempted to say add probe just as a freebee its really not that useful.
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I don't see why it should have growth either. Actually pretty much nothing should have population growth for any realistic reason, so that's not saying much. But really, what's long lines for bread going to do for growth? The USSR did all of that, China used to do all of that. You get to eat a lot of winter cabbage.
The whole point of an autarky is a self sustaining economy thats geared toward the population not making money. The USSR was a socailist economy not an autarky and dependant on US aid the entire time.
Post by: Vidsek on April 19, 2019, 02:01:55 AM
Be advised that Doctrine: Loyalty should also have a research weight of wealth=3, because extra SUPPORT is a kind of minerals making.I've made that change now, so everything should be correct and up-to-date.
As I mentioned in my previous post, I'm testing with AIG's Social Engineering section unchanged. Same for everything else except for where it overlaps with Yitzi's work and there I attempt to choose settings that don't change game mechanics or gameplay from what you intend.
Your reasoning on why you've made the choices you have for the Socials makes sense to me. Balancing realism, the game lore, and gameplay within the constraints of game mechanics is quite a feat. It cannot produce a "perfect" result, only the best possible (if you're smart and maybe a bit lucky).
extra SUPPORT is a kind of minerals making.I totally agree. I've considered SUPPORT to actually be an INDUSTRY bonus/penalty rather than a separate category.
I haven't played with the research weights for tech in any of my fooling around: for a thing like extra minerals which has some value to all the categories, how do you decide which ones to not put a weight on?
Post by: bvanevery on April 19, 2019, 04:40:12 AM
No I forest the entire map.
I'm much closer to "forest and forget" myself so I'm really not seeing the problem. Building a mere Tree Farm most places, I'm really not seeing eco-damage even under -3 PLANET. I refrain from building Mines unless I've done some things like the Pholus Mutagen or Hybrid Forests or whatever. Lately I don't even do Hybrid Forests much, as they are not needed to get a city to size 14 or 16 pre Hab Dome.
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I'm tempted to say add probe just as a freebee its really not that useful.
If it's not that useful then there's no reason to be particularly concerned about where it is given. Fundamentalist was always a good play mechanical fit, because factions with poor research do have a motivation to steal techs. There's just no realism in it having anything to do with being Fundamentalist, which is why for a long time, I didn't have any PROBE bonus for it at all. In my mod the Data Angels somewhat embrace the "don't research, just steal tech" role, because they are already "pre-stealing" anything that 3 factions know anyways.
I really think the original game was guilty of repositing "game mechanics that don't fit elsewhere" into Fundamentalist. I resisted that for a long time with my "it's like a police state, a distinction without a difference" approach to Fundamentalist. In more recent versions of my mod though, I've seen how the original game did provide some distinct choices for the player in some cases. I became less interested in a gradualist mixing and matching of abilities ala the "3 benefits, 2 liabilities" rubric, and more interested in having different social choices stand for something specific. So Police State is what you do if you really intend to go hog wild with POLICE, for instance. Democratic makes you money. Fundamentalist has always been a little bit about warmongering, although I don't want it to be as juicy as Power is for that, so I'm not sure how much of a role it can have for much of anything.
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The whole point of an autarky is a self sustaining economy thats geared toward the population not making money. The USSR was a socailist economy not an autarky and dependant on US aid the entire time.
Suppressing my initial reactions, I went and read the wikipedia section on the history of the concept. I notice that many actual examples of autarky were small scale. This tempts me to propose a severe EFFIC penalty. Go vertical or go home.
Post by: bvanevery on April 27, 2019, 10:09:02 PM
Code: [Select]
100, ; Combat % -> AAA bonus vs. air unitsThis is what I actually changed:
Code: [Select]
50, ; Combat % -> Air superiority unit vs. air unitWhich is probably an acceptable change, but doesn't address what I wanted to fix: the invulnerability of AAA units to Needlejets. Like how do you throw some hand weapons and armor together to take down planes anyways? Is this like when we were 5, and said "Whatever you say bounces right off of me and sticks back to youuuuu!"
This by itself is not worth a release. For that matter I never tested the AAA combat change anyways. But if enough reasons pile up to do another release, this is noted.
Post by: Vidsek on April 28, 2019, 02:45:30 AM
Now it makes sense, and I wonder if you even went far enough: as I read the line
50, ; Combat % -> AAA bonus vs. air units {-100 to 32767} (or 100 or whatever),
it looks like we're talking how much more accurate and damaging Triple A is compared to air to ground attacks - a bonus to anti-air artillery above and beyond even-odds.
AAA certainly is quite dangerous, especially to ground-attack aircraft, accounting for the large majority of combat losses, but AAA units and sites are also regularly taken out by air attacks (Wild Weasel attack aircraft with radar homing missiles, etc.) Overall, (in the absence of RL statistics which I haven't yet looked up), I'd be inclined to give them closer to even-odds, maybe a 20% bonus to AAA since most aircraft targeted by it evade and run away rather than fight back.
I might be biased, for some reason the name "Wild Weasel" is especially appealing to me....
Post by: bvanevery on April 28, 2019, 09:33:33 PM
The exact balance is open to test because air units in my mod are hugely more expensive than the stock game. You may find the AI hardly makes air units at all. I'm not even sure if air units are worth it for anything anymore. Gun Jets are definitely worth it to gain immunity to ground attacks as they cover an advance, but this is more like an exploit than something I think is a good combat system. Since I target the official binary and am not going to get into the business of requiring a binary patch, I just figure the immunity is what it is.
I found a description bug for Comm Jammer. It says +50% bonus instead of +25% as I actually have it set. This is reason enough to do a 1.31 release, but at this rate it looks like a minor bugfix release. I don't have any major new capabilities in mind, nor am I likely to come up with such, as I'm trying to move on with my own game effort. Of course everything is subject to player feedback. I did announce on /r/4Xgaming yesterday, so more downloads should start happening.
I'm finding the stacked JUSTICE penalties to be quite a bear to deal with. In my current game I got Advanced Military Algorithms fairly early. I blew a lot of Artifacts on the Hunter-Seeker Algorithm, which costs 500 now, and is hard to get done early in the game. I thought I was going to rush my neighbors with a Fundamentalist Power onslaught, but my cities kept whining and crying. I ended up not making any advance at all. I had a lot of trouble making money, with so many JUSTICE penalties. My exploration based economy is pretty much what kept me solvent. I'm still playing this game but honestly it's been boring.
Post by: bvanevery on May 02, 2019, 05:34:28 AM
I've resolved to start a new game and find out. I need to see if militarism is basically doable or not. I've pushed JUSTICE penalties deeply into the negative as a play mechanic, but I still don't know if that's a good idea or not. I've dried up a lot of the easy resources of the game. I wonder if I've overdone it. Or did I actually put it into a good balance, and still don't know how to play my own mod yet?
Post by: vonbach on May 03, 2019, 02:31:37 AM
The Drones having justice bonuses or power having justice penalties. It was efficiency in the game
for a reason because it made much more sense.
Post by: bvanevery on May 03, 2019, 12:20:57 PM
I don't think you get it under a Power regime either. You get conscripted, you die in trenches, bombs fall on your house, etc. I actually preferred the GROWTH penalties in some ways, since it more directly represents people getting killed, but the AI is really obnoxious about anything has a GROWTH penalty in it. I can get the AI to swallow a JUSTICE penalty.
Fundamentalist is still the Fundamentalist of the original game, as far as basic conception. Discussions haven't generated any superior or better fitting term for some kind of more conservative society. Nor was mere conservativism topical to the game's lore. I personally think making the Believers not compulsively Fundamentalist was a good move. But Fundamentalist regimes do exist in the real world and I don't have an incentive to deny that. I have no doubt that they are not entirely just, so -1 JUSTICE doesn't trouble me.
No amount of persuasion would convince me that Capitalism is just. :D I'm giving it a big benefit of the doubt not giving it a JUSTICE penalty.
My only real concern with JUSTICE is play mechanical. I can't tell yet whether there are too many penalties or not. Consider furthermore that Power does need some kind of penalty, and INDUSTRY was always a stupid penalty. Yeah, the USA had such an INDUSTRY problem in WW II. That's only what made it a superpower!
Post by: vonbach on May 04, 2019, 01:32:02 AM
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The original original play mechanic was building a Courthouse in Civ II to stop Corruption.Yes representing efficiency. Justice is part of police representing how content your people are.
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My only real concern with JUSTICE is play mechanical. I can't tell yet whether there are too many penalties or not.
Thats one of the reasons I don't like the change.
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Consider furthermore that Power does need some kind of penalty, and INDUSTRY was always a stupid penalty. Yeah, the USA had such an INDUSTRY problem in WW II. That's only what made it a superpower!Very little things fit for a penalty for power. Except growth something the AI doesn't like or maybe research representing jingoism but that really doesn't fit either.
A planet penalty might fit but thats pushing it.
Post by: bvanevery on May 04, 2019, 02:28:34 AM
QuoteThe original original play mechanic was building a Courthouse in Civ II to stop Corruption.Yes representing efficiency. Justice is part of police representing how content your people are.
There was no 'efficiency' concept in Civ II, to my recollection. There was Corruption and Waste. Now you could argue that Efficiency is the negation of the word Waste, so therefore it's "in there". But by that same line of reasoning, Justice is the negation of the word Corruption, so therefore it's "in there". It's not wrong to use these labels just because you don't like where I went with these labels.
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QuoteMy only real concern with JUSTICE is play mechanical. I can't tell yet whether there are too many penalties or not.
Thats one of the reasons I don't like the change.
As of tonight, my opinion is that Police State in conjunction with either the Ascetic Virtues or the Hive's +1 POLICE works fine. Double police effectiveness overcomes the -2 JUSTICE penalty quite handily. +1 JUSTICE from Green also mitigates the problem of Police State. Police State was also inefficient in the original game, it's the same penalty it always had. Yang was just immune to it before. Instead he's got enough POLICE as to render the point moot, so there's no problem here.
Free Market never had an EFFICIENCY bonus in the original game, so there's no problem there.
I do not think Socialist is overpowered. -2 ECONOMY is a hefty penalty.
Wealth never had an EFFICIENCY bonus in the original game, so there's no problem there.
My only real question at this point is Power. I haven't gotten to that part in my current game yet.
I'm currently trashing the Hive at close quarters. I started with Democratic Green with -1 POLICE due to the Ascetic Virtues. I did not actually use mindworms in the fight, just a lot of production of Impact Squads and rails. Recently I switched to Police State Green because it gives me +3 POLICE. Yang is toast.
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A planet penalty might fit [Power] but thats pushing it.
Nah. Doesn't make any sense at all. Deidre can want Green Power.
Post by: vonbach on May 04, 2019, 03:02:25 AM
Efficiency might be one or research but both are pushing it. But the real penalty is you're not choosing wealth
or knowledge.
Quote
Nah. Doesn't make any sense at all. Deidre can want Green Power.You would be surprised how much environmental damage the military industrial complex can do.
Especially with an indifferent government.
Post by: bvanevery on May 04, 2019, 05:07:01 AM
Honestly Power values, wanting a strong secure country really doesn't have a lot of downsides.
Uuuuh, 1st off in the real worlds that's baloney. Guns vs. Butter has been a tradeoff since forever.
2nd off, you always seem to have this idea that there should be things in the SE table that don't give penalties. I don't agree with that. As much as I might like to make life easier for the AIs, it's important to force the player to make tradeoffs. Otherwise it becomes a game of progressively collecting shiny new baubles until the player overruns everything. There can't be challenge without consequences.
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Efficiency might be one or research but both are pushing it.
Like the Nazis were bad researchers. Or war has ever slowed down research.
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You would be surprised how much environmental damage the military industrial complex can do.
Especially with an indifferent government.
I just think getting into Agent Orange and depleted uranium rounds is not thematic to SMAC. "Don't fight, it's bad for the environment" isn't much of a play mechanic. Heck don't do anything it's bad for the environment. Just die so the mindworms can be at peace.
Post by: bvanevery on May 04, 2019, 06:51:27 AM
I may have screwed up the more enjoyable circumstance of not having any probe team power in the game. Giving Fundamentalist a +1 PROBE may have been a mistake. That said, the Hive did this to me and it should be using Police State. Begrudgingly reloading the abandoned game to see what happened. They're Police State as expected, so it's not directly about me changing the amount of PROBE in the game.
I could take drastic action and banish mind control from the game. I could implement that by giving every single faction the MINDCONTROL ability. Probe teams could still steal techs, sabotage stuff, incite drone riots, make biological attacks, etc.
If I did that, I'd also need to rework the Believers. Instead of it being a special ability for them, it would be how everything in the game works.
Another option is to to use PROBECOST to increase the cost for all mind control actions for all factions, until the cost is high enough to stop the AI from being super annoying. I do not want the AI cranking out probe teams to liberate cities as some kind of 100% reliable trivial defense, which is pretty much the situation right now.
When trying to use either PROBECOST or MINDCONTROL to change the behavior of a game in progress, I've discovered that Start New Game is not enough to change anything. You have to use the Scenario Editor to reload the faction's .txt file.
Post by: vonbach on May 04, 2019, 09:02:13 PM
Post by: bvanevery on May 04, 2019, 09:57:05 PM
It's a PITA to have to remember them at 1 AM when I'm tired. The game has always been a gigantic PITA that way. And I'm much more diligent about probe team defense than I used to be. I had a probe team in literally every other one of my cities, except the one I just took. I do not want to keep playing turns over again just because of 1 stupid forgotten probe team.
It is not realistic that a totally crippled Hive faction with very little money, can just buy a city that I just put 4 units into. The Hive's budget was 100 credits! I can't rush even 1 of those units for 100 credits. Nevermind units within the city's radius that also get swept up, a mindworm and a few Formers. It's a bargain basement and it has always been totally stupid that anyone can do this with cities. It's completely broken.
If I were a binary patcher and in the business of requiring a patched binary, I would fix this. Banish it forever. I am not, so the workaround is to raise PROBECOST until egregious behavior doesn't happen with crippled, budgetless, nearly dead factions. PROBECOST 200 has stopped city takeover, now it's just a drone riot. I can live with a drone riot, sabotage, or theft, I don't have a problem with that.
It remains to be seen if PROBECOST 200 is enough, or if it needs to go higher to prevent other ass pulls. I figure I've got until the end of May to decide the balance of this.
Post by: vonbach on May 05, 2019, 04:49:53 AM
That said probe teams can be really annoying.
Post by: bvanevery on May 05, 2019, 05:39:01 AM
I am Police State Socialist Power with the Ascetic Virtues. It's working. I'm a bit surprised that Socialist with a -2 ECONOMY penalty still makes me slightly more money than Green. I've trashed the Hive and am now beginning to trash the Pirate enclaves near me. My sea bases have been hit with Pirate foil probe teams, but they haven't been able to mind control anything. I'd say my change in PROBECOST is working.
Post by: vonbach on May 06, 2019, 10:56:54 AM
Post by: bvanevery on May 06, 2019, 05:21:44 PM
Definitely useful against probe teams though. Useful for keeping ground units invulnerable to counterattack. Useful for escorting ground units into enemy territory to sabotage Sensor Arrays, although you really need 2 jets to do a consistent escort. With only 1 jet, it has to go back to base, and that makes the Sensor Array pillaging task potentially a suicide run. For that reason, so far I've decided that giving the Unity Jet is not overpowered. Only having cover every other turn is an advantage, but not decisive, and it only happens in 1 place.
I definitely prefer Unity Jets to Unity Choppers, which simply broke down a lot and got killed. From a scouting standpoint, Unity Jets get a lot more done. I expect people to play on Huge maps and the little bitty Chopper wasn't cutting it, especially since I had nerfed its moves to keep it from having so many attacks.
Post by: bvanevery on May 09, 2019, 07:26:59 AM
I've been doing Power for a long time and I'm unwilling to shift to Wealth because I'm still fighting on the borders of my large empire. I went Democratic to try to make money, but a +3 POLICE Police State is much better for keeping unhappiness suppressed. I'm having all kinds of unhappiness problems sticking with Power, as the JUSTICE penalties definitely hurt.
Vonbach didn't think Capitalist does anything now, but choosing it at this stage of the game doubles my income, from 80 credits/turn to 160. That's a huge jump when you're trying to finish expensive Secret Projects before others do. You can't do that with Supply Crawlers or factories because those come rather late now.
So it's a challenge. I'm thinking that's ok. A faction with more JUSTICE would definitely have some advantages, but I'm playing the University.
I've often found it surprising that Socialist will make me more money than Green will, despite the -2 ECONOMY penalty. For a sufficiently large empire, JUSTICE can be more important for making money.
Post by: Vidsek on May 09, 2019, 08:14:17 AM
Keep the reports coming!
Post by: bvanevery on May 09, 2019, 09:34:07 AM
I'm in the Fusion Power era now. It's taken quite a while to get a big money flow and also supply crawlers, but now I can finish Secret Projects fairly quickly. I'm not sure what I'm doing but I think "more troops" is probably the right idea.
Post by: vonbach on May 09, 2019, 02:28:09 PM
I'm finding that Capitalist has a pretty substantial tradeoff in late midgame. B
Vonbach didn't think Capitalist does anything now, but choosing it at this stage of the game doubles my income, from 80 credits/turn to 160. That's a huge jump when you're trying to finish expensive Secret Projects before others do. You can't do that with Supply Crawlers or factories because those come rather late now.
So it's a challenge. I'm thinking that's ok. A faction with more JUSTICE would definitely have some advantages, but I'm playing the University.
I've often found it surprising that Socialist will make me more money than Green will, despite the -2 ECONOMY penalty. For a sufficiently large empire, JUSTICE can be more important for making money.
Oh it does something just not enough for the penalties in my opinion.
Post by: bvanevery on May 09, 2019, 04:24:18 PM
Post by: vonbach on May 09, 2019, 10:27:00 PM
Post by: bvanevery on May 10, 2019, 12:13:39 AM
Meanwhile, I find that Democratic Socialist Wealth Eudaimonic in the late game is good for money, good for pop booming, but I can't fight for a damn! I've been trying to take over this coastal sea base of the Pirates since forever. I've been too cheap to put real force on it, so I've mostly only sent old units against it. That said, I did just send a bunch of really expensive Drop planes after it as well. They all died. So did all the old Marines I had stacked up. -3 MORALE is a pretty serious penalty that does affect your ability to conquer anything. I never learned the tech for the Cyborg Factory and no one else has either. I'm building Hab Domes everywhere now. I could win by voting myself Supreme Ruler. Especially if I get Clinical Immortality, I think it's all over then.
Just realized my ECONOMY is 0. I'm just wealthy beyond rational belief. I should ditch Wealth because it won't affect my income at all.
Yeah, Democratic Socialist Power Eudaimonic works a lot better. My MORALE is only +1, but I stomp stuff. I can afford to put Gas or Wave on things. In my mod they cost 4, aka a 100% cost increase. Not a problem with Genejack Factories and Robotic Assembly Plants.
I am at +2 PLANET, as Eudaimonic gives +1, and controlling the Manifold Nexus gives another +1. I have the Manifold Harmonics so my fungal patches are worth a fair amount now. I could get even more if I went Green, but then I'd lose my pop boom. I'm building Clinical Immortality and think I'm trying to win the game with a Diplomatic Victory.
Post by: vonbach on May 11, 2019, 02:46:16 AM
Post by: bvanevery on May 11, 2019, 05:23:03 AM
Meanwhile in my game, I believe I would have won already, but we're in sunspots. Can't vote myself Supreme Leader. I have been without advances in weapons and armor for a long time because those are "pure" Conquer categories of tech, and that's not part of my Explore, Discover research foci as the University. You can get very far in the tech tree without gaining them, like Hab Dome / Secrets of the Manifolds far. Only recently did I get some because I conquered some enemy bases with some Artifacts in them. The best weapon of the game is still Missile Launchers. At times I've tricked them out with extremely expensive Gas or Wave capabilities. Now honestly I'm just waiting for the sunspots to lift because I believe I have the votes. I build various Marines to go after Pirate sea bases next to me, but my effort is half-hearted.
Once I got the Cloning Vats (I mean it, you can get really far along without weapons and armor!) my final government form has become Democratic Green Power Eudaimonic. Mainly because that gives +3 PLANET so it maximizes the benefit from the Manifold Harmonics. Secondarily because +2 JUSTICE is useful.
Post by: vonbach on May 11, 2019, 06:14:21 AM
With what in my mod? You don't get Supply Crawlers or Genejack Factories until late midgame. You'll never get enough Artifacts to build many SPs anymore, as I've raised the cost of SPs so much. Do you seriously just sit around waiting for SPs to complete in 1 city?
I modded the governments long ago. But In your base mod I'd use Police state or democracy and green and maybe wealth.
Yes I do just wait for SP to be built I usually don't spend money on SP unless in emergencies. I typically go all forest except for a
few farms with solar so it doesn't take that long. The main issue is getting the cities to grow early game. So building SP doesn't take
that long for me. Most of my games are just plain over by the time the cloning vats are a thing.
Post by: bvanevery on May 11, 2019, 08:31:57 AM
Most of my games are just plain over by the time the cloning vats are a thing.
Well of course they are. I put it nearly at the end of the tech tree for a reason. Only reasons I've got now are 1) we're in sunspots and 2) I'm the University. My research is inevitably accelerated even though I've never pursued Knowledge in this game. I haven't built anywhere near the number of lab facilities I could have either. Pretty much didn't bother with Corporate Labs except in my capitol. Once I finally got Genejack Factories I did those and then Robotic Assembly Plants, preferring production to more research. And my research is still way beyond anyone else's.
Post by: vonbach on May 11, 2019, 09:03:21 AM
Usually by either conquest or economic victory. Genejack factories are something I typically don't bother with a lot.
Are they worth it for the drone in your opinion?
Post by: bvanevery on May 11, 2019, 09:39:20 AM
I've made more advanced military units very expensive in recent versions of my mod. It's an almost geometric progression. You need real production to make more advanced units. Do you need advanced units at all? My jury's out on that question. What I actually ended up doing, was building Genejack Factories everywhere, Robotic Assembly Plants everywhere, discovering Hab Domes, setting off a pop boom, and building Hab Domes everywhere. I've got the Empath Guild and Clinical Mortality and massive numbers of votes.
I think the factories have been useful for building the Domes. Possibly I could have blown all that off and just used cash. However, I've used my massive cash to buy even the newly super expensive SPs pretty darned quickly, like in 2 to 3 turns. I'm really just waiting for sunspots to end, so I can declare myself Supreme Leader. I could see what the price of Economic Victory is, because I wouldn't be surprised if that's within my reach. And I haven't even learned Orbital Power Transmitters yet.
I still don't know how to play my mod. But buying SPs outright is a proven strategy AFAIAC. Whether I need factories or not, I don't know. I put them later in the tech tree for a reason. I don't think they're essential. If a city gets to 20 minerals, it can produce stuff. One thing that surprised me this game though, is I've been routinely doing 60..75 minerals and I'm not doing any eco-damage. I guess the Pholus Mutagen and a lot of Hybrid Forests will work.
I've thrown some grossly expensive units into combat, like various Drop Needlejets, and have watched them seriously underperform in some cases. Enough that I didn't, ah, renew the contract. I'm still learning.
Post by: vonbach on May 11, 2019, 10:33:00 AM
its infantry along the rail lines. The early mag tubes are one of the most notable changes it makes it a much different game.
Money I typically spend on buying a city with a probe team thats too small to capture or upgrading units.
Post by: bvanevery on May 11, 2019, 06:14:26 PM
When I'm using rails to conquer, I use defense only armored infantry and offense only damage dealers, because it's cheaper to make units that way. Money goes to Secret Projects. I tend to conquer in a strict radius from my capitol. There tends to come a point at which I've got more facilities to build in cities and I stop making offensive units. I tend to try to squeeze additional conquest out of the units I've already got, rather than just produce a never ending horde. After awhile all the unit pushing just gets to be too much, and it's easier to just wait around for cities to make facilities.
Still my empire in my current game is quite large despite these constraints. I've crushed the Hive, the Gaians, and the Data Angels who were all my nearest land neighbors. The Believers are a long term tiny ally. The Pirates are near neighbors, although they've been pushed out of the core of my empire. Getting to their cities is more of a PITA as I have to make Marines to take them over. If I'm fighting a land power, that's a waste of production. The Peacekeepers are way far to the north, so far that I haven't built a rail to them yet. And I might never, because Needlejets actually became a problem for my Formers about the time I started conquering the Data Angels.
I'm in an endgame where swelling my population is all I need to do, so I'm not bothering with more rails, more AAA, or much in the way of conquest. I'm just waiting for the sun to come out. Cost of cornering the energy market is 100k credits! Not sure if it would be cheaper if I choose Thought Control and gain +2 PROBE. Or maybe it depends on raising one's ECONOMY? Mine's nothing special right now, only +1, but I just changed my budget to 60-20-20 and I think I'm making 3k credits/turn. Probably I'll go through the motions of saving up the money, only to have the sun finally clear and vote myself the winner.
Finally they succumb. My final vote tally was like 3700+ vs. 500+. I'm doubting I even needed the factories to do this. Getting to Hab Domes first would probably have been enough to put everyone under the table vote wise. I suppose without 4X votes, my margin would have been 900+ vs. 500+, not enough to win Supreme Leader. In which case I would have had to invade more stuff. I was preparing a doomsday spread of Conventional Missiles since I had so much production. That wasn't the leanest path through the game, clearly.
Post by: vonbach on May 13, 2019, 05:40:30 AM
I never disband units if I can help it and I like to have all my units up to date if possible.
Post by: bvanevery on May 13, 2019, 06:43:54 AM
Today I realized that the cost of fission Conventional Missiles was seriously out of whack, like 220 or some rubbish. I'm fixing the missile costs for 1.31. My design notes today:
- Missile Chassis: now costs 1. This makes it easier to calculate the final cost of a missile weapon across all the different reactor sizes. Previously the fission version of a Conventional Missile was exorbitantly expensive. The cost of Conventional, Fungal, and Tectonic missiles vary with reactor size, but Planet Busters do not, so they did not need to be changed.
- Conventional Payload: now costs 50. This makes Conventional Missiles cost 120, 90, 60, and 60 with increasing reactor size.
- Fungal Payload: now costs 25. This makes Fungal Missiles cost 120, 90, 60, and 60 with increasing reactor size.
- Tectonic Payload: now costs 55. This makes Tectonic Missiles cost 270, 200, 140, and 80 with increasing reactor size. The cost of Raising/Lowering Land with Formers was doubled to make it a more weighty choice, so this is increased as well.
Post by: vonbach on May 13, 2019, 11:05:23 AM
Post by: ChaDawnFanatic on May 20, 2019, 06:14:11 PM
Post by: bvanevery on May 20, 2019, 08:22:00 PM
Post by: vonbach on May 23, 2019, 06:29:15 PM
Post by: bvanevery on May 23, 2019, 10:27:28 PM
The only control that I see for these costs, is PROBECOST in the faction.txt entries. I say it has to go up, not down, so it just isn't available for solving this problem in my mod.
Awhile back, I got rid of all the tech bonuses that increase base probe team morale. This is for 2 reasons: 1) it's pretty easy to increase probe team morale, as Command Centers, Bioenhancement Centers, Cover Ops Centers, and SE choices all boost it. 2) I realized that armored probe teams are a serious exploit. Making Elite armored probe team units easily available is not cool.
I wonder if those probe team tech bonus increases are hooked into the cost formula? The way to test that, would be to reinstate all the bonuses and see if the horrible costs go away. I have to admit, I don't feel terribly motivated to test that, but I'd listen to someone else's results. Alternately, someone could go digging through the back articles on how mind control costs are actually computed.
An alternate theory is, on Huge maps there just end up being a lot of enemy cities, with a lot of wealth, which causes the cost of mind control to go up a lot. The cost definitely increases as the game goes on, with endgame costs getting particularly silly.
Meanwhile, finishing my current game is proving to be a drag. I dominate, I've elected myself Governor, and I'm Clone Vatting my cities to be bigger and bigger. However it still hasn't been enough to vote myself Supreme Leader. It may yet come but turns are very slow. My greatly increased manufacturing costs, take a huge amount of time to get through.
Planet has undergone some flooding due to factories I've built to make those units. I've still only made Genejack Factories and Robotic Assembly Plants, even though I could do more. I have a +2 PLANET rating and the Manifold Harmonics. Possibly other factions are contributing substantially to global warming, but I haven't really checked. I find myself waiting for my units and repairing my rails. I've been building Psi Gates everywhere because they do actually seem useful, although in practice I've used them very little. Sometimes a huge pile of Locusts of Chiron attacks and I haven't bothered to make any Air Superiority units to deal with them. Instead I make AAA defensive units. I recently acquired 12-Res armor so that helps, although I've forgotten whether 12-Res is actually any better than 3-Res as far as defending against psi attacks.
I feel like I'm waiting for an inevitable victory but the waiting is taking a long time. I don't play that much of the game per day because it's not that interesting. Instead I've spent most of my goof off time arguing about what Season 8 of Game of Thrones did right or wrong.
Post by: vonbach on May 24, 2019, 03:19:27 AM
The probe thing has to be some sort of bug. Its just annoying. I was thinking of making an enormous
Terraformed Venus map.
Post by: bvanevery on May 24, 2019, 04:09:17 AM
Post by: vonbach on May 24, 2019, 01:22:32 PM
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Low erosion and rainy? I haven't done an Enormous map in a long time. I wonder if some of the distant AIs could actually present a challenge at that scale.
The longer the AI has room to expand the more dangerous it gets. Even on my "normal" Venus map a huge map
whomever gets the main continent gets very powerful. I try to make the map with as few tiny islands as possible
to avoid terrible starts for the ai. One main reason i started making maps in the first place.
Post by: bvanevery on May 24, 2019, 05:37:15 PM
Post by: vonbach on May 24, 2019, 06:19:37 PM
Post by: Vidsek on May 25, 2019, 03:03:14 AM
I too have the mapmaker program set to make no small islands so I can then put a few in where I want if I want.
My background with plant ecology, geography, and anthropology makes me very unhappy with random placements of the special features and bonuses and, most especially, fungus. Plus I have some education in cartography and find it to be a lot of fun for me.
I can, of course, just go with the randomness and consider it a gameplay factor, however unsatisfying the unreality feels. However, I've found that while it takes some time and work, making the map follow some real-universe laws and patterns also results in playable maps and introduces some new strategy factors to consider.
I'm generally not fond of the slow early stage of the game so for the most part I've gone with rather rich environments (high erosion/rugged terrain, very moist, large cloud effect, very few flat tiles).
This also affects the mid and late game some but is by that point swamped by the greater effect of terraforming and facilities. The non-builder factions still lag behind the builder ones (in the absence of war at least).
My current map is designed to specifically test some aspects of the AI Growth Mod (and of the game in general). It has seven continents with enough ocean between to make raising land bridges impractical, leaving sea transport of troops for across-the-beach landings as the main way to proceed. Later, airdrops can supplement them.
If each faction has it's own landmass, war is uncommon or absent during the early game so it is possible to evaluate the performance of the factions at handling unhampered growth and development. Their use or neglect of seapower and ocean bases is also clearly apparent.
Post by: bvanevery on May 25, 2019, 05:34:20 AM
The non-builder factions still lag behind the builder ones (in the absence of war at least).
What are some examples of "non-builder" factions? I ask because everyone has got Explore as an AI trigger, except the Usurpers who don't need it. That's not quite the same thing as building, but it does try to ensure early empire growth and size. I think of the Spartans as a non-builder faction because they have no economic advantages whatsoever. Otherwise it's not so clear to me.
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My current map is designed to specifically test some aspects of the AI Growth Mod (and of the game in general). It has seven continents with enough ocean between to make raising land bridges impractical,
Even with standard play for my mod, it's not so easy to make land bridges now as it once was. The Weather Paradigm is significantly more expensive and requires specific Build research to obtain. A player can have it if they want, but if they choose other things, I find that AI factions complete it before I can do anything about it. Raising land takes 2X as long now, so it isn't as easy to make bridges to places. It's possible, but I find myself strongly preferring existing continental routes with only short water passages to bridge.
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leaving sea transport of troops for across-the-beach landings as the main way to proceed. Later, airdrops can supplement them.
Lately I prefer sitting around minding my own business until I've achieved orbital insertion. Long distance marine assaults are tedious! Only Secret Project cities are worth conquering anyways, or a city sitting on the Manifold Nexus. I can build better cities closer to my capitol.
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Their use or neglect of seapower and ocean bases is also clearly apparent.
But what can influence it? I've gone through an iteration of very cheap ships, then dialed it back up to more normal price, however with greater speed for all ships. I think the ALIEN and AQUATIC AIs are ok at sea colonization for some reason, like maybe being given more code for it in the expansion. But the normal faction AI just isn't that good at it.
Post by: vonbach on May 25, 2019, 09:35:41 AM
giving the AI a second colony pod to start with and a spare former. Just to help the AI out early game. One thing Ive noticed is the AI stays at size 2 bases
a lot.
Post by: bvanevery on May 25, 2019, 11:32:47 AM
I've thought about giving all factions 4 colony pods to start with. That's a major change however, something that would require a lot of playtesting. I'm definitely not willing to do it for my 1.31 release, as we're almost to the end of the month now and it's time to release. I'm trying to focus my energies on my own new game development, not SMAC anymore, so I don't actually want a major change that's a gamble and would require a bunch of testing. If a number of other people tried it and reported it was actually useful, that might persuade me to evaluate its merits, as I wouldn't be completely shooting in the dark and just wasting a lot more of my time.
Giving out sea colony pods to non-aquatic factions doesn't work. There's no guarantee that a faction will start next to water. For an inland faction, extra sea colony pods would just die immediately. Any coastal faction would start with a major advantage.
I've already made Doctrine: Flexibility a C1 tech, no prereqs. Boats are gained much faster than the stock game. There is still a delay to gaining them however.
I've not really thought about making predefined ship units available without any techs. My concern if you get any kind of ship, maybe it can be turned into other kinds, but I could check on that. There's still the question of whether having ships immediately available, does any actual good for colonizing. Sometimes the AI does very stupid things when it's given early capabilities that it can obsess about. For instance, I had to make Perimeter Defenses and Heavy Artillery come later, because otherwise the AI goes unproductively nuts with them. The testing for this is much less ambitious than the 4 colony pods idea, but it would still need testing.
Post by: vonbach on May 25, 2019, 10:56:18 PM
Quote
I've already made Doctrine: Flexibility a C1 tech, no prereqs. Boats are gained much faster than the stock game. There is still a delay to gaining them however.
Boats are gained early the aquatic colony pods don't come then though.
Post by: bvanevery on May 25, 2019, 11:24:36 PM
Aha. Yes indeed, if you don't have the Unit Designer on, you won't see a Sea Colony Pod, even though you can design one. That's worth providing a work around about.
While I'm in here thinking about stuff, I'm thinking that having a Unity Foil be Slow is pretty pointless. Gonna remove that. Heck I'll give it a Deep Radar while I'm at it, make it more useful.
I have verified that making a Transport have no prereq, also makes it possible to design a Gun Foil and a Sea Colony Pod. Giving it away for free would basically make Doctrine: Flexibility have no purpose. I'd need to come up with something else to do with it.
Post by: vonbach on May 26, 2019, 12:51:48 AM
Post by: bvanevery on May 26, 2019, 07:53:01 AM
Post by: bvanevery on May 26, 2019, 06:48:59 PM
I can contemplate the essential annulment of C1 Doctrine: Flexibility in a version 1.32, as well as giving everyone 4 colony pods to start with. But the answer might be "these things should not be touched". I'm also feeling pretty unmotivated to touch them, and I don't have anything else for a 1.32 release. I may not ever make a 1.32 release. It's contingent upon finding something that actually needs doing, and I'd like to think I just found "the few things I missed" for 1.31, which I also didn't expect to be releasing. Releases are definitely on a "trickling wind down" now.
Post by: vonbach on May 27, 2019, 06:20:49 PM
Post by: bvanevery on May 28, 2019, 07:06:56 AM
The good news is I think this might mean there's actually a late game and an endgame to play. I've actually found Psi Gates useful for a change. Part of me wonders if I've just been stupid about how to win the game though. I'm definitely in the situation where I still don't know how to play my own mod.
Once I got the Cloning Vats, I thought I was going to rack up the votes and get a Diplomatic Victory. But the other factions were never conquered and continue to grow. Not enough to challenge my dominance, but enough to make it more difficult to put a 3/4 majority out of reach. A few turns ago I decided, heck, maybe all this military garrisoning and taking over cities with Secret Projects was a complete waste of time. So I started building Sky Hydroponics Labs to really goose my growth.
Well guess what? The game just gave me bloody sunspots!! :mad: :mad: :mad:
:wall: :wall: :wall: ;buttdance ;bored ;wince
I'm not playing 20 more turns of this garbage to get a Diplomatic Victory. I'm morally opposed to Transcending. I don't have the money to Corner the Energy Market, I'd have to build a bunch of Orbital Power Transmitters first, then wait 20 turns. And I think a Conquest victory with conventional forces would be prohibitively tedious, given the number of enemy units on the board. So I am embarking upon a comprehensive plan to destroy the world with Singularity Planet Busters.
:D ;liftoff ;nuke; ;nuke; ;nuke; ;nuke; ;nuke; ;nuke; ;nuke; ;nuke; ;nuke; ;nuke; :tada: :doh
Because I'm a stick in the mud, I'm still using my 1 Skunkworks to prototype new units. The game forgot that I knew how to make a Planet Buster, because it recycled my unit designs. Or maybe it didn't, I was fiddling with those settings recently. Anyways it forgot, so I have to prototype it again. It was going to take 5 turns because it's not a high minerals city. But it just so happens there are still a few supply pods at sea. They were trapped in an inland sea that opened up due to flooding. Or conquest, whatever. I sent out a 12-Res Trance Cruiser Transport and picked one up. And thereby achieved possibly my most expensive unit completion ever. 900 minerals for that prototype, higher than many Secret Projects in the game!
endgame pod popping |
And the 2nd pod I popped that same turn, gave me 50 energy credits.
Post by: bvanevery on May 28, 2019, 07:48:55 AM
preparation for doom |
You might wonder, where is my sense of political correctness and ethnic diversity? Eh, sunspots. It can really fog the brain on what you'll put up with. Also these jerks have been declaring war on me every few turns for a very long time now. Nobody actually likes me. Nobody will sign a Treaty with me, even though I have the same politics as 3 out of 5 factions. So screw 'em! They had their chance.
Post by: bvanevery on May 28, 2019, 08:06:31 AM
singularity apocalypse |
Planet isn't bothering to wait for me to launch. It already resents my increase in minerals due to the Singularity Inductor. That thing never mitigates enough damage for all the minerals it spews out. Reaching the Threshold of Transcendence and getting another +1 minerals in fungus squares doesn't help either. I'm having a vague memory that something is supposed to make Planet stop hating on me though. Like if I start the Voice of Planet? Can't remember. Would be cool if I could trick Planet into ignoring my apocalypse.
Of course I have not bothered to make offensive air units to take out these stacks of Locusts. I do have plenty of defensive and redeployable Trance 12-Res units though.
Post by: bvanevery on May 28, 2019, 09:42:08 AM
expensive armor |
I haven't managed to prototype the Inertial Damper yet. Belatedly I'm realizing it's as expensive as a Planet Buster. I think that's ok, it gives people something to look forward to. The Black Hole Gun is goofy by comparison though, only costing 60 minerals for an unarmored infantry unit. I think I'll need to jack that cost up. Finding stuff like that, is why I've been forcing myself to finish this tedious game. Although, my final actions may yet prove amusing.
I'm working on the Telepathic Matrix. I used a probe team to take over Zhakarov's last city with a Secret Project in it. I succeeded at Total Thought Control so we're not at war. That was expensive, like maybe 5000 credits, I forget. That's how much I'm making per turn though, and I only built 1 Orbital Power Transmitter. I built 54 Sky Hydroponics Labs which should be, ah, "sufficient". Only 8 Orbital Defense Pods as they haven't seemed much needed. The Drones built 1, that's it. The Peacekeepers still have the Planetary Transit System, which I want to take over. Then my collection of Secret Projects will be complete!
I "only" have 11 Singularity Planet Busters, so I'm not quite ready to launch. I'm making some Conventional Missiles to decoy any enemy Orbital Defense Pods. It seems to be cheaper than just slugging it out with ODPs, as the latter tend to favor defense not offense.
Post by: Vidsek on May 28, 2019, 05:54:49 PM
Post by: bvanevery on May 28, 2019, 08:36:28 PM
Since I can't make things more expensive, I decided to make things cheaper. ;stupid Well there really is a problem of infantry units with weapons + armor being way too expensive at the end of the game. I found out in the real world of keeping Planet from turning into Waterworld, factories just aren't going to get bigger and bigger. You'd drown first. I've recalibrated Black Hole Guns so that a Singularity infantry unit with Inertial Damping armor costs 600, the same as 2 Planet Busters. With a Singularity Laser it's now 500, and with a Graviton Gun it's now 450.
These costs are still high, and thereby create an interesting endgame dynamic. It's actually economically rational to completely destroy Planet with Planet Busters rather than bother producing expensive units. Getting pissed off at the game and saying, "I'm gonna end it all with nukes!!" might be a more common thing now. I wonder if one even needs to wait until the Singularity era to do this. Quantum era? Even the Fusion era?
Conventional Missiles and Fungal Missiles become really cheap in the Quantum era, so that's another way to go. "How to do the endgame" may be a subject explored for some time. Maybe it will need further balancing, because I think in the past, most of us never got to any substantial endgame. In stock SMAC, gonzo techs come too quick, so you just steamroller everyone and declare yourself the winner.
I was up late last night, and am not quite ready for the holocaust today. I'm at MY 2396 and have 20 Singularity Planet Busters. I have 24 more in production, almost all of which will be ready in 3 turns. I total thought controlled the last enemy city with a Secret Project, and I'm still in a Truce with everybody. Sunspots are still active. Where's my sunblock?? My brain is melting. I'm definitely feeling the Daenerys Targaryen effect of screw these people, they had their chance. Maybe that's what will happen from now on, the game will annoy you with factories and units that are so expensive, you just want everyone to die already! I mean hey, this game has been annoying me that way for 20 years, and so has the genre in general. Vengeance by modding.
Post by: bvanevery on May 29, 2019, 10:01:29 AM
pipsqueak university |
MY 2398. Can you believe this crap?? I'm minding my own business, trying to get a boring war ready for the end of the world, and this clown deigns to bother me. These jerks can't seem to honor their Truces for more than 5 years at a time. I've lost track of whether it was Zhakarov who rebelled last time, but someone is always stirring the pot. And he did what, wound a Former? These people need to seriously die. And I was just starting to have second thoughts about my holocaust too.
I've decided to bump up the prices of missiles again. A progression of 400, 300, 200, and 120 for Tectonic missiles. 200, 150, 100, and 60 for the Conventional and Fungal missiles. I'd rather those be higher with a Singularity reactor, but I can't get them to be. Well unless I jack up the base cost of the chassis again, maybe that would work. Or if I make predefined units for these, can I fix the cost of a missile regardless of the reactor on it? Worth trying. Tectonic missiles in particular are completely backwards, I'd like them to be more expensive as the reactor gets bigger. I could settle for them all just being super expensive, like 600. Do you want a Secret Project or do you want a land bridge?
Post by: Vidsek on May 29, 2019, 10:47:07 AM
I just need to use to Scenario Editor to gift all the reactors and missiles to a faction and run through all eight options available with Yitzi. I'll get to that some night a bit of tedium seems appealing.
Does the AI ever actually use Tectonic missiles? Or Fungal ones for that matter.
The Fungal warheads make some RL sense as biological warfare, but the whole concept of the Tectonic ones sticks in my craw. If the AI doesn't use them, I'd be tempted to disable them entirely.
At the very least, they should have an equal chance of lowering the land, or lowering one side and raising the other.
Just as unrealistic, but more fun, would be if they caused a volcano to erupt, complete with active lava flows that damage units crossing them ;lol
Post by: Vidsek on May 29, 2019, 11:07:23 AM
If you load a map made with special conditions set, but have a different set of conditions stored in your copy of the game, the map editor will automatically redraw it to match your settings. You need to go into the Scenario/Map Editor and match the construction settings to see it as intended.
Here is a copy of the same map made with all the pertinent parameters set to average/default (which I suppose most folks leave them at):
Post by: bvanevery on May 29, 2019, 03:39:55 PM
Does the AI ever actually use Tectonic missiles? Or Fungal ones for that matter.
I've never seen it, so the answer might be no. However, I've never tried making a predefined unit available. Also the cost of weapons does affect whether they'll get used. Making Conventional Missiles more expensive is how I keep from being pestered by a continuous rain of them.
Quote
At the very least, they should have an equal chance of lowering the land, or lowering one side and raising the other.
Just as unrealistic, but more fun, would be if they caused a volcano to erupt, complete with active lava flows that damage units crossing them ;lol
Since game mechanically a Planet Buster lowers land, they surely figured you have the missile based editing tools at your disposal to do whatever you wish.
Post by: bvanevery on May 29, 2019, 09:26:51 PM
So, I'm not happy that Tectonic Missiles become pretty cheap at the end of the game, but it's not worth fighting the cost formulas at the modding level. If I were committed to shipping a binary patch, and I'm not, I'd definitely put changing these formulas on the list of things to tweak, along with probe team takeover costs.
apocalyptic inventory |
MY 2399. I have 41 Singularity Planet Busters in my arsenal. It's time to launch! However this is going to be a bit of a hybrid finish.
I'm starting to understand what it means to completely overkill a game, as last turn I kicked Zhakarov off his continent by conventional means alone. I used Singularity troops to do it, but nothing stronger than a R-Bolt. Mindworms that I had Psi Gated to the front, were just as effective at clearing his cities. Which definitely makes me wonder about bothering to build expensive units. I didn't build new forces to make my invasion, I just used my standing forces. I guess I was feeling overprotective earlier, and a series of expensive cash upgrades made those units more effective over time.
I belatedly remembered that I didn't need to research anything anymore, so I switched my budget to 70-20-10. I'm making 8900 credits per turn. Now I'm belatedly remembering that I built the Telepathic Matrix, so I'm switching my budget to 80-10-10. Now I'm making 9400 credits per turn.
Between the conventional forces, and the money, I should be able to take the biggest population centers intact. I'll fry the rest. As a precaution for the aftermath, I've been building Pressure Domes everywhere. Planet has already been sinking a lot as is, and it has gotten difficult to track which cities are ready for the flood. So from now on, all of them have to be. I'm also building piles of Empath Trance Gravships to deal with any Locusts that show up. I don't know how effective they will be. If they aren't, I could always just build my own Locusts, which are a lot cheaper.
most of the world |
The game doesn't quite want to show me the whole map at a reasonable blowup. Mainly missing is a continent full of weak Drones. I am the yellow bits. The first thing that's going away is the white bits, since I'm at war with them. That shouldn't actually take all that many nukes, as it's just some sea bases and the blast radius is 4.
Post by: bvanevery on May 29, 2019, 10:12:35 PM
witness the conflagration |
Everyone declares war on me. Zhakarov has no nukes, so I don't need to worry about him retaliating. Free Drones have 1 Quantum Planet Buster. Spartans don't have any, I think I destroyed their limited inventory in a ground assault awhile back. The Peacekeepers somehow lost 7 Quantum Planet Busters. Wonder how they managed that? The Believers have 1 Fission Planet Buster and somehow lost 13. The Usurpers are extinct. Well it's not going to take much to end everyone's ability to resist!
seabase schmeebase |
So far I've got good groupings on the destroyed cities. To my knowledge I haven't wiped anyone but the University. But I'm not checking for units inside cities before I light them up, nor for innocent units within within the rather large blast radius. But hey there are no innocents anymore! We will follow in the footsteps of Daenerys Targaryen and 'liberate' them all!
close to port |
I have to be careful what I shoot at. Some of these cities are close enough to my own to take them out in the blast. I'm going to need Marines, ships, air units coming from Psi Gates, something, to clean up the few stragglers.
tight grouping |
I've gotta show the before and after of this one.
the one that got away |
So far my challenge has been to navigate my missiles to the farthest extent of their 41 square range. They can stay aloft forever, but it's better to strike targets in 1 turn than 2 turns. Things might get interesting if the 2 enemy Planet Busters are not within range of my own first strike. But that's what Psi Gates are for!
Post by: bvanevery on May 29, 2019, 10:53:32 PM
choose your neighbors carefully |
The University is down to scraps, with only a few isolated cities here and there rather than groupings. I have 37 missiles remaining! Man can these things cover. I guess it's what I've been missing all these years, and I'd probably continue to, if the sunspots hadn't arrived. Now I can't kill University Base and others without hitting someone 'innocent'. Oh wait, there are no innocents. Let's liberate them!
corner shot |
I clicked on the wrong city when measuring my distances, so now I have 1 PB aloft that doesn't have a target yet. Wouldn't you feel lucky if you lived in Theta Sector? Of course there's more than one Theta Sector so the name alone can't protect you.
divine intervention |
Pity about the Uranium Flats. They were sinking anyways, and what's left will be even more radioactive!
Jehovah is merciful |
This is a lot like bowling. It's even like the old bowling video games, because I have to push the Prnt Scrn button at just the right time to capture the mushroom clouds going up.
Spartans get their turn |
I don't have anything against them lately but eh, range. It's easiest to take out the cities nearest me, using the missiles from my rearmost cities. They were in the way of me wiping the Believers. Who were in the way of me wiping the University. I'm following the continental outlines man! If they wanted safety they should have settled differently.
that's a tall one |
You can see it looks a little intimidating when done near your own cities.
Post by: Vidsek on May 29, 2019, 11:04:53 PM
Post by: bvanevery on May 29, 2019, 11:10:23 PM
d'oh! |
I forgot that the Free Drones are the only faction to deploy an Orbital Defense Pod. They had a few more a long time ago, but they lost them attacking my ODPs I think. Pity, I had made all these Conventional Missiles to fool the ODP into discharging. Totally forgot to do it.
d'oh! d'oh! |
I guess my orbital kung fu is weak. I didn't realize they got another chance with an expended ODP. At least they can't do it again. That's 2 of my precious PBs they wasted. I only have 30 left, how am I ever going to destroy the world at this rate?!? :'(
die properly |
By careful targeting I got 3 mining platforms out of the deal too. I could have taken out more cities by hitting an Isle at sea, but I wanted the mines. Also it would take a 2nd nuke to clear the southern cities anyways, so I couldn't actually save on my missile count. You just gotta feel the edge of your borders man!
remnants be gone |
3 more mines out of that one too.
Post by: bvanevery on May 29, 2019, 11:33:31 PM
keep your mindworms tidy |
The Free Drones lost an isolated city because they left one of their mindworms lazing about. I was trying to destroy the Believers but couldn't resist the opportunity to include them in the blast radius.
vapor hole |
I wonder if I'll capture every frame of the animation by the time I'm done with this.
when does Planet get pissed |
25 nukes remaining. I'm starting to think this won't be enough to do the job. I'm ok with mopping up conventionally. Gives Planet a chance to have a say in the matter.
Isle of the very deep |
I have finally located the Believer city with the nuke in it. It's to the north. I didn't like the city groupings, as the best spread would hit a Peacekeeper city. I think I've previously avoided committing any atrocities against them, and would prefer to save them for a conventional cleanup since they're farthest away. Although for all I know, some of their stray units could be collateral damage already and it may not matter. Anyways a stray Isle gave me the targeting I needed on 3 cities.
and now their nuke is ended |
Only the Free Drone nuke remains.
Post by: bvanevery on May 30, 2019, 12:01:54 AM
peaceful sea chain |
Ah what the heck, I can't resist a good grouping! They're allied with the Spartans and the University and have probably already gotten one of their units fried anyways.
poof |
I'd like to think that by destroying the smallest, most inconvenient cities, I'm sparing lives.
the most flat Isle |
There was nothing out there. I got clicking on the arrow keys too fast, trying to hustle my nuke up north, and ran into an Isle. 1st time I've made that mistake. I'll try to slow down now. Maybe it had to do with the cup of coffee I started drinking. 20 nukes left, so I've expended half my inventory.
proper |
You know I've been Democratic most of the game. Yet Lal has been a jerk for a very long time. It just goes to show how wound up people are around here.
bank shot |
as in the bank of a river. Or maybe that's the ocean. The big city had the Free Drone nuke in it, so that's that!
Post by: Buster's Uncle on May 30, 2019, 12:24:25 AM
Post by: bvanevery on May 30, 2019, 12:27:54 AM
orange roughy |
Friends don't let friends grow up to be mindworms.
makin' craters |
try to say goodbye |
tip tap |
The Free Drones are roaming so many units around in their hinterland, that I can almost count on a unit to be in the perfect position to take out the maximum number of cities.
Monsoon crater |
The ecological loss caused midlevel executives the world over to weep profusely. Oh they had the most delicious fruits! But we need stable markets and can't very well have this random violence the other factions are constantly precipitating. It's as though they don't basically respect the strength of our balance sheets.
Post by: bvanevery on May 30, 2019, 12:45:21 AM
ding dong |
it's like basketball |
just tip it in |
tiddlywinks |
I've used Psi Gates to completely devastate the Drones, whose continent was farthest away from me. I have 9 PBs remaining and it's down to last choices. The Peacekeepers are the only faction with a substantial number of cities remaining. The Spartans have more than one would expect, by virtue of them being scattered and small to begin with. Otherwise, it's crumbs. The humans other than myself are done for.
Post by: bvanevery on May 30, 2019, 01:10:59 AM
we don' need no steenkin' coast |
tiptoe through the fungus |
yippie kai yai yay |
blueberry ghost |
I've run out of PBs that can pass through Psi Gates, since they stop their movement upon entering a new city. I can only gate them when they start in a city with a gate, and only 1 can pass through per turn. Some cities had multiple PBs and didn't manage to find a good target grouping within immediate range, so that's that. I've decided to expend my remaining nukes on scraps close to home, rather than bother with saving them for next turn.
Post by: bvanevery on May 30, 2019, 01:45:11 AM
don't stand next to the Former |
trying to be fair |
blubber |
whoosh |
I blew up 1 more city, but spaced out saving the screenshot of it. Well it's not like I don't have enough nuke porn! Sorry if the positions tend to look the same. Some lessons here about the entertainment value of holocaust photos. Might be interesting to design a game that features prurient screenshots of things dying.
I still haven't finished my turn. Next phase is mopping up the Peacekeepers using conventional forces. I won't be able to eliminate them as I don't have enough naval, air, or gravship units and I'm out of nukes. But close enough!
Post by: bvanevery on May 30, 2019, 03:37:37 AM
democratic remnant |
I kicked Lal in the teeth a little bit more, but my Conventional Missiles couldn't reach any targets. I left them hovering, on the presumption that Lal's air force is toast, if he ever had one. I could have bought the big city but balked at spending 9K on it. Even with my wealth, that's a lot. What you're seeing here is mostly what Lal has left, aside from a few small sea bases offscreen. Other factions have hardly anything left at all, 1 to 3 cities, and I thought some had none. Maybe when I start my next turn I'll get some Faction Eradicated notices.
energetic march of capitalism |
I'm actually Green but it's the thought that counts. Green actually makes me more money, I think partly from the Manifold Harmonics, partly from +1 JUSTICE, and partly because you don't get much (any?) Commerce from factions in a Truce. The world is a little more yellow from my conventional takeovers. Mostly what's notable about the world now, is what's missing.
most of the world |
Here is what it used to look like. I don't know what kind of flooding I'll get next year. I changed my Gravship production to make an assortment of units of different costs, so that almost everything will complete next year. I will also get 3 more nukes. Even if the whole map becomes mindworm hell, this should be enough to wipe out all remaining humans and declare a Conquest victory. As long as there isn't some rule about surviving "one more turn" before being handed the victory award. The amount of eco-damage my cities are now projected to have, is quite frightening. Previously most of my cities did no damage, and a tiny number were in the teens. Now the highest I see is 116, from dropping all these nukes.
Post by: Vidsek on May 30, 2019, 12:16:48 PM
Now I'm eagerly awaiting the results of triple digit eco damage :danc: Bring it on!!
Post by: ChaDawnFanatic on May 30, 2019, 05:06:26 PM
;zak;
Post by: bvanevery on May 30, 2019, 05:46:24 PM
red tide of the apocalypse |
MY 2400. I count 13 huge fungal pops, almost all in my home territory. However there are no stacks of Locusts, meaning I've already faced massively worse earlier in the game. I made all these Gravship units expecting to be attacked that way again. By comparison, this is a cakewalk that's going to make me a lot of money. At least this turn, I can certainly afford to toy with the humans however I like. This turn pretty much proves that annihilation by Singularity Planet Busters is quite winnable.
If all of these pops had been stacks of 64 Locusts, like I got before, I would be worried. The problem with a Locust stack is you can't just kill them all in one shot, you have to kill every single one of them. Generally speaking you can't, so you have to just sit there taking hits. I survived a few attacks like that earlier, like maybe 3 in one turn, by stocking up on defenders in the affected cities. My Neural Amplifier and Trance 12-Res AAA units do hold up rather well to the abuse, but multiple such units are needed to hold the line. If lots of cities are attacked at once, it becomes difficult to move enough units into position. I've also relied on Trance Formers to help with the resistance.
I'm not fooling around with these mindworms. I have a rather large reserve of mindworms, back from when I occasionally captured massive stacks of 32 units at a time, during those earlier embroilments. It is only the difficulty of moving them from continent to continent, that kept me from sweeping the globe with them. I just send them out to summarily slaughter the big stacks. I will likely have enough reserves from unaffected cities, and enough of a rail network, to mop up all the single unit stragglers.
I only have 2 cities that need Pressure Domes. The Peacekeepers were expecting a flood as well, so all those conquered cities have them. I don't need new military units, so I'm making Temples of Planet everywhere I haven't. Otherwise, more Gravships.
Victory over Planet |
The mindworm scourge has been eradicated. I used all of my own mindworm reserves to do it, leaving them out on the fungus to obstruct any invisible stragglers. I also used the various fission units that have been hanging around since the beginning of the game for this purpose, a few hovertanks here and there, and some of my new Gravships. I find that the expensive R-Bolt Empath Gravships don't do any better than plain Phase Gravships. Maybe that's due to the Dream Twister and my +3 PLANET rating?
Anyways this was rather easy, as long as I don't have to keep doing it! Even if I did have to, my defensive units are still unscathed, and I have lots of Gravships to obstruct the movement of enemy ground units. It's only Locusts I fear.
The moment of reckoning comes now. Don't worry, Zhakarov is gonna get what's comin' to him!
:dunno: ;liftoff ;nuke; ;nuke; ;nuke;
Post by: bvanevery on May 31, 2019, 04:10:52 AM
another one bites the dust |
I fibbed a bit. The 2 nukes are really for Lal, as he's the only one with city groupings left. I took over his last large land city with conventional forces. This grouping of 4 cities in the ocean goes bye bye. I take various sea bases conventionally from various factions, using Psi Gates to move a few units around.
what can you do with an earthquake missile |
Disdaining subtlety, I use a Tectonic Missile to lift one city out of the water to make it easier to conquer. I'm all about expending the existing inventory.
hey hey ups and downs |
Oh good grief, how did I miss? I thought Singularity missiles had a radius of 4. Must be 3. It wasn't a Quantum missile, I just checked on that. Oh well. This could cost me another turn of futzing.
[Limit reached]
I thought that was it for Peacekeeper cities. Where is he hiding the last one? Maybe there's just a turn delay until I get the faction eradicated message, when using a nuke.
Post by: bvanevery on May 31, 2019, 04:45:23 AM
The 2nd most dead faction! The Usurpers got there first a long time ago. Or maybe it's 3rd most dead. I seem to have wiped out the Spartans, and I don't remember getting any notification about that. Maybe it's 4th most dead as I don't see any Peacekeeper cities. Maybe a nuked faction just gets silently removed between turns.
[Limit reached]
I think these 3 University cities are all that's left. I also think I've used up my Gravships this turn, so the mindworms get one more go at me. I've run out of things to do with most of my Formers, and fungus is really high yield now, so I'm plowing over any Flat non-forested terrain and Rocky Mines as I'll get higher yield. A lot of land is Endangered and not worth working on. I have repaired my rail networks sufficiently for the next onslaught.
[Limit reached]
I had 1 nuke I forgot about. Only 1 city was left on the map that wasn't in radius of my own, so I used it.
[Limit reached]
Some combo of my income and killing mindworms has elevated my coffers to 58,696 credits. I check on the cost of Cornering the Energy Market for sake of form. I guess when there are only 2 enemy cities left, not much! I won't bother to spend the money to get it started, since I will not be waiting for it to complete.
Post by: bvanevery on May 31, 2019, 05:29:59 AM
The death of the Peacekeepers was indeed delayed because of the nuke. Good way to go I suppose.
[Limit reached]
You wouldn't know from all the fungal popping that I just built umpteen zillion Temples of Planet. This turn I'm building umpteen zillion Tachyon Fields that I've otherwise never cared about or had a need for. Nor will I now. I'm just wasting time with all the forced inter-turn updates.
[Limit reached]
One city got trashed by piles and piles of Isles that I never even saw coming. I don't think there was even a fungal patch to mark their existence. This demonstrates that down in the water is a pretty dangerous place to be. You may not notice one of the stacks on land, but at least you can easily block movement on land.
[Limit reached]
Time to end this nonsense. I'm not spending a bazillion mouseclicks on mindworms, Formers, etc. I attack the last 2 cities with Gravships I had moving into theater last turn. I gate an Isle in to take one of the cities. Now for the final Gravship conquest.
[Limit reached]
So, about 45 Singularity Planet Busters was enough to take over the world, plus a smattering of conventional forces, plus a hefty anti-mindworm garrison. Doable. I think 60 SPBs would have been enough to do it in 1 turn. If I had to use Quantum or Fusion PBs it would take more, due to less opportunity to wipe out city groupings.
[Limit reached]
Does Morgan's logo have MORGAN in it ordinarily? I can't remember. I am using someone's sound mod, but I don't remember changing any of the visuals.
[Limit reached]
To me the most noticeable things about this map, are the absence of other factions, the disparate continental groupings due to orbital invasion, and the craters.
The moral of this story is, don't let sunspots get you down! And that I seriously overproduce empires when victory was achievable earlier by violent means. Maybe I shouldn't fear mindworms and flooding quite so much, although those giant stacks might have gotten old to deal with from turn to turn.
That's the most nukes I've ever used in a game. Let alone lived to tell about it!
Post by: bvanevery on May 31, 2019, 05:58:59 AM
Changed from version 1.30 to 1.31:
- PROBECOST: increased to 150 for all factions, except the Data Angels which is increased to 100. The cost of mind controlling enemy units and cities is increased because it's way too easy for a nearly defeated AI to liberate cities with a probe team. Mind controlling cities has never been realistically proportional to the number of military units in them.
- AAA bonus vs. air units: reduced to +50%. Weapon vs. armor ratios are lower, and Sensor Arrays are tougher. Units shouldn't be invulnerable to air attacks. Meant to do this in 1.30 but changed the wrong setting, "Air superiority unit vs. air unit". That one might as well be reduced to +50% as well, so I'm not changing it back.
- Comm Jammer: changed description text to match actual +25% setting.
- Black Hole Gun: reduced to cost 61. This causes a Singularity infantry unit with Inertial Damping armor to cost 600, equal to 2 Planet Busters. Upper end costs were getting absurd.
- Singularity Laser: reduced to cost 51. This causes a Singularity infantry unit with Inertial Damping armor to cost 500.
- Graviton Gun: reduced to cost 45. This causes a Singularity infantry unit with Inertial Damping armor to cost 450.
- Missile Chassis: now costs 1. This makes it easier to calculate the final cost of a missile weapon across all the different reactor sizes. Previously the fission version of a Conventional Missile was exorbitantly expensive. The cost of Conventional, Fungal, and Tectonic missiles vary with reactor size, but Planet Busters do not, so they did not need to be changed.
- Conventional Payload: now costs 64. Conventional Missiles now cost 150, 120, 80, and 60 with increasing reactor size.
- Fungal Payload: now costs 32. Fungal Missiles now cost 150, 120, 80, and 60 with increasing reactor size.
- Tectonic Payload: now costs 80. Tectonic Missiles now cost 400, 300, 200, and 120 with increasing reactor size. The cost of Raising/Lowering Land with Formers was doubled to make it a more weighty choice, so this is increased as well.
- Unity Foil predefined unit: now called Unity Transport. Removed Slow ability. Added Deep Radar ability. I think Slow ships are a completely pointless play mechanic. The game is enough of a drag pushing around units as is.
- Unity Gunship: added Deep Radar ability.
The attachment limit per post is 5, and I eventually ran out of room at the top of the thread. Consequently, this becomes the new home of version 1.31. It was downloaded 145 times before I moved it here.
Post by: Vidsek on May 31, 2019, 07:22:02 AM
When you release monthly at the end of the month it's a great reminder to me that it is time to pay the mortgage.
For the Data Angels, a PROBECOST of 100 is the same as not specifying a probecost. I suppose putting it in does keep the format consistent, so I'll leave it in their file for the Yitzi/AIG Merge.
When you say: "Comm Jammer: changed description text to match actual +25% setting", where did you edit that text? In alphax? Or in another text file?
Post by: bvanevery on May 31, 2019, 12:07:33 PM
Data Angels is for consistency. It is a change from the stock alphax.txt.
Comm Jammer change is of course in alphax.txt. That sort of thing does not appear in faction.txt files and I've never shipped any kind of file other than alphax.txt and faction.txt.
Post by: bvanevery on June 01, 2019, 05:53:09 AM
Then the game says all my research goes bye bye because I didn't build any Network Nodes. So much for doing what I want to do, to save mouseclicks, as opposed to what the game wants me to do. Ok, I start building Network Nodes everywhere. At least I have to wait for my rails to get completed before launching an invasion anyways.
I have a hard time stealing techs and some Secret Projects slip past me. I accumulate massive amounts of money because of all the mindworm faffing around. Even finally finishing up the Xenoempathy Dome, I have like a 1400 credit surplus, or maybe it's 1700, I forget. Then the game decides it would be fun to take 75% of my money away in a market crash, leaving me with 400 credits. That's an entire Secret Project's worth of money.
I rage quit and flame this game. I swear I'd delete it if I weren't a mod author. A year spent modding, and it's still a complete POS here and there. Devs in the late 90 were partly morons, or just mean, same diff. Hey, let's take stuff away from the player! They won't mind. The game is so scintillatingly well paced, with all the !#$@# units to move around, that everyone just wants whatever progress they've made to be summarily wiped out. This isn't even a roguelike with a deep dungeon dive, where at least you know the basic play mechanic is "press your luck". No, this is just random grief, because, devs.
I would need to be able to mod the random events to not be driven crazy by this. Turning them all off is not what I want. I want to get rid of the ridiculously punishing ones.
And probe teams still suck too. They suck rocks. I've tried to tweak that in 1.31, who knows if it helps. Probably will irritate someone that I made everything else expensive, just to keep the cheap city takeover nonsense from happening. Another area where I'd totally gut the formulas if I could.
But I don't think it's worth trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. There is this point of diminishing returns. Debatable whether I passed it awhile ago, but at least all the changes I've made, I felt should be made.
Still can't solve the core problem that it's SMAC. The game takes forever. I've made the progressions more fair / balanced I think, so there aren't golden abuse paths through the game, but that also makes things take longer. Which sucks.
For a year's effort, I've made better SMAC. But it's still SMAC. There are still places where this game is junk.
Better SMAC. It's driving me crazy. And I don't remember any of the binary patches actually addressing these issues that seriously bug me.
Post by: vonbach on June 01, 2019, 10:29:03 PM
Post by: bvanevery on June 02, 2019, 07:23:32 AM
I'm brooding over how to approach my next project. Looking at other games' art direction for maps is on my list of things to do. I think a game needs to be more than a map, it needs to be a narrative vehicle. I really hate the full screen text interludes in SMAC. They're not all that well written, and they interrupt everything with this big screen of text. I want something integrated, where the game doesn't stop just because you are reading text.
Post by: bvanevery on June 02, 2019, 08:15:59 AM
Now I'm playing as the University. I haven't botched anything yet, nor been rudely victimized. I almost blew a gasket when this foil probe team took over my sea base, since I just did the mod to make that much harder to do. Then I realized it's the Data Angels and this is their thing. So I guess I have to forgive it. They declared war on me awhile ago, but they're so far away I hardly know where they are. At least this will give me the opportunity to infiltrate them and steal a tech.
I wasn't sitting still on probe team garrisoning either. Many cities have them. Just hadn't gotten to that one. That foil probe team traveled a long way to bother me. The AI is like that. I can hardly equal its ponderousness. I have like 3 foil probe teams I'm pushing around, trying to infiltrate distant targets, and it's a chore.
Post by: bvanevery on June 03, 2019, 09:54:02 AM
I've never had an AI skip straight from war to a Treaty, nor offer to give me a base before. The base in question is one I took from the Pirates, then they took it from me. So that makes it laundered, "my" base. Cha Dawn's claim that he "never wanted" this war is a bold face lie! I've been Democratic for a very long time, and in my mod he's the Fundamentalist yahoo of the game. I'm just becoming technologically much more advanced than most factions, let alone the Cult of Planet.
I'm happy to make peace so I can go after the real enemies, the Data Angels. Or the Free Drones, I haven't really been paying attention. They're off on their side of the world, I'm off on mine. I've built Flechette Defenses in all my cities and some Orbital Defense Pods. I've got the Space Elevator so I could do orbital insertion warfare against them. I don't have great productivity though, as I've been studiously avoiding building factories. Global warming has started anyways, mainly due to the Drones.
At 6:30 AM I ended up quitting that game. I was in the lead, but all I was doing was sitting around waiting to save enough money to build Secret Projects. Having a research advantage means I get first shot at all the SPs. However they're so expensive that it's not actually wise to try to get them all. Old ingrained compulsions are hard to ignore though. I didn't build any factories out of fear of flooding. But even as it was, the Free Drones caused some flooding anyways. I'm wondering if it's a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation.
Post by: bvanevery on June 04, 2019, 06:57:00 AM
Wow, I just realized how boring the Believers look on the Social Engineering screen! One might infer that all they believe in, is money. I've had all sorts of reasons not to give them various bonuses anymore. Individually they've all seemed like good decisions. Collectively, this is a very dry sandwich! No mayo.
[Limit reached]
The situation doesn't look nearly as bad in the faction's datalinks entry. They've got a middle of the road amount of text describing them. The Spartans are the worst, having a truly spartan amount of text describing them.
[Limit reached]
I think I considered giving the Believers +1 SUPPORT, but then I decided against it. No factions get a SUPPORT bonus or penalty in my mod. I think I made other changes and said, let's see how this faction plays. I've seen the AI play it a few times recently and I can't remember if it does well or badly. A clear pattern didn't stand out in any event. What I haven't done much of, is actually play the Believers myself. I generally allow random factions to be handed to me, and it hasn't come up in awhile. I guess I'll see whether anything needs adjustment.
Post by: bvanevery on June 05, 2019, 12:10:37 AM
In my game as the Believers, I'm doing ok but I'm not dominating. The Caretakers and I are in a temporary stalemate. That surprises me, but they had enough land and production to get a few SPs done, including the Xenoempathy Dome. I've chosen not to make new offensive units lately, out of a perceived need to compete with other wealthy factions at a distance, such as the Morganites. The Caretakers and I have traded a lot of mindworm spam, as I decided to go Democratic Green and have mostly relied on mindworms for my fighting. I didn't produce Trance units to advance on my front, so it's been mostly attrition.
Meanwhile other factions have done well on other parts of the map. For instance, the Morganites finished the Planetary Energy Grid. Even though I stole the tech for it just in time, I did not have enough Artifacts to finish it off. That's saying a lot because I had 7 Artifacts in reserve, and I'd started a SP in the base awhile ago, and it still wasn't enough. It costs 500 now, which is hard to come up with in the early midgame. I took the Maritime Control Center instead, which "only" costs 400. That has been useful for fishing Artifacts and stealing techs. I definitely like the new non-slow Unity Foils with Deep Radar, it's a much more civilized way to clear the oceans.
Lal is my neighbor and just decided to ally with me. Crossing my border, he gifted me 28 units, which would have been very useful if I could have supported them. I couldn't, so I spent a massive amount of time clicking as they all died. I got 5 units since my border city wasn't particularly minerals rich. If I were a binary patching guru, I'd seriously like to change the free unit dumping behavior.
The spread of SPs is surprisingly even in this game. I think it's a consequence of having raised prices on so many of them. One can only tend to amass so many Artifacts in the early game as other concerns like defending yourself arise. The spread:
- Believers (myself) - Maritime Control Center, Ascetic Virtues, Command Nexus. All from theft of tech.
- Caretakers (my land enemy) - Xenoempathy Dome, Human Genome Project
- Morganites (my sea enemy at a distance) - Weather Paradigm, Planetary Energy Grid, Merchant Exchange
- Cyborgs (far away ally) - Planetary Transit System, Virtual World
- Spartans (Treaty at a distance) - Citizens' Defense Force
- Peackeepers (adjacent ally) - none
- Pirates (Treaty at a distance) - none
The Morganites and the Spartans have both been working on the Hunter-Seeker Algorithm. It is as expensive as the Planetary Energy Grid, so even if I steal the tech, the odds of me completing the project are not good. I have found that the new regime of expensive SPs, allows me typically to get 1 or 2 of them, but the others slip through my fingers. Which is fine, I think that means it's balanced. If I ever do get ahead in the later midgame though, then there comes a point at which I just sweep the table with the rest. Although, that can get very boring to pursue because they are so expensive. I question whether it's worth bothering with, vs. conquering neighbors outright.
Post by: bvanevery on June 10, 2019, 03:20:43 AM
[Limit reached]
I got rid of Copters and put Locusts on the Copter chassis a long time ago. This allows Gravships to have their own higher movement rate. I have Gravships somewhat earlier in the game and see them as somewhat taking over the role of Copters. They can't fire multiple times like a Copter, which is pretty much the point in my opinion, as I think that's completely overpowered. I did have slower Copters for awhile, to reduce the number of attacks available, but I was never satisfied with that. In the real world I'd never make Copters because they were crippled.
Now I've finally realized that the Copter chassis is vulnerable to ground attack! It's a lot easier to survive a stack of Locusts than I realized. I doubt that's a bad thing, as stacks of 32 Locusts are pretty overwhelming. I haven't verified whether all the Locusts in the stack die or not. This game hasn't had any flooding yet.
Post by: Geo on June 10, 2019, 11:32:05 AM
Now I've finally realized that the Copter chassis is vulnerable to ground attack! It's a lot easier to survive a stack of Locusts than I realized. I doubt that's a bad thing, as stacks of 32 Locusts are pretty overwhelming. I haven't verified whether all the Locusts in the stack die or not. This game hasn't had any flooding yet.
So, this means that Locust stacks spawn at the other end of the map would never reach you?
Post by: bvanevery on June 10, 2019, 06:15:19 PM
Actually it turns out my current Copters already don't use fuel. Looks like I lifted the settings from Gravship when I made the change, then adjusted movement accordingly. When the 3rd number is 0, it means "don't use fuel".
Code: [Select]
Copter,M1, Chopper,M1, Rotor,M1, Lifter,M1, 8, 2, 0, 0, 1, 8, Disable, Gunship,M1, Warbird,M1,
Gravship,M1, Skybase,M1, Antigrav,M1, Skyfort,M1, 12, 2, 0, 0, 1, 30, Gravity, Deathsphere,M1, Doomwall,M1,
I wonder if the chassis even matters? Well it must matter some because the Copter chassis made them vulnerable to ground attacks. I wonder if I can make a fake chassis for them, freeing up Copters for something else? Not that I really have any use for Copters, but it was disappointing to get rid of the unit artwork.
Well I can't just add another #CHASSIS. I tried adding a Swarm chassis, and the game barfed.
One thing weird about Locusts is they use icon based artwork, but they don't have an icon number for the artwork. Actually this is true of Isles as well. The original SMACX predefined unit entries are:
Code: [Select]
Mind Worms, Infantry, Psi, Psi, 1, 5, 0, CentEmp, 3, 00000000000000000000000000
Isle of the Deep, Foil, Psi, Psi, 7, 8, 4, CentMed, -1, 00000000000000000000000000
Locusts of Chiron, Gravship, Psi, Psi, 4,10, 0, CentGen, -1, 00000000000000000000100000I wonder if I could implement a Locust as a Slow Gravship, maybe even with a Transport on it, and give it a capacity of 0? The problem with using a Slow Needlejet as a chassis, is they consume fuel and a Locust doesn't. A Gravship doesn't have that problem, but the speed difference is large, 12 vs. 8. I don't really want Locusts to be as fast as Needlejets. I think the main limitation of indigenous life forms, is they don't have much range. That should stay true, or else it would become the obvious uber kill unit of the game.
Oops, the Transport idea doesn't work. Sure it slows an air unit down a lot, but it also takes the weapon slot. The Locust wouldn't be able to attack. Having only -1 movement from Slow isn't enough.
Post by: Vidsek on June 11, 2019, 07:44:18 PM
Post by: bvanevery on June 11, 2019, 11:30:27 PM
I'm starting to question the cost I've assigned to the Needlejet chassis. I spent almost 400 minerals to make Gas Wave Fusion Chaos Needlejets. It went up against some modest unit in an enemy city and died. I could have made 1.33 nukes for that level of manufacturing output. It took a long time to make too, because I stuck to Explore Conquer focus and never learned how to make factories. Didn't have to deal with global warming at least, so far.
Post by: Vidsek on June 12, 2019, 09:54:52 AM
Post by: bvanevery on June 17, 2019, 06:12:09 AM
I finally finished that game with the Believers. Manufacturing costs were difficult to get through. I never built Genejack Factories or Robotic Assembly Plants, for fear of global warming. There was a small amount anyways, but not anything remotely like the difficulty I've been through in other games. I spent a lot of time waiting for stuff to complete. I probably spent way too much time making facilities to make people happy. My total number of cities was quite large, I'm pretty sure in excess of 60 by the time I was done. I did not pursue a policy of conquest, but rather, knocking off a city to make enemies sign a Truce. I couldn't ever get them to sign Treaties though.
I built a land bridge to the Morganites. My invasion of them was slow, but eventually forced by their repeated Vendettas against me. I also built a land bridge to the Cybernetic Consciousness. Once I had taken all of their Secret Projects, nobody could oppose me. Not that they really had any offensive capability against me anyways. You could argue that I toyed with them and took a very long time to do so. I'm not sure what a faster approach would have been. Maybe next game I'll try to find out. At the end of the game I completed a land bridge to the Spartans but not a rail into their territory. I realized the population balance had finally shifted due to having the Cloning Vats running for a long time, and taking over Morganic cities. I finally had the votes so I brought this to an end.
I almost completed the tech tree. I was starting on Orbital Power Transmitters, thinking perhaps I'd win economically. Generally I kept casting around for a production strategy that would speed things along. I never really found one. Just the Vats had eventually been running long enough.
I think I'll be more brave about global warming next time. And less interested in making people happy. I definitely don't want to make all those buildings again.
I think I'll have an AI Believers opponent. I need to see if they're capable of posing a threat as is, or if they need +1 SUPPORT to give them more teeth. Nobody currently gets a SUPPORT bonus.
Post by: bvanevery on June 17, 2019, 07:09:46 PM
I think this game was mostly determined by my starting position and lack of willingness to be aggressive. Now I know more about the Hive's potential growth rate. I did a small naval landing on the other continents and did find Heavy Transport to be a useful early game ability. I was building a land bridge using the Weather Paradigm when I quit. I'd like to see a game where the Believers get an ordinary start rather than an exceptional one.
Post by: bvanevery on June 20, 2019, 05:45:45 AM
Then I discovered I had built a city within 2 squares of a Believer city! I've held the city against overwhelming artillery fire. I started with ships defending it, but they eventually got blown away. Now it survives mainly because the AI is a bit dense. It shells and shells and shells but doesn't come to kill it.
[Limit reached]
MY 2226. Datatech and Believer foil probe teams have been bothering my shores. I've never had the production time to build defensive probe teams. My empire is too large, and it was difficult to get what I've got under control. The Spartans have no special gift for larger empires or productivity. I'm finding they simply have problems getting anything done on a Huge map, at least when I'm playing them. Not sure about when the AI plays them.
The Believers take over a sea base that I just built a few turns ago. It's 3 squares from my capitol and 25 squares from theirs. I have 543 credits and they have 330 credits after the takeover, so they didn't have a money advantage over me. They are Fundamentalist so have +1 PROBE. I am a Socialist Police State. I have +0 JUSTICE and whatever Bureaucracy penalty I'm suffering. The +50% mind control cost increase for version 1.31 of my mod is in effect.
I wonder if a lack of JUSTICE makes bases overly vulnerable to probe teams? Something to watch. Negative JUSTICE is likely if one chooses Police State and Power. I did not have any problems with that last game though. I also had very few sea bases. Generally speaking my other cities have had time to build Children's Creches, but not this brand new city.
I can now steal tech from this base, but I can't mind control it back. My Believers are immune! Oh well, coastal bases is what Marines are for.
Last game I was shocked when the AI actually attacked one of my home sea bases with Marines on a Transport. I countered by hijacking the Transport with a Marine Foil.
I contemplate giving the Spartans something more than +2 MORALE. Granted they also have free prototypes, which is a much bigger deal in my mod than in the stock game. I'd like to give them a combat ability, but I don't think there's anything appropriate left to give anyone. A defensive bonus would fit their lore of being so good at holding out when faced with superior force. I've always found that claim to be a bit of a joke in the real world.
Heck, last game I was fighting Conqueror Marr and it was pretty much dead even fights. Elite vs. Elite. The difference was they needed to be Fundamentalist to get +4 MORALE, and I could get by with Police State. Both of us chose Power.
I suppose I could give them IMMUNITY to the negative effects of Power. Doesn't help me right now though! Takes awhile to get Advanced Military Algorithms in my mod.
I finally lost motivation in MY 2287. Almost 6 AM. I was slightly ahead of everyone on the graph, with only the Data Angels sitting on the Monsoon Jungle as the main contenders. The Cyborgs managed to build the Hunter-Seeker Algorithm because Secret Projects are so expensive that that sort of thing just happens. I was building this massive air force that never arrived, because planes are expensive, and I'd keep getting technology upgrades to make them even more expensive.
My Elite troops were not that effective against the Data Angels troops, which were also peppered with Elite units. They were Fundamentalist Socialist Power, which gives them +3 MORALE. It would only take a bit of combat experience or a Monolith upgrade to make their units Elite.
I did Democratic Capitalist Power, which gave me +4 MORALE. However I can't do that at the start of the game. Without any Build oriented abilities, it takes me much longer to get my core empire developed. Overall I don't think I really have an advantage. Now, maybe I should just be doing Elite 4-1-1 units and forget about the fancy planes and armored units. Still, the Spartans feel weak.
I could give them a free Command Center in every base...
Post by: bvanevery on June 23, 2019, 09:13:41 AM
I got 8-balled behind the Free Drones. I didn't make war on them, partly because it takes forever to get any weapons. Then they declared war on me, and I did a defensive elimination of anything they sent my way. This went on for a long time and eventually we made peace. Meanwhile I got chemical weapons legalized. I wiped out the Usurpers and the Cult of Planet using those. The Believers also got wiped out meanwhile. They were strong for a time, but the Hive was way strong and steamrollered them. I allied with the Gaians. I was a Police State with the Ascetic Virtues and allied with the Hive for a very long time, but then they turned on me. I allied with the Free Drones and completed a rail to Hive territory, built mostly from Domai's previous invasion route into the Usurpers.
The tech needed to raise land took forever to get with my Explore, Conquer focus, but eventually I did get it. Genejack Factories and Subsea Trunklines took even longer to get. I'm only starting to build those now, and I've gutted the core of the Hive empire. I've taken all his Secret Projects. I eliminated all but 1 Planet Buster and I've got a strong Orbital Defense Pod screen, so now I'm making genetic war on the Hive. I've had the capability for a long time, but I held off until I was certain I had his PBs under control.
Now it's genetic mopping up. The Hive empire is massive, the AI has sprawled everywhere. But, the best cities were in the core, sitting on the Monsoon Jungle, and those are all mine. They've all got Punishment Spheres on them. I've developed quite enough cities thank you very much, it's time to dispose of the rest!
Post by: ChaDawnFanatic on June 23, 2019, 08:36:19 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7osbICghaM (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7osbICghaM)
Post by: bvanevery on June 23, 2019, 10:33:48 PM
Post by: Buster's Uncle on June 23, 2019, 11:05:29 PM
Post by: bvanevery on June 24, 2019, 06:20:07 AM
This was a pretty sloppy game from a developmental standpoint. I had a rather small peninsula enclave to begin with, which I surrounded with sea bases. I did achieve tech dominance that way, even having no advantages in that regard. Vertical rather than horizontal development. It was a weird way to do things and invasion of the Free Drones to seize the land would have been more rational.
Another weird thing I did is stick to Explore, Conquer as the AI would have done. This is definitely not optimal when gaining factories is such a major boost midgame. I eventually got those factories built as the game ended.
I was also kind of a chicken for awhile about the atrocities I legalized. I didn't want to take on the Hive because he had nukes. But I probably could have deployed Orbital Defense Pods more quickly than I did.
I came to realize that X units and genetic warfare are not necessary for wiping out cities. I forgot that you can just oBliterate them. I did that a lot at the end of the game, when I had all those Hive cities to clean out. Genetic warfare is mostly good for weakening defending units. It's quicker than artillery.
I still feel dissatisfied with the Spartans, but I'm still not sure what I'd do about it. I feel like trying again, and trying to remember to adopt a more sane opening strategy.
Post by: ChaDawnFanatic on June 24, 2019, 03:50:58 PM
Extremely satisfied so far... ;domai;
Post by: bvanevery on June 25, 2019, 01:50:56 AM
Although I could give them +1 PROBE just because they "don't have enough stuff", that doesn't actually change their real problem, which is early game productivity on Huge maps. The problem is compounded by weapons taking a long time to acquire. I just don't think it's very smart to try to rush anyone immediately, at least on the Huge maps I've been playing on. You'd have to literally start right on top of someone, and that's rare if not impossible.
I did start another Spartan game, mulling over this. The Believers are in the game again, to make sure the AI performance is up to snuff. This time I started on a large land mass at the bottom of the map. The Gaians are to the west, the Believers to the north, and the Hive to the east. There were supply pods all over the place, and I grabbed as many as I could, but I found the AI surprisingly good at grabbing them for themselves. I made peace with all 3 factions. I managed to ally with the Gaians and the Hive, and I have gone Police State Green for now.
The Believers got in a war with the Gaians briefly. I've been trying to cover and develop the large amount of land I've claimed, which is equivalent in size to the other 3 empires. I did not feel ready to stop this project and fight the Believers. Although I did have Lasers and probably could do just fine, I felt it was a distraction from my real ambition, which is fully claiming all my territory and making good roads between everything. So I got the Believers to call it off. Their attitude towards me though is poor, and I do expect war in the near future. I just think I'll be more ready for it when it does finally come. For one thing, I'll actually have an armored Probe defense screen up.
Anyways, I don't have the problem of being 8-balled in this game. In fact, I've got every opportunity to expand my empire to as good a size as anyone could reasonably want, before getting down to the task of slaughtering somebody. I believe what will probably happen, is I'll completely my own empire, the Believers will declare war on me, I'll crush them, and then my empire will double in size.
After that I don't know what will happen. The Peacekeepers and the Cyborgs are both going nuts fairly far away from me. They're building Secret Projects that I can't really do anything about. I don't have the productivity, and the big supply of land based supply pods dried up pretty quickly. I did not get many Artifacts from my poppings, so I can't chuck out even one SP easily. I do have one coastal base with access to probably a world-encompassing ocean, but I've been way too busy jockeying for position on land to do much Artifact fishing. I've been gradually clearing the sea immediately around the base. There's a somewhat long passage to the east that probably turns north and goes around this supercontinent. I do have 1 Transport out making the rounds, but it can only get so far and I haven't managed much yet.
So probably the Peacekeepers and Cyborgs will grab all the Secret Projects between them. Actually the Gaians are making some too, because they're fast at tech and get lots of things started before others can. I have benefited from that actually. I did get a lot of money popping pods, and I bought a lot of tech from the Gaians. In fact I might even be tech dominant, so I can't claim I didn't get anything from popping all the pods. Just not SP raw materials.
I could backstab the Gaians, but at this time would prefer not to. Seems to me it's better to knock off an enemy that's determined to make war with you, than one that isn't.
I took away the Believers' compulsion for Fundamentalist in my mod. These Christians don't have to choose anything, and they could do anything. I did, however, reinstate their Aggressive personality. So a flip side of their non-aligned social choices, is there's no way to butter them up by choosing what they choose! They don't care. I find that the Believers are still dangerous because they're still Aggressive and often do decide to go to war with you eventually. What I'm not sure of, is how well they hold up in combat. At least in this game, we'll be on an equal land resource footing because I wasn't 8-balled behind anyone. We all got an equal share of the land, far as I can tell.
I can probably rely on the Gaians and the Hive not making war on me as long as I'm choosing their politics. Police State Green is actually a pretty reasonable combo at the start of the game. My productivity has definitely increased from the +2 SUPPORT and not having to do much to keep the citizens in line. The net -1 JUSTICE is not that big of a deal. I may not have the highest possible MORALE, but I already start with +2 MORALE, and building up the empire I think is more important on a Huge map. The Spartans aren't really in a position to go nuts until they get Advanced Military Algorithms and can choose Power. Then they've got Elite units coming out of the factory, and those movement 2 infantry can be pretty terrifying with a good weapon on them.
One thing I will do differently this game, is switch to Conquer only once I've gotten enough Explore techs. I really like getting the Ascetic Virtues, as it enables one to play like the Hive with Police State and 2X police effectiveness. However Deirdre is working on it so I may not get it. I also really need Monopole Magnets to make a good land invasion. Doctrine: Initiative might be useful for Artifact fishing but it remains to be seen whether it's essential.
Post by: bvanevery on June 25, 2019, 12:14:24 PM
I could also throw +1 PROBE on the BBQ and call it balanced. I wanted something more directly thematic for them, but 2 minor abilities can make up for the lack of a defensive combat adjustment.
I don't think the Believers need anything. They were the dominant faction of the game for awhile. Even now they are equal with myself and the Peackeepers. The Believers and I are nominally at war, but mostly I've been finishing off the Hive. My alliance with the Gaians fell through when they stole from me. I had to shift a bunch of probe teams towards the Hive to do my invasion, and the Gaians took advantage. That's another reason to give the +1 PROBE.
Had a bleary eyed hiccup where I didn't save and load properly to look at the right values. ROBUST does work as advertized.
Post by: bvanevery on June 25, 2019, 10:08:10 PM
I decided to ditch the +1 PROBE. When ROBUST to JUSTICE, Fundamentalist doesn't have any JUSTICE penalty. That means at the beginning of the game, it's a very attractive choice for the Spartans. -2 RESEARCH, that's it, otherwise it's all bonuses. It puts them at +3 MORALE, and they already get +1 PROBE from it. I don't want the Spartans turning into some overpowered Probe Team faction. They're supposed to be fighting, not sneaking.
[Limit reached]
I'll review my posts since 1.31, but ROBUST is the only change I can think of for 1.32, off the top of my head. If correct, I'll have it out shortly. It's nearly the end of the month and that's the time to kick things out the door.
I suppose I could try to solve the "Locusts are vulnerable to ground attacks" problem. Or I could ignore it. I could put them back on the Gravship chassis and accept that they'll move at the same rate. They would need to be appropriately expensive.
I could reintroduce the Copter as a late game doomsday weapon, even worse than a Gravship. I could ignore that the unit artwork is completely goofy for a late game tech. I really don't want to deal with switching unit artworks around. I can see things going wrong with a user's game installation, and Firaxis' permission to change stuff, only talked about modding the text files. Those might seem like fig leaves, but bear in mind, I don't do binary patches either. I want to keep the "clean legality" of what I'm doing, unless there's a very compelling reason not to.
Maybe I could make the Copter into a suicide missile.
Post by: ChaDawnFanatic on June 25, 2019, 10:18:25 PM
It's been a privilege. ;cha;
Post by: bvanevery on June 26, 2019, 02:47:26 AM
I still think reducing Gravship movement to 10, and then making Locusts a Slow version of a Gravship, is a reasonable idea. Gravships won't be as zippy as I've had them be recently, but they still have the endurance to go all the way across the map. It's also possible to add fuel nanocells and antigrav struts if you really want them to be quick.
This would make the Copter chassis totally unused for anything. So I can decide to make it into a goofy doomsday weapon, or just leave it out of the game entirely.
TBH I don't feel like doing any game testing for Copter balance right now. I think it is inherently not balanced, and it is probably right to leave it out of the game. It's the loss of the unit artwork that saddens me. Reconsidering the fate of the Copter can be saved for a 1.33 release if at all. It's the end of the month and time to kick stuff out the door.
Post by: bvanevery on June 26, 2019, 04:57:31 AM
Changed from version 1.31 to 1.32:
- Spartans: made them ROBUST to JUSTICE penalties. The Spartans need something to keep pace with other factions. They have a huge problem on a Huge map, because they may not start next to anyone they can invade. A faction that is isolated by itself, needs to build their own empire from scratch, and they've got no advantages in this regard. They do poorly compared to other factions at chucking out techs and Secret Projects. They are awesome once they gain Power, as all their units become Elite, but it takes a long time to research Advanced Military Algorithms. It won't happen before midgame, and they need something much earlier to help them develop. They have problems with JUSTICE Penalties, as they tend to choose Fundamentalist or Police State, as well as Power. In the beginning they can now choose Fundamentalist with no JUSTICE penalty. In midgame, taking at most a -2 JUSTICE penalty will help them conquer more cities before serious economic consequences ensue.
Giving them free Command Centers would be overpowered. The game lore says they're supposed to be able to stand up to tons of poorly trained enemy troops, but I've never found that to be true in the real world. I would have preferred a defensive bonus, to make it true! However, there is no mechanism to implement that.
- Locusts of Chiron: put them back on the Gravship chassis. Made them Slow. This results in a net speed of 10, which is a +2 increase. This frees up the Copter chassis to be used for something else. Needlejets move 12 and I want Locusts to be slower than them. 10 is good enough. Using up the Copter chassis just to get the speed down to 8, isn't worth it. I've also found speed 8 to be a bit of a drag to push around on Huge maps.
The attachment limit per post is 5, and I eventually ran out of room at the top of the thread. Consequently, this becomes the new home of version 1.32. It was downloaded 110 times before I moved it here.
Post by: Rocky on June 27, 2019, 01:11:49 PM
Love the clearly defined areas of research between Explore, Discover, etc. It makes you think not only about which path you want to invest in, but it makes obtaining a new tech feel much more rewarding.
I like the additional cost to prototyping. It feels realistic and it's like a mini-Secret Project. The choice to build a new non-prototyped unit has much more impact now.
I hope you don't mind I merged your awesome mod with the Thinker AI. I'm 100% sure it's my version of Alien Crossfire (GOG edition I believe), but the vanilla AI always seems to build so many defensive units that it has no minerals left and then stops doing anything.
Thank you so much for all your hard work. I'm really enjoying playing the game again with your mod, especially how the choices you make feel much more important.
Post by: bvanevery on June 27, 2019, 06:07:42 PM
You can of course do what you want with my mod, subject to the Creative Commons CC-BY-NC license. It'll be a long time before I try Induktio's Thinker Mod work again, as I don't agree with fundamental directions he's been going in, at least as of 2 months ago. I did what I could to curtail his AI's abuse of various "golden paths" in the original game. It takes a lot longer in my mod to get rolling with Supply Crawlers, Condensers, and Thermal Boreholes. So much longer, that you have other alternatives for how to win the game.
Post by: Rocky on June 27, 2019, 07:27:27 PM
In my current game Yang, who likes to complain about my Democracy every chance he gets, still wanted to trade all his Explore techs for my Build Techs, while Miriam wanted to trade her Conquer techs for my Build techs as well. The AI's in your mod are much better in specializing in certain paths, which gives them much more of an identity.
I'm sorry to hear there was a disagreement between you and Induktio. I have to say though, as far as I can tell Thinker AI feels at home with your mod. The access to Boreholes/Supply Crawlers is slower (and I like it - like you said this opens up more options), but it's going for wider empires to make up for it.
Post by: bvanevery on June 27, 2019, 08:16:45 PM
My memory of serious disagreements with Induktio are:
- Completely ignoring AI political requirements. This causes things like Yang yelling at you to be a Police State when he himself is Fundamentalist! Not only is it narratively jarring, but it breaks the diplomatic play mechanics.
- Exploiting Supply Crawlers, Condensers, and Boreholes to the hilt. This I've mitigated, but I can do no more, without sacrificing the playability of the game for people who aren't using Thinker Mod.
- The AI gets a totally free ride on global warming, when doing the above exploits. Any human player producing the level of Boreholes that the AI does, would put Planet completely underwater. The AI and the human player aren't even playing the same game. Induktio decided to make nerfing global warming possible, and I think that's now the default in his alphax.txt. This basically does away with global warming as a consequential play mechanic.
He refused to make the AI suffer the consequences of global warming, same as a human player would. He claims it's technically difficult, which I doubt because it's changing 1 number somewhere. He'd also have to add some "Borehole restraint" code. I've seen the AI in other Civ-style games totally trash the planet, by building lotsa factories and not enough environmental mitigation facilities. Might have been Civ II: Test of Time or Call To Power II. You couldn't let the AI manage your cities for fear of it giving you "teh stoopid" and melting down your whole empire.
Why does it matter? I think his approach to AI and game design is basically abusive to players. However, some players actually want that. "The biggest challenge" is the only thing that matters to them, not narrative or gameplay balance. I try to make games that are fair, that can be won if you understand how the system works and have done various things more-or-less correctly. I also think the player should have meaningful choices as to how they go about it. I don't like or believe in "Monster" challenges. Especially when they force a One True Style of gameplay because there's no other way to keep up.
In principle, I could fork his code and fix it to my satisfaction. In practice, I'd rather put the effort into a commercial title that could make me money. I've been working on my own mod for over 6 full time person months, and over a year on the calendar. I don't need more $0 stuff to chase after. I've done pretty well with what I did, and it's going to take awhile for people to try out, adopt, and understand what I've already done.
And who knows, maybe several years from now, Thinker Mod will be different? I can hurry up and wait.
Post by: bvanevery on June 28, 2019, 08:31:37 AM
MY 2277. I have dominated this entire game as the Spartans, due to a good early land spread policy. However my initial empire was big and unwieldy enough, that it didn't seem wise to expand beyond my own borders. The Believers have hassled me to the south, and to a lesser extent the Usurpers. I started with 3 cities on a southern shore, with the rest of my empire on a northern continental mass. I eventually used the Weather Paradigm to connect the land masses and build rails everywhere, but that took a long time. I've mostly behaved as a defensive Builder empire. I got a lot of Secret Projects but not all. Notably I did not have the production to prevent the Free Drones from completing the Planetary Energy Grid.
I've been mostly waiting around to discover Advanced Military Algorithms so I can finally get Power and push out. It still hasn't happened and I persist in a Democratic Free Market with modestly trained troops. I started life as Fundamentalist, then Fundamentalist Green. Eventually the need for money seemed more rational than the need for military oomph. Without the extra boost I've lost a lot of 4-1-1 Impact troops attacking my enemies. As Veterans or Commandos they just don't always do the job. I haven't bothered to make a lot of those, preferring infrastructure such as Tree Farms.
The Cult of Planet used to be my northern neighbor. That was part of why I was Fundamentalist for a long time, to please them. North of them was the Free Drones. We were allied for awhile but then they blew me off. Subsequently the Free Drones utterly crushed the Cult. Their army came down to my border, and I foolishly chose to move a Rover Former up to fix a square the Cult had pillaged before they died. Domai gave me a talking-to and said he was going to kick my ass! I said fine whatever.
I didn't really take him all that seriously. I was quite surprised last turn when I almost lost a city to him. I think he had a lot more Impact Speeders than I realized. He's got a horde sitting next to my city, and I happen to be fresh out of 4-1-1 units. He caught me flat footed. So I've brought up almost every reserve Plasma garrison I've got, thinking he can't possibly get through a wall of them. Bases still have Plasma Probe Infantry guarding them, so they're not walk-ins, and I really don't have credible aggression from anyone else right now. The Believers haven't done so well recently, and I've taken up a better position on a rocky river square between us. The Usurpers are quite weak on the graph, although they always manage to hassle me with a few units.
I hope he doesn't think to shell my Boreholes. That would annoy me.
MY 2278. I finally get Advanced Military Algorithms. I switch to Power, deploy some newly manufactured units, and the crisis abates. I wonder how much spam Domai's got?
Post by: bvanevery on June 28, 2019, 09:47:11 AM
I'd make this a predefined unit for the AI's use, except I don't think the AI will have the brains to use it properly. It already uses a Cloaked Laser Speeder, which it uses somewhat properly and can definitely annoy. They tend to destroy backline Formers you weren't expecting them to, and they might also pillage.
Artillery is the AI's preferred way of destroying Sensor Arrays. This makes me wonder, what would the AI do with stealth artillery? Is it even a valid concept? It seems to work just fine when it's a Spore Launcher doing it.
Post by: bvanevery on June 29, 2019, 04:15:06 AM
MY 2300. The Free Drones are pretty spammy. They still march really large stacks of units south to my border, where I summarily kill them with not very many units. Shelling the crap out of them as they enter open ground is one of the secrets to my "success". I took 1 city from the Free Drones but did not ever manage to push up to the 2nd. I gained the ability to make Hybrid Forests and Soil Enrichers and preferred to spend my time on that, rather than spewing out units for conquest.
I still haven't finished the Hunter-Seeker Algorithm, which I consider modestly important for an invasion, if not critical. The Data Angels are also in the game and I'd like to end their ability to bother me from afar. I changed my focus to Discover because nobody had built the Human Genome Project and I figured I should. I completed that and now I want the Virtual World.
I've got Doctrine: Air Power but I've only made 1 Impact Needlejet. Planes are expensive in my mod, and I've found that Impact weapons are not terribly effective against much of anybody, even when Elite. A plane can let me choose a vulnerable target, shelter my troops, and block up the enemy's advance, but it's not actually a lot of deadly force to do anything with. If I had a harsher attitude, switching to chemical weapons would be tempting, but the status quo favors my Builder sensibility.
I have found a bona fide reason to prefer Impact Speeders to Impact Infantry. Infantry are cheaper, but Speeders get a bonus when attacking units on open ground. This bonus is actually needed to be successful, even when Elite.
I think if I had Gatling weapons, it would tip the balance in my favor and make it pretty easy to wipe stuff out. But it simply hasn't happened yet. That's partially my fault for deciding I wanted to pick up the cheap Discover oriented Secret Projects. On the other hand, I researched Conquer only a long time before changing my focus, and I still didn't get Gatling guns. I haven't gained ECM or Pulse armor either. It's kind of a weird, low tech game this way. Maybe I spent a lot more time on Fundamentalist than I realized.
I also mistakenly kept using a 30-40-30 budget for a long time, not realizing I had long since made people happier. Nowadays I'm at 40-30-30, an acknowledgement that new tech is not that important. I'm Democratic Capitalist Power, with the Ascetic Virtues so I can use 1 police unit. Nobody's sending mindworms at me and I long since cleared out all threatening fungus, so no issues. My few Scouts from the beginning of the game have been shipped off to far-flung continents to pop pods. I have the Xenoempathy Dome and spend an amusing amount of time scaring up mindworms that I can't capture and must run away from.
The oceans on the other hand, I've all but cleared out with the Maritime Control Center. I rarely get Artifacts now, but if I do, I cash them for a tech. Earlier in the game, my Artifacts all went to winning Secret Project races. Nobody can touch me on Secret Projects anymore, as I'm too advanced for anyone to get anything started, and I make too much money for anyone to catch up on building them. I've debated whether Capitalist is weak or powerful, but this game is definitely proving that at a certain stage of the game, the ability to get +2 ECONOMY and thus +1 energy per square, is extremely powerful for belting out Secret Projects.
Once I finally discover how to make the Virtual World, I will switch to Build. More production would definitely enable me to wipe out the Free Drones. I'm already building Hybrid Forests as is, and my citizens are abundantly happy, so I can handle Genejack Factories. I'm also slowly working on the Pholus Mutagen, although I expect it'll get turned into the Virtual World and I'll have to start from scratch yet again. I did that already to rapidly complete the Human Genome Project.
In principle, the Cyborgs could have provided the world with a lot of Discover techs. In practice, they were left with 1 city a long time ago. Recently I allied with them, figuring it could be a vote for me in some governmental matter. I've been the Governor almost the whole game, because my initial spread was that good.
Post by: bvanevery on June 30, 2019, 07:20:06 AM
Once I got Gatling Lasers, it was pretty much all over. They weren't quite enough to punch through cities with no losses, but they were enough of an advantage that the Free Drones melted away pretty quickly. Shortly thereafter I got Missiles and that only added insult to injury. They could destroy the defenders as long as they didn't have Sensors, and I'd done a pretty good job of getting rid of Sensors. I also soon got Hovertanks, Genejack Factories, Robotic Assembly Plants, and Fusion Power. As of MY 2236 I've had Fusion capability for a turn or two and I don't even need it. My existing Fission units pretty much have the Free Drones in a rout.
The game is pretty academic and uninteresting at this point, so I'm quitting. It's a lot of work cleaning up all these cities on a map this big, and I've certainly done it enough times before. I switched to a Conquer only focus and could reasonably expect to have Chaos weapons before too long. Pretty soon it'll just be running around playing tag.
The main lesson is that Impact weapons aren't quite enough to sweep the world. Maybe I could have done it with those if I hadn't bothered with all the Secret Projects I so much love better. But how dull!
If I had legalized chemical weapons, and kept up with the violence, this would probably have been easy peasy even with Impact weapons. Heck maybe plain Lasers would work, judging by by how effective Missile units were later. I might have to try that sometime. The problem is that legalizing chemical weapons early in the game is kinda random. Sometimes the AIs are into it, and other times they are not. I haven't seen any pattern to it. If they expect you to bribe them to do it, it's generally too expensive to bother with. And illegal chemical weapons early in the game, result in your certain death at the hands of Planet.
Post by: bvanevery on July 01, 2019, 06:08:49 AM
I started a new game with random factions. I drew the Free Drones. I saw the Garland Crater near my starting position and started heading for it, only to find that the Usurpers had planted their flag there! Frustrated, I started settling in the opposite direction away from them. I switched from the default of Explore, Build to Conquer only, hoping to get chemical weapons ASAP. Well to be honest that took some time.
Once I got it, I started making a new kind of unit, one that I've never made before. The X Scout Infantry. It costs just as much as a regular Scout; that's pretty much the thing with Scouts, you can get 1 essentially free ability with them. I have been trying to garrison my cities with X Scouts ever since, while simultaneously trying to expand, fight off mindworms, and gain more needed techs. I have all of the combat techs I need now, if I were to make an X Scout based assault. But I still don't have enough stuff produced, like prototyping Synthmetal armor yet. Or Speeders.
I don't have C3 Applied Physics. I might get it soon, but it usually takes awhile, and I was never planning to wait for it to make an assault. I figured with enough X Scouts, I could depopulate Marr's cities and wipe him out. And frankly, it would be better than he's got! I'm assuming that an X Scout attacks with an effective strength of 2 when chemical weapons are used. I haven't actually tried it in the field yet. Surprisingly, Marr hasn't said a thing to me. Usually he's summarily declared war by now.
[Limit reached]
MY 2160. There are only 5 human factions in the game and I've met them all. 2 are allied with me and 2 are at war. I do not have the votes to win the Governorship. That would easily go to my enemy, Svensgaard. I figured this is as good a time as I'm going to get to try to get chemical weapons legalized, since nobody can veto it. Alternately if I was Governor, then nobody could veto me, but that looks like it'll be awhile yet. Probably not until after I've defeated the Usurpers.
Morgan is my ally and might listen to me. If I have to bribe him, maybe his price is something I can afford. If he switches, then I have pulled this off!
[Limit reached]
Hot diggety! Barring negative number bugs, this has to be the cheapest bribe in all of SMACdom. All your chemicals are belong to us. Now, can I turn this into an unusually short game?
[Limit reached]
MY 2194. I still haven't got Applied Physics and Lasers. As far as I know, no one has it. I never went to war with the Usurpers because they offered a Treaty when I finally met them. It wasn't MY 2200 yet and even if I did wipe them out, they'd just restart somewhere else. Why bother? I can dispose of them later.
Instead I've been prosecuting a chemical war against Svensgaard. I started with 1X-2-4 ships, which weren't very good at sea fighting. In a pea shooter war, it's actually better to let the other guy attack you and die on your armor. I lost all those ships and got majorly shelled by a Pirate horde for awhile. I got Plasma armor and made 1X-3-4 ships. Sea combat isn't any better, as my offensive chemical weapon gun isn't any stronger.
However, I've made a surprising discovery about artillery duels with a ship in port. If you win, it kills the civilians! I've wiped out a sea base this way, show above. There used to be a city there. So the key to chemical weapons war at sea, is don't fight on the water. Fight the enemy in port, where it will destroy their city. With Plasma armor, it seems the drill is to sail right up to the enemy cities, completely ignoring everything, and then fire.
Post by: bvanevery on July 01, 2019, 08:13:49 AM
I kept my Conquer focus and have now researched Doctrine: Initiative. If I can complete the Maritime Control Center, that could turn the tide in the war against the Pirates. However I have little incentive to make more ships before then, so they're going to get a bit of a breather. When I send my ships one at a time past allied Gaian territory into Pirate waters, they just get picked off, so once the current crop is done I won't bother anymore.
I'm also finding out those 1X-1-1 Scouts I made at the beginning of the game, perform poorly. It took a pile of them just to eliminate some interloping Cultist Synthmetal Rovers. Granted, the defenders were on Rocky terrain. Those X Scouts might have been great if I had sent them against Usurper cities defended with only Scouts, but they might have been a bit of a joke against Synthmetal. At least they didn't cost me anything extra to make, but I'm disappointed.
Post by: bvanevery on July 01, 2019, 09:16:23 AM
Fighting the Pirates early using expensive X ships, wasted way too much of my productivity for no real result. The Cult eventually came into land contact with me, adding to Pirate spam that was already hitting my shores again. Yes I would have completed the MCC fairly soon, but waiting for that to happen is not a quick game. It starts to feel no better than any other typical game I've ever played, with the abiding sense that a number of things could have been done better. The main one is I simply didn't expand, as I thought capitalizing on early X weapons would get me something. Turns out that the Cult eventually shows up with X weapons too.
Rushing the Usurpers might have been a better idea. I don't know if I needed X weapons to do it. As it happened, I was never forced to fight them. I was tough enough that they didn't want to get into it with me.
The moral of this story is I learned how to use an artillery duel to cause mass casualties. Might be a good trick in the future, although on land it will require gaining "two abilities" capability first. In my mod that comes with Doctrine: Initiative.
Post by: bvanevery on July 01, 2019, 02:39:40 PM
New game. I drew the Caretakers. I'm on a supercontient that twists and encompasses the entire globe, if only a 1 square land bridge existed across 1 channel. I decided to make a beeline for chemical weapons and Applied Physics. I've never really abused chemical weapons as the Aliens before. I think I can use them scott free against the humans? It'll be pretty funny if that's not true and Planet kills me.
I soon discovered the Cult of Planet was near me. I trailed after one of their colony pods for awhile, preventing it from settling. I also acquired several mindworm larvae as I popped pods. Soon I found the Data Angels immediately to the west of me, in the way of my expansion. They had a Colony Pod next to one of my mindworms and I'd finally had enough. In 2136 I attacked!
A Data Angel Scout was threatening to approach my westmost city. I immediately changed production to an X Scout to gain an advantage. Now in MY 2138 we see the result of such an interchange. For Scout vs. Scout combat, this is a good move. The odds for a Green attacking Scout aren't amazingly better though. Facing against a terrain advantage, or an inherent city defense, this might not be a harbinger of doom. We'll see. On the other hand the point may be moot because my mindworms might do things faster.
Then again, I'll have Applied Physics in 7 years. This might be a debacle for humankind! There's no way any human faction can match an Alien determined to get Lasers early. Interesting that Conqueror Marr doesn't beeline for it when played by the AI. He's the only faction in my mod that has a Conquer only research focus. Seems to work fine for him. All the human factions need Explore as part of their focus, to trigger the better initial colonization algorithm. The Caretakers probably could do Conquer only, but they don't, because they're a +1 PLANET faction and learning how to make mindworms and biology labs etc. is valuable to them.
Post by: bvanevery on July 01, 2019, 03:20:07 PM
MY 2148. X Scout vs. Scout in city worked pretty well. Both were Green and the Nerve Gas is stronger than the inherent base defense. I'm not sure these odds are correctly displayed though. I captured them in mid-battle with a quick screenshot, as I had neglected to set the Confirm Odds Before Attacking preference. In this screenshot I have Power 3 vs. Power 0 and that seems weird. Could be that's the Power of a dead unit.
Post by: Rocky on July 01, 2019, 06:28:23 PM
I seriously underestimated the effects the specialized research paths would have and that turned out to be my downfall. I kept going back into the old mindset of the vanilla game that I could afford to delay researching (I'm playing with Blind Research) military techs a bit longer because I would be able to get them later with a higher tech level and better infrastructue. Turns out it didn't work like that.
By the time I did get Laser tech and Impact weapons I was behind in manpower. I could not stop the near endless assault of Spartan Impact Infantry and Rovers, as well as a group of Probe Teams. I lost my outer cities and although I could have tried to make a stand with my core cities the game felt lost.
The Hive was growing in size and the war against the Morganites was swinging in their favor. I have to admit, the Morganites did well in the opening stages of the war by capturing several Hive cities, but when the Hive's war machine kicked into gear they took those cities back. What followed was a back-and-forth taking and re-taking of each other's cities until the Hive finally overwelmed the Morganites in numbers and began pushing into their territory.
The Believers were invading the Gaian core cities and although the Gaians put up a good fight (retaking some of their cities at first) the Believers had the momentum and established a presence within Gaian territory.
Worse, the University, although direct neighbors of the Spartans, had somehow evaded their attention and were building up their infrastructure, their tech level going through the roof. They still seemed to have a small military so I'm not sure if they can survive for much longer, because after the Gaians are gone they would be sandwiched in between the Spartans and the Believers, both now fielding a massive Impact army. Infiltrating their datalinks I noticed the Spartans, Believers and Hive were now also building lots of Impact Tanks.
I lost, but I had a lot of fun as it made me realize there are a lots of subtleties in your AI Growth Mod. It really feels every choice matters now, and making the wrong choices or investments could have irreversible consequences. The vanilla game offered some support by spreading out its military tech in different branches.
But it makes so much more sense (And something your mod conveys so well) that if you want to have the most advanced military technology, you have to be prepared to invest heavily in it, and to be prepared to sacrifice progress in other fields of science in return because you're diverting scientists and resources toward that goal. It feels realistic and I like it.
Already started a new game. This time as the University. The Spartans are my neighbors again, but this time I'm not going to make the same mistake. (I hope)
Post by: bvanevery on July 01, 2019, 09:36:45 PM
Back to my current game of shooting children! The Data Angels and the Cult of Planet are complete babies compared to me. They really shouldn't have started next to me. It'll be interesting to see if I can expand my logistical reach fast enough to other players, to bring the same can of whup ass before they've got acceptable defenses.
Post by: Rocky on July 02, 2019, 12:46:29 AM
The most consistent "big picture" mistake I've made playing my mod, not even with Induktio's AI, is not spreading enough at the beginning of the game. I like to stop and go vertical when I have the techs. It's similar to what you said, in that it takes a lot longer to gain an advantage with the techs than you think.
I entirely agree. It's the same for me too, I like to go vertical as well when I get the chance. I'm looking forward to find out if I'll do better in my next game.
Post by: bvanevery on July 02, 2019, 02:05:13 AM
MY 2154. I accidentally whacked the Cult into surrender without using any X Scouts. This might prove that X Scouts are a solution in search of a problem, if you have captured mindworms. The Data Angels on the other hand hate my guts and are almost dead.
[Limit reached]
MY 2158. I discover the Manifold Nexus in Cultist territory. I can't very well let them have that. They want 250 credits for it. That's acceptable, as compared to more brutal alternatives. Or I could save the game and see if I can simply extort it! Let's see. Hmm, there's no option to threaten them. I'll just buy it from them in a bit, assuming I don't manage to get my own Colony Pod up there first.
[Limit reached]
MY 2159. I earn the eternal enmity of the Data Angels, I think. Don't know if a reset makes them any less sore about atrocities.
Post by: bvanevery on July 02, 2019, 02:15:29 AM
MY 2161. My vassal extorts me for 272 credits, but I gain +3 PLANET and +1 RESEARCH. Cult spread will be more manageable as I let them run into a bunch of mindworms on their approach to the Manifold Nexus.
Post by: bvanevery on July 02, 2019, 03:00:06 AM
MY 2162. Deidre shows up on my shore. She's in contact with Lal, but wanted a tech in exchange for his comm frequency! Blew that off, as if. Signing a Treaty as I don't know exactly where she is or how quickly I can conquer her. There's always probe teams to make her upset later! I need to figure out who my next victim is.
[Limit reached]
MY 2171. Really surprised she did this. Doesn't she know how badass I am? Well now I know which way my next victim is. "South", somewhere.
[Limit reached]
She meant it too. Wasn't just randomly knocking her unit into me. Fortunately I have lots of troops arriving in the region, back from wiping out the Data Angels. They were going to explore the eastern part of the supercontinent, but they can certainly be pressed into service en route.
Post by: bvanevery on July 02, 2019, 04:07:56 AM
MY 2195. Deirdre knocks it off as flippantly as she began it. Best I can tell, everyone is far away from me.
Post by: bvanevery on July 02, 2019, 04:19:07 AM
MY 2196. I have found the Data Angels. The are south of me, and oddly, land has just been bridged between our continents. They must have set off an earthquake. I was just in the northwest corner of the screenshot, I hauled an Artifact out of there. I will bring down my X Scouts and see if that's enough to wipe them out for good.
I suppose I could have saved myself some trouble, by leaving them 1 city until the year 2200 came. But I did it this way! I honestly didn't think they'd be the nearest victim.
Post by: bvanevery on July 02, 2019, 05:33:20 AM
MY 2213. I walked all the way to the Datatechs without any roads. I finally begin an assault on a Datatech city using 3 X Scout units. I lost the 1st one but did some damage. Let's see if this 2nd one prevails! Nope. Ok, here comes a 3rd, but it's 20% wounded. Hrm, still not quite there. I've got a 4th unit that can attack at 2/3rds strength, or I can just wait. I'll just wait. I can attack with 2 X Scouts and 1 mindworm next turn. The moral of the story is it can take up to 4 X Scouts to take out 1 Synthmetal Sentinel, and that's without any Sensor Arrays. Also I think all my Scouts are Green and the defender was Hardened.
We've been in sunspots for awhile. I've been tromping around various people's lands exploring them. Nothing too nefarious. I've been directing my research towards Discover techs. I've built the Human Genome Project and will do the Virtual World next. Planetary Datalinks after that. I'm so far away from everyone that it seems more practical to fight Secret Project wars. I still haven't learned Monopole Magnets. I know someone's got the tech, but I'm only at war with the Datatechs right now. I expect that will change once the sunspots lift.
MY 2214. SOB he built another Synthmetal Sentinel. I've never infiltrated anybody. Never got around to making any Probe Teams at all. It's ok as I do have a mindworm to attack with, but it seems wasteful to have gone so far last turn. I'll make more of a plan next time.
Post by: bvanevery on July 02, 2019, 07:48:09 AM
MY 2239. A single X Laser Speeder is devastating. It took me awhile to figure out how to use it properly, as I marched all the way to the east to take out a city that only had 1 defender. Marching back, I realized that scooting from a Monolith over and over again is a good play. I also attacked this turn with a 20% wounded X Scout, hoping that might end things, but it didn't put much of a dent in the defending Scout. I conclude that X Scouts aren't that great.
I've only been sending silly junk at the Data Angels, just leftovers of previous garrisoning. Mostly I've been building Secret Projects and fishing for Artifacts. I have captured large numbers of Isles and a fair pile of Independent mindworms. I pity the fool who thinks they would invade me, 'cuz it wouldn't work! With the Planetary Datalinks I'm starting to gain the stuff I never stole from anyone. Soon it'll be time to build a rail somewhere.
Post by: bvanevery on July 02, 2019, 09:08:47 AM
MY 2248. The Pirates finally declared war on me, as they didn't like my Knowledgeable ways. They are going to be devastated by piles of unarmored X Impact Cruisers, trained by the Maritime Control Center. The Pirates aren't a major power in this game, although cleaning them up will be a bit sloppy as they're scattered. Unlike last time, I doubt they can outproduce me.
Lal is the other major power of the game. He's been chewing up Deirdre.
Post by: Rocky on July 02, 2019, 11:43:24 PM
I wanted to invade Gaian territory to gain more land to expand on, but I was worried the Spartans would attack me from behind. (Impact Rovers already moving at my borders) I couldn't get Deirdre to ally with me against the Spartans so I attacked the Spartans on my own.
Had some success early on by taking out several of their units. But then the Gaians backstabbed and allied themselves with the Spartans against me. A series of mind worm attacks overran my border city. Probe teams relentlessly stole tech (Impact weaponry) and energy from me.
At that point it was game over. The Spartans recovered with a new stack of Impact units and Probe teams. Deirdre refused to speak with me and her mind worms and Recon Rovers were now approaching my core cities, and she was already prototyping Impact units.
On a positive note, I did better than last time with military tech. I should have invaded the Gaians to deal with their native units first instead of worrying about the Spartans. Their mind worms proved to be more of a threat in that stage of the game than the Spartans did.
Post by: bvanevery on July 03, 2019, 03:47:49 AM
Alternately, did either of these powers complete the Weather Paradigm? You cannot let Thinker Mod do that, unless you're willing to play a rough game. I've let it happen just to see what the consequences are. From a gaining victory standpoint, it is not at all desirable. It can be tolerable if the empire who gains it is sufficiently far away from you. If they're your land neighbor though, no, forget it. You'd better destroy their city building it, or run probe teams to sabotage it, or complete the thing yourself, or take it away from them after they've built it. It's that important in a Thinker Mod game. I raised the cost of the WP as much as I was willing to, and it does give a human player a longer window to snatch it from under the AI's nose. But I can't really put the brakes on it entirely, because the whole point of the WP, is to get all those capabilities earlier.
In my mod it's easy to go Green. In fact it's much easier than I'd like it to be, but that was the price of making sure the PLANET seeking AIs would actually choose it. Captured mindworms are the best legal early game weapon. In fact I've been somewhat worried that they're the only good weapon, but I'm not going back to giving away offensive weapons. And I can't very well stop the capturing of mindworms, as it's a core game mechanic and fundamental to the narrative as well.
I have intended that if the pace of offense and defense is maddeningly slow and counterproductive, that the player strongly consider the alternative of committing atrocities. That's part of why chemical weapons are available with C1 High Energy Chemistry. The other reason is because of Aliens. I figure if they can bother you without you getting to say much of anything about it, then you should be granted the means to kill them! Although the point may be somewhat moot nowadays, since you really need C3 Applied Physics to kill much of anybody conventionally.
Anyways, consider atrocities early and often! Although you'll want to get them legalized, because otherwise Planet is gonna kill you. Not a problem if you're an Alien or fighting the Aliens. Planet bleeds for the precious UN rules.
I don't remember Thinker Mod being particularly capable of overrunning things with mindworms. That could be a later game behavior, a simple consequence of the enemy making lots of units. It may have something new programmed since the last time I played. It was not really any better at combat when I was playing several months ago.
Probe teams stealing lots of money, sounds like a new behavior. The stock AI never steals money at all.
Post by: bvanevery on July 03, 2019, 05:26:57 AM
MY 2259. I sink my 1st Pirate base. I'm surprised that X Impact Cruisers are not enough to summarily execute his Synthmetal defenders. Seems he learned Doctrine: Initiative and now has a Naval Yard as inherent sea base defense everywhere. Oh well, I'll use the units I've got until they're dead. The Free Drones are also at war with the Pirates and still at peace with me, although they do hate me and have made threats. They took over a sea base with a probe team, so I'll leave the bases in that direction to them.
My main strategy is to hit Svensgaard's outlying bases first, the ones that don't have much in the way of ships coming from them. That's where my unarmored execution units have the most advantage. Since I need to shell the bases first before hitting them, it's important to have a few turns without interference. I should be able to gradually liquidate the Pirate periphery and save their core for when I have better weapons.
Lal has got Gatling Guns and is at war with me, but they're somewhat far away. I could make a Cruiser Probe Team I suppose, and steal from one of the relatively nearby bases they took over from the Gaians. But right now I'm focused on getting rails belatedly built. There's a full war on and I want to be able to deploy internally any way I wish. I am gradually building up my own probe team defenses, but I actually have only 1 city working on that. Fortunately it's only locals that have tried to send probe teams against me so far.
I've got piles of captured Isles to use as reserves, but if I stick them too close to the front, they just get killed. I have them hanging back, which is not where I need them to be to interdict approaching probe teams. It's not a problem from the Pirates anymore as they generally come from their home waters just west of me. But there's a southeast ocean where in principle, something could approach. In practice, I think Lal is still preoccupied with slaughtering Deirdre, and Svensgaard's cities in that region might be worrying about Domai.
If I redeploy now, I'll probably be ok and not suffer any takeovers. Also, I did raise the cost of mind control for a reason, to keep it from being easy to mess with me unless it's like the Data Angels or some +3 PROBE faction. My empire is also nicely centralized so it shouldn't be cheap to take over anything. That's part of why I'm willing to destroy cities completely. Mine are better than theirs and I really don't want distant headaches, especially since I'm the only Alien in the game.
[Limit reached]
MY 2260. So much for the Gaians providing a distraction! And dangit, they're allied with Svensgaard. They haven't even met Domai. That's kinda weird but not impossible, as they are separated by a fair amount of water. It means that Lal has never become Governor. They're dominating as the supposed #1 faction on the graph, with Domai and myself roughly tied for a distant 2nd place. Oh well, things can change. I'm not sure I'm going to get a chance to commit atrocities against Lal though. He may get Orbital Spaceflight before I do, at the rate he's going.
Post by: Rocky on July 03, 2019, 10:53:28 AM
Did the game go on long enough for either the Spartans or the Gaians to make Condensers, Thermal Boreholes, and Supply Crawlers? If so, then I'd definitely say you're doing something wrong with your growth earlier, as it should take a pretty long time now for the AI to get around to that kind of stomping. Thinker Mod was the major driver for me delaying all sorts of "more minerals" techs. I was successful at greatly delaying it, but it cannot be postponed forever. Eventually the AI will get its toys and then it will start to do its thing. Need to overrun them before it happens, say with hovertanks or Locusts. Locusts are good at tearing up undesired enemy infrastructure. With the stock AI, I usually use them against Sensor Arrays.
In vanilla Alien Crossifre I was able keep up with Thinker AI most of the time. But with your mod the Thinker AI feels more dangerous. This is part because I'm re-learning the game with your mod, but with the changes in military tech and research paths the AI seems to have more options to portray strength early on. (And I like it)
I have to confess, this is the first time I disabled Boreholes/Condensors in the Alphax.txt. (This is because of the AI, NOT because of your mod)
Your mod delays the Boreholes/Condensors (And I really like that) but in my first AI Growth game as Peacekeepers rising sea levels still became a problem between 2250-2300. (The AI's had eco-damage ranging from 30-100!) It actually seemed to hurt the AI in the mid-game. Lots of aliens, eco-damage and a disrupted resource income.
I just want to test if Thinker AI can still manage without Boreholes/Condensors. As it has a preference to plant forests, it may still be able to build up a strong empire mid-game with Tree Farms/Hybrid Forests.
The Kyrub AI mostly seems to skip Boreholes (sometimes it builds one or two near its Headquarters but manages the eco-damage) but still does well because it focuses heavily on Forests/Tree Farms/Hybrid forests. I hope this is the same for Thinker AI.
The Gaians were using Green economics early (This in contrast to Kyrub's AI, which prefers to run Planned) I have to pay attention next time if it increases the strength of native life.
The Gaians indeed had a lot of mind worms (I assume most of them captured) and although they packed a punch I didn't feel they were overpowered. The AI caught me out of position a few times; whenever I could get in the first attack the mind words weren't that scary. Overall I would say it feels balanced, and I like the flavor of the Gaians going native.
Thank you for your advice and playing tips. I appreciate it.
Post by: bvanevery on July 03, 2019, 11:32:06 AM
Another point of my early game is to deny early starts on Secret Projects. You just don't get to do that. Also that SPs are expensive. Even if I've got piles of Artifacts, the competition for SPs is fierce. A few of the expensive ones like the Planetary Energy Grid and the Hunter Seeker Algorithm, and my horde of Artifacts will be gone. That's with cleaning out an entire Huge map too. I'm pretty good at that drill and the stock AI isn't. Thinker Mod didn't know how to do anything in that dept. either, last I played a few months ago. Anyways I can't ensure that I get all the SPs even with vanilla AI now. Some games I may only get 1/2 or 1/3, depending on what my start is like, and what my priorities turn out to be.
Another point is that Politics and Economics choices are easy to obtain. There are no SPs blocking you from trading the techs for them. I'm doubting that Thinker Mod can exploit this better than you can.
Yes, consistent rising water levels are no fun at all. It's a drag. All you do is run around doing empire repair. And then "rivers of death" come that completely wipe out the repairs you made. Later for that rubbish.
I never build Boreholes. I rarely build Condensers. Forests always come first for me and I'm not putting a Condenser where it's mostly forest. By the time the Condensers are available now, I've long since finished building "core" cities. I do put the Soil Enrichers everywhere, which is my new "officially blessed" way of how you're supposed to get more food.
I've played "Boreholes everywhere" games in the past, before I started modding. Wasn't that impressed with the results, so crossed it off my bucket list. Been there, done that.
Even without Boreholes and Condensers, Thinker Mod should still exploit Supply Crawlers and Mines. Although, I did make those Crawlers much more expensive to mitigate this. A Fusion Supply Crawler costs as much as an Artifact, 50 minerals. Granted, an AI on Transcend will get the effective +30% INDUSTRY bonus, so that's not the sticker price the AI is paying for them. But it's still more than they would otherwise cost and it does slow the AI down some.
Weather paradigm is still worth a lot because of 50% terraforming speed increase. But for some reason it doesn't award Soil Enrichers. One has to wait until B5 Planetary Economics, which takes a long time. So if Boreholes and Condensers are out of the game, I doubt that the WP is game deciding, the way it otherwise would be in Thinker Mod.
Trance Scouts are a good cheap antidote to mindworms. They're a predefined unit, so the AI knows how to make them too. Hmm, makes me wonder if the Cloaked Scout is being made too much instead. Also I think the unit designer messes up the predefined Trance 3-Res Sentinels. I seem to have to design that unit myself. Getting the AI to build more kinds of Trance units, might reduce the cakewalking I tend to do with mindworms. I mean if I actually used all the mindworms I captured in the current game, at least one of my enemies would be so dead. Instead I just leave them all at home as this big badass garrison. I only like to push units across the map if I have rails. Far fewer mouseclicks. Some games I just wait until orbital insertion because I'm lazy.
I wonder if I should reintroduce armored Police units. I tried Police Scouts for a few iterations I think, but the AI never used them properly in practice.
Post by: Rocky on July 03, 2019, 01:52:21 PM
I like the more expensive SP's. It feels right.
In vanilla Alpha Centauri (against Kyrub AI) I have a habit of building a few Boreholes near my Headquarters but other than that I'm also going with the forest strategy. Maybe in my current game I could try out an Echelon Mirror, never really build those before.
Morgan seems to be getting close to Tree Farms. I'm keeping my fingers crossed the Thinker AI will aggressively build them.
Heh, I know the feeling about being lazy. I love the game but I've reached a point I want to do things in as few clicks as possible. Sometimes I just give up on conquest and go for the "turtle" route. I remember games when I was younger where I just kept building Planet Busters simply because I couldn't be bothered moving my armies.
I have never used chemical weapons before. If I have a chance I'll try to get the Charter repealed to see how they work.
Encouraging the AI to build more Trance units could definitely work. Trance is an ability that stays strong throughout the game. It's an ability I use the most on my units.
Police units sound good, especially flavor-wise for factions like the Hive or Spartans. Does the AI need to be modded in order to build them or will the AI use them when they're needed?
Post by: bvanevery on July 03, 2019, 06:16:37 PM
Heavy fungus hurts the vanilla AI. It spreads stupidly and gets lotsa colonists killed. I don't know what happens with Thinker Mod with that, as I always tested with my same world settings.
I don't think Echelon Mirrors are going to make any noticeable difference in your game. In the past I've played "Echelon Mirrors in the middle of the Sensor Array" games, and I never saw any boost worth writing home about. I think they're just a gewgaw. Forests are the true way IMO.
Sometimes if I'm isolated and really bored, and have way too many Formers, I Drill to Aquifer on all the Rocky terrain, so that my Mines will have rivers on them and give me energy as well. It makes no real difference, it's just a minor optimization ritual.
Remember that you don't need to legalize chemical weapons if you are an Alien or fighting an Alien. That's because Planet's vengeance is tied to what the Planetary Council voted on! If it's legal, Planet doesn't take vengeance. Really stupid and immersion destroying.
The Spartans don't have a POLICE bonus in my mod. I couldn't tolerate them having better POLICE than our dear Chairman Yang! And now his faction ability is getting +1 POLICE at the start of the game. He doesn't get that weirdo wonky "immunity to EFFIC / JUSTICE" stuff anymore. He just gets POLICE so good, that they can repress all of that! And it works. Any faction can do the same thing if they get the Ascetic Virtues and choose Police State.
You raise a really good question though: is anyone actually making any Police units? I don't think they are. That's definitely worth investigating. Yang is definitely powerful nowadays so I don't think I need to solve a problem for him, but he'd be even better if he made proper use of Police when they become available.
Post by: bvanevery on July 04, 2019, 04:52:23 AM
[Limit reached]
MY 2270. The Datatechs are dead this turn, if I want them to be. I'm surprised how effective a mere Spore Launcher and some mindworms were against them. Granted I do have +3 PLANET. Any time they got it in to their head to make artillery, I'd just trot my Spore Launcher onto some fungus. They'd shoot at me and I'd win the duel every time. I'd heal at a Monolith and do it again if need be. After even slight shelling, my mindworms would just trash the bases. I have 3 in theater now, and I've not really had to use my X Laser Speeder.
Taking this city raises a conundrum though. The Datatechs will be eradicated, so will the citizens be counted as Datatechs or mine? I want to put Datatechs to death, not my own citizens. I'm worried that the transfer of power in the last city, might change things. On the other hand I don't think Aliens have any restraint or consequences on committing atrocities? Can I just nerve staple all my people and nothing bad ever happens? I wonder.
I suppose I can save the game and just get on with it. If I think something bad has happened, go back.
[Limit reached]
Smells like crispy Datatechs to me.
Post by: bvanevery on July 04, 2019, 05:49:15 AM
MY 2274. I've utterly devastated the Pirates to the north and west of me. Next turn their last base in the region will be gone. I took minimal losses as they just haven't had any productive capacity. They seemed to vapor lock themselves with too many garrison units. I've wondered why, although I suppose they've been in a war with the Free Drones for quite some time.
I haven't seen them build much in the way of Sea Formers. I looked at their faction profile and it said they were Aggressive, which doesn't make much sense, because they are set to Passive in my mod. Do they appear to be Aggressive when I'm playing an Alien faction? Well that may not have helped their cause. Do they become Aggressive when atrocities are perpetrated upon them? Well that would be a pretty good trick!
Meanwhile I just finished stealing several techs from the Peacekeepers, and I completed the Hunter Seeker Algorithm right out from under their nose. I've been going full Discover and am working on Industrial Labs and the Network Backbone. I'm even doing it before bothering with Tree Farms. I don't feel I need to make any new military units until my X Impact Cruisers are done wiping out the Pirates. Then I have to see how advanced Lal is, because it wouldn't be a good idea to commit atrocities if he's got nukes. We're all still pre-nuke though.
Post by: Rocky on July 04, 2019, 11:53:58 AM
After seeing your playthrough as the Caretakers on this page I put my Peacekeeper game on hold and started one as the Caretakers as well. I'm playing this game with the vanilla AI as I want to practice with native life forms. (It's weird, the vanilla AI seems to be working better now after re-installing the game)
I'm having a lot of fun so far "going green." It makes me wish I had tried this earlier. No hassle with unit upgrades (except for keeping up with prototypes) I have to wait and see if they're still viable later in the game but so far it's been fun. (I can't wait to make my own naval force of Isle of the Deeps/Sealurks, and maybe a few X cruisers as escorts. I haven't tried chemical weapons yet)
I'm curious, can you capture bases with Locusts or do you need other units for that?
Post by: bvanevery on July 04, 2019, 06:23:53 PM
Post by: Rocky on July 04, 2019, 06:46:19 PM
Post by: bvanevery on July 04, 2019, 09:12:10 PM
MY 2298. Next year the Pirates will breathe their last. Chemical elimination of the Pirates is the most effective strategy I've come up with for dealing with them. Building rails along their shores and attacking with Marines isn't bad, but it can take a really long time. It's just not fun or worth it to actually capture Pirate bases, as you don't get the minerals bonus on water like they do. Maybe if the Pirates had seriously terraformed the oceans with lots of mining platforms it would be different, but they still tend to have sea bases vastly far away from your own empire, that aren't going to be worth anything except for production. Just a big hassle. I say wipe 'em out!
I've been in a shooting war with Domai for a bit now. Recently I started lighting him up with chemical weapons. I'm nowhere near his territory, I'm just dealing with his spam on my own border. I think he's physically marched his piles of units all the way to me, I don't think he has any roads or rails helping him out. I used my independent mindworm reserves to blunt his advance, and now I'm slowly starting to make counter forces. What can I say, I wanted my Industrial Labs and Tree Farms.
I've started using Fusion X Artillery on him. He had established 1 tiny base next to my home territory, which was annoying to get at because of all his spam in the way. Well a couple of artillery duels cleared that right out! Chemical weapons artillery is a pretty neat trick for clearing out bases. The AI thinks it's going to prevail in artillery duels and it just won't. Not when I've got Fusion, Missiles, and Xenoempathy / Pholus fungus backing me as defense. I'm going to build up my forces, push Domai back, and start building a rail straight into his heart. I'll wipe out every city that doesn't have a Secret Project in it. The prizes are the Planetary Energy Grid, the Weather Paradigm, and the Merchant Exchange.
To add insult to injury, I'm now genetic warfare capable as well. I'm just nowhere near his cities yet.
I have taken 2 minor bases at the extreme southwest corner of Lal's empire, that used to be owned by the Gaians. I did this with some mindworms and scout units only, the same troops I used to wipe out the last of the Datatechs. I have refrained from committing any atrocities, as I'm concerned he might achieve Orbital Spaceflight before I've finished wiping out Domai. Generally my atrocities policy is "one at a time", to minimize the risk of getting a nuke in the face. I had some "flooded planet" game once where some folks I'd gassed early in the game, actually survived long enough despite my expectations to nuke me late midgame. Lesson learned.
Post by: Rocky on July 04, 2019, 10:00:52 PM
I'm really enjoying your battle reports. Well written and fun to read.
In my game as Caretakers Zakharov surprise attacked me for a second time. So far he has taken out three of my border bases but my mind worms are finally in position, lurking in the fungus patches along our borders.
A scout revealed the University is also at war with the Usurpers. The Usurpers are dropping on the power chart.
The Morganites are annoying me with several Foils from the south but the first Isle of the Deeps should be finished breeding soon. The Morganites started this war by demanding almost all of my credits. I assumed they wouldn't be a threat for some time but I was surprised at the number of ships they send my way.
It's going to take time but both the Morganites and University are going to regret this.
This is the most fun game I've had in a long time!
Post by: bvanevery on July 04, 2019, 10:15:39 PM
[Limit reached]
In my mod it's now possible to do orbital insertions without space flight! This didn't used to be true. In version 1.27 I made Orbital Spaceflight an explicit prereq. Looks like I undid it somehow. It's probably Chairman Yang's fault, adopting a bold tactic of simply throwing his minions off the top of the elevator. If enough land, it's an invasion!
Well, maybe that's not completely crazy. You wouldn't have to orbit to do orbital insertions, you'd just need a way to re-enter the atmosphere without burning up. Glorified gliders. Of course how you launched again, without physically traveling to the bottom of the Space Elevator, that's a bit of a hand wave. Details details.
The real problem is I don't think there's a satisfying sequence in my tech tree that combines Conquer and Build for this. I'm already using Advanced Spaceflight + Industrial Nanorobotics --> Nanometallurgy, which makes the Nessus Mining Station and the Living Refinery available. That was lore driven. The cutscene for the SP is of orbital asteroid mining, with a voiceover from Morgan about how all this space stuff is happening. So I didn't want to give up that SP without space travel being established.
Perhaps we all just have to visualize the throwing of minions. Their gentle descent.
Post by: Rocky on July 04, 2019, 10:52:07 PM
Somehow I can just picture Yang throwing his minions from the top of Space Elevator, yelling "For the Hive!"
I haven't gotten this far in the game yet, but I like there's an option for orbital insertions besides Orbital Spaceflight. With the specialized technology paths in your mod it's nice to have this choice.
Post by: bvanevery on July 05, 2019, 12:24:25 AM
Interesting, an Aggressive Morgan. I wouldn't see that outside of a "randomize faction personalities" game. I don't consider that a test case for my mod, so I never play that nowadays. I suppose if he got to Genejack Factories before others, he could be a real problem. But nobody generally gets that far in my games.
I'm seeing that Lal is Aggressive too. He's pounding on the 2 cities I took from him. They're badly in need of reinforcement, which I'm not providing. However I've started the Space Elevator, so the cavalry will come soon. I don't think I need any more troops to wipe out Domai, especially now that I've remembered the probe teams. I'll just keep building Super Hovertank Formers until I've got rails everywhere.
MY 2316. I wiped out my first Free Drone city in his home territory. I forgot that I could use probe teams first, since I haven't built a full rail yet. I'll have to bring those up.
Post by: Buster's Uncle on July 05, 2019, 12:29:33 AM
Somehow I can just picture Yang throwing his minions from the top of Space Elevator, yelling "For the Hive!"Yo, never yelling; Yang think he all Dark Carnival ConfuciusBuddha, and he be Spockin' out "Needs of the many", cold-like, and evolving the Group, sos's they ignores the pain of reentry.
Post by: bvanevery on July 05, 2019, 01:07:23 AM
This does make me wonder if a commercial title about the absurd death aesthetics of the Hive would be welcomed. Strong overlap with the surrealist absurdist writings of Victor Pelevin in Omon Ra (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omon_Ra). The Soviets never had a nuclear bomb. They just got a lot of people to jump out of planes at once, each with their own pack of TNT to detonate on the way down.
Truthfully though, my plans are tending more towards a RPG at the moment, and more of a fantasy setting. It's not finalized though. I'm in a "concept" stage.
Dystopian 4X though. Does have a ring to it. A place like Alpha Centauri if the Hive won.
Post by: Buster's Uncle on July 05, 2019, 01:19:53 AM
Post by: bvanevery on July 05, 2019, 01:47:33 AM
That said, I have designed a kind of kamikaze unit for at least one of my demonstration games. I called it a "Banzai Brigade". It's basically a Marine Scout. The purpose is for destroying coastal sea bases. Let's say you've wiped out all the inhabitants of the base, using Marines standing on dry land. But now the base is size 1 and it's still owned by the enemy. The Banzai Brigade jumps off the cliff to finish it off! It drowns, but the enemy is crushed.
I have wondered about doing something bizarre and suicidal with the Copter chassis, such as making it a "missile" that dies after being fired. It's a pity not to have that unit artwork in the game, but I don't want a "fires umpteen times" contraption in the game.
I also think Locusts do a perfectly good job fulfilling the tactical role of Copters, as far as providing support in late midgame as an army moves forwards, or moving about in the field unaided. Granted, you have to go in that tech direction, but I don't really have a problem with that. I don't think everyone needs to get everything for having headed in the direction of Doctrine: Air Power.
Plus if you've got enough hovertanks you can rule Planet. They come way earlier now. I'm not seeing the need for another "clean 'em out" unit. That said, ECM and 3-Pulse armor is effective against hovertanks, if the AI gets to it. I'm doing so well lately, that the AI doesn't, but in the past they have.
Post by: bvanevery on July 05, 2019, 03:15:10 AM
MY 2320. I'm about to lose the 2nd of the 2 bases I took from Lal. Well it wasn't a bad run for nothing but scouting scraps! I have still refrained from committing any atrocities against him. His research seems to be nothing to write home about though, as he still hasn't learned Orbital Spaceflight. I haven't bothered to learn it either. I mostly just look for new Secret Projects to make.
I've all but built a rail to Free Drone Central. I didn't build the last link because I'll have to take the city conventionally. I'd rather wipe out all the other cities around it with chemicals before finally committing my forces to that. That way, there's no possibility of realistic counterattack. Domai has managed to kill a few units of mine, no big deal, but why waste them? The southern half of his empire is on its last legs and will be gone in 2 or 3 more turns.
I've started building a rail towards Lal. "Civilian" cities are building Supply Crawlers now, instead of Formers. "Military" cities have been building Drop Trance garrison units, but they don't have anything to drop on yet. I haven't completed the Space Elevator. It costs 800 in my mod, it's expensive! I'm also working on the Self-Aware Colony which is 600.
Post by: bvanevery on July 05, 2019, 04:12:56 AM
I still haven't completed the Space Elevator, and I'm restarting the Self-Aware Colony. I decided to complete the Empath Guild instead, because it's slightly cheaper and I can. It doesn't actually benefit me. I just don't want Lal to feel good about himself. ;lol I am sure that my rail is going to make contact with Lal long before I've finished the Space Elevator.
Domai has only 1 major city remaining in the south, and it's about to be hit with a probe team. He also has a base he just founded with nothing in it. Otherwise it's a gradual operation of circling around his capitol, to reach other cities to lay waste to. I hope to draw his units out as I circle, so that I don't have to deplete my forces to hold Free Drone Central. Real productivity is going to go into a war against Lal. What I've got already can clean up Domai just fine.
I'm sitting on a reserve of 12 Artifacts that I haven't bothered to cash. I wanted to give Lal a chance to do my Orbital Spaceflight research for me. I don't need more technology for anything. Enemies die like flies. I need Supply Crawlers to finish my Secret Projects. By the time my current ones are done, I'll probably have researched another SP on my own.
Post by: bvanevery on July 05, 2019, 04:57:44 AM
MY 2327. An example of why X Artillery is great! I've previously reduced the city to size 1 with genetic plagues. Domai was on his last ropes last turn here, but somehow he got a fully healed 3-Pulse unit in there, which could interfere with my X Tanks. I shell it with X Artillery. Not only did it wound the unit, but it triggered the AI to start producing a Laser Artillery as a defense. Which cannot possibly stand up to my Fusion X Missile Artillery, it'll just die when it attacks. And if it didn't attack, then I'd shell it with chemicals turned on. That would wipe the city off the map!
Nowadays I am welcoming any artillery in cities. They used to be such a PITA.
Actually I just ended up wiping that city out with an X Missile Tank anyways. It even had a Sensor. The unit was wounded badly enough that it couldn't hang. Also I've got Fusion to his Fission.
[Limit reached]
I must be doing something right. There used to be a lot more units stacked up inside Free Drone Central.
In 2 years I'll be in contact with Lal's empire. Only the most far flung corner though, that I previously took with Scouts and mindworms. He does march a lot of units down that way to deal with me though, so it'll be good for draining him out. This time I'll have full reinforcement.
Post by: bvanevery on July 05, 2019, 06:12:07 AM
MY 2329. The Cult of Planet seemed to do me the favor of getting rid of 3 of the defenders. I only faced 2. With such a meager defense I merely brought up my few Demon Boil mindworms, independent from the beginning of the game. I lost 1 but who cares! I'm made to realize that taking the city "intact" without chemical mass casualties, is a mistaken idea. Because I'm fighting humans, the city is going to depopulate anyways. I can probably afford to knock it down to size 3 or 2 before the final onslaught, assuming they have a Perimeter Defense. A genetic plague is probably the right idea as it devastatingly weakens Domai. He never had the tech to put up any kind of biological warfare defense.
[Limit reached]
Understanding this lesson, I bring most of my Hovertank Formers back from the front with Lal, and complete a rail to the newly conquered Free Drone Central. I send a Probe Team up the rail to devastate the city containing the Planetary Energy Grid. I save the game just in case this works out worse than expected.
[Limit reached]
City drops to size 2! Look at the horrific wounds dealt to the defenders. I couldn't do that kind of damage with any quantity of artillery, due to "minimum health" restrictions in a base from indirect fire. And no damage to the infrastructure, yet. We'll see if that holds up once I take over, but so far so good!
[Limit reached]
I lost a Children's Creche, a Recycling Tank, a Recreation Commons, a Perimeter Defense, a Hologram Theater, and an Energy Bank. That's pretty typical of conquest. Oh well, I don't think there's any way around that if you want to use the military. I will gradually rebuild them.
I perform the same operation on Domai's last city. The Weather Paradigm is mine, and Domai is no more!
However I didn't get a "monument" screen like I was expecting. Maybe Aliens don't get one? I also tried "Menu.. HQ.. View Monuments.." and nothing happened. Oh well, just imagine them squirming in the Sphere.
I sell off my Energy Banks and complete the Dream Twister. Just to be insulting, I bring the last conquering Hovertank all the way to Lal's front and blow away an artillery piece. Then I put X Artillery that got healed from conquests right in front of his doorstep, under a Locust. I expect he'll attack with his artillery next turn and will summarily die. I still haven't committed an atrocity against him. He still has No Minerals to build his Planet Buster with.
Post by: bvanevery on July 05, 2019, 08:15:34 AM
MY 2330. I played nice with Lal because I thought I might be liberating my own cities. But to my chagrin, they were still regarded as Captured Bases. It's not a total loss because they still have the Punishment Spheres I managed to build in them. I will take these 2 cities that I previously held, and use them as a foothold. The rest, I'm going to start destroying. He can't very well nuke me if his cities are vaporizing as fast as I went through Domai!
Maybe his Fusion defenders will annoy me. But once I steal Orbital Spaceflight, I can jump 12 techs ahead. Hmm, this makes me realize I could have stolen it at any time by land. I'm wasting my time pushing the Cruiser Probe Teams around.
Ok, I'm spaceborne! What 12 toys am I going to get on top of that? Advanced Spaceflight, Silksteel Alloys, Photon/Wave Mechanics, Global Energy Theory, N-Space Compression, Quantum Power, Graviton Theory (don't need Space Elevator now), Super Tensile Solids, Secrets of Alpha Centauri (and I think I got cheated out of my free tech), Probability Mechanics, Nanometallurgy, and Matter Editation. Well I think I can probably win the war now.
Taking the 2nd city, I lost the Punishment Sphere. I've had enough of the guff. Time to obliterate.
[Limit reached]
MY 2334. I'm knocking on UN Headquarters. I've been liquidating all the cities around it, like I did to the Free Drones. Deidre can be my thrall now!
Post by: bvanevery on July 05, 2019, 10:46:35 AM
Nah. I looked at my tree. Lore-wise it's in the progression it should be. Retroviral Engineering is a C6 tech. That's pretty late in the tech tree, even if there's a bunch of stuff that comes later still. The game's just got twice as much stuff in it as it needs.
I declare myself the winner of the game, as clearly, it can't go any other way. It just uses up hours of my time to finish off the last of the helpless cities. My home cities are only making Secret Projects and Supply Crawlers. A further lesson is I don't need much of what's in the game, to win the game.
I never picked any Politics this game, until the very end when I changed to Thought Control and Democratic. I never tried to grow past size 7 cities for the most part. Some did anyways, but this was a low population game by my usual standards. I never spent more than 10% of my budget on Psych. I'm realizing in hindsight that my Industrial Labs were a complete waste of time, because I could have popped the 12 Artifacts I had accumulated.
Chemicals are that good!
Onwards to testing Synthmetal Police, and thinking about making Copters into some kind of suicide drone.
Post by: bvanevery on July 06, 2019, 06:41:52 AM
Post by: Rocky on July 06, 2019, 06:30:37 PM
After 40 years of constant border war against the University my army of native life forms is finally breaking through. I think Zakharov must at least have thrown somewhere between 20-30 Laser/Impact units against me. That was a struggle but yet so satisfying.
Morgan has been a thorn in my side, having taken over 2 sea bases with Probe foils. I'm about to take them back but he's not letting up. Lots of Laser/Impact foils along my shores. I was finally able to breed my own fleet of Isle of the Deeps. Got lucky with some Artifact sea pods which helped me get ahead in tech. Switched from Planetary Transit System to Neural Amplifier.
Zakharov has completed Hunter-Seeker Alogrithm. Hopefully I can snatch that project from him soon because I've had it up to here with Morgan's probe teams.
I'm having a lot of fun with this game.
Post by: bvanevery on July 06, 2019, 06:46:19 PM
Sea bases getting lost to probe foils is annoying, although nowadays it should take a lot more money if the base is close to your capitol, and not be nearly as much of a threat as it once was. Morgan typically has a lot of money though. The AI is annoyingly persistent in that it will sail a foil probe team from any distance across the map to get at your sea bases. On the bright side, this can become a free infiltration and tech steal when you counterattack with your own probe teams, sparing you the effort of pushing your own units all the way across the map. I haven't been quite so cynical to just leave a "bait base" for the enemy to take over, but I've thought about doing so.
Post by: Rocky on July 06, 2019, 11:02:53 PM
After over a 100 years of bloody battle the University has finally been neutralized. (Except for some hidden sea base) Zakharov is never going to surrender because of my atrocities. I wasn't interested in his surrender anyways, only in his complete destruction. Finally he's going to pay for his betrayal and wiping out my border cities. He can tell me all day I'm going to choke on my own bile. I think I'll use a X cruiser to take out his last sea base to end him in style.
I know it's just an AI, but man, am I enjoying taking his faction apart.
The Morgans snatched the Neural Amplifier from under my nose. This is bad. They're the biggest faction with the largest armies; they're also allied with two other human factions. This renders my Isle of the Deep/Sealurk fleet almost useless. We've been at war for over a 100 years now, and I'm done. I'm switching to a X Cruiser fleet with some Isle of the Deep/Sealurk support and am going to take back dominance of the oceans, or at the very least control of my own backyard.
The Usurpers have unleashed a huge attack from the East with dozens of Impact infantry/artillery. A couple of mind worms in the fungus is helping against this for now.
The other factions are rising in power quickly. I was surprised that, despite my lead in tech and population, the Morganites, Peacekeepers and Hive are all about to overtake me if I'm not careful.
I got the Universal Translator, I got my Network Nodes and Research Hospitals in place, and I'm going to start with Tree Farms and Energy Banks soon. I'll be on the defensive for awhile, but after I've given my economy a boost, I'm going to turn my attention to the Usurpers who are east of me on the same landmass. The human factions are on the other side of the ocean on the southern hemisphere, it's not worth it to try launch an invasion at this stage.
Post by: Buster's Uncle on July 06, 2019, 11:11:54 PM
Post by: bvanevery on July 07, 2019, 02:27:46 AM
The Morgans snatched the Neural Amplifier from under my nose. This is bad. They're the biggest faction with the largest armies; they're also allied with two other human factions. This renders my Isle of the Deep/Sealurk fleet almost useless.
If you can stand to wait, later on you could build the Dream Twister. Its Psi offense advantage will be equal to the Neural Amplifier's defense advantage, resulting in a wash. Amassing +3 PLANET from Green, Eudaimonia, and possession of the Manifold Nexus should put your mindworm based forces back in the operatively superior position.
Although, one thing further to watch out for in sea battles: the Naval Yard. Whether from the Maritime Control Center, the Pirates' inherent faction ability, or just built individually because the AI likes them. They're a +100% defense bonus. If they're not from the MCC, you can destroy them with Cruiser Probe Teams.
Of course the really juicy way to do it is with the X Cruisers, per my previous posts. The enemy tends to have ships for defense, and that tends to get them mass casualties! It's so overpowered that I might have to rework some genetic plague defense rules. Certain techs provide that, but it sure didn't seem to be enough for the defenders in my last game.
I've created a Cloaked Artillery and an X Artillery predefined unit, to see what the AI does with them.
I did a huge tearing up of the tech tree prereqs, trying to solve the police unit problem. The irony is I haven't managed it yet. Just all sorts of other "improvements". Many are just to make the lore better.
Having 2 abilities is going to come earlier in the tree, and it'll affect most of the tree quickly. This is so I have more choice when making predefined units.
Secrets of the Human Brain is no longer going to be a research barrier to non-Discover factions, and it's going to give Trance, like in the original game.
Pre-Sentient Algorithms is going to become a major research barrier to overcome, for getting access to genetic warfare, the Cyborg Factory, and Supply Crawlers. Neural Grafting used to be prereqs for all of those, and I'm back to using that for 2 abilities, much earlier in the tree. I'm not averse to making Supply Crawlers harder to get, since they're seriously overpowered, but my choice indirectly makes the Space Elevator harder to get. So we'll see if I go through with that one. It's subject to playtest. I could make C5 Nanominiaturization a prereq instead, as it's much easier for most factions to obtain.
Habitation Domes will no longer depend on spaceflight, although they're still a Tier 8 tech. The Cloning Vats will go back to E9 Biomachinery, and Sky Hydroponics Labs will go there as well. That late in the game, I don't think it's gonna matter if you've got the Vats running. You can already permanently pop boom with Socialist + Eudaimonia, as long as you accept the penalties. Eudaimonia is dropping to E6 and will have the Empath Guild, instead of E6 Homo Superior.
Yeah I tore up some stuff, but the tree is not that different. It's just better laid out IMO. Less worrying about late game research foci, and more worrying about lore. I've got a sense now of what techs do and don't show up as a game gets long. Having super expensive late game Secret Projects changes a lot of things too. It's not so important whether a SP is Tier 9 or Tier 10 when it costs 800 minerals to make.
Well back to faffing with police.
Post by: bvanevery on July 07, 2019, 07:49:20 AM
The Data Angels were the leading faction of the game. They were willing to make quite a lot of those police units, 14 of them. Unfortunately their government was Democratic Capitalist with a -2 POLICE rating and they got no benefit from them. It's possible they might change their government at some point in the future, at which time those police units wouldn't be a waste.
Other factions made far fewer such units. Some had governments that could benefit from them, and others didn't.
I need to run a test long enough to see Plasma Police units. I've got those coming with E4 Bioadaptive Resonance. The unit designer is unfortunately too stupid to design police units on its own.
Post by: bvanevery on July 08, 2019, 10:27:22 AM
I couldn't really steal from my various enemies effectively, because they were very far away. I stole some anyways, pushing Foil Probe Teams rather long distances to accomplish it. That takes so long that other factions just keep getting ahead of me.
The Gaians and the Cyborgs are both strong research factions, but only the Gaians were effective, as the Cyborgs got squashed between the Data Angels and the Free Drones. Maybe the Cyborgs are still weak, although their position was bad, so it's not clear from this game alone. Something to keep a watch on.
The Free Drones shocked me by getting Secrets of the Human Brain first. I thought that was due to me putting Trance there and changing the research weights on it. Except, I forgot to actually change the weights! So how did they pull that off, luck? Quite weird.
The Peacekeepers often aren't slouchy on research. I think enough reasonably strong research factions were feeding the Data Angels, that they became the tech masters, benefiting from everyone else's stuff. Maybe also, I've created more breadth in the early tech tree. Maybe to the extent that other factions diversify their research, it feeds the Data Angels like oxygen being blown under a campfire. I suppose that theory could be tested by not including them, and maybe also by restricting a test game to more modestly researching factions.
I had the weird situation where I skipped a few important Tier 2 techs, that I was expecting I'd get, and that everyone else would get. I had E3 Centauri Genetics before I had E2 Centauri Empathy. I couldn't manage to get C2 Doctrine: Loyalty. The latter is useful because I now include a Synthmetal Skirmisher predefined unit with it. I kept wanting to get that rather than wasting time on a prototype, and I kept not getting it. Then when I did finally get it, it took some hacking to give me a Synthmetal Infantry prototype. The logic of when a predefined unit is going to complete a prototype or not, doesn't seem consistent. Sometimes I've got completed prototypes and I don't know why. Other times, stuff isn't completed, although skipping techs seems to have something to do with it.
Maybe prototypes all get updated the next time you get a tech, so there's a lag.
The Peacekeepers built 2 Synthmetal Police and 7 Plasma Police. However they are Democratic Capitalist and can't utilize police.
The Gaians built 2 Synthmetal Police and 0 Plasma Police. They are Fundamentalist Green and also built the Ascetic Virtues, so they have a +1 POLICE rating. They built 18 Plasma Sentinels.
The Cult of Planet built 4 Synthmetal Police. However their mindworms function as police, so whether they should do this is questionable. Also weird is they're Frontier Simple Survival. They never learned Doctrine: Loyalty so never went Fundamentalist. Hmm, that tech only has power=4 and build=3. It doesn't make people happy, so no Explore component. That's not a good fit to the very common Explore, Conquer research foci, such as the Cult has.
It would also explain why I didn't get it for a long time either, as the Hive has the same default foci. I only wanted the Synthmetal Skirmisher predefined unit, not Fundamentalist or Punishment Sphere.
The Data Angels have made some X units, and have been in a shooting war with the Cyborgs, but they don't seem to have committed any atrocities with them. I checked with "Edit Faction Diplomacy".
Post by: Jade Panther on July 09, 2019, 12:15:09 AM
I played as Deirdre, with the other six factions from the original game as AI's. I got my own continent. Zakharov got a large island near me. The Morgans and the UN share a continent and have been at peace with each other all game. The Spartans, Hive, and Miriam share a continent and have been at war with each other all game. I played to an extent like the AI, only prioritizing Explore in research, and to an extent not, since I used Socialist economics which AI Deirdre will never consider.
By 2308, I am massively in the lead in terms of power, and everyone except my long-time ally Yang is trying to stop me. Lal is in second place, and the UN-Morgan alliance is almost keeping up with me tech-wise. (It used to be the UN-Morgan-University alliance, but Zakharov was militarily weak and building bases three tiles away from mine when he declared Vendetta on me. Morgan, on the other hand, is militarily strong, and has been on the offensive against me for about 50 years. You've taken away everything that used to make him weak, but he now has +1 energy per worked tile by default.) Sparta, the Hive, and Miriam are all at least 15 techs behind the UN-Morgan alliance.
Cool thing that I've never seen before: an AI (Yang) built a new HQ after losing its original capital.
Things that worked well
The increased cost of crawlers meant that using them no longer feels like cheating. The increased cost of aircraft meant that they no longer dominate warfare. Not having copters at all was good, since they are very powerful and the AI has no idea how to use them or how to not be vulnerable to them. Cheaper mindworms meant I occasionally bred them. Getting hovertanks and future SE choices early enough in the game to use them was nice. The Spartans running Police State (because Robust: Justice), which is so thematically appropriate for them.
The rearranged tech tree, rearranged order at which things became available, and generally increased cost of weapons, armor, and aircraft all worked.
Issues
You probably already know that the Space screen (F6) does not work properly until a Sky Hydroponics Lab is built, so the UI doesn't play well with enabling the contruction of ODP's and OPT's before you can build SHL's. (I'm not disagreeing with making SHL's available later. UI issues aside I think that's a good idea. I'm just pointing out the UI issue.)
I got the Interlude that tells you that your faction has developed the technology to breed mind worms in captivity when I researched Centauri Empathy, even though Centauri Empathy does not give one the ability to breed mind worms in your mod. For this reason, I think that, whichever place in your revised tech tree you want to place the ability to breed mind worms, Centauri Empathy should be the tech in that place.
Things That Didn't Work
1. The Relative Power of Different SE choices
Wealth is terrible. None of the AI's will touch it with a ten-foot pole, and I don't blame them.
Socialism scales badly. More precisely, -2 Economy (-1 energy per base) scales badly, because in the early game it's a big deal and later in the game it means nothing. (It’s an especially big deal if a base doesn't have Recycling Tanks, and in my game both the Hive and the Spartans bypassed the technology that gives Recycling Tanks, and neither of them had any RTs, nor any bases larger than 7 pop, as of 2300.) I don't think it's coincidence that the three factions that were running Socialism when I encountered them (Hive/Sparta/Miriam) are the three weak AI factions, while the three factions that were running Capitalism when I encountered them are the three technologically advanced factions.
On the other hand, socialism is strong if you know how to use it and there's really no reason for me as Gaians not to run it: +2 Justice alone is better than the complete benefits of Green; -1 energy per base, although bad for the early-game AI, is meaningless to me when I have a couple of dozen pop 16 bases; and the +2 Growth (which allows pop booming) is completely bonus.
As a result of this, as the Gaians I've spent the entire game running Frontier politics & Socialist economics. Democracy is mainly useful if you're running Capitalism, which I can't, and Police State and Fundy are both good for militarized factions, which I'm not. I don't think a system where I'm ignoring every political choice and Green economics as the Gaians is really ideal.
I understand thematically why you decoupled ++Economy and -Police, but in terms of game mechanics combining the two works really well.
2. Efficiency/Justice
Because of the way the game mechanics work, I think that the SE settings should be designed so that everyone, especially the AI, will tend towards higher Efficiency/Justice values as the game progresses. Increased efficiency has two major game effects: it reduces the number of drones that you get as a penalty for having many bases (where "many" is relative to the size of the map you're playing on), and it reduces the amount of energy you lose to inefficiency at distant bases (where "distant" is not relative to the size of the map you're playing on). Since you're recommending this mod be played on larger maps than the original game designers' baseline, and since you're encouraging the AI to build many bases (e.g. giving all them the "explore" priority), it can reasonably be expected that, in a normal end-game, both player and successful AI's will have many bases some of which are "distant".
Therefore, I think that the average Efficiency stat for the factions should trend upwards over the course of the game, and moreso than vanilla games which were intended for fewer bases on smaller maps.
I say "Efficiency" rather than "Justice" because I'm strictly talking about game mechanics here, and when you talk about "Justice", well, the game clearly allows you to have the choice of creating late-game dystopias as well as late-game utopias (“police state”, “thought control”, every late game commentary by Miriam ever). A dystopia shouldn’t have a high Justice rating, but it’s not a viable strategy if it has a low Efficiency rating.
At 2300, my faction’s Justice rating was +4. I calculated that Lal, at +2, was the only AI with a positive Justice rating, and, hmmm, he was the second-ranked faction. Sparta was at 0, Zakharov and Miriam at -1, and Morgan and the Hive at -2. This isn’t great for AI’s with over 20 bases (except for Zakharov) and spread out over a very large map.
Edit: To put this in perspective, for me at+4 Justice 44/44 bases produced at least 2 energy after the inefficiency penalty based on Efficiency and distance from the capital. AI "Peacekeepers" at +2 Justice 39/39 bases produced at least 2 energy after the penalty. AI Sparta at 0 Justice 14/26 produced at least 2 energy after the penalty, 6/26 produced just 1, and 6/26 produced none. At -1 Justice, 11/23 Believer bases produced at least 2 energy after inefficiency - in MY 2308, less than half of their bases produced 2 or more energy! - 8 produced 1 energy, and 4 produced none. At -2 Justice, 17/20 Morgan bases still produced at least 2 energy after inefficiency, but AI Morgan routinely builds creches for his bases while AI Yang, Miriam, and Santiago do not. Finally, also at -2 Justice, 8/25 Hive bases produce at least 2 energy after inefficiency (perhaps not coincidentally, 7 are equipped with creches), 2 bases produced 1, and 15/25 Hive bases produced no energy after inefficiency. END EDIT
As a start, I’d give Hive Impunity: Police State, increase Democracy to +2 Justice (probably more changes needed), and remove the Justice penalty from Fundy. That would give most factions 1 point more Justice than they currently have.
With respect to Green, I’d give Gaians, Planet Cult, and Caretakers Impunity: Green. Then you can give Green whatever penalties you think suit 80% of the factions best without worry that AI Deirdre will turn up her nose. Green at +2 Justice +2 Planet -2 Economy looks good to me.
Post by: Jade Panther on July 09, 2019, 12:30:47 AM
The power graph says I'm Unsurpassed, but I can't help but feel that I'm actually losing to other factions. On tech, I simply can't catch them.In my current game, as Gaians running Knowledge and Cybernetic (and a pop 16 base with Supercollider, Theory of Everything, and Network Backbone), with 250% as many pops as Lal, I am six techs ahead of him and we are each researching one tech every 5 turns.
+Economy is powerful.
Post by: bvanevery on July 09, 2019, 02:30:15 AM
I did not in fact know that the Space Screen doesn't work until you've got Sky Hydroponics Labs available. That's a bit of a problem, especially as I was about to put it even later than it already is, to make Habitation Domes not depend on spaceflight. I'll have to think about what can be done. Free food quickly is just not cool.
I'm puzzled about Centauri Empathy vs. Centauri Genetics, as far as getting a mindworm production interlude. I'll check on that. I wonder if it's hardwired to the name of the tech, or the number of the tech. I could switch the names around, but the icons would be the same. So I'd have "Centuari heart symbol that makes mindworms" maybe, and "Centauri genetics symbol that does something else", maybe.
Giving Green any penalties isn't an option. There's a bug where if it has any penalties, the AI won't use Green at all. I worked pretty hard to get the Gaians to actually use Green. They refuse to use it in the original game, until they discover Locusts of Chiron. That's just stupid. That's a hundred years of wasted opportunity for them.
I find clearing out the entire map of supply pods, using +1 PLANET from Green, to be extremely profitable. I tend to amass large numbers of mindworms and Isles when doing so. It's a different play style, but it's hardly inferior to Socialist. If anything I think it is seriously overpowered, but you may not have noticed this. Especially if you played as the Gaians and had +1 PLANET already. I guess you're saying as the Gaians you had your cake and ate it too! Well, you can do that. But the AI can't.
Quote
A dystopia shouldn’t have a high Justice rating, but it’s not a viable strategy if it has a low Efficiency rating.
I disagree. I've been typically gaining +3 POLICE by various means, and they can suppress the heck out of the plebs! So they don't make money and labs outside your core. And maybe they whine a lot, at a distance. That's fine: either build a Punishment Sphere or obliterate them. I mean if you're worried about being a dystopia, you should do it right. :whip: Punishment Spheres are deliberately cheap in my mod, and deliberately available early in the game. You can definitely use distant cities for manufacturing only, such as coughing out more military units.
Generally speaking, I do not want players to be immune to the effects of -4 JUSTICE. I want them to feel the pain and have to deal with it somehow. I find that I can deal with it, but I have to make tradeoffs.
The -5 POLICE mechanic is now the province of dedicated researchers. Happens with Democratic Knowledge Cybernetic.
Post by: bvanevery on July 09, 2019, 03:14:21 AM
The Synthmetal Skirmisher is a popular unit. Pirates have 59 active, 41 lost! Hive: 48 active, 15 lost. Gaians: 53 active, 30 lost. Cult: 42 lost. Believers: 39 active, 21 lost. Peacekeepers 80 active, 24 lost. Spartans 71 active, 17 lost. One might almost think the AI is obsessed with this unit. I haven't been in enough of a fight with the AI factions, to know if this is good or bad.
Nobody uses Synthmetal Police this late in the game. Some factions have large numbers of fission Plasma Police. Pirates: 18 active, 7 lost, but -2 POLICE so a waste. Hive: 40 active, 3 lost, +5 POLICE. Wonder what happens if I don't tell him to seek POLICE as a secondary compulsion? Edit: he chooses Thought Control. It turns out I got rid of POLICE as a secondary compulsion a long time ago. His Politics should be Police State when the AI plays him anyways. Gaians: 0 active, 1 lost, +3 POLICE and built the Ascetic Virtues. Believers: 5 active, 1 lost, +2 POLICE. Peacekeepers: 3 active, 9 lost, +2 POLICE. Weird that they prefer Frontier to Democratic politics, c'mon Lal! Spartans: 20 active, 2 lost, +2 POLICE. Thought Control seems to be reasonably popular this late in the game.
Some factions have made the predefined X units, but none have committed atrocities with them. I think that makes them a useless extra production expense. A pity.
Post by: bvanevery on July 09, 2019, 03:01:31 PM
The Spartans, Hive, and Miriam share a continent and have been at war with each other all game.
I don't think it's coincidence that the three factions that were running Socialism when I encountered them (Hive/Sparta/Miriam) are the three weak AI factions, while the three factions that were running Capitalism when I encountered them are the three technologically advanced factions.
On further contemplation of this, I'm not convinced. You may be right, or it may be that 3 factions are sharing 1 continent and weakening each other because they're at each other's throats. Both the Spartans and the Believers are Aggressive factions in my mod. The Peacekeepers, University, and Morganites are all Passive factions. There's a reason they are able to sit back and accumulate wealth and technology, it's by design. The Morganites, especially, functioned as sort of a ticking time bomb during a lot of my mod development. I've seen the Peacekeepers often have this effect as well, possibly because they tend to gain the Governorship and get a lot of money that way.
In my experience the University is not as tough as them and tends to get trashed, but I don't know what more I would do with them, having given them free Biology Labs on top of their free Network Nodes. I have to keep in mind what a human player would do with the University, and I think that faction is just fine from the standpoint of human play.
The Pirates were the arch "Passive ticking time bomb" faction for a long time. Just a complete economic runaway. I'm not sure what has happened, but they don't seem to be as tough anymore. Maybe it's selective observation from when I've played as the Caretakers or Usurpers? Then like all the other human factions, they become Aggressive, and that actually hurts their play style. I'll have to pay attention to the phenomenon of Pirate performance.
I wonder if violent, at war factions choose Socialist? And is it because they think it's Planned and are going to get a +1 INDUSTRY bonus that they're not actually getting anymore? Or is it not hardwired, and just a consequence of trying to balance -JUSTICE from Police State or Fundamentalist?
Post by: bvanevery on July 09, 2019, 03:32:41 PM
Wealth is terrible. None of the AI's will touch it with a ten-foot pole, and I don't blame them.
They don't know what they're missing. :D The actual difference between my Wealth and stock Wealth is I don't give the INDUSTRY bonus. I have decided that ECONOMY bonuses are overpowered and pretty much the key to buying Secret Projects outright. The game is structured so that if you pick 2 of {Democratic, Capitalist, Wealth} you're gonna have a pile of money. Some factions can't pick 1 of those, so they would pick the other 2. The basic problem with the stock game is the AI doesn't know how to spend money on stuff, but for a human player, it becomes a bit of a cakewalk. I really can't abide having INDUSTRY bonuses on top of that. Taking those away from both Capitalist and Wealth was a good move, I have decided.
I've had different penalties for Wealth in the past. There are times when it has been -1 MORALE -1 PLANET. The problem with that is, you can't get away from a certain kind of penalty when they're mixed together like that. With the existing system, you have a choice of taking POLICE, PLANET, or MORALE penalties.
The one faction that is supposed to choose Wealth, is the Pirates. I haven't been paying attention to whether they're actually doing it lately. If they're not, then that's a problem, and would explain why they're not doing as well as they used to. I'd have to fix it somehow, like I fixed Green for the Gaians.
Post by: Rocky on July 09, 2019, 08:01:44 PM
It's now 2370 and I just completed it. I had a few scary years when the Morganites landed several stacks of units near my Headquarters. Considering you lose all of your population as aliens when humans conquer a base this could have been disastrous and it was a close call.
I'm now in the process of replacing all of my military units with native life forms. I love that they're cheaper to build in your mod, I'm having so much fun playing with them, not to mention I'll be able to avoid a lot of micro-management with the upgrades.
- I'm still Unsurpassed but the Peacekeepers and Morganites are close behind. Especially Morgan is a powerhouse who's also (narrowly) leading in tech.
- The Consciousness was the first to achieve Advanced Spaceflight and has just started Cloudbase Academy.
- Morganites just launched his first missiles and is likely already working on Planet Busters. I'm a little nervous about that as I don't have defenses against PB's yet. I just began research on Orbital Spaceflight, attempts to steal this tech failed as all my Probe units were intercepted.
- Peacekeepers, Morganites and Consciousness are doing well and are scientific powerhouses. University has been reduced to a few sea bases, but he's now expanding again. My motivation for revenge has waned now the Morganites are a bigger threat.
- The Hive and Usurpers seem to be lagging behind in science output, but they do employ Destroyer Probe Teams. Judging by the tech level of their military units they're not doing too bad.
Post by: bvanevery on July 10, 2019, 12:27:16 AM
I'm now in the process of replacing all of my military units with native life forms. I love that they're cheaper to build in your mod, I'm having so much fun playing with them, not to mention I'll be able to avoid a lot of micro-management with the upgrades.
You know what's really funny? They were cheaper in my mod, and I could swear that I changed them back to the costs of the original game... only in the case of mind worms, I didn't. It's a bug! Spore Launchers, Isles, and Locusts all got changed back in version 1.30. From my CHANGELOG:
Code: [Select]
PREDEFINED UNITS:
- Mind Worms: now costs 5, same as the original game. Weapons power has shifted too heavily in favor of Psi combat. Restoring costs can help even it out.
- Spore Launcher: now costs 5, same as the original game.
- Isle of the Deep: now costs 8, same as the original game.
- Locusts of Chiron: now costs 10, same as the original game.Except that in alphax.txt, the cost of a Mind Worm is actually 4. What to do? What a puzzle. The cheaper cost would definitely explain why in my last AI vs. AI test run, it was completely overrun with mind worms.
I'm pretty firm on leaving the cost of Isles and Locusts alone. When Isles were cheaper, the AI was downright obsessive about building them, especially the Pirates. Locusts are back to original pricing and the AI does build a few of them, not many. I just made them faster in my last release, to free up the Copter chassis for something else, so I don't have any inclination to make Locusts cheaper.
I don't really think artillery is "better" than a direct fire weapon. For a long time I had artillery simply cost 0, as a mere weapons platform choice. Unfortunately this made the AI obsess about building artillery, so I had to change it back to the stock "depends on various factors" formula. I don't really ever make Spore Launchers, but I've used captured ones some. I'm unclear on when they are and aren't effective.
I think by popular demand, we will try Spore Launchers = 4. Since 2 of you actually like cheaper mind worms, I don't have the heart to take that away just yet. I do still question the combat balance though. For now, I will work on trying to get the AI to build more Trance units. I did not like the Trance = 0 cost of the original game. However, Trance = 1 has some negative consequences for game balance. It sure simplifies unit design though, instead of minimaxing every single possible Trance variant of a unit.
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I'm a little nervous about that as I don't have defenses against PB's yet.
The AI never attacks with PBs unless you've committed an atrocity against them. Then an Aggressive faction will start firing. Thus, if I ever choose to use chemical weapons earlier in the game, I have to be certain I'm going to completely wipe out a faction before they can launch nukes. A corollary to this, is to only have 1 chemical weapons war at a time, for fear of leaving 2 or more jobs unfinished.
Post by: bvanevery on July 10, 2019, 02:18:36 AM
I'm changing POLICE around for 1.33. I can make the AI produce police units, but I can't make it smart enough to make or not make them depending on POLICE rating. Therefore, the most common government choices need to have a POLICE rating of at least -1. This is readily solved if I dump all liabilities onto Knowledge and Cybernetic.
I need Doctrine: Loyalty to have a growth component to it, i.e. it needs to make people happy. Most factions have Explore, Conquer research foci and they aren't learning how to go Fundamentalist. This is much more of a problem now that I'm broadening the early techs. So, we're back to Fundamentalist having a lesser Police capability. I suppose that could also combine nicely with Thought Control later on.
Power gets the +1 PROBE, which when combined with Thought Control will bring to +3 PROBE. I'm not fond of anyone having PROBE advantages in the early game. Recently I raised all the PROBE costs because mind control is overpowered. I'd actually like it if cities can never be taken over by probe teams in the early to mid game. Power is already pretty heavily penalized with -2 JUSTICE so I don't think it's imbalanced. It's a better mid to late game progression having it here.
I have not forgotten the problem of Wealth. I simply haven't looked into it yet. I need to see what the Pirates do, if they obey their primary compulsion or not. The path of least resistance would be to restore +1 INDUSTRY per the original game, but I don't want to. Another option is to do +1 SUPPORT, which would help earlier in the game but not so much later in the game. Or I could just change to -1 MORALE. Or I could try something I haven't thought of yet. Again it depends on what the Pirates will or won't accept.
Post by: bvanevery on July 10, 2019, 05:35:14 AM
The Spartans, on the other hand, tore up a supercontinent. Judging by their start position, it looks like they colonized the Monsoon Jungle at the beginning of the game. They built or came to control most of the Secret Projects remaining. They're about to execute the Peacekeepers, which is why the game stopped. I suspect that if I let it continue to run, they will overrun the Gaians in short order. Then it will be a showdown between the Spartans and the Pirates, although expect it won't resolve before MY 2500. The Spartans were choosing Police State Socialist Power Thought Control.
The Cyborgs have a modest sized island to themselves. They have chosen Democratic Capitalist Power. They have not researched Digital Sentience and so have not gone Cybernetic. I would say these choices are not wrong for them, but the AI isn't smart enough to fight successfully from an island. It appears the Gaians wiped them out within the first 100 years and they landed on an escape pod on this island.
Post by: bvanevery on July 10, 2019, 06:57:04 AM
Anyways, I find it mildly interesting that the game will terminate with a winner before MY 2500. But I'm not going to wait around for it because it's tons of tedious Spore Launcher shellings every turn. You'd think the AI would be bright enough to clear those out.
Synthmetal Skirmishers survive as a popular unit even in the bitter end. The Pirates have 36 active, 9 lost. I think they were made in situ in various sea bases, because many are Green. I guess those sea bases were never successfully attacked by anything. The Spartans have 60 active, 2 lost. I suppose when they swept their foes off the supercontinent, nobody was around to do their units any harm.
Post by: Jade Panther on July 10, 2019, 08:53:16 AM
I find clearing out the entire map of supply pods, using +1 PLANET from Green, to be extremely profitable. I tend to amass large numbers of mindworms and Isles when doing so. It's a different play style, but it's hardly inferior to Socialist. If anything I think it is seriously overpowered, but you may not have noticed this. Especially if you played as the Gaians and had +1 PLANET already. I guess you're saying as the Gaians you had your cake and ate it too! Well, you can do that. But the AI can't.I'm well aware of the power of the play style - in vanilla, doing this while running Democratic/Planned/creche is what the Gaians do. But, in vanilla, you forfeit the ability to run +2 economy, which is an acceptable trade-off. I hadn't thought through that in this mod one can cycle between running Demo/Green/Wealth and getting +2 economy while farming alien artifacts, and running Frontier/Socialism/Whatever and pop booming while farming alien artifacts, which is pretty crazy.
More pertinant to your point, though, is that even though you've made it possible for the AI for most factions to run Democratic/Green/Wealth and farm artifacts while getting +2 economy and +2 justice, none of the AI's in my game have shown any interest in doing so despite having numerous chances.
Some factions have made the predefined X units, but none have committed atrocities with them. I think that makes them a useless extra production expense. A pity.If they have them, that gives them the means to retaliate if players commit atrocities against them. It's also possible they might use them against Progenitors, which doesn't count as an atrocity in the eyes of Planet or other human factions. So it's not necessarily wasted effort.
Except that in alphax.txt, the cost of a Mind Worm is actually 4. What to do? What a puzzle. The cheaper cost would definitely explain why in my last AI vs. AI test run, it was completely overrun with mind worms.I agree with keeping the cost of mind worms at 4. At a cost of 5, I've never built them, but at 4 I do. The AI in my game is building them occasionally: low-tech Miriam is building mind worms (a tiny fraction of her massive army) while high-tech Morgan (with his -3 Planet rating) builds locusts, not worms.
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Punishment Spheres are deliberately cheap in my mod, and deliberately available early in the game.This is totally an aside, but back in 1999 or 2000 Firaxis stated in the notes to one of SMAC's 4 patches that they'd hard-coded the AI not to build punishment spheres because it had no idea of how to use them. So how cheap or expensive or early or late punishment spheres may be is only relevant to players, not AI's (unless you installed from a 20-year old SMAC CD).
Curious side note. I just noticed that Santiago has lost two planet busters. I have no idea how that happened, although I assume Yang is responsible. The other AI's try to build them but can't, because they have to pay 3x cost for the first prototype, and they never finish the prototype before they decide they urgently need to build something else at that base.
I have not forgotten the problem of Wealth. I simply haven't looked into it yet. I need to see what the Pirates do, if they obey their primary compulsion or not.My hypothesis for the way the AI decides this is: when an AI is deciding what to pick and their Agenda is one of the options (for your Pirates, when they're looking at Values, their Agenda of Wealth is one of the options) I think they just consider their Agenda vs. the default option, in this case Survival. So they won't consider how good Power or Knowledge might be. They'll simply calculate the net benefits of Wealth, and if that's over 0 they'll take Wealth, otherwise they'll do nothing (Survival).
Other factions that don't have Value Agendas will compare Wealth to Power and Knowledge, and almost certainly decide that the benefits of one or the other of those are greater than whatever rather meager value they assign to 1 Econ - 2 Morale.
However their cities aren't doing any eco-damage now. Neither are the Spartan cities. I wonder if the Voice or the Ascent suppresses eco-damage?Every fungal bloom suppresses eco-damage, so fungal blooms will eventually solve themselves if you don't constantly increase production.
(Or it might have been something else. But it doesn't have to have been.)
Post by: Jade Panther on July 10, 2019, 10:29:21 AM
Generally speaking, I do not want players to be immune to the effects of -4 JUSTICE. I want them to feel the pain and have to deal with it somehow. I find that I candeal with it, but I have to make tradeoffs.Then we're talking past each other. I don't have any problems with players having to make tradeoffs. But the AI will do what it will do, and in the case of AI Yang (for example), he'll run Police State/Socialist/Power at -2 Efficiency every game, and in so doing he will forfeit every game. Although he can and will build numerous units, his research, in the later game after he switches to Power, will not be remotely competitive with the stronger AI's or with a player who is competitive with the stronger AI's.
When AI factions consistently throw the game, it makes it less interesting for me as a player.
As a player I could run Power (-2 Justice) if I need it badly enough, and then switch out of it during periods of relative peace. The AI won't do that. Not just Santiago, but Yang, Miriam, and Morgan(!) have run Power constantly since I infiltrated them. Yang and Santiago have been locked in a death grip with each other, so they have an excuse (especially considering that Spartans are Robust), but Miriam, even in 2300 when she was at peace with everyone, has been running it constantly too.
On further contemplation of this, I'm not convinced. You may be right, or it may be that 3 factions are sharing 1 continent and weakening each other because they're at each other's throats. Both the Spartans and the Believers are Aggressive factions in my mod.You shouldn't be convinced. It's a sample size of 1. And the war has definitely hurt them: Yang's bases have little terraforming; many of his pops are working fungus squares producing two food and nothing else; and he's lost over 20 formers to enemy action. The kicker for me was seeing how many of his bases are losing all their energy to distance-inefficiency. That's a deal-breaker. And the irony is that up until circa 2250 he was OK. It was only after he became more advanced, able to run Power, that he crippled himself.
The Peacekeepers, University, and Morganites are all Passive factions. There's a reason they are able to sit back and accumulate wealth and technology, it's by design. The Morganites, especially, functioned as sort of a ticking time bomb during a lot of my mod development. I've seen the Peacekeepers often have this effect as well, possibly because they tend to gain the Governorship and get a lot of money that way.That's been exactly my experience of these three factions during my game.
In my experience the University is not as tough as them and tends to get trashed, but I don't know what more I would do with them, having given them free Biology Labs on top of their free Network Nodes.
I wonder if violent, at war factions choose Socialist? And is it because they think it's Planned and are going to get a +1 INDUSTRY bonus that they're not actually getting anymore? Or is it not hardwired, and just a consequence of trying to balance -JUSTICE from Police State or Fundamentalist?In my game, Lal was running Democratic/Capitalist/Knowledge/Cybernetic, researching at a rate of 1 tech/5 years, while at war with me, for the longest time. Then three things changed: I built the Empath Guild and took the Governorship from him, I captured a trivial University base only 10 squares from the nearest Peacekeeper base, and I expanded my tech lead from 3 techs to 7. I don't know which of those things it was, or if it was something else, but he switched to Frontier/Socialist/Power/None, and is now researching at a rate of 1 tech/13 years, basically conceding the game when he was still in it. I understand only one part of that - once he'd switched to Socialist, there was no point in remaing Democratic, or maybe if he thinks the war has become real now that our nearest bases are relatively close maybe he wants to drop the police penalty (OK thinking the AI's that smart is a stretch), and since his Agenda is Democracy his only choices are Democratic and Frontier. But I have no idea why he switched to Socialist. In vanilla, AI factions that will consider both Democracy and Fundy typically run Democracy when I think they're competitive at research and typically run Fundy when I evaluate them as needing to catch up with probe teams, but I don't see why that would be relevant here. The AI seems to realize that -3 and -4 Justice are bad, but other AI's don't seem to have a problem with -2 Justice, and if Lal ran Frontier (to avoid the Police penalty)/Capitalist/Power he'd still be at -1 Justice. I don't get it.
It's interesting that Miriam still runs Fundy/Socialist/Power even though she's no longer under any obligation to, but she's way behind on tech, and Fundy has a PROBE bonus. Still, she could still run Capitalism, and Survival values would be better than Power.
Post by: Rocky on July 10, 2019, 12:38:21 PM
In my game I noticed an increase in Trance or Resonance Armor enemy units after I started to breed native life forms on a large scale. Until I got the Dream Twister, there were many encounters where my mind worms were not a match against them and had to mix them up with regular units/Spore Artillery.
Thanks for the info about the atrocity. It's a good thing I didn't use it against Morgan when he was attacking my headquarters because chances are I might have had a Planet Buster used against me before being ready.
Post by: bvanevery on July 10, 2019, 03:30:07 PM
and running Frontier/Socialism/Whatever and pop booming while farming alien artifacts, which is pretty crazy.
+2 GROWTH from Socialist is not pop booming. Pop booming requires a total of +6 GROWTH from various sources. A Children's Creche is worth +2 GROWTH. If you can make your people extremely happy, you can enter a Golden Age and get +2 GROWTH from that. But with a -2 ECONOMY that's not easy to do with Socialist. The expected way that players will get a pop boom, is to build a Children's Creche and choose Socialist and Eudaimonic. That's a late game arrangement. Before then, your only recourse is to make people very happy and get a Golden Age. It's also Morgan's only recourse because he can't choose Socialist, but hey, he's rich.
If you can demonstrate how you're actually pop booming, consistently and early in the game, maybe with manipulating worker types, then I might consider it a problem. I don't manipulate workers to make anything happen myself, too much micromanagement for me.
The original game has +2 GROWTH available from Democratic and +2 GROWTH available from Planned. I don't have any growth from Democratic.
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More pertinant to your point, though, is that even though you've made it possible for the AI for most factions to run Democratic/Green/Wealth and farm artifacts while getting +2 economy and +2 justice, none of the AI's in my game have shown any interest in doing so despite having numerous chances.
Nevertheless, the Pirates just won my last AI only test game doing exactly this. I think the next followup question is what does Morgan do? If a sufficient number of money grubbing factions actually choose Wealth, then there is no problem with Wealth. Doesn't have to be all factions, or even most factions.
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If they have them, that gives them the means to retaliate if players commit atrocities against them. It's also possible they might use them against Progenitors, which doesn't count as an atrocity in the eyes of Planet or other human factions. So it's not necessarily wasted effort.
I don't need the AIs to wipe out Aliens faster, or the Aliens to wipe out humans faster. AI vs. AI combat is pretty much balanced as is. That was one of the earliest major changes I made, defanging the Aliens. If the AI was smart enough to make chemical weapons when the Aliens are in the game, then it would make sense, but it isn't. I believe it's possible to make a tech that only appears if a given faction is in the game, such as the Aliens, but that requires sacrificing a tech for that purpose. A further problem is, do the humans and Aliens even know to use chemical weapons on each other? They may not.
I've tried many predefined unit ideas that didn't work out in the real world, because the AI factions weren't smart enough to use them properly. I chalk this up as just another one. The usual pattern is I think of something that's neat for a player, and then it turns out to be rubbish for the AI.
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while high-tech Morgan (with his -3 Planet rating) builds locusts, not worms.
What a goof nut! I've often seen the AI pester my own Locusts, when I'm tearing up their back country getting rid of all the Sensor Arrays and so forth. Those kinds of "didn't beef it up" Locusts often just bounce off mine. A further irony is Locusts can be attacked by ground troops, you don't need Air Superiority units to do it. I was surprised to find out that's true even in the original game.
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This is totally an aside, but back in 1999 or 2000 Firaxis stated in the notes to one of SMAC's 4 patches that they'd hard-coded the AI not to build punishment spheres because it had no idea of how to use them. So how cheap or expensive or early or late punishment spheres may be is only relevant to players, not AI's (unless you installed from a 20-year old SMAC CD).
Interesting. Explains why I've never seen the AI build them. Doesn't matter though. If a player wanted to skip all the usual happiness buildings and just have a low tech Punishment Sphere empire, they could do so from very early in the game.
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Curious side note. I just noticed that Santiago has lost two planet busters. I have no idea how that happened, although I assume Yang is responsible.
Overrunning a base that has PBs in it. Happens all the time. AI is terrible about protecting them.
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The other AI's try to build them but can't, because they have to pay 3x cost for the first prototype, and they never finish the prototype before they decide they urgently need to build something else at that base.
I've seen plenty of factions in plenty of games complete PBs. Yeah maybe they pay top dollar for them, but they still do it. In principle, they could build them at a Skunkworks as I intended. I'm not sure how often they do it that way in practice.
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My hypothesis for the way the AI decides this is: when an AI is deciding what to pick and their Agenda is one of the options (for your Pirates, when they're looking at Values, their Agenda of Wealth is one of the options) I think they just consider their Agenda vs. the default option, in this case Survival. So they won't consider how good Power or Knowledge might be. They'll simply calculate the net benefits of Wealth, and if that's over 0 they'll take Wealth, otherwise they'll do nothing (Survival).
Well I have Pirates=Wealth, University=Knowledge, Spartans=Power, and Usurpers=Power. So that's what I'll be looking for.
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Other factions that don't have Value Agendas will compare Wealth to Power and Knowledge, and almost certainly decide that the benefits of one or the other of those are greater than whatever rather meager value they assign to 1 Econ - 2 Morale.
Lately everyone seems to like Power. I've noticed the AI is rather tolerant to JUSTICE penalties, and downright allergic to GROWTH penalties. Not sure about POLICE or MORALE.
Post by: bvanevery on July 10, 2019, 08:13:16 PM
[Limit reached]
I've just learned Centauri Empathy. Am I now going to get an interlude like Jade Panther says?
Nope.
So far, can't reproduce this bug. Notable differences in our situations:
- I am the University, not the Gaians
- I have never captured a mind worm
I'm going Green, as I think it would be useful for terrorizing the Free Drones. I'm also quite gunshy about going Capitalist too early in the game. Lotsa fungus for some hostile to come clobber me. I prefer to wait until I've cleared fungus away from all my bases and know I'm not facing imminent mind worm threats. Popping pods at sea tends to produce lots of mind worms and spore launchers on one's shores.
Post by: bvanevery on July 10, 2019, 09:29:34 PM
MY 2177. Deirdre trades me E3 Intellectual Integrity for E2 Centauri Empathy, even though she hasn't finished the Ascetic Virtues. Unless she's just about to, that's a mistake, and I doubt she is. I wonder why the AI did that?
I'm quitting this game because I'm not satisfied with the way I've torn up the Discover techs. Need to fix that and start again.
Post by: Rocky on July 11, 2019, 05:01:45 PM
I'm still having lots of fun with my Caretaker game. I wanted to fill up some of the space between my Empire and the former University territory but any new base is getting sniped thanks to Orbital Insertions. If I want a new base I'd better send some garrisons to protect it.
I just got the tech which gives Habitation Domes. (I love how this is earlier in the tech tree in comparison with the vanilla game. I often feel "locked in" when my bases hit their max early on)
Post by: bvanevery on July 11, 2019, 07:38:09 PM
I've fixed the Sky Hydroponics Labs problem, by making it available with Advanced Spaceflight. That will now be an E7 instead of C7 tech. Orbital Defense Pods and the Cloudbase Academy will go to Graviton Theory, which will now be a C8 tech. I'm not happy about earlier food, but we can't very well have a broken UI can we? It's just a limitation of the original game.
Time to run an AI only game and see how the Hive does, I suppose.
Post by: bvanevery on July 12, 2019, 12:13:58 AM
With the new POLICE levels for Fundamentalist and Knowledge, the Morganites have made an interesting midgame choice with them. I don't think this is wrong of them, as in my experience they don't actually benefit from a massive ECONOMY rating unless they've got a lot of peaceful Commerce going on.
[Limit reached]
The Hive started on an island, and managed to get to the nearby mainland, simultaneously occupying it with the Peacekeepers. Remarkably, they did not come to blows despite intractably different ideology. They are allied , but they do not fight the same enemies. The Hive is at war with the Spartans and the Believers, and the Peacekeepers are at war with the Morganites. The latter 2 are the most powerful factions of the game. The Spartans are at war with the Morganites and the Believers, who have a Treaty with each other.
[Limit reached]
The Believers colonized a split empire at the beginning, with their western capitol securely behind a peaceful Morganic shield.
[Limit reached]
The Believer eastern empire is getting wiped out by the unified Spartans pushing up from the south.
The Gaians and the Free Drones skirmish on another spindly continent, with the former seeming to get the better of the latter, but the outcome is uncertain as of yet. The Believers are also colonizing another portion of this continent, making them a triple split empire.
This is a weird game! I'm not sure why it terminated, as none of the factions were actually about to die. For some reason I woke up from a nap with the Spartans in MY 2100 ready to settle their 1st city. This generally means the faction I was watching, lost the game and a new game started. I went back to Autosave 2, because usually if a game is terminated, Autosave 1 will just keep going and you'll be at the game's end. Looking at Autosave 1, it's from MY 2270 and the game hasn't terminated, so I don't know what happened.
I wonder if the game crashed? Ordinarily I don't have any stability problems, but Windows 10 recently updated itself to version 1803. I noticed some audio buzzing, which is caused by that, but I haven't been playing long enough to determine if it persists. Well I will start this game up again and let it run awhile longer, to see what of interest develops.
[Limit reached]
Now this is baffling. Why won't the Peacekeepers choose Democratic? Clearly they know how to do it, they just won't. -1 POLICE is the slightest slap on the wrist, it merely prevents nerve stapling. Democratic is almost a giveaway now, and it's not like other factions don't choose Democratic. Notably, I've seen the Pirates choose it plenty of times.
[Limit reached]
The Gaians have chosen Fundamentalist Green, which is rational and completely in character for them.
[Limit reached]
Huh, the Free Drones also dislike Democratic. The AI seems to be allergic to a trivial POLICE penalty.
Or maybe not. Maybe in both cases, the AI has calculated that a net -1 ECONOMY doesn't matter compared to -2 ECONOMY. Additional JUSTICE is not valued because neither empire is terribly large at this time? So if neither of the benefits particularly matter, perhaps it figures it should retain its right to nerve staple. If so, then the empires should get bigger and more in need of Democratic at a later time. So I'll run the game and see what happens.
Post by: bvanevery on July 12, 2019, 02:00:25 AM
And here is my answer. Termination of the game was legit. No bug. Now, how the hell did Morgan pull it off? What amount of money was needed to start the Economic Victory countdown? I'll have to go back 20 to 30 turns. I haven't seen a game resolve with Economic Victory in a long time. I don't think I've ever seen it happen in an AI only game. The last time it happened in one of my games, I realized I had overpowered the ECONOMY bonuses and took 1 of them out of the game. Nowadays it is only possible for Morgan to get to +5 ECONOMY, as he starts with +2 and only +3 is attainable from SE choices. +5 is the max the original game ever intended to be available. And seemingly, Morgan didn't even use that to win. So what's up?
At game's end, Morgan had 7 Tree Farms. He had built the Weather Paradigm and the Maritime Control Center. He was working on the Planetary Energy Grid. He built 10 Energy Banks. He had 1194 energy credits. Not what I'd call a world conquering economy.
In MY 2260, Morgan has 1029 energy credits. He is Fundamentalist Capitalist Knowledge and has a +3 ECONOMY.
[Limit reached]
The Morganites used to be Democratic! They had a +4 ECONOMY rating. They had 918 energy credits. At this time, they have already activated Corner The Energy Market. Victory will come in MY 2269. Unfortunately the auto-saves don't go back any farther than MY 2250, so I've just missed the window of understanding what happened.
The Morganites did achieve Planetary Economics. That's the required tech for Economic Victory, same as the original game. Maybe my changes to the tech tree, have made going up the Build part of the tree much easier than in the past.
[Limit reached]
An election was last held in MY 2239. By proposing something else, I was able to determine that no one is Governor. As Lal is actually in contact with everyone, I'm inclined to guess that the last election was deadlocked. And also, that there wasn't any previous election, that it took a long time for everyone to get into contact. I am thinking that the lack of a Governor, threw off the game's Commerce values. Making it very easy for Morgan to buy Planet.
If I am correct, then this could be a repeatable strategy? Don't contact anyone if you can help it. Grow as much as possible, amass as much money as you can, and buy Planet before a Governor is ever established?
Post by: Jade Panther on July 12, 2019, 03:58:43 AM
Now this is baffling. Why won't the Peacekeepers choose Democratic? Clearly they know how to do it, they just won't. -1 POLICE is the slightest slap on the wrist, it merely prevents nerve stapling. Democratic is almost a giveaway now, and it's not like other factions don't choose Democratic. Notably, I've seen the Pirates choose it plenty of times.
I now have a hypothesis for this. If you remember, a few posts ago I mentioned that AI Lal in my game abruptly changed to Frontier/Socialist/Power/None from Democratic/Capitalist/Knowledge/Cybernetic and this really puzzled me. I've played 20 turns since then, and Lal has been working on an absolutely massive military build up since then. My new hypothesis is that the AI has a mode where it says "I'm going to be in an all-out fight... need to place a high negative value on any negative police rating."
Or maybe not. Maybe in both cases, the AI has calculated that a net -1 ECONOMY doesn't matter compared to -2 ECONOMY. Additional JUSTICE is not valued because neither empire is terribly large at this time? So if neither of the benefits particularly matter, perhaps it figures it should retain its right to nerve staple. If so, then the empires should get bigger and more in need of Democratic at a later time. So I'll run the game and see what happens.Have you ever actually seen the AI nerve staple? (If you have, that's really cool, but I've never noticed it doing so.)
I am increasingly of the hypothesis that the AI doesn't think about the end totals of ECONOMY, etc., but just gives each one a weight, depending on the personality of the faction and the situation it is in, assesses each option (politics, economics, etc.) independently, and then the end results are whatever they are. Remember, Firaxis didn't do QA around "how does the AI play when people mod alpha.txt?" They did QA around "does the AI make reasonable decisions under vanilla conditions?"
Also, this would be easier to code.
This hypothesis implies that the AI isn't thinking, "choosing Democratic will put my final value at -1 POLICE" but the programmer was thinking "this AI's about to go to war, and choosing Democratic will give it -1 POLICE all by itself, and who knows what the POLICE implications of its choices for Economics and Values will be? Better not do that."
I'm quite sure that the AI does not consider how large it's empire is when it decides how much to value EFFIC/JUSTICE. If it did, AI Yang in my game would not be running SE choices that leave 2/3 of his bases at 100% inefficiency.
Post by: Jade Panther on July 12, 2019, 04:18:23 AM
The Morganites did achieve Planetary Economics. That's the required tech for Economic Victory, same as the original game. Maybe my changes to the tech tree, have made going up the Build part of the tree much easier than in the past.
An election was last held in MY 2239. By proposing something else, I was able to determine that no one is Governor. As Lal is actually in contact with everyone, I'm inclined to guess that the last election was deadlocked. And also, that there wasn't any previous election, that it took a long time for everyone to get into contact. I am thinking that the lack of a Governor, threw off the game's Commerce values. Making it very easy for Morgan to buy Planet.
If I am correct, then this could be a repeatable strategy? Don't contact anyone if you can help it. Grow as much as possible, amass as much money as you can, and buy Planet before a Governor is ever established?
I don't think you need to complicate your hypothesis by wondering whether not contacting anyone makes an economic victory easier.
According to the "Help" files, "Controlling the Global Energy Market will require a sum of credits roughly equal to the cost to 'mind control' every remaining base on Planet." So it's relative to the size of other factions. It might normally be cheap to meet the energy requirements early in the game, without it showing up in testing because in vanilla the tech requirement wouldn't be met early on.
You've made Morgan into a regular faction that gets +1 energy/square from the day he lands on Planet. Much stronger than he is in vanilla. He'll be richer in the early game than Firaxis ever expected any faction to be. (Not inherently bad, as in general your factions look stronger than their vanilla equivalents: in general they all look, at first glance, like regular factions with bonuses.) It wouldn't surprise me if it's harder for him to get Planetary Economics by 2250 (which I would have thought to be really hard) than to meet the energy requirement.
Post by: Jade Panther on July 12, 2019, 06:39:18 AM
I doubt the Hive can ever run out of money though. The AI probably cheats at that.When a human-controlled faction runs out of money, the game sells one of your facilities for you. I expect it does the same when that happens to an AI. A survey of my vanilla games shows that the AI rarely runs deficits and, when it does, it could balance its budget by reassigning some of the energy it is assigning to research, however unrealistic an expectation of AI Zakharov that may be. In my game with your mod, the Believers, the Hive, and, after Sparta went to Power, Sparta, were all running deficits, but a casual survey of the Hive in saved turns didn't show any signs that they were actually running out of money. Yang was getting infusions of money from somewhere, I don't know where, but wild mind worms are one possible source.
Tech, well, I don't believe all factions should be awesome at tech. If that were the one true strategy for winning the game, then every faction would be the same. All that really matters is if the Hive survives long enough to provide a challenge to the human player, and that it's reasonable when a human plays it. +3 POLICE is really powerful, and I've now got various predefined police units for the AI to play with. A Police State Power faction also manages +3 SUPPORT, which matters at least through the midgame.
Time to run an AI only game and see how the Hive does, I suppose.
Unless they're extremely unlucky, the Hive will prosper in the early game and fade into technological irrelevance after it gets the ability to run Power.
-2 Efficiency means that every base that's 16 or more squares from the headquarters will be at 100% inefficiency (unless it has a creche). That goes beyond "not awesome at tech". It's just not a viable strategy in a mod that's intended for large maps. It's not a problem for the player, who can easily see that the tradeoff of Power, -2 Justice for Support and Morale, is not worth it. It's a problem for the AI.
Morgan had a couple of pretty big drawbacks in vanilla, which you removed while giving him permanent baseline +2 Econ, which is fine. (Lal, Zakharov, Deirdre also got buffs. I haven't thought through the others). Buffing the factions compared to vanilla is a fine design decision. But why then are you nerfing Yang badly compared to vanilla, taking away the ability to run his Agenda without a -2 Efficiency/Justice penalty (as well as all of his other strengths) away from him?
"Power" works nicely in vanilla because -2 Industry is a big penalty to the player while being a somewhat meaningless penalty to the AI, who are more constrained by their inability to effectively terraform than by INDUSTRY modifiers. -2 Efficiency/Justice may seem like a smaller penalty than -2 Industry, and arguably from a player's point of view it is, but it's a much bigger penalty to the AI than -2 Industry is. The AI effectively gets +3 Industry at Transcend difficulty. It does not get +3 Efficiency.
Anyway, it's your mod and I've nagged you enough about this.
I've fixed the Sky Hydroponics Labs problem, by making it available with Advanced Spaceflight. That will now be an E7 instead of C7 tech. Orbital Defense Pods and the Cloudbase Academy will go to Graviton Theory, which will now be a C8 tech. I'm not happy about earlier food, but we can't very well have a broken UI can we? It's just a limitation of the original game.
I wouldn't worry about it. In my playthrough of your rules, I researched (and built) the Manifold Harmonics (which gives, among other things, a food bonus to every fungus square, which rather makes SHL's irrelevant), before I developed the technology for SHL's. Really, by that point in the game, you've got the food problem solved. (One of the cool things about SMAC is how you go from struggling to survive in the opening game to the God-mode of the end game.) In my house rules I nerf SHL's indirectly by making Cloudbase Academy much harder to get (Applied Gravitonics E14), so that every SHL is only worth 1/2 food to bases without aerospace complexes, as it was in SMAC before Cloudbase got introduced in SMAX.
Post by: bvanevery on July 12, 2019, 06:57:04 AM
They did QA around "does the AI make reasonable decisions under vanilla conditions?"
They weren't completely thorough about that either. I've found enough holes over time. It's a logical consequence of a game with lots of gewgaws in it, that doesn't have an ongoing way of being monetized, and that didn't get quite the sales of the Civ franchise in any event. To me the moral of the story is 1) don't make so many gewgaws, 2) figure out some way to keep getting new revenue from the game. 'Cuz if you're not, well, the kind of stuff I'm working on now is clearly "diminishing returns" territory and won't pay the bills. I hope someone recognizes all this polishing for what it is, but man, shiny shiny shiny is expensive!
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"this AI's about to go to war, and choosing Democratic will give it -1 POLICE all by itself, and who knows what the POLICE implications of its choices for Economics and Values will be? Better not do that."
It could even be that -1 POLICE did have a bad effect at some point in their development, but that they nerfed it. And didn't change any other logic, so they weight it as more catastrophic than it is.
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I'm quite sure that the AI does not consider how large it's empire is when it decides how much to value EFFIC/JUSTICE. If it did, AI Yang in my game would not be running SE choices that leave 2/3 of his bases at 100% inefficiency.
I've definitely observed the AI to be more tolerant of JUSTICE penalties. That's why I'm using them.
I'm currently playing as the Morganites. I'm doing quite well, but my isolationist "don't elect a Governor" plan failed completely. The Pirates met everyone including me, as one would reasonably expect the Pirates to do. And they elected themselves Governor, as Pirates with all their kelp fed population are likely to do. I'm not exactly close to Planetary Economics yet. It'll be some time yet.
Post by: bvanevery on July 12, 2019, 07:41:57 AM
-2 Efficiency means that every base that's 16 or more squares from the headquarters will be at 100% inefficiency (unless it has a creche).
I don't believe that. Do you have a screenshot proving it? I've empirically experienced games with -2 JUSTICE and have found them to be "no big deal". -3 has often seemed like a big deal though.
Another big issue is whether you as a player tend to "build vertical", just the number of cities you think you need in a starting area, or you tend to "go horizontal", building as many cities in every direction for as long as you can. In the limit, the latter is smallpoxing. Heavily penalizing smallpoxing is a feature.
Conquest inevitably involves the acquisition of cities that are not in one's core. My answer to that problem is to annihilate them or put a Punishment Sphere on them. I don't really care what the AI does about it, because the AI is cheating anyways. I can't even begin to quantify all the ways the AI cheats.
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It's not a problem for the player, who can easily see that the tradeoff of Power, -2 Justice for Support and Morale, is not worth it.
IYO. I just keep the "money and tech" cities in my core and crush everything else on the map. You don't need lots of money or tech to win this game. Troops will do just fine.
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But why then are you nerfing Yang badly compared to vanilla, taking away the ability to run his Agenda without a -2 Efficiency/Justice penalty (as well as all of his other strengths) away from him?
Because he now starts with +1 POLICE and can trivially go to +3 POLICE without effort, resulting in 2X police effectiveness from the early game onwards. Really have you simply not been inclined to play Yang much? I've made him the Police State badass of the game. Others can emulate him if they get the Ascetic Virtues.
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The AI effectively gets +3 Industry at Transcend difficulty. It does not get +3 Efficiency.
Be that as it may, INDUSTRY penalties for Power don't make any rational sense. Tell me how much of an INDUSTRY penalty the USA suffered in WW II. Or the Soviets. It works the opposite way in real life. I think I even had some versions of my mod where there was a bonus, not a penalty, but I don't remember it working out.
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Anyway, it's your mod and I've nagged you enough about this.
Your feedback is good. Bear in mind, there are more considerations than "what the AI was hardcoded to do". There are narrative and thematic considerations, which is why things like Socialist and JUSTICE are in the mod. SMAC wasn't famous just for being a collection of wargaming rules, that one minimaxes this way or that. It's a narrative experience. When you get a -4 JUSTICE penalty, you're supposed to be experiencing what it's like to run an unjust empire. In GNS Theory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNS_theory), a Gamist might be made upset that their favorite formulae aren't what they were used to be. But from a Simulationist standpoint, it's working rather well. I also think it's working pretty well as a narrative, although I haven't thought what the "dramatic satisfaction criteria" of choosing Police State and Power is.
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I researched (and built) the Manifold Harmonics (which gives, among other things, a food bonus to every fungus square, which rather makes SHL's irrelevant),
If you have a high PLANET rating. Some factions won't. For instance, it's not the Morganic way.
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Really, by that point in the game, you've got the food problem solved.
It's not the food problem by then. It's the voting yourself to victory problem.
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In my house rules I nerf SHL's indirectly by making Cloudbase Academy much harder to get (Applied Gravitonics E14), so that every SHL is only worth 1/2 food to bases without aerospace complexes, as it was in SMAC before Cloudbase got introduced in SMAX.
You'd have to nerf the Space Elevator too. It waives penalties for not having an Aerospace Complex. Or so it is documented.
Post by: bvanevery on July 12, 2019, 08:14:14 AM
When AI factions consistently throw the game, it makes it less interesting for me as a player.
Look you know you can always beat the vanilla AI, right? That it's only there for resistance. Well, at least if you've gotten used to how things work in my mod.
Haven't you seen the Hive take half the map yet? You either have to go conquer all that stuff, which is a PITA, or you have to come up with some other way to win. I'm just not getting this "Hive always throws the game" idea. I don't think you've played enough games to make that judgment. It's possible that my perspective is skewed by recent developments, and that my current regime for the Hive isn't as well tested as I thought. But I sure could swear the last time I tweaked the Hive's attributes, I had my reasons for what I gave them.
Balancing factions is empirical. You play until you get the sinking sense that a faction can't perform. Then you give them something.
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but Miriam, even in 2300 when she was at peace with everyone, has been running it constantly too.
The question is not whether Miriam is running Power. The question is whether Miriam's empire is large and dominant on the map, or feeble and stunted. She's an Aggressive faction still. It's rational for her to be into Power.
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In my game, Lal was running Democratic/Capitalist/Knowledge/Cybernetic,
I thought that was odd, because I thought he had a secondary compulsion to pick GROWTH. It looks like I removed his secondary compulsion a long time ago. Back then, I also tried giving him +2 GROWTH as a factional ability. But he was pop booming at the beginning of the game and it was seriously overpowered. So I got rid of that. He seemed to do just fine, so I never added back the GROWTH compulsion.
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but he switched to Frontier/Socialist/Power/None,
The simplest explanation is he thinks he needs Power to fight. But that gives -2 JUSTICE, and he wants that offset. Socialist does that. Also I don't know if you've noticed, but there are many circumstances where Capitalist, Socialist, and Green do not provide straightforward amounts of money. You can be surprised at which one actually gives you the most money.
A compounding factor may be, that Lal's actual research foci are Explore, Conquer. He's got the same idea as the Hive, the Spartans, the Believers, the Data Angels, the Caretakers, and the Cult of Planet. Why? Because it's a rough neighborhood. He's supposed to be the U.N. enforcer, he's supposed to keep the peace. Yes he's Passive, unlike the other factions which are all Erratic or Aggressive. But he believes in conquest, whether he calls it peace or not. I can't tell you how many games I've played of vanilla SMAC where I've cursed the @#$! Peackeepers, they are not nice.
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In vanilla, AI factions that will consider both Democracy and Fundy typically run Democracy when I think they're competitive at research and typically run Fundy when I evaluate them as needing to catch up with probe teams, but I don't see why that would be relevant here.
Vanilla Democratic isn't relevant. It doesn't give +1 ECONOMY, it gives +2 GROWTH, and it has -2 SUPPORT rather than any POLICE penalty. Apples and oranges.
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and Fundy has a PROBE bonus.
Marginal in 1.32, and going bye-bye in 1.33. Power will get it instead.
Post by: bvanevery on July 12, 2019, 08:31:14 AM
In the middle game the cost wouldn't matter as much as you would have more production + Brood Pits,
No you won't. :D I moved Brood Pits to D8 Secrets of the Manifolds because they're seriously overpowered. I've thought about moving them even later, but the narrative progression seems reasonable at present. You're right that you'd have "more" production by midgame, from more squares worked per city, but you're unlikely to have Genejack Factories or Supply Crawlers midgame now. Those are now early late game items. Your actual production is likely to be determined by how many forests you've planted and Tree Farms you've built, and it'll be modest.
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In my game I noticed an increase in Trance or Resonance Armor enemy units after I started to breed native life forms on a large scale. Until I got the Dream Twister, there were many encounters where my mind worms were not a match against them and had to mix them up with regular units/Spore Artillery.
I'm glad the AI has half a brain about this. Otherwise it would be too much of a cakewalk. This is reminding me that I meant to make more kinds of Trance units for 1.33, as I don't think the AI makes enough of them.
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Thanks for the info about the atrocity. It's a good thing I didn't use it against Morgan when he was attacking my headquarters because chances are I might have had a Planet Buster used against me before being ready.
I've got some choice After Action Reports about what happens when you do it "wrong". :D
Post by: Jade Panther on July 12, 2019, 09:58:55 AM
I don't believe that. Do you have a screenshot proving it? I've empirically experienced games with -2 JUSTICE and have found them to be "no big deal". -3 has often seemed like a big deal though.It's in the in-game documentation. Press F1, select advanced concepts, select inefficiency (advanced), plug the number into the formula.
I've always found it to be accurate, though you have to bear in mind that a base with a children's creche in a faction with -2 Justice has a Justice rating of 0 for purposes of this formula. So if, like most human players, you have creches in all of your major bases, it won't seem like such a problem, especially if your main bases are centralized. But some AI's won't have creches in most of their bases. (And human players can get around it with specialists, but AI's only do that by accident.)
Your tweaks to map configuration are awesome, BTW. It really feels like a planet.
I'm curious. In the test game that the Pirates were going to win in 2465, did any of the AI factions launch satellites? I've never seen them do so, and that game sounds like a best-case scenario.
Post by: bvanevery on July 12, 2019, 12:19:58 PM
I've always found it to be accurate,
I seriously doubt it is, but I'll see what I see.
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But some AI's won't have creches in most of their bases.
I seriously doubt that as well.
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Your tweaks to map configuration are awesome, BTW. It really feels like a planet.
It's been instructive to learn the influence of basic geography on the game dynamics. In a 4X game I'd always make the planet generation fully under player control. I seem to remember Civ III doing a good job of this.
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I'm curious. In the test game that the Pirates were going to win in 2465, did any of the AI factions launch satellites? I've never seen them do so, and that game sounds like a best-case scenario.
I don't think they did. I've played games where the AIs launched vast numbers of satellites, but lately I've been beating them long before they get to that stage. It was the kind of thing I could expect Morgan or the Pirates to do. The AI will actually completely wear you out with Orbital Defense Pod spam. It's a complete drag to deal with an AI determined to launch those.
Post by: Rocky on July 12, 2019, 02:59:37 PM
At first I was a little disappointed when I read about the Brood Pits, but after thinking about I realized you're right. When I first got Brood Pits I had a lot of fun with the boost they gave my units, but in hindsight I agree that it may have been too much at this point in the game.
From a lore/thematic perspective, having Brood Pits with Secrets of the Manifolds makes sense, as manipulating native life forms is something that should require a lot of research to master.
Can you direct me to one of those After Action Reports?
I'm curious. In the test game that the Pirates were going to win in 2465, did any of the AI factions launch satellites? I've never seen them do so, and that game sounds like a best-case scenario.
In the game I'm currently playing Morgan is building Orbital Defense Pods.
Post by: bvanevery on July 12, 2019, 04:07:43 PM
but in hindsight I agree that may have been too much at this point in the game.
They also give a +2 POLICE rating to the city they're in. For me that was the last straw. Totally overpowered facility.
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Can you direct me to one of those After Action Reports?
Witness (http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=21015.0) the poor slob Chairman Yang (i.e. me) getting what he fully deserves in the end.
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In the game I'm currently playing Morgan is building Orbital Defense Pods.
Yeah, been there, done that. Building your own ODPs to try to wipe out their ODPs is suicide. The combat odds seem to favor defense, I think because they are defense pods. An efficient and reliable way to get rid of ODPs, is to make cheap Conventional Missiles. Just fire them at whatever you intend to nuke, before you drop your actual nukes, to get all the ODPs out of the way. CMs aren't as cheap as they used to be though, so I'm not sure this strategy will be effective if you don't have Quantum Power or better.
I can't remember if you caught it, but in this thread I did an informal partial AAR about nukeing the entire planet at once using Singularity PBs. That's another finishing idea: wipe out everything at once, before Planet can retaliate for your ecological transgression.
Post by: bvanevery on July 13, 2019, 06:55:46 AM
MY 2249. I gain Planetary Economics and inquire as to the cost of Cornering The Energy Market. A measly 1788 credits. I have a +5 ECONOMY, Tree Farms in all 10 of my cities, and I make 194 credits per turn. I can win the game in under 30 turns! I'm not the Governor either, nor have commerce rates been doubled. The AI's Economic Victory wasn't a fluke. I've done something bad to the game's economics. Could it be all those factions running Socialist with -2 ECONOMY?
Energy reserves of other factions: Free Drones 850, Gaians 321, University 673, Hive 328, Pirates 406, Data Angels 1266. The latter is because I just gave them a big loan and bought a lot of techs from them.
[Limit reached]
The vanilla AI pretty much always puts the Pirate capitol in deep ocean and doesn't develop it. It also tends to be far away from other sea bases. Here we see that almost every Pirate city is more than 16 squares away from the capitol. This will be a good test of whether low JUSTICE ratings are unmanageable. The AI chose Fundamentalist Socialist, resulting in +1 JUSTICE. I shall switch them to Fundamentalist Green Power, resulting in -2 JUSTICE.
Well, it didn't make any difference. The real problem is the Pirates aren't building any Sea Formers. They're in a war with the Data Angels and the Gaians, who are contiguous land powers intertwined with the Pirates. They were allied with the Hive until last year. I believe the Hive and the Pirates are dominant on the water, so I think it unlikely that Pirate Sea Formers got sunk.
When I look at their Security Nexus, they don't show any made, produced, or killed at all. They have obsessed about Transports, producing 57! They have 17 cities and have produced 22 Synthmetal Skirmishers.
Umm ok I just looked at their Workshop, and they don't even have a design for a Sea Former. What's up with that? Guess I'd better check my CHANGELOG and figure out if I did something. This is weird.
The oldest autosaved game is from MY 2220. Back then, they were in a war with the Gaians, did not have a Sea Former design, and had Doctrine: Initiative. I believe I traded it to them.
The Hive, Gaians, Data Angels, and Free Drones also lack a Sea Former design. The University has it though. They also know Doctrine: Initiative, so I don't think that's the source of the bug.
The *Sea Formers line in alphax.txt is the same as the original game. The tech for it is Disable. Does the game barf if I have too many predefined units? Currently I have 42. Version 1.32 had 36.
Using the Scenario Editor I Discovered A Technology for the Pirates. I got Centauri Meditation, and with it immediately came a Fungicidal Sea Former design. However once I reviewed the design, it did not appear in the Workshop. I look at the available design slots and it says 64 are empty. 6 units have been designed, but 2 of them perhaps shouldn't be because they have predefined equivalents. Could that be the bug? The offenders are the Sea Colony Pod and the Scout Rover. Well, I guess not. The Unity Rover and the Sea Escape Pod may duplicate them, but technically they're different units with different names I suppose.
I wonder if this is just some kind of fluke stale game start bug thing? Like if I quit and restart SMAC, will this go away?
Post by: bvanevery on July 13, 2019, 05:16:39 PM
In version 1.33 that I'm working on, AI factions are not designing Sea Former units. I have recently increased the number of predefined units to 42. I thought that might have something to do with it, but commenting out new units and truncating the number to 36 doesn't make the problem go away.
[Limit reached]
The problem is present in the original game. I am wondering if my recent update of Windows 10 is to blame. I now have Windows 10 Pro, version 1803, OS Build 17134.885. Previously I had Windows 10 Pro, version 1709, OS Build 16299.1087.
The other possibility is that Sea Formers have always become available to the AIs in a weird way that I've never previously noticed, for lack of paying attention.
Post by: Rocky on July 13, 2019, 06:19:25 PM
The other factions would often not build a sea former until they got their first sea bases, which sometimes was never.
Post by: bvanevery on July 13, 2019, 08:31:56 PM
My Advanced Ecological Engineering makes a predefined unit available, the Super Cruiser Former. The game then also designs the Fungicidal Cruiser Former. A plain old Sea Former is not designed at this time. The AI does start building a Fungicidal Cruiser Former almost immediately when it's available. When a new tech is learned, no Sea Former unit is designed, so it must think the Cruiser based Formers are better designs. Or it just doesn't know what to do.
I am thinking this problem can be ended by explicitly setting a tech where the *Sea Former predefined unit is given. Even in vanilla SMAC, the tech for this design is set to Disable. I've now set it for B2 Industrial Base, which happens to have C1 Doctrine: Flexibility and B1 Centauri Ecology as prereqs. This seems to result in what I'd call "normal" early game behavior, and doesn't result in excessive numbers of such units. I'd say problem solved.
Post by: Rocky on July 13, 2019, 09:23:59 PM
Post by: bvanevery on July 13, 2019, 11:17:03 PM
MY 2236. The Pirate AI has built 91 Transports. FFS why?? Players have reported on excessive Transports at various times in this mod's development, but there's never been a clear pattern to it. Nor am I sure if it happens consistently. The Pirates are at war with 4 factions, so maybe it thinks it needs these for a war effort. There's a predefined unit for a Transport, but even in vanilla SMAC, its tech prereq is set to Disable. I wonder if giving it an explicit home would fix the problem?
The Pirates have 25 cities, 21 of which are sea bases. They have built 20 Trance Synthmetal Sentinels and 29 Synthmetal Skirmishers. The latter is a new predefined unit, which I'm trying to get the AI to take advantage of since the armor is basically free. This many units for the defense of empire is not unreasonable, but could the Speeder units be making the AI obsess about delivering them to somewhere?
Post by: bvanevery on July 14, 2019, 12:05:07 AM
I'm trying a version of Socialist where INDUSTRY is penalized instead of ECONOMY. It could be that the popularity of Socialist is destroying the Economic Victory conditions. The Pirates like it. Previously they were Democratic Capitalist. In MY 2199 they acquire B4 Environmental Economics and immediately switch to Wealth and Socialist. They are at war with the Hive and the Spartans. The Hive is an immediately threatening neighbor, intermixed with Pirate home territory. The Spartans are nearby but not quite as much of an existential threat. The Pirates have built 20 Transports, which again, seems excessive. They have 22 cities, 19 of which are at sea. They have researched Doctrine: Initiative and have completed a prototype Cruiser chassis, so continuing with Transports is weird.
I'm also trying Power with -2 GROWTH instead of -2 JUSTICE. I've done it before, but I thought the AIs wouldn't accept it before. I may have been mistaken, getting confused with the Gaian Green problem. Or it may have been a systemic consequence of liking Socialist. I don't know yet. I keep restarting test games.
Post by: Rocky on July 14, 2019, 12:11:47 AM
The vanilla Pirate AI has always seemed weird like that with its transports and sea formers.
Post by: bvanevery on July 14, 2019, 04:47:42 AM
Have you tried running the Pirates without the Explore setting?
In vanilla SMAC the Pirates are an Erratic, Explore, Conquer faction. I think I had them that way in version 1.0, which doesn't have any CHANGELOG notes for it. In version 1.1 they became a pure Conquer faction, and this was true through version 1.7. In 1.8 they become an Erratic, Explore, Build faction. In version 1.20 I changed their personality to Passive. It's been way too long for me to have a clear idea what they were like when they weren't Explore. I think I may have tried them without Explore at one point, and thought they didn't do well, so I kept them as Explore. But things change, and who knows how they'd behave now?
[Limit reached]
Morgan is quite ok with -2 GROWTH. MY 2271.
The Pirates are freaking out with a depressing 117 Transports though.
I removed the Synthmetal Skirmisher from the predefined units and ran a new test game. Lo and behold, Transport production returns to sanity! I'll watch further games to see if this holds.
My theory is that AIs in these games often deal with "the Transport problem" by just sort of shuffling stuff around and producing according to perceived needs. Like a ship moves "somewhat" towards a pickup target, but it's not really committed to doing so. I read this in some development article somewhere over the years. It's a way of dealing with the amphibious problem without spending a lot of development energy actually trying to solve anything.
Another test game... so much for that theory. MY 2280. 165 Transports!
Trying the no Explore, Build only idea. MY 2225. Transports are reasonable, but only 14 sea bases, much less than usual. Morganites are trying to Corner The Energy Market. Need to go back a turn and find out what it cost them. About 1200 credits. So unfortunately, getting rid of ECONOMY and JUSTICE penalties isn't enough. The Morganites just have too hot of a head start. The turn before they started the Cornering, they had a +4 ECONOMY from Democratic Capitalist. They eschewed Wealth. After starting the Cornering they dropped Capitalist. That's a little weird.
Post by: Rocky on July 14, 2019, 12:12:53 PM
What do the Pirates start with? Do they already have a pre-defined transport or do they get it later?
For the Morganites, you could potentially move the economic victory condition further up the tech tree to delay it, or bring back some of his handicaps like Hab Complexes.
Post by: bvanevery on July 14, 2019, 05:21:36 PM
It's good to hear that transports seems to be less now with Build. If you wish, you could try to give the Pirates Build and Conquer (either Peaceful or Erratic), the latter priority may make the AI more expansionistic.
And Conquer may also just spawn Transports all over again. Another problem is it's against my intent for the Pirates. They will focus on getting weapons instead of going straight up the Build tree and pursuing Wealth. I will see how they do as a pure Build faction for a few test games.
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What do the Pirates start with?
They start with C1 Doctrine: Flexibility.
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Do they already have a pre-defined transport or do they get it later?
Everyone who learns C1 Doctrine: Flexibility gets the predefined Transport unit. This is true in the original game. One has to be very careful about messing with original game units. Now who knows, maybe if it's disabled and the unit designer simply has to make a Transport, there won't be an obsession anymore? I suppose that's worth experimenting with.
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For the Morganites, you could potentially move the economic victory condition further up the tech tree to delay it,
That's what I'm currently working on. I'm thinking all the way up to Orbital Power Transmitters.
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or bring back some of his handicaps like Hab Complexes.It's not strictly a Morganic problem. I suspect that anyone could buy the victory cheaply, if only they made the right ECONOMY choices. We see the Morganic AI do it because they get a high ECONOMY easily. A human player can probably do it with other factions, which is unacceptable.
Post by: Rocky on July 14, 2019, 05:49:01 PM
And Conquer may also just spawn Transports all over again. Another problem is it's against my intent for the Pirates. They will focus on getting weapons instead of going straight up the Build tree and pursuing Wealth. I will see how they do as a pure Build faction for a few test games.
Good point. Yeah, in that case it's best to keep it on Build-only for now.
I remember that in vanilla Alien Crossfire Cha Dawn and Miriam had the same problems with overproducing transports as well (Both used Explore and Conquer) but not in every game. They had a tendency to do it when they had sea bases or were at war with more distant factions. It's probably something that gets triggered in certain conditions. For the Pirates it might be worse because they can't move ground units freely between their bases without transports.
The explanation in your earlier post about the AI and transports not really committing to pick up units might very well be the cause.
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That's what I'm currently working on. I'm thinking all the way up to Orbital Power Transmitters.
Sounds great.
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It's not strictly a Morganic problem. I suspect that anyone could buy the victory cheaply, if only they made the right ECONOMY choices. We see the Morganic AI do it because they get a high ECONOMY easily. A human player can probably do it with other factions, which is unacceptable.
Good point. In that case delaying the victory condition might be the best solution.
Post by: bvanevery on July 14, 2019, 06:38:06 PM
The Pirates are also an AQUATIC faction, and for all I know, their Transport code might be different from other factions. The 3 faction types are standard (no particular label), AQUATIC, and ALIEN. The latter 2 were added in the Alien Crossfire expansion pack. The ALIEN factions seem to do water colonization fairly consistently, and they do a better job of it than the original game code.
I wonder if the ALIEN factions are also prone to generating ridiculous numbers of Transports? They start on land though, so getting a small island start where they go watery, takes some doing. Wouldn't show up very often with my default settings, and most likely they'll just be runted and killed. The Pirates building 167 Transports is of course a sign of some kind of success. The problem being how egregiously wasteful and pointless it is.
Current plan for Economic Victory is B9 Global Energy Theory, which gives Orbital Power Transmitters. It's a big delay and lore-wise feels correct. Hey if you haven't gotten Economic Victory by then, with OPTs you jolly well should! Cheap economic victory is pretty weird to me, as whenever I've been contemplating it, I've typically seen costs of 60K to 100K credits. I probably wasn't thinking about doing it early game.
Post by: bvanevery on July 14, 2019, 08:31:37 PM
The SE choices were weird. 1st time I pressed "E", they said Democratic Capitalist Survival Eudaimonic. When I pressed "E" again, they said Fundamentalist Green. I don't know what's up with that. In either case I surmise that they don't want MORALE penalties while in a war. They are at war with 3 factions.
In another test game without Synthmetal Skirmishers, the Pirates only made 18 Transports. In MY 2357 they had made 237 Isles of the Deep. They also had the Pholus Mutagen and the Dream Twister, so this is pretty rational. Government is Democratic Socialist Wealth Cybernetic. The Data Angels are equal on the graph and they have a Truce. Their technological level of attainment is B8 Nanometallurgy, so I think my redesign of the late Build tree to be a "straight ramp" is working.
A few years later in MY 2363, the Pirates and the Data Angels are at war. The Pirates have gone to Fundamentalist Green Survival Cybernetic. They have got the prereqs for B9 Global Energy Theory but have researched 2 other Tier 9 techs. I expect they'll get it soon. I am wondering if things like "237" Isles is a screen printing error rather than a bona fide number. Now the numbers show as 19 active, 35 in production, 82 lost. That's a large number of units, but that's quite a bit less than previously stated.
In MY 2371, the Pirates learn B9 Global Energy Theory. It would cost them 190,116 credits to Corner The Energy Market. They have 0 ECONOMY and +1 JUSTICE. I take control of the Pirates and switch to Democratic Capitalist Wealth Eudaimonic, which gives me +3 ECONOMY and and +3 JUSTICE. This cheapens the cost to 140,645 credits. Of course it's prohibitive and isn't going to happen with the Pirates on their current trajectory.
Additionally, the Data Angels have built a modest number of Orbital Defense Pods, 5 so far. The Pirates are not in a position to dominate space and win with piles of Orbital Power Transmitters, assuming the AI actually knows how to do this. In other games that got to an orbital race, I've seen vast numbers of ODPs built by both sides as a typical outcome. Also as a human player, it's simply not possible to beat the AI's ODP output at this point in the game. Ground intervention is required, to prevent ODPs from being launched in the 1st place.
Post by: bvanevery on July 15, 2019, 06:24:48 AM
I guess now I start trying to remove the predefined Transport unit.
The results are that without a predefined Transport unit, they won't get designed. I even tried making a predefined Infantry Transport unit, just to establish the Transport module as already prototyped. It didn't help.
New theory on the nature of the problem. Once upon a time, I cheapened the cost of a Foil chassis. In vanilla it's 4, in my mod it's 3. I think the AI has decided that a Transport is an incredible cost deal. Fortunately I have a remedy: raise the cost of a Transport module. Hopefully I find a threshold where the AI isn't enticed anymore.
Another way to change costs, is to assign a cost to the predefined Transport unit itself. In vanilla SMAC, the cost is set to be autocalculated. I'm still testing, but a value of "6" seems to deter the AI. For reference, an Isle of the Deep costs "8" and a Locust of Chiron costs "10".
In a test game, MY 2307, the Morganites gain B9 Global Energy Theory. They are Unsurpassed but the University and the Pirates are close competitors. They have a +3 ECONOMY and +4 JUSTICE. It would cost them 9622 credits to Corner The Energy Market. Taking control of them, I change their ECONOMY to +5 and proceed to the next turn, but it still seems to cost the same.
Meanwhile with the Pirates, I made the Unity Transport available with Doctrine: Initiative. In my mod this is simply a Transport with a radar on it. I was hoping that if I changed the unit slot number, the AI might become more reasonable. No luck! It built 248 of them.
Post by: bvanevery on July 16, 2019, 04:25:06 PM
Changing the AI's general production practices, by providing other units for it to build and obsess over, is a general strategy worth exploring.
Unfortunately I think it's no longer effective in the Fusion era, because predefined units are interpreted as Fission units, far as I can tell. I'm not confident that the AI will upgrade any particular designs. Especially, my Police units all disappear in the Fusion era. But hey, at least I get them this far, and units are not necessarily upgraded or disbanded. I've seen plenty of test games where piles of the old Fission Police units are still hanging around.
Jade Dragon has pointed out how severe even a -2 JUSTICE Penalty is, to Economy and Labs production farther than 16 squares from the capitol. Consequently, I have changed the Power penalty to -2 GROWTH. The AIs seem to accept it just fine. The story idea is people are getting killed in wars and political disappearances.
Post by: Rocky on July 16, 2019, 05:55:46 PM
Maybe I missed it, but did you make any progress on a solution for the Pirates not building any sea formers?
Post by: bvanevery on July 16, 2019, 11:09:56 PM
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- Sea Formers: renamed from [sic] "*Sea Formers", and now available with B2 Industrial Base. For some reason this unit wasn't getting designed until midgame, typically in the late 2200's. Even in vanilla SMAC, the problem exists. In original SMAC the tech for this unit is set to Disable, which implies that something else triggered the design of a Sea Former.
I have freed up Progenitor Psych. I don't need it as an E1 tech anymore. I'm trying to decide what to do with it. In games without the Aliens, it is useless. I also have to be careful about giving anything with it, because the Aliens will get it at the start of the game. Someone did a mod where they made a completely optional part of the tech tree, that doesn't exist if the Aliens aren't in the game. However when I tried setting it up that way, I found that no entry appeared in the Datalinks. That's not a feature. I'm still contemplating this one.
Oh wait I think I remember how it was done. The User Technology was used as prereq. That way, only factions that start with the tech have it. This could be done in general with any tech that one wanted to make faction specific. Although the general problem is, having techs and gewgaws that can be completely out of the game.
Quite awhile ago I reinstated the deactivated Global Energy Theory and Inertial Damping, even getting their quotes and dialogues to work. I've never done the same with the User Technology though. Its icon is a light bulb with a number 9 in it. A bit goofy, but if anything, it seems appropriate for a Discover tech. Thing is, I've never needed another Discover tech in the tree. There aren't that many Discover gewgaws compared to other stuff.
Oops, clicking around on those tech icons in the Datalinks seems to crash the game.
[Limit reached]
I found a way to do it without a bug in the Datalinks. 1st tech requirement needs to be set to "None". 2nd tech requirement needs to be set to any valid tech. Then it will appear in the Datalinks like the picture above.
Post by: Vidsek on July 17, 2019, 02:31:05 AM
I've always been suspicious of that * before sea former in the UNITS section of alphax. Never got around to playing with it, tho.
Post by: bvanevery on July 17, 2019, 03:11:01 AM
Post by: Rocky on July 17, 2019, 07:34:31 PM
===
I haven't been able to play as much with my Caretaker game but I'm still enjoying it very much. It's 2413 and it feels each of the leading factions have their own identity now. I've started pop-booming around 6 years ago and the Peacekeepers are still keeping up with me. They have sea bases around the globe, over half of them fully developed because they've been building lots of sea formers.
Peacekeepers have large bases and a tech output (1400 per turn) that surpasses everyone, including me.
Morganites are slightly below the Peacekeepers but have the most energy reserves and the highest gold per turn.
The Hive has ended their war against the Consciousness and are now in "peace" mode. They are running Capitalist/Wealth/Cybernetic, and have a respectable 700 tech per turn.
The Consciousness is half the size of the Peacekeepers but have succeeded in becoming the technology leaders on Planet.
The Usurpers are close to elimination but they're putting up fierce resistance. I've counted over a dozen Gatling Cruisers (inflicting heavy losses on my northern fleet) and nearly two dozen Gatling/Missile Infantry/Artillery used against me within the last 10-15 years. The Morganites broke their Pact with the Usurpers and are now wreaking havoc on them from the south while the remnants of my naval fleet are sweeping in from the north.
The University has been kind of forgotten after I chased them off my continent; they have a small sea empire somewhere in the west. As long as they don't start building Planet Busters I'll probably ignore them.
I've been at war with all human factions almost since the beginning of the game. Morgan, Lal and Zakharov declared war on me around 2160 and the other two human factions declared war on me before I even met them! Peace has become impossible as after 300 years of constant warfare none of the humans are willing to talk to me. Although at this stage there's not much to gain from peace anymore.
My attempt to dominate the oceans failed. The Morganites and Peacekeepers have seeded the oceans with native life forms supported by a few Cruisers. Even my Resonance/Trance Cruisers can't stand up to their endless attacks. (The AI is surprisingly good in sniping my ships) I've retreated back to my territory.
I want to try and breed Demon Locust Swarms and support them with a stockpile of missiles. If I can use the missiles to take out the toughest defenders and my Locusts to mop up any weaker units I might finally be able to force a breakthrough in this war. It's also the only option I have left as the oceans are closed off to me now.
Having lots of fun with this game and your mod. I can honestly say the most fun with this game I had in years!
Post by: bvanevery on July 19, 2019, 06:31:35 PM
I'd be surprised if a Demon Anything doesn't cut through defenders, provided you have a high PLANET rating to get the attack bonus. Unless it's some kind of Trance unit with high Morale behind a Perimeter Defense and a Sensor Array. I do routinely destroy Sensor Arrays before taking cities, because they're easy enough to build back. I don't like destroying Perimeter Defenses although probe teams can do that. Problem is, if they're not algorithmically enhanced they typically won't survive doing targeted attacks well enough. So you have to just destroy everything, which is not usually what I want, if I'm bothering to take a city intact.
I haven't really solved the Pirate Transport problem in a satisfactory way yet. I think that Explore triggers the Pirates to make more of them, either directly or indirectly. For instance, Explore probably makes initial bases much farther apart, which might in turn trigger more Transports to be produced. However if I change the Pirates to a pure Build faction, then they're not trying to learn Doctrine: Initiative. I'm not exactly happy about that. I don't really want to tear up my tree and make D:I into some kind of Build tech either. I could make the Pirates Build, Conquer but then they won't be focusing on Build so much in the real world, due to overwhelming numbers of Conquer techs.
Synthmetal Transports are an effective defense against early game marauding at sea. However the Pirates won't make them for some reason. Other factions will. Since I saw the Data Angels making them, I suspect the order in which techs are learned is relevant. Maybe the automated unit designer kills various designs if they're acquired in "the usual order". I'm trying different orderings of the predefined units in alphax.txt, hoping that some orderings may be more effective than others.
I used to have the AI making both Synthmetal Police and Plasma Police. Now they only like Synthmetal Police. Again, I'm hoping it's an ordering problem. If it isn't, then maybe it's because I put Non-Lethal Methods at Tier 2. Putting them earlier, might have a counterintuitive effect on their desirability to the AI. I don't know if the AI smart enough to decide if it actually needs them, and I suspect it isn't. But if it was, then perhaps other happiness facilities got built, so don't need police.
I've decided to make the Cloaking Device a "mostly for the Aliens" tech, by having a sequence C2 Field Modulation, E3 Progenitor Psych, E4 Bioadaptive Resonance, that doesn't really overlap with anything else. I don't give the cloaked predefined units until the latter tech, because I don't want the Aliens starting the game with a bunch of predefined units. So a whole pile show up at E4 Bioadaptive Resonance. Which ones are useful or not, I'm still weeding through. I think the AI cheats and the Cloaked units will only be useful if harassing a human player. So it's not a good idea to make an expensive unit for the AI, if it just weakens its ability to fight and survive the onslaughts of other AIs.
I've come to realize that the Deep Pressure Hull serves many of the purposes of a Cloaked unit, so I've got some designs like that now. For instance, Sub Probe Teams, which should be very hard for a human player to do anything about. Sub combat in general, I'm experimenting with. I'm moving the capability to C3 Advanced Subatomic Theory because C2 Adaptive Doctrine was giving away too much stuff.
Post by: Rocky on July 20, 2019, 11:14:24 AM
It's interesting to hear about factions fighting back and causing problems.
I'd be surprised if a Demon Anything doesn't cut through defenders, provided you have a high PLANET rating to get the attack bonus. Unless it's some kind of Trance unit with high Morale behind a Perimeter Defense and a Sensor Array. I do routinely destroy Sensor Arrays before taking cities, because they're easy enough to build back. I don't like destroying Perimeter Defenses although probe teams can do that. Problem is, if they're not algorithmically enhanced they typically won't survive doing targeted attacks well enough. So you have to just destroy everything, which is not usually what I want, if I'm bothering to take a city intact.
I wanted to take four bases from the Morganites which housed several Secret Projects. They were stacked to the brim with 3-Res AAA Trance units (plus the effect of the Neural Amplifier) Even without sensor arrays it was something like 8.00 vs. 16.00 in strength. (Demon Locusts and +3 Planet rating) I think I used around thirty or more missiles on those four bases (multiple ones on the AAA units) and then I still lost a number of Locusts trying to overcome the remaining defenders. In the end the losses were worth it as I finally got the Neural Amplifier and Space Elevator.
Next turn something happened I haven't seen the AI do before, at least in my games. I had two captured Morgan bases, both stacked with around 8-10 Locusts each. The Hive launched a volley of missiles on both bases until no locusts were left, made an orbital insertion, took them over, and because they were both population 1 bases the projects inside were gone forever. (Merchant/Nano Factory/Self-Aware) I was able to keep the other two with Amplifier/Elevator but not without taking a few hits. In one turn I think I lost around 20 Locusts and several other units.
Post by: bvanevery on July 20, 2019, 04:52:47 PM
Such a unit would be the perfect defense against a Locust. Heck, I design that kind of unit myself all the time, if I think I'm going to be facing a Planet vengeance debacle. You would have been better off with a ground attack with a Demon Boil.
I guess you're saying the Hive dropped on size 1 cities, which destroyed them? Oops! Interesting that they beat you to building the Space Elevator, or captured it from its original owners. Just the other week, Jade Panther was complaining about the Hive being hopelessly weak. Guess that's not always true! But again, would need to verify vanilla AI or Thinker Mod AI. If vanilla, well gosh, what glorious violence.
Launching a lot of missiles, even the stock AI will do that, if it has the missiles. Missiles are quite expensive in my mod though. They cost 120 with a Fusion reactor. The cost drops to 80 with Quantum reactors, so is that what the Hive has got?
Post by: Rocky on July 20, 2019, 07:15:37 PM
This is with the (stock) AI of your mod. I've attached a screenshot below. The other three bases had similar kind of defenses + lots of native life.
True, mind worms would have worked better, but I'm shuffling so many units around that transporting the mind worms from one continent to another would have taken a long time.
Now that you mention it; all human factions got Quantum Power around the same time. Around 15-20 turns after the screenshot below was taken the Hive launched the missile attack and they were indeed using Quantum missiles.
Post by: bvanevery on July 20, 2019, 09:01:26 PM
Mindworms are indeed mainly limited by how long it takes to push them around. Hence why I'm primarily a fan of using rails to invade on Huge maps. I don't like loading and unloading Transports, nor pushing them around!
That said, Locusts are really useful for degrading a distant hostile empire in the absence of rails. I tend to destroy Sensor Arrays and Formers while waiting for a rail to arrive. Too bad pillaging with Locusts is a bit of an exploit. You can attack Locusts with ground troops, even in the original game, but the AI doesn't.
Post by: bvanevery on July 22, 2019, 02:26:46 AM
Watching an AI only test game. I think this is the 4th nuke thrown in the game. Not sure if Lal threw all of them or not.
In other news, I experimented with having D5 Applied Relativity as a prereq for C6 Fusion Power. I found this to be a harsh barrier to anyone learning the tech, as most factions don't pursue Discover techs. Build techs are more common so I changed the prereq to B5 Planetary Economics. That's also a prereq for C6 Orbital Spaceflight, where the nukes are coming from. Without Fusion reactors, unit designs would stagnate with whatever I provided as predefined units. With Fusion, the game moves along at a more appropriate pace. Story-wise I liked the idea of D5 Applied Relativity as a prereq, but its effect on gameplay was profound.
I have not been able to consistently prevent the Pirates from obsessing about transport units. I think I have lessened the problem, as I've gotten it to obsess about building various defensive foil ships, and also various armored transports. The latter are still wasteful of Support, but at least they do more damage as they are killed.
I am experimenting with the Pirates having Build, Conquer as their research foci, instead of Explore, Build. The problem is they keep getting in wars with everyone nowadays, despite their Passive personality. This might be a side effect of getting everyone to build more armored foils as Defensive units, to stop them from obsessing about so many Synthmetal Sentinels on land. The oceans are a lot more violent now, or at least they seem that way to me, watching it. The Pirates' pursuit of Wealth is looking increasingly pointless and I might abandon it. But, I haven't run enough test games to be completely sure of results, especially when changing the Fusion prereq turned out to have such a major effect.
Post by: Geo on July 22, 2019, 08:04:30 AM
I have not been able to consistently prevent the Pirates from obsessing about transport units. I think I have lessened the problem, as I've gotten it to obsess about building various defensive foil ships, and also various armored transports. The latter are still wasteful of Support, but at least they do more damage as they are killed.
Have you tried armed predefined foils, able to carry a passenger? A bit like the IoD...
Post by: bvanevery on July 22, 2019, 01:04:40 PM
Have you tried armed predefined foils, able to carry a passenger? A bit like the IoD...
It's not possible. Weapons and the Transport module go in the same slot, you can have one or the other. The Isle of the Deep is coded as a special case and you can have only 1 predefined unit with that property, hardcoded at that position in the unit list.
That said, I have never experimented with giving a unit a non-zero Cargo rating anyways. You can do that, but the effects of doing it when it's not actually a Transport, are unknown. I wonder if it can be hacked in-game by having a bona fide Transport in the same square as a non-Transport unit with cargo capacity? Once the Transport is loaded, or if the non-Transport simply has more moves, then maybe units could be loaded onto the non-Transport. That could lead to very frustrating buggy behavior if the player doesn't know what's going on.
Even if it works, a basic problem for gameplay, will be that such a unit is indistinguishable in appearance from a normal combat ship. So unless all combat ships can carry 1 unit, and the AI is bright enough to make use of them instead of more traditional Transport ships... but it's not possible to have all combat ships carry 1 unit, as only predefined units can be given that property.
Post by: Geo on July 22, 2019, 04:44:50 PM
You could define it as such: in #chassis, disable the cargo capacity of ships. And in #units, predefine a bunch of foils/cruiser units with the gun weapon and a cargo capacity. A bunch because you might want to predefine an number of 'gun' transports with the most common types of armor.
This way you'd mostly have a graphic consistency (normal gun foils/cruisers don't show a weapon graphic anyway).
To be honest, I never tested what happens if you put the cargo capacity at 0 in chassis, and try to predefine a unit with a fixed cargo capacity. Also, better reactors wouldn't increase cargo capacity of the unit.
Post by: bvanevery on July 22, 2019, 05:11:15 PM
So, the game would be full of units that are indistinguishable from each other. Feelings of crufty bugginess, are not something I want for my mod. Generally speaking I will bear the guilt of that, meaning would-be players go "WTF?" and uninstall the mod. There's not really enough verbal education bandwidth available for it to be otherwise. I'm already asking players to deal with dozens of new things that are going on, but at least those aren't broken things, and shouldn't greatly try the patience of someone familiar with the game.
A further problem is it's not possible to design Fusion units with the stock game. I can't just make an appropriate Cargo unit for every armor type, as my designs will be ignored once Fusion is discovered.
Scient 2.0 allows one to specify Fusion designs, but I'm not willing to require that patch. That's an adoption and deployment issue. SMAC just doesn't have a mechanism sophisticated enough to push mod content to users and ensure that "everyone" is using Scient 2.0. Also, Scient 2.0 is now known not to be bug free. It's crashing the game when it plays the Weather Paradigm and some other Secret Project videos. That's just what's known; I don't know what bugs are unknown. A mechanism for pushing Scient patches to users + installing mods would be best, but I'm not going to write that. Too much work for $0 gain.
On the balance I think this idea is going nowhere. It's the sort of problem better suited to binary patching, which I'm not in the business of doing. I will continue with whatever predefined unit and research foci expedients seem to reduce the problem. I probably can't solve it, but I think I can reduce it.
Post by: bvanevery on July 23, 2019, 04:41:21 AM
Look at this clown! He thinks he's gonna gas me!
We had an early game skirmish over the Monsoon Jungle. I made him give me one of his cities. Time passed, then he took it back with a probe team. We've been at war ever since. I retook the city with a mindworm, then stuffed the approaches with doubled up Cloaked Scouts to prevent any further mind control. It's been a stalemate since then as I don't have any weapons. I could have brought up some captured mindworms since I'm the Caretakers, but I thought they were far more valuable as explorers. I'll get around to wiping out the University eventually. I'm more into building Secret Projects at present. Other factions are starting to get C3 Applied Physics now. Meanwhile I'm building a pile of probe teams, although the University doesn't have enough cities for me to steal all his techs without losses. The Usurpers are still pretty far away and not entirely convenient to steal from, but I'm building a rail in their direction, courtesy of the Weather Paradigm. I've occupied the Manifold Nexus and the initial purpose of the rail is to connect it to the rest of my empire. Basically, I'm dominating the game.
I don't think I've ever seen the AI build X units unprovoked. Zhakarov is not at war with anyone else. I don't have any predefined X Marine units, although I used to. This is a new game, and actually, I got rid of predefined X units quite awhile ago. I wonder if those designs can persist in .tmp files somehow? If not, then maybe it's just because I'm a dominant Alien. I don't remember ever seeing the AI build X units in response to Aliens before though. Maybe because they never got far enough ahead that the AI felt desperate?
What if it's because I bullied him at the beginning of the game? Looking to get even.
Also amusing is that it's a Marine unit. The AI does seem to like Marine units, and perhaps that's due to the way I organized the tech tree. I deliberately made it easy to combine Marines with Lasers. The AI will also attack coastal sea bases properly with those Marine units.
The Explore, Build, Conquer Pirates have built 10 sea bases. They have built 9 Synthmetal Transports and 3 regular Transports, so that's not a problem for now. The have built 20 Synthmetal Coastals and have lost 7 of them. They're at war with the Data Angels. They've built 12 Synthmetal Garrisons and 2 Synthmetal Police. They are Fundamentalist Green Survival.
I've decided to quit this game. For one thing, the AI factions are completely pathetic compared to me. I suspected this, and proved it by turning on the Scenario Editor. Just can't do anything to me when I get the Monsoon Jungle start.
For another thing, I tried putting Fundamentalist back to +1 POLICE. I'm now thinking this is a bad idea, because it's making it way too popular with the factions. Too many Fundamentalist Socialist factions. Maybe the Pirates don't do as well now partly because of that obsession. Democratic is going to get better in 1.33 because it'll only be -1 POLICE. Maybe if I don't change Fundamentalist, I can get more factions to choose Democratic or Police State.
I will keep my eye peeled for more X weapons aimed at me in the future. Try some more early game bullying. I'm finding I can generally make the humans give me 1 city for free, before they start standing up to me.
Post by: bvanevery on July 27, 2019, 07:16:07 PM
The factions all want it to go make wars. Then they suffer RESEARCH penalties and stagnate, except for some ones that have advantages that overcome it. Like I've got the Free Drones doing Build, Conquer now, and they just steamroller supercontinents. It's a bit frightening. Actually the Spartans are doing just fine with a Conquer only focus again for some reason. Maybe the beginning of my tech tree is just easier now. The Data Angels also do fine with Conquer only, because they're getting free research from everyone else and need to beeline for Advanced Military Algorithms to get their free Covert Ops Centers.
But for others, it's a mess. The Gaians want to go Fundamentalist and I don't want them to, that's what the Cult of Planet is for. I tried giving them a secondary compulsion to pursue RESEARCH but it doesn't stop them from taking a -2 RESEARCH penalty from Fundamentalist. Secondary compulsions don't mean much. They're like a suggestion that might push the AI towards something, or not. I got the Pirates making more money again by giving them an ECONOMY secondary compulsion, but it doesn't always work.
I'm working on nerfing Socialist, it's too popular. Fundamentalist Socialist is this incredibly boring pattern that so many factions want to do. I may end up with +1 GROWTH for Socialist and +3 GROWTH for Eudaimonic.
I'm experimenting with adding +1 INDUSTRY to Capitalist, but that makes it way too attractive. Everyone wants it. I threw -1 JUSTICE in there to compensate, but then that makes Capitalist look like it's on an equal moral footing with Fundamentalist. Not sure I'm down with that. <sigh>
This is kind of turning into a mess, like when you pull on the thread of a sweater and the whole thing unravels. But at least Conquer seems to be a viable alternative to Explore as far as early colonization is concerned. Not sure why exactly, but may be due to the reshaping of my early tech tree.
I'm going to try getting rid of the MORALE bonus. I think factions choose Fundamentalist because they want to fight better. I think everyone should be denied that in the early game.
I also have an alternate naming idea for the category: Extremist. It does not imply religion. It could apply to a Brother Lal that is way too full of himself about the necessity of U.N. bureaucracy, for instance. Or a Santiago that thinks 5 year olds should be packing heat. Zealous or Dogmatic might also work.
I'm going with Extremist.
Post by: bvanevery on July 30, 2019, 03:36:32 AM
Changed from version 1.32 to 1.33:
SOCIAL ENGINEERING:
- Fundamentalist: now renamed to Extremist. It does not imply religion and is appropriate to the story of all factions.
- Extremist: removed PROBE bonus. Removed MORALE bonus. Removed JUSTICE penalty. Increased SUPPORT bonus to +2. This choice was way too popular with the AI factions, and it would cause their RESEARCH to stagnate. I believe they chose it for the MORALE bonus. They're going to have to do without it now! This choice is deliberately less attractive, so that most AI factions won't take a RESEARCH hit. Some will still do it however. Notably, the Caretakers seem to like it for some reason. Other factions are much more likely to flip back and forth between the new Police State and the new Democratic, and that is intentional. I want the core of political struggle, to be mostly about battling between these 2 poles, with the occasional Extremist faction.
- Police State: added +1 PROBE bonus. Removed SUPPORT bonus. Reduced JUSTICE penalty to -1. Being better with probe teams makes sense. AI factions have been averse to a -2 JUSTICE penalty, and this makes it way more attractive to them. Getting SUPPORT is now the province of Extremist factions; keeping the rabble in line is what you do in a Police State. This is going back to a much earlier design sensibility in my mod, the idea of a "mix and match" system. For instance, it is now much easier for a Capitalist Police State to arise.
- Democratic: reduced POLICE penalty to -1. I want the AI to make police units and benefit from them. Democratic was preventing many factions from doing so. The AI isn't smart enough to make or not make police units according to its POLICE rating, so avoiding -2 POLICE is necessary.
- Capitalist: reduced PLANET penalty to -2. Almost none of the AIs wanted to choose Capitalist as it was. Now it's much more popular.
- Socialist: reduced GROWTH bonus to +1. Reduced JUSTICE bonus to +1. Reduced ECONOMY penalty to -1. The AI factions liked this choice way too much.
- Knowledge: reduced RESEARCH bonus to +1. Added +1 JUSTICE. Added +1 PLANET. Increased POLICE penalty to -2. I want it to be possible to have a -5 POLICE rating. Previously I have said that knowledge and research are morally ambiguious, but a POLICE penalty isn't ambiguous at all. It should be consistent, so Knowledge is hereby a force of good and JUSTICE. The Gaians are a research oriented faction nowadays and the University gets free Biology Labs, so it's not crazy to move the Eudaimonic PLANET bonus to here.
- Wealth: reduced MORALE penalty to -1. Added -1 PLANET penalty. This spreads out the damage to Planet.
- Power: reduced JUSTICE penalty to -1. Added -2 GROWTH penalty. A playtester pointed out that -2 JUSTICE has seriously deleterious effects on cities farther than 16 squares away from a capitol. Cumulative JUSTICE penalties were overdetermining AI choices. The AIs accept the GROWTH penalty, it's still a popular choice. The story concept is people are being killed in wars and disappearances.
- Eudaimonic: raised GROWTH bonus to +3. Removed PLANET bonus. Triggering a pop boom without any happiness, has been about getting to Eudaimonic. I don't want Socialist to be so attractive in the early game. The PLANET bonus did not make sense with the Free Drone storyline. I do not want it with Cybernetic like in the original game, as I don't think cyborgs make better gardeners or hippies.
FACTIONS:
- Angels: changed description to "PROBE TEAM actions cost less". This is easier than trying to put an exact number on it. That's difficult to do because most factions are at 150% of the cost of the stock game now.
- Believers: set research foci to Build, Conquer. They seem to colonize at the beginning just fine with this, and it increases the liklihood of them turning their +1 ECONOMY bonus into something useful.
- Cyborgs: may not choose Extremist politics.
- Cult of Planet: now chooses Extremist politics.
- Data Angels: set research focus to Conquer only. They colonize just fine without Explore as a stimulus. They don't actually need Explore techs as they will get free techs from everyone else. What they need is to beeline to C4 Advanced Military Algorithms to get their free Covert Ops Centers.
- Free Drones: set research foci to Build, Conquer. Reduced JUSTICE bonus to +1. They colonize just fine without Explore as a stimulus. In fact with these settings they're awfully deadly, clearing out supercontinents full of enemies. They may be overpowered, and they have plenty of abilities, so JUSTICE is reduced to try to balance it.
- Gaians: set secondary compulsion to RESEARCH. The Gaians have free Biology Labs and are a research oriented faction. I don't want them to be Extremist like the Cult of Planet, as that's redundant. Knowledge now gives a PLANET bonus, so I don't need to tell the Gaians to pursue PLANET to pick that up.
- Hive: added +1 PROBE. Lowered probe team costs to 125. Does not suffer POLICE penalties in any social engineering choice. This was implemented by giving IMPUNITY to Knowledge and Cybernetic, as they only have POLICE penalties. If that changes, this will have to be reworked. The Hive is given these new abilities because it lost +2 SUPPORT from Police State. This hurts them more than any other faction, and they need stuff to make up the difference. They can now easily research and make war at the same time, unlike any other faction.
- Pirates: set research focus to Build only. Set secondary compulsion to ECONOMY. ECONOMY makes them more likely to pick Democratic and Wealth. They seem to favor Green over Capitalist, which is fine. A Build only focus results in a much tighter grouping of sea bases, almost to the point of becoming a smallpoxing strategy. They nevertheless seem to spread out sufficiently, I suppose because sea colonists are fast compared to land colonists. They do not appear to need an Explore stimulus to colonize appropriately at the beginning of the game. They also manage to learn the techs they need, such as Doctrine: Initiative, even though it is not a Build tech. I suspect this is because Conquer is a broad research category, and Explore recently became broad in the early game as well. Build is narrow, so probably a certain number of non-Build techs are picked up randomly, but not too many.
- Spartans: set research focus to Conquer only. They are colonizing in the early game just fine with this. It helps them get to C4 Advanced Military Algorithms and Power faster.
- University: now starts the game with D1 Information Networks. May not choose Extremist politics. They have not proven to be an especially strong faction, and now the early Discover techs are much easier for everyone else to obtain. This will help them get to Secrets of the Human Brain first.
BUILD TECHS:
- Doctrine: Loyalty: set power=0, wealth=4, and growth=3, making it a B2 tech. Extremist is now about getting +2 SUPPORT. It doesn't give MORALE or PROBE bonuses anymore. Punishment Spheres make drones go away. Has B1 Centauri Ecology and D1 Information Networks as prereqs. Since Extremist harms RESEARCH, the latter is to block factions from learning Extremist until they at least know how to build a Network Node.
- Technology for economic victory: now set to B9 Global Energy Theory, which is when Orbital Power Transmitters are gained. The Morganites can get a +4 ECONOMY very early in the game, and this seems to make Cornering The Energy Market exceedingly cheap. I have seen the Morganic AI do it multiple times, typically by the late 2200's, and typically costing 1200..1800 credits. Delaying Economic Victory gives the AI factions more time to develop their economies.
- Global Energy Theory: now a B9 tech. I wanted a fairly straightforward Build path to reach this, and I did not have enough earlier Build prereqs to leave it where it was.
- The Longevity Vaccine: moved to B6 Bio-Engineering, as in the original game. Better lore fit.
- Bio-Engineering: set growth=3 as the Longevity Vaccine can make people happy.
- Clinical Immortality: moved to B9 Matter Editation, as in the original game.
- Matter Editation: set power=3 and growth=3 as it gives Clinical Immortality.
EARLY DISCOVER TECHS:
- Biology Lab: moved to D3 Gene Splicing. It's valuable for early research and was too easy to obtain. This gives more of an advantage to the University and the Gaians, who have free Biology Labs as a factional ability.
- Gene Splicing: set power=3. Biology labs provide a lifecycle bonus. I've gone back and forth about whether mind worms are conquer techs or not, but they're clearly the best early weapon in the game.
- Hypnotic Trance: moved to D2 Secrets of the Human Brain, as in the original game. This tech didn't give anything other than a free tech, and I didn't like that. E2 Centauri Empathy still gives Green economy, so it is still worth researching.
- Secrets of the Human Brain: set power=3 and growth=3, as Trance is a mindworm combat abiltiy. This tech is no longer a pure Discover barrier and will be far more researchable by other factions.
- Hologram Theater: moved to D3 Optical Computers. This tech didn't have anything to offer besides a Secret Project, and I don't like that. It's also too easy to get Hologram Theaters as is. Since D2 Secrets of the Human Brain is no longer a hard research barrier, it shouldn't be that difficult for non-Discover factions to research Hologram Theaters.
- Research Hospital: moved to D4 Cyberethics. This tech has no lab facility, and in my experience, nobody can afford to make Research Hospitals earlier in the game anyways.
- Cyberethics: set power=3, wealth=3, and growth=3. Knowledge now gives JUSTICE and PLANET bonuses. The former can be worth money, and the latter is worthwhile for both exploratrion and combat.
CONQUER TECHS:
- Foil Chassis: raised cost to 4. Speed was raised in version 1.27 without raising cost. I suspect having it super cheap, exacerbates the problem of the Pirates building piles of Transports for no particularly good reason. Raising this by itself doesn't end the Pirate problem, but it does seem to make it occur less often.
- Heavy Transport: moved to E3 Monopole Magnets. Was giving away too much stuff too early.
- Deep Pressure Hull: moved to C3 Advanced Subatomic Theory. Was giving away too much stuff too early.
- Adaptive Doctrine: set growth=0. It now only gives military abilities.
- Soporific Gas Pods: moved to C7 Retroviral Engineering. I've had it here before. It's not a perfect thematic fit, but it's ok as far as when the ability is bestowed.
- Technology to allow 2 special abilities for a unit: now set to C3 Neural Grafting, as in the original game.
- Neural Grafting: now a C3 tech. Set wealth=3. Having 2 abilities in 1 unit saves on SUPPORT costs.
- Advanced Military Algorithms: set wealth=3. It gives a SUPPORT bonus.
- Self-Aware Machines: now a C8 tech. I want this as a prereq for E9 Biomachinery.
- Mind/Machine Interface: now a C7 tech. There are too many C6 techs.
- Retroviral Engineeering: now a C7 tech. There are too many C6 techs.
EXPLORE TECHS:
- Non-Lethal Methods: moved to E2 Biogenetics. I need this ability to mix into predefined units farther down the tech tree, and it was too difficult to do it from a Tier 3 tech.
- Biogenetics: set wealth=0, as it no longer gives a SUPPORT bonus.
- Children's Creche: moved to E3 Intellectual Integrity. Can't overload E2 Biogenetics, and it will also make E3 Intellectual Integrity more attractive to different research foci.
- Intellectual Integrity: set power=3 and wealth=3. Children's Creche gives a MORALE bonus and a substantial JUSTICE bonus.
- Centauri Empathy: set power=3. No longer gives NUTRIENT bonus in fungus. Green economy gives +1 PLANET. This allows the capturing of mind worms, and they are the best weapons of the early game.
- Technology to allow 3 nutrients in a square: now set to E3 Centauri Genetics. E2 Centauri Empathy was giving away too much stuff, and I don't think it's wrong to make the players work for nutrients a little harder.
- Aquafarm: moved to E3 Centauri Genetics. It's pointless to build until nutrient restrictions are removed.
- Progenitor Psych: now an E3 tech. Now gives +1 NUTRIENT bonus in fungus. I thought it was boring having early research wasted on this. Aliens will now usually contact humans, not the other way around. It will be a prereq for Resonance weapons and armors, a completely different research path from conventional weapons.
- Hab Complex: moved to E3 Monopole Magnets. Lore-wise this is fine, as the Planetary Transit System video is about humanity expanding like a gas. This will make it easier to do other things with Intellectual Integrity.
- Empath: moved to E6 Eudaimonia. It's now a better lore fit, and that tech is more about wealth as well.
- Centauri Meditation: set wealth=0. No longer increases ENERGY production in fungus. No longer has Empath giving an energy bonus.
- Bioadaptive Resonance: set power=3 and growth=4, making it an E4 tech. It's more mindworm oriented.
- The Empath Guild: moved to E6 Eudaimonia. This fits with Empaths also being moved to E6 Eudaimonia.
- Eudaimonia: now an E6 tech. Set power=3 as it gives the Empath Guild. Now increases ENERGY production in fungus. I prefer having Future Society choices consistently available at Tech Tier 6, and for this one to be wealth oriented.
- Psi Defense: moved to E6 Homo Superior. I think it's a useless tech, but in case someone finds that it isn't, this is a good home for it. The tech icon artwork is appropriate for a defensive tech, as opposed to E7 The Will To Power which looks like an offensive tech and gives Psi Attack.
- The Neural Amplifier: moved to E6 Homo Superior. Now costs 50. I tried putting it at E4 Bioadaptive Resonance, but it just feels like too much of an advantage too early.
- Homo Superior: set wealth=0. It no longer gives the Empath Guild so there's no money or minerals to be made here.
- N-Space Compression: now an E9 tech. Set power=3, wealth=0, and growth=4. The Tectonic Missile is more about expanding land than it is about conquering. The Fungal Missile is a kind of mind worm attack when the reactor is big enough, so it's proper to think of it as an Explore tech. This tech no longer gives the Living Refinery so there's no wealth.
- The Cloning Vats: moved to E9 Biomachinery. This is a better fit for the lore, and this late in the game, I don't think permanent population boom makes that much of a difference when it happens. The late game secret projects are also tremendously much more expensive than they used to be.
- Biomachinery: set power=4, wealth=0, and growth=5. It gives the Cloning Vats and no longer gives Clinical Immortality.
- Matter transmission: set power=3 and growth=4. It no longer gives the Cloning Vats.
ORBITAL ATTACK VIEW
- Graviton Theory: now a C8 tech.
- The Cloudbase Academy: moved to C8 Graviton Theory.
- Orbital Defense Pod: moved to C8 Graviton Theory.
- Sky Hydroponics Lab: moved to E7 Advanced Spaceflight. The Orbital Attack View screen will not activate until this facility is available. Unfortunately that means abundant food has to become available before everything else.
- Advanced Spaceflight: set power=3 and growth=4, making it an E7 tech.
PREDEFINED UNITS:
- Sea Formers: renamed from [sic] "*Sea Formers", and now available with B2 Industrial Base. For some reason this unit wasn't getting designed until midgame, typically in the late 2200's. Even in vanilla SMAC, the problem exists. In original SMAC the tech for this unit is set to Disable, which implies that something else triggered the design of a Sea Former.
- Super Slider Formers: moved to C7 Retroviral Engineering, due to prereqs changing.
- Rover Formers: new predefined unit available with B2 Industrial Base. I used to worry about players getting free prototypes "too quickly" but I don't consider that a problem anymore.
- Mind Worms: set AI plan to "0=Offense", like a Spore Launcher. I'm wondering if this setting is for units that are only good at offense, and that's basically true of mindworms. Also note that they cost 4. The CHANGELOG for version 1.30 says I changed it to 5, but I didn't actually change it in alphax.txt. Oops. Meanwhile, 2 playtesters said they liked the cheaper mindworms. So for now, I'll keep it. I do worry that it has become the One True Weapons platform, but I'm willing to give it more playtesting. I do think Isles and Locusts have correct costs now. The AI obsessed about Isles when they were cheaper, and I didn't like that. The AI does build some Locusts, and I sped them up in 1.32, so there's no reason to cheapen them.
- Spore Launchers: now cost 4, to match the Mind Worms. This is what they cost from versions 1.17 through 1.29.
- Battle Ogre MK1: now has Particle Impactor as main armament. R-Lasers don't do enough damage for the amount of wounds taken. My Ogre attacked an enemy Scout on open terrain and was nearly dead afterwards.
- Battle Ogre MK2: now has Chaos Gun as main armament. It needs more punch.
- Battle Ogre MK3: now has Soporific Gas Pods. It needs more punch. Note that this unit doesn't have the Blink Displacer ability. I'm not sure when I removed it, but it's intentional, as Blink Displacer isn't available until D15 Threshold of Transcendence.
- Slider Probe Team: moved to C7 Retroviral Engineering, due to prereqs changing.
- Sub Probe Team: new predefined unit available with C3 Advanced Subatomic Theory. The Deep Pressure Hull is to mess with a human player, as the AI will probably cheat and ignore it.
- Foil Probe Team: moved to C2 Polymorphic Software, due to prereqs changing.
- Probe Team: moved to D2 Secrets of the Human Brain, due to prereqs changing.
- Cloaked R-Laser Speeder: new predefined Offensive unit available with E4 Bioadapative Resonance. Cloaks are now on an Alien-oriented part of the tech tree and are not readily available otherwise.
- Cloaked Laser Speeder: removed, due to prereqs changing.
- Trance R-Laser Foil: new "Defensive" foil available with E4 Bioadaptive Resonance. Note that "2=Defensive" is not a naval AI plan, it is a land plan. The AI likes to build excessive numbers of Synthmetal Sentinels, to the point of exhausting all available Support. This isn't good for any faction, and is particularly bad for the Pirates, as the land units can't walk anywhere while at sea. Specifying "Defensive" sea units, seems to distract the AI from building so many defensive land units, and also benefits the Pirates because they're building stuff they can at least somewhat fight with. At sea, the AI doesn't really use these units defensively, it pretty much goes on offense, so it's good to have a weapon on them. I didn't add a Cloak because I think the AI cheats, so it just adds expense. A cloak could be more challenging for a human player to fight, but these units are mostly needed for AI vs. AI combat. The AIs make large numbers of various kinds of foils and have big ocean fights. I think this is because the predefined foil units have stimulated the land powers to make more foils than they otherwise would. They go to attack the Pirates if the Pirates are in the game, and the Pirates respond in kind.
- 3-Pulse Laser Foil: new "Defensive" foil available with C4 Single-Sided Surfaces.
- 3-Pulse Foil: new "Defensive" foil available with C4 Single-Sided Surfaces. The AI will obsess about this unit instead of Synthmetal Foils. Since it survives better than Synthmetal, that's an improvement.
- Synthmetal Foil: new "Defensive" foil available with C2 Adaptive Doctrine. The AI will obsess about this unit instead of Synthmetal Sentinels. Since foils will actually go somewhere, do something, get killed, and thereby free up support, that's an improvement.
- Trance 3-Res Police: new predefined unit available with E4 Bioadaptive Resonance. Uses Non-Lethal Methods. This is to get the AI to make police units. I've done Scout Police before but the AI didn't make good use of them. A police unit should be specified with an AI role of "2=Defense" to keep it in a base, but a Police Scout is not a good defensive unit. The game does not design new units based on predefined units, so many police unit designs are needed, with different technologies and costs. The game also tends to override and delete older unit designs. I suspect the designs are less likely to be overridden, if the most advanced units are put earliest in the predefined unit list.
- 3-Res Police: new predefined unit available with E4 Bioadaptive Resonance.
- 3-Pulse Police: new predefined unit available with C4 Single-Sided Surfaces.
- Plasma Police: new predefined unit available with C4 Single-Sided Surfaces.
- Synthmetal Police: new predefined unit available with E2 Biogenetics.
- Cruiser Transport: new predefined unit available with B5 Advanced Ecological Engineering. It has a Deep Radar, which for some reason the game doesn't ever want to design itself. It also takes the 3rd position in the predefined unit list, formerly occupied by the plain Transport. The game likes to wipe out old unit designs. I suspect this is less of a problem, if the most advanced units are placed earliest in the predefined unit list.
- Trance 3-Pulse Cruiser Transport: new predefined unit available with C5 Nanominiaturization. This is to try to get the AI to use armored Transport designs. The AI for the Pirates will build obsessive numbers of unarmored Transports, which have almost no combat value and quickly exhaust Support. I can't seem to stop the AI's obsession with feeling a need to transport stuff, but I can at least get it to build armored transports, which do more damage when they are destroyed. A lot of different designs with different costs are provided, because one can never be sure in what order the AIs will actually learn the techs. Many of the designs will be successively wiped out.
- Trance 3-Res Transport: new predefined unit available with E4 Bioadaptive Resonance.
- 3-Res Transport: new predefined unit available with E4 Bioadaptive Resonance.
- 3-Pulse Transport: new predefined unit available with C4 Single-Sided Surfaces.
- Plasma Transport: new predefined unit available with C4 Single-Sided Surfaces.
- Synthmetal Transport: new predefined unit available with C2 Adaptive Doctrine.
- Transport: now occupies the very last position in the predefined units list, to try to curb the Pirate AI's obsession with it.
- ECM 3-Pulse Sentinel: removed. The game always seems to cancel this design, and it will build ECM 3-Res units on its own. Those aren't quite as good at repelling fast units, but they're well rounded, more cost effective, and the AI mostly makes Infantry anyways.
- Synthmetal Skirmisher: I designed this unit but then deleted it. When a Speeder only has a Gun, putting Synthmetal armor on it doesn't cost extra. However the AI gets obsessed about building large quantities of them.
- Marine Probe Team: I designed this unit but then deleted it. It's only likely to be useful against the Pirates. They may not be in the game, and even if they are, they may not be an AI faction's enemy. It is more likely to be a burdensome cost than a benefit.
- Cloaked Probe Team: I designed this unit but then deleted it. I think the AI cheats and ignores the cloak.
The attachment limit per post is 5, and I eventually ran out of room at the top of the thread. Consequently, this becomes the new home of version 1.33. It was downloaded 113 times before I moved it here.
Post by: bvanevery on July 31, 2019, 04:23:54 AM
Random opponents. I drew the Caretakers. They might be the most powerful faction in the game when played by a human. When the AI plays them, ironically they tend to obsess about Extremist and choose it readily. I don't know why that would be, but there it is. Most other factions don't like it so much.
[Limit reached]
I started on a small island. Nevertheless I was Unsurpassed for quite some time. I did a "Gun Foil spread", with the objective of capturing lots of Isles so I could fish for Artifacts. Other factions seem to be catching up now. The Usurpers are immediately east of me on a supercontinent. They're gonna get trashed!
It took a surprisingly long time to learn Doctrine: Loyalty. It's a Build 2 tech now. It's throttled by D1 Information Networks to keep the AI factions from learning it before they know how to make a Network Node. Despite having directed research, it's just not easy to beeline to it. Directed research offers weird choices at times, that don't seem to be based on what could be researched next, but rather the category of whatever you last researched. I think a human Build-oriented faction would actually get to it faster. Oddly enough, I was getting near to finally researching this myself, but I bought it from the Hive. They are an Explore, Conquer faction, so there's no particularly good reason why they would be learning it first. Yet they did, go figure.
Post by: bvanevery on July 31, 2019, 04:39:29 AM
It took a couple years to save some money to make the switch. Now I'm Full Metal Extremist. I've got SUPPORT and other factions don't. All my little minions!
[Limit reached]
I did a round of probe team spamming before I learned Doctrine: Loyalty. I didn't want to build Recreation Commons or Network Nodes, and I don't have any other facilities to build. In 1.33 a lot of facilities are now Tier 3 techs, and I haven't learned them yet.
I surmise that the Caretakers are really unpleasant about the future of Planet. It's not natural to want to make yourself subservient to an indigenous fungus hive mind, so people have to be tortured into it. I'm making the Usurpers look good! Who knew that they were the good guys of the game? Of course being so good, they will have to die.
Post by: bvanevery on July 31, 2019, 05:39:12 AM
MY 2165. I complete the last Punishment Sphere. I've made lots of Sea Formers in an effort to boost my population. However, 3+ food and Aquafarm are now given by E3 Centauri Genetics and I don't have it. I get breakthroughs every 38 turns. I don't think anyone else has researched it yet. I know the Gaians haven't. I have lots of Artifacts, but I would have to build Network Nodes to pop them, and I don't want to do that. I'm thinking the Spheres are not at all helpful to my cause, but hey, I wanted to try this!
I'm building lotsa Command Centers. That will be fine for defense, although nobody is trying to invade me. I don't have an offensive weapon yet, and to my knowledge, neither does anyone else. I do have captured mindworms. Lots of them, if I can bring them to the same place, but I'm still removing all the supply pods from Planet. Well I suppose this will all work out eventually. It's certainly not a blitz though.
Post by: Rocky on August 01, 2019, 07:22:39 PM
This was one of the longest games I had so far and one I really enjoyed. It was a great experience finding out about all the fun changes and trying to adapt to them.
I'm planning to start a new game, but this one I want to do a little different. Thinker AI has an option to mix the standard AI and Thinker AI together in one game (Like for example 4 standard and 3 Thinker) I'm curious to see how this will work out.
I'm really enjoying your mod and I'm definitely liking the new 1.33 changes. One thing I wonder: Green doesn't have any negative penalties in the recent version (Maybe it was already the case before but I didn't notice it) Was this intended?
Thank you so much for all your hard work and for sharing it with us!
Post by: bvanevery on August 02, 2019, 08:30:54 PM
My only advice would be, I think 2 of my factions may still be inherently weak. I tried to beef up the Cybernetic Consciousness a few releases ago, but it may not have been enough. My jury is out about the University. Recently I did see them start to do well one game, but I've also seen them get slaughtered. I have my eye on them.
No penalties for Green is, sadly, deliberate. From my DESIGN DETAILS:
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This mod started as an attempt to model "realistic" growth in the social engineering choices. Unfortunately the "realism" didn't survive the cold, harsh reality of game mechanics, nor the AI's fixation on GROWTH as a choice. For instance Green used to have a GROWTH penalty, but the AI would not choose it, even in the original unmodded game! Only if the AI had learned how to make Locusts of Chiron would it finally accept the penalties of Green, and that was way too late in the game to be acceptable for an AI faction. To work around this, I made Green not have any penalties. To try to balance this "free lunch", I minimized the number of bonuses it gets.
Post by: Rocky on August 02, 2019, 10:07:32 PM
In the previous game the Consciousness ended up in the middle, but that was mostly because they were continuously attacked by the Hive as their neighbor. After that they became a tech leader even with only being half the size of the largest faction. They at the very least seem to have a strong tech focus.
Why do you think the Cyborgs and University are inherently weak? Is it something with the AI?
Post by: Geo on August 03, 2019, 11:11:22 AM
Perhaps the extra drones for the University. It does translate to lost turns.
Post by: bvanevery on August 03, 2019, 07:34:34 PM
I suspect that a Discover research focus, negatively affects the colonization AI. And that faster research isn't enough of an advantage for the AIs, compared to other kinds of advantages one could have. I really can't beef up the Discover tree any more though. I gave out a lot of advanced research facilities earlier than they come in the stock game. I'm not sure if the AI even uses them.
All I know is the Cyborgs seem to get their asses kicked.
The Hive was a tough enough faction in my recent releases. Now that I totally changed how Police State works, the Hive won't be getting that +2 SUPPORT anymore. So we'll see how they do now. They didn't seem to do badly in my AI vs. AI test games, but I haven't watched them a whole lot.
Post by: Geo on August 04, 2019, 09:07:07 AM
Post by: bvanevery on August 04, 2019, 07:16:42 PM
I'm not sure what has changed. My early tech tree is broader now. There are more Explore and build techs in the early tree than before. The fungal nutrient stuff got moved slightly later, as did 3+ nutrients. I added a lot of predefined units in 1.33, and it is conceivable that this has fundamentally changed the production patterns of the AIs.
Post by: bvanevery on August 07, 2019, 01:46:08 AM
MY 2165. I complete the last Punishment Sphere. I've made lots of Sea Formers in an effort to boost my population. However, 3+ food and Aquafarm are now given by E3 Centauri Genetics and I don't have it. ...
I don't have an offensive weapon yet, and to my knowledge, neither does anyone else.
I gave up on that game. Building Punishment Spheres early was clearly of no benefit at all, it was a complete liability. My tech research completely stagnated. One needs at least the minimal ability to make war. One also needs a way to grow. I've deliberately restricted early game growth, it's not easy to do. A Punishment Sphere is really only valuable if you're talking about a high population, otherwise you're fine slapping a Recreation Commons and a Police unit on the city and calling it good. In real, previous games, I've generally only used Punishment Spheres for distant conquered cities that would never yield any research anyways. And depending on circumstances and legalities, I've often preferred to obliterate such cities. Doing this to your core cities doesn't basically make any sense, as you'll probably need things like a Tree Farm to grow more anyways. They come with a happiness bonus, long as you spend some budget on it.
I started a new game. Happened to get the Free Drones. This made it clear to me that certain factions are going to be even less interested in building Punishment Spheres for their own citizens, because they have happiness bonuses. I'm keeping the use of a Sphere as an option "if it comes up", but I don't expect it to happen anytime soon.
Post by: bvanevery on August 08, 2019, 06:48:27 PM
I'm going to try taking the ECONOMY bonus out of Democratic, putting it in Eudaimonic, and cutting Eudaimonic's GROWTH to +1. This would remove "unhappy" pop booming from the game. You'd need +2 GROWTH from SE choices, a Children's Creche for another +2, and +2 from triggering a Golden Age. Aside from controlling growth, it will take easy money out of the game. I think it's an enormous advantage for human players to be able to get to +2 ECONOMY easily. If it isn't so easy, then Morgan and Miriam should have a bigger relative advantage from their faction abilities.
I'm also going to try declaring more predefined units as 2=Defensive. I'm starting to think it's the "obsess about this" flag. Perhaps I can get the AI to obsess about a more productive force mix.
Actually when I remove the ECONOMY bonus from Democratic and replace it with GROWTH, it looks boring. Like a copy of Socialist. I don't want that. Instead I'm going to try reducing Morgan to +1 ECONOMY, giving him a SUPPORT bonus, and a -1 PLANET penalty. Then I can remove the PLANET penalty from Wealth. Most factions will do -2 PLANET eco-damage and he'll do -3.
I'll take away the Believers' ECONOMY bonus and try MORALE. Will try them as a pure Conquer faction while I'm at it.
Post by: bvanevery on August 10, 2019, 08:01:59 PM
I played a game as the Hive through MY 2316, then I quit. I had Spartans as enemy neighbors and they were surprisingly spammy. At any given point, I felt like I could have beaten them, but I didn't want to get deeply involved in trampling them. Getting tired of moving around troops, and wanting to concentrate on my own infrastructure buildup, I took various Cease Fires. They routinely betrayed those overtures and kept fighting. I had a city sticking out into the middle of their territory, back from when I was more determined to conquer them. I was quite surprised that they surrounded the city and pinned off the rail I typically used to reinforce it. They also kept hitting it with probe teams, and someone else got the Hunter-Seeker Algorithm because Secret Projects are so expensive. I just wasn't willing to reinforce this. I had Missile technology and never prototyped it, because I wanted to build my Children's Creches and Tree Farms.
The Morganites resisted the Monsoon Jungle powered Usurpers for a time, but then collapsed. That was clear on the other side of the board. The Usurpers ultimately got the HSA. I used up all kinds of Artifacts to get just about everything else, including the Planetary Energy Grid. SPs are expensive and it's generally not possible to get every single one of them. If I had kept going, this game would have eventually been a big 2 power showdown between myself and the Usurpers. But I was irritated that I had allowed the Spartans to be a "slide along" for so long. I thought about all that troop movement I'd done over and over again, and how it was so wasteful.
It's also more valuable to play a game where I see how the Believers, Cyborgs, University, or Morganites do with my changes. The Believers were in my last game, but they got a bad start. I think they got one of their original colonists killed, and then they were stuck near the Free Drones who crushed them.
[Limit reached]
I don't like the +3 GROWTH bonus in version 1.33. It looks stupid on the table. I'm going to require a Golden Age for pop booming. Unless you're the Hive, in which case you could pick Socialist and Eudaimonic. Combined with their faction's +1 GROWTH bonus, they'd have the +4 GROWTH necessary to pop boom without making anyone happy.
I thought the PLANET penalty for Wealth was unfair to the Gaians. Now only the Morganites and the Usurpers will experience -3 PLANET.
Morgan or the Believers would pick Democratic Capitalist Wealth Eudaimonic to reach +5 ECONOMY.
Post by: bvanevery on August 13, 2019, 05:14:20 AM
The +2 SUPPORT from Extremist definitely helped earlier on. Later I started to wonder if it was useful, but Cha Dawn can only choose Extremist or Police State. The latter has -1 JUSTICE and I had substantial problems in that regard, since my empire was so large. The JUSTICE economy is pretty tight right now, and it definitely has an effect. Eventually I did get the Virtual World, which took a long time because nobody was researching Discover. It's not so easy to get Hologram Theaters anymore for the same reason. The tradeoff is it's much easier to get and use police units, so I don't see any problem.
I had more mindworms than I knew what to do with. I started making lots of Formers instead and driving a rail all the way across the board to reach the Believers. They weren't at war with me, but with my tech research fairly slow, I figured the game would have to end in total conquest. Even waiting to get Orbital Spaceflight so I could get a Diplomatic Victory, would probably take way longer than I'd want.
I got in a fight with the Gaians because they wanted to march troops across my land. They were too uppity about it and I slaughtered them. It would not have been hard to completely take them over. When I quit, I felt my victory was academic, and something I'd seen many times before. Better to spend the time testing something else.
Declaring victory over the Synthmetal Sentinels overproduction problem, I think was a bit optimistic. It still seems to happen. I may have lessened it, particularly in the case of the Pirates. It was hard to say in that game, because I got such a production advantage from the Monsoon Jungle. I will now experiment with more predefined units, which I will gratuitously assign "2=Defense" in the hope it fools the AI into doing something better. Hmm, what if I tell it a Synthmetal Sentinel is an "Offensive" unit? Will it believe me?
Post by: vonbach on August 14, 2019, 08:48:07 PM
Extremist, Capitalist , and Power all look a little underpowered but nothing in the mod is especially overpowered. All in all it looks pretty balanced.
I haven't actually played in awhile. I was taking a break but I think I'll start a new game.
Post by: bvanevery on August 14, 2019, 09:52:12 PM
You are the semi-anonymous celebrity who was instrumental in the basic change of tone. And I think generalizing to "Extremist" is the logical conclusion of that change of tone. Lal, the Caretakers, the Usurpers, the Spartans, the Free Drones, the Data Angels, the Gaians, and the Pirates are all capable of being Extremist, and not a single one of them is religious.
The Politics and Economics choices are deliberately low impact. I want the players to have to deal with the early to mid game without any big governmental boosts. That seems to be working. I find that some factions do eventually choose Extremist, liking to combine it with Power to get +3 SUPPORT. That's free units up to the base size. Can be a rational plan if you intend to overrun everything with high MORALE troops.
I'm playing another test game as the Free Drones. I expanded like crazy on ok land with a lot of Nutrient bonuses. The Caretakers are equivalent to me and started on the Monsoon Jungle. Other factions are mediocre to pathetic. I think the combo of +1 INDUSTRY and going to size 3 without Drone Riots may be overpowered. When the AI is playing them, they do a Build, Conquer focus now, and they seem to be mostly wiping out the whole map that way. They did it to the University in the last game I played, totally crushing them. The University just can't stand up to that. Granted, that was a big land mass game, which I think favors the Free Drones.
I haven't figured out any new predefined unit tricks yet. Still hoping for revelation.
Post by: vonbach on August 14, 2019, 10:08:32 PM
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Good to see you again!Thanks :)
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You may be happy to know that I seriously beat the crap out of someone on /r/4Xgaming recently, on the subject of removing the anti-Christian stuff. Guy was going on about what a malevolent travesty I'd committed and how I hadn't "disclosed" what I did. Which is false. I declared it in when I posted the versions that had the changes, and I took plenty of guff when I did so. And it's all in my design notes, on both my web page and the readme_mod.txt. People have to actually read it, if they want to know all the stuff I changed. The guy acted like taking away anti-Christian stuff, was the first and foremost thing I personally owed him, as to how I advertize and promote my work. He even went as far as to say I should rename my mod, to be the "Narrative Change Experiment" mod or some such. Like he was on my naming committee 15 months ago! Whatever. Well that argument is long since over, it's just the sort of thing that happens from time to tim
Interesting. We disagree on many things but we try and respect on another and be civil. Besides its your mod you don't owe him an explanation.
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You are the semi-anonymous celebrity who was instrumental in the basic change of tone. And I think generalizing to "Extremist" is the logical conclusion of that change of tone. Lal, the Caretakers, the Usurpers, the Spartans, the Free Drones, the Data Angels, the Gaians, and the Pirates are all capable of being Extremist, and not a single one of them is religious.This is the one of the biggest problems I have with the game. You cant build civilizations like this.
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The Politics and Economics choices are deliberately low impact. I want the players to have to deal with the early to mid game without any big governmental boosts. That seems to be working. I find that some factions do eventually choose Extremist, liking to combine it with Power to get +3 SUPPORT. That's free units up to the base size. Can be a rational plan if you intend to overrun everything with high MORALE troops.So long as all of the choices are low impact nothing is unbalanced. The only thing I would do is give Capitalism another +bonus of some kind and remove a - growth from Power.
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I'm playing another test game as the Free Drones. I expanded like crazy on ok land with a lot of Nutrient bonuses. The Caretakers are equivalent to me and started on the Monsoon Jungle. Other factions are mediocre to pathetic. I think the combo of +1 INDUSTRY and going to size 3 without Drone Riots may be overpowered. When the AI is playing them, they do a Build, Conquer focus now, and they seem to be mostly wiping out the whole map that way. They did it to the University in the last game I played, totally crushing them. The University just can't stand up to that. Granted, that was a big land mass game, which I think favors the Free Drones.
The free Drones have always been one of my favorite factions. Played right they are obscenely powerful. The AI never did well with them though. Mostly because of the passive AI choices they had. The more they expand and the more aggressive they are the better they'll perform.
Post by: bvanevery on August 15, 2019, 04:03:15 AM
I do understand that Miriam is a "beloved" character. However I'm firm in my analysis of the dissonance of her portrayal. A screenwriter wrote her Secret Project video dialogue, and you'd never know from that, that she's supposed to be some kind of warmongering [complaint or disagreeable woman]. It's simply not how she's portrayed, at all. Meanwhile, most of the cookie cutter faction dialogue was written by amateurs. It really shows, and that's where all the "warmongering [complaint or disagreeable woman]" stuff comes from.
It would be interesting to find out if the same writer wrote all of it. That would say something, I think, about what point in the project the diplomatic dialogue was written. I say early. They didn't start with the "considered Miriam" and then trash it with bitchy diplomatic dialogue later. No, they clearly started with the bitchy Church Chat lady and someone turned her into an actual character later. I suppose there are more project variables that could cause that to happen, than "amateur writer". Could have been politics pressing for the original bitchy version, for all I know.
Per previous discussions, I'm not going to give Capitalist a JUSTICE or a GROWTH bonus. I don't want it to have +2 ECONOMY, a lot of changes have been made to spread ECONOMY out over the social engineering choices. Giving an INDUSTRY bonus would in my opinion be overpowered. I don't really believe in TALENT bonuses, because they have no visual representation, and I don't see any particular reason why Capitalist would result in that anyways. The basic philosophy of my ECONOMY arrangement, is that piling up money is worth a lot. It's pretty much how I buy all my Secret Projects. So I'm going to stay with Capitalist just being one contribution out of several.
Power, yes I could reduce it to -1 GROWTH, but getting +2 MORALE and +1 SUPPORT is really powerful. There needs to be a tradeoff, and I don't believe -1 GROWTH stings enough. If there were other GROWTH penalties somewhere, then -1 would be more appropriate, but there are no other GROWTH penalties. Nor can there be, as far as getting the AI to accept various choices and not fixate on GROWTH penalties and bonuses. If you're going for Power you should be trashing everyone else in the game. I wouldn't say my opinion on this is set in stone, but I'm definitely in a "wait and see what playtesting says" mode about it.
Wealth is going to have the PLANET penalty removed in 1.34. Instead, Morgan will get +1 SUPPORT and -1 PLANET, so that he and the Usurpers can still suffer the indignity of -3 PLANET. Everyone else will manage -2 PLANET at worst.
Eudaimonia will be reduced to +2 GROWTH, and will gain +1 ECONOMY, making it more similar to the original game. Due to the ECONOMY bonus, JUSTICE will be lowered to +1. Almost all factions will need to make people happy in a Golden Age to trigger a pop boom. The exception is the Hive, which could do Socialist Eudaimonic along with its factional +1 GROWTH bonus.
My Free Drones are Erratic. They definitely seem to be violent enough. I'm not entirely opposed to having them exhibit a sort of superpower cleanup of the map, but I need other factions to be capable of that also. Otherwise it sorta becomes the Free Drone game.
Post by: vonbach on August 15, 2019, 01:32:16 PM
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Per previous discussions, I'm not going to give Capitalist a JUSTICE or a GROWTH bonus. I don't want it to have +2 ECONOMY, a lot of changes have been made to spread ECONOMY out over the social engineering choices. Giving an INDUSTRY bonus would in my opinion be overpowered. I don't really believe in TALENT bonuses, because they have no visual representation, and I don't see any particular reason why Capitalist would result in that anyways. The basic philosophy of my ECONOMY arrangement, is that piling up money is worth a lot. It's pretty much how I buy all my Secret Projects. So I'm going to stay with Capitalist just being one contribution out of several.Its not bad it just seems a little weak and one dimensional. I would add +Growth but thats just me.
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Power, yes I could reduce it to -1 GROWTH, but getting +2 MORALE and +1 SUPPORT is really powerful. There needs to be a tradeoff, and I don't believe -1 GROWTH stings enough. If there were other GROWTH penalties somewhere, then -1 would be more appropriate, but there are no other GROWTH penalties. Nor can there be, as far as getting the AI to accept various choices and not fixate on GROWTH penalties and bonuses. If you're going for Power you should be trashing everyone else in the game. I wouldn't say my opinion on this is set in stone, but I'm definitely in a "wait and see what playtesting says" mode about it.Power does seem to have a little to harsh penalties but its not that bad.
What penalties are you giving wealth if you don't mind me asking?
Overall the choices all look balanced. It looks very good.
Whats with the 150 probe cost by the way?
The Free Drones one of my favorites. Old "joy though strength" Domi. He looks like a jacked up Hitler without the mustache and he leads a workers movement toward a society based on life based on excellence.
Post by: bvanevery on August 15, 2019, 01:47:44 PM
Its not bad it just seems a little weak and one dimensional. I would add +Growth but thats just me.
Per previous discussion, the AI obsesses about GROWTH bonuses. That's a reason to almost never use them.
I also can't very well have Capitalist giving GROWTH away. That's my Socialist, and you have to pay with ECONOMY to get the growth. You can have money or growth, not both. Currently I find the faction AIs are making varied economic choices, and that's how I want it.
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What penalties are you giving wealth if you don't mind me asking?
It will be only -1 MORALE. So the PLANET friendly factions can choose it, have bad conventional troops, and still fight with mindworms just fine.
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Whats with the 150 probe cost by the way?
From my design notes:
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In the original game, probe teams were overpowered. A single team could take over an entire base, for very little money, no matter how many units were in it! And every unit in the base's radius would be taken over too. You'd be invading an AI faction, and it would be all but dead, but it would still take bases back from you this way. This is unrealistic and completely ridiculous. I've rage quit SMAC more times because of this one issue than any other thing I can think of!
So, Mind Control now costs 1.5x higher than the unmodded game. This stops the nonsense in the early game. You can still get your bases taken over in the mid to late game, but it will cost a lot more money, which is how it should be. The Hive is now a partly probe team oriented faction, so they have 1.25x cost. The Data Angels are at 1.0x cost, as their probe teams are supposed to be powerful, and the baseline of the original game was overpowered to begin with.
In 1.34, the Cybernetic Consciousness will also drop to 1.25x and will get a +1 PROBE bonus.
Post by: vonbach on August 15, 2019, 02:19:57 PM
Post by: bvanevery on August 15, 2019, 03:50:19 PM
INDUSTRY is overpowered.
My politics are that JUSTICE has a narrative meaning. I've used the metaphor of JUSTICE to distinguish what various social engineering choices do. I'm not going to rescind that. IMO it is a good metaphor, and it is derivative of original Civ II play mechanics. Once upon a time, you built a Courthouse to stop corruption and waste. The JUSTICE economy is also now pretty tight. It's not easy to get a lot of it, and having +1 JUSTICE as a faction ability does give a real advantage now.
GROWTH causes the AI to obsess, and is already what Socialist does.
SUPPORT has become the distinguishing feature of Extremist. I'm keeping that play mechanic. SUPPORT bonuses are pretty powerful in my opinion. That's why Power gets one. I'm not giving it away for Capitalist as well, that would make it overpowered. You might be interested to know that the Morganites are getting a +1 SUPPORT bonus in 1.34, as well as -1 PLANET to offset it. That way, they'll continue to enjoy -3 PLANET doing their greedy moneygrubbing thing. If you want SUPPORT while Capitalist, play the Morganites.
I got rid of POLICE penalties and I'm certainly not going to give a POLICE bonus. That's for Police State and Thought Control.
I'm not giving Capitalist a RESEARCH bonus. There are complete other parts of the table for making RESEARCH go up or down.
A MORALE bonus would be non-sensical. It is also the province of Power. I do not want the MORALE economy to be inflated. I quite deliberately removed it from Extremist. The AI obsesses about MORALE bonuses, for good reason as they're great things to have.
I don't believe in TALENT bonuses, as they have no visual form, which makes my modding look broken. I refuse to do anything which makes my mod look like it's buggy. I also don't see why Capitalist should give a TALENT bonus anyways. Maybe it would be reasonable for Cybernetic or Eudaimonic.
There is of course not going to be a PLANET bonus.
By process of elimination, there is simply nothing left to give. Even if I wanted to, which I don't. I have designed the entire social engineering table. All the parts fit together, it's not just about what someone would want from Capitalist. Only so many capabilities were given by the game, and they were clearly designed for a table that is only so large.
Capitalist simply isn't going to be a "juicy" choice in the game. You get it from a lousy Tier 2 tech, Industrial Base. You don't have to work for it at all. Anyone will trade it to you, if they don't hate you. You can choose it and take the consequences. +1 ECONOMY is definitely worth taking a -2 PLANET penalty to get, especially because you can get it very early in the game without doing much research. If you combine it with Democratic you're getting +1 energy per square. That's powerful!
In general I no longer believe in giving "juicy" social engineering choices, at all. All these design iterations have proven that they have bad effects on play balance and AI. The Future Society choices are as juicy as they're gonna get.
Most of the game balancing I've done recently, is pushing capabilities into the future and increasing their cost. If something sticks up as a problem, like a nail in a floorboard, I bang it down with a hammer. I make it harder to get. Wet, lather, rinse, repeat. Do this long enough, and you get a fairly tame social engineering table. You also get an early to midgame that feels a bit like a mild tech stagnation game. There's way too much junk in SMAC. I think by delaying the junk, the true core of the game emerges. You can win this game with Particle Impactors.
Post by: vonbach on August 15, 2019, 09:19:11 PM
Effic bonuses are always nice. Capitalism is still weak especially for its penalties.
Post by: bvanevery on August 15, 2019, 09:41:35 PM
Even though you and I have different politics, there's more to it than that. What the AI is willing to do, is a crucial design consideration for me nowadays.
Post by: vonbach on August 15, 2019, 11:21:17 PM
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You don't make enough money in your games for some reason. :D I don't know why.I make plenty of money I just spend it on different things.
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Even though you and I have different politics, there's more to it than that. What the AI is willing to do, is a crucial design consideration for me nowadays.I try and keep that in mind when I make my mods. But Free Market was as ideologically hated by the game designers as fundamentalism and religion was.
One of the reasons I like to buff it. Capitalism is about more than money. Thats what wealth is for.
Post by: vonbach on August 16, 2019, 09:01:40 PM
Post by: vonbach on August 18, 2019, 10:09:12 AM
Post by: bvanevery on August 19, 2019, 04:00:15 PM
But Free Market was as ideologically hated by the game designers as fundamentalism and religion was.
Hm, where's the internal evidence for that? Morgan is a starring role in the game. The devs clearly hated Microsoft. Many of the Morganic comedic bits, are jabs at the tech industry of the time. "Where Do You Want Your Node Today?"
The -5 POLICE stuff is a direct simulation of Civ II Democracy play mechanics. If you manage to lower it to -3 POLICE by combining it with Police State, you get the Civ II version of a Republic, where you can have 1 military unit afield without anyone getting upset. -5 POLICE is not evidence of hating Capitalism. It's evidence of making a conservative transition from Civ II play mechanics, without much originality of thought dumped onto it.
Post by: bvanevery on August 19, 2019, 04:09:31 PM
Tried a test game with the hive. Growth is just to hard too come by. Not so much for me but the AI. Early game at least most cities stay at size 2 forever.
Haven't seen that in my test games. However: in version 1.34 I am moving the Children's Creche back to Tier 2. I do think growth was too restricted and this is part of why.
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Its 2217 right now. Democracy and Socialism are both overpowered.
Democratic is the other half of the original game's Free Market. It's a very good early choice. AIs will nevertheless choose Police State regularly, they think it's valuable. A few will choose Extremist.
Sanity check: you're playing version 1.33 of my mod? Socialist has +1 JUSTICE +1 GROWTH -1 ECONOMY. I'm sorry, there's simply no universe in which I can accept that as being overpowered. It isn't. Flat. Out. Isn't. It's barely any bonus at all and you lose money. I did this because the previous version of Socialist was too attractive to AIs. Now they are much more likely to choose Capitalist or Socialist. A few will choose Green, the Gaians mainly, and I've seen the Pirates do it.
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Power has growth penalties so it will never get picked. Just my initial impressions.
This is false. Factions choose Power and overrun other factions all the freakin' time in my test games. They don't even miss a beat swallowing the -1 JUSTICE -2 GROWTH. Nor should they, as getting +2 MORALE is that good.
Post by: vonbach on August 19, 2019, 11:28:23 PM
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Quote from: vonbach on August 15, 2019, 11:21:17 PMJust take at the ridiculous penalties for it in the original game, -3 planet and -5 police.
But Free Market was as ideologically hated by the game designers as fundamentalism and religion was.
Hm, where's the internal evidence for that?
This is beyond silly for a simple +2 economy. Wealth should be for making oodles of money. Free market should be an balanced alternative to
green and socialist. One of the reasons I like to spread out growth in my personal mods isn't ideological. It's to help out the AI by spreading growth around.
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Haven't seen that in my test games. However: in version 1.34 I am moving the Children's Creche back to Tier 2. I do think growth was too restricted and this is part of why.
Thats probably it. Early game growth is to low until the creche gets built.
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This is false. Factions choose Power and overrun other factions all the freakin' time in my test games. They don't even miss a beat swallowing the -1 JUSTICE -2 GROWTH. Nor should they, as getting +2 MORALE is that good.Power has very hefty penalties for what you get. Especially with Knowledge sitting right next door. Extremist is in the same boat.
Post by: vonbach on August 19, 2019, 11:41:38 PM
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Quote from: vonbach on August 15, 2019, 11:21:17 PMJust take at the ridiculous penalties for it in the original game, -3 planet and -5 police.
But Free Market was as ideologically hated by the game designers as fundamentalism and religion was.
Hm, where's the internal evidence for that?
This is beyond silly for a simple +2 economy. Wealth should be for making oodles of money. Free market should be an balanced alternative to
green and socialist. One of the reasons I like to spread out growth in my personal mods isn't ideological. It's to help out the AI by spreading growth around.
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Haven't seen that in my test games. However: in version 1.34 I am moving the Children's Creche back to Tier 2. I do think growth was too restricted and this is part of why.
Thats probably it. Early game growth is to low until the creche gets built.
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This is false. Factions choose Power and overrun other factions all the freakin' time in my test games. They don't even miss a beat swallowing the -1 JUSTICE -2 GROWTH. Nor should they, as getting +2 MORALE is that good.
Power has very hefty penalties for what you get. Especially with Knowledge sitting right next door. Extremist is in the same boat.
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http://alphacentauri.us/fac-tool/rate.htm
I found this on another site. Its a stat rating system for factions. It could also be used for governments.
Post by: bvanevery on August 20, 2019, 04:34:46 AM
Just take at the ridiculous penalties for it in the original game, -3 planet and -5 police.
This is beyond silly for a simple +2 economy.
We agree that POLICE penalties were onerous. In fact I take the view that a Capitalist system should have no POLICE penalties at all. So I implemented such. A Capitalist Police State would be modern China.
Capitalism does do damage to a planet. We're living through that on our own planet right now. I think it's only an argument about whether it does -1, -2, or -3 damage to PLANET. In this game I've lived with stiff consequences for industrialization, global warming, and global flooding for a long time. In 1.33 I dropped it from -3 to -2. This made it much more popular with the AI factions. In 1.34 I'm making Morgan take a -1 penalty to go with his new +1 SUPPORT bonus. That way, 2 factions will still experience the joys of -3 PLANET.
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One of the reasons I like to spread out growth in my personal mods isn't ideological. It's to help out the AI by spreading growth around.
The AI obsesses about growth. My answer to that issue, is not to give it out.
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Thats probably it. Early game growth is to low until the creche gets built.
Now that you point it out, I do notice various size 2 cities in the early game. But they're on scraggly land, so their population makes sense. Cities on good land get bigger just fine. Wiping out an AI faction that's near you, in the early game, is never going to be that hard. What counts, is factions that aren't quite near you, that have time to dig in and grow.
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Power has very hefty penalties for what you get. Especially with Knowledge sitting right next door.
So choose Knowledge if you think it's better. The AIs choose Power just fine, and with it, they stomp entire continents full of enemies just fine.
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Extremist is in the same boat.
It is designed to be unattractive to most of the AIs. I want AIs to mostly pick between Police State and Democratic. The only faction that should pick Extremist is the Cult of Planet, because their RESEARCH never drops below zero. There are still times as a human player when picking Extremist might be advantageous, although most of the time, the other 2 are better choices.
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http://alphacentauri.us/fac-tool/rate.htm
I found this on another site. Its a stat rating system for factions. It could also be used for governments.
It's their opinion. I have my own ideas about what all these abilities are worth. I do agree that +1 ECONOMY is worth double a usual ability. I would point out that the benefits of reaching various thresholds on the table are not linear. +3 POLICE is really powerful. So, my Hive can do it in the early game without any difficulty getting there.
Post by: vonbach on August 20, 2019, 01:23:38 PM
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We agree that POLICE penalties were onerous. In fact I take the view that a Capitalist system should have no POLICE penalties at all. So I implemented such. A Capitalist Police State would be modern China.Global warming is bunk but thats besides the point. My problem wasn't so much with the original penalties but the scale of them. I just think capitalism or free market should be good for something other than money. Besides Economy isn't as powerful when people simply refuse to trade with you. Something I've seen sometimes.
Capitalism does do damage to a planet. We're living through that on our own planet right now.
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Now that you point it out, I do notice various size 2 cities in the early game. But they're on scraggly land, so their population makes sense. Cities on good land get bigger just fine. Wiping out an AI faction that's near you, in the early game, is never going to be that hard. What counts, is factions that aren't quite near you, that have time to dig in and grow.
I sometimes like to make things easier for the AI to grow just so I can have something to conquer. The AI isn't always that good at growing cities.
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It is designed to be unattractive to most of the AIs. I want AIs to mostly pick between Police State and Democratic. The only faction that should pick Extremist is the Cult of Planet, because their RESEARCH never drops below zero. There are still times as a human player when picking Extremist might be advantageous, although most of the time, the other 2 are better choices.
I just think its Underpowered compared to its penalties especially with clean reactors showing up later in the game.
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It's their opinion. I have my own ideas about what all these abilities are worth. I do agree that +1 ECONOMY is worth double a usual ability. I would point out that the benefits of reaching various thresholds on the table are not linear. +3 POLICE is really powerful. So, my Hive can do it in the early game without any difficulty getting there.
Someone else had a rating system for faction bonuses but this was all I could find I thought it might be useful.
Morgan is getting +1 support next patch? Interesting.
Post by: bvanevery on August 20, 2019, 03:27:06 PM
Global warming is bunk but thats besides the point.
Heard on NPR this is the hottest recorded year for the whole planet. I've had questions about the role of humans in it, but the changes I've seen in Asheville are gradually making more of a believer out of me. The difficulty is actually swallowing climate science, as opposed to just taking someone else's say-so, is a lot of work. At various times I've tried. My last go, I failed because the publication had 35 pages of references alone. How am I supposed to get through all of that?
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especially with clean reactors showing up later in the game.
I tried them early in the tech tree at one point, although I don't think I released it. The AI simply didn't use them. Now granted, I could make predefined units with Clean Reactors. However my experience has been they're not that useful in the real world. By the time you get them, you typically have enough minerals that you don't need them. And if you're trying to crank out troops for a war, you're going to take casualties anyways, and speed of production is more important than using up SUPPORT.
I suppose if I made the cost of a Clean Reactor depend on the power of a weapon, I could pretty much solve the problem of the AI exhausting SUPPORT, with all the defensive units it builds. It would have to be available from pretty much the beginning of the game, before the AI starts obsessing about building too many defensive units.
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Morgan is getting +1 support next patch? Interesting.
But he's also dropping to +1 ECONOMY and getting -1 PLANET. He retains his Commerce bonus. I have observed that AI Morgan doesn't crank up his ECONOMY all that much. It's like he starts with so much ECONOMY he doesn't feel like he needs more.
Post by: vonbach on August 20, 2019, 10:36:31 PM
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Heard on NPR this is the hottest recorded year for the whole planet.Its NPR or National Peoples Radio as I like to call it. The studies and data they use to justify global warming are BS.
The Russians leaked them some time ago. Even if the whole western world went totally green and went back to the horse and buggy days
it wouldn't make the slightest bit of difference. India and China crank out far more pollution. I'm also old enough to remember when they
were talking about global cooling.
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I suppose if I made the cost of a Clean Reactor depend on the power of a weapon, I could pretty much solve the problem of the AI exhausting SUPPORT, with all the defensive units it builds. It would have to be available from pretty much the beginning of the game, before the AI starts obsessing about building too many defensive units.This is one of the reasons I'd hand out support for some of my mods. Just to keep the AI from choking itself to death on units.
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But he's also dropping to +1 ECONOMY and getting -1 PLANET. He retains his Commerce bonus. I have observed that AI Morgan doesn't crank up his ECONOMY all that much. It's like he starts with so much ECONOMY he doesn't feel like he needs more.What no Morganite green mean machine anymore?
Speaking of Green +1 Planet isn't all that good. It's ok but not very effective.
Post by: bvanevery on August 21, 2019, 03:41:23 PM
The Russians leaked them some time ago.
That claim doesn't even pass a smell test. You can't fake an entire corpus of peer reviewed science papers. A few papers here and there, sure. But there are lots of climate scientists producing lots of papers in all kinds of countries, all with peer review.
Asheville NC happens to be climate science central in the USA, for historical cold war reasons. They wanted data to be near to Washington D.C. and available, but not destroyed if nuked. So locally we have a place called The Collider, which is a market driven incubator for climate science solutions. Some time back, they were giving away the 2016 "status on climate" report away for free. It has 35 pages of references in the back of it, all of them peer reviewed. That's not leaks, that's science.
People who don't understand the profession of science, or peer review, aren't qualified to pass judgment on the material. A general problem of science, according to Thomas S. Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Revolutions), is that when professional scientists arrive at a paradigm for their work, they only end up talking to themselves as an audience. They leave the lay public way behind. Well, I certainly had that experience trying to sift through that 2016 report. I don't have the background to understand it, and it would take much more energy to gain enough background, than I've been willing to put into it.
Climate science is frustrating because there's no clear high school level lab test that can verify anthropogenic global warming. Whereas, if I want to know the charge of an electron, I can do that. If I want to know the speed of light, I can do that, provided I'm willing to stand on 2 mountain tops far apart. Heck I can even prove abiogenesis in a lab! I can demonstrate the spontaneous production of amino acids, under the right simulated atmospheric conditions. Yet I have to just swallow climate science because "it's complex" ? Doesn't sit well with the amateur scientist in me. I thought I was going to be a physicist in college, but ended up doing sociocultural anthropology instead.
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India and China crank out far more pollution.
Policy problems are a different can 'o' worms. I'm not impressed by carbon taxes, or trading carbon offsets, because I think industries and nations will respect those to about the degree they respect nuclear non-proliferation treaties. They don't! If you're really serious about stopping carbon emissions, you should shut down offending factories at gunpoint. Or even invade other countries, if the world gets bad enough. Fortunately it isn't yet. But these are all ideas about enforcement and the reality is, if people don't want to enforce, then very little will change.
So, we'll see if we bake, drown, or get killed in mass riots or not. At some point, I suspect the displacement of people from coastal population centers will be the real danger, not the climate itself per se. Better be rich with thick walls and a private army, or else know how to make a bow and arrow, because there are going to be too many people running amok to have enough ammo for all of them.
For now, I'm still putting my energy into computer games rather than how to make weapons. I've tried making an arrowhead out of man-made obsidian, i.e. the bottom of a beer bottle, but I didn't do very well at it. Maybe a YouTube video exists for that and would set me right.
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I'm also old enough to remember when they were talking about global cooling.
The basic hole I've found in the research claims, center around the subject of "ocean upwelling". Having more radioactively dead carbon in the atmosphere, is supposed to be the fingerprint of anthropogenic carbon emissions. But what if the oceans are spewing up radioactively dead carbon from their depths? I haven't found any research materials providing any clarity on that. Volcanoes can also spew radioactively dead carbon into the atmosphere, but the claim is they don't put out anywhere near enough volume to account for what's observed. I'm prepared to believe that, because we haven't had all that many world noticeable volcanic events recently. But the oceans are big. So if there's some process whereby they can put millions of years old carbon into the atmosphere, it could matter a great deal.
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This is one of the reasons I'd hand out support for some of my mods. Just to keep the AI from choking itself to death on units.
I'm moving forwards with Clean Reactor being available from the beginning of the game. Initial testing is about whether the AI will make appropriate use of predefined units. So far, it seems that they will.
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What no Morganite green mean machine anymore?
I suppose that is a consequence. Won't happen in the early game unless he went Green and controlled the Manifold Nexus. In midgame he could choose Green and Knowledge and get +1 PLANET that way. Given how easy it is for almost every other faction to go Green in my mod, I'm not sad about this.
The Believers also have +1 ECONOMY. Maybe they'll end up being better Morganites than the Morganites, but the AI still plays them as a combat faction. Hm, maybe I'll dump the ECONOMY bonus and give them +1 SUPPORT instead. Pity to lose my description "tithings keep the church solvent" though, I bloody love that line.
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Speaking of Green +1 Planet isn't all that good. It's ok but not very effective.
It's enough to let you capture quite a lot of mindworms at the beginning of the game, with no penalties for doing so. It's plenty good. You can make piles of money that way, fish lots of Artifacts, and mindworms are really the only good early game weapon available. You'd have to think about what you're doing, but you can definitely destroy a nearby faction with Scouts, Synthmetal, and captured mindworms.
Post by: vonbach on August 21, 2019, 05:16:57 PM
so they can work for pennies in what used to be our well paying jobs.
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https://www.newsmax.com/MKTNews/global-warming-hoax-facts/2014/10/17/id/601458/
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https://www.naturalnews.com/045695_global_warming_fabricated_data_scientific_fraud.htmlNaturalNews)
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When drug companies are caught faking clinical trial data, no one is surprised anymore. When vaccine manufacturers spike their human trial samples with animal antibodies to make sure their vaccines appear to work, we all just figure that's how they do business: lying, cheating, deceiving and violating the law.
Now, in what might be the largest scientific fraud ever uncovered, NASA and the NOAA have been caught red-handed altering historical temperature data to produce a "climate change narrative" that defies reality. This finding, originally documented on the Real Science website, is detailed here.
We now know that historical temperature data for the continental United States were deliberately altered by NASA and NOAA scientists in a politically-motivated attempt to rewrite history and claim global warming is causing U.S. temperatures to trend upward. The data actually show that we are in a cooling trend, not a warming trend (see charts below).
This story is starting to break worldwide right now across the media, with The Telegraph now reporting (1), "NOAA's US Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) has been 'adjusting' its record by replacing real temperatures with data 'fabricated' by computer models."
Because the actual historical temperature record doesn't fit the frenzied, doomsday narrative of global warming being fronted today on the political stage, the data were simply altered using "computer models" and then published as fact.
Post by: DrazharLn on August 21, 2019, 06:06:50 PM
This is a debunking of a similar story, perhaps the one that your source is derivative of:
https://www.snopes.com/news/2017/02/08/noaa-scientists-climate-change-data/ (https://www.snopes.com/news/2017/02/08/noaa-scientists-climate-change-data/)
In general, the very best way we know of for obtaining correct information is the scientific method. Many, many peer-reviewed articles attest to the reality of climate change.
Contrasting that, we have a variety of articles by generally unreliable newspapers and blogs and a few fairly isolated cranks and industry apologists.
It could still be that anthropogenic global warming is not happening, but the balance of credible evidence is strongly supportive of anthropogenic global warming..
Really, if there is a climate change conspiracy, who benefits?
Post by: vonbach on August 22, 2019, 09:28:29 PM
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Really, if there is a climate change conspiracy, who benefits?
Communists want control Its just disguised as environmentalism. Never mind all the money they can make grinding
every last dollar out of people with "carbon taxes."
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpSQuc69R9c
Post by: DrazharLn on August 23, 2019, 09:23:45 AM
Post by: bvanevery on August 23, 2019, 05:05:47 PM
Eco-damage is going to be a bit tamer in 1.34 as I'm eliminating the PLANET penalty from Wealth. Too difficult for the Gaians to make money with such an obstruction.
Doesn't look like I'm going to give Morgan a PLANET penalty after all. It was keeping him from choosing Capitalist! Doesn't make much sense, as the AI would pick it just fine when the penalty was all -3 under that. But split it across categories, and Morgan was balking.
Decided I'd take the Usurpers' PLANET penalty away while I was at it. It's not fun starting the game with a fungal bloom before you've even settled your 1st base. The Caretakers don't have any penalty and the Usurpers are the only faction that has one. Not sure if removing this makes them too powerful or not, my jury is out.
Looking at reducing Cult of Planet to +1 PLANET, but giving them +1 SUPPORT to model their cultishness. Believers getting similar treatment, no more ECONOMY bonus but instead +1 SUPPORT.
I'm running out of magic tricks to try to dissuade the AI from building Synthmetal Sentinels and Plasma Sentinels in abundance. It's just what the AI likes to do.
The Clean Reactor does help with the SUPPORT situation somewhat. I hope I haven't turned it into a cakewalk for the human player, but so far, I rather like the clarity that early Clean Reactors provide for my decision making. First I built Clean Scouts, which are consequence free since they cost the same as regular Scouts. Then I build regular Formers until I've used up my base's support. This tends to put a lot more Formers out early than would otherwise happen. Then I decide whether I want to build more Clean units or more dirty units. Clean units take a lot longer to produce at the beginning of the game, so it's not obvious that you'd just want Clean units for everything.
In theory, a human player could swamp an AI faction with an infinite number of Clean Scouts. In practice, they're slow, and they do take time to make. I think a human might find it boring pushing all those units and might not bother in practice. We shall see. If it doesn't work out in practice, I could do what Fission Armor mod did, which is make chasses cost 2, 3, and 4 instead of 1, 2, and 3.
Post by: vonbach on August 23, 2019, 09:19:11 PM
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Communists are not a powerful group in the world any more, certainly not powerful enough to influence almost the entire climate science community into malpractice.Sure they are they just call themselves the left now.
Here's a question. Have you ever tried a test game after removing all the penalties to all the policies?
Just to see how the AI handles things and how much easier it makes life for the AI.
Post by: bvanevery on August 23, 2019, 11:13:32 PM
It's not my agenda to completely redo the SE table that I've spent so long developing. This is the culmination of many months of work and testing. I doubt there is ever going to be a perfect table, just as it's generally not possible to pack a knapsack perfectly with rectangular objects. It's one of those problems where you have to try every single possibility to get any kind of answer. Over the past 16 months, I've certainly tried enough possibilities!
Removing faction penalties is where I uniformly applied the "no penalties, to help the AI" sensibility. I see no downside to that, as picking a faction is 1 choice at the start of the game. The point of the SE table is to have 16 choices during the game. I believe in having tradeoffs, where you don't simply get kewl stuff for having made a choice.
Having said that, Democratic is nearly consequence free now. I wanted police units to be usable by the AI, so it had to be done. Also some factions can't choose Democratic, and some factions will go to war with you for choosing it. I suppose nowadays that's only the Hive and the Cult of Planet, because the Believers have free will.
Post by: vonbach on August 26, 2019, 01:31:30 PM
Post by: bvanevery on August 26, 2019, 02:42:26 PM
The Missile chassis in my mod is also pretty much reserved for long range ICBM type missiles. They don't use fuel, which means they can hover indefinitely and get to anywhere on the map eventually. That's rather un-SAM-like.
Post by: DrazharLn on August 26, 2019, 04:51:17 PM
In the base game you have to build sea transports (not that it's really worth it - I've never known the AI to try really hard at nuclear war and I think they're pretty conservative when you've got nukes of your own anyway)
Post by: bvanevery on August 26, 2019, 11:59:31 PM
I've run into trouble with my new "Clean Reactor from the start of the game" paradigm. It's become apparent to me just how effective a swarm of limitless Clean Scouts is at close range. It only takes a city with a Minerals bonus to really spew the things out. I suppose this problem is why SUPPORT was invented to begin with. I hope I can find a way to rearrange the costs and not just have to abandon the effort.
My current approach to Clean Reactor is "cost varies with weapon and armor". This does leave Gun + Scout armor units an awfully good deal. I'd like to define a weapon that has offense 0, can't attack, and is still considered a weapon. I have a feeling that when I try, it's not going to work.
Post by: bvanevery on August 28, 2019, 02:19:22 AM
Changed from version 1.33 to 1.34:
SOCIAL ENGINEERING:
- Wealth: removed PLANET penalty. It was hard for the Gaians to boost their economy. The Usurpers are now the only faction that can get to -3 PLANET.
- Eudaimonia: reduced GROWTH bonus to +2. Reduced JUSTICE bonus to +1. Added +1 ECONOMY bonus. I thought having +3 GROWTH looked really awkward and hacky. From now on, most factions won't be able to pop boom unless their cities enter a Golden Age. The exception is the Hive, because they have a +1 GROWTH bonus.
FACTIONS:
- Believers: removed ECONOMY bonus. Added +1 SUPPORT bonus. As much fun as it's been to talk about tithings, the Believers have had a confused identity for awhile now. They don't excel as an economic faction the way, say, the Pirates do. Generally speaking the AI plays them as a conquest faction, so their bonuses are shaped more towards that, and more like the original game. With the new Extremist mechanic, they can gain +3 SUPPORT easily if they want to.
- Cult of Planet: changed research foci to Explore, Build. Slightly rephrased description of ROBUST research. Doctrine: Loyalty is now a Build technology and gives Extremist, which is what the Cult wants.
- Cyborgs: added +1 PROBE bonus. Lowered PROBECOST to 125. Now starts the game with D1 Information Networks and a BONUS TECH. They're cyborgs, they should be good at probe stuff. They are a weak faction and need strengthening.
- Morganites: reduced ECONOMY bonus to +1. Added +1 SUPPORT bonus. Set secondary compulsion to ECONOMY. Morgan should try to raise his ECONOMY to +5. I want the max to be +5, which means he can't start at +2. He needs something else to keep him strong and no other factions have a SUPPORT bonus. In my mod, SUPPORT is regarded as a form of Wealth. Also Extremist is a kind of Wealth creation, so Morgan could go to +3 SUPPORT if he wants.
- Pirates: made them ROBUST to MORALE penalties. Despite having a Passive personality, the AI always gets in fights. It was not choosing Wealth because it didn't want a MORALE penalty.
- University: made them ROBUST to POLICE penalties. Starts with a BONUS TECH, as in the original game. They are a weak faction and need strengthening.
- Usurpers: removed PLANET penalty. The Caretakers have no penalties, and now the Usurpers follow suit. Starting the game with supply pods that turn into fungal blooms is not fun. A PLANET penalty seems to make it happen more.
TECHS:
- Clean Reactor: now costs 2 as in the original game, and is available from the beginning of the game. The AI obsesses about building various kinds of units, which runs it out of SUPPORT. Clean Reactors help with this problem, even when units are more expensive to produce.
- Progenitor Psych: now an E2 tech, due to change in Field Modulation.
- Field Modulation: now a C3 tech. This is an artifact of fooling with Clean Reactors, but it's good for prereqs so I left it.
- Biogenetics: set power=4 and growth=3, making it a C2 tech. Police State increases PROBE. Biogenetics is currently a prereq for 3 Conquer techs.
- Children's Creche: moved to B2 Ethical Calculus. I have restricted early game growth a great deal. I think the Creche is needed earlier to compensate. The MORALE and anti-probe bonuses it gives are also needed for defense.
- Ethical Calculus: set power=3 as it now gives the Children's Creche.
- Intellectual Integrity: set power=0 and wealth=0 as it no longer gives the Children's Creche.
- Ecological Engineering: no longer gives +1 NUTRIENT production. I'm regarding Build as less PLANET friendly.
- Centauri Meditation: now gives +1 NUTRIENT production.
- Advanced Ecological Engineering: no longer gives +1 MINERALS in fungus. It was giving away too much stuff.
- Eudaimonia: set wealth=4 and growth=3, making it a B6 tech. Eudaimonic now gives +1 ECONOMY. Empaths make money. Winning the Governorship with the Empath Guild is worth a lot of money.
- Subsea Trunkline: moved to B7 Industrial Nanorobotics. B6 Bio-Engineering already gives Genejack Factory. That's too many minerals to give away at once, especially if the Pirates combine it with their oceanic minerals bonus.
- Secrets of the Manifolds: now gives +1 MINERALS in fungus. The lore fits, and I want fewer minerals earlier in the game.
UNITS:
- Free units that have a reactor: now all have a Clean Reactor, so that they can never cause a SUPPORT problem for a base.
- Clean Transport: new predefined unit available with C1 Doctrine: Flexibility. Costs more but helps AI with SUPPORT.
- Clean Formers: new predefined unit available with B1 Centauri Ecology. Costs more but helps AI with SUPPORT.
- Clean Rover Formers: new predefined unit available with E2 Centauri Empathy. Replaces Rover Formers.
- Clean Synth Foil, Clean Synth Transport: new predefined units available with C2 Adaptive Doctrine. They cost more, but attempt to distract the AI from building too many garrison and transport units.
- Clean Sea Formers: new predefined unit available with B2 Ethical Calculus. Replaces Sea Formers predefined unit, which was only enabled in version 1.33. The mechanism by which the game introduces a Sea Former is unclear to me. Sometimes the game doesn't seem to do it at all, which might be a bug. The Clean Sea Former is a viable alternative should that happen.
- Clean Synth Garrison: new predefined unit available with C2 Biogenetics. This tries to distract the AI from building too many garrison units and running out of SUPPORT. Note that although a Speeder based unit would be equivalent in cost, I don't offer it, because the AI will obsess about it and commit suicide with it in combat.
- Clean Synth Police, Clean Police: new predefined units available with C3 Neural Grafting. These try to distract the AI from building too many garrison units and running out of SUPPORT. The Scout based Police unit needs to be defined as 3=Reconaissance. If it is defined as 2=Defense the AI will obsess about building tons of these, and they don't offer good defense.
- Clean 3-Pulse Garrison, Clean Plasma Garrison, Clean 3-Pulse Foil, Clean 3-Pulse Transport: new predefined units available with C4 Single-Sided Surfaces. These units try to distract the AI from building too many garrison and transport units and running out of SUPPORT.
- Clean 3-Res Police, Clean 3-Res Garrison, Clean 3-Res Foil, Clean Trance 3-Res Transport, Clean 3-Res Transport: new predefined units available with E4 Bioadaptive Resonance. These units try to distract the AI from building too many garrison and transport units and running out of SUPPORT.
- Needlejet Chassis: now costs 15. In version 1.28 it was made excessively expensive. It wasn't worth it, as it is just a flying gun, no more powerful than a cheap infantry gun. The Fission era lasts quite a long time and calibrating the chassis soley upon Fusion costs isn't reasonable.
- Slider Probe Team: removed Deep Radar ability. It increases the cost.
- Destroyer Probe Team: renamed to Cruiser Probe Team. It does not carry offensive weapons.
- Trance Colony Pod: removed. E4 Bioadaptive Resonance occurs too late in the game to be of much use for colonizing.
- Super Cruiser Formers: removed. The AI designs Foil units. In the Fission era, they are cheaper and work just fine.
- Trance 3-Pulse Cruiser Transport: removed. The AI makes very few of them.
- Sea Supply: removed. The Fission version is prohibitively expensive and the AI will never build it.
- Sub Probe Team: removed. The AI rarely builds them.
The attachment limit per post is 5, and I eventually ran out of room at the top of the thread. Consequently, this becomes the new home of version 1.34. It was downloaded 100 times before I moved it here.
Post by: Rocky on August 28, 2019, 10:18:47 PM
I like the new changes. I'm a little bit sad about the Believers losing their +1 economy, but I do agree the Support bonus plays more to their strengths.
Post by: bvanevery on August 29, 2019, 07:57:23 PM
I'll be interested to hear what your experiences are. My jury is still out on Needlejet costs. I've made them more reasonable now, but they might still be too expensive. I don't want the air spam of the original game, but I'd like the AI to actually build some kind of air force and attack with them. I'm not sure if I've done that or not, because my testing iterations didn't often get to games of that length. Also I'm good enough at playing my mod now, that I just tend to whip everyone's ass before they get an air force anyways.
Post by: bvanevery on August 31, 2019, 05:22:22 AM
- Cyborgs: added +1 PROBE bonus. Lowered PROBECOST to 125. Now starts the game with D1 Information Networks and a BONUS TECH. They're cyborgs, they should be good at probe stuff. They are a weak faction and need strengthening.
I said I wanted that...
[Limit reached]
MY 2142. Our capitols are unusually close together for a Huge map with my land modifications. I estimate she got 8-balled behind my expansion, up on this short peninsula, and probably lost one of her colony pods to mindworms. She wasn't hostile initially, but she signed a Treaty and was running 2 Speeders all over my land. She had the temerity to ignore my hails and take 3 of my supply pods in 1 turn! So next turn I told her to get off my land. She told me to **** myself. So I killed her Speeders in short order.
That city she just took over, was my best minerals producing city though. She also got some Clean Formers out of the deal. I should still probably have her outclassed 4 cities to 2 though. I'm surprised that these new PROBE advantages enabled her to do this. I'm inclined to think it's because we're at such close range. Well, there's nothing for it but to exterminate her. Will I just kick her to another continent? Or will I isolate her capitol and take her over after MY 2200, so that she can't escape by rocket? We'll see. I think I'll refrain from atrocities though. Even if I wanted to, they aren't terribly effective without Lasers.
MY 2154. After stealing tech and infiltrating, I liberate my base for about 200 credits. It only costs me about 150 because I get about 50 as spoils from taking the base. Another artifact of the enemy probably only having 2 cities. The money for my buyback, came from fishing pods in the ocean. I've actually been quite wealthy in that regard. The Cyborgs are not surrendering so I'll be pushing northwards to bottle them up.
[Limit reached]
Taking back just 1 of the Clean Formers they stole from me, would cost 816 credits! And they haven't even discovered Polymorphic Encryption. Awhile back, I gave them free P.E. on all of their units when they discover Polymorphic Software. They haven't yet. At this kind of pricing it might be quite redundant. Curious though, why are the units so expensive when the base only cost me 200 credits to buy? Granted, it used to be my base, that might have something to do with it.
[Limit reached]
MY 2171. She comes to her senses and surrenders, without me taking either of her 2 cities. I think it was the intimidating pile of mindworms and Isles I captured. I was just getting ready to start taking out her Sensor Arrays and trampling her. Well that was easy, and a bit silly. See, if only she had made the correct decision to respect the Treaty, she could have lived out her life as a completely useless but independent faction.
The Usurpers are on a continent to the east and require slaying. If I can act quickly, it should be a cakewalk. Their coastal cities are only barely settled and don't have any troops in them.
Well, it didn't go that way. I deployed my captured mindworms piecemeal and they weren't all that effective. Especially since the Usurpers no longer have a PLANET penalty. Instead I settled into a pattern of competing for Secret Projects. I was quite surprised when the Usurpers rushed the Citizens' Defense Force somehow. I'm not sure how, and didn't bother to verify, but I found it odd that it happened. They just upped and finished it. I don't think they had a longstanding project in the works.
I did fine but at 3:45 AM I declared boredom and quit. The Cyborgs did better at probe teams than I expected, and the Usurpers did better at medium distance early game defense than I expected. I suppose that means my changes went in the correct direction.
Post by: bvanevery on September 02, 2019, 03:11:26 AM
I spent a lot of time getting drawn strategically into something I really couldn't defend, and not really gaining any benefit from it. I tend to think that a high PLANET rating will make a faction deadly, but I almost feel like some factions are scripted to do poorly at it, until some threshold is reached. Maybe certain technologies are needed to increase the rate of mindworm capture? And some factions are going to get those later than others. For instance, I played the Pirates according to the default AI research focus, a pure Build faction. Not going to get mindworm techs quickly that way.
Post by: bvanevery on September 02, 2019, 08:44:47 AM
Post by: vonbach on September 02, 2019, 11:08:42 PM
Post by: bvanevery on September 02, 2019, 11:34:46 PM
I can't tell if the AI is made stronger for having CRs. They don't seem to be made weaker, but I haven't played a game long enough to be sure. For various reasons I've quit when midgame was getting started.
This is probably all a logical consequence of using the "straight cost increase of 50%" version of CRs, as in the original game. I tried "varies with weapons and armor" but that made Gun Scout units essentially free to mass in large swarms. That was clearly exploitable in the early game, so I had to do otherwise.
Post by: vonbach on September 03, 2019, 03:24:05 AM
Post by: bvanevery on September 03, 2019, 04:45:51 AM
I played another game as the Spartans. Did fine but got bored and quit before midgame. Too much time spent building, not enough killing.
Post by: vonbach on September 03, 2019, 02:14:25 PM
Post by: bvanevery on September 03, 2019, 03:41:36 PM
- I'll build a city next to a pile of minerals, put a Command Center on it, then cough out Clean Garrison units for all the other cities. I've been designing various Synth Speeder units that are a good idea for costs, but I couldn't predefine those units because the AI will use them stupidly.
- If I've got nothing else to do, like there's not even enough food for a Colony Pod yet, I'll build another Clean Former.
- I tend to use 1 or 2 Clean Gun Foils and/or Clean Transports for any given ocean I'm next to.
These aren't proving to be any kind of big win. The game just rolls along as before. Saving on minerals here and there probably only amounts to a gradual change in the game's condition.
Part of me wonders if belting out a lot of Clean Laser Speeders would be powerful. However in my mod, it takes a fair amount of time to get C3 Applied Physics anyways. And you definitely don't need Clean Reactors to swamp an enemy with Laser Speeders.
Post by: bvanevery on September 05, 2019, 07:21:07 AM
It's MY 2317. I'm the Believers and I'm in the final stages of trampling Planet. Basically made it to Hybrid Forests and Missiles, although I'm not using the latter, just my older Gatling Hovertank inventory. Rails all the way across the world. The last serious holdout is the Cult of Planet, but now they're going down. Fission only game so far. When I saw I pretty much had supremacy, I started building a lot of CMs. I used them to pave my way easily through the Morganites. They didn't have a pile of Spore Launchers to negate the CMs.
Post by: bvanevery on September 05, 2019, 08:51:02 PM
Victory in MY 2325.
Due to sunspots I had to eradicate the Cult of Planet and the Morganites. I'm sure they would have surrendered if I could talk to them. If I create a new game, I wouldn't include that play mechanic. It's a long time to wait for communication to resume, and it doesn't make any basic sense. So you've got sunspots, why not physically relay messages on the ground? It's a contrivance and in recent years, I've found it more annoying than amusing, as it has gotten in the way of otherwise easy victories. Literally hours of additional play time because of this mechanic, when the game is already long since decided.
It's a cooperative victory because the Usurpers allied with me the whole time. They were feeble and a non-contributor to the cause. Earlier they were a buffer state between myself and the Hive. The Gaians started next to me and were immediately ornery, refusing to remove their troops in accord with our Treaty. So I crushed them and they became my first vassal. After building up for awhile, I crushed the Hive, leaving the 5 Usurper cities as a sort of "belt" in the middle of my empire.
More building up, and gradual wearing down of the Caretakers to the south. I didn't want their cities, I wanted the Usurpers or the Hive to take over their cities. So I'd wipe out all the defenders and hope my allies / vassals would get a walk-in.
Eventually I did enough terraforming of conquered Hive territory that I had a surplus of Formers. So I built a rail westwards and connected to the other half of the megacontinent. I all but wiped out the Morganites with a hovertank assault, gradually building in rails behind it. After consolidating that, I took on the Cult of Planet, which was the only viable power of the game at that point. Being opposite from me on the map, and sitting on the Monsoon Jungle, they had managed to build up a fair amount of stuff. But compared to my tech and production at that late point in the game, they were nothing special. It took awhile but I crushed them, without any real chance of them doing anything about it.
The moral of this story is if land powers are left to sit around and do their own buildup thing, I clearly understand all of this better than the AI and I will win. That is unfortunately not something I can mod my way out of.
I don't know if the Pirates are capable of being fierce or not. They weren't in this game. They used to be quite a challenge, but I don't know about nowadays.
This was a slow research game. The pinnacle of tech was the availability of Genetic Warfare, which I never actually used. A fairly substantial continent of supply pods never got popped by anybody. I had this 1 Artifact that I was trying to get home for forever, but I couldn't due to enemy ships in the way. I made my own ships but I had very few sea ports and they took a long time to arrive. By the time they did get down there, I had wiped everybody out. So, didn't need the tech from that Artifact really.
I wonder if a faster researching faction, located on the opposite side of the map, could have provided more credible opposition? The Cult of Planet at least doesn't suffer any research penalties, but they didn't research as well as I did. The Morganites were doing slightly better than myself at research up to C5 Centauri Psi, but then I invaded and that was the end of that.
I would say that 4 factions started too close to me to have the slightest chance of staying alive. That left 2 on the opposite side of the map, and they did go to war with each other. The Cult definitely did a better job than the Morganites. The latter has +1 SUPPORT now, so maybe the Monsoon Jungle was to blame? The Cult definitely made effective use of Clean Formers. I slaughtered piles of them when I finally got into the area. The Morganites did not do as excellent a job connecting its empire. Maybe that was due to the pressure of war.
I think if you have the luxury of sitting around making Hybrid Forests, time is on your side.
Although I used a bunch of Conventional Missiles to assist with my invasion of the Morganites, in hindsight it was unnecessary and not cost effective. I could have put the production into more hovertanks. Or made some artillery, which I really didn't bother to do. Or used the piles of surplus probe teams I had after completing the Hunter-Seeker Algorithm.
By the end of the game I had piles of money that I had no use for. Like 4K credits. However I changed Economic Victory to require some rather advanced tech, Global Energy Theory, due to some pathological stuff I saw the Morganic AI doing in my playtesting. That was before I demoted them to only +1 ECONOMY though. Maybe I should change it back now. I don't know if it would have actually made my game go any faster though. You still have to wait 20 turns to Corner The Energy Market, and that's comparable to amount of time sunspots can last.
Post by: bvanevery on September 06, 2019, 03:53:49 AM
Wow, what the hell am I supposed to do with this?
I decided to play a game with the Pirates in it as an opponent, to see if they're still fierce or not. Everyone else is random including me. I'm sticking with the AI's default research foci of Explore, Build, to see what it's like for the AI. Unless the land snakes around to the south, I'm going to need ships fast. Well, that's why Doctrine: Flexibility is a Tier 1 tech in my mod. It shouldn't take that long to get.
The fungal bloom came from popping a supply pod with my 2nd colonist. Recently I've realized that's a bit risky, as a mindworm can in fact kill you. I think you have to be on flat terrain though. If you're on something with some cover, I think they typically injure you rather than kill you. I played for quite a long time with seeming invulnerability to being killed by mindworms in the first few turns of the game. Not sure what changed. Don't think anything did.
I'm going to try to kill the fungal tower immediately. In the first few turns of the game, that often seems to be doable. However that looks like a pretty big tower for only being Turn 4.
After that, well I don't know where that 2nd colony pod is ending up, because it sure doesn't have any good land or resources that I'm looking at.
I wonder if any AI factions will get crippled starts like mine? If not, maybe this'll be a rough game for me.
MY 2105. Odds against the tower were given as 14 to 9, and it did die. So far so good.
MY 2109. I took the risk of popping the pod south of me with my 2nd colony pod, because it took awhile to get my nearly dead Scout back to base, and my production is super low. For my trouble I was given a Unity Transport. I'd like to think that's the game looking after me, but I have not consistently observed such awards for dire circumstances. At least in this case, I've been paid out.
Unity Transports in my mod have Deep Radar. The radar scope shows this to be a little tiny piece of crap, with seemingly more dry scrub and fungus to the south, and no immediately visible supply pods. I wonder if the world generator has given us all an uncharacteristically watery world? Checking on that now, by zooming out and looking at the radar contours. Nope, there seems to be a supercontinent north of me, spanning the whole globe.
I switch production from a Scout Patrol to a Colony Pod. I've got abundant food, no production, and I seriously doubt I need more than 1 Scout to finish off this island. As I'm the Morganites, I do have my 100 credit extra starting money, and my current worth is 159 credits from having destroyed the stalk. I can rush the Colony Pod as soon as minerals get up to 10, which will be next turn.
MY 2113. I have 2 cities on the supercontinent now. 1 of them, I'm rushing a 2nd Scout for 38 credits to make up for lost time. It's got a supply pod next to the city and I need resource bonuses that ordinarily I would have had by now. I'll do the same thing in the 2nd city next turn.
MY 2114. I pop the comm frequency of Chairman Yang. We trade techs, giving me C1 Doctrine: Flexibility. We trade maps and...
[Limit reached]
...oh good grief, he's my immediate neighbor! Well I've spread a little faster than him, despite my bad start. I'm pretty good at out-colonizing people's asses, and I forgot that the new Morgan has +1 SUPPORT. I can make more Scout Patrols.
MY 2117. A Sealurk, which of course I can't see and have no way of knowing where it came from, kills my Unity Transport. So now I have a shipping problem again.
[Limit reached]
BUT, I change production to a Speeder based Clean Rover before popping a pod. Lo and behold, the prototype completes! I've noticed this seems to be rather likely to happen, if you set up a prototype. I could have had a Clean Transport instead, it would have been the same cost, although it may not have been as likely to complete. I had already popped a couple of pods and hadn't gotten one. Anyways this start is not looking so bad anymore. I just have to compete with Yang now, and I've got tricks the AI doesn't have.
Post by: bvanevery on September 06, 2019, 05:17:06 AM
MY 2142. I pulled the same trick with synthmetal, resulting in a ridiculously expensive Former. I'm spreading like wildfire and Yang is standing still by comparison. We're allied. He did build 1 Clean Former, saving him 1 mineral in SUPPORT. I think building 4 Scouts in 1 city wasn't a good move on his part though. Wonder if I should include a Clean Scout unit, even if they cost twice as much?
Also allied with the Peacekeepers, and they're doing poorly as well with only 2 cities. U.N. Headquarters built 2 Colony Pods which they haven't settled, so their SUPPORT is exhausted. They're trying to build a Clean Formers and can't. Their 2nd city has completed the minerals for a Colony Pod, but hasn't gotten to size 2 to make it. 9 more turns before it does. Not even a Scout in that city. In short, the Peacekeeper AI is a complete moron! I don't think it's due to my Clean Reactors, I think it just didn't handle the map successfully.
I quit in MY 2191, at 2 AM. I have a 5:30 AM wakeup call for something. I did fine but I couldn't help the feeling that several factions had started really badly. I need to look into Clean Scouts or other clean scouting units.
The immediate trigger for quitting was the Pirates declaring war on me. I was preparing for a land war with the Hive, building several Command Centers. To keep the peace I never went Democratic, even with Lal as my distant ally. Nor did I go Capitalist, because I was so deeply surrounded by fungus that it took a long time to cut it away from my cities. Couldn't go Green for a long time either, because I didn't discover it and others wouldn't trade it to me. When the Pirates declared war I went for Police State, figuring it would help with taking over their interloping units. I found Police State Green to be a really irritating choice for my faction though. I felt like my agenda was being continuously subverted. It was irritating enough to use the excuse of needing to look at the AI Scouts problem, to beg off.
Post by: Rocky on September 07, 2019, 01:03:18 PM
- Factions like the Believers/Spartans/Hive are often the first to swarm the ocean with Clean Synth Foils. In my last game the Believers were bombarding my coast with half a dozen Foils, decimating my infrastructure. I like it. It makes them more of a threat that you can't just ignore.
- The AI loves the early Clean Police (Synth). It gives the bases some more defense and stability without slowing them down too much.
- The AI seems to pick its most productive base to produce a couple of Clean Formers early on, which works perfectly as it really does give them a boost.
- The aggressive factions (or the factions with the Conquer research path) seem to benefit the most. When they get their Lasers and Impact units out, their advantage in minerals saved by their earlier built clean units makes them potential monsters early on. I had the Believers overwhelming the Peacekeepers, the Hive decimating the University and the Spartans winning against the Believers in an earlier game.
- The more peaceful factions are no pushovers either though. Even a faction like the Morganites put up a fight. They were taking bases and units from me with Probes and combined with hit and run attacks from their Foils disrupted my invasion.
===
Some things I noticed:
- Some factions, when not having much starting land, don't seem to expand into the ocean. Do the AI's get a pre-defined Sea Colony Pod as well when they get Doctrine: Flexibility? Or wasn't that possible? I remember you were trying to do that with the Pirates once.
- I like the increased Prototype cost, but it feels like too much in its current state. It feels like it's slowing down the game, especially if you're up against an enemy who already has prototyped that weapon and is hammering you with it.
- The AI is performing much better in its current state, but is there a way to improve terraforming as well? Currently it still uses the old terraform style of Farms and Mines.
Post by: bvanevery on September 07, 2019, 07:33:10 PM
I'm experimenting with Clean Scouts and it at least is not causing harm. I find that when factions start in marginal conditions, like very little land surrounded by fungus and poor nutrients, they may make plain Scouts and exhaust their SUPPORT. Since I started doing the Clean Scouts, I'm not sure if it's prevented the problem. I saw 1 city that produced several Scouts and cost SUPPORT, but it had the minerals to do it and did not get choked out. I am wondering if changing the AI Plan of the predefined unit will help. For my next test I will try -1=AutoCompute. Before I was doing 3=Explore, and that at least does not cause harm.
My own testing is problematic because I play the game too well. :( I know exactly how to exploit everything, like a Clean Reactor at the beginning of the game. So I've just been expanding in the early game like crazy and leaving the AIs in the dust. Yes the Clean Reactor helps the AIs, but it also helps me. This won't be true of everyone who tries my mod though. And it could be, I'd kick the AI's ass anyways. I'm just wondering, whatever happened to the days when I thought the Pirates and Morganites were scary? Maybe I played on Enormous maps back then. I've only done Huge for a long time now, and it doesn't seem that difficult to me.
- Some factions, when not having much starting land, don't seem to expand into the ocean. Do the AI's get a pre-defined Sea Colony Pod as well when they get Doctrine: Flexibility?
There's no predefined unit for it. There could be, there just isn't right now. It was Sea Former that I was having trouble with before, not Sea Colony Pod. I have no idea whether encouraging sea expansion will help or not. The AI in my experience often does a terrible job picking sea base locations, especially when it gets into a "3 square diagonal climb" in some corridor, none of them having any substantial resources. Although, that's typically a late game behavior. All I'm really saying is, this is an untested unknown. What I can do, is try throwing a pod into the predefined units, and see what the AI does with it.
Quote
- I like the increased Prototype cost, but it feels like too much in its current state. It feels like it's slowing down the game, especially if you're up against an enemy who already has prototyped that weapon and is hammering you with it.
The tricks you want are:
- Blow an Artifact on it.
- Set up a prototype in a border city, pop a pod somewhere, so that that city is closest. Good chance the prototype will complete. For bonus points, make your prototype unit as expensive and exotic as possible. Like put totally unnecessary armor on it and so forth.
- In the early game, you can just wait for techs to give you Synth or Speeder units predefined. The general drill is predefined units that use a new weapon, armor, or chassis, come 1 tech later than when those capabilities appear. This is so predefined units don't just give prototypes away.
- C4 Bioadaptive Resonance and C4 Single-Sided Surfaces are exceptions to this rule. You get the prototypes immediately. This is because they're only providing Strength 3 weapons and armors on Tech Tier 4. Used to be that C3 Advanced Subatomic Theory was a prereq for both. It still is for Surfaces, but Bioadap is now its own independent branch of the tech tree. The idea is you've already struggled to get Plasma armor prototyped and that makes both 3-Pulse and 3-Res available.
- Once you get C3 Applied Physics, build a Skunkworks.
I could make the Skunkworks easier to get. Just realized it's also a Build tech, as it saves on minerals costs and allows prototypes to be shifted around without minerals penalties. C3 Neural Grafting might be a more reasonable fit. I find the latter is easier to obtain than C3 Applied Physics, probably because it's a Conquer / Build / Explore tech instead of just Conquer. Multiple categories generally means more likely to be discovered. Think I'll also make the tech path to C3 Neural Grafting more clearly in the Build tree while I'm at it.
Quote
- The AI is performing much better in its current state, but is there a way to improve terraforming as well? Currently it still uses the old terraform style of Farms and Mines.
There are no settings to change the terraforming behavior with .txt modding.
I could remove this penalty:
Code: [Select]
-1, ; Nutrient effect in mine square (0 or -1)Whether that's a good idea or not, I don't know. I suppose it would stop me having to scrap all the mines on top of farms, when I capture AI territory. :D I suppose I'll try it as a test. The stock AI is stupid and that's not gonna change, so this may be justified.Post by: bvanevery on September 08, 2019, 04:59:41 AM
[Limit reached]
Sea Colony Pods is not one of them though. I haven't done anything with that yet. I note that 2 very cramped factions are in fact producing Sea Colony Pods. The Spartans even managed to found 1 sea base already. Now it could be argued that they're not coming early enough, but to put it in perspective, I haven't managed to make my 1st sea base either. And I'm the Unsurpassed faction of the game. I started with amazingly fertile land, so no pressure for me to do it, I'm just filling out stuff around my capitol. I have 1 coastal city working on a Sea Colony Pod and it's been taking a long time.
They'd have to be cheaper to get it done any faster. I could only do that as a special case predefined unit, as I'm not inclined to mess with Foil chassis or Colony Pod Module costs. The former would change all the early game ship costs, and the latter would change cost of land colonies. I'm not thrilled about handling it as a special case, because if someone wants to design a different kind of sea colony pod, the cheapening wouldn't be in effect. I could get over it if I really thought it was worth it, but it'll take substantial testing before I believe that getting the AI to make a lot of sea bases is actually a good idea. I think it's likely to make the land factions rather weak, and the Pirates don't need the help. In fact, it would inevitably make the Pirates rather monstrous, if they're getting Sea Colony Pods even cheaper than they already do.
MY 2165. I've noticed that the Spartans are settling a new sea base, and the Hive seemingly already had a sea base I didn't notice before. So, I don't think the AI making Sea Colony Pods is a problem. Only issue is the rate at which they do it. Which is inevitably compounded with the Pirate problem.
Much later... it should be noted that Sea Bases are extremely easy targets for enemy Foil Probe Teams. I lost the one I made almost immediately. I stole from it, but the effort of actually retaking the base was not worth it compared to other things I could be doing. Granted, I forgot I could use Marines to retake the base. Quite an oversight since I designed Marine Probe Teams to steal from it.
Post by: vonbach on September 08, 2019, 02:15:09 PM
I have noticed the AI does not like to build its own units. So units like sea pods come later.
The problem with the increased prototype costs isn't that it hurts me I just plow though the extra cost or make a skunkworks.
The AI seems to be hurt more than me.
All in all the changes seem interesting and good.
Post by: Rocky on September 08, 2019, 02:28:49 PM
Thank you for the tips about prototypes. I had no idea it worked like that with the pods. I really like the concept of the pre-defined units. It adds flavor to the game and gives a feeling of satisfaction when you discover a tech that makes those units available.
I've been playing the latest game with mines disabled. So far it doesn't seem to hinder the AI. They actually seem to terraform faster and plant more forests. (But that's probably because it spends less turns on mines) I'm curious to see how this will go in the mid/late-game.
In my current game the Believers are ruling everything. I'm not a good player but (playing as Morganites) I expanded as much as I could with currently 16 bases around 2220, but the Believers are three times above everyone in power and they don't have a Monsoon Jungle. Luckily, they aren't really hostile to me (more like indifferent) and seem to have set their sights on the Usurpers. The Caretakers don't like me because of my Capitalist economy, and are coming pretty close with their Resonance Laser units and Foils, hopefully I can rush my infrastructure in place before they attack.
Post by: bvanevery on September 08, 2019, 11:30:08 PM
- Pinpoint the problem. I think we're talking about events within the first 40 turns of the game, but I've not observed that timeframe very much. I'm usually waiting for longer results than that, whether playing myself or watching AI games.
- Let's say we pinpoint that under conditions X, the AI should make Sea Colony Pods, but doesn't. Then we have to see if any kind of predefined Sea Colony Pod unit will change that behavior.
I do see AI factions get "8-balled" behind other factions and have little to no land to grow into. I would like to think the answer to this is extreme violence, but the AI doesn't know how to step up to the situation.
I've also seen an AI faction making 3 bases on land and then just quitting their expansion. Usually because they're surrounded by a death maze of fungus. Plenty of land, but not very good land, and a lot of twisty turny passages to get to anything. It wouldn't shock me if the AI path finding code can't reason very well about it and just chokes.
So we've got 2 kinds of barriers: other factions and fungus. The perceived answer is to settle the oceans. I wonder if that's really the answer though?
I think I'll start by observing AI vs. AI game runs, all ending uniformly at MY 2140.
[Limit reached]
This game deliberately included the Pirates. Nobody had a land availability problem, everyone had basically tons of reasonably good land. Most factions have settled at least 4 cities by now. The Cult is on a large island or a small continent, i.e. "Australia". They're just morons.
[Limit reached]
In another game the Caretakers have land, but they perceive themselves to be threatened by other factions around them, plus a Spore Launcher. Their Colony Pods don't settle. Or they're trying to be greedy and grab too much.
[Limit reached]
The Morganites don't have any more Colony Pods in production. They're an Explore, Build faction. I'm thinking of changing them to Build, Conquer, now that they've got +1 SUPPORT. A bit more Haliburton.
[Limit reached]
That game had a lot of factions next to each other, so I ran it for awhile to see who gets stomped. The Morganites are obviously going to die. They have 4 cities but their "empire" is split in half by the Caretakers and the Spartans are swamping them. I think that settles it as far as switching to Build, Conquer. The Caretakers are doing ok but not as well as some other regional powers.
[Limit reached]
The new Conquer only Hive is a terror! They wiped out a number of decent Cyborg cities. The latter are an Explore, Discover faction and I've been thinking about switching them to Discover, Conquer. Think this shows it's time.
Post by: bvanevery on September 09, 2019, 03:24:59 AM
[Limit reached]
What would I even do about this? They have an excess of production vs. food. They could have produced units to defend this city, but they didn't. If I put armor on the Artifacts, would they survive attacks? Probably they'd just be like Probe Teams and gratuitously die when something else dies. But a lone city, maybe they'd fend stuff off.
They've also only built 3 cities despite abundant land. They've got no active Colony Pods, but 2 in production.
[Limit reached]
The University is an Explore, Discover faction. Now they're the only one. They've got plenty of land, they're just not getting the settlement job done. They seem to have been distracted by the discovery of Progenitor Psych. The Caretakers are distant neighbors to the west, but they're not in contact. The University has researched PrPsych on its own. I've moved Hypnotic Trance to that tech. They've made a few too many Trance Scouts, although the problem is not bad. If Trance Scouts turns out to be an AI obsession, I could move it somewhere else.
[Limit reached]
It doesn't end well for the University. They never expand. The Caretakers hassle them with a Battle Ogre, mindworms, and spore launchers the whole time. The University is a Socialist Police State and builds Probe Teams obsessively. They march in front of the Battle Ogre and are promptly killed. They also try to build some Foil Probe Teams when they should be tending to other needs. They actually had Recon Rovers in time to do something about their situation, but they don't use them effectively.
[Limit reached]
In other news, it looks like the Free Drones got bottled up and squashed by the Cyborgs and the Believers. I'm surprised at that, because recently I set the Free Drones to Build, Conquer and they became pretty terrifying. The Cyborgs did the actual conquests, indicating that their new Discover, Conquer focus actually works. I think the Believers merely blocked routes of expansion. Now the Believers and the Cyborgs are in a shooting war, so I'm interested to see who comes out on top. They're the 2 most powerful factions on the graph.
Eventually in MY 2299, the Believers have been slowly wearing down the Cyborgs. They seem to outproduce them, the tech is about equal, Probe Teams are not much of a factor for either, and the Believer empire is more centralized and radial. The Cult of Planet is doing better than everyone, as is made it to the Monsoon Jungle and took off.
The Cult is currently an Explore, Build faction because I was worried about them getting Extremist. However that's the only Build tech they actually need, so I'm going to try them as an Explore only faction, like the Gaians.
Post by: bvanevery on September 09, 2019, 08:10:36 PM
That said, they did make it to the endgame of my last test game, because they started on a large island and had no land competition. The game came down to a 4-power stalemate, between the Cyborgs, the Spartans, the University, and the Drones. Technically the Data Angels were still in the game but I think they got wiped and then escaped. The Cyborgs finished the tech tree but did not have the productivity to finish the Voice of Planet before MY 2500. I quit watching at MY 2480 as it was boring. The whole thing was dominated by mindworm combat, despite the availability of Singularity reactors and other endgame goodies.
[Limit reached]
In a new game, we finally see the kind of circumstance where someone might want Sea Colony Pods, although a Transport and regular Colony Pods would actually be better. This is a curly arm of a twisty, globe spanning supercontinent. Someone's gonna get crushed! I just changed the Gaians to Explore, Discover as thematically they've been that way for awhile. I've also changed the Morganites to Build, Conquer as they tend to have stiff opposition on land. The Pirates have been a pure Build faction since version 1.33, as they have a huge moat.
[Limit reached]
The Gaians managed to make a bit of a land claim before making peaceful contact with the Morganites. The latter have been gifted a Unity Transport.
[Limit reached]
So here we have a reasonable lower bound on how soon a land faction could become seaworthy. Notice also that there hasn't even been time to get a 3rd land city settled. I think it's safe to say that making Sea Colony Pods in the first 20 turns of the game is a non-issue / would be a non-productive strategy.
[Limit reached]
That said, they don't even have the option. Is it merely a 1 tech delay until the Unit Designer runs and makes the unit? Or is it an ongoing bug? We shall see. Right now the Gaians have 5 Tier 1 techs.
[Limit reached]
The Gaians do not gain a Sea Colony Pod with this tech. They were making a Recreation Commons in 1 of their cities, which I regard as a big mistake this early in the game. I could move the Recreation Commons to a later tech, although I'd need to figure out what to do with Social Psych. Upon learning Biogenetics, the Gaians switched production to a Clean Synth Speeder and a Synth Police Wagon. They have a 3rd Colony Pod at the Morganic border but have not settled yet.
[Limit reached]
Unbeknownst to the Gaians, the Hive has triggered an earthquake and bridged the land just to the south. They have not met yet. I suspect that earthquake probability has to do with settlement and land constriction, that it's not completely random. It may be a partial safety valve for bad map layouts. It's probably not going to help the Gaians a whole lot though. Introducing a new enemy may even be a big negative.
Meanwhile, the Morganites have 2 Colony Pods milling around fairly unproductively. They should just settle somewhere. Well I guess actually exercising brains for this sort of thing, is Thinker Mod's territory. I can't do anything about that.
Post by: Rocky on September 09, 2019, 08:43:33 PM
I agree with you about adding Conquer to certain factions as a defense against more aggressive factions. With the tech tree being specialized the Conquer path is more powerful.
I've been testing out the game with Mines disabled in the alphax.txt. It doesn't seem to hinder the AI and it actually seems to improve on it a little. Without mines, the AI is terraforming faster and adding more farms/collectors and early forests.
Post by: bvanevery on September 09, 2019, 09:18:19 PM
One thing that troubles me though, is factions often don't build Command Centers when they should. They're already a Tier 1 tech so I can't offer them any earlier. I could cheapen them. On the other hand, I don't want the AI to obsess about making them too early. It was doing that with Perimeter Defenses, to the exclusion of colonization, so that's why it got moved to a Tier 3 tech.
I can't really see the aesthetics of Mines going away, pleasing me at all. I like my big "7 minerals" mines on a Minerals bonus square. But kudos to you for experimenting. I did turn off the mine on farmland penalty, although I haven't paid attention to the results.
[Limit reached]
The Gaians have gone back to building a Recreation Commons. This is not a smart course of action for them. They already built a Clean Police Wagon, so they can go to size 3 without problem. They still need to colonize. They don't have enough Clean Formers to make aggressive use of a larger population anyways. They haven't even gone Police State and they could, which would allow 3 police units. Here they are just sucking. Now that the use of Non-Lethal Methods is early game and mainstream for all factions, even Democratic factions, I really think I should put Recreation Commons later. It's a waste of time.
I've noticed that the AI also does the same sort of wasteful thing with Hologram Theaters, if it gets the chance. This is perversely a problem of the University. It's actually a Tier 3 tech, you have to discover Optical Computers. Most other factions don't discover the tech because it's in the Discover part of the tree. I might have to delay Hologram Theater until Tier 4. It really shouldn't be needed in the early game at all. I've seen AI factions completely fail to research it for long periods of time, and they don't seem to be negatively affected. And as a human player, I certainly don't need it, when police are always available and useful.
MY 2136. The Gaians sign a Treaty with the Hive, and go Democratic. They're building a Children's Creche. With only 3 cities, their development is arguably too vertical. On the positive side, the Clean Formers and Clean Synth Speeders have done their job of preventing loss of SUPPORT.
I could do the same with Colony Pods, if I perform some heroics of reassigning costs. Just make supporting Colonists no longer part of the game. I'd have to make the Colony Module less expensive, so that when combined with a Clean Reactor, the cost comes out the same as current Colony Pods. This could be abused by a human player though, who could design a Colony unit without a Clean Reactor. That might be a price worth paying though. Strictly speaking, I could disable the Colony Module so that designing units with it is impossible, and then only provide predefined Colony units. However I'd rather not.
Hm, there's another way. I could leave the module costs alone, and simply outright assign a cost to a predefined Clean Colony Pod unit. Yes you could design something else, but cost-wise you wouldn't want to. Sounds like a plan.
MY 2140. The Gaians capture their 1st mindworm. That's pathologically late for them, and a direct consequence of having no land to maneuver in. They have a 4th Colonist milling around now, and another in production. They still don't know how to make Sea Colony Pod units.
MY 2145. The Gaians should have settled their 4th city, but didn't. They were right on a correct spot on the Morganic border. They still have Treaties with both the Morganites and the Hive. Next year they just walked away. They're just abysmally stupid. I've seen this non-settlement behavior quite a number of times. Generally speaking it's a benefit to me, the human player, when the AI exhibits this paralysis of encroachment.
Post by: Rocky on September 09, 2019, 09:36:29 PM
The terraforming without mines reminds me a bit of the Kyrub AI. (Except it only places mines on rocky squares) It grows forests early so they can spread and then follows it up with Tree Farms/Hybrid Forests.
Is it possible to "tell" an AI to emphasize building certain facilities like Tree Farms? Or is that something you can't directly control?
Post by: bvanevery on September 09, 2019, 09:48:42 PM
Is it possible to "tell" an AI to emphasize building certain facilities like Tree Farms?
Only in the sense of cheapening the cost of the facility, or making it available earlier. I'm definitely not going to make it available earlier, as it's even more valuable for a human player. For similar reasons, I don't think the cost should be lowered. Having factions focus on Build rather than other options, would tend to get them to B4 Environmental Economics sooner. I do have a fair number of Build, Conquer factions nowadays, so they might get there on their own.
I think it's important to remember, that Clean Reactors is now my primary strategy for increasing AI output. Giving away everything is not a good idea. Aside from making "unintended" cakewalks for human players, some people do combine my mod with Thinker Mod. And that AI is evil. You give that thing an inch, it will take a mile! So no, no free lunches for the AIs. Improvements always have to be kept on a tight leash. That's why it's a game design problem, and not just a "give everything to everyone" problem.
MY 2174. The Gaians learn E2 Centauri Empathy and go Green. They have 2 Colony Pods that have been milling around forever. Valid city sites are available, the AI is just not taking them. It sucks!
I think this experiment is pretty much concluded from an "identifying the problem" standpoint. The question is whether Sea Colony Pods is actually a solution. The AI does know how to make Sea Colony Pods now, but I don't know when they became available. They're not choosing to make them, despite having 3 cities. They're working on a Command Center, a Network Node, and a Colony Pod that they clearly don't need.
It wouldn't be completely unreasonable to make Sea Colony Pods cost the same as land Colony Pods. Yes they contain the equivalent of a Recycling Tank, but the ocean has no minerals. I will consider experimenting with that, but first I need to change when the Recreation Commons and the Hologram Theater become available.
[Limit reached]
Oh, the punchline: the Morganites didn't do any better. 4 idle Colonists, despite piles of land they could settle! What a joke. Or a tragedy. I think I'll cry now.
If unarmored civilian Clean Transports were predefined and cost less, I wonder if the AI would use them to bridge land gaps? Something to experiment with, but first I'll be making all those other changes. It's also risky to have the AI obsess about such things.
Post by: vonbach on September 10, 2019, 02:29:38 AM
Quote
It wouldn't be completely unreasonable to make Sea Colony Pods cost the same as land Colony Pods. Yes they contain the equivalent of a Recycling Tank, but the ocean has no minerals. I will consider experimenting with that, but first I need to change when the Recreation Commons and the Hologram Theater become available.It would make the AI's life much easier.
Post by: bvanevery on September 10, 2019, 01:31:34 PM
Post by: vonbach on September 10, 2019, 10:44:31 PM
The AI sets certain things in a much higher priority and it also depends on what AI. Some AI will spread like a weed. Others will build more.
From what I've seen the AI will start colonizing (depending on the AI) when it has certain things built. Like Recreation commons that and things like a Children's Creche or a Recycling Tanks usually have top priority.
Post by: bvanevery on September 11, 2019, 04:13:09 AM
Post by: Rocky on September 11, 2019, 09:49:54 AM
---
Out of curiosity I did a quick AI-only test on terraforming with and without mines and took a snapshot at 2220. It turns out differences were mostly minor. Two things I noticed:
- Terraforming is slightly faster without mines. Most noticeable on outer bases which generally have one farm/collector and one forest/sensor near them. With mines the outer bases are usually still empty, except for a road connecting them.
- Tech and energy output of all factions in the game without mines were slightly higher. In both scenarios the Peacekeepers were Democracy/Green/Wealth.
Peacekeepers with mines at 2220: Labs 70% 95 tech per turn -- Eco: 30% 10 energy per turn.
Peacekeepers without mines at 2220: Labs 70% 114 tech per turn -- Eco: 30% 20 energy per turn.
Post by: bvanevery on September 11, 2019, 01:29:43 PM
Post by: Rocky on September 11, 2019, 02:31:19 PM
So the question is, which approach makes a faction more likely to prevail? More research and energy isn't useful if the AI doesn't do something with it.
You make a good point. This was just a test for fun. The differences were smaller than I expected, and your solution of keeping the nutrient for the mines is probably the best choice as it doesn't limit game options for the human player.
After a few more tests I did notice that an AI seems more likely to build a Tree Farm if there are several forest squares around a base.
Post by: vonbach on September 11, 2019, 06:03:47 PM
One thing I've done in the past is remove the mines food penalty just to help the AI since it likes to spam them
so much. You might want to reduce the prototype penalty and the cost of the clean reactor to help the AI.
Post by: bvanevery on September 12, 2019, 05:04:33 PM
I'm not convinced the prototype penalty is an issue. Early prototypes are actually easy to get, because there are early techs with predefined units that award a prototype. Prototypes start becoming difficult from Nonlinear Mathematics onwards. For the human player I think it is a good play mechanic, to make it an actually consequential decision.
Meanwhile, my experiment with depriving the AI of a Recreation Commons at Tier 1, is a disaster! Even with Social Psych merely at Tier 2, many factions never learn it. This eventually leads to size 7 bases with 3 medical doctors. Factions may or may not deploy police units, even if they know how to make them.
Restricting Hab Complex until Tier 4 also doesn't work, as various factions do find enough food to get to size 7 by say, MY 2250. In particular the Pirates, the Free Drones, anyone sitting on the Monsoon Jungle, and any sea base that manages to get left alone in shallow water long enough to build up some ocean improvements.
So I've got a bit more reshuffling to do.
[Limit reached]
This is the kind of situation where an immediate Sea Colony Pod is desired. They don't have the capability. Time to add it and see what happens.
[Limit reached]
The availability of Sea Colony Pods is clearly not triggered by Mission Year, but by some difference in technology. But what?
[Limit reached]
21 years earlier, the Gaians don't have Sea Colony Pods. But within 10 years they gain them. Other factions already have them, so again it's not based on Mission Year.
Analyzing the faction techs, the Gaians have all the technologies the Peacekeepers do, and a number more. This would seem to indicate that the lack of a Sea Colony Pod is not intended, and is simply a bug.
I notice that the Gaians have not completed a Synthmetal Laser Skimship or a Scout Rover prototype. Other factions with Sea Colony capability have. The Cult of Planet in MY 2020 doesn't even have the prototypes available, as they haven't learned the appropriate Conquer techs yet.
I've now renamed the Sea Escape Pod to a Clean Sea Colony Pod and have made it available with Doctrine: Flexibility. I've also changed to a Clean Colony Pod. The AI likes these units just fine.
I've discovered that a Tier 3 Explore tech that merely has growth=4 and no other weights, will never be researched. Other Explore techs that are cross-listed with, say, Conquer will be researched first. Even through Tier 5, i.e. Centauri Psi.
Granted, none of the factions in my test game had Explore as part of their research foci. Still, that counts and matters. The consequence is nobody ever got the Hab Complex. The Consciousness built the Ascetic Virtues and went to size 9, gaining an advantage over the others. This phenomenon is interesting and demonstrates a way of delaying the acquisition of a tech in the tree. It's not appropriate for Hab Complex but could be useful for something else.
Post by: vonbach on September 13, 2019, 09:19:26 PM
Post by: bvanevery on September 14, 2019, 01:24:01 AM
I just sped up the Discover tree. I'm trying to get the University going a lot more quickly with its research. I'm also using the Discover tree as a barrier to new weapons technology, since most factions will not research Discover stuff. That will give the University the possibility of developing superior weaponry. In a test game it almost worked... they held off the Spartans for a long time, because they discovered Fusion Power I think. Eventually the Spartans did grind them up though.
The shocking terror of that game was actually the Cult of Planet. More mindworms than you can believe. The mindworm is definitely the dominant weapon of the futuristic AI battlefield.
Retroviral Engineering is going to come earlier again, because it fits with a progression I've made with Gene Splicing. Maybe testing will show that to be a bad idea, and I may recant. But I kinda miss that atrocity exit hatch.
Post by: vonbach on September 14, 2019, 08:50:48 PM
Planet rating is becoming a necessity just to play the game without getting eaten alive by mindworms.
Especially in the early game.
Post by: bvanevery on September 14, 2019, 09:15:02 PM
I've been playing as the University. I got the Network Backbone. I felt like I was cheating, getting it so early. However the game keeps going on and the Free Drones and the Peacekeepers are supposedly equal to me. I have a hard time believing that, but it's what the game says. I haven't learned C5 Retroviral Engineering because it's a pure Conquer tech. I'm only researching pure Discover. I've come to realize that pure research barriers can slow down stuff and "hide" things in the tech tree. They'll be difficult for many factions to research in practice. It's like building a maze. If techs share categories, the "terrain" of the maze is easier to navigate. If they don't, if there's an abrupt cliff, then it's harder.
Truth is I'm kinda bored with my game right now. Using Discover to restrict access to things like Gatling Guns worked. I'm the only one who's got them. But having all this tech, leads to all these Secret Projects being available. Which makes me feel like I should build them, instead of other stuff. I've built the Xenoempathy Dome and the Pholus Mutagen. I was already doing Knowledge, and I've changed from Capitalist to Green, so I'm +2 PLANET. I've made Industrial Labs everywhere, and I'm starting to make mindworms everywhere. My thought is to overrun the Drones with them, or at least make them sign a cease-fire. It's just all going slow as molasses though. Nobody can really do anything about me, but my research isn't fast enough to feel all that impressive. Having to build Research Hospitals and Tree Farms sounds like a drag.
Well maybe a nap will fix this.
I've had some water hassles with the Believers. Maybe that's courtesy of the Clean Sea Colony Pods that don't cost extra? Everyone definitely has some sea bases.
Post by: vonbach on September 14, 2019, 10:04:33 PM
Post by: bvanevery on September 15, 2019, 12:17:10 AM
Took a break, and gonna go back to the University slaughter now. Looking at my new tech tree, I can't honestly say that Research Hospitals are in the wrong place. They're Tier 4 now, and that's appropriate, same time as Industrial Labs. One comes from a more Explore part of the tree, and the other from a more Build part of the tree. I just don't want to build the Research Hospitals. From a happiness standpoint they're unnecessary, because I snagged both the Virtual World and the Human Genome Project. The latter is going to come with Centauri Genetics now. That's a bit of a hand wave, but at least it's genetics. Mainly it blocks AIs from trading mindworm tech.
I should probably just produce a mindworm plague and Be Happy [TM]. I liked the idea of producing a viable civilization without Tree Farms, just based on Industrial Labs and other Discover techs. I guess there's really nothing stopping me. I just have this tendency to want to take over 1 city and go back to peace, I think because the unit pushing gets really boring.
Post by: bvanevery on September 15, 2019, 05:49:30 AM
It seemed most profitable to let the Drones extend themselves into Morganic territory, then counterattack where we had the terrain advantages and they didn't have any Sensor Arrays. This results in a lot of repetitive actions over many turns though. Eventually the Morganites had tossed so many units my way, that I started pursuing this massive strategic flanking movement, based on a rail that I had built earlier. I was starting to engage that 2nd front when... I'd just had enough of the unit pushing.
The Peacekeepers were far across the map and separated by a lot of water. The graph said they're better than I am, and they actually beat me to Orbital Spaceflight. However I was on target to beat them to Fusion Power, because I designed a partial restriction in the Discover tech tree. You need Applied Relativity to get Superconductor, and Superconductor to get Fusion Power. It's possible to get Orbital Spaceflight and Synthetic Fossil Fuels without any Discover prereqs, so I think it's fair. And it pretty much worked as designed. I had a Gatling advantage over my enemies for awhile, even though I didn't make much use of it. Eventually they got past that and had their Missile Launchers.
I did get Retroviral Engineering, and I could have broken the stalemate with that. But I just didn't want to. Plagues are a pretty specific mood or roleplay for me. It's not like my situation was desperate or I was intending to be inherently cruel. I figured realistically, I'd get Fusion Power and then I could overrun stuff, if I so chose. But that kept happening with every other tech advantage I got, I just wouldn't choose to exercise my advantage. Just tired of the unit pushing.
I conclude that the Network Backbone isn't actually that powerful. It seems like it is, but the reality is probably when you used to get it, you had already pretty much won the game anyways. Already researching techs a mile a minute or whatever. Earlier in the game, it didn't amount to anything decisive. I'm now thinking of it as a better, fancier version of the "+100% research at this base" Secret Projects, but not much more than that. Commerce bonuses... well, you need to have something other than Vendettas and Truces with most of the factions.
My research rate certainly wasn't all that impressive. Despite Industrial Labs in every city, and +5 RESEARCH from Democratic Capitalist Knowledge Cybernetic. Granted, I did switch to Green. Less money, but the +4 JUSTICE allowed me to change my budget to 30-20-50 without any penalty. In hindsight, I didn't use mindworms enough to justify the loss of Capitalist money. Noted for another invasion.
Looks to me like my new Discover tech tree passes the human play balancing test. So mission accomplished. I've already tested AI vs. AI a fair amount, so 1.35 is probably ready to go. I'm still sticking to the monthly release cycle though, so I'll see if anything shakes out by the end of the month. Heavy lifting is clearly over though.
Post by: bvanevery on September 16, 2019, 03:23:59 AM
MY 2145. I've never met this orange headed freak in my life. The Data Angels are in the game. Could they have already framed me, using their starting Probe Team unit? I've seen this "immediate belief in atrocity" sort of thing before. I'm inclined to regard it as a bug, but I have no idea what's causing it. TBH I'd rather play this game than dissect this game.
Post by: Rocky on September 16, 2019, 04:06:32 PM
Post by: bvanevery on September 17, 2019, 12:12:48 AM
Post by: bvanevery on September 21, 2019, 06:41:16 PM
The problem is that unlike a lot of my AI vs. AI test games, this map has the Pirates in fairly close proximity to powerful enemies. So they've been fighting a lot. Some bases, they've stacked to the roof with these units. Other bases, they've made the units and simply sailed away, leaving the bases totally undefended! "We don' need no steenkin' defense", quoth the Pirate King. At this point midgame, I've got the Maritime Control Center, and enough production and safety to finally send a few ships out and about. I'm encountering complete cakewalks with some Pirate bases. It's pretty boring. Spammy as the Pirate sea base spread may be, I think if I had a handful of fast ships, I could take over half of their bases as complete walk-ins. That's unacceptable.
Another problem is although they have Plasma armor, they don't know how to design a Clean Plasma Laser Foil. It costs the same as the inferior Synth unit they're producing in abundance. I provide a predefined unit with C4 Single-Sided Surfaces. However the Pirates focus on Wealth and they haven't learned that tech. They couldn't steal it from me because I've been vigilant with defense Probe Teams and not creating vulnerable sea bases. They could have stolen it from the Peackeeepers or the Data Angels, but for some reason they haven't. I think they're so in love with the Clean Synth Laser Foil, that they've neglected to build anything else of use to them, such as Foil Probe Teams.
Time to start a new game, with that unit snipped out. What will be the next AI obsession? I just keep adding units, then subtracting again when they don't work out.
I played that last game as the Hive. I really don't know how to use their Probe Team capabilities, but at least they helped with defending against the Data Angels. Being able to avoid all POLICE Penalties did prove useful for awhile. I did Knowledge for awhile and enjoyed having no interruption to my usual use of police units. I was also Green due to exploration and an alliance with the Gaians. However after a time I had explored all of Planet, and the Gaians weren't particularly useful as an ally. So I switched to Capitalist Wealth. With +1 energy per square, I made much more money, and consequently my rate of research came out about the same. So Knowledge in this case was useful more for the PLANET bonus it gave me, than the small increase in RESEARCH. Eventually I had Gatling guns and figured I didn't need to be a mindworm oriented faction anymore.
In 1.35 all sorts of Conquer techs are bottlenecked by Discover requirements, to make the University have more control and power in the game. Getting "Gatling superiority" is now a thing. I happened to steal a prereq, D4 Applied Relativity, from another faction. I think I researched D3 Intellectual Integrity and managed to build the Planetary Datalinks, so that pumped me with more prereqs. Not entirely though, as the Gaians were the only RESEARCH oriented faction in the game. They're split between Explore and Discover now, and they didn't make that much contribution to Discover techs.
I built about half the Secret Projects available. That was the rate of production, money, and Artifacts that I could actually get done. The other half were built by other factions, although nobody had a bunch of them like I did. The play mechanic of having to choose which ones you really want, because they are so expensive, is holding up.
The Peacekeepers were the other dominant power of the game. In fact on the graph, they're supposedly twice as good as I am, but I don't believe it. I don't think the game weighs various empire factors appropriately. No doubt they were doing well though. The Pirates in contrast were doing pseudo-well, due to that problem of leaving half their bases wide open. Well, better luck next game!
I was starting to make a lot of money. A Tree Farm + Industrial Labs economy. 180 credits/turn. A focus on Industrial Labs as an alternative or complement to Tree Farms, is new in 1.35. I've lowered it to Tier 4, making it easier to get. Research Hospital is also raised to Tier 4. Especially for a POLICE suppression faction like the Hive, a Research Hospital is not that much of a deal, as I don't have a problem shutting my citizens up. You can build some pretty big cities for only a few Police Scout or Clean Police units.
Wow, the Peackeepers really liked the new Cloaked Impact Squad. 54 Active, 3 in Production, only 15 Lost. I didn't have to face those because my immediate land enemy, the Free Drones, was a runty weenie. Every time he'd get uppity I'd take another city to shut him up. I was in no hurry to absorb him, because I had the best land and he wasn't valuable in any way. I was trying to work towards an invasion of the Peacekeepers, or maybe a rail to the Data Angels down south, although the latter wasn't a real threat. Building my infrastructure gewgaws generally seemed more profitable. I had just acquired B5 Advanced Ecological Engineering when I quit.
Post by: vonbach on September 21, 2019, 09:37:12 PM
Post by: bvanevery on September 21, 2019, 10:00:12 PM
It helps the AI, more than it helps the human player, and it's staying.
Power is mainly about getting +2 MORALE and Elite units.
Post by: bvanevery on September 23, 2019, 06:02:18 AM
Someone framed me! The Data Angels? I was going to come to blows with the Gaians eventually anyways, as I changed to Capitalist awhile back. I'm just surprised this happened. I know it's theoretically possible, but I don't remember it actually happening since forever.
I was in a titanic struggle for the Monsoon Jungle with the Free Drones for a long time. They were spammy but I prevailed. We began jockeying for it at the beginning of the game, with them taking most of it, and me only holding onto a corner. The AI put up a bit of a fight.
After all the battles for Secret Projects, I managed to get 2 Artifacts home and cashed them for techs. 2 more are almost home. I've got somewhat better tech than the competition, but several powers are nuclear capable. I haven't paid attention to whether they've built any nukes. I got Advanced Spaceflight so I could start building Orbital Defense Pods, but I don't feel that threatened yet. I'm mainly just clipping fungus and building Soil Enrichers. Consolidation after the battles I've had with my neighbors. Every once in awhile one of them gets uppity. I trash one of their cities, then they sign a Truce again. I don't need anyone else's bases.
Post by: bvanevery on September 23, 2019, 06:02:26 PM
In MY 2279 I had a crash. It happened during the AI's turn. I replayed my turn from an AutoSave, then saved the game. It crashed again, with the cursor spinning "busy" and then the whole game going down without a warning. Started up the game, loaded the saved game, didn't have any further problem. Guess it wasn't a memory leak if it happened twice. Don't know what it was, but at least it was transitory. I did have some other crash recently, but it doesn't happen very often.
Soon I'll have the Empath Guild and will vote myself Governor. I've acquired Fusion Power, before anyone else. My 1.35 tech tree has Discover imposing a lot of restrictions on key advances in technology, like Fusion reactors for instance. Not everything though. You can get nukes and missile launchers without any Discover stuff.
Post by: Buster's Uncle on September 23, 2019, 07:29:39 PM
Post by: bvanevery on September 23, 2019, 08:30:22 PM
I'm wondering how I'm going to win my current game if I don't want to outright conquer everyone. I'm going to make an Amphibious Missile Hovertank assault on the Gaians, as they actually have a coastal sea base somewhat near me, if I cross Believer territory to get to it. It's a much longer route by sea, and I only have 2 sea ports on that ocean. That will get the Gaians to sign a Truce. Nobody's really worth invading though. I grabbed all the bases that were actually good and worthwhile, sitting on the Monsoon Jungle. I have a well centralized empire sitting upon that.
If I got Hab Domes, I could probably win a Diplomatic Victory pretty easily. But even with +5 RESEARCH I think it's going to take awhile to get there. Hmm, wonder what it costs to Corner The Energy Market?
Umm, just remembered that in my infinite wisdom about AI vs. AI play, I now require Global Energy Theory for Economic Victory to be possible. Getting that, might be about as difficult as getting Hab Domes. If only because I insist on sticking with Discover only research, to see how the AI would experience things.
In MY 2294 I learn C6 Retroviral Engineering. In 1.35 it has B5 Bio-Engineering as a prereq, which in turn has D4 Gene Splicing as a prereq. So it's something the University is more likely to discover than other factions. I think it would be totally in Zhakarov's amoral character to liquidate any faction that's proving inconvenient! That would be the nearby Believers. They're weak, and the Hive is going to take them completely over eventually anyways. I'd rather the Hive not gain those population centers, and I don't want them myself as they're too far away to be economically important. If I liquidate enough factions with plagues, I can gain population supremacy and vote myself Supreme Leader.
For this to work I need to legalize atrocities though. I became Governor 9 years ago, and I tried to pass a Global Trade Pact which nobody wanted. Next year I can try to legalize. I've found that legalizing is pretty random. Especially in the early game, sometimes factions are into it, and other times they are not. If they do legalize, then the drill is to completely wipe out 1 faction at a time. You don't want anyone lingering who wants you nuked. The game has ways of causing that to come to pass!
This turn I ran a few sabotage and Drone Riot missions against a Believer base that's just up a partial rail from me. I've now got 5 Elite probe teams trained up. That'll be enough to cause a lot of death if I pass things next year.
MY 2295. Only Chairman Yang wanted my plagues. Only Domai would talk to me, and he said the matter was far too important for him to change his position. So I will have to proceed with the previous strategy, of gradually depopulating cities by conventional attacks. Eventually the Believers will lose another city, and I'll ask them once again for a Truce. Wet, lather, rinse, repeat until they comply. Meanwhile I've built a lot of Corporate Labs and am starting to build some Nanohospitals. Maybe the future will just get her quickly and I can cakewalk this planet.
I just belatedly remembered that I can do orbital insertions now, courtesy of C8 Applied Gravitonics. I bottlenecked it with D7 Unified Field Theory, which of course I discovered. I don't have to sail to hell and a handbasket, I could just drop on some enemies. Who is that worth doing to though? Some of the factions have made a fair number of sea bases, which I can't just drop on. I guess that's due to the Sea Colony Pod having a Clean Reactor. Well that's fine / intentional. Anyways, usual dropping drill is to take over cities containing Secret Projects.
Post by: bvanevery on September 24, 2019, 02:22:17 AM
I'm still using my old Fission units to conduct my wars. They were adequate for overrunning the weak Believers. They're probably enough to wipe the goofy Datatech outpost on my continent. I've got 3 mindworms inbound to that, and my Elite Recon Rovers may catch up. I don't think my small Impact air force can reach it though. I've never bothered to make Super Formers, I just have old Clean Formers finishing all my terraforming. Only thing they've got left to do is build all the Mines I didn't want. Hopefully I've got enough Hybrid Forests and the Pholus Mutagen by now, not to have any serious eco-damage from that. I mean I'm sitting on the Monsoon Jungle, no sense rocking the boat.
I contact Morgan because it's been awhile. We're both Capitalist. Maybe he got the memo that I've got Fusion Power and am orbital insertion capable. Or maybe he got attacked by former allies and likes that I'm Capitalist. Well he signed a Treaty, so one less troublemaker to worry about. Not that he can do a darned thing. He got stuck sharing a small island with the Data Angels. The Data Angels colonized the nearby sea aggressively, and the Morganites did not. The Data Angels are a pure Conquer faction, which probably explains their sea facing behavior. In 1.35 I changed the Morganites back to a pure Build faction, which might explain their lack of sea growth.
MY 2298. I complete the Cloudbase Academy. It extends my air umbrella a bit, but my Impact Needlejets are currently useless against Gaian Isles. I'm working on the Dream Twister though.
MY 2299. The populous and sprawling Chairman Yang declares war on me. We used to be Police State buddies but he doesn't like that I went Democratic ages ago. We still don't share a front because he hasn't quite broken through the Believers.
I complete a Centauri Preserve in my capitol, only to see my first big mindworm pop. Fortunately there is only 1 Locust, so it won't be a problem yet. I design a AAA Trance 3-Res R-Laser Infantry for my defense. This interferes with my intention to make a Marine Probe Team to steal a tech from the Gaians. My capitol is the only city that is "finished", as everyone else is building expensive infrastructure.
MY 2301. I complete the Dream Twister. This makes it easy to attack with mindworms, even with -1 PLANET. Gaian Isles are no longer immune to my Impact Needlejets.
MY 2302. The Hive takes a small Believer base near me. I destroy it in turn. This does not deter them from making war on me. We slog it out with peons for awhile, as I can't be bothered to make new units.
Post by: bvanevery on September 25, 2019, 03:06:19 AM
This year however, sunspots have fallen. I could commit atrocities and wipe out a heavily populated faction without being noticed, if I can act quickly enough. The other factions have got nukes, but I've got 5 Orbital Defense Pods. More than my victim has Planet Busters, and I can make more of them. I'm in rail contact with the Hive so it makes sense to pick them as the victim.
I've completed Nanohospitals everywhere. Basically, all the science buildings. I've got Genejack Factories most places as well. I doubt I'll bother with Robotic Assembly Plants. I'm still Capitalist but currently not doing any eco-damage. I haven't made any modern offensive units because I thought completing science buildings was more valuable. Now I'll flood the Hive with some X units to put them out of their misery. My first attacks will be genetic plagues, with the probe teams that have been sitting idle for a number of turns.
[Limit reached]
I'm surprised that a plague affects native life forms in the city. Ok well that's some good genetic engineering! This might be a cakewalk.
Where did the funky alternate website theme go? Just when I needed some flaming silksteel spray...
A lack of offensive units does have its drawbacks. I can't believe this one badly wounded Silksteel unit took out like 5 peons I threw at it, including some cheap R-Laser Gravships I'd been using to dispose of enemy mindworm larvae. I guess all the conventional forces in my mod are seriously overpriced. I haven't wanted to make them, and neither has the AI. The dominant weapon of the future battlefield is the mindworm.
MY 2320. I learn Super Tensile Solids and begin building Habitation Domes. The X Impact Gravship Hovertank is the mainstay of my abusive units now, with Amphibious Gravship Hovertank Probe Teams bestowing the plagues and other mayhem. The Hive's exterior lands are gone and I'm now penetrating into their main territory. They don't have anything that can stand against me, they're pretty helpless. I expect they'll be obliterated and I'll have a game winning population by the time sunspots are lifted.
Genetic Plagues are horrible! I just dropped a size 12 city to size 3 with 1 hit. I suppose that's what happens if you haven't learned anti-Plague techs and haven't built any Research Hospitals. If the Hive falls this fast, I might consider giving the Gaians the same treatment. I'd feel bad for these people if I wasn't the amoral University, working on advanced tech the whole game. It should be cake by now.
Post by: Buster's Uncle on September 25, 2019, 04:30:17 AM
I've put you in the 'funky alternate website theme'. -You can change back with the last thingy at the bottom of the right column.
Post by: bvanevery on September 25, 2019, 06:17:39 PM
In MY 2231 I became bored of the slaughter. I had all but wiped out the Hive, with them only having 1 base containing the Maritime Control Center. I had very few conventional units to attack it with, and wearing down the defenders was taking a rather long time. For some reason the base cost an absurd number credits to buy, like 13K. I've got a hefty income of roughly 1K/turn, but I don't have that kind of time to sit around saving up.
Due to merely building a Robotic Assembly Plant in 1 city, and my Capitalist Knowledge merely -1 PLANET demeanor, I got enough eco-damage to cause global warming. This disrupted my round the world rail network. The Free Drones had also disrupted it some, doing a large troop movement towards the Believers during the sunspots. The sunspots still hadn't abated, so I couldn't vote myself Supreme Leader.
I also wouldn't have had the votes anyways. Despite wiping out the Hive, the Gaians still had enough population due to sea bases to deny me the vote. That meant I'd have to invade them. Which means that having waited around to do it this long, was pointless. I could have done it eons ago. I've done enough unit pushing this game and don't care to do any more.
I'd say that requiring Discover in order to get genetic warfare, was a success. It shouldn't be easy to end the world in this way. However I think requiring Discover to get Fusion Power is a failure. It stunts AI development enough that they can't pose any serious challenge in the late game. I will amend that.
I also need to reconsider the expense of weapons and armor as the game progresses. It turns the mindworm into the only practical weapon.
Post by: bvanevery on September 27, 2019, 01:51:54 AM
I'm sitting on half of the Monsoon Jungle. The Cyborgs are on the other half and we're peaceful. The Pirates are nearby and allied. The Peacekeepers are on my eastern border and were at war with me for awhile. But the land they grabbed wasn't as good as mine, so I managed to hold them off with Synthmetal and Recon Rovers. Eventually they got tired of fighting and signed a Treaty. I figured I'm competing with some bigger problem on the map, not them. Either the Hive or the Usurpers. The latter has expanded freely onto a southern supercontinent I think. I sent some Isles down there to check it out, but they're getting chewed up by the local defense boats. When they're gone they're gone. I've all but cleaned out the northern hemisphere of supply pods.
I dominated, but I ended up quitting that game. I played until just before the Fusion era. I had a large, well centralized land mass. I was in the process of completing Industrial Labs and Research Hospitals everywhere. I enforced my will with a large corps of Locusts. Mainly I wanted everyone to stop fighting me, to leave me alone so I could grow and win. So I'd knock off a base whenever anyone got uppity, then sign a Truce. I was putting more effort into eroding the Usurpers at a distance, since I can't win Diplomatic Victory without the Aliens gone from the game.
I decided not to bother with Hybrid Forests, but instead to build modern garrison units. I lowered the costs on pre-Fusion weapons and armor, because they were a bit absurd, back from a time when it was easier to get a Fusion reactor. However my changes weren't showing up in my actual game in progress. ECM Trance Photon Garrisons were costing me 200 when they should only cost 120. I figured this would be generally true of the "late Fission era" units, which is the main reason I quit.
Also I finally figured out which of my predefined units were clearly superfluous, and I got rid of those. It's the end of the month and time to kick the version out the door. I think it's been tested well enough now, and continuing that game wouldn't have taught me anything new.
Post by: bvanevery on September 29, 2019, 05:29:48 PM
Changed from version 1.34 to 1.35:
FACTIONS:
- Cult of Planet: now an Explore only faction. The only Build tech they actually need is B1 Doctrine: Loyalty to get Extremist.
- Cyborgs: now a Discover, Conquer faction. Removed Information Networks starting tech. Removed bonus starting tech. They don't particularly need Explore for anything. Conquer is ok for early colonization spread, will help fend off aggressive neighbors, and helps with PROBE warfare. Conquer has made the AI quite a bit tougher and the other buffs are not needed.
- Gaians: now an Explore, Discover faction. This fits their faction abilities and their lore.
- Hive: now a pure Conquer faction. Planetary Networks is now primarily a Conquer tech, so the Hive can beeline to Police State. They don't need facilities to make people happy, as they can ruthlessly suppress everyone with +3 POLICE. They don't need mindworms for anything, nor do they really need to Build anything. Conquer is adequate for early colonization spread.
- Morganites: now a pure Build faction. They're anti-PLANET and Explore isn't actually helpful to them.
- Peacekeepers: now a Build, Conquer faction. Explore has evolved to be much more about mindworms than about colonization or making citizens happy.
- University: now a pure Discover faction. The Discover tree has been redesigned to be more favorable to them.
BUILD TECHS:
- Doctrine: Loyalty: now a B1 tech. Set growth=0, making it a pure Build tech. It no longer gives the Punishment Sphere. I didn't have enough Tier 1 Build techs. I'm not opposed to making Extremist available quickly, as most factions don't like it. This will help the Cult of Planet get it.
- Centauri Empathy: set wealth=2 because the JUSTICE bonus can be worth money.
- Clean Rover Formers: moved to B2 Ethical Calculus, due to changing prereqs.
- Skunkworks: moved to C3 Neural Grafting. A Skunkworks saves on minerals costs so is partly a Build tech. Also a playtester said he was having trouble getting prototypes built. C3 Neural Grafting is easy to obtain in practice. Probably because it's multi-category so shows up high in the research weights as valuable or probable.
- Technology to allow 3 minerals in a square: now set to B3 Industrial Economics. It's a pure Build tech and appropriate for minerals.
- The Planetary Energy Grid: moved to B4 Planetary Economics. This is a better lore fit.
- Engineer: moved to B4 Planetary Economics. Environmental Economics had too much stuff in it. It still removes the energy per square restriction, so it's still important.
- Wealth: moved to B4 Planetary Economics.
- Planetary Economics: now a B4 tech. Set wealth=5 and growth=2. The Planetary Energy Grid is really valuable. The Engineer gives a small amount of happiness but is rarely used. I need more Tier 4 Build techs. I want the Planetary Energy Grid to come at Tier 4 so that I don't have to stress about whether to build it or individual Energy Banks.
- Environmental Economics: set wealth=4 as it no longer gives the Planetary Energy Grid.
- Thermocline Transducer: moved to B5 Advanced Ecological Engineering. I want this to stay at Tier 5.
- Hybrid Forest: moved to B5 Advanced Ecological Engineering.
- Bio-Engineering: now a B5 tech. It now has D4 Gene Splicing as a prereq, making Discover a requirement to get Genejack Factories.
- Empath: moved to E6 Homo Superior. I want all the woo in the Explore part of the tree. I want Eudaimonia to be something the Free Drones would aspire to, and they are not woo oriented.
- The Empath Guild: moved to E6 Homo Superior, to go along with the Empaths.
- Homo Superior: keep wealth=3. Version 1.33 was supposed to set wealth=0, but didn't. Empaths give money, and winning the Governorship with the Empath Guild is worth a lot of money.
- Eudaimonia: set power=0 as it no longer gives the Empath Guild.
HAPPINESS:
- Police State: moved to C2 Planetary Networks.
- Non-Lethal Methods: moved to C2 Planetary Networks.
- Planetary Networks: now a C2 tech. Set growth=3 as it gives happiness. The voiceover is Chairman Yang talking about the human race being more nihilistic. Although the Biogenetics voiceover also features the Chairman, this is a better lore fit, and it's a better prereq for E3 Monopole Magnets. This frees Biogenetics to be used for something else.
- The Human Genome Project: moved to E3 Centauri Genetics. It will keep AIs from trading mindworm tech. Lore-wise at least it's talking about genetics, even if worrying about human and mindworm genetics at the same time is a bit freaky.
- Punishment Sphere: moved to C3 Cyberethics. In a year's worth of testing, I have not found any circumstance where building a Punishment Sphere is worthwhile in the early game. Cities just aren't going to get big enough to warrant it. It's useful in the midgame when conquering distant cities that one doesn't want to obliterate. It happens to be a lore fit for Cyberethics.
- Hologram Theater: moved to C3 Cyberethics. The AI obsesses about building this when it's totally unnecessary, so I want it delayed. I also don't want this and the Virtual World in the same tech. If they're together, the AI will try to build Hologram Theaters while it is still building the Virtual World, which is stupid.
- Hab Complex: moved to E3 Monpole Magnets. If it comes later, some AI cities will stagnate at size 7. It also can't be in a pure Explore tech, or non-Explore factions will fail to discover it.
- The Ascetic Virtues: moved to E3 Monopole Magnets. The voiceover is Chairman Yang talking about overcoming Yin-Yang dualism.
- The Planetary Transit System: moved to E4 Environmental Economics. This will keep the AIs from trading Tree Farm and getting access to unlimited energy.
DISCOVER TECHS:
- Biology Lab: moved to D1 Biogenetics. It is appropriate as a Tier 1 tech, as it provides an absolute +2 to LABS output. This is useful for small cities at the beginning of the game.
- Biogenetics: now a D1 tech. Set power=3 and tech=4. The Biology Lab is an Explore, Discover, and Conquer tech.
- Information Networks: set power=0 as it no longer gives the Probe Team module. This makes it a pure Discover research barrier. Only the Discover oriented factions will get past this anytime soon, although it could be popped from a supply pod.
- Secrets of the Human Brain: set power=0 and growth=0, as it no longer gives Hypnotic Trance. This makes it a pure Discover research barrier. Only the Discover oriented factions will get past this anytime soon.
- Knowledge: moved to D3 Intellectual Integrity. The University is weak and needs to get to this sooner.
- The Planetary Datalinks: moved to D3 Intellectual Integrity.
- Intellectual Integrity: now a D3 tech. Set power=3, tech=4, wealth=3, and growth=3 as it gives the Planetary Datalinks. The voiceover is Zhakarov talking about what people choose to believe, rather than what the evidence shows to be likely or possible.
- Research Hospital: moved to D4 Gene Splicing. They aren't that useful earlier, compared to building lots of Biology Labs and Network Nodes. The AI never builds them early.
- Gene Splicing: now a D4 tech. Set power=0 as it no longer gives the Biology Lab.
- Thinker: moved to D5 Pre-Sentient Algorithms.
- Pre-Sentient Algorithms: set growth=2 because Thinkers provide a little bit of happiness.
- Corporate Lab: moved to D6 Sentient Econometrics. It's expensive and partly a Build tech.
- Sentient Econometrics: now a D6 tech. Set tech=4 and wealth=3 as it gives the Corporate Lab.
- Nanohospital: moved to D7 Unified Field Theory.
- Unified Field Theory: set wealth=0 and growth=3, as it now gives the Nanohospital and no longer gives the Corporate Lab.
UNIT COSTS:
- Needlejet Chassis: now costs 13. It was still not quite cheap enough to be practical. This is calibrated so that a Fusion Missile Needlejet costs 50. Any lower and it would cost 40, which I don't want.
- Chaos Gun: now costs 14. The jump in cost from Missile To Chaos was rather large. This is calibrated so that a Fusion Chaos Needlejet costs 80. Any lower and it would cost 70, which I don't want.
- Phaser: now costs 18. The weapon progression has been too expensive, making mindworms the only really practical weapon of the game. This is calibrated so that a Fusion Phase Needlejet costs 100. Any lower and it would cost 90, which I don't want.
- Silksteel Armor: now costs 7. This is calibrated so that a Fission Silksteel Sentinel costs 50. Any lower and it would cost 40, which I don't want. Silksteel is very likely to appear and be used extensively in the Fission era. It was made expensive to stop Fusion units from being too cheap, but the jump in cost was too severe.
- Photon Wall: now costs 9. This is calibrated so that a Fission Photon Garrison costs 70. Any lower and it would cost 60, which I don't want. It's quite possible to be using Photon armor in the Fission era, since both Photons and Fusion Reactors are Tier 6 techs. It was made expensive to stop Fusion units from being too cheap, but the jump in cost was too severe.
COMBAT:
- Doctrine: Flexibility: set power=3 and growth=4, making it an E1 tech. I need more Tier 1 Explore techs. The combat prowess of a Foil without a Laser armament is pretty low, especially when Synthmetal Armor is available so early.
- Hypnotic Trance: moved to E2 Progenitor Psych. This branch of the tree is a better fit for psi techs. It makes the ability available to E4 Bioadaptive Resonance later, so I don't have to change its predefined Trance units.
- Trance Scout: moved to E2 Progenitor Psych.
- Repeal U.N. Charter: moved to C2 Planetary Networks. More thematically appropriate than Doctrine: Loyalty.
- Applied Physics: now a C2 tech. The game was taking too long to get into a shooting war.
- Laser: now has Offense=2 and Cost=2. This matches Tier 2, and I don't want an early shooting war to be trivial.
- Nerve Gas Pods: moved to C2 Applied Physics. It needs at least Offense=2 to be effective. It also makes it easier to hand wave the prereqs, as Biogenetics becomes appropriate.
- Plant Fungus: moved to E3 Centauri Genetics. It doesn't come up very much as a combat strategy, but if it does, this is a better lore fit.
- Cyberethics: now a C3 tech. Set power=4, tech=0, wealth=0, and growth=3. The Punishment Sphere is useful for conquering distant cities that will never produce substantial research. This tech doesn't have any major character doing a voiceover, just a quote from St. Augustine. Other techs had Zhakarov doing voiceover and are better as Discover techs. This is surplus and can be repurposed.
- Adaptive Doctrine: now a C3 tech. Amphibious Pods have not proven terribly useful or important at Tier 2. The Pirates nowadays are not especially violent and do not need to gain their free Marine Detachments quickly.
- The Command Nexus: moved to C3 Neural Grafting. This will prevent AIs from trading dual abilities. It will also cause fierce competition for the Command Nexus since Neural Grafting is an Explore, Build, Conquer tech.
- High Morale: moved to C4 Advanced Military Algorithms. It's been here before. The Hunter-Seeker Algorithm will prevent AIs from trading it. I'm tempted to delay it substantially or make it more expensive, but it'll stay here for now.
- The Neural Amplifier: moved to E4 Bioadaptive Resonance and now costs 40. It's powerful, but no more than other Secret Projects at Tier 4. I want Homo Superior to go back to giving the Empath Guild. It will also keep the AIs from trading Resonance techs.
- Heavy Artillery: moved to C4 Nonlinear Mathematics. The AI was obsessing about building Laser Artillery and it's not effective.
- Superconductor: now has D4 Applied Relativity as a prereq. Now a prereq for C6 Fusion Power. This makes Discover a requirement for getting better weapons and Fusion reactors.
- Nanominiaturization: now has D4 Pre-Sentient Algorithms as a prereq. Now a prereq for C6 Retroviral Engineering. This makes Discover a requirement for getting genetic warfare.
- Retroviral Engineering: now a C6 tech.
- Orbital Defense Pod: moved to C7 Advanced Spaceflight. C8 Graviton Theory has D7 Unified Field Theory as a prereq, making it difficult for non-Discover factions to research. ODPs shouldn't require exotic physics to make.
- Advanced Spaceflight: now a C7 tech. Set power=4 and growth=0. It now gives the ODP and does not give Sky Hydroponics Lab. It has 2 Conquer prereqs and is a prereq for 1 Conquer tech.
NUTRIENTS:
- Nutrient effect in mine square (0 or -1): set to 0. The AI obsesses about building Mines on top of Farms. There's no way to change this behavior at the .txt modding level. What I can do, is take away the penalty for doing so. Hopefully this benefits the AI more than it benefits a human player.
- Progenitor Psych: set power=3. No longer gives NUTRIENT bonus in fungus squares. Hypnotic Trance is a combat tech. Previously the NUTRIENT bonus was given because this tech wasn't giving anything of value. Now it does, so no need to give too much at once.
- Centauri Psi: now gives NUTRIENT bonus in fungus squares. This keeps the total fungus bonuses the same as the original game, although now the food is coming later.
- Technology to allow 3 nutrients in a square: now set to E3 Ecological Engineering.
- Aquafarm: moved to E3 Ecological Engineering.
- Ecological Engineering: set wealth=3 and growth=4, making it an E3 tech. It now lifts nutrient restrictions and does not lift minerals restrictions. E3 Centauri Genetics was giving away too much stuff, so I put growth stuff here.
- Soil Enricher: moved to B5 Advanced Ecological Engineering. Better lore fit.
- Sky Hydroponis Lab: moved to C6 Orbital Spaceflight. I don't think the extra food can be a game winner because the Cloudbase Academy is not available for awhile yet, nor are Hab Domes. B5 Advanced Ecological Engineering is a prereq, so there's thematic continuity.
PROBE TEAMS:
- Probe Team module: moved to C2 Polymorphic Software.
- Probe Team: moved to C2 Polymorphic Software. A prototype delay is not worth bothering with.
- Foil Probe Team: moved to C2 Polymorphic Software. A prototype delay is not worth bothering with.
- Cyborgs, Hive: reduced PROBECOST to 120. Changed faction description text to "PROBE TEAM actions cost 20% less". Since PROBECOST=150 is the base cost for most factions, it's easier to state it this way.
- Data Angels: changed faction description text to "PROBE TEAM actions cost 33% less". They have PROBECOST=100.
NEW UNITS:
- Clean Scout: available from the beginning of the game. When the AI starts with excessive fungus, it makes plain Scouts and runs out of SUPPORT. This unit can help, and it's not doing any harm. It's the cheapest combat unit that doesn't require SUPPORT.
- Clean Synth Speeder, Synth Police Wagon: available with C2 Planetary Networks. The Speeder versions cost the same as the Infantry versions. Synth Speeder not included because the AI obsesses about it and runs out of SUPPORT.
- Clean Synth Police Wagon: available with C3 Neural Grafting. The Speeder version costs the same as the Infantry version.
- Clean Recon Rover: available with C3 Adaptive Doctrine. The AI obsesses about building Synthmetal Laser Squads, and this rover costs the same.
- Clean 3-Pulse Police, Clean Plasma Police, Clean 3-Pulse Laser Foil, Clean Plasma Laser Foil: available with C4 Single-Sided Surfaces. C3 Neural Grafting is now a prereq, which enables units with 2 abilities. The AI likes to attack with its Foils, so it's good to put a weapon on them.
- Clean Trance Scout, Clean 3-Res R-Laser Foil: available with E4 Bioadaptive Resonance. The 1st costs the same as a Clean Scout. The AI likes to attack with Foils, so it's good to put weapons on them.
- Cloaked Recon Rover: available with C4 Nonlinear Mathematics. This sort of unit has been available before. In a previous release I was trying to maintain a purity of the Alien tech tree, but now I'm more inclined to make Tier 3 Conquer techs have equal numbers of subsequent Tier 4 techs. It's cheaper than the Cloaked R-Laser Speeder and should be enough to destroy Formers and other weak units.
- Cloaked Impact Squad: available with C5 Superconductor. It's cheap, prereqs allow for it, and it should be quite annoying to the human player.
REMOVED UNITS:
- Super Slider Formers, Slider Probe Team. They come too late in the game to be useful as Fission designs.
- Cloaked Scout. Trance Scout is always a better choice.
- Clean Synth Foil. The AI obsesses about this. Attrition is horrible due to the weak main Gun.
- Clean Synth Transport. The Pirate AI obsesses about producing it.
- Clean 3-Res Foil. It tries to attack with its Gun and usually dies. Attrition is horrific.
- Trance R-Laser Foil. Attrition is horrific. The cheaper 3-Res R-Laser Foil is better for attrition.
- Clean Trance 3-Res Transport. The AI fixates on building these. Attrition is high.
- Clean 3-Res Transport. The AI fixates on building these. Even though in my game vs. the AI they didn't get killed, the AI really should build something of more use.
- Clean 3-Pulse Transport. With the other kinds of Clean Armored Transports gone, I assume the AI will find a way to obsess about this one. So it needs to go as well.
- Clean 3-Pulse Foil. The AI likes to attack with units that only have a Gun, which gets them killed.
- 3-Pulse Laser Foil. The AI should not build units that aren't Clean, unless they're particularly useful. This one will probably be designed by the AI anyways. Other units do the "2=Defense" trick so this is not needed as a distraction.
The attachment limit per post is 5, and I eventually ran out of room at the top of the thread. Consequently, this becomes the new home of version 1.35. It was downloaded 92 times before I moved it here.
Post by: bvanevery on September 30, 2019, 03:33:00 AM
So here in 1.35 I have a bit of a bad situation. Getting put right next to Santiago wasn't pleasant, but I was handling it. I don't have any weapons, or any Command Center for training, but I do have Synthmetal Armor. Being able to get that really early, is working as designed. It's so that a militarily weak faction like myself can fend off an aggressor. It worked pretty well, I've bounced 1 Scout that tried to attack my city.
Problem is, I think Santiago is also sitting on the Manifold Nexus. Although in principle they could have acquired E2 Centauri Empathy and gone Green, it's highly unlikely. Their research focus is Conquer only, and this is only MY 2142. They haven't had that much time to wander around. Even the Explore factions can take a lot longer to discover it than you'd think, because there are now a pile of low tier Explore techs in the tree now. It's rather broad at the beginning. It's not completely impossible though, because the Gaians and the Caretakers are in the game.
Anyways, Santiago has mindworm capture ability. That's a problem. A mindworm can walk through any defense I've got. Hopefully the AI is too stupid to make effective use of them, and I can defeat them with Scout spamming tactics.
I have more SUPPORT and probably spread faster than Santiago. I could switch my research focus, but I'm stubborn about trying to feel what it's like for an AI player. So I will stick to pure Build, which is new in 1.35. I honestly don't know if that was a completely good idea. It might not be. I worked awfully hard on a lot of things this month, and there was a point at which I just needed to kick this out the door with no further testing. It might prove to be a problem for the Morganites, although that won't be determined this game, because the AI is not playing them.
I tried to make an easy kill of that lead base earlier, with a couple of Scouts. Well, I got wiped by many more Scouts. So the AI isn't completely dumb about what to do. I begged off, worried about hunkering down, connecting up, building a Synth wall, and expanding away from the Spartans until I've got a better setup to come at them. I could seriously use a Recreation Commons, as then I could just grow and spam Scouts with my existing cities. No such luck so far though.
It's a bit more difficult to get Probe Team technology now, and that could have consequences. On the other hand, it's easier to get Lasers.
MY 2144. The AI used its mindworm improperly, walking it right onto plain ground in front of my city. It could have waited a turn, then attacked from the fungus next to the city. Their loss is my gain! Simultaneously they're trying to front with Scouts, but my cities have well armored defenders. I've also completed a Sensor for 1 of the cities, so they have no chance there, absent another mindworm. I'm beginning to conjure my own Scout spam and will try to push them back.
MY 2145. I bounce an attacking Scout. Another mindworm approaches, although it's just a larva.
MY 2146. The mindworm moves into the same stupid place in front of my city and I kill it. At least for now, I happen to have founded my city in a lucky spot. I have a natural kill zone.
MY 2147. Domai comes wandering up to me. He's useless for tech, but he sells me Lal's comm frequency. Lal trades me Doctrine: Mobility and signs a Pact. I start building Command Centers. Santiago is in trouble now! Still could use a Rec Commons though.
MY 2148. I learn Centauri Empathy and go Green. Maybe it's not as hard to learn as I thought. I check Santiago's faction profile and see that she's Extremist Simple Survival though. That confirms she's got the Manifold Nexus AFAIAC. She's put a 3rd mindworm in front of my city to be slaughtered. If she would only attack the other city that's completely vulnerable to fungus, she'd have a much easier time of it. And I'm not likely to learn Trance any time soon, because that's hanging out in E2 Progenitor Psych lately and isn't a Build tech at all.
Post by: bvanevery on September 30, 2019, 04:13:52 AM
MY 2153. Sheesh! I guess the difference between a pure Conquer and a pure Build focus, is one gives you Lasers and the other doesn't. None of my friends have Lasers either. Well I hope my doubled defenders and my Sensor are enough for this. I march another Synth from Morgan Industries just in case it isn't. I will probably capture my 1st mindworm next turn, unless it dies attacking my Scout. More likely I lose a Scout to gain a mindworm. Then it'll need to heal, and to get back to where it can be useful.
[Limit reached]
MY 2154. I set off an earthquake which joins the halves of my empire. The bad news is I lose the sea passage connecting 2 oceans. Also my independent Transport is joyously caught on a mountaintop city forever.
Santiago has not attacked my tripled up base. I'm glad she's intimidated for now, but without a means to counterattack, she will eventually bring up enough force to wreck me. I didn't capture the mindworm, it died when I tried. I find that some factions capture mindworms easily with +1 PLANET, pretty much as though it's scripted to happen. Others, not really. Takes a number of tries, or maybe it's a number of years passing, before it starts to work.
Lal learns Industrial Base and trades it to me. I go Capitalist. Yeah I'm fighting Santiago's mindworms, but they haven't been a problem so far. I could use the money, to complete some Recycling Tanks more rapidly. It's the Morganic way! Actually I quite often delay going Capitalist until I've cleared the fungus away from my cities, but I don't feel like I have that luxury right now.
MY 2156. I, uh, lost 2 Scouts this year. 1 was because my finger slipped and I walked into fungus when I didn't mean to. I was surprised when I couldn't actually kill the larva. Well hey it clears up SUPPORT, but I didn't get any pods from that.
I spend 100+ credits to rush the rest of a Synth Rover, so that the other 3 Synth Rovers will complete without too much waste. That was part of the point of going Capitalist.
MY 2157. I pop a pod and get 3 mindworms in my face, all lined up in a row. That's unusual. Usually they surround you, but dead is dead. Those mindworms will advance towards my cities. I'm starting to wonder if there are good reasons not to go Capitalist.
MY 2159. I research Ethical Calculus and go Democratic. My income goes from 16 to 27. Greed is good!
MY 2166. None of my allies have learned E1 Social Psych. Granted, both the Peacekeepers and the Free Drones are Build, Conquer factions. Belatedly I remember I've learned C2 Planetary Networks and have Non-Lethal Methods available to me. I design a Police Scout unit, which I don't have predefined lest the AI obsess over it. The Spartans are moving forwards with a 2nd Laser Infantry, but I've blocked it off on a chunk of rock. I've got a Recon Rover completed. Something I picked up trading with the Hive. All factions are known and Lal has been elected Governor.
MY 2167. Umm... she ambushes me with an unseen mindworm, over some fungus. Lesson learned. I retaliate by destroying one of her Laser Infantry sitting on open ground. Did she learn her lesson?
MY 2174. I finally get Social Psych out of a supply pod.
Epilogue: the Spartans did a surprisingly good job of spamming me. That's because they chose Extremist, giving them SUPPORT a notch better than my own. I held out, but it was a drag. Not getting Recreation Commons for such a long time, really threw me for a loop. I didn't colonize very well, I only had 7 cities. A mining site that I had started to prepare, they settled on instead. Went I finally went up the road to see what was going on with it, that city was stacked with Rovers that were going to blow my Rovers away. That pretty much put me off to continuing.
Once her Laser Infantry gained Rocky terrain, I had no way to dislodge them. They couldn't beat me but I couldn't beat them, and the stalemate was taking place in my backyard, not theirs. Meanwhile, other factions were expanding. I was definitely not in control of this game and did not feel I was playing all that well. Having to deal with the Spartans so early was definitely unbalancing.
Another quirk is nobody ever learned how to use Probe Teams. They're all in C2 Polymorphic Software now. It's a pure Conquer tech, so if one isn't a pure Conquer faction, one is at a disadvantage for learning it. I think Build, Conquer factions are probably going to learn techs that are cross-listed, like C3 Neural Grafting. That's valuable, you get the Command Nexus that way now, but Probe Teams are valuable too. It's a weird dynamic, not having any idea what's inside someone else's cities.
My position was viable, just tedious and suboptimal. At 1:30 AM I thought sleep sounded like a better proposition. I'd also rather see the AI play the Morganites, to know if they're crippled now, or if this was a fluke / worst case.
Post by: bvanevery on September 30, 2019, 08:58:52 PM
The Morganites are in the game and allied with me. I'll be watching the AI to see if they do ok as a pure Build faction. So far they've managed to learn B3 Industrial Economics, E3 Ecological Engineering, and B4 Environmental Economics. However they haven't started any of the Secret Projects associated with these. They have only 6 cities. That is similar to what other factions have managed.
I am much better at colonization than everyone else and have got 15 cities. Granted, the University is not far behind with 11 cities. But, their research focus is pure Discover and I wonder whether they're doing worse than they should be, because of that. Non-Explore arrangements for various factions are fairly new, and it remains to be seen if they hold up well.
MY 2279. I'm neither winning nor losing. The University has been sitting on the Monsoon Jungle at a great distance. It seems my revamping of the Discover tech tree did empower them, at least if they sit on the Jungle and get left alone. They keep completing Secret Projects, including the Hunter-Seeker Algorithm. I've been in a Truce with them forever. They're still too far away to fight with.
The Morganites are also doing well, and are also far away. A pure Build strategy hasn't hurt them this game at least. I wonder if that's because they didn't get violent neighbors. They tend to research better tech than I do. I'm allied with them, and I've often bought tech from them.
The University dominates the graph. Everyone else is supposedly even after that, except the Cult of Planet, my runty neighbor. Because I colonized better than them at the beginning, their empire was strung out. Miriam took the extreme portion of it, which gave her a reasonable land mass empire. I took 1 remaining city in that direction because the Cult was being uppity. This "shield wall" of the fairly harmless Cult and Believers, has kept me from involving myself in any great conflict. I've basically just sat back and built up. I don't see a point in taking over any of my neighbor's cities, because they aren't worth anything. I've already got all the well centralized cities I should need.
I did Police State Capitalist for quite awhile. Then Police State Capitalist Knowledge. Recently, Yang has become immune to any POLICE penalties, so Knowledge is actually a pretty good thing to pursue. However when Wealth finally became available, I was seriously tempted by the doubling of my income. I've been throwing the money into Happiness to try to grow faster. I'm not sure if that's working.
I've also been using surplus money to buy enemy cities. I'm not sure this has been successful. I bought a remote Peacekeeper outpost, but Lal did not sign a Truce and after a few turns he bought it back. I spent a lot of money to buy a Datatech city, and it remains to be seen if I can hold onto it. Roze keeps sending Probe Teams at it, although I've been able to kill them so far. She didn't sign a Truce either.
I made a bunch of Locusts to go mess with Lal. Although they're -2 PLANET and can't do much damage, they can tear up Sensor Arrays and kill Formers. I could start destroying Lal's infrastructure if I wanted to. Lal's in a war with the Believers, with neither side having much of an advantage. He hasn't sent any air force after my Locusts. I could try to block his reinforcement of some city, so that the Believers can build up and stomp it.
MY 2300. I find myself too irritated with this game to continue. I've had a Secret Project from the Stone Ages that I got beat on, that's still going, and has accumulated 800+ minerals. I've never been able to get any tech advantage to make any further project. I finally cashed 3 Artifacts to try to get a boost, and that did get me the opportunity to try to build the Longevity Vaccine. Which of course I wasn't going to spend 800 minerals on. But Morgan beat me to it! The University and the Morganites creaming me on Secret Projects is working as designed, but I've been off-balanced this whole game by it and didn't know how to cope.
The other major irritation is Probability Sheath is ridiculously expensive. I spent a long time building Clean Police versions of those. It probably put me behind some. The cost needs to come down. Although Fusion Power can be expected by then, one can't be certain of Genejack Factories.
Finally, I really didn't know how to increase GROWTH prior to getting Eudaimonia. Going for Wealth was probably really wasteful.
Post by: bvanevery on October 03, 2019, 03:11:19 AM
Even more surprising, they were willing to trade Advanced Military Algorithms for my Neural Grafting. The latter has the Command Nexus, so it wasn't a perfect trade on my part, but I couldn't resist. I have 4 Artifacts so I think I can complete the Command Nexus before they can.
[Limit reached]
Morgan is also behaving weirdly about Secret Projects. He wouldn't trade a tech for this, but he would take a rather modest amount of cash. What's up with that? The Weather Paradigm hasn't even been started by anyone yet. Maybe I made a mistake turning Ecological Engineering into an Explore 3 tech. Now it lifts Nutrient restrictions, not Mineral restrictions. The Weather Paradigm is still a rather important Build tech though. Maybe I need to review the weights that are put on various Secret Projects, because this AI behavior is weird. Ordinarily they do not just give these capabilities away.
I had just gone Green, but I switch to Capitalist, because I need a lot of money to complete 4 Secret Projects. I'm engulfed in fungus and this is actually a somewhat dangerous move. However E3 Ecological Engineering does give me Fungicidal Tanks capability, so if I set other cities to building Fungicidal Formers, I may be ok. I also have the Believers next door and they are Seething, so I hope they don't get uppity too soon. I do have C2 Applied Physics already, so I can beat them off if need be, but I'd like to have the Command Nexus completed before they start causing trouble.
MY 2181. 4 Artifacts later, I've completed the Command Nexus. The rest I'll have to win by simple foot races. Other cities will crank out Fungicidal Formers and try to get my homeland safe from marauding mindworms.
MY 2184. Well here it is, Miriam being Miriam. I told her to bugger off. She declared war. At least I did get the Command Nexus done, but I've got a nation of untrained Scouts. At least she probably doesn't have a good road infrastructure yet.
MY 2198. We passed through sunspots for awhile, and they lifted this year. Zhakarov traded B4 Environmental Economics, which has the Planetary Transit System, not built yet. I traded B3 Industrial Economics for it, with the Merchant Exchange already completed. Why so blase about the Secret Projects?
MY 2199. I ally with Morgan and learn that he's sharing the Monsoon Jungle with the University. It can't end well.
Miriam and I are at a stalemate. She's had Probe Teams and I haven't had them. I've finally learned them now, but I'm more concerned with putting police units in my cities than probing her. I've defended against her probes well enough by using doubled up units on favorable terrain. I could choose Power to try to break through her lines, but the -2 GROWTH hasn't been attractive to me. If I don't learn E3 Monopole Magnets soon though, my cities will be at size 7 and then it won't be an issue anymore. Learning how to make Hab Complexes has proven to be quite a bottleneck in the past few games. I wonder if I've made it too difficult.
MY 2217. Despite all of the foregoing, I'm not winning. Both the University and the Morganites out-compete me on tech and Secret Projects from afar. At least I did get a few things: the Command Nexus, the Merchant Exchange, the Planetary Transit System, and the Weather Paradigm. That's likely all I'm going to get though. If it's like last game, I'll never catch up again.
The Believers hammer at me, from what I now learn is a substantial land empire. They don't make any progress, because I have a superior understanding of "terrain traps". I don't make any progress against them though either, and they won't sign a Truce. However the tech is starting to shift in my favor. I've got Plasma armor now and they don't. I've almost got Impact prototyped and they don't have that either. Maybe I will now crush them? But it is wasteful crushing them, as their empire has no value. The real long term enemy is the University. They have already completed the HSA and are working on the Network Backbone.
Well, I'll either get them to beg off or I won't. I suppose all I can do meanwhile is keep fighting.
MY 2223. My advantage didn't last. She's got the same armaments. She put up a Sensor in an irritating place that I can't easily dislodge, as she always has units on top of it. I've been doing the same thing to her, so our front is starting to look like WW I trench warfare.
Sometime later, I quit. The game is a hassle! The Hive and the Cyborgs started dropping Transport units on my back coast. It wasn't enough to harm me, but it did seriously annoy me and cause me to divert forces. They also mercilessly probed the hell out of the one sea base I established earlier. Just wrecked it, over and over again. Nothing I could do about it. Sometimes I'd beat them back for awhile, other times they'd just wreck everything. The last straw was when Miriam brought up Gatling Artillery and started winning the duels. Yes I had Gatling capability as well, was just about done with a prototype, but I could not seem to extract myself from this stalemate. I made a lot of money, enough to even rush the Neural Amplifier at one point, so it's not like my position was untenable. But it was frustrating. I'm not sure if I'm just doing something wrong, or I actually managed to improve the AI.
Strategically, I guess Miriam with a land mass behind her, becomes too powerful to just whack and tell her to beg off? But if so, why wasn't it a problem last game, when I was the Hive? I did exactly the some sort of "no I don't really want to fight you" strategy, although against the Cult of Planet. The Believers were also my neighbor, but we never came to blows. The Believers had a much better start and a much better tech base this game. They seemed to match every advance I myself got.
Post by: bvanevery on October 04, 2019, 01:19:24 AM
New game as the Data Angels. I got this small island start where I'm not even off my rock yet. The Caretakers show up, and they say I've done horrible things to them! This game I'm going to crank up the editor and try to diagnose, because I have no commitment to the game so far.
[Limit reached]
MY 2110 is the earliest autosave I've got. We're not in contact and we've each only settled 1 city. Yet the Caretakers have declared a Vendetta and think they need to Fight To The Death.
[Limit reached]
I can't find a 3rd Caretaker colonist anywhere. There's no record in their unit list of having lost a unit either. Does the AI only get 2 colonists, contrary to my expectations? Or did their 3rd colonist get killed by a mindworm, and I am being blamed for it as an atrocity?
[Limit reached]
The game does not believe I have committed an atrocity. In fact, it doesn't believe anyone has committed any atrocities, nor does anyone have any blemishes on their records.
[Limit reached]
I've got exactly the same settings towards the Caretakers as they have towards me. Some of those would be sensible, like having a Vendetta. I do wonder about willingness to Fight To The Death though. And who marked this stuff as Permanent?
There are no Usurpers in the game. Could it be that this happens not because of an atrocity, but a mistaken belief that I somehow have the role of the permanent Alien nemesis? Then it would just be choosing inappropriate dialogue, misleading me into believing this has something to do with atrocities or framing.
If so, then I predict the bug occurs when there's only 1 Alien in the game. Never with 2, nor with 0.
One might expect this to occur between a Human faction an an Alien faction, but a previous game proves it can occur between 2 Human factions. I was playing the Free Drones and the Believers thought I'd committed an atrocity, without ever having met them before. I made note of it 2 webpages full of posts ago, but I wasn't motivated at the time to record additional information, make any saves, or do any diagnosis. It was quite a bit later in the game and I was much more committed to playing the game at the time.
I have wondered if the bug has anything to do with stale old game settings in my own environment. Am I the only one who experiences this? I suppose I'd need to start an official bug thread once I've collected more evidence.
Post by: bvanevery on October 04, 2019, 02:36:15 AM
As of MY 2304 I'm still playing this game. I'm Democratic Green Knowledge and playing as a PLANET faction because I started with the Manifold Nexus. I built most of the Secret Projects but a few have slipped by. I'm 1 of 3 dominant powers. Everyone is at war with me, and I don't think anyone ever liked me. For a long time nobody liked anyone else either. I was isolated and left alone for a very long time. The Pirates and the Believers were at each other's throats for a very long time, but they have a Treaty now.
[Limit reached]
I'm slowly building a causeway to the Believer Monsoon Jungle. I expect that once we connect, I'll summarily crush them.
Although I could have mounted an air and drop campaign much earlier, the Believers had so many units in their homeland that it didn't seem advisable. Instead I built up my infrastructure and ran around the map with Locusts. Generally I tear up enemy Sensors and Formers, to make it easier to attack everything else. I also experimented with cutting off Gaian cities in their border skirmish with the Spartans. I also tried to prevent the Believers from completing nukes, Conventional Missiles, and advanced prototypes by destroying infrastructure, but it didn't work. Eventually I got bored of that and just used the Locusts as escorts for Probe Team missions, since they provide pretty much perfect air cover.
It takes the AI a very long time to come up with an answer to a Locust invasion, particularly when I have the Neural Amplifier. The Believers managed to kill my Locusts in a ground assault once, when their units were cut off and had nowhere else to go. Otherwise they've been totally ineffective and helpless. Same with the Pirates. The Gaians did finally expel my 1 Locust once they got Missile Needlejets.
Despite my extensive degradation of the Believer homeland, they have nevertheless come up with new Conquer techs pretty regularly. I had to go steal them. I wonder if the Global Trade Pact has anything to do with it. I agreed to it, but with all the Vendettas maybe I don't benefit from it as much as I'd think. I've generally not been able to just take 1 city and get someone to sign a Treaty, because I started so far away from everyone else. I've done dozens of fly-ins of size 1 sea bases with my Locusts, but that hasn't caused anyone to quit fighting.
I think I've got production superiority. Many of my cities have completed Genejack Factories and I don't think anyone else has that tech. I'm currently building a round of modern Photon units for defense. I've had a few Synthmetal units defending my empire the whole game. The one time the enemy did land on my shore, I beat them off with some artillery and a few spare captured mindworms. Isolation is definitely cheap as far as unit production goes.
The Believers actually proposed to Repeal the U.N. Charter not that long ago. I agreed! No one else did. I couldn't bribe anyone because they're all at war with me. So no gassings. Hmm, do Sanctions still sting if I'm at war with everyone? Maybe I'll look that up.
Post by: bvanevery on October 06, 2019, 06:48:32 AM
MY 2327. The Believer alliances are falling apart. They've gone back to war with the Pirates. In this state of desperation, they have proposed atrocities. I comply! I could make Plague attacks on anyone now, but my goal is to take over and subdue the Believers. I need the votes that their cities will give me, and it's not a good idea to inflict atrocities on a 2nd faction. So, any Final Solution will have to wait. I have the Empath Guild, and Eudaimonia has given me size 16 cities, but Miriam has Deidre and Domai as allies. Between all 3 of them, they can still vote me down.
Many factions have nukes, and I'm starting to build Flechette Defense Systems in all of my cities. I have not launched an Orbital Defense Pod yet, as I don't have any Aerospace Complexes. I've been pursuing a terrestrial war of mostly mindworms, spore launchers, and railroads. I am Extremist Green Knowledge Eudaimonic, which gives me +3 SUPPORT with my faction bonus. I can field a lot of mindworms.
Post by: bvanevery on October 07, 2019, 01:18:15 AM
I've built only 1 Aerospace Complex the whole game, in my capitol, and only for the purpose of launching an Orbital Defense Pod. Which didn't end up happening because suddenly it was time to compete for the Space Elevator. I'm #1 on the graph, double the power of everyone else, but the Free Drones and the Pirates both think they're still in the game. The Free Drones actually came up with the Space Elevator tech themselves, shortly before I did. That might be because I stayed Extremist longer than was warranted. Once I conquered all of the Believer's Monsoon Jungle homeland, I just spread my units out across all the bases, so really didn't need buckets of SUPPORT anymore.
I'm building a raft of ODPs to ensure no one can nuke me. I've also built a few Drop units to try to take over the very few far flung Secret Projects. However I haven't put a great deal of effort into it, nor have I looked at what I really need to do. I make a lot of money and possibly could just buy some bases, so I've made some Drop Hovertank Probe Teams as well. It'll probably turn out to be ridiculously expensive though. I wonder what Cornering The Energy Market is going to cost? I haven't learned Global Energy Theory yet so I don't know.
I actually need to go steal Nanometallurgy from the Free Drones. They're building the Living Refinery and only need 7 turns to complete. The stealable surface area of the Free Drone empire is quite large, as they've gobbled part of the Cult of Planet, but they're also on the opposite end of the map. If it weren't for orbital insertions, I'm not entirely sure I'd get there in time. I've got 1 Cruiser Probe Team being escorted by a hovering Conventional Missile, a bit of a cheat but eh. 3 others are moving from a different direction in a more traditional manner, with a Cutter ship in front of them to scan for enemies.
I've dropped a Probability unit in the fungus near one of the Free Drone cities. I'll have 2 Drop Probe Teams available next turn. I believe they halt their movement when they land, so that's 2 turns before they can steal. I complete a tech next year, so it is possible I might learn the tech myself.
I am now Democratic Green Wealth Cybernetic. I haven't quite given up my mindworming ways. A volcano erupted a few turns ago, so I'm a little concerned about Global Warming. I'm not doing any eco-damage right now, but I don't know about other factions. Miriam is the only Capitalist, and she lost all her serious minerals producing land cities to me. She's got some sea bases, but I blew up their Mining Platforms eons ago. Since she won't sign a Truce, I'm going to plant fungus on what's left! I've got some armored Sea Formers that I don't need for anything else anymore.
MY 2338. I researched it myself, so no need to steal. I've built very few Supply Crawlers this game, but I did have 2 spares, so they got the Living Refinery started. I rushed the rest with cash and still have 1000 credits in the bank. Yep I'm rich!
I've realized that if I make a bunch of Drop Transports, I can invade Domai with my existing mindworm forces. I can put 3-Res armor on them for no additional expense, in case of enemy mindworm attacks. I've made a couple of Probability armored ones for a spearhead, but they take longer to make.
[Limit reached]
I've got a pretty good contingent of defensive units built up next to the city with the Planetary Energy Grid. They don't even know I'm here! The city is lightly held, so if I can bring up some Drop Transports full of mindworms, I'll have this. I seriously doubt I can just buy it, it'll be ridiculously expensive. I switch to Knowledge in anticipation of my mindworm attack.
[Limit reached]
Belatedly I'm realizing the target city wasn't that far away. It's just barely outside of the reach of a conventional air drop. In principle I could have ferried units over with a Locust escort. In practice, the Pirates were attacking me until only a few turns ago, when I took 1 of their sea bases next to the Monsoon Jungle and got a Truce out of them. I was so busy dealing with Pirate spam for so long, that I never really thought about where the Free Drones really were. Oh well, this will still work! But yeah, uh, maybe stop any more Drop Transport production. They'll be useful for giving the Gaians the same treatment at least.
[Limit reached]
Turns out the Believers can eat sea fungus just fine. It's still a little less food than kelp, and it's minerals free. I anticipate I'll have the Manifold Harmonics eventually, if I haven't won the game first. Fungus bases will be good for me then. I still haven't committed any atrocities, even though they're legal. I haven't even nerve stapled anyone, although my current government does prohibit it.
Post by: bvanevery on October 07, 2019, 03:32:30 AM
They finally noticed my sneaky stack. Thanks to a jerky Believer Foil Probe Team that decided to attack one of my Drop Hovertank Probe Teams on land. The unit was merely wounded, but that was enough to keep it from being able to access the rails and do any subterfuge. Fortunately I have 2 such units, so I've got 1 to do whatever I'm going to do next.
A mindworm larva and a Probability Garrison are next to me. I took the precaution of making these Drop Trance units, because in previous games I've seen the AI likes to obsess about mindworms, even if they're not very strong or big. Especially with the Neural Amplifier, they can't even hope to scratch me. I'm more concerned that the jig's up at my target city and they'll start garrisoning.
With heroics, I think I can complete the Nethack Terminus in 2 turns. I'd have to disband some obsolete units, like the Formers from the beginning of the game, to get the project started. If I really have to push it, I could disband some good units, like spare mindworms or whatnot.
My 1 Probe Team is only Commando and I don't think I can rely on it to do a precision strike on the production of the project. Also it's currently the only Probe Team I've got in range to steal. I have the Conventional Missile escorted Cruiser Probe Team approaching, but I was right that it wouldn't get there in time. I sent the other 3 teams back to a port because I didn't think they'd be needed, and they didn't have a guaranteed safe escort. Likely they'd just get picked off.
I steal the tech without incident. And after scraping up every single bit of old Scout, Synthmetal, obsolete artillery units etc., I made it with 300 credits to spare. Take that Domai!
;morganercise :bot: ;domai;
I kept all those things around in case of a Global Warming mindworm apocalypse, but it has never happened, and nowadays I've got lots of spare mindworms and spore launchers.
I take over a Believer sea base off the coast of the Monsoon Jungle and finally get a Truce out of them. It won't stop me from planting fungus on their other sea bases though. It may be an exploit, that ruining their terrain improvements isn't regarded as an act of war. But we're only in a Truce, and if I park my units on those spaces, they do deprive the enemy of their use. So I'm willing to do the exploit if we're in a Truce. It also works during a Treaty, but I think that would be cheating.
MY 2340. I complete the Nethack Terminus. I also take the one nearby Gaian sea base, that I took from the Believers originally, and then the Gaians took it from me, back at the beginning of the game. The Gaians finally sign a Truce.
My non-combat Drop Transports can't drop next to enemy units or zones of control. My reinforcement plan is temporarily ruined. I guess I could go bother the Cult of Planet and see if I can get a Truce out of them.
This is strange. I feel like the Year Counter didn't go up. Should be MY 2341 but it isn't. Well maybe I missed something. I bribed a Spartan city and got them to sign a Treaty afterwards. I took a Cult of Planet city with the hovertanks on the Drop Transports from last year, but they wouldn't sign a Truce and talk about executing me. Weren't they the ones who thought I had committed atrocities against them? I could just wipe them out.
Post by: bvanevery on October 07, 2019, 09:00:56 AM
Oddly, when I select more ECONOMY choices, my income doesn't say it will change. Maybe that's because only Santiago has a Treaty with me. Being almost dead, they're economically worthless. Maybe I can bribe my way to peace. This year I spent all my money rushing the Manifold Harmonics though.
I suppose I still need Habitation Domes, so best to stick with my government for the moment.
MY 2349. I complete the Manifold Harmonics, and realize that I'm better off with my +3 PLANET rating with that. It gives the maximum minerals and energy bonuses.
I sacrifice some hovertanks to take another of Domai's cities. I can't get him to surrender because he had a unit next to the city, triggering immediate conversation and the dialogue bug.
MY 2350. I begin Clinical Immortality. Diplomatic Victory?
I just noticed that the Pirate AI has chosen Police State Capitalist Survival Eudaimonic. They only take half penalty for MORALE. Wealth + Eudaimonic would be -2 MORALE, halved to -1. They prefer Eudaimonic only and halved to 0. I think I'd rather them take Wealth and avoid Eudaimonic, if they're so allergic to MORALE penalties. I suppose I'd have to change them to have Impunity to Wealth. Or I could make them Immune to MORALE penalties.
MY 2351. I wage a full offensive against the next Free Drone city, killing every single unit in the field surrounding the city, so that there will be no communication with Domai when I finally take the city. It works and I don't get the dialogue bug. I contact Domai directly and get a Truce out of him.
The only remaining malcontent is Cha Dawn. He lobbed a Conventional Missile at a Unity Transport that's been sitting in a landlocked sea since the beginning of the game!
Post by: bvanevery on October 07, 2019, 04:35:59 PM
Now arguably, that could always be true of any increase in population, so why even distinguish? Indeed at times I wonder. But Hab Complexes and Hab Domes are big, noticeable effects, so I feel justified at least in this instance.
Actually upon further contemplation and analysis, for every single Happiness tech in the game, I've found some excuse to incorporate a wealth weight. The only holdout was lowly Social Psych. I've decided that one has to fall as well. The new regime shall be that happiness is primarily considered Explore / growth, but that it is also secondarily considered Build / wealth.
I rush Clinical Immortality. I had to wait a few turns to get the minimum number of minerals to rush without a severe penalty. I have 2000 credits remaining afterwards. I've begun the Bulk Matter Transmitter, but again I have to wait a few turns to make the minimum minerals. I could have some other base cough out a Supply Crawler, but it won't be much faster and I can't be bothered. I still have plenty of things to spend money on. I could upgrade some of my garrison units to Quantum reactors for instance.
The Truce with the Pirates has expired. We'll see if they attack. If so, I'll take another city from them. I still haven't committed any atrocities, even though they are legal.
I have built 30 Orbital Power Transmitters and I have a few more in progress. I think a city can only use as many OPTs as it has population, so 16 would have been enough right now. I'm switching production to Sky Hydroponics Labs in anticipation of eventually getting Hab Domes. Once I've got 30 or so of those I'll be pretty much done. I've got 14 Orbital Defense Pods. No other factions have built a single satellite. The only thing that could mess me up is a solar flare and a lot of hostility, but I have refrained from atrocities.
MY 2355. I finally learn Super Tensile Solids. I'm not sure if my editing of alphax.txt helped with that. Of course now we are in sunspots. Once those end, I'm sure I'll have the votes for Diplomatic Victory. I'm unlikely to amass enough money for Economic Victory in the meantime, as the cost is currently 208K. I'm currently Democratic Green Knowledge Eudaimonic and make 1.5K/turn. I never did manage to get any Treaties with anyone, so if that would have made more money, then oh well.
The usual alternative to waiting out sunspots in these circumstances, is a total Conquest victory. On this map, that would be a lot of unit pushing! I will settle for wiping out Cha Dawn, as I run out of other things to build.
Completing the Bulk Matter Transmitter, fortunately did not trigger any fungal pops or Global Warming. I've been pretty aggressive about building Centauri Preserves, as who knows when I might want to conjure a Locust corps of doom?
Post by: bvanevery on October 08, 2019, 01:43:24 AM
MY 2359. The Pirates make a surprise attack. We're still in sunspots, so I might as well make total war on them and take as many population centers as possible. I begin making Quantum Tachyon Skybases, which should make pretty short work of them. I was going to flood the world with Gravship Formers, continuing the campaign of planting fungus on all the factions in Truce, but that will have to wait.
I learn Biomachinery and begin the Cloning Vats. I disband a couple of Fusion hovertanks from the Free Drone front in order to rush it. I have 2K credits remaining.
Last year I started taking over the Cult of Planet's few remaining pathetic cities with probe teams. I captured an Artifact from an earlier hovertank conquest and finally got it home last year. This year I cash it and get N-Space Compression. My 1 Skunkworks city is currently busy with Neutronium Armor so any Tectonic Missiles will have to wait. They could be useful, or at least amusing, for messing with the Pirates.
MY 2360. I remember that one of my captured Believer cities has a Skunkworks in it. I start on a Fungal Quantum Missile.
MY 2361. I mind control the last Cult of Planet city, eliminating them. No more undeserved hate! I have 4K credits remaining. I switch to Thought Control as with the Cloning Vats, I don't need the +2 GROWTH of Eudaimonic. I have few probe teams but they'll be sent towards major Pirate population centers away from their capitol. Hopefully I can take over major cities at a reasonable cost.
MY 2362. Even with +2 PROBE from Thought Control, a size 9 base that's 12 squares from Safe Haven costs 4909 credits to subvert! Guess I'm trying somewhere else. Conventional attacks will eventually bring it down, but there are an awful lot of spam Plasma Laser Foil ships to clean up.
A size 8 sea base 50 squares from the capitol, "merely" costs 1700 credits to subvert. That's at least within the range of economic reason. Granted, I do make 3K credits/turn, but there are an awful lot of bases to deal with. My takeover brings a lot of Laser Foils with it. They can help clean up the spam.
Post by: bvanevery on October 09, 2019, 04:35:30 AM
Economic Victory seemed somewhere between impossible to extremely undesirable. First, I was going to need 300K credits. Yes I could probably have changed my budget around, but that's a lot of money. I never could make any Treaties because of the damn sunspots, so that's a lot of money not coming in. Second, even once one starts to Corner The Market, one has to wait 20 more turns! I thought playing the game for an additional 40 turns was a pretty ridiculous idea. Even a nuclear apocalypse would be quicker than that.
Thought Control and probe teams weren't all that useful to me. I had more than enough military output to crush anything I wanted. I didn't actually want anything further, I just wanted to be declared the winner. I don't need minor population centers, that just becomes another city I have to level up. I didn't want to wipe them out either. I didn't commit a single atrocity, even though they were legal. There just was no need for it, as my population growth was absolutely crushing the other factions on votes.
Tectonic Missiles were somewhat useful for scooping Pirate bases out of the ocean. However they weren't entirely useful, as one has to work from adjacent land. In some cases I didn't want to ruin my own land to do that.
Fungal Missiles actually improved Pirate bases, especially those I had scooped out of the water. So it was not a good degradation strategy against them. And I don't think I can fire them against someone I have a Truce with. That was everyone else.
Using Formers to turn Free Drone Mines and Mining Platforms into patches of fungus, was a reasonable strategy. Especially since I had the spare Former capacity. Something to do when my own lands are already finished. The Free Drones, and to a lesser extent the Believers, spent plenty of time marching mindworms all over my own land during the Truce. I could do that sort of thing on steroids if I wanted. Build a bunch of clean armored cloaked units and put those bitter little pills everywhere, smothering the enemy to death. I might try that sort of thing in a future game.
I built a fair number of Thermal Boreholes, but never suffered any eco-damage from them. I was way ahead of the curve on environmentally friendly facilities and Secret Projects.
I spent most of my day rebalancing the cost of weapons and armor in the late game. They were excessively expensive. A unit can't cost so much that it's simply not worth buying, compared to a mindworm.
I also got rid of the Clean Plasma Laser Foil predefined unit, because the Pirate AI loves it way too much. I think that obsession literally drove them to ruin. They built hundreds of the things, instead of more important or valuable stuff.
Their other main obsession seems to be building Isles, although that might be more rational. Even my R-Bolt units weren't especially effective against Isles, although they did do the job. I just think for the extra cost, they weren't obviously better than a Tachyon Bolt. Well, maybe having the Dream Twister had something to do with it. +50% for that, and +30% for +3 PLANET, gives me a baseline +80% attack. What's the difference between that and +105%?
I've probably now finished whatever will go into 1.36. However I will stick to the monthly release cycle. Who knows, subsequent games may reveal "just one more thing" to throw in there.
Post by: bvanevery on October 09, 2019, 05:43:11 PM
Summary of changes:
- Made Hab Complexes and Hab Domes much easier to research.
- Made late game weapons and armors cheaper.
- Removed Clean Plasma Laser Foil unit because AI obsesses about it.
Post by: bvanevery on October 14, 2019, 10:16:00 PM
For the 2 people who expressed passing interest, I decided that the Punishment Sphere needs to go back to B1 Doctrine: Loyalty. In my current game as the Cult of Planet, I still haven't learned E3 Cyberethics and I'm in midgame now. The Cult has a pure Explore research focus, so that just shows there are a lot of Explore techs in the early tree. I never intended a Punishment Sphere to be a difficult tech to obtain. I don't actually need it, as the Spartan cities I'm conquering don't have large enough populations to warrant it. But since I am trashing the Monsoon Jungle and could in principle get big populations, I think it should be available if I want it. The cities are definitely far enough away to warrant such suppression.
Post by: bvanevery on October 21, 2019, 07:49:27 PM
Yang was my western neighbor. Although he had a decent empire size, he was never a credible threat to my mindworms. In the earlier part of the game, whenever he'd get uppity I'd just take a city from him, then call a Truce. The Usurpers were south of the Spartans and it took me a long time to make a rail connection to them. By that time I didn't want to develop any more cities, I just wanted to wipe everything out. So I started making X Missile Rovers.
Yang got uppity again, so I called a Planetary Council session to Repeal the U.N. Charter. Surprisingly the remaining factions were either in favor or abstained - the Data Angels had recently been killed by the Usurpers. So then I was attacking both Yang and Marr with X Missile Speeders, having a pretty darned easy time of it, and building that wonder technology the Hologram Theater in my bases that were getting on to size 7 or 8. Yeah with no Tree Farms, you get a bit crunched for happiness stuff.
At this point it was pretty clear that my victory was academic. I hugely dominated the graph. Domai on some far shore had done nothing of note and never produced Secret Projects. Yang only had land cities and would soon be gassed into oblivion. Followed by a land campaign to kick the Usurpers off the southern continent, and maybe some sea weirdness to wipe out their extensive sea bases. I though lifting them out of the water and turning them into land bases might be fun, since I had the Weather Paradigm and probably enough Formers to do it. But whatever, doesn't matter, was just a sandbox at that point. And it was pretty slooooowww building those rails, pacifying more cities, knocking off more cities...
I quit, because I didn't see that I'd learn anything about my 1.36 beta from playing any longer. Time to kick the official release out the door. It's earlier this month, but that's ok. Further development definitely has to be playtester driven, because I think I fixed everything. Well, maybe some test game in the future will reveal that the Pirates still obsess about some silly prefab ship. But I'm just not bothering with any test games for now. Others can play some games and hopefully let me know what it was like for them.
Six Ages (https://sixages.com/) by A Sharp, has been released for PC finally. They made King of Dragon Pass, which IMO is the only other good game that's been made, aside from SMAC. KoDP was not quite 4X, although it did have a bit of an expansion and conquest element to it, within a sort of limit / cap. KoDP is more of a RPG, and has the best narrative elements of any game I've ever seen. It's arguably a unique development in gamedom, although if anyone wants to point out something "vaguely similar" they're welcome to do so. I've never seen such, and I've been waiting a long time for the sequel. Six Ages is gonna get my gaming time for awhile. It's available on GOG, DRM free, for $20.
Post by: bvanevery on October 21, 2019, 08:34:52 PM
Changed from version 1.35 to 1.36:
GROWTH VS. WEALTH:
- Social Psych: set wealth=2. After making the changes below, this was the only Pure Explore tech left in the tree. It could be difficult for non-Explore factions to obtain, despite having no prereqs. Over time, I have found an excuse to incorporate a Wealth weight into every other Happiness tech in the game. I think this says that population, happiness, and wealth are not cleanly separable concepts. In the future I will put the most emphasis on Explore / growth, but Build / wealth will be considered a secondary weight. The truth is, minerals and energy output do increase when bases get larger.
- Punishment Sphere: moved back to B1 Doctrine: Loyalty. Whent it was with Cyberethics it was a Tier 3 tech and could take forever to discover, even with a pure Explore research focus. I intend for this to be an easy alternative to the usual way of making people happy, not a difficult tech that one has to work to obtain.
- Doctrine: Loyalty: kept growth=3 setting because of Punishment Sphere. I said I set growth=0 in 1.35 but it didn't get done. Kept power=0 because conquered cities are not large enough to warrant a Punishment Sphere at the start of the game.
- Children's Creche: moved to E2 Adaptive Economics. B2 Ethical Calculus gives Democratic, which already offers substantial benefits.
- Adaptive Economics: set power=3 and wealth=3, as it gives the Children's Creche. When this tech was only a pure growth=4 tech, it proved very difficult to research. Factions without an Explore focus wouldn't discover it at all. Even factions with an Explore focus would take a long time to get it, because there are many early Explore techs and it has a low total weight compared to the multi-category Explore techs. It's a prereq for E3 Monopole Magnets, so that became difficult to get as well. It could take as long as midgame to get a Hab Complex.
- Ethical Calculus: set power=0, as it no longer gives the Children's Creche.
- Planetary Networks: set wealth=2. Police State and Non-Lethal Methods increase the number of happy citizens, indirectly increasing minerals and energy.
- Cyberethics: set power=0, wealth=3, and growth=4, making it an E3 tech. It only gives the Hologram Theater.
- Monopole Magnets: set wealth=3. I have decided to regard the lifting of population limits as a form of Wealth. There's no question that working more squares produces more minerals and energy. This makes it easier for more factions to discover this tech, as it has more weights and is more valuable in the tech tree. Techs with fewer weights on them, actually function as a barrier to discovery in practice, because more desirable techs are found first.
- Super Tensile Solids: set wealth=3. Previously it was a pure Explore tech and that was proving to be a significant barrier to its discovery. At the end of the game, I shouldn't be waiting around forever to learn how to get bigger cities. In one test game I got Quantum Machinery, a Build 10 tech, and I still hadn't gotten this Explore 8 tech.
- Changed prereqs for better research continuity. In particular, Cyberethics is no longer a prereq for Advanced Military Algorithms.
UNIT COSTS:
- Tachyon Bolt: now costs 24. This is a more reasonable progression from a Phaser.
- Resonance Bolt: now costs 28. A more reasonable progression.
- Plasma Shard: now costs 28. A more reasonable progression.
- Chronoton Gun: now costs 32. This continues the linear progression.
- Graviton Gun: now costs 40. This continues the linear progression.
- Singularity Laser: now costs 48. This continues the linear progression.
- Black Hole Gun: now costs 60. This continues the linear progression.
- Probability Sheath: now costs 12. The jump in cost from a Photon Wall to a Probability Sheath was way too abrupt. A Fusion reactor can be assumed at this point, but a Genejack Factory cannot be. A player is not guaranteed to be swimming in piles of minerals at this point in the game. This is calibrated so that a plain Fusion Probability Garrison costs 60 and a Fusion Clean Probability Police costs 120.
- Neutronium Armor: now costs 18. With a Quantum reactor, any unit with a single cost=1 ability (such as Non-Lethal Methods for a police unit), costs at least 60. If the armor is a Probability Sheath, the best weapon for that cost is a Missile Launcher. This is calibrated so that a Missile Neutronium Police unit costs 100. The armor is 50% better, and the cost goes up 66%. It's not proportional, but it isn't unreasonable, as all manner of factories, mines, boreholes, and supply crawlers are available by this point in the game. Unit shouldn't be gratuitously expensive though, lest a mindworm become the only unit worth building.
- Resonance 12 Armor: now costs 22. Assuming a Quantum reactor, this is calibrated so that a Trance Neutronium Missile Garrison and a Resonance 12 Missile Garrison both cost 100.
- Pulse 12 Armor: now costs 22. Calibrated as above, but for a Comm Jammer.
- Antimatter Plate: now costs 30. Linearly proportional to an 8 point increase from Neutronium Armor.
- Inertial Damper: now costs 45. Linearly proportional to an 18 point increase from Neutronium Armor.
REMOVED UNITS:
- Clean Plasma Laser Foil. The Pirate AI produces hundreds of these. Although a good strategy for the early game, the obsession continues indefinitely. Enemy ships have better armor by midgame, and this just becomes a waste of production.
The attachment limit per post is 5, and I eventually ran out of room at the top of the thread. Consequently, this becomes the new home of version 1.36. It was downloaded 111 times before I moved it here.
Post by: Douglas on November 01, 2019, 07:26:02 PM
The game does not allow upgrading to a predefined unit design. I actually consider this a bug in the game, not in your mod, but your mod adds things that make it actually matter. For example, I cannot upgrade a Scout Patrol to a Clean Scout, or a Formers to a Clean Formers.
In the unmodded game, this doesn't matter because the only predefined unit designs are the cheapest possible examples of their kind, which will never be superior to anything that would otherwise be legal to "upgrade" into them. AI Growth mod adds a lot of higher tech units, I believe for helping the AI by nudging it to build those designs, which has the side effect of making it impossible to upgrade to those designs.
This cannot be worked around by making a custom design identical to the predefined one. If you try, the game just selects the existing design instead of creating a new one. These predefined designs can be marked obsolete, but retiring them does not actually remove them from the designs list, so that doesn't work either.
The only workaround I've found is to edit the mod. If you add a meaningless ability to the predefined designs, then it becomes possible to make a custom equivalent that is identical except for not having that ability. One example would be to add Super Former to everything except Former units, and Soporific Gas Pods to the Formers. This requires also manually setting unit costs to prevent this from making them more expensive. I tried using Slow on the Infantry chassis designs, but even though its cost is 0 it still made some designs more expensive. Notably, Slow Clean Formers cost 40 instead of 30.
TLDR: I suggest adding a nonfunctional ability to each buildable non-native design, and manually setting unit cost to keep that unchanged, so that otherwise identical designs can be made in order to upgrade units.
Post by: bvanevery on November 01, 2019, 08:43:50 PM
I wonder if a new, completely meaningless ability can be defined? The basic problem is, it would have a flag, for its position at the end of the table. I don't know if the bit storage of the original game, allow for the arbitrary flexibility of defining one more ability. It may very well not. There are 29 abilities in the game. They could very well be stored in a 32-bit piece of memory. 3 more bits might be available, or they might be used for something else, like some housekeeping task about the unit design. Also I don't know if the game's routines would actually pay attention to the bit, in any meaningful way that solves the problem. It would kinda be luck if this all worked out.
I could give irrelevant abilities to some units, i.e. Algorithmic Enhancement for non-Probe units. As you suggested, I'd have to manually adjust the costs. The downside of this, is then the unit designs are going to look goofy to someone. I might very well get a bug report from someone else about the goofiness, and generally get blamed for something being goofy. I'm a bit sensitive to this about a modder, I don't like doing anything that makes the mod look like it's bugged. I'm saying the cure has to be better than the disease.
Hmm actually I can't just use arbitrary abilities anyways, like say Algorithmic Enhancement. I think that would allow a player to take the predefined design, and construct other kinds of Algorithmically Enhanced units. I'm not certain of this, because sometimes units seem to be "locked out" from doing it. I'm not sure of the pattern with that. But it's an issue.
Interestingly, the game's predefined units in alphax.txt only define 26 of the 29 available bits. The highest bit anyone ever bothered with was Dissociative Wave for the various Battle Ogres Mk II and III. Nobody ever cared to make a predefined unit with Marine Detachment, Fuel Nanocells, or Algorithmic Enhancement. Nor have I!
Experiment: defined a new ability, last in the table. This didn't make the game crash.
Code: [Select]
mod predefine, 0, None, mod, 000000111111, No effect upgrade workaround.Experiment: added 1's for the Scout unit in 27th, 28th, and 29th bit positions. This did indeed result in a Scout with these abilities, so we know that all of the game's usual abilities can be put into predefined units.
Experiment: added a 30th bit set to 1, hoping to see my new ability in the Scout unit. No effect. :-(
Since any workaround is not trivial or obvious, I'd like to do some triage on where this is really needed. Which units is this most causing a problem for you?
Myself, I make sure to get my Scouts killed. Usually I run them into Fungal Towers. I may send them out on ships in packs of 4 or 8, sweeping some empty island of supply pods. If they're grouped up like that, they might actually take out a mindworm, although they usually can't handle a full 8 explosion of mindworms. That's ok, they're cannon fodder, I'm trying to get rid of them. I also just disband Scouts to move Secret Projects along, or even regular facilities along, if I've decided it's time to deal with my SUPPORT.
So at least from the way I play the game, I'm not seeing a lot of incentive to go through heroics to make sure Scouts can be upgraded to Clean Scouts. How does your own play differ?
Similarly for Formers to Clean Formers. Formers that cost SUPPORT, I try to use on the front line of my expanding rail network, as I drive it straight into the heart of the enemy. If someone shows up to to kill them, especially an enemy air force, well they were costing me SUPPORT and no big loss. And if I need to get some Secret Project completed before the AI does it, I might just round up all the goofy units like old Formers and Scouts and Synthmetal Sentinels and whatnot, and throw 'em into the
Do you agree that this problem is always going to go away in the Fusion era? There's no such thing as a predefined Fusion unit that you can upgrade. The only such units are the Battle Ogre Mk II and Mk III. Well, unless you're playing with Scient's patch, which does allow for predefined units that have fusion reactors. But my mod doesn't have any, and I'm not likely to write a Scient specific version of the mod, so there's no problem.
So the problem seems to be early to midgame upgrades. You and I seem to be playing very differently in that regard. Are you trying to get your units up to Elite training, and then upgrading them to military designs with greater punch? i.e. started life as a Scout, now you want it to be a 4-1-1 Impact Squad?
Post by: Douglas on November 01, 2019, 09:34:55 PM
This makes early research proceed rather slowly, so for quite a while adding Clean to a unit is the only upgrade option available.
For the reverse engineering problem, I just now verified that it doesn't work for abilities. If you don't have the tech for the ability, then it won't show in the design workshop when you try editing a copy of the design, and the resulting design won't have the ability. I remember reading somewhere that the same goes for having a second ability before Neural Grafting.
Yes, the problem will always go away in the Fusion era, unless you make a Scient version that defines Fusion units.
On the "new meaningless ability" idea, I just tried it out and you don't actually have to create a new ability at all. I think the ability flags in the file are treated as the verbatim binary of a 32 bit bitfield, and just adding a 1 outside the range of bits that actually have meaning does the trick. Prepend 1000 to the existing 26 bit flags, and you get:
- No extra special ability displayed in game.
- No change in unit cost (Clean Formers stayed at 30 even though I changed them back to autocalc).
- Creating an identical design in the unit workshop actually creates a new design.
In my new test game I now have two 1/1/1 units named Scout Patrol, one using the predefined design and the other using a custom design (which I renamed to match), and I cannot distinguish which is which without either renaming the custom design again or trying to upgrade one of them.
So, I think you can just paste "1000" indiscriminately in front of every design's ability flags, leave everything else unchanged including cost, and declare it fixed.
Incidentally, I hadn't actually tried the Super Former variation, or I would have noticed the graphical effect it has and not suggested it. A scout with the Super Former equipment addon looks weird.
Post by: bvanevery on November 01, 2019, 09:42:15 PM
Attached is a draft alphax.txt for a 1.37 release. Most units have the "1000" prefix in the flags. Some don't need it, because it's not possible to upgrade anything to a mindworm, or a Former, or a Locust, etc.
I played a game until the early midgame and nothing blew up in my face.
Post by: bvanevery on November 13, 2019, 07:03:06 PM
I haven't encountered any issues with the prefixed "1000" predefined units. I haven't bothered to upgrade anything either though. I have far better uses for money than that. I consider the bugfix sufficiently tested to put into the 1.37 release.
I've decided I will add the Copter chassis back into the game with predefined units only. I will keep their armaments feeble, so that the multi-fire capability isn't basically useful in most circumstances. That way, I can get the unit artwork back into the game, which is what I miss about them. I don't miss overpowered Chaos Copters at all and I don't want them in the game.
The Unity Scout Chopper shall return. It shall be made Clean, given Deep Radar, and a range equal to a Needlejet. I like using my Unity Jets as scouting units, and I don't want to give up the convenience of that. I'll make them buyable when one gets Doctrine: Air Power. I wonder if even a strength 1 gun will turn out to be an awesome anti-air unit?
I might design a Transport Chopper, a Former Chopper, and a Supply Chopper, but I might hold off on that until a 1.38 release. I doubt I'm going to play enough of the game before the end of the month to test all of that. The main test would be whether the AI does anything stupid with them. Maybe I could run it through some AI vs. AI games to see.
I could just make the Scout Chopper a Transport, so that it doesn't have a gun. The speed penalty for putting a Transport module on an air unit is pretty severe, at least on a Needlejet chassis. If I go this route, I might have to forego other uses of the Copter chassis. We'll see.
Turns out if I make any of my predefined Copter designs available with some tech, so that the player can build them, the Copter chassis becomes available for unrestricted designs. I can't have that, so I can't let the player build their own Unity Scout Choppers. This means I can really only afford one Copter chassis design.
I've decided to make it a Transport design, henceforth known as the Unity Lifter. I massively goosed its speed to overcome the hardwired penalty to using a Transport module, so it flies around like a Needlejet. It'll be just as good at scouting as the Unity Jet was. It also lands and takes damage like Copters do. One could load up the Unity Mining Drill, and an Artifact, and head for home!
Post by: Douglas on November 14, 2019, 01:37:17 AM
Turns out if I make any of my predefined Copter designs available with some tech, so that the player can build them, the Copter chassis becomes available for unrestricted designs. I can't have that, so I can't let the player build their own Unity Scout Choppers. This means I can really only afford one Copter chassis design.Yeah, that happens for anything where simply removing it isn't a valid option. That means weapons, equipment, armor, reactor, and chassis - everything except abilities. The one limitation on it is that you can't combine multiple things you get this way unless the original design already has the combination you want.
I've been playing a while and did encounter one bug, but I'd been using Slow instead of a non-existent ability and I'm pretty sure the bug is with Scient's patch, included in Thinker mod, not anything to do with this. It was a rather bizarre issue where one of my units spontaneously turned into a hostile Fungal Tower with no zone of control. Then I killed it, got my planetpearls, and it popped right back - active and flashing and ready to move, still showing as a Fungal Tower on the map and list of units present, but back to being my unit in the active unit details. When I moved it, it magically turned back into the original unit - and there was now an area of the map that caused the game to hang if I tried to view it. I think what happened is that a pointer to part - but only part - of the unit's (or location's?) data got overwritten with the address of a wild Fungal Tower that was in the hang-inducing area. I had to go back and replay a few turns to be able to continue.
There was also one time where one of my Formers went native - it was still the same unit, but now controlled by Planet. When I attacked and killed this "wild" Former, I was told my capture attempt had failed and I got planetpearls energy from it.
I doubt either of these is related to your mod, they're just something amusing that happened while playing with it.
Post by: bvanevery on November 14, 2019, 04:26:45 AM
One time I got a unit with Fungicidal Tanks on it that shouldn't have had them. I posted about it somewhere, probably in Bugs, but I can't remember if I included a screenshot in the post.
That's about all my excitement.
What should I do with the University? I don't think I've terraformed someone to death. Problem is, it's a hostile action, and it can be terribly expensive. Wonder if I could buy key towns by subterfuge? Or colonize in an unfriendly manner just upon his borders? Find some sneak hack way to get it done?
Post by: bvanevery on November 22, 2019, 03:29:10 AM
Subsequently I'm playing a random game as the Morganites. I have Peacekeeper and Gaian allies completely surrounding me as buffer states. I wiped out the Usurpers with chemical weapons. The Cult of Planet is nothing to speak of. The Pirates are a force and chose to make war with me, so I've made strangely distant coastal war upon them. An amusing circumstance has arisen:
[Limit reached]
I don't have any sea ports on the Pirate ocean, it's way too remote from my starting location. However the Pirate ocean is huge, spanning the whole world, and they build a cluster of sea bases very far from their capitol. I slipped some amphibious probe teams down there and pretty cheaply subverted a size 14 base full of units. It came with 9 Clean Transports as the Pirate AI has been obsessing about those a little. 97 active, 10 in production, 40 lost. What's the alternative though? Won't they just obsess about something else? Maybe instead it'll be the Clean 3-Res R-Laser Foil. 47 active, 9 in production, 32 lost. That's not a good preservation ratio for a Clean unit, so I suppose it's time to delete that one.
Anyways, I wondered what I'd do with so many Clean Transports. I finally got a rail built out that ways, to invade the other coastal sea bases I didn't subvert. As I approach with a horde of surplus Marines, I finally realize what I can do with the Clean Transports! Board them and wreak havoc. I wasn't very planned about any of this, but in the future I could see myself making more deliberate use of such "borrowing" tactics.
In MY 2329 I finally got bored of that game and quit. There was nothing wrong with my position. I had just finally discovered Global Energy Theory and could probably have won Economic Victory if I started building Orbital Power Transmitters. Or my cities were so robust, I could have won Diplomatic Victory. That would have required elimination of the Caretakers, who were on the opposite side of the map and had a modest empire to themselves. Not that difficult with chemical weapons... but I just couldn't escape the feeling that I was being pulled in many directions with busywork tasks. I had ridiculous amounts of money, typically rising to 5K credits in a few turns... but I was nevertheless spending all this time having to add on "just yet one more building". Because the world is flooding, despite my +3 PLANET rating and the Pholus Mutagen.
I think that's the thing that most immediately triggered the quit. My rail line got flooded out, and I was like, no, I've done this way too many times in other games to put up with it. Maybe if there was something tactically interesting going on, but there wasn't.
Deirdre was sort of a challenging drag. She mostly stayed slightly ahead of me in tech the whole game. Granted, it was my choice to go Green and stay at peace with her. Similarly with Lal, although he only tended to be divergent towards Conquer techs, and not actually getting ahead of me.
Another excuse was, I had recently gotten the Pirates to surrender. Now that I know that Clean 3-Res R-Laser Skimship has to go, I wonder how the Clean 3-Pulse Laser Skimship holds up in comparison? It would be better to start another game for that, one that makes sure to include the Pirates.
Gradually making this building and that building, just isn't interesting compared to nuking the University in the previous game. I feel like as a game design, it has sort of "reinvented long division". Like you just e-ver sooo graaaaaduallllly find out how strong you are, building all these little tiny "+1" buildings until they finally add up to something. What a bore!
Post by: bvanevery on November 23, 2019, 06:16:35 PM
I got a Unity Lifter from the Unity crash site. It's not nearly as cool as I thought it would be, because the Air Transport rules require you to load and unload at a base or airbase. Clearly someone missed the memo on the entire Vietnam War!
[Limit reached]
That's a nice little patch of water and winding road to skip over. I have an irregularly shaped empire, a sort of "wishbone" thing. I upped the speed of the chassis to 24, so that with a Transport on it, it moves 12. I also increased the Range to 2, so that it doesn't take damage the first time you land it in the boonies. Without that, you're spending a lot of time healing up, which is damn annoying compared to the Unity Gunjet this unit is replacing. So now I have my Unity Mining Drill closer to the front that just opened up with the Data Angels. Good thing they're incapable of mind controlling my cities, but they can still wreak havoc stealing and sabotaging stuff.
Well the start of that game was fine, but I got bored with it and quit. I consider the Unity Lifter to be pretty well tested now. It works. Time to kick 1.37 out the door.
Post by: bvanevery on November 24, 2019, 04:58:53 AM
Changed from version 1.36 to 1.37:
PREDEFINED UNITS:
- Added bogus 30th ability flag to most units I've predefined in this mod. This makes the game think they're different designs than what the game itself comes up with, even if the game comes up with exactly the same design. Playtester Douglas discovered that units cannot be upgraded to predefined unit types. So for instance, a Former could not be upgraded to the predefined Clean Former. This is only an early to midgame problem, as there are no predefined Fusion Reactor desgins and anything can be upgraded to a Fusion design. However if one is playing a tech stagnation game, the early to midgame can go on for a very long time. There are 29 abilities and bit flags can be set for each of them. A spurious 30th ability can be defined in the abilities table, and the game will not crash when this is done, but it seems to be completely ignored. Douglas discovered that even without a defined 30th ability, setting the 30th bit to "1" does cause the predefined unit design to be different than what the game itself would come up with. This is becauase the bit flags are probably encoded into a 32-bit word, and the game probably uses the entire 32-bit word as an unsigned integer to identify the unit design.
- Copter Chassis: increased to Speed 24. Changed Range to 2 and Cost to 13, same as a Needlejet. This will only be used for the predefined Unity Lifter unit. The game has a huge hardwired penalty for using a Transport module on an air unit, so a massive speed increase is needed to bring the final unit up to speed 12. When the Range was 1, any time it moved 12 spaces and landed outside of a base, it would get wounded. For scouting purposes that's really annoying, as then the unit would have to heal up in base for a turn or two. The Copter chassis can fire every move, which is seriously overpowered. I don't want such multi-fire weapons in the game unless they're feeble or nonexistent. However I've missed the Chopper's funky unit artwork, the capricious whirling blades. If I only allow this chassis to be used in predefined units, then I can prevent the player from designing more powerful units. However if a predefined unit is made available with some tech, its chassis can be used to make different designs. The only way to prevent new designs is to Disable the predefined unit. Then the player has to obtain it from Supply Pods or the USS Unity crash site. Unfortunately only a small number of predefined unit slots exist for this. In practice, it means I can only afford 1 Copter design for the whole game. This may seem like baffling BS, and one may rightly wonder why an advanced civilization couldn't build more of these things, and with different weapons packages. The answer is they could, BUT it's seriously overpowered, so I'm not allowing it.
- Unity Jet: removed.
- Unity Lifter: new predefined unit that replaces the Unity Jet. Uses a Copter chassis. Has a Transport module, Heavy Transport to hold 2 units, Deep Radar, and a Clean Reactor. Moves at speed 12.
- Clean 3-Res R-Laser Foil: removed. The Pirate AI was obsessing about building it. It's expensive at 60 minerals, and it exhibited an alarming death toll of 40% losses. That's not good for a Clean unit. The AI should expend something cheaper if it's going to die in combat that much.
The attachment limit per post is 5, and I eventually ran out of room at the top of the thread. Consequently, this becomes the new home of version 1.37. It was downloaded 84 times before I moved it here.
Post by: Douglas on November 24, 2019, 05:28:46 AM
This is becauase the bit flags are probably encoded into a 32-bit word, and the game probably uses the entire 32-bit word as an unsigned integer to identify the unit design.Not exactly. It's not used to "identify" the design - that's probably done with just an array index, and you can see non-predefined units numbered in the design workshop from 1 to 64. What's probably happening is that, when the game checks if two designs are identical, it checks for identical abilities by just comparing the whole 32-bit words.
Post by: bvanevery on November 24, 2019, 05:46:59 AM
Post by: Geo on November 25, 2019, 06:21:48 AM
Post by: bvanevery on November 25, 2019, 07:41:09 AM
Copters have really high movement rates, which is what makes their multiple attacks unacceptable. Like in my mod, air units typically have 12 movement, to deal with the Huge maps I expect people to be playing on. I had a seriously reduced speed Copter chassis for awhile, but it wasn't any fun to use and I never wanted to build it in the real world. So after awhile of that, I took it out of the game completely.
Only a lot of whinging from multiple playtesters would get me to relent. I think the consensus over the years has been, the Copter chassis is overpowered and has to be nerfed somehow.
Post by: Dewbacca on November 27, 2019, 06:00:53 PM
Cats killed my monitor, internet got iffy in my rural area and I fell off into a much loved series of books for a reread and discussion with my wife... so not much SMAC(X) in that period.
I buy a new monitor, internet is still approximately dial-up speeds and wife and I are reading a new series of novels, but seems to be less discussion, so I get to poke around on my games again, and when I check in here, I see this Growth mod is up to v1.37, I've missed some interesting changes and glossed over some of the v1.2x changes to try and catch up.
I am currently on Year 2220 of a Transcend difficulty game as the University on v1.37, playing standard SMAC factions (Original 7), retarded tech progression but able to select research. Map is a very large "Glorious Map" I downloaded from this site.
My overall assessment is WOW, doesn't even seem like the same mod as v1.20. It DOES seem to assist the AI greatly, so while it seems very different (from both SMAC-SMAX and v1.20) it's still doing a fine job of promoting a more vibrant and productive AI.
Clean Reactor: I love this tech and it's a staple of my gaming style, Forest and forget, build lots of clean military units & lead the pack on research. But giving it out at the beginning of the game, AND making it so cheap to add to other units seems oddly like cheating to me.
I would recommend pairing this ability with the tech that gives you recycling tanks. That would at least make you EARN the ability, and increasing the cost of clean vs standard unit would better reflect the VALUE of that ability.
I have observed the AI using clean units, so the reason for adding them is valid and adding prototypes of them is effective in inducing the AI to utilize them. It has the side effect of killing a fun tradition of breaking the AI's production when supported units are forced onto other cities as you capture enemy bases... but while that was a fun tradition, it was cruel and I'm not sad to see it go.
Prototype Units: I hate these on general principle. They wouldn't be as loathsome if I could delete or upgrade them to get them out of my build screen, but of course you can't.
That being said, I've read your reasoning for adding them and while I can't speak to specific units, I DO see the AI using these units, so the reasoning and inclusion of them is valid, but I will try to be more observant and see if I can help identify useful prototypes and eliminate any unnecessary ones in future replies.
Early Magtubes: I am a big proponent of magtubes and am always glad to see I have that ability... but so far in both v1.20 and v1.37 I can report I got them EARLIER than was useful. I didn't have much city spread at the time and all of my formers were busy upgrading tiles for existing cities or for future city expansion, so it has consistently been researched well in advance of my ability to use it effectively or enjoy it's benefits.
I might suggest a logical point to consider placing this ability would be when you get the ability to harvest 3+ minerals from a tile. Lore-wise you would have enough minerals THEN to encase highways in pressurized metal tubes. It's a bit far fetched that you would have enough metal to do that as early as I have been getting that ability in this mod.
Faction Agenda/ Diplomacy/ Societal/ Economic, ect:
Ok, I have a lot of impression, a lot of confusion, very little specifics that I can comment on. I am still trying to get a handle on how these have changed and how to navigate those changes for desired effect. I can only give you examples of my confusion in lieu of specifics, you may glean some useful information from the sad tales.
Deidre and I usually get along, especially early in the game. This game crammed us together as competitors on a small continent and we both quickly outgrew our allotted space and tensions started to rise. We were immediate friends, but she was never that happy about it. She was belligerent on a couple of occasions over new tech I had received and DEMANDED it! Sometime before turn 80, she parked a mindworm next to one of my cities, blatantly violating the terms of our friendship. I let it slide for several turns until I need in that area for improvements. I contacted her, we exchanged some tech, and I politely asked her to move her unit, at which time she declared vendetta upon me!
At this point that has backfired on her and she has been driven from the continent, but it was touch and go there for a while, she had most of my tech and a few more cities than I did. If the AI had built mindworms instead of spore launchers the outcome would have been different I fear.
In all of my years (decade+) of playing SMAC(X) I have never had more than a brief friendship with the Spartans. My style conflicts with their parameters and sparks fly, I expect it like a sunrise or a morning backache. But in THIS game... maybe it's the mod, maybe it's the Spartan Empire being so far away, but it's different. I met an empty transport at sea and got a begrudging truce from them around turn 50... and around turn 80, here comes another transport right up to my shores, and I expect the worst... I mean, It's SPARTA!
So imagine my surprise when Santiago offers me a Pact of Brotherhood if I will agree to war on the Hive! I nearly fell outta my chair. Not only did I agree to her terms, but I am considering honoring that agreement with some clean units once I have dealt with the duplicitous Deidre.
I'm not complaining, I'm just sayin... this ain't normal Spartan behavior.
The University: I expect some drone issues, and generally deal with them by getting The Virtual World. This of course was challenging enough in v1.20 with you sliding the wonders back several techs... but in v1.37 I am struggling economic/ research wise under the new rules. I still cant find whatever comes after lasers on the tech tree... I'm having to beat Deidre with her own money via probe warfare and a navy of clean laser foils. She beat me to probes, so even THAT was a close call, was lucky to get probes myself via alien artifact.
I'm enjoying this game, enjoying the "new" to discovering the new rules and how to exercise them to benefit me... but it's quite the learning curve from stock SMAC(X).
For extra credit I was going to submit the .SAV from the game, but I can't seem to find where the games are saving!! They're not in the save folder!
Post by: bvanevery on November 27, 2019, 06:54:33 PM
Clean Reactors may feel like cheating, but they aren't. No matter how beneficial you may personally feel they are to you, they are of tremendous early game benefit to the AI. This is an area of the game where I'm quite clear that my insights of banging around on this thing trying to make it perform better, seriously outweigh anyone's perceptions about the game that they've acquired from "stock" play. You're simply going to have to play my mod long enough until you finally see it my way. It takes a long time to cogitate on all of these changes, and you have noticed that the AI is playing a bit better. This is one of the contributing factors.
The math on this is actually simple. You don't need Clean anything when you've got lots of production in the mid to late game, with Hybrid Forests, Factories, Thermal Boreholes, Mines with abundant food, and whatnot. You may think you're getting a big bonus from Clean stuff at that point, because it seems "efficient" for things to not pay SUPPORT, but it simply doesn't matter by then.
Yes, collapsing the AI with SUPPORT problems is traditional to "stock" play... and that's exactly the sort of thing that needed to be fixed to get the AI to play better. I wish I could say I totally fixed it, but I probably haven't. I've definitely mitigated it.
As for prototype units, policy has become it's not about your convenience as a player. It's about whatever it takes to make the AI play better. I've devised many more units than are currently in the game. Always, I've been eventually made to realize the bottom line is, does this help or hinder AI play? When it hinders, it goes. Lots of things would be great, if only the AI would use them properly. Like I can design a flying colony pod for instance... but the AI is too stupid to actually found new cities with those.
Magtubes: there are 3 things you need to build a Magtube network. The tech, the Formers, and the desire. If those things aren't all lining up yet, that's not a problem. I don't need to delay the tech just because you personally weren't building more Formers, or didn't want to build a Magtube network yet. I find in my own games, sometimes at the current tech availability it comes earlier than I need it, sometimes later than I need it. You suggested a particular place in the tree for it to appear, but it does come at Tier 3, same as the place you suggested. It's just on a different part of the tree than apparently you're researching. I'm fine with where it is in the tree, from a logic / continuity / availability standpoint. It doesn't need moving. It's weighted 4 Explore, 3 Build, 3 Conquer, which means it's highly discoverable by many routes of focus.
The tech tree is quite broad in the earlier part of the tree, compared to how I remember it used to be. It can actually take quite a long time to get any given tech on Tier 3. Which ones take longer, can be somewhat random. It definitely puts some incentive to research the paths you're actually most interested in. Also, many key techs on Tier 3 are deliberately blocked by Secret Projects, so that you won't be able to trade for them for awhile. This is all totally 100% intentional.
I can't explain your experience with the Spartans. In the "stock" game they have an Erratic personality. In my mod they have an Aggressive personality. They should either be more violent in my mod, or less violent than other factions in the stock game. I think people have often assumed that the Spartans were Aggressive in the stock game, but they weren't.
I have observed that any faction can decide they want an immediate Pact with you, to go wallop someone else, if their circumstances have driven them to that point. Even factions that ordinarily would hate your guts for your social choices. This makes for strange bedfellows but hey, whatever! Your alliance with an ideologically opposed faction doesn't have to last over the long haul. Hey, we fought with the Soviets against Hitler in WW II.
Post by: Douglas on November 27, 2019, 07:58:47 PM
Prototype Units: I hate these on general principle. They wouldn't be as loathsome if I could delete or upgrade them to get them out of my build screen, but of course you can't.You can get them out of your build screen by opening the design workshop, selecting the design, and clicking the "Obsolete" button.
Post by: bvanevery on November 27, 2019, 08:20:35 PM
Post by: Dewbacca on November 29, 2019, 09:28:42 PM
Also noticing some of the "Clean" laser prototypes didn't have a clean reactor.
Having some install issues, going to do a clean install and proof it before going any farther forward.
Post by: bvanevery on November 29, 2019, 09:57:29 PM
Or were you playing with Tech Stagnation yourself?
Are you sure the AI's units really didn't have Clean Reactors? I have noticed a problem when you try to use the Unit Design Workshop, that clicking on a unit that said "Clean", doesn't necessarily pull up the Clean design. But if you look closely, it doesn't actually say it's the Clean design anymore either. It's sort of a bait-and-switch problem. The way to know for sure, would be to activate the Scenario Editor and get a good stare at the AI units. I'll keep my eye peeled for this issue, but it's not something I have observed myself.
Post by: Douglas on November 29, 2019, 10:47:17 PM
Are you sure the AI's units really didn't have Clean Reactors? I have noticed a problem when you try to use the Unit Design Workshop, that clicking on a unit that said "Clean", doesn't necessarily pull up the Clean design. But if you look closely, it doesn't actually say it's the Clean design anymore either. It's sort of a bait-and-switch problem. The way to know for sure, would be to activate the Scenario Editor and get a good stare at the AI units. I'll keep my eye peeled for this issue, but it's not something I have observed myself.That's a quirk of how the design workshop handles designs with multiple abilities and how that interacts with the dummy ability flag recently added.
In the main window where you can edit things to make a new design, it only shows the number of abilities you have the tech for - 2 if you have Neural Grafting, 1 if not - and it picks them in order from left to right in the ability flags from alphax.txt and caps the number before checking what they are.
If you copy and edit the Clean Police design, for example, its ability flags are, in order: 1) Fake dummy ability, 2) Non-Lethal Methods, 3) Clean Reactor. Without Neural Grafting, you get just the dummy ability, which then gets dropped because it's not a real ability. With Neural Grafting, you get the dummy ability and Non-Lethal Methods, and the dummy ability is dropped so you only see Non-Lethal Methods. You will never see Clean Reactor in the initial details of copying this design.
The smaller summary view in the bottom left has the actual full details, but note that if you're not hovering the mouse over a design then it's showing the summary for what's in the main window. Mouse over Clean Police in the list of designs at the bottom, and as long as you keep the mouse there you will see the actual stats for it - "(1-1-1, Clean, Police)"
The unit stats shown in the bottom left when viewing an actual unit on the map also show the full stats. The only place that has any issue with this is copying/viewing a design in the workshop.
Post by: bvanevery on November 30, 2019, 04:14:21 AM
Post by: bvanevery on December 15, 2019, 06:53:56 PM
Changed from version 1.37 to 1.38:
- Added "Recommended" to Huge map button, on suggestion of playtester kaminiwa. Note that parentheses, curly brackets, and square brackets do not print, so I had to be creative about the delineators. Also there's no lower case, the text prints in ALL CAPS. I finally chose "HUGE >>RECOMMENDED<<" as sufficiently aesthetically pleasing and helpful for selection.
- Copter chassis: set Range=5. When it was set to Range=2, I thought it would get one "free" landing outside of a base or airstrip, then start taking damage on subsequent turns. However, it just outright died on the 2nd landing. Range=1 must have hardcoded a certain style of damage in the original game. To compensate, I'm giving it a large but not infinite range of movement. Enough fuel for 60 squares, then it dies.
- Clean Transport: removed. The Pirate AI obsessed about producing it, making hundreds of units.
- Clean Synth Garrison: removed. It was meant to distract the AI from producing so many Clean Synth Speeder units, but the AI isn't interested in building this.
- Clean 3-Pulse Police: removed. It's expensive and the AI shows no interest in building it.
- Clean 3-Res Police: removed. It's expensive and the AI shows no interest in building it.
- Trance 3-Res Police: removed. It's expensive and the AI shows no interest in building it.
The attachment limit per post is 5, and I eventually ran out of room at the top of the thread. Consequently, this becomes the new home of version 1.38. It was downloaded 87 times before I moved it here.
Post by: bvanevery on December 22, 2019, 10:31:32 PM
So, there will be a version 1.39. I will wait for something other than a documentation bug before releasing it though.
Oh snap, that same description says they get +1 PLANET when they actually get +2. Another old bug!
Post by: bvanevery on December 25, 2019, 04:41:12 AM
I end my turn and WOW the Cult takes over my city with a probe team. I had a pile of units in it, as I hadn't moved forward yet, plus lots of Spore Launchers forming a front line within my city radius. Size 13 city which should not be cheap to take over. I look at their money and figure, the AI did this for only about 800 credits. Neither one of us had any PROBE advantage.
[Limit reached]
I disgust quit my game and fired up the Scenario Editor. This is what it would cost if I was in charge of the Cult of Planet. Factor of 3 more expensive. The AI is one hell of a cheater!
And this is with all my modding making probe team costs far more expensive than the regular game. It is so broken. Looks like nothing short of binary patching would ever fix this.
If the AI had to pay 2700 to get their prize city back, I would consider that a fair exchange. But the AI just ignores any sanity of rules.
Post by: Douglas on December 26, 2019, 05:46:45 PM
Post by: bvanevery on December 26, 2019, 06:31:40 PM
My entire homeland was garrisoned with probe teams, to prevent such problems.
Post by: Douglas on December 27, 2019, 02:14:30 AM
The AI gets a number of other special rules treatments, too. For example, it does not need to actually have an available path to use a planet buster. I once tried to block a planet buster from reaching a particularly valuable base by putting a solid line of units in the way - needlejets for the ones adjacent to it, so the PB wouldn't be able to catch the base in the splash radius by hitting them. It made no difference, the base got nuked anyway. I reloaded and switched sides to check, and there was literally no way to actually fly the PB to the target in one turn.
Post by: bvanevery on December 27, 2019, 04:57:49 AM
If you only used a line, you'd need to take higher movement rate for a Fusion reactor into account. Or whatever the reactor was.
I suppose for sake of form, I should check on the relative level of ease of fixing these various binary problems that really bug me. But if it isn't easy, I'm not bothering. Hard stuff should go into a new game.
Post by: Douglas on December 27, 2019, 08:26:44 PM
Post by: bvanevery on December 28, 2019, 12:54:56 AM
Post by: bvanevery on January 22, 2020, 09:16:30 AM
Changed from version 1.38 to 1.39:
FACTIONS:
- Cult of Planet: changed 2 errors in Faction description. Said it got +1 PLANET and +1 SUPPORT. Both are wrong, and have been wrong for a long time.
WORLD SIZE:
- Giant planet: changed to 126x252. Playtester ih8regin suggested that allowing a map coordinate to exceed the range of an 8-bit integer, might expose more pathfinding bugs.
CONQUER FOCUS:
- Command Nexus: moved to C3 Adaptive Doctrine. When it was given by C3 Neural Grafting, the Morganites would typically be the ones to get it, because that tech is partly a Build tech. This feels inappropriate. I think a faction doing pure Conquer research should have the best chance of getting it, so I've put it in a pure Conquer part of the tech tree.
- Single-Sided Surfaces: now has C3 Field Modulation as a prereq, instead of C3 Neural Grafting. The predefined units granted by this tech, only have 1 ability. Field Modulation is a pure Conquer tech and Neural Grafting isn't, so this gives a pure Conquer faction the best chance to discover the tech first.
- Nonlinear Mathematics: now has C3 Adaptive Doctrine as a prereq, instead of C3 Field Modulation. This keeps it from having the same prereqs as C3 Single-Sided Surfaces. Thematically, Field Modulation feeds the defensive techs, and Marines feed the offense techs.
- Doctrine: Initiative: now has E3 Monopole Magnets as a prereq, instead of C3 Adaptive Doctrine. I had accidentally made this tech and C4 Advanced Military Algorithms have the same prereqs.
EXPLORE FOCUS:
- Doctrine: Loyalty: set growth=0. A Punishment Sphere is not a practical means to grow in the early game. It only has value when base sizes are much larger. This tech is now a pure Build research barrier, in the same way D1 Information Networks is a pure Discover research barrier. Factions without a Build focus can trade for it, or eventually discover it by popping a supply pod.
- Neural Grafting: set growth=0. It doesn't give the Neural Amplifier anymore. It doesn't offer any mindworm, growth, or exploration benefit.
- Bioadaptive Resonance: now has E3 Centauri Genetics as a prereq, instead of C3 Neural Grafting. This is for Explore research focus continuity. Having 2 abilities is no longer guaranteed, nor is Non-Lethal Methods.
- Doctrine: Air Power: set growth=1. Needlejets do not aid substantially in the exploration of Planet by the time they appear in the game. Nor are Needlejets capable of popping supply pods. Air Transports are not good at moving Artifacts or Colonists as a base or airbase is required to load them. Although Needlejet Colonists could settle new territory quickly, the AI doesn't know how to use them. The Explore research focus should be more directed towards mindworms and not distracted by techs that give little exploration benefit.
- Nanominiaturization: set growth=1. Fuel air cells speed up Needlejets, at a noticeable additional cost. They are a tweaky and rarely used feature of the game. Needlejets do not aid substantially in the exploration of Planet by the time they appear in the game.
- Fusion Power: set growth=1. The only benefit for exploration is ships move a little faster. Psi combat does not care about reactor size.
- Orbital Spaceflight: set growth=2. By the time a Sky Hydroponics Lab is launched, most of Planet's surface is already known anyways. They do not provide substantial amounts of food until all bases have Aerospace Complexes, which are expensive and take a long time to complete.
- The Will To Power: now has C6 Organic Superlubricant as a prereq, instead of C6 Photon/Wave Mechanics. The former isn't great lore, but it has Explore focus continuity. The latter doesn't, and that made it a hard barrier to Explore research.
- Industrial Nanorobotics: set growth=1. Completing the Space Elevator allows orbital insertions. They can be useful for popping the last supply pods, but there are almost none left by this stage of the game.
- Graviton Theory: set growth=1. Although orbital insertions are useful for popping the last supply pods, there are almost none left by this stage of the game. Gravships cannot pop supply pods.
- Quantum Power: set growth=0. Ships move a little faster, but exploration is over by now. Psi combat does not care about reactor size.
- Singularity Mechanics: set growth=0. Ships move a little faster, but exploration is over by now. Psi combat does not care about reactor size.
UNIT COSTS:
- Infantry chassis: now costs 2. Unarmored infantry units with an offensive weapon are no longer a cheap deal. They now have expense proportional to the cost of the weapon. This is achieved both by increasing the Infantry chassis cost and raising weapon costs.
- Speeder chassis: now costs 3. This is to make it incrementally more expensive than Infantry.
- Hovertank chassis: now costs 4. This is to make it incrementally more expensive than a Speeder.
- Needlejet chassis: now costs 16. This is calibrated to cost the same as a Hovertank chassis.
- Copter chassis: now costs 16. This is to match the Needlejet chassis.
- Gravship chassis: now costs 20. This is calibrated to cost twice as much as an Infantry chassis.
- Particle Impactor: now costs 4. Same as the original game. The new policy is that weapons up to the Missile Launcher are Fission Era weapons with low costs.
- Gatling Laser: now costs 5. Same as the original game.
- Missile Launcher: now costs 6. Same as the original game.
- Chaos Gun: now costs 13. The new policy is that weapons up to the Tachyon Bolt require a Fusion Reactor to be affordable.
- Resonance Bolt: now costs 29.
- Plasma Shard: now costs 58. The new policy is that weapons up to the Graviton Gun require a Quantum Reactor to be affordable.
- Chronoton Gun: now costs 69.
- Graviton Gun: now costs 106.
- Singularity Laser: now costs 213. The new policy is that weapons up to the Black Hole Gun require a Singularity Reactor to be affordable.
- Black Hole Gun: now costs 255. This is the maximum cost any weapon can have. It's only an 8-bit unsigned quantity and rolls over if it's any higher.
- Terraforming Unit package: now costs 3. Since the Infantry chassis is more expensive, this reduction was needed for land based Formers to stay at the same cost. It has the effect of making Sea Formers cheaper. This shall not be regarded as a problem.
- Supply Transport package: now costs 13. This makes a Fusion Infantry Supply cost 50, same as an Artifact.
- Probe Team package: now costs 3. Since the Infantry chassis is more expensive, this reduction was needed for land based Probe Teams to stay at the same cost. It has the effect of making Foil Probe Teams cheaper. This shall not be regarded as a problem.
- Plasma Steel Armor: now costs 2. Since the Infantry chassis is more expensive, armors have to be less expensive to match the costs usually expected in the early game. There isn't room for much gradation of cost. Plasma is now always better than Synthmetal in every respect. This was generally true in practice anyways.
- Pulse 3 Armor: now costs 3.
- Resonance 3 Armor: now costs 3.
- Silksteel Armor: now costs 3 and has armor rating 4. I wanted an armored Garrison unit with only a Gun weapon to cost 40. However, the integers only allow me to have costs of 30 or 50. I chose 30 and lowered the protective value of the armor to compensate.
- Photon Wall: now costs 4.
- Psi Defense: now costs 4. In the original game, it had the same cost as a Photon Wall.
- Probability Sheath: now costs 7. Requires a Fusion Reactor to be affordable.
- Neutronium Armor: now costs 10.
- Pulse 12 Armor: now costs 11.
- Resonance 12 Armor: now costs 11.
- Antimatter Plate: now costs 24. Requires a Quantum Reactor to be affordable.
- Inertial Damper: now costs 38. Requires a Singularity Reactor to be affordable.
PREDEFINED UNITS:
- Scout: set cost=1. I want to retain 2 kinds of Scouts that only cost 10. The new cost for No Armor would make it cost 20.
- Trance Scout: set cost=1.
- Clean Scout: set cost=2. I want it to cost 20. The new Infantry chassis cost would make it 30.
- Clean Trance Scout: removed. E4 Bioadaptive Resonance no longer guarantees that 2 abilities are available. The AI wasn't building it anyways. Various other units with 2 abilities were already removed in previous revisions because they were too expensive.
- Clean Police: removed. The new Infantry chassis cost would make it cost 40. I don't want special cases for most Scout designs. It was a bit of an exploit that most abilities could be gained with a Scout for free.
- Clean Plasma Police: removed. C4 Single-Sided Surfaces no longer guarantees that 2 abilites are available.
- 3-Res Police: removed. E4 Bioadaptive Resonance no longer guarantees that Non-Lethal Methods is available. The AI wasn't building it anyways.
- Clean Synth Speeder, Clean Synth Police Wagon, Synth Police Wagon: removed. With the new Infantry and Speeder chassis costs, Synthmetal armor is no longer free on a Speeder.
- Clean Synth Garrision: reinstated and now available with C1 High Energy Chemistry. This tries to distract the AI from building too many garrison units and running out of SUPPORT. To give the AI the best possible chance, Synthmetal Armor does not need to be prototyped.
- Transport: removed. The AI does not need a predefined Transport unit to design and build them.
- Clean Transport: reinstated in the same slot that the Transport used to be in. The Pirate AI obsesses about building Transports regardless of whether any Transport unit is predefined. At least it can be made to build Clean ones so as not to run out of SUPPORT.
- Clean Recon Rover: removed. The AI was building a lot of them for combat. It should build just plain Recon Rovers. It's better for the AI to invest in clean armored units for standing defense.
- Clean 3-Pulse Laser Foil: removed. The AI obsessed about building it in the Fusion era when it was no longer appropriate, and losses were high.
- Clean Colony Pod, Clean Scout: removed bogus 30th ability flag. These units are base types with specially assigned costs and are available at the beginning of the game. It would be irrational for the player to design similar units.
- Trance Scout: removed bogus 30th ability flag. This unit has a specially assigned cost, is only available when Hypnotic Trance is discovered, and is then immediately available without prototyping. It would be irrational for the player to design a similar unit.
- Formers: put back in the same slot in the predefined unit table as the original game. When Clean Formers are available, the AI mostly prefers to build those. It doesn't matter what order they're in.
- Clean Sea Formers: removed. The Terraforming Unit package is cheaper now, so a plain Sea Formers only costs 20 minerals. Most factions start on land and do not have a problem running out of SUPPORT from building too many Sea Formers. The Pirates do not seem to obsess about building Sea Formers, and they have a +1 minerals bonus on ocean shelf squares to compensate for any SUPPORT problems.
- Sea Formers: reinstated in the same slot in the predefined unit table as the original game. Available with B2 Industrial Base. The Foil chassis is not guaranteed to be available yet, but this tech is a prereq for E3 Ecololgical Engineering which gives the Aquafarm. It would be annoying not to have a Sea Former available for that. This unit is only predefined as a safety valve anyways, to overcome a bug where Sea Formers are sometimes never designed by the AI. The Pirates are supposed to have this unit available from the start anyways. If they suffer the bug, at least they are a pure Build faction and B2 Industrial Base is directly on their research path.
The attachment limit per post is 5, and I eventually ran out of room at the top of the thread. Consequently, this becomes the new home of version 1.39. It was downloaded 86 times before I moved it here.
Post by: bvanevery on February 07, 2020, 08:20:45 AM
What seems to be happening, is the University climbs rapidly up the Discover tree, as I intended. It gets to D4 Pre-Sentient Algorithms. Then it doesn't have the Build prereqs for D4 Applied Relativity. Rather than learn those, it seems to pathologically beeline up the Conquer part of the tree, completely ignoring Build and Explore. It's a strange behavior as they're a Passive, pure Discover faction. I would have thought the distribution between the techs would be more random, but it doesn't seem to be.
They're also very willing to give away C3 Adaptive Doctrine, which gives the Command Nexus. 2 games in a row, they've traded it to me for nothing. So of course I built it. Don't know what's up with that.
I could just make the HSA more expensive, but I don't feel that's enough. I don't want the U. being able to get this so fast. At times I've not even had probe teams by then, due to bad luck. Even with a partial Conquer focus. I can't have the U. completing the HSA before other factions even get a chance to steal from them.
This is a PITA because I'm somewhat lacking flexibility in my tech tree nowadays. I'm going to have to stare at it really hard to figure out how to reshuffle this. If I have to make a sacrifice somewhere, I think it would be ok to make the U. less scary fast on tech. I'm really not sure what's freed up with them in the early tech tree, but they just go gangbusters now.
Maybe I need to take the University's free Biology Labs away and clip their tech wings. At one point in development, it was definitely needed. But maybe with the new "Discover beeline" tech tree, they don't need it anymore.
Post by: bvanevery on February 11, 2020, 07:53:46 AM
Because they research so many Conquer techs, I'm tempted to change their personality from Passive to Erratic. I'll see what further testing yields.
I could put Discover breadcrumbs in the tree, breaking the rigidity of my category separation.
Post by: 杨主席 on February 22, 2020, 08:38:45 PM
Post by: bvanevery on February 22, 2020, 09:03:46 PM
Forests still work. In fact, that's all that works. You don't get to have factories, crawlers, or thermal boreholes until much later in the game now.
I suppose you could do ordinary Mines if you have enough food, but I only start building those once I've built Hybrid Forests anyways. I'm scared of eco-damage, and you need to have a lot of food to work mines, when you don't have crawlers.
You get Soil Enrichers at the same time, so that's another option if you weren't into forests. My Soil Enrichers are faster to build, to compensate for Condensers being slower to build. They come at the same time, you don't get to have Condensers early. This was to stop Thinker Mod from exploiting Condensers and Boreholes earlier in the game.
One benefit of my mod, is there's no penalty for building a Mine on farmland. You can do both. You're just assumed to be eating toxic metals in your garden produce. :D This was to make the AI's life easier. Benefits the AI more than it benefits you.
I don't think Needlejets are going to benefit you as this great strategy, as they come a bit later, and they're definitely more expensive. But, try it and see. You tell me.
I made mag tubes available rather early in my mod. I'm biased by the idea that I'm going to build a rail straight into the enemy's heart, than zip down it with tons of ground troops. That's not a Cult of Planet way to play though. You would want the Xenoempathy Dome, so that you can attack with piles of mindworms from the fungus.
Hovertanks also come early enough to be an alternative to Needlejet based invasion. And frankly, I always found a Cruiser full of Marines to be the fastest way to conquer the whole world quickly.
Post by: bvanevery on February 24, 2020, 04:49:00 AM
Changed from version 1.39 to 1.40:
FACTIONS:
- University: removed Information Networks starting tech. Removed 1 free tech bonus. Removed strange #xxx comment line. The University's research was too fast. They don't need any research boost.
DISCOVER TECHS:
Previously I believed that the shorter Discover tech tree was benefiting the University, but it isn't. They actually research many non-Discover techs. They are probably doing well for other reasons, such as having Clean Reactors available from the beginning of the game. Ergo, the Discover tech tree does not need to be especially short.
- Information Networks: now a D2 tech. Set wealth=1 and growth=1. These are breadcrumbs so that non-Discover factions can learn it. Otherwise it becomes a hard research barrier for most factions. I'm not worried if a Conquer faction doesn't learn it, as they want immediate military results.
- Knowledge: moved to D3 Secrets of the Human Brain.
- Secrets of the Human Brain: now a D3 tech. Set wealth=1 and growth=3. Knowledge gives a JUSTICE bonus which can be worth a small amount of money, and a PLANET bonus. It now gives the Virtual World.
- Optical Computers: set power=2, wealth=2, and growth=2. It now gives the Planetary Datalinks, which can help all kinds of research.
- Intellectual Integrity: now a D4 tech. Set power=0 and growth=0. It now gives the Universal Translator, which is only good for more research.
- Thinker citizen type: moved to D5 Digital Sentience. The advantage isn't needed earlier, and I need to repurpose Pre-Sentient Algorithms.
- Applied Relativity: now a D5 tech. Industrial Labs should come after Research Hospitals.
- Digital Sentience: set tech=4, wealth=1, and growth=1. Having tech as 5, probably just makes it easier for non-Discover factions to research. Cybernetic only gives a small JUSTICE bonus.
- Nanohospital: moved to D6 Nanominiaturization.
- Nanominiaturization: now a D6 tech. Set power=2, tech=4, and growth=3. It now gives Nanohospital. Repair Bays and Fuel Nanocells are marginal military capabilities.
- Corporate Lab: moved to D7 Unified Field Theory. Industrial Lab is a Tier 4 facility and this doesn't need to be coming at Tier 6.
- Unified Field Theory: set wealth=3 and growth=0. It gives the Corporate Lab and no longer gives the Nanohospital.
CONQUER TECHS:
- Probe Team package: moved to C2 Planetary Networks. Police State gives a PROBE bonus and it's more rational to actually have the ability to make use of the bonus.
- Field Modulation: now a C2 tech. D1 Biogenetics was underutilized as a prereq, and this can be a lore fit for that. The position of Field Modulation is unimportant as a Cloaking Device is very nearly useless.
- Adaptive Doctrine: now a C2 tech. I don't like having to wait until Tier 3 to get Marines.
- The Command Nexus: moved to C3 Polymorphic Software. It has to stay at Tier 3.
- Polymorphic Software: now a C3 tech. I don't mind if the AI is delayed in using Probe Teams.
- Neural Grafting: set power=3 and wealth=4, making it a B3 tech. This has been functioning more like a Build tech, and Tier 3 needs another Build tech.
UNIVERSITY AI:
- Covert Ops Center: moved to C5 Pre-Sentient Algorithms.
- Pre-Sentinet Algorithms: now a C5 tech. Set power=4, tech=0, and growth=0. It now gives Covert Ops Center and the Hunter-Seeker Algorithm. Now has B4 Planetary Economics as a prereq.
The University AI is cheating, using Directed Research when it should be using Blind Research, to beeline for the Hunter-Seeker Algorithm. If I disable the HSA from the game, the University doesn't bother to research C5 Pre-Sentient Algorithms. If I relocate it to E5 Centauri Psi, it makes an extraordinary effort to learn that tech. If the HSA is available with C4 Advanced Military Algorithms, the University will start it by turn 75. If the HSA available from C5 Pre-Sentient Algorithms, but still having only Conquer prereqs, the University will start it by turn 100..115. With B5 Planetary Economics as a prereq, the University will start it by turn 130..140, and other factions can beat them to finishing it. This isn't great lore, and it's bad research continuity, but it blunts the AI's cheating.
EXTREMISTS:
- Doctrine: Loyalty: now an E2 tech. Set wealth=3 and growth=4. Extremist is only designed to benefit the Cult of Planet, who can use it without penalty. It should be on the Explore research path for them.
BIG BASES:
- Hab Complex: moved to E2 Adaptive Economics. It used to be at E3 Monpole Magnets, which can take a long time to research. I went 120 turns as the Pirates without learning it, nor did anyone else in the game. Meanwhile my kelp fed bases hit their size limit.
BUILD HAPPINESS:
- Cyberethics: set wealth=2. I wish to de-emphasize the contribution of happiness to a Build focus.
- Monopole Magnets: set wealth=2. I wish to de-emphasize the contribution of happiness to a Build focus.
- Sentient Econometrics: now a B7 tech. Set tech=0, wealth=4, and growth=2. It no longer gives the Corporate Lab. The Self-Aware Colony can actually lower a city's effective police, because it doesn't use Non-Lethal Methods.
EXCESSIVE WEIGHTS:
- Advanced Military Algorithms: set power=4 and wealth=1. Having power as 5, made it too easy to research. Power gives a SUPPORT bonus but also JUSTICE and GROWTH penalties. I want to deemphasize this as a Build tech.
- Planetary Economics: set wealth=4. Having wealth as 5, made it too easy to research.
- Orbital Spaceflight: set power=4. Having power as 5, made it too easy to research.
- Biomachinery: set power=3 and growth=4. Having growth as 5, made it too easy to research.
MINIMAL BENEFIT:
- Biogenetics: set power=1. A Biology Lab is not useful for conquest at the beginning of the game, as nobody knows how to make mindworms yet.
- Centauri Ecology: set power=1. Roads are useful for conquest, but they aren't critical. At the beginning of the game, any conquest is going to involve a lot of units walking or speeding over undeveloped land.
- Centauri Genetics: set power=1. I want Mindworms and Spore Launchers to be mostly Explore techs, to differentiate them from a Conquer focus.
- Progenitor Psych: now an E3 tech. Set power=1. I want Hypnotic Trance to be mostly an Explore tech, to differentiate it from a Conquer focus. I'm intrigued by the idea of it coming later, instead of being an easy early defense against mindworms. This also makes human-Progenitor communication completely one sided. Progenitors will initiate, not the humans. In the stock game that would be a problem because the Progenitors are overpowered, and it's not fun to get stomped by an enemy you can't negotiate with. But in my mod it's not a problem, because the Progenitors have the same strength as human factions. When they won't talk, the typical military result is a stalemate.
- Advanced Ecological Engineering: set power=1. Although faster roads, faster rails, and raising land are useful for conquest, they're simply not as important as better weapons and armor.
- Centauri Empathy: set power=1 and wealth=1. Although Green allows one to capture mindworms, and they are powerful at the beginning of the game, having only a few of them is limiting. Building a pile of Lasers is a much more certain way to kill an enemy. The JUSTICE bonus is not going to make anyone any money at the beginning of the game.
- Planetary Networks: set wealth=1. Although Police State and Non-Lethal Methods make people happy, it's hardly a monetary competititor with Democratic. The JUSTICE penalty can also hurt money. I want this more strongly differentiated from Build techs at the beginning of the game.
- Organic Superlubricant: set wealth=1. Hovertanks are useful for terraforming fungus and rocky terrain, but the value of this should not be overstated. They cost more and cheaper units can also get the job done.
SECRET PROJECTS:
- The Human Genome Project: moved to E3 Cyberethics. Story-wise it bugged me having it at E3 Centauri Genetics.
- The Virtual World: moved to D3 Secrets of the Human Brain. Set ai-tech=1 and ai-colonize=1. Hologram Theaters are cheap in my mod.
- The Planetary Datalinks: moved to D3 Optical Computers. It's a better lore fit.
- The Universal Translator: moved to D4 Intellectual Integrity. Set ai-tech=1. It isn't a terribly useful secret project.
- The Planetary Transit System: set ai-colonize=1. I don't think the AI benefits much from it.
- The Hunter-Seeker Algorithm: moved to C5 Pre-Sentient Algorithms. The University AI cheats, using Directed Research rather than Blind Research to go after this project, no matter where it is in the tech tree. Moving it to Tier 5 slows the University down a bit.
- The Network Backbone: set ai-colonize=1. It negates the Cybernetic POLICE penalty.
- The Empath Guild, Clinical Immortality: set ai-fight=0 and ai-mil=0. 2X votes is not explicitly oriented towards conquest.
- The Living Refinery: set ai-fight=0 and ai-mil=0. A SUPPORT bonus is not explicitly oriented towards conquest.
PREDEFINED UNITS:
- Probe Team, Foil Probe team: moved to C2 Planetary Networks. Police State gives a PROBE bonus, so let's provide the units actually needed to probe.
- Clean Sea Colony Pod: removed bogus 30th ability flag. This unit has a specially assigned cost, so it would be irrational for a player to design a similar unit.
- Sea Formers: moved to E3 Ecological Engineering. This unit is merely a safety valve, in case the AI doesn't automatically design the unit like it's supposed to. The AI needn't build it prematurely. It becomes more useful when nutrient restrictions are lifted and Aquafarm is available.
- Rover Formers: new predefined unit available with E2 Adaptive Economics.
- Clean Rover Formers: removed. It's much more expensive than a Rover Formers.
- Clean 3-Pulse Garrison, Clean 3-Res Garrison: removed. The AI doesn't build them, and they're much more expensive than a Clean Plasma Garrison.
- Cloaked R-Laser Speeder: removed. It's much more expensive than a Cloaked Recon Rover, and it gives away a R-Laser prototype.
- 3-Pulse Probe Team: removed. Although effective, they're twice as expensive as a regular Probe Team.
- 3-Pulse Police: removed. The AI doesn't build them, and they're much more expensive than Plasma Police.
- Trance Scout: removed. In the new unarmored cost regime, I did not like that Hypnotic Trance was getting a special dispensation for cheapness.
The attachment limit per post is 5, and I eventually ran out of room at the top of the thread. Consequently, this becomes the new home of version 1.40. It was downloaded 74 times before I moved it here.
Post by: 杨主席 on February 25, 2020, 02:18:19 PM
I have a few questions if you don't mind. Is there a changelog with all the changes, not just the changes from one version to another? Is there a tech tree to consult, as opposed to fumbling through the datalinks? I don't want to sound like a choosing beggar but I feel it's hard to plan without having a clear idea of where the new techs lead.
After being humbled with the Cult, I've started a new game with Morgan since you mentioned you had specifically beefed him up. It's a ton of fun. My empire is weakly defended and not that powerful (the University has developed EXTREMELY fast in the early game but the Hive ended up catching up somehow) but I am able to keep a tech edge with probes and simply buying stuff at a great price, even from people who hate my guts (which seems to be everyone except Lal). With +4 econ the take I haul in is just indecent and should inspire an "Occupy Borehole Cluster" protest against inequality or something to that effect. The Spartans are way too close for comfort so I try to keep them happy by declaring war on more distant enemies (sorry, Lal. She had too many drop infantry and needlejets for me to survive otherwise).
Post by: bvanevery on February 25, 2020, 03:24:11 PM
I got steamrolled by the Free Drones.
Looks like I did my job. :D The game has some shelf life for you yet.
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Is there a changelog with all the changes, not just the changes from one version to another?
Yep. readme_mod.txt.
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Is there a tech tree to consult, as opposed to fumbling through the datalinks?
By selecting "HQ.. Laboratories Status.." or just hitting F2, you get a display of 1 tech, all the techs that connect with it, and an index of all the techs you have researched. If you have infiltrated other factions, you can click on their icons and get the same info about them. This UI is different than the Datalinks. There is in fact a button at the bottom of the tech display which says Datalinks, that will take you to those.
Unfortunately, displaying tech relationships 1 tech at a time, is all that SMAC has got. An overview is impossible inside the game.
I don't think anyone ever developed a 3rd party "stable" overview printout tool. I know such have existed at various times, but I don't know of something that is being maintained and is known to be working. Maybe it exists and I just haven't looked.
Some people have been interested in creating such a tech tree sheet manually for my mod. But then I go and change the dependencies every release, so they are dissuaded. I can't yet promise any feature freeze. I think 1.40 is my last version, but I also said that a year ago, and look where I am now. I'm sure that changes are on the wind-down, as I'm getting much more serious with moving on with the technology of a commercial project, and there's simply very little to fiddle with anymore. But I can't promise that I'll never change something in the tech tree. I haven't gotten enough playtester feedback and approval for the work, to make that kind of promise yet. Someone could tell me that something sucks, and they could be right!
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I don't want to sound like a choosing beggar but I feel it's hard to plan without having a clear idea of where the new techs lead.
SMAC was limited in what it offered. However, as a matter of game design, one could go even farther with what they did offer. They offered "Blind Research", where you don't just get to pick the next thing you're working on. Well, what if like in real science, you don't even know what discoveries are possible? It's a valid way to try to design a game. It would have quite a burden for player expectations though, and those would have to be met somehow. You think about the game in terms of planning your tech strategy, because you have that available to you. Well what if you didn't? You'd need something else to strategize about.
This kind of question, has me scratching my head and rubbing my chin, about "what I would do" in a similar 4X TBS title. Choosing "what you're going to discover" is teleological. It's non-sensical. But as a play mechanic, what would I replace it with?
An even more vexing question, is what it means to "win". In real life, is the United States "winning" ? It won WW II, but it hasn't actually won anything since then. If your goal isn't to take over the planet, then what's to win? The idea of winning, is either archaic, or despotic.
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With +4 econ the take I haul in is just indecent and should inspire an "Occupy Borehole Cluster" protest against inequality or something to that effect.
;rotflmao I've had to do some rebalancing of ECONOMY over time. At one point, AI Morgan was pressing Economic Victory very early in the game, for the low low price of only 1000 credits! My answer to that was to make it impossible before B9 Global Energy Theory.
Post by: 杨主席 on February 25, 2020, 08:16:26 PM
Quote
Looks like I did my job. :D The game has some shelf life for you yet.
Shelf life? Probably an entire supermarket left since I'm not even past Librarian :D
Quote
SMAC was limited in what it offered. However, as a matter of game design, one could go even farther with what they did offer. They offered "Blind Research", where you don't just get to pick the next thing you're working on. Well, what if like in real science, you don't even know what discoveries are possible? It's a valid way to try to design a game. It would have quite a burden for player expectations though, and those would have to be met somehow. You think about the game in terms of planning your tech strategy, because you have that available to you. Well what if you didn't? You'd need something else to strategize about.
This kind of question, has me scratching my head and rubbing my chin, about "what I would do" in a similar 4X TBS title. Choosing "what you're going to discover" is teleological. It's non-sensical. But as a play mechanic, what would I replace it with?
Perhaps introducing rogue-like features in a tech tree would work? Conceptually, it would avoid the nonsensical teleological aspect you've highlighted. It would however be a nightmare to properly balance, or end up being mile wide and inch-deep like many rogue-like features.
4X games feel satisfying in part because you can see the consequences of your strategic choices unfold over the long term. Some random aspects of the game (the terrain you land on, the fortunes and positions of other civilizations, etc.) do not generally create frustration for the most part because if they act as creativity-boosting constraints for your strategic planning and add depth and character to your game's story-line à la Dwarf Fortress. However, if the randomness restricts the player too much and dwarfs (lol) the consequences of their own actions, that's when the frustration can set in e.g. a truly terrible start that even an experienced player can't do much about. In a way, this draws parallels with the hypothesis of autonomy, mastery and purpose being the trifecta behind intrinsic motivation. Overly punitive randomness attacks all three, which is why real life can be a ;miriam; sometimes.
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An even more vexing question, is what it means to "win". In real life, is the United States "winning" ? It won WW II, but it hasn't actually won anything since then. If your goal isn't to take over the planet, then what's to win? The idea of winning, is either archaic, or despotic.
At this point, I guess the medium itself becomes the limitation. I have no idea what a game allowing paradigm shifts like this would look like. Perhaps to approach the complexity of real life it would necessarily have to be a simulation indistinguishable from it.
I'd definitely be down for a sandbox title based on the SMAX universe, though. There's the GURPS book, but that's about it.
Post by: bvanevery on February 25, 2020, 09:30:21 PM
A losing condition, is definitely easier than a winning condition. For instance the human race can lose by destroying itself in nuclear armageddon, allowing sufficient global warming to flood the whole planet and fry us all to death, failing to get into space before a big planet surface destroying asteroid hits us, or before the Sun goes red giant. But if the human race were to survive all these things, it's still not clear what *winning* means, let alone for any subsection of the human race. You just get to keep playing the game of Life.
Chairman Yang said it thus: "...life's only purpose, is Life, itself."
Post by: bvanevery on February 29, 2020, 03:41:57 AM
Sea bases are incredibly vulnerable to them. And what do you have when playing the Pirates? Sea bases. It's generally not possible to make a "good" cluster of bases around your capitol in the ocean, to increase the cost of enemy mind control. There aren't enough oceanic resources in one spot to make centralized empires like that. One of your bases will inevitably be far away, sitting on some nice resource. And here comes the enemy Foil Probe Team!
In my last game, I was able to shell a fair number of them into oblivion, because the AI was stupid enough to stop its movement just short of my sea base. That's just the accident of where they left port from, and the distance covered. Eventually though, a different faction came from a different direction and nailed me.
I quit the game. I was cramped, stuck between lots of players, and couldn't even learn C2 Planetary Networks which gives probe teams. My ally Zhakarov had the tech for some time but wouldn't sell it to me, because he's a dick. He'd finally loosened up and probably would have sold it to me in a few turns, once I'd scraped the money together. That's when this happened.
Happened the previous 2 games as well. I'm in a "Pirate mastery" kick. It seems like getting lots of completions from supply pods at sea, should be an exploit that would put them seriously ahead of everyone else. But somehow, it's not working out.
Granted, one game my empire was fine, and I was big and scary, but I had such a long distance to cross to get to the Gaians. Was sending all kinds of Recon Rovers and Impact Rovers across fungus, using the Xenoempathy Dome. I stole the tech from the Gaians and had huge money to get things completed. But pushing the units over land got really old. I really didn't like this land-and-sea empire I was building, so I quit.
I wonder what it cost the Believers to subvert that base? I suppose I should look it up. I've tried to adjust the costs to be expensive, but I wouldn't be shocked if it isn't working.
Looking at the Believer's credits on the previous turn, I'm guessing they spent roughly 400 credits to take my sea base. It is size 5 with 1 Medic. It has a Children's Creche, a Recreation Commons, and a Biology Lab. It is 16 squares away from my capitol as the crow flies, 18 by water. That's not that far away. I have 11 bases and +2 JUSTICE from Democratic Green. The base is only suffering -2 energy due to corruption and waste. The Believers have +1 PROBE from Police State. My PROBE is 0, so my bases cost the standard amount to take over. Normal factions in my mod have PROBECOST=150, a 50% increase in cost over the stock game.
I'm bumping PROBECOST to 200 for starters. See if that ends up being more reasonable.
Post by: bvanevery on March 08, 2020, 06:13:30 PM
The Usurpers whacked one of my border cities with an Elite Recon Rover. I thought, ok, I'll probe it and then retake it. Took forever to get a simple probe team done. By the time I'd finished my infiltration and theft, they had learned Plasma armor and deployed it. So I've got these chinsy Lasers and not enough of them to do any real damage. I didn't want to spend money to retake my base, since I'd just doubled the cost of that. Didn't bother to find out what it would cost me, I just didn't wanna pay it.
They also attacked my capitol hard enough to completely empty it, but they failed to take it over and I retaliated the next year. The Cyborgs showed up and almost did similarly to a border city, but I held them off.
The game was so bumbly fumbly that I quit.
I learned Monopole Magnets awfully early. That's a case of beelining to the Hunter-Seeker Algorithm. Seems to be true of me too, not just the AI. Scient disassembled the game's code and found out how the cheating works:
Code: [Select]if (PlayersData[factionID].SE_ProbeBase <= 0) {
if(tech_is_preq(techID, Facility[FAC_HUNTER_SEEKER_ALGO].preqTech,
(PlayersData[factionID].AI_Tech != 0) + 2)) {
if (!PlayersData[factionID].AI_Power) {
valueRet *= 2;
}
if (PlayersData[factionID].AI_Tech) {
valueRet *= 2;
}
}
}
This applies to factions with PROBE <=0. If you don't focus on Conquer, you get a 2X multiplier. If you focus on Discover, you also get a 2X multiplier. The University is getting a 4X strong "pull" towards the HSA. Basically you can blind research anything you want, long as it contributes to the HSA! That means things that don't contribute, aren't going to be discovered. At least until the HSA has been completed, I suppose.
All of the techs I discovered in this test game, were consistent with beelining towards the HSA. It's actually pretty annoying to have designed a Discover tech tree, that Discover factions can't even use.
I suppose if I put the HSA far enough up the tree, all of the early game techs would be ancestors, and thereby get equal weight. But that seems to be a pretty drastic price to pay.
Looks like I need to throw in the towel and put the Hunter-Seeker Algorithm in the Discover tech tree. Otherwise any faction focusing on Discover - including the human player! - won't actually learn the early Discover techs. Instead they learn a bunch of Conquer techs.
Post by: bvanevery on March 11, 2020, 10:06:09 PM
Playtesting 1.41, I've run into an oddly slow tech game. It's MY 2377 and only now, is anyone learning D3 Secrets of the Human Brain. I made D5 Applied Relativity a prereq for C6 Fusion Power, so nobody's discovered fusion reactors either. The highest weapons and armors in the game are Chaos and Probability, but I don't think anyone's built any Chaos guns yet. I just built 1 Probability boat to have it available if I want, but nobody's making it to my shores in any substantial force.
My Missile Needlejets are plenty for sinking the few incoming enemy ships. I'm building a land bridge to the Spartans. I've delayed the Xenoempathy Dome in my mod, but I just completed it, so now I'm sending over Locusts and will do a ground invasion with mindworms if necessary. I don't really care about conquering the Spartans as they're a relatively weak power, I just want to force them to sign a Treaty.
The Data Angels are my opposition. On the graph, they're supposed to be more powerful than I. They certainly have double my population and are the Governor I think. At least I'm not. Because I'm the Believers, I've been immune to my bases being subverted, but I've still had to garrison them pretty tight with Firewall Probe Teams. I even built Covert Ops Centers in most cities, first time I've done that. I don't have them in the same tech as the Hunter-Seeker Algorithm anymore, and that's yet another Discover tech that hasn't been discovered yet.
I'm wondering how exactly I'm going to stomp the Data Angels before MY 2500. Total conquest? The Aliens are in the game. They're weak but not exterminated. The Usurpers are my ally.
Post by: bvanevery on March 12, 2020, 01:07:48 AM
The Usurpers were my ally. Assuming the AI has to follow the same framing rules that I do as a human player, it had to be someone who wasn't at war with the Usurpers. I think that's the rule? The Caretakers are at war with both of us, so I don't think it can be them. I would suspect my neighbors the Free Drones, or the Cult of Planet, except that neither one of them has a high PROBE rating. The Data Angels certainly do, so maybe it was their op.
I had just secured the Manifold Nexus by driving a rail through Usurper territory. I'm gonna turn the rail corridor into my territory! Not by taking Usurper cities, but by settling my own and destroying the alien ones. They're so weak that I can afford to gradually wear them down and not commit any atrocities. I need them to exert their territorial claims while I'm settling, so that the Free Drones don't get all the land I need for my corridor.
So, uh, Data Angels... thanks?
Well I played this for quite awhile longer. I eventually matched the Data Angels on the graph. However there were so many cities to go, and I was in the last century. At 5 AM I'd had enough and decided to quit. I thought the strong separation between Discover and other research paths was interesting. However I didn't see a point in playtesting any longer. It pretty much passed.
I think the ultimate moral of that story, is that fear of probe teams, and building lotsa armored probe teams and Covert Ops Centers to defend against them, consumes lots of productivity. Arguably so much, that the game becomes very slow. Although, if a stronger research faction had been in the game, it might have gone differently.
Post by: bvanevery on March 15, 2020, 04:57:36 PM
Holy crap! At least I'm not the victim. I'm merely playing a "normal" game and I'm "winning", but obviously I'm not dominating. I built like 1 Orbital Defense Pod awhile ago, which may have saved my bacon! Well I'm going to make a whole curtain of them now. I was just in the middle of a war with Lal, but we're both Democratic so I signed a Truce after taking over his HQ. I think I mainly wanted the bragging rights of completing a rail network over the south pole. Maybe I'll concentrate on getting everyone focused on the "demon antichrist" Col. Corazon Santiago.
[Limit reached]
The creep did it again! That landed awfully close to a city I recently took over. The University was my ally for a long time, but then they suddenly backstabbed me. So I'm taking all of their land bases including the Hunter-Seeker Algorithm. I definitely feel powerful now. Soon I'll be in a final showdown ground war with the Spartans.
[Limit reached]
I guess she's only guilty of using what she built. One of my Orbital Defense Pods shot it down. Looks like she's got 1 more somewhere. Maybe she'll think twice about shooting them close to my borders?
[Limit reached]
Once again she launches at the University, and my nearby city shoots it down. I'm super powerful now. I'm making a whole raft of Tachyon Antigrav Hovertanks to end her miserable life. I've got about 50% of the world's vote.
Another one goes off. Taking screenshots of this is getting old.
A volcano erupted. Hope I don't get flooded. I'm already as PLANET friendly as I can be.
I'm such a softie. I took 2 Spartan cities and called a Truce. I mean, I'm going to win the minute I get Habitation Domes.
Post by: Geo on March 16, 2020, 04:19:42 PM
[Limit reached]
I guess she's only guilty of using what she built. One of my Orbital Defense Pods shot it down. Looks like she's got 1 more somewhere. Maybe she'll think twice about shooting them close to my borders?
[Limit reached]
Once again she launches at the University, and my nearby city shoots it down. I'm super powerful now. I'm making a whole raft of Tachyon Antigrav Hovertanks to end her miserable life. I've got about 50% of the world's vote.
Does the game show this popup of a destroyed base when one of your orbital defense pods shoots down the incoming Planet Buster so it doesn't impact?
Looks like a bug to me. It thought it should show the "satbat_sm" pic instead?
Post by: bvanevery on March 16, 2020, 04:32:33 PM
Spartans broke their truce, so I overran half their empire in 1 turn. I may overrun the rest shortly.
Gosh I finally had to quit that game. I was overrunning everyone longly. I was 5 years away from guaranteed Diplomatic Victory, like 2000 votes to 350, when I just said this is a complete waste of time, I've had enough. The problem is, I called the Planetary Council in 2358 to increase the solar shade. Didn't want all my nice terraforming messed up. Well that meant I couldn't vote myself Supreme Leader until 2368. And those turns got long. Especially since I was determined to actually make nice housing for everyone, and not just throw up Punishment Spheres anymore. Worldwide kumbaya.
So yes in spirit, I stomped all of them. And the game held up from a testing standpoint. In particular, I think my new unit cost weights are working. A hovertank is just enough more expensive than other kinds of units, to make you think about whether you really need one or not. You don't have enough productivity to make just the most awesome buff unit you can possibly imagine with your current tech. Even once I got Quantum Power, I was a bit constrained.
And it's not exactly worth it anyways. I did eventually get the very late, very expensive Dream Twister. And then my Locusts would just trash stuff.
I think I should have invested differently if I wanted to end the game faster. Buffing up all sorts of newly conquered cities ad nauseam, just takes forever. Instead I should have concentrated on chucking out enough units to conquer the whole world in a few turns. I kept thinking about garrisoning instead of conquering. I didn't build anything remotely like enough Super Former units for the job, nor Drop units.
And when I want to win, don't vote for anything like solar shades. I could have won the game many real world hours ago, if I hadn't done that.
Post by: bvanevery on March 19, 2020, 08:02:45 AM
Changed from version 1.40 to 1.41:
PROBE TEAMS:
- PROBECOST: now 200 for most factions. 150 for the Data Angels, the Cyborgs, and the Hive. When I played the Pirates, I found that the AI could take over a size 5 base, only 16 squares away from my capitol, for merely 400 credits. I thought that was too cheap.
- Probe Team package: now costs 4. I don't want to make it too easy for the AI to spam them.
- Probe Defense: new predefined unit available with C2 Planetary Networks. Has an infantry chassis and synthmetal armor. The AI will walk these towards the enemy. Although they may get destroyed, AI units tend to die trying to kill it.
- Foil Probe Defense: new predefined unit available with C2 Polymorphic Software. Has synthmetal armor.
- Probe Firewall: new predefined unit available with C4 Single-Sided Surfaces. It has 3-Pulse armor, making it hard to kill. Has an infantry chassis to reduce expense. The AI will walk these towards the enemy.
- Foil Probe Firewall: new predefined unit available with C4 Single-Sided Surfaces. It has 3-Pulse armor.
- Cruiser Probe Team: moved to C5 Silksteel Alloys. C4 Doctrine: Initiative and C4 Single-Sided Surfaces are now prereqs for that tech, making continuity for probe team improvements. This keeps C5 Doctrine: Air Power from being overloaded with benefits.
- Foil Probe Team: removed. The Foil Probe Defense has a better chance of succeeding and defending, for not that much more cost.
EXPLORE PURITY:
- Dream Twister: moved to E10 Sentient Resonance and now costs 1000. It's super powerful and recently I've learned that the AI cheats to beeline to it, same as with the Hunter-Seeker Algorithm. I want it to have mimimal impact on the game, and I need it out of the way so I can move the Pholus Mutagen higher up the Explore tree.
- Sentient Resonance: set power=3 and growth=4, making it an E10 tech. It gives the Dream Twister.
- Pholus Mutagen: moved to E7 The Will to Power and now costs 800. It gives a lifecycle bonus, a combat bonus and healing in fungus, and greatly lessens eco-damage. That makes it greatly beneficial in all categories but Discover, so it should cost more.
- Empath citizen: moved to B7 The Will to Power. Empaths make more money, that's their value. I want the midgame Explore tree purged of Build influence, so that you have to focus on Explore to learn the techs and Secret Projects.
- Dissociative Wave: moved to C12 Temporal Mechanics. I don't really want this messing up the balance of the game. I want the midgame Explore tree to be devoid of Conquer techs as much as possible.
- The Will to Power: set power=1 and wealth=3. It now gives the Pholus Mutagen and the Empath citizen. I want Explore to be required to learn indigenous life form warfare techniques, with only a small chance of discovery through Conquer.
- Empath Guild: moved to B6 Eudaimonia and now costs 600. Voting oneself Governor is worth a lot of money.
- Neural Amplifier: moved to E6 Homo Superior and now costs 600. It's a powerful ability, pretty much eliminating the disadvantage of fighting with indigenous life forms.
- Homo Superior: set wealth=0. It no longer gives the Empath Guild or the Empath. This makes it harder for Build factions to obtain midgame Explore techs.
- Xenoempathy Dome: moved to E5 Centauri Psi. Set ai-infra=0 and cost=500. Moving through both fungus and roads as one big road system, is a powerful combat ability, worth as much as any of the other major Secret Projects in midgame. The Build value is minimal, just allowing fungus to be cleared faster. A Dome player probably wants to keep the fungus anyways, to walk on it. I want the midgame Explore tree purged of all Build weights, as it has proven far too easy for Build oriented factions such as the Morganites to learn the techs.
- Centauri Psi: set power=1 and wealth=0. It no longer gives the Pholus Mutagen. To learn indigenous warfare, you mostly study Explore.
- Centauri Meditation: set power=1. To learn indigenous warfare, you mostly study Explore.
- Secrets of the Manifolds: set power=1. A Brood Pit gives a lifecycle bonus and an indigenous production bonus. Indigenous combat techs shall have a minimal Conquer component.
- N-Space Compression: set power=1. These are Planet / native life techs and the Conquer componet is considered minimal.
CONQUER TECHS:
- Neural Grafting: set power=4 and wealth=3, making it a C3 tech. It is now a prereq for C4 Advanced Military Algorithms. This separates the Build and Conquer trees better
- Covert Ops Center: moved to C4 Advanced Military Algorithms. I need to repurpose Pre-Sentient Algorithms as a Discover tech. I want the Data Angels to be able to learn this without having to go up the Discover tree.
- Cyborg Factory: now costs 800. This keeps up with the cost increases in the Explore oriented Secret Projects.
BUILD TECHS:
- Engineer citizen: moved to B5 Bio-Engineering. Engineers make people happier, which is a good lore fit to the Longevity Vaccine.
DISCOVER TECHS:
Scient disassembled the game code and made an interesting discovery about the Hunter-Seeker Algorithm. When a faction has PROBE <=0, and chooses Discover as a research focus, prereqs to the HSA are given 2X weight. Additionally if the faction isn't focused on Conquer, prereqs are given another 2X weight. Also a Discover faction weights the prereqs 3 in advance of the HSA, instead of 2 in advance. In my mod that means the University receives 4X weight to get the HSA, and this weighting is triggered at Tier 2. The Gaians, Cult of Planet, Morganites, and Pirates get 2X weight, and the weighting is triggered at Tier 3.
When the HSA is not in the Discover tech tree, Discover techs don't get learned. In my mod, with its strongly separated research categories, a pile of Conquer techs get learned instead. This is pretty intolerable, so I've put the HSA back in the Discover tree, as in the original game. This causes the Discover tree to get most of the weight for seeking the HSA. A few of the early Explore techs are also affected.
- Information Networks: set wealth=1. I want Build factions to have a slight chance of discovering it.
- Virtual World: set ai-tech=2. A faction that is focused on Discover, will be building the needed Network Nodes.
- Intellectual Integrity: set wealth=1 and growth=1. I want Build and Explore factions to have a slight chance of discovering it.
- Pre-Sentient Algorithms: set power=3 and tech=4, making it a D5 tech. I also rearranged prereqs to be Discover only.
- Digital Sentience: now a D6 tech. Set growth=3. It gives the Thinker citizen, which makes people happier.
- Nanominiaturization: now a D7 tech.
FACTIONS:
- Gaians: now an Explore only faction. This reduces the HSA weight to 2X. With the HSA back in the Discover tree, they were not learning the Explore techs they needed, such as E4 Centauri Meditation.
- University: removed free Biology Lab. They were learning the Hunter-Seeker Algorithm by turn 100 and completing it by turn 120.
DATALINKS:
- Cloaking Device ability: renamed to Cloaking Field. I have it coming from Field Modulation. The lore says the Aliens control local fields inherently, and not by using a device. This change improves my Alien faction descriptions. I won't be changing the Datalinks entry for Cloaking Device though, as for Copyright reasons I don't provide any modified Datalinks files. The discrepancy is accepted as an imperfection.
- Caretakers, Usurpers: added hyperlinks for Hypnotic Trance and Cloaking Field.
- Cult of Planet: hyperlinked "double police duty" to Non-Lethal Methods ability.
- Cyborgs: added hyperlink for Polymorphic Encryption.
- Data Angels: added hyperlink for Covert Ops Center.
- Gaians: added hyperlink for Biology Lab.
- Hive: added hyperlink for Perimieter Defense.
- Pirates: added hyperlinks for Marine Detachment and Naval Yard.
- University: added hyperlink for Network Node.
The attachment limit per post is 5, and I eventually ran out of room at the top of the thread. Consequently, this becomes the new home of version 1.41. It was downloaded 132 times before I moved it here.
Post by: vonbach on March 21, 2020, 07:11:01 PM
The clean reactor means the AI spams endless waves of synthmetal garrisons. Yours and enemy bases. The wonder placement is interesting.
Post by: bvanevery on March 21, 2020, 07:43:35 PM
Im trying out your mod again. I'm actually pretty far in game and haven't got any real military tech beyond lasers. I wonder if this is intentional.
If you want weapons, you gotta research Conquer. If you're not, then you're not getting any weapons.
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The clean reactor means the AI spams endless waves of synthmetal garrisons. Yours and enemy bases.
For beginning to midgame, that's intentional. Damn hard to rush an AI that's defensively stocked and not losing SUPPORT to do so. Hopefully the AI decides to make better stuff later on.
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The wonder placement is interesting.
You mean Secret Project delays in the tech tree? The newest tweak is making the awesome Mindworm oriented SPs come later.
Post by: vonbach on March 21, 2020, 08:11:09 PM
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If you want weapons, you gotta research Conquer. If you're not, then you're not getting any weapons.I always randomize research and click all four. Usually I don't have any issues.
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For beginning to midgame, that's intentional. Damn hard to rush an AI that's defensively stocked and not losing SUPPORT to do so. Hopefully the AI decides to make better stuff later on.I thought as much. The problem is the spam gets out of hand occasionally.
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You mean Secret Project delays in the tech tree? The newest tweak is making the awesome Mindworm oriented SPs come later.
The wonder placement is very nice. Especially the universal translator.
Post by: bvanevery on March 21, 2020, 10:22:34 PM
The Universal Translator is actually one of the most useless SPs IMO. It gives you 2 techs, which is worth exactly 2 Artifacts. Whereas it costs the equivalent of 6 Artifacts to build the SP. Granted, you actually have to find 2 Artifacts, but at the beginning of the game you can certainly do that. So I think this is another one of those things about the game, that despite everyone's historical conditioning curve as to where it used to occur, they totally got it wrong. It's a beginner's SP. Narrative-wise I know they wanted to "discover God" and all of that, but game mechanically it's dorky.
Post by: vonbach on March 21, 2020, 11:20:53 PM
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That's weird luck, not getting any Conquer techs with random research. I've never done totally random research, so that's an untested scenario. Did you at least get some mindworms, like E3 Centauri Genetics?
I did get mindworms yes but nothing beyond lasers and no one else did either.
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The Universal Translator is actually one of the most useless SPs IMO. It gives you 2 techs, which is worth exactly 2 Artifacts. Whereas it costs the equivalent of 6 Artifacts to build the SP. Granted, you actually have to find 2 Artifacts, but at the beginning of the game you can certainly do that. So I think this is another one of those things about the game, that despite everyone's historical conditioning curve as to where it used to occur, they totally got it wrong. It's a beginner's SP. Narrative-wise I know they wanted to "discover God" and all of that, but game mechanically it's dorky.
It may not be the best wonder in the game but I like it. Its much fluffier when in the beggining of the game. Besides I like the two techs.
My all time favorite is the Aesthetic Virtues just for the video.
Post by: bvanevery on March 22, 2020, 01:18:38 AM
The Ascetic Virtues is probably my favorite SP, because it enables one to be Chairman Yang without being Yang.
Post by: vonbach on March 22, 2020, 08:10:48 PM
Post by: bvanevery on March 22, 2020, 11:49:44 PM
Post by: vonbach on March 23, 2020, 02:31:20 AM
Both are modified from the original factions.
Its not so much them as starting against the Gaians. The Gaians are very strong early game just because they can collect mind worms.
They are always top tier in any game I play.
Post by: bvanevery on March 23, 2020, 02:38:24 AM
Are you using my SE table or did you mod that too? That would change things. I of course don't have Planned. I have Capitalist, Socialist, and Green.
Post by: vonbach on March 23, 2020, 12:28:00 PM
The Gaians aren't so much overpowered as they have early advantages. They're good builders and good at tech and
they get free units from having Planet bonuses. This will usually put them in the top rankings until I pull ahead.
Of course she's on the largest continent and has conquered most of it and that helps.
Post by: bvanevery on March 23, 2020, 03:20:16 PM
They are good at research. A free Biology Lab is useful.
Free mindworms are good for rankings, but not for actually conquering someone. I can understand if you're saying the Gaians sit on the other side of Planet and look strong on the graph. I see that all the time. For some reason they do almost as well as the Morganites and Pirates, they seem to do just fine as a "grow at a distance" faction. But if you were to put the Gaians vs. the Spartans into a close border conflict with equal resources, I'd put my money on the Spartans.
Post by: vonbach on March 23, 2020, 05:23:04 PM
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Free mindworms are good for rankings, but not for actually conquering someone. I can understand if you're saying the Gaians sit on the other side of Planet and look strong on the graph. I see that all the time. For some reason they do almost as well as the Morganites and Pirates, they seem to do just fine as a "grow at a distance" faction. But if you were to put the Gaians vs. the Spartans into a close border conflict with equal resources, I'd put my money on the Spartans.
Its not so much that mindworms are good for conquering its more that they are helpful. Basically they are free units to throw into the grinder and every little bit helps. Also there are little effects like formers not lost or colony pods not lost. That combined with her good research helps a lot. Starting
location also helps.
Post by: bvanevery on March 24, 2020, 01:02:31 AM
Post by: vonbach on March 25, 2020, 07:56:39 PM
Post by: bvanevery on March 26, 2020, 01:30:12 AM
Post by: vonbach on March 26, 2020, 02:50:24 AM
Post by: bvanevery on March 26, 2020, 05:29:16 AM
Post by: vonbach on March 26, 2020, 11:32:18 AM
Post by: bvanevery on March 26, 2020, 08:20:35 PM
Weapons have a very strict expense progression in recent mod versions. You cannot get a bargain with an unarmed infantry chassis anymore. If you want an 8-1-1 Chaos infantry, it's going to be expensive because it's a powerful Chaos gun. It'll be more if it's a Speeder, and more still if it's a Hovertank. No bargains, no free lunch. The chassis cost progression is now 2 3 4, instead of the stock game's 1 2 3.
I actually think mindworms are too much of a bargain compared to this weapons cost regime. But I can't see any obvious antidote to that, without sacrificing core sensibility of what SMAC was about. I definitely think any changes in this area should be subject to long term playtesting, and I just don't have the playtesting feedback to know if anything should be done one way or another.
Post by: vonbach on March 26, 2020, 10:24:10 PM
I never had any issues with the expense of weapons systems. Or the expense of the chassis themselves.
Mindworms aren't especially effective really. Even at higher levels. They are also slow.
It's been some time since I've played your mod. The Social engineering is interesting.
Extremist seems very underpowered. Power is likewise too expensive for what you get. Wealth seems like the penalties are
too weak in my opinion.
The only issue with the mod I have is the clean reactor at the beginning of the game. It basically removes the need for SUPPORT at all.
I will admit the clean formers are nice.
One problem is the AI likes to spam units usually weak ones it also never upgrades.
Post by: Nexii on March 26, 2020, 10:49:19 PM
I mod similarly, infantry chassis 4, rover 6, hovertank 8 (same ratio diff cost formula)
I like the modding to differentiate foils and cruisers a bit more. Might try that out, make cruisers super fast and more expensive. Base move speed of sea units is kinda sad and they get demolished by air because of it
Feel like Power has too much a downside most of the time, Capitalist too. Could see just sticking in Democratic/Wealth even in war. I've had similar problems modding too, Free Market in my current mod is like that. ECON is about the toughest to balance around
Post by: bvanevery on March 26, 2020, 11:29:14 PM
I never had any issues with the expense of weapons systems. Or the expense of the chassis themselves.
Well the "fission class" weapons, basically everything through Missiles, are pretty similar in cost to the original game. If you can win the game in the Fission era, then yeah you wouldn't notice anything. Chaos Gun is the beginning of the Fusion era and it's quite expensive if you only have Fission. The same thing is done again for the Quantum era, I think with the Chronoton gun. Then again with the Singularity era. Graviton guns are transitional, and Singularity weapons are godawful expensive.
But in my view, all those advanced weapons are pretty much sandboxing, or for people who aren't experts at the game for some reason. An experienced player should be winning at roughly "midgame". Don't really need all those toys to win, it's pointless.
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Mindworms aren't especially effective really. Even at higher levels.
Hmm. I've thought otherwise, but who knows what biases I have about how to perform a conquest?
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They are also slow.
True dat. But rails aren't. :D
;hippy
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Extremist seems very underpowered.
As I've gone over before, that's entirely deliberate. I do not want the AI to choose it for the most part, because -2 RESEARCH cripples the AI. It's deliberately unattractive with few exceptions. The core game dynamic is the choice between Police State and Democratic, and IMO that's plenty.
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Power is likewise too expensive for what you get.
I've debated whether -2 GROWTH is too much, but so far the play balance evidence is fine. The bonuses are very powerful.
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Wealth seems like the penalties are too weak in my opinion.
It is rather difficult to survive wild mindworm attacks with -2 MORALE. I don't want the penalty to be that onerous, especially since Capitalist imposes -2 PLANET and is already a steep mindworm attack advantage. If someone wants to fry themselves with both Wealth and Eudaimonic, I'm ok with that. Less excuse for not being prepared later in the game, when you have the productivity to make choices about what kinds of units you want to produce.
I'm not putting a PLANET penalty in with Wealth. I've done that in previous releases, and it's a bad idea. The core ECONOMY tradeoffs are what penalty you're going to accept in exchange for more money. POLICE, PLANET, or MORALE? Democratic, Capitalist, or Wealth. I'm not going to have them span multiple categories of penalty. This gives the player control over their tradeoffs, on the assumption that what they want is a +2 ECONOMY for the 1 energy per square bonus.
Thus, I run out of rational penalties for Wealth, even if I thought -1 MORALE was slightly too light. An INDUSTRY penalty would be dumb. A GROWTH penalty is already the schtick with Power. Although I could impose a JUSTICE penalty on either Capitalism or Wealth, I think you were in favor of me not doing so. And I prefer to stay neutral on those subjects, not seeing them as either especially helpful or harmful to JUSTICE.
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The only issue with the mod I have is the clean reactor at the beginning of the game. It basically removes the need for SUPPORT at all.
This is false. Factions with better SUPPORT have an advantage because they can crank out more unclean units faster.
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I will admit the clean formers are nice.
They clearly improve AI terraforming. And Clean Synth units clearly improve early AI defense. Whatever objections you may have to Clean, the benefits clearly outweigh them. That's why I did it. It's hack to help the AI more than it helps you. If I were mucking about with the binary code, I would do something else. Like teach the AI not to run itself out of SUPPORT and keep some kind of reserve.
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One problem is the AI likes to spam units usually weak ones it also never upgrades.
Not upgrading isn't as much of an issue if the spam is Clean. The problem is really when the AI fixates on some unit, spamming it when it should be doing something more important with the productivity. I've tried many predefined units, and subsequently removed them, for that reason. There are still problems, like the Pirates spamming Transports. But generally the Pirates do well enough lately, that I can't say they're not performing well as a faction. And they've spammed every other kind of unit I've tried to get them to fixate on instead, so there's not really a win for that, AFAICT.
Post by: bvanevery on March 26, 2020, 11:41:55 PM
Clean is a bit less broken if dual ability units come later.
I have dual ability coming fairly early, albeit along a specific tech development path. I've got it as a Conquer Build hybrid tech. I don't see the point in making players strain about whether they're putting Deep Radar on Cruisers or Needlejets. It should be available. Having to redo your designs "because now free Deep Radar is available" is boring.
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I found dual ability units were really what hosed native life strategies.
Well, at least Trance actually costs something in my mod. It's not free.
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Empath+Trance on the same unit just is too hard of a counter.
I've seen the AI design lots of Empath units over the years, and I was always unimpressed with that. I'd typically steamroller the AI if it was doing that. Getting the AI to use Trance is far more worthwhile, because I'm usually the one assaulting the AI, not the other way around. Also, mindworm combat is an assault thing. Only Tim Nevolin's The Will to Power mod turns it into a defense thing, and right now IMO his mindworm combat is broken. Mindworms just walk up to you in the beginning of the game and kill you, no matter what you do, even if you had Trance. That's not right.
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Plus having to pick Clean vs Fungicidal / Super is a bit more of a choice on formers
Minerals are increasing by then. It doesn't matter as much as people think. I find that either choice often ends up being 2 turns to produce. I usually go with Clean, because I don't generally need to remove fungus by then.
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I mod similarly, infantry chassis 4, rover 6, hovertank 8 (same ratio diff cost formula)
Yeah those higher number sequences change the dynamic range of your weapon cost specifications around. Has to do with the underlying formulas. I believe I did experiment with higher multiplier ratios, but found 2 3 4 to be necessary to keep weapon costs within a window of specifiability. You can't go past 255 or it wraps around. That's my Black Hole Gun.
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I like the modding to differentiate foils and cruisers a bit more. Might try that out, make cruisers super fast and more expensive. Base move speed of sea units is kinda sad and they get demolished by air because of it
Huge maps are my >>RECOMMENDED<< choice. I'm never going back to Standard, and somewhat faster Foils, Cruisers, and Needlejets are far more civilized on larger maps. I also got rid of the Slow Unity Transport mechanic. If you get one of those, it moves at the same speed as Transports generally do, which is already penalized by 1.
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Feel like Power has too much a downside most of the time,
But does it actually stop you from overrunning opponents? Perception is not important. People always feel that "getting a penalty" isn't as much fun for them. What's the reality of the impact on your empire? It's like the inverse of the Clean Reactors. People think they're some big deal, some huge bonus, but they're not. At the time they appeared in the stock game, they never actually mattered, because minerals productivity was abundant by then.
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Capitalist too.
My Capitalist is far milder than the original game's Free Market. You've got -2 PLANET instead of -3, and no POLICE penalty at all. I'm not apologizing for, or going to change, Capitalist. There's nothing broken about it at all. Unless you really believe that PLANET penalties and global warming increases shouldn't be a part of the game, and I'm sorry, I'm not nerfing that any more than I did.
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Could see just sticking in Democratic/Wealth even in war.
I do it. It's viable, particularly if you have a weapons tech advantage. -1 MORALE isn't that bad, and easily compensated for if you keep your units alive and level them up.
It's also the preferred combat method of a Green faction. That's what Wealth is for IMO, to shift the combat burdens onto the mindworms where MORALE doesn't matter. Of course, since I gave +1 PLANET to Knowledge, a Green is likely to do that instead. At least there's a choice.
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I've had similar problems modding too, Free Market in my current mod is like that. ECON is about the toughest to balance around
I had to make Economic Victory only available with Global Energy Theory. The way I had it before, the Morganite AI was cornering the market with only 1000 credits spent! I'm not sure if that's the correct decision lately, but it was correct the last time I looked.
Post by: vonbach on March 26, 2020, 11:56:42 PM
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As I've gone over before, that's entirely deliberate. I do not want the AI to choose it for the most part, because -2 RESEARCH cripples the AI. It's deliberately unattractive with few exceptions. The core game dynamic is the choice between Police State and Democratic, and IMO that's plenty.The problem is theres is literally no reason to take it at all. I like the idea of extremist getting growth bonuses at the cost of research.
Police State for order. Democracy for money. Extremist for Growth.
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True dat. But rails aren't.
Neither are decent morale bonuses. :)
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This is false. Factions with better SUPPORT have an advantage because they can crank out more unclean units faster.Theres no reason to build units without clean reactors at all. One of the main reasons I don't like the early clean reactors is it makes the game too easy for me in some ways. The clean formers are the one part I really like. The computer actually terraforms with them.
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Thus, I run out of rational penalties for Wealth, even if I thought -1 MORALE was slightly too light. An INDUSTRY penalty would be dumb. A GROWTH penalty is already the schtick with Power. Although I could impose a JUSTICE penalty on either Capitalism or Wealth, I think you were in favor of me not doing so. And I prefer to stay neutral on those subjects, not seeing them as either especially helpful or harmful to JUSTICE.
Growth would be a better penalty for Wealth than for Power. It actually firs in real life. Just as it would as a penalty for Planned.
Both actually decrease growth rates. If anything Power should increase growth because of the increased confidence and security of the people.
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My Capitalist is far milder than the original game's Free Market. You've got -2 PLANET instead of -3, and no POLICE penalty at all. I'm not apologizing for, or going to change, Capitalist. There's nothing broken about it at all. Unless you really believe that PLANET penalties and global warming increases shouldn't be a part of the game, and I'm sorry, I'm not nerfing that any more than I did.I like this versions capitalist. It feels like a real choice. I still pick Green most of the time though.
Post by: Nexii on March 27, 2020, 12:03:18 AM
The infantry bonus to cities was one of the main reason I used them. Oh well. I actually liked using something other than the speeders.
I never had any issues with the expense of weapons systems. Or the expense of the chassis themselves.
Mindworms aren't especially effective really. Even at higher levels. They are also slow.
It's been some time since I've played your mod. The Social engineering is interesting.
Extremist seems very underpowered. Power is likewise too expensive for what you get. Wealth seems like the penalties are
too weak in my opinion.
The only issue with the mod I have is the clean reactor at the beginning of the game. It basically removes the need for SUPPORT at all.
I will admit the clean formers are nice.
One problem is the AI likes to spam units usually weak ones it also never upgrades.
Re Mind worms I found they really needed to get defense from PLANET SE. With them being slow and having no defensive abilities and all. Also delaying dual ability units, Empath and Trance on the same is just so good vs Native
Post by: Nexii on March 27, 2020, 12:26:01 AM
I get the paradigm, its sort of a pick 2 out of 3. Which is a fine model it just makes all the other picks much less desirable. Hence the comments about Extremist and Power. On their own maybe ok but I can't see taking them over Demo/Green/Wealth
FWIW I think they are close to being balanced, +2 ECON is super hard to balance around, it drives me crazy too. The devs knew this and really overdid the penalties. But they also overcosted facilities to where you pretty much need +2 ECON to fuel the maintenance. This is an aside topic, if +2 ECON wasn't so crucial/powerful then it'd really change the game
Post by: bvanevery on March 27, 2020, 02:17:16 AM
Police State for order. Democracy for money. Extremist for Growth.
I place an absolute priority on increasing AI performance in practice. RESEARCH penalties heavily inhibit the AI. This as far as I'm concerned is proven, incontrovertible fact, and overrides all other concerns.
There are only so many play mechanics for penalties available. If not a RESEARCH penalty, then what? And where would one ever have a RESEARCH penalty, if not that? I've got one for Thought Control. I find that to be pretty irrelevant as the AI rarely makes it to Thought Control, at least when I'm kicking its butt.
Meanwhile, I do not want to make good growth available to the human player early in the game. It's on a very strict diet now, to prevent pop booming until you've got Eudaimonia. Or if you're the Hive. That's a special ability for a human player, if they're paying attention to the details. Although I doubt they can put it into practice, since it requires Golden Ages. Maybe I should play a game where I test whether that idea even works.
The AI also fixates on anything that gives a GROWTH bonus. It has an overwhelming tendency to choose it. That's why Socialist is at +1 GROWTH now instead of +2. +2 was overpowered, and the AI wouldn't choose anything but Socialist. Now it will choose other things in the real world, and that's what I want. Everything is tuned by what the AI will actually do, not what you the human player would ideally like.
If I were mucking about with binary patching, I could solve these problems other ways. But I won't do it. I will put that kind of development energy, into a new 4X title with "better" tradeoffs for everything. I haven't decided what my equivalent of a Social Engineering Table would be. Graphically, the table idea is pretty good. Game mechanically though, seems like a system might be better with continuous dials and sliders, rather than integer based "choice cliffs". Maybe, maybe not, there's something to be said about the perceptibility of integer increments. Anyways there's a lot of design stuff to thing about, and the effort is better spent there, than me mucking about with the binary.
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Theres no reason to build units without clean reactors at all.
Yes there is, they take substantially longer to build. You haven't played my mod enough, if you haven't seen that. It certainly matters at the very beginning of the game, it's a clear tradeoff.
The difference may start to erode later on for some things. I definitely build lots of Clean Formers. If I didn't think the tradeoff was harsh enough, I could make the Terraforming Unit more expensive, as is done in The Will to Power mod. But I like the relatively cheap Clean Formers just fine right now, and so does the AI. I will wait for long term playtester verdicts on this one.
For military units, I think the tradeoff always matters through midgame. I'll be thinking I'm going to build Clean Synth units, then I'll realize I have an enemy breathing down my neck at close quarters. I need to switch to plain Synth, it's 20 minerals vs. 30! That's a big difference when you're talking about not many cities, your life actually depends on it, and it's early game and you simply don't have Mines Boreholes Factories Forests etc. None of that. The cost difference matters.
If it didn't matter enough, I could jack it to +100%, instead of +50% where it is now. I don't presently see the need, and I'll definitely await playtester feedback on this point.
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Growth would be a better penalty for Wealth than for Power. It actually firs in real life.
Power is about wars. Wars kill people. GROWTH penalty is totally realistic. How many Russian males do you think were available after WW II? Granted, you don't actually need that many males to reproduce. Guess the ones that survived, were lucky for awhile.
AI might also hate additional penalties. If AI won't accept -1 GROWTH, that's overrides all other considerations. My Pirates have to choose Wealth. If they aren't doing so, then what I've done is broken. I think lately they are doing what they are supposed to do, but I'll have to remember to pay good attention next time I see them as opponents.
AI opponents are swallowing -1 JUSTICE -2 GROWTH as a Power penalty. Mission accomplished. AI knows the bonuses are overwhelmingly beneficial.
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Just as it would as a penalty for Planned.
As you know, I don't have Planned. I have Socialist. We've argued about what it all means politically before. Think "Swedish Socialist", not commies putting you up against a wall.
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Both actually decrease growth rates.
This whole mod started with me trying to "realistically" simulate growth. Play mechanically, it didn't work out. Gameplay is king.
And narratively, why should I pick on Wealth, when I'm not even picking on Green anymore? I had to remove Green penalties to get Deirdre AI to take it. I wasn't happy about that, but I did what had to be done. To hack it into submission. Wealth gets a GROWTH penalty, when Green doesn't, is silly. I'll take imperfect over silly any day.
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If anything Power should increase growth because of the increased confidence and security of the people.
Power is the declaration of martial law, and the mobilization of all citizens into a war economy. Civil liberties suspended. It's not going to make people feel confident and secure. It terrorizes people. Secret tribunals, Patriot Acts, military juntas. People are "disappeared". Power is very similar to a Police State. No, a Democratic government that's into Power, is not particularly Just. Think National Guard firing on civilians to keep them under control.
I could probably make this concept more explicit with a POLICE bonus, but there's only so much scope for such bonuses. +3 POLICE is as high as is worthwhile, and man, is it worthwhile!
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I still pick Green most of the time though.
Green has huge efficacy early in the game. If I choose Capitalist early on, I'm actually scared of mindworms blowing me up.
Post by: vonbach on March 27, 2020, 03:58:51 AM
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Yes there is, they take substantially longer to build.Im my experience theres little difference. It takes maybe an extra turn to build a clean unit.
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Power is about wars. Wars kill people. GROWTH penalty is totally realistic. How many Russian males do you think were available after WW II? Granted, you don't actually need that many males to reproduce. Guess the ones that survived, were lucky for awhile.
Power is about the ability to wage wars. It's also not just logistical support or training. It's about morale and pride. A research penalty might be better for a buffed power.
Also soviet Russia is not a very good example. If not for US support from the Bolshevik revolution to its dissolution it never would've survived at all.
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As you know, I don't have Planned. I have Socialist. We've argued about what it all means politically before. Think "Swedish Socialist", not commies putting you up against a wall.Swedish socialism means not having kids in the first place. Theres clear evidence that European socialism
decreases growth not increases it. The more resources that women in particular get from the state the less they feel they have to have families in the first place.
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Power is the declaration of martial law, and the mobilization of all citizens into a war economy. Civil liberties suspended. It's not going to make people feel confident and secure. It terrorizes people. Secret tribunals, Patriot Acts, military juntas. People are "disappeared". Power is very similar to a Police State. No, a Democratic government that's into Power, is not particularly Just. Think National Guard firing on civilians to keep them under control.
No that is a police state not Power. Power is the ability and the will to wage war. Not oppression.
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Green has huge efficacy early in the game. If I choose Capitalist early on, I'm actually scared of mindworms blowing me up.The main reason to pick Green in your mod is there are no penalties. Its still weak though.
Post by: bvanevery on March 27, 2020, 07:36:01 AM
Im my experience theres little difference. It takes maybe an extra turn to build a clean unit.
At the beginning of the game, that is simply false. As bases get more and more minerals, that finally becomes true. But by then, you didn't need the SUPPORT anyways. You only thought you did, because the game conditioned you to believe that Clean Reactor is a benefit. The benefit actually only matters at the beginning of the game, when minerals are scarce. That's why I put it there. It helps the AI more than it helps you.
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Power is about the ability to wage wars. It's also not just logistical support or training. It's about morale and pride.
It's about drafts, or keeping people poor so that they'll volunteer as soldiers for lack of better economic opportunities. Feel free to write "Pro Military Industrial Complex mod". It's not this one. This game doesn't have a good way to model actual war casualties anyways, their effects upon society. Something I'll think about for a 4X game.
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A research penalty might be better for a buffed power.
That's silly. War has always driven technical progress.
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Also soviet Russia is not a very good example. If not for US support from the Bolshevik revolution to its dissolution it never would've survived at all.
I'm reasonably sure that the USA was a belligerent to the Bolsheviks in the immediate aftermath of the revolution, as were several Western powers. Yes, my memory is good, I'm 100% totally right (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_and_the_Russian_Revolution). Your comment is not basically defensible. You could talk about Lend-Lease (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease), and maybe trading some grain, that's about it.
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Swedish socialism means not having kids in the first place. Theres clear evidence that European socialism
decreases growth not increases it.
Ok, for sake of argument, let's say Extremist has +1 GROWTH and Socialist does not. What benefit does Socialist bring? An INDUSTRY bonus is silly. Socialism and Communism have never done any such thing. A TALENT bonus? The problem with TALENT bonuses is, they don't visually show up in the SE Table. That makes me look stupid as a modder, and I never do anything that makes me look stupid. Can't have people complaining that I wrote "bugs". Jack the JUSTICE bonus to +2 ? Well that vs. -1 ECONOMY doesn't sound like a very good trade, why do it?
I don't think Socialist magically creates any more SUPPORT for anything in society. Like free tanks driving around. Pretty silly idea really. We deal with SUPPORT because it's a game mechanic in SMAC, not because it's a good model for anything. In later Civ games, things just cost money to maintain.
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No that is a police state not Power. Power is the ability and the will to wage war. Not oppression.
So you fundamentally believe that Santiago isn't the leader of a Banana Republic, a warlord? That she doesn't just send people to die, because she gets off on militarization and battle? That she has higher ideals that polishing her beloved artillery pieces?
How about Marr? In my mod he does Power too. He's a conqueror, why shouldn't he be into Power?
What Would Julius Caesar do? And what would the other Senators do with him?
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The main reason to pick Green in your mod is there are no penalties. Its still weak though.
I have made far too much money popping supply pods on a Huge map, and have collected far too many mindworms with merely +1 PLANET, to believe that!
Post by: Nexii on March 27, 2020, 04:14:58 PM
Post by: bvanevery on March 27, 2020, 05:49:30 PM
Marxists claim that these wild swings are inherent to Capitalism. It's an engine of exploiting whatever can be exploited. There comes a point at which the greed is just too much, it's not based in transactional reality, and a major correction has to happen. They hurt people who don't have much money.
Now I don't honestly know if some imagined Marxist system could do much better. I think that greed is a fundamentally human tendency, borne of natural selection to propagate one's own genetic code. Genes can be somewhat cooperative, but selfishness is there as an evolutionary force and strategy. Societies can design cultures and try to restrain their individual actors, but there are many ways to cheat, and to succeed at doing so.
Anyways, the USA gets into WW II. The pursuit of Power then creates wealth and knowledge!
The trichotomy of Power, Knowledge, Wealth is a narrative about these factions in the game. They are not historical realities. This might explain why vonbach and I fight about politics as much as we do. We are arguing about history, but the game is often narrative, not history.
Even in academia, what is the purity of the pursuit of Knowledge? Some academics do it, some academics have big fat contracts with corporations for their funding. Morgan yabbers on about the ivory tower intellectuals and the concrete and profitable applications as well. A corporation gave us the iPhone, not academia. XEROX PARC gave us the mouse. Some things come from academic research and other things come from corporate research. Different research groups have different priorities and capabilities. Nowadays the style at companies like Microsoft, Google, and Facebook, is to pay a lot of money to retain those PhD researchers, because none of the companies want to be caught with their pants down if one of the PhDs happens to invent The Next Big Thing. Academics are thus a sort of generalized munition, that corporations fight to have control or ownership of.
Post by: vonbach on March 27, 2020, 07:12:19 PM
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That's silly. War has always driven technical progress.
A society that values Power is frequently Jingoistic. Think modern Russia.Or the USA during the cold war.
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I'm reasonably sure that the USA was a belligerent to the Bolsheviks in the immediate aftermath of the revolution, as were several Western powers. Yes, my memory is good, I'm 100% totally right. Your comment is not basically defensible. You could talk about Lend-Lease, and maybe trading some grain, that's about it.The USA was trading and giving the USSR food aid all throughout the cold war. The USSR was never able to feed itself.
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It's about drafts, or keeping people poor so that they'll volunteer as soldiers for lack of better economic opportunities. Feel free to write "Pro Military Industrial Complex mod". It's not this one. This game doesn't have a good way to model actual war casualties anyways, their effects upon society. Something I'll think about for a 4X game.No Power isn't about keeping people poor. Once again you confuse oppression with the pursuit of strength.
Just because someone has guns or training does not mean they want to kill everyone else.
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Ok, for sake of argument, let's say Extremist has +1 GROWTH and Socialist does not. What benefit does Socialist bring? An INDUSTRY bonus is silly. Socialism and Communism have never done any such thing. A TALENT bonus? The problem with TALENT bonuses is, they don't visually show up in the SE Table. That makes me look stupid as a modder, and I never do anything that makes me look stupid. Can't have people complaining that I wrote "bugs". Jack the JUSTICE bonus to +2 ? Well that vs. -1 ECONOMY doesn't sound like a very good trade, why do it?
Socialism and communism were and are about keeping people under control. Basically modern Swedish style Socialism is about buying people off and propagandizing people. Its an early form of Thought Control. At least its modern version.
A Socialist system designed around the welfare of its population is essentially an Autarky the best term for a green economy. A closed self sufficient economy.
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I don't think Socialist magically creates any more SUPPORT for anything in society. Like free tanks driving around. Pretty silly idea really. We deal with SUPPORT because it's a game mechanic in SMAC, not because it's a good model for anything. In later Civ games, things just cost money to maintain.
There really aren't that many benefits. Socialism works until you run out of other peoples money. Swedish style socialism only works because the USA pays for Europes defense budget. The closest thing would be a police or Talent bonus representing the people being bought off with social programs.
Both Socialism and Wealth if you want to be realistic should have Growth penalties. At least their modern versions.
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So you fundamentally believe that Santiago isn't the leader of a Banana Republic, a warlord? That she doesn't just send people to die, because she gets off on militarization and battle? That she has higher ideals that polishing her beloved artillery pieces?She's attempting to recreate ancient Sparta. Its not just about conquering everyone else. Its about personal betterment, strength and the ability to defend you and your family against outside threats. Like the planet they are currently on for example. Pacifists have this idea that soldiers are warmongers and nothing could be further from the truth. Usually the opposite is the case since they know the real costs of war in the first place while pacifists don't.
Both Extremist and Power are weak and both need to be buffed. More than that Conquer techs take way too long to appear it simply slows the game to a crawl. Once again on random research I haven't got anything more than lasers and I've gotten a half dozen wonders already.
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Marxists claim that these wild swings are inherent to Capitalism. It's an engine of exploiting whatever can be exploited. There comes a point at which the greed is just too much, it's not based in transactional reality, and a major correction has to happen. They hurt people who don't have much money.
Marxists are typically people that have money in the first place. Usually they've never had to a real days work in their lives. The modern usury capitalist economy is an abortion and isn't what a proper economy is supposed to be like. The USA had a Free Market economy before the Federal Reserve and it worked just fine.
Wild swings are inherit to usury economies because thats how the system is set up. When the bubble pops thats when the banker class makes thier money. It's when they shear the sheep.
In a Marxist economy you never get any of the money in the first place.
Politics aside my biggest issue with the Mod as it is now is how long it takes to get weapons beyond lasers.
Post by: bvanevery on March 28, 2020, 12:42:25 AM
The USSR was never able to feed itself.
That doesn't appear to be accurate (https://www.quora.com/Did-the-USSR-rely-on-US-food-shipments?share=1). But they definitely had a use for additional grain.
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She's attempting to recreate ancient Sparta. Its not just about conquering everyone else. Its about personal betterment, strength and the ability to defend you and your family against outside threats. Like the planet they are currently on for example.
Against your claims about her character, here is the following quote from blurbs.txt:
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##Advanced Military Algorithms
#TECH17
Man has killed man from the beginning of time, and each new frontier
has brought new ways and new places to die. Why should the future
be different?
^
^ -- Col. Corazon Santiago,
^ "Planet: A Survivalist's Guide"
Doesn't sound like any kind of high minded noble defense orientation. Sounds like bloodletting is just part of the human condition in her world view. She believes in the law of the jungle, predators and prey.
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Both Extremist and Power are weak and both need to be buffed.
On the subject of Extremist, I don't think you're listening to the part about AI performance being the most important objective. It doesn't matter to me if you only have 2 "good" Politics choices, if it makes the AI play better. Extremist exists as a viable choice for the Cult of Planet only.
Power seems plenty powerful to me, and the penalties don't seem that bad in the scheme of things. If I succeed in overrunning other empires, then Power is working. I'll await other people's input on the matter.
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More than that Conquer techs take way too long to appear it simply slows the game to a crawl. Once again on random research I haven't got anything more than lasers and I've gotten a half dozen wonders already.
I'm playing a game as Conqueror Marr right now. With directed research, I actually chose to focus on weapons and of course got them. Meanwhile, as of turn 150 Santiago's got Gatling Lasers as well, so it's definitely possible for a Conquer only AI faction to get weapons. The Cyborgs are distant across the water and I haven't managed to infiltrate them, because they keep sinking my Foil and Cruiser Probe Teams with Gatling Foils. They're a Discover + Conquer faction. The Cult of Planet is actually strongest on the graph, and I couldn't even possibly tell you why, considering that I'm sitting on the Monsoon Jungle. They're kinda remote from me and I have no infiltration. We've exchanged mindworm unpleasantries in a vast hinterland.
The Morganites are my local puppet ally. I've gone Socialist. I did it to offset the liabilities of Power, but I'm done with the Power surge now, I'm back to Survival for lack of another option. I'm keeping it for the nominal JUSTICE improvement and to tick Morgan off. If he acts up, I'll take a city that he unwisely put on my Monsoon Jungle, back when he was silently caught in the crossfire of our alien jungle war. In the interim, he's a buffer state taking the brunt of Santiago's attacks. Actually a recent missive said he was beating them, although I don't quite get how. I don't think he's buying them out, because they took Morgan Solarflex quite some time ago and he hasn't liberated it. The Spartans have made no progress past that though. Morgan Solarflex is of no value to me, it's far enough from my core empire to simply be a liability. I'll wait for the Spartans to punch through the Morganite lines before I bother to take anything, if they ever manage it.
I've completed 4 Secret Projects. Surprisingly, the Cult of Planet completed 2. My purification of the Explore tech tree, seems to have worked. I never even got a chance to try for those.
I've generally not seen any weapons problems in my games, and I'm wondering what's different about our play styles, that you're having noticeable problems. Are you playing on Huge maps?
Post by: vonbach on March 28, 2020, 01:31:36 AM
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Against your claims about her character, here is the following quote from blurbs.txt:Frankly I always thought that the idea of Santiago being in charge of anything was frankly laughable.
She's as bad as Miraim who's pretty much supposed to be the church lady from Saturday night live.
She's basically a parody of militarism. This games politics always have been ultra left.
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On the subject of Extremist, I don't think you're listening to the part about AI performance being the most important objective. It doesn't matter to me if you only have 2 "good" Politics choices, if it makes the AI play better. Extremist exists as a viable choice for the Cult of Planet only.Every choice should be good for something.
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Power seems plenty powerful to me, and the penalties don't seem that bad in the scheme of things. If I succeed in overrunning other empires, then Power is working. I'll await other people's input on the matter.Power is very weak for what you get. As is extremist. With clean reactors from the start Support is almost meaningless. Both have to be good for something and not just one AI faction.
In my mods I try and make every choice good for something.
In the games i play on in huge maps lasers are all that typically appear and for ages. I typically play on the map of Planet with no jungle.
The AI typically never gets anything beyond them. So its just lasers against synthmetal. Meaning I'm stuck using mindworms. That gets old really fast. The AI just declares war and either loses units or does nothing.
It makes the game into one big stalemate.
I like the clean formers those are a boon to the AI. Those are awesome. But I'd get rid of the starting clean reactors.
Growth is hard to come by. The AI has the habit of sitting on size 2 cities forever. Extremist needs a buff. I'd give them a Growth bonus.
Green seems a little weak but it has no penalties. I'd add either effic or planet. Power either needs a buff or its penalties reduced drastically.
Post by: bvanevery on March 28, 2020, 02:58:35 AM
Frankly I always thought that the idea of Santiago being in charge of anything was frankly laughable.
I agree that her character is not credible. Going by the quotes and videos, she's never given an order or conquered a damn thing. The basic problem is the writer(s?) had her philosophize, like some of the other characters, and that's not credible for a military general / junta. Such a character should be a person of action, winning battles and wars.
Structurally, she's an afterthought. There are 6 obvious characters that matter: Lal vs. Yang for humanitarian issues, Morgan vs. Deirdre for environmental, and Miriam vs. Zhakarov for religion. Santiago is introduced to create imbalance in the system, 7 instead of 6. And she's a "diversity hire", without that actually being well thought out.
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She's as bad as Miraim who's pretty much supposed to be the church lady from Saturday night live.
Miriam's treatment in the videos is fine. It's the diplomatic dialogue that's silly. I got rid of it.
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She's basically a parody of militarism. This games politics always have been ultra left.
I think her diplomatic dialogue was actually a parody of right wing militia movements. I did eliminate some of that.
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Every choice should be good for something.
Not if you're working with play mechanics and AI code that's broken. RESEARCH penalties kill AI factions, that's a fact. The options are either to keep RESEARCH penalties as a play mechanic somewhere and prevent the AI from choosing them, or to get rid of RESEARCH penalties entirely. I think the latter renders Extremist or Fundamentalist narratively meaningless. If I could think of something else Political to replace it with, that was still in keeping with the original game somehow, I would. But there isn't anything, as there are only so many play mechanics to toy with. I'm not going to reach into the binary to fix this, nor am I going to rewrite the narratives in any large portion. I accept that the original game is limited and flawed, and that my modding can only do so much to address it. It was not a perfect game and there are limits to what I can do to improve it.
My "serious" efforts on such matters will go into a brand new game. Such as not making Miriam or Santiago's character mistakes.
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In my mods I try and make every choice good for something.
But I don't know if you are succeeding, because I have not played your mod. I could take an educated guess if you published your SE table.
My table is the result of a very long process of trying various things out, and seeing how the AI did with them. There were consequences.
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In the games i play on in huge maps lasers are all that typically appear and for ages. I typically play on the map of Planet with no jungle.
The AI typically never gets anything beyond them. So its just lasers against synthmetal. Meaning I'm stuck using mindworms. That gets old really fast. The AI just declares war and either loses units or does nothing.
It makes the game into one big stalemate.
By what turn would you say it's "gotten old" ? In my current game, I'm pretty sure the Spartans have had Gatling Lasers since Turn 140, and the Cyborgs since Turn 130 or earlier.
The Caretakers never got Particle Impactors. I succeeded at stunting, runting, and trashing them. They were a relatively close quarters enemy so that's to be expected. We both went searching for good lands and both found the Monsoon Jungle roughly between us at about the same time. We had some serious initial Scout skirmishes that were actually a bit threatening to me, but I'm tactically better than the AI and kept my foothold on my part of the Jungle. I brought up my Battle Ogre to wound one of their cities. It exhibited not-so-great performance against the Synthmetal defenders, only killing 2 and not beating the rest out, but it bought time for me to complete and bring Recon Rovers up. With their superior Morale, they did the real work. After that it was an exercise in consolidating and expanding my hold over the Jungle as I pleased. I killed many Caretaker incursions on my front line while building a solid mag tube system to connect my whole empire. Then I hit them with one fist, all the fingers together. No isolated city stands up to a unified rail network. I invaded or destroyed their few front line cities, pushing them out of the Jungle, building my rail forwards to do it. Morgan interfered with their rear, cutting off any possibility of reinforcement. Then I just marched down over a small amount of land, not doing anything special, and finished off the final defenders with my Infantry units. They're gone. I got Power towards the end of all of this, and now it is turned off.
That's 150 years of play for me. How about you?
Are you sure you didn't accidentally play a Tech Stagnation game?
Do you build Biology Labs and Children's Creches? I never did do Network Nodes. I could have, Morgan knew the tech, but I didn't see a need to bother.
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I like the clean formers those are a boon to the AI. Those are awesome. But I'd get rid of the starting clean reactors.
Clean Synth is essential to AI garrisoning, to stop you from overrunning them with Recon Rovers.
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Growth is hard to come by.
That's deliberate. I'm not changing it. You have been put on a diet. Same reason minerals are on a diet.
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The AI has the habit of sitting on size 2 cities forever.
Depends on local conditions. Some cities get plenty big. Some factions tend to get bigger than others, like the Free Drones.
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Green seems a little weak but it has no penalties.
You may not remember, but we've had this conversation a few times before. Removing penalties is necessary to get Deirdre to go Green in a reasonable timeframe. Even in the stock game, she won't. It's a bug.
Post by: vonbach on March 28, 2020, 06:00:39 AM
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Not if you're working with play mechanics and AI code that's broken. RESEARCH penalties kill AI factions, that's a fact. The options are either to keep RESEARCH penalties as a play mechanic somewhere and prevent the AI from choosing them, or to get rid of RESEARCH penalties entirely. I think the latter renders Extremist or Fundamentalist narratively meaningless. If I could think of something else Political to replace it with, that was still in keeping with the original game somehow, I would. But there isn't anything, as there are only so many play mechanics to toy with. I'm not going to reach into the binary to fix this, nor am I going to rewrite the narratives in any large portion. I accept that the original game is limited and flawed, and that my modding can only do so much to address it. It was not a perfect game and there are limits to what I can do to improve it.
Thats why I like to go with something like Traditionalist or some such thing.
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But I don't know if you are succeeding, because I have not played your mod. I could take an educated guess if you published your SE table.
I change it often actually. Normally what I do is remove most if not all of the penalties. Fundamentalist usually gets renamed and gets Growth and morale or some such thing. Planned I like to play with giving it Support and Police or something like that. My vision of Green is much like your vision
of Socialism. Power gets buffed but also has a research penalty.
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My table is the result of a very long process of trying various things out, and seeing how the AI did with them. There were consequences.I actually like your table with the two exceptions. I was thinking of altering mine actually.
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By what turn would you say it's "gotten old" ? In my current game, I'm pretty sure the Spartans have had Gatling Lasers since Turn 140, and the Cyborgs since Turn 130 or earlier.I honestly don't remember what turn but I normally build everything reserch related but I play on random research and pick all four research categories.
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You may not remember, but we've had this conversation a few times before. Removing penalties is necessary to get Deirdre to go Green in a reasonable timeframe. Even in the stock game, she won't. It's a bug.
I do actually. It's a weird bug. I actually like to remove most of the penalties. I'd just add an extra +effic.
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Clean Synth is essential to AI garrisoning, to stop you from overrunning them with Recon Rovers.The clean synth isn't that bad. Its just having the clean reactor available outside of the set units.
Post by: bvanevery on March 28, 2020, 06:36:46 AM
I honestly don't remember what turn but I normally build everything reserch related but I play on random research and pick all four research categories.
Ok, this is not a tested scenario. I've never played a game, ever in my life, when I've done this.
If you want weapons and armors in my mod, you have to study Conquer. Period, The End. Weapons and armors are not sprinkled all over the tech tree like in the stock game, so that you'd always eventually run into something. You will never run into something if you're avoiding Conquer. I think I can probably assure you, that you'll never get weapons and armor, if you pick Explore Discover Build as your research foci. You might learn Bioadaptive Resonance because it's also an Explore tech, for the anti-mindworm defenses and ordinance, but that's it. Almost every single weapon and armor in my tech tree is a pure Conquer tech, no cross-listing. I think the only other exception is Sentient Resonance, for the same reason as Bioadaptive Resonance.
When you really study what Firaxis provided, they had a lot of techs directly related to combat. I made all of them Conquer techs. There are more Conquer techs than any other kind of tech, by a wide margin. I'd say Explore comes after that, because there was a fair amount of happiness stuff and I decided that's for Growth. There's some Build and then Discover has the least, a very thin line going up the tree.
Lots of the Conquer techs aren't weapons or armors. They give you battlefield capabilities, like a new chassis or 2 abilities or probe teams or Power or cloaks or Marines or whatever, and you can certainly use them to invent strategies if you're not getting what you're usually used to. For instance, you could use X Recon Rovers and just rock on. You could smother your enemies with Clean Synth units, starving their cities to death. "I don't have a bigger gun" doesn't mean you can't fight. You could sabotage any Perimeter Defenses and bring truly mind numbing numbers of Recon Rovers to the fight. They'll probably work, especially if you've got Power and have monolithed them, maybe even made them High Morale.
If you're just randomly gaining techs from the tree, the odds of you getting a weapon or armor are definitely lower. If you actually want weapons and armors, you need to change your research focus to Conquer. It would be most effective to change it to Conquer only. It is totally normal in SMAC to change your focus to something you actually want. If you don't say what you want, it's not actually my fault that you don't get what you want.
The only reason I stick to faction default research foci, is to see what the game is like from the AI's perspective. If I was playing to seriously win, I would switch to whatever focus I thought was most effective to do that. I certainly wouldn't just take random stuff from the tree. In fact, I've never heard of anyone playing this way before. It's definitely not what the original game was designed for. You were supposed to say what you wanted next.
The difference is, the stock game doles out weapons and armors everywhere, sprinkling them around, and I don't. You must study Conquer.
Another difference is, if you've selected all research categories, then cross-listed categories are probably going to have a more valuable weight to them. The Conquer categories aren't going to be as valuable, because they are often not cross-listed. Weapons and armors almost never are. Chasses are always cross-listed with Explore.
You might choose to spread yourself thin in your research. But Santiago, Marr, Yang, and Roze will not. They're all pure Conquer factions. They'll be getting the weapons, the armors, the Command Nexus, and the Citizens' Defense Force. You won't be.
Post by: vonbach on March 28, 2020, 06:41:13 AM
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Ok, this is not a tested scenario. I've never played a game, ever in my life, when I've done this.That actually surprises me. I always play like this.
Thats probably the issue. I nearly always pick all four and just let it go. I'll try another test game and see the results.
One thing I do miss though is the bonus to attacking bases with infantry units. I loved using them.
It was something different than the rover rush.
Post by: bvanevery on March 28, 2020, 06:49:54 AM
Because my tech curve with Marr was a bit weird, I tried a Drop Pod strategy. Started making airbases 8 squares from my empire. Wanted to continent hop to take over the Cult of Planet, who was claimed to be doing best on the graph. Built a fair number of Drop Formers to make strings of airbases. First time I've done that in the Doctrine: Air Power era. I usually don't bother with Drop units until orbital insertions.
Well, it was boring! Too much unit pushing. Too much mouse clicking effort. I got bored with the game and I guess I quit, seeing as how I don't want to play it anymore. I should have just built a rail to Cha Dawn's front door. That's the "traditional" way of ending everyone's miserable life. It works. You need a metric ton of Clean Formers but it works.
Post by: vonbach on March 28, 2020, 07:30:39 AM
Post by: vonbach on March 28, 2020, 04:15:57 PM
At this point I still haven't gotten anything beyond lasers.
Turn 151 and I finally got my particle impactors.
And right about the same time everyone got plasma steel armor.....
Taking bases is much much too hard in this mod.
Post by: bvanevery on March 28, 2020, 07:07:03 PM
I generally also steal from other factions, even if I have to sail long distances to do that. I don't have to be the one who figures out the weapons.
Post by: vonbach on March 28, 2020, 08:12:34 PM
Or respond to a declaration of war. Its worse when you finally get the tech get the units built and your staring at garrison units of equal strength when you get there. To top it off the cities oftentimes aren't big enough to even take. Usually just being on another continent gives them plenty of time to develop.
I did find some inspiration for my mod though. I took the clean units and put them in my mod. I moved the universal translator to earlier in the tree.
Police state: ++Police +Probe, -effic, Republic: +economy +effic -police, Fundamentalist: +Growth +Morale
Capitalist: +economy --planet, Socialist +growth +effic -economy Autraky: ++effic +planet
Power: ++support +morale -research -effic, Knowledge +planet +research +effic --police Wealth: +Economy -morale -police
Cybernetic ++research +effic --police Eudianomic: ++Growth + effic +economy -morale -probe
Thought control:++police +support ++probe +industry -- research
Thats what I'm going with currently with my new social tree.
Fundamentalist and autarky have no penalties because i haven't got any real inspiration yet.
What do you think?
Post by: bvanevery on March 28, 2020, 10:15:12 PM
Our SE tables are similar at this point. The big difference is Fundamentalist. I predict your AIs will love the heck out of that and use it exclusively. It loves MORALE and loves GROWTH. Putting MORALE on a diet was one of my earlier considerations for Fundamentalist / Extremist. It was way too popular with the AIs. Since I had retained the narrative RESEARCH penalty, that was a big problem for the AI faction strength.
Your Thought Control seems like a bit of a giveaway. INDUSTRY bonuses are overpowered, which is why I don't give them. A silver lining of my restriction that way, is I don't have to stress about changing government just to get a Secret Project finished, or any other stuff I need to build. Everything always costs the same.
You realize that when we argue about Power, you only giving +1 MORALE, and me giving +2, is a really big difference? Granted, your total SE MORALE bonuses would be +2, as mine. But I make players go to early midgame to get get C4 Advanced Military Algorithms. No early game bonuses to MORALE. That's often my policy with stuff, "No early game bonuses to X". Lots of things are too skewing.
Post by: Nexii on March 29, 2020, 06:36:47 AM
Same with making SPs super expensive, they just don't pay off before end of game. If you look at speed runs usually only a very few are built, meaning even at default costs a lot weren't all that amazing. Same with most facilities for that matter.
Anwyays I think even von's SE set sort of has this problem. The side choices just aren't that compelling compared to the choices with +ECON (till you get +2 ECON). It's just super powerful when the other SE choices don't give +6 GROWTH or +3 SUPPORT or +INDUSTRY, etc. Again not saying it's easy and actually most factions will be forced into picking the 2 out of 3 that are available.
Post by: vonbach on March 29, 2020, 07:01:37 AM
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Our SE tables are similar at this point. The big difference is Fundamentalist. I predict your AIs will love the heck out of that and use it exclusively. It loves MORALE and loves GROWTH. Putting MORALE on a diet was one of my earlier considerations for Fundamentalist / Extremist. It was way too popular with the AIs. Since I had retained the narrative RESEARCH penalty, that was a big problem for the AI faction strength.
Growth has to be somewhere in the mod and a traditionalist government makes sense to have it.
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Your Thought Control seems like a bit of a giveaway. INDUSTRY bonuses are overpowered, which is why I don't give them. A silver lining of my restriction that way, is I don't have to stress about changing government just to get a Secret Project finished, or any other stuff I need to build. Everything always costs the same.
Thought control has industry because the rest of the bonuses are relatively weak. It also makes sense in a way.
I'd still pick either of the other choices over thought control.
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You realize that when we argue about Power, you only giving +1 MORALE, and me giving +2, is a really big difference? Granted, your total SE MORALE bonuses would be +2, as mine. But I make players go to early midgame to get get C4 Advanced Military Algorithms. No early game bonuses to MORALE. That's often my policy with stuff, "No early game bonuses to X". Lots of things are too skewing.
Power as it is now is what I'm starting with. I'm probably going to change it. I'm liking the idea of +support +morale and +police for -research, effic or economy.
Autarky I might add a growth bonus to it. Reflecting a agrarian self sufficient society. Probably with -economy as its downside
I was thinking of removing the growth from Socialist and adding something else probably or simply changing the penalty to -support.
Most if not all of my my government choices are available at midgame. I like having them all early.
Post by: bvanevery on March 29, 2020, 07:04:36 AM
I still don't really see how a midgame without pop booming works.
Tree farms? Careful use of Nutrient specials at specific production sites? Rail networks? I'm not seeing how pop booming has ever been required for the midgame at all. You can overrun stuff in midgame if you want.
You also have Clean Reactors from the beginning of the game, which always gives you an opportunity to invest in more clean units, if you don't have any worthwhile techs.
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When you nerf down builder
Cheap clean formers is not nerfing builder strategies. And perhaps you haven't learned how to mass up piles of money to buy your Secret Projects. AFAIAC it's core strategy in my mod.
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circumvent it with PS/ICS strategies.
I don't believe in ICS. But you're welcome to post some kind of benchmark with my mod, of just how far you get with something, by such and such turn. I would then be able to compare it to more conventional strategies.
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police units are vastly cheaper than psych and faciliites.
You sure about that? The lowest cost in my mod is Synth Police. That's 30 minerals and requires SUPPORT. You can't just do Clean Police right away because you have to learn Neural Grafting. Also I think that unit costs 50 minerals.
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Same with making SPs super expensive, they just don't pay off before end of game.
This is flatly false. I've playtested all my SPs to death. They all have prices and timings exactly commensurate with what they're worth.
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If you look at speed runs usually only a very few are built,
If you can speed run in my mod on a Huge map, be my guest! I think you're going to find that some of your expected tools are not available. But who knows, that's what playtesting is for.
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Anwyays I think even von's SE set sort of has this problem. The side choices just aren't that compelling compared to the choices with +ECON (till you get +2 ECON). It's just super powerful when the other SE choices don't give +6 GROWTH or +3 SUPPORT or +INDUSTRY, etc. Again not saying it's easy and actually most factions will be forced into picking the 2 out of 3 that are available.
I await your saved games / screenshots / Turn anecdotes. Otherwise it's just theory.
Post by: bvanevery on March 29, 2020, 07:36:44 AM
Turn 151 and I finally got my particle impactors.
And right about the same time everyone got plasma steel armor.....
I'm now playing as the Cult of Planet. I had a strange start. Made peaceful contact with the Morganites, both of us on the same continent. Got Children's Creche from him when I had only 5 cities. Had so much fungus in the way, and so many mindworms out popping pods, that I just built Creches instead of settling more. Went quite vertical, with Biology Labs, Network Nodes, and even starting some Research Hospitals courtesy of Zhakarov. Settled more bases eventually, built a rail network, had to clear some fungus to get to the Ruins to do it. Piles of Clean Formers and also some Rover Formers.
It's Turn 115 and I haven't got any better weapons or armor yet. Some distant factions at least have Plasma, as they're working on the Citizens' Defense Force. Whether anyone's got Particle Impactors is unknown. The Usurpers are so distant on the map I haven't reached them, it's kind of an alternating water continent maze world. I haven't learned E3 Centauri Genetics, can't make my own mindworms. It took a surprisingly long time to learn E2 Centauri Empathy, despite my pure Explore research focus. This because of so much trade with other peaceful factions, that my tech expanded in many directions. I actually bought it from someone else eventually.
I've got buckets of captured mindworms though. They finished popping all the nearby land, then I brought them home. The water maze makes it difficult to take them anywhere else. They're doing police duty. I could overrun Morgan with this force, especially know that I've got Knowledge and +4 PLANET. I just don't see any need though. If he gets uppity, I'll take a city from him and make him behave. So far he's still my ally, and he hasn't tried to pull any probe team shenanigans.
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Taking bases is much much too hard in this mod.
On my Turn 115, there is no need to take any bases. I could have all of Morgan's cities and double my size. Why bother? He will never be able to harm me. I will always be ahead of him, and always able to annex him whenever I want. "Close contact" friends / enemies / frenemies are useful that way. He's my satellite whether he realizes it yet or not.
I'm going to complete the Weather Paradigm. Nobody can stop me, as I've got a good reserve of Artifacts. I'm just being cheap and trying to use more more money and fewer Artifacts to get it done. I'm going to land bridge to my other frenemy, the Cyborgs. Maybe then my friend the University. After that, Lal is kinda uppity, and a natural enemy. Maybe he'll declare war on me, just about as I've built a rail to his doorstep.
Roze is on the Monsoon Jungle, somewhere rather far away. She dominates the graph. Maybe Marr's got half the world and is doing well. There's no need to be premature about conquering anybody.
MY 2225, aka Turn 125. I finally get E3 Centauri Genetics. Roze declared war on my "ally" Zhakarov. She's stomping him with Particle Impactors. Guess a Conquer focus on the Monsoon Jungle, works just fine! I've bridged to their continent, they were only 1 square apart. I don't have a rail to the front line yet though. I also need to settle more cities in the west of my continent, before bridging to the Cyborgs. My biggest cities are merely size 5. I don't have time to build Condensers, I'm doing more basic terraforming for the western city sites.
MY 2232. I'm in direct conflict with Roze, because she's taken all the University cities I was going to connect with. 2 squares separate my railhead from her conquered city. I did not end up stealing from her or even infiltrating her. Instead I bought techs from Zhakarov and Morgan. That allowed me to complete the Planetary Energy Grid out from under Morgan's nose. He completed the Hunter-Seeker Algorithm instead, which is good, because Roze was trying to build it. I've now got all the stuff, including Particle Impactors and Plasma armor. I've bridged to the Cyborgs and am removing fungus to connect a rail to them. I've got both Morgan and Aki-Zeta5 on board with my war. Once I complete the Cyborg link I'll advance, hopefully with 3 against 1. Technically 4 but Zhakarov is almost dead.
So, it has taken me a similar amount of time as vonbach, to get the stuff.
Post by: zoneplate on March 29, 2020, 02:35:45 PM
Post by: bvanevery on March 29, 2020, 05:34:49 PM
I did notice the Whole Lot of Mouseclicks problem. Which is why I haven't used CMs in probably a year.
Post by: zoneplate on March 29, 2020, 06:53:37 PM
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Conventional Missiles can capture bases?Yeah, it threw me right off to discover too! I accidentally moved one into an unoccupied base, it captured, and I was just like...... ah????
My recent attempts have been ironman transcend and it's pretty brutal, I'd (playing the Drones) tend to be keeping a smallish garrison around and trying to put my all into building to attempt to stay ahead in terms of research, only to find that the second someone comes to pick a fight my forces are woefully inadequate and get instantly owned. But then I'm not particularly good at strategy games so this is in fact Probably Fine (and I'm mostly having fun anyway so, yknow)
edit: oh yeah, one other thing that made me go "hm,", although it's more of an aesthetic/tonal quibble - the naming of the Quantum Lab replacement as Corporate Lab seems like, a bit out of place to me. Why should a unified field theory be a prerequisite for something as commonplace as a corporate lab complex (not that SMAC/X has ever been perfectly coherent with what gives you what I guess)? Perhaps something like "High-Energy Lab" would fit better?
Post by: vonbach on March 30, 2020, 05:01:47 PM
Post by: bvanevery on March 30, 2020, 06:27:43 PM
Democratic and Police State have both been made into attractive options, for different purposes. I've seen factions stay with Frontier in the past, but not so much lately. What year are they roughly switching to something else?
In my current game, the Morganites in midgame have chosen Police State Simple Power. That's irritating. Ok, maybe the AI is smart enough to realize that I'm the Cult of Planet. I'm Extremist Green Power and have got +3 PLANET. We share a large border and they haven't been friendly to me. War could come at any time and there will be lots of Psi war. If they chose Capitalist they'd be in bad shape with -2 PLANET on offense.
Also, they may not strictly need the money. Still, they have ECONOMY as their secondary imperative, so it's annoying that they're not following it.
Another possibility is they may think they're placating me, that I'm supposed to want Green, as in the original game. But I don't, I want Extremist. So it could be a bug, that they inappropriately hardwired the diplomacy for the Cult of Planet.
Post by: vonbach on March 30, 2020, 06:36:39 PM
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Which ones? Do they have any restrictions on choosing Democratic or Police State?
Some of them actually have a preference towards police state. I think its because I had the line after that their preference set to nil.
The AI just plain does weird things. Thats one of the main reasons I liked simply removing the penalties. I do it just to help out the AI.
Post by: bvanevery on March 30, 2020, 09:23:44 PM
Cha Dawn - prefers Extremist, cannot choose Democratic.
Marr - cannot choose Democratic
Lal - prefers Democratic, cannot choose Police State
Domai - cannot choose Police State
Zhakarov - cannot choose Extremist
Aki-Zeta5 - cannot choose Extremist
So there are only 3 factions that actually prefer something. Only 1 of them prefers Police State.
Post by: bvanevery on April 01, 2020, 03:46:44 AM
MY 2306. Marr lobs one at Roze.
;marr; ;liftoff ;nuke; ;roze;
Fortunately this is not aimed at me. The Aggressive factions have been pretty consistent in my mod if left alone. They nuke! And unlike usually, I don't have any kind of Orbital Defense Pods at all. I don't think anyone has learned that yet. It's a slow tech game if not strictly tech stagnation, because the University got all but killed pretty early on. I was allied and built a rail towards their capitol, but I was hoping it would get taken over, so that I could take it and get the Human Genome Project. Once I was down there though, it seemed more reasonable to keep going with my rails than wait up.
I shouldn't actually be disappointed. My rail network was actually a long term plan to exacerbate fighting between Marr and Roze. They didn't have a land connection and I made one! Then I tried to get the hell out of the way. Mostly they fought each other, sometimes they've veered northwards up the rail line to fight me.
I've been invading Roze as well. I took her peripheral cities, and I've got a 1 city strong foothold on the Jungle.
I've hit a bit of a logistical limit though. My frenemies the Morganites have given me tons of troops, and stabbed me in the back, often on the same turn! It feels like a bug. Once I thought their excuse was trying to kill the Cyborgs on the same square, but I think they've also done it without that excuse. The 1st time they did it, I trashed 1 minor city without going after any other troops, then reestablished our alliance. The 2nd time, I took the Hunter-Seeker Algorithm away from them. That was convenient because Roze was starting to hammer me with probe teams.
I went through this period when we only had a Treaty, where I built elaborate double rail lines all through my empire, because the Morganites kept jamming up my rails with Cloaking Field units! I didn't want to tell him to get lost, because it would have probably meant war.
My next objective is to seize the Citizens' Defense Force from the Data Angels, so that I can actually get rid of their Perimeter Defenses when attacking. I need a bit more of a railhead to do it. I haven't built new Former units in ages. Got Super Formers a long time ago, but have never built any land versions. My old empire is well developed, but my new acquisitions have some spots in them. I've built Punishment Spheres on all of those cities. It's the Jungle, I want the population.
If I'm ever freed up to deal with Marr, I'll make scorched earth of him. It would be nice if I could get someone other than Roze to go after him though. They could all send and receive some nukes. Only problem is, Planet is starting to sink. I don't have the tech to Launch Solar Shade.
I would say I'm winning, but other factions are certainly not "down and out" yet. Morgan did succumb to my prediction, that ultimately he'd be under my control. But there were some periods where he was my adjacent equal. If he'd made a move then, it would have been irritating. Now it's more like, "Let me remind you about my reserve of mindworms, and all the Fusion Gatling Speeders you gave me." I don't even use those. They stay behind in case Morgan pulls something unforgivable. My life is mainly about sending donated Fission units to their deaths.
MY 2307. I'm such a jerk. I took the Citizens' Defense Force, then stopped my invasion so that Roze can wear herself out fighting Marr! Better her than me. I'll go after Lal, who isn't even close to me. But as I'm Extremist, he's a dire enemy. His fault, not mine.
Post by: bvanevery on April 01, 2020, 08:16:22 PM
MY 2324. Marr nukes me!
;marr; ;liftoff ;nuke; ;cha;
I "only" lost 1 of my 2 cities I've taken from Roze in the Monsoon Jungle. Oddly, he didn't nuke the one with the Citizens' Defense Force in it. Maybe he thinks he's going to capture it.
My reluctance to wage a war of total conquest, instead preferring to wage limited wars to make other humans comply with my progress, has had a price. It's time for the gloves to come off! I'm starting to manufacture X Chaos Needlejets. There's gonna be nothing left of this alien jerk when I'm done with him. Guess I'll need some carriers too. And I'll need to keep Lal off me, getting my planes down there somehow. I suppose I could advance over land and just make airbases. Just liquidate everything in front of me. My mindworms won't be useless either, I'll make some of those.
I wanted Roze to do the fighting with Marr, but it's clearly not working.
I finished both the Nano Factory and the Empath Guild this turn. I've finally got infiltration with Marr and Lal. Neither have any new techs. I'm not surprised, as I'm not a complete slouch on labs, and nobody's an especially advanced researcher. I will complete the Network Backbone next year.
Marr has got 4 more nukes in production. In principle, they can hit anywhere on Planet. In practice, I think the last round demonstrates that the AI will target things close by. My core empire is fortunately on the other side of the globe from Marr. Which is why he's had time to build up.
Post by: bvanevery on April 01, 2020, 11:00:37 PM
MY 2325. ;marr; ;liftoff ;nuke; ;roze;
[Limit reached]
;marr; ;liftoff ;nuke; ;cha;
I guess when it says "4 in production", they could be about to finish next year. I didn't check the actual cities building them. That explains the survival of the Citizens' Defense Force last year. It was about to die anyways!
[Limit reached]
;marr; ;liftoff ;nuke; ;roze;
I think that was the Merchant Exchange. No value to me, so far from my capitol.
We're getting 266 meter floods from this. And the Data Angels are "surprise" attacking me. Gosh, what's left to hit on? Some Formers, whoopie. I was expecting most of those to die a long time ago.
I complete the Network Backbone. Cybernetic now has no penalty, but that doesn't really matter. My Extremist is going to keep me at +0 RESEARCH. I could go Police State instead, but part of me really wants to feel what Extremist is like. If I switch from Eudaimonic to Cybernetic, I only have +1 ECONOMY. My income drops from 267 credits/turn to 35 credits/turn. Pretty big hit. I feel greedy. In principle, mindworms can do all the work, right? In practice, I now need to build a lot of Perimeter Defenses.
I take over a Data Angel city, working my way towards a land bridge with Lal, and we have a Truce again.
Post by: bvanevery on April 02, 2020, 04:02:51 PM
MY 2331. I finally got the opportunity to try to take over a base with a missile. I was working on a Usurper base, hitting it with X Chaos Needlejets, but I crashed my plane with a misguided screen scrolling, and they've moved in a solid AAA unit. Lal did me the favor of settling within the hovering range of my missile.
[Limit reached]
Bug verified. Acknowledgement in readme_mod.txt for zoneplate!
I will try giving the Missile chassis a range of 4. The chassis speed is 30, which becomes 32 with a Fission reactor. That's 128 squares, enough to hit anything on even a Giant map.
There's a bug where if missile speed is 84 or higher, the game hangs. I hope that isn't true of missile fuel remaining. I'll be playtesting.
Post by: bvanevery on April 03, 2020, 02:25:59 AM
[Limit reached]
Too perfect. You can't plan this stuff! It all coming down to keeping my pipsqueak ally Zhakarov around all this time. Who's sitting on the Human Genome Project, so yes it's a sacrifice.
The Extremist is now the moral center, the very Moral High Ground, of Planet! Clearly we must all live as Planet would have it.
[Limit reached]
Last year I did my first orbital insertion. This year I colonize auspiciously! Rockin' with +4 PLANET and a whole lotta Wealth money. Hope I don't get nuked. Hope the Manifold Nexus doesn't sink, although at least this early, I should be able to do something about it. Oh, wait. Just remembered that raising destroys it also. Urm. Well, I hope things don't sink.
Generally I'm building Flechette Defense Systems everywhere. I haven't built any Orbital Defense Pods yet. That will be the next stage. Most places, I'm not building Robotic Assembly Plants. Only where I've got an Aerospace Complex for the most part. We're already having flooding and I don't want to contribute much to it. I've been relinking my sunken land bridges and putting rails through them again. When that's done, I'll start on some biological terror for the Alien.
Um, a base that I took from Roze, that was just across a water channel from Lal, is gone now. Doesn't look like it sunk. Did I miss a fight in all the confusion? Weird. Oh well, it wasn't important.
Ah heck. I'm making so much money, let's go for Knowledge! +5 PLANET and I still make more money than I can use. I could actually go Cybernetic next year and get +1 RESEARCH. Hmm, or I could do Thought Control and have +0 RESEARCH as before. Would be -4 RESEARCH without my faction special ability. Choices choices choices.
Post by: bvanevery on April 03, 2020, 03:44:32 AM
MY 2338. SOB he nuked me just as my ODP screen was about to go up. Don't think there's a SP in that one, but it's a size 14 city, original to my empire, fully developed. And it'll cut my empire in half, I'll have to raise land again. This is definitely the most nukes I've ever taken in any game and kept playing. I think because they never hit anything truly crucial. Still, this guy is annoying! Even with a unilateral orbital insertion capability, I haven't managed to get my empire "turned around" to taking on such a distant enemy. He's mocking me with fireballs!
Hmm, well at least the crater didn't actually cut my land bridge. Weak. I think that's the last toss he's getting at me, barring a solar flare at the wrong moment.
[Limit reached]
Morgan's polluting like crazy and we're in for another 200 meter rise. Fortunately most are sane enough to try to reverse it.
I've finally abandoned Extremist. I'm Police State Green Knowledge Thought Control with the Ascetic Virtues, resulting in +3 POLICE, +3 PROBE, and +5 PLANET!
MY 2341. You know, I'm really tired of this game. Finally achieving some things, that in other games I'd have probably managed 100 years beforehand, sorta informs how I really feel about this now. All I'm doing is building up stuff. It doesn't seem like I'll ever have a "good", clever way to fight the Usurpers. The unclever approach is to railroad them, and I've certainly done an entire global destruction of an Alien before. Been there, done that! This game might have been After Action Report worthy, if I had started on that from the beginning, because of the excessive nukeings. But as luck would have it, only some of my peripheral cities got scorched, and it's no great hardship. I'm just not seeing a future in which this game remains interesting. I'm thinking things would go faster, if I just kick people out of their continents immediately and stop being so nice to everybody.
So in my true developer form, I quit! I did actually tweak the Explore tree and fix the missile bug, at least I hope so. Haven't actually tested the new version of missiles. I would have just discovered Locusts of Chiron, in my new tree. I've done massive Locust invasions before, it's not new.
Post by: bvanevery on April 23, 2020, 10:50:50 PM
Changed from version 1.41 to 1.42:
PROBE WAR
- Thought Control: moved to C6 Retroviral Engineering. In my mod, this is the compulsion of the Data Angels. But they are Conquer focused, not Explore focused, so it should be in the Conquer tree. The Explore tree is much more pure now, and I saw a game where the Data Angel AI was never going to learn E6 Homo Superior. It did learn C5 Retroviral Engineering, although it learned some more advanced "pure" Conquer techs first. Thought Control doesn't offer pure Conquer abilities, so unfortunately I won't make it a pure Conquer tech. Retroviral Engineering can be a lore fit, as the game does talk about controlling the population with gases. I have Soporific Gas Pods available with that tech.
- Retroviral Engineering: set growth=3 and wealth=1. This imitates C2 Planetary Networks.
INDIGENOUS WAR
- Locusts of Chiron: moved to E6 Homo Superior. C5 Centauri Psi already gives the Xenoempathy Dome, which is deadly, and Centauri Preserve, which can make mindworms even deadlier. With the removal of Thought Control, Homo Superior didn't have a guaranteed offensive benefit. Locusts are powerful, and I have to wonder why I ever allowed them so early. Probably just had too much stuff to shove into the Explore tree.
- Homo Superior: set power=1. It no longer gives Thought Control. I want Explore to be required to learn indigenous life form warfare techniques, with only a small chance of discovery through Conquer.
- Brood Pit: now costs 360 and has maintenance=6, same as a Quantum Converter. This is a wonder facility. It gives a lifecycle bonus, makes indigenous life forms absurdly cheap, and gives +2 POLICE in its city. It shouldn't be something spammed at every base or just the "next to have" on somebody's list of things to make.
SPACE WAR
- Missile chassis: now has Range=4, instead of unlimited range. Playtester zoneplate discovered that unlimited range was making Conventional Missiles behave as Gravships. They could capture bases! Range=4 is enough to hit anything on even a Giant planet.
- Geosynchronous Suvery Pod: now costs 12 and is available with C9 Graviton Theory. I did not realize it confers an additional defense bonus, over and above an existing Sensor Array. That makes its value similar to a Tachyon Field, even if the defense bonus isn't as much. I don't want players having this earlier in the game.
- Flechette Defense System: now available with C9 Graviton Theory. I don't want players having this earlier in the game.
ECONOMIC VICTORY
- Ecological Engineering: changed 2nd prereq to B2 Industrial Economics. I want this tech at the intersection of the Explore and Build trees, and not an Explore exclusive. Builders may need Fungicidal Tanks to clear walls of fungus in the early game, and the Weather Paradigm is extremely valuable to Builders.
- Technology for economic victory: changed to C6 Fusion Power. It takes a staggeringly long time to learn B9 Global Energy Theory, and then even longer to amass 138k credits to win the game. I nearly de facto completed the tech tree with only 10% budgeted for LABS. Economic Victory should be a completely different option than transcending, it shouldn't be a tech climb.
- Turns to corner Global Energy Market: changed to 5. For whatever reason, it takes absurd and stupendous amounts of money to corner the market, like 138k in my last game. Even with Orbital Power Transmitters, solar flares will come along that completely wipe them out and make one start over. I've cut my LABS budget to 10% while pursuing money, and I'm still in danger of completing the tech tree without even trying. Why would anyone bother to corner the market if it's so painful? If this amount of money has been achieved, there's really no reason to torture the human player with excessive numbers of turns to hold off the enemy. Enemies should get a chance to strike at the offending capitol and that's it! If they can't do it, too bad, game over.
The attachment limit per post is 5, and I eventually ran out of room at the top of the thread. Consequently, this becomes the new home of version 1.42. It was downloaded 161 times before I moved it here.
Post by: zoneplate on May 06, 2020, 04:45:52 AM
I'll be sure to drop in if I encounter any bugs or anything but otherwise I hope you're doing well and keep refining this thing!
Post by: bvanevery on May 06, 2020, 05:38:46 AM
Post by: bvanevery on May 11, 2020, 04:06:00 PM
I'm also experimenting with every single faction having a distinct set of research foci. If you take all the combos of 1, 2, and 3 research foci, you end up with exactly 14 different combos. Although it sounds nice on paper, this is contingent on the AI factions actually performing better under this regime. And not ending up feeling too generic, which could be a problem with introducing the 3 combos.
Whether I do that or not, I'm convinced that the pure Conquer focus is not benefiting the Hive or the Data Angels, and something must be done about that.
Also, Thought Control is pretty useless and irrelevant to the Data Angels. I originally picked it because no faction had a Thought Control compulsion, and I wanted more variety in the compulsions. Narratively it does suit them, as long as you reimagine Roze as quite a bit darker and more abusive than her jazzy dialog would suggest. All that mind control power going to her head, basically. Game mechanically though, she simply doesn't need what Thought Control is offering. She already has lots of PROBE. By that point in the game, most factions will have solved their happiness problems, so POLICE is not that valuable.
I tried a game where I removed the Data Angels' compulsion to choose Thought Control. I found myself very bored by it though. They were my ally, my next door neighbor on my border. I foresaw that they'd never be unhappy with me. Like the Believers, they had no compulsions at all, but unlike the Believers they were Erratic not Aggressive. That meant they'd sit around without any conflict and I don't like that.
So if the Data Angels are going to keep their compulsion, Thought Control is going to have to change to something useful. I will experiment with an INDUSTRY bonus, since I don't have one, and consider it to be rather powerful and unbalancing. For a Future Society that could be ok though.
Post by: bvanevery on May 14, 2020, 05:11:07 AM
Post by: Hagen0 on May 15, 2020, 04:14:44 PM
Post by: bvanevery on May 15, 2020, 05:39:00 PM
There is no guarantee that my mod "as is" will work with Thinker Mod. I didn't used to have a specific concern, but recently I tried combining with The Will To Power mod, which uses Thinker code. There are collisions about the meaning of the "high bit flag" hack for predefined units. It's a good hack with the stock binary, because it allows some units to be upgraded that otherwise couldn't be. However in TWTP it makes units cost an exorbitant amount. Since this doesn't happen with the stock binary, someone's code has changed something. I don't know if that's specific to TWTP, or if it's inherited behavior from Thinker Mod.
I don't test other people's mods for compatibility, because working relationships and boundaries of responsibility "fell through" a long time ago. Everyone is just doing what they think is best and not working together. This is primarily for game design reasons. We don't agree about what should or shouldn't be done, or how layers of design should be separated, like when alphax.txt should or shouldn't be touched. Sometimes stuff collides. The only reason I know about this collision, is because I tried combining with TWTP relatively recently.
Scient's patch will combine just fine, but it's for bugfixes, not AI improvement. I don't support Scient's patch, in the sense of testing with it or making sure there's compatibility, but there's no reason it wouldn't work. All of Scient's patch's changes to alphax.txt are optional, so when they're overwritten, there's no problem.
Similarly, the PRACX graphical patch will work. It has nothing to do with gameplay.
It would not be much work to "integrate" my mod with any of the other binary patch mods, but it is not work that I personally will ever do. The main benefit I get from my own mod, is showcasing my own skill as a game designer. Not sharing the limelight with someone else. I hope my mod functions as a product advertizement for my own commercial game someday. You saw what I could deliver on my own, so hopefully someday, you think it's a reason to pay me for something.
In case someone else wants to do such work, and put it in front of the public, and be responsible for it, and continue to ensure that it works, I put my own work under a Creative Commons CC-BY-NC license. Someone else can do all of that, if they really want to. It wouldn't be hard, as open sourcey things go. Way, way less hard than what it actually took me to do this, 2 years. But for me personally, it's busywork that doesn't gain me anything.
Someone else can make their "fame" on being a skilled and disciplined integrator.
Post by: zoneplate on May 16, 2020, 12:02:42 PM
Post by: bvanevery on May 16, 2020, 03:09:36 PM
Post by: bvanevery on May 16, 2020, 08:04:06 PM
Last game seemed to demonstrate that Explore, Discover results in seemingly powerful play by the Data Angels. Although now I wonder about them doing Thought Control, since that's not part of the Explore or Discover tech trees. It's Build and Conquer. They actually learned the new Eudaimonia first and completed the Xenoempathy Dome. I suppose that makes sense for an Explore oriented faction. I didn't really want to make them Explore Discover, but it's what was left after divvying up all the faction research combos.
Trying a new game with 7 random factions.
Post by: Geo on May 17, 2020, 12:19:03 AM
I stopped playing my current 1.43 test game as the Cyborgs. I was bizarrely unable to overtake any other factions. I took full advantage of the new "Cybernetic gives money" style, but despite building all the research facilities, I was pretty much outclassed by the Data Angels. They built almost every Secret Project. My empire was physically isolated and I kept dealing with minor land and sea incursions from other factions. Kept trying to build up in my isolation, and kept feeling like that strategy wasn't worth anything. It may be that the uniquification of research foci, has injected a lot more Discover research into the game's tech economy. This + AI research bonuses on Transcend, may result in trying to win a tech race being basically unprofitable. I don't know yet if that's bad per se, but it was definitely boring to try to do that, and pretty much fail. I'm sitting around building more and more facilities, trying to get an advantage that way, and finding that I basically cannot.
That's good, isn't it? It means one could play the game at a lower difficulty level when bonuses are more on par and still have the AI a shot at overtaking the player if he isn't careful enough.
Post by: bvanevery on May 17, 2020, 12:36:53 AM
I think I'd be a lot happier if the Data Angels weren't succeeding like Gaians. The Gaians were in the game too, and partly sitting on the Monsoon Jungle, so it was a very fair test of balanced vs. overpowered. The Gaians did fine but I think they should be getting to the Xenoempathy Dome, not the Data Angels.
Maybe the problem is with a big increase in Discover based research, many more factions are getting advanced tech on their own. Which makes my Data Angels' automatic Datalinks ability, way more powerful than previous.
Ok I've done a reshuffle, with the Data Angels now as Discover Conquer. So that they can end up with Thought Control and not become the new Gaians. I'll run an AI only game and see how it goes as I walk the dog.
Post by: zoneplate on May 17, 2020, 02:32:12 AM
Because the AI is a moron about Bunkers. It builds lots of them, which wastes terrain production time that could be used for something more profitable. It doesn't man them, which just gives an easy invasion route for the human player. Haven't you noticed how trivial it is to take apart someone's empire when they've made all sorts of Bunkers for your convenience?
ahh, I see. I suppose that makes sense, yeah - they do sometimes do very very very ill advised things like putting empty bunkers on the me facing side of their bases.
Post by: bvanevery on May 18, 2020, 05:19:51 AM
Started another random test game. Was wandering around my 2nd colony pod a little more than usual, due to fungus being in the way and trying to get a position that wouldn't have any fungal threats next to it. Finally said ok, can't have a perfect spot. Will at least capture the 2 nutrients I popped from supply pods. And then Morgan shows up, and kills half my empire! No I didn't knowtow to him, I never do. Why has he been such a jerk lately? I didn't change any of his settings, but my Cyborg settings have changed to Discover Build so who knows, maybe he sees me as stiff competition. Or maybe it's selective observation. I'm on a Huge map as usual and shouldn't have a close by enemy, but sometimes it does happen. And he happened to pop a Scout Rover.
Well I think this game is going to be about early genocide. Except that, I'll need to leave 1 base behind to kill him after year 2200, so that he can't escape in a rocket. I'm assuming I won't have any difficulty killing him, which strictly speaking, remains to be seen. Maybe I'll just make him surrender. I dunno. I'm mad now though. :mad:
This might be one of the only times the Cyborgs' steal tech upon conquer ability is actually of any use. In a typical game they're ahead of others so not so much point in conquering to steal.
2 test games ago I was also the Cyborgs. That's the game where I felt like I was treading water and not making any progress, just keeping up with other AI factions in tech. I suppose it should be remembered that Cyborgs are only +1 RESEARCH in my mod. They're not the University, they're not a powerhouse of research. They're also inferior to the Gaians at research nowadays, as Gaians get +1 RESEARCH and free Biology Labs. I have wondered if the Cyborgs are underpowered, but I did give them these encryption and probe abilities. The AI doesn't really know how to make use of that, but perhaps I can as a human player.
Die, Morgan, die! ;morganercise ;nuke; ;liftoff
[Limit reached]
Well maybe this is just one of these rare games where I get to die. Boxed in by a Battle Ogre? Mindworm has to stir up when I try to get away? That original Scout Rover was waiting to the north, so I don't believe there was some other way to go. I'm totally 8-balled. Those Scout Rovers in the south, I only recently popped them. They haven't had time to get back, and they can't scratch the Battle Ogre anyways. I completed a Clean Former earlier, but the Battle Ogre blew it away without even taking a wound. Its only legacy is the Sensor Array and patch of forest. I had also made a farm, where the Battle Ogre is standing now. It pillaged it. I've got 2 Green Clean Scouts in my capitol. Don't know if they can hold the line and at this point, I don't really care. I haven't seen a game randomly this bad in, well, forever.
[Limit reached]
Many turns ago, I got Yang's comm frequency. Of course he declared war on me. And now after having somewhat beaten off the Morganites with repeated suicide attacks with untrained Scouts, I get to do the same with Yang! Except I find out next turn that he's got Synthmetal Sentinels to accompany him. Yang's been walking this crap across the map just to give me grief. Fortunately those Sentinels are very stupid and harmlessly commit suicide on me.
At 2 AM I decided this game was viable, but lame. So I quit.
Post by: lolada on May 21, 2020, 10:53:11 AM
Did you nerf that battle ogre? 6 attack is a lot for how early you can get it.. in line 1st turn of the game.
Post by: bvanevery on May 21, 2020, 09:38:15 PM
I can almost never bring myself to pay off a faction to leave me alone. I almost think it shouldn't be part of the play mechanics. It's the game rubbing it in my face that my personal agency has been destroyed. Most of the time my agency has not been destroyed anyways, I'm perfectly capable of fighting. The AI is just wasting my time with taunts and trash talk. The very few times when I really am likely to die, what's my incentive to keep playing? How does this fit into a general schema of available tactics? I don't usually feel like I'm playing a game at that point. I feel like I'm experiencing the overwhelming resource advantages and luck that the AI was awarded.
I'm on record as not liking "monster" challenges, where opponents have been dialed up to One Hundred and Eleven.
My willingness to participate in this one, was contingent upon its use of real world time. At 2 AM, time limit expired. Sleep is more valuable, interesting, and important to me.
I learned a long time ago, with friends, that if you want to keep an inferior opponent playing with you, you'd better not rag on them too hard! Your victim will decide they don't like being a victim and they'll stop.
Post by: Douglas on May 21, 2020, 11:03:03 PM
I usually use a very build-heavy play style, which can easily result in me greatly outclassing Santiago/Miriam/Yang/etc. in income, production, and research, while also having a much smaller military than they have. I can beat them, but in order to do it I have to divert my production capacity into building a military to match theirs, and I'll take much fewer losses if I do that several turns before they attack.
If they demand Fusion Power, though, well... screw that. I'm not sure I've ever accepted a demand for that technology.
Post by: bvanevery on May 21, 2020, 11:24:01 PM
I think if the game implemented more of a diplomatic reality, I could get on board with it. But it doesn't implement something like our real world diplomatic power structure.
Post by: bvanevery on May 24, 2020, 02:27:25 AM
Post by: bvanevery on May 28, 2020, 02:49:41 AM
[Limit reached]
I also gave the Cult +1 SUPPORT and changed them from Aggressive to Erratic. The latter is someone's theory that Aggressive factions do not build enough facilities to keep up in the midgame onwards. I forget who; I'll need to look up whose idea that was. Here is now the Cult in an endgame with the Free Drones, neck and neck on the graph! The Free Drones actually went for the new Thought Control. INDUSTRY didn't work out as a bonus. All the AI factions loved it way too much and wouldn't choose anything else unless forced.
At first I didn't get why the Cult was avoiding Extremist. Then I realized it preferred to have +4 RESEARCH. This makes me think I should give them a simple IMPUNITY to the effects of Extremist, instead of IMMUNITY to RESEARCH penalties. That's boring, but it looks like it would actually improve AI performance.
Post by: Nexii on May 28, 2020, 03:00:44 AM
^^“Efficient energy transmission for powerful weaponry”
It's a tough one like many. I ended up interpreting it that Morgan was selling weapons to benefit his economy.
The end of the tree got a lot more hand wavey. Starting out I thought it would be more obvious what techs should get what and how they should link up but it wasn't always the case. About half felt 'Discover' to me just by reading the descriptions and ignoring the traditional benefits
Post by: bvanevery on May 28, 2020, 05:16:43 AM
The voice acting is Morgan talking about the economic value. He doesn't talk about superconductor weapons, he talks about superconducting fiber. It's glorified fiber optic cable or something. It makes our present economy possible. It's not our present military being made possible, it's the entire economy. The meaning of Morgan's words is obvious and plain.
Morgan also never takes the role of an arms merchant, in any of the voice acting. His character is about making money. He does talk about gnarly medical research once, that makes you wonder how he managed to cross over into University territory? But there's no "Morgan Nukes" to talk about.
You are being confused by the fact that at some point in SMAC's production, they rearranged and repurposed something. Or the left hand didn't know what the right was doing. Or they thought it would get boring having so much military-speak for so many military techs, so they did some economic-speak.
The end of the tree got a lot more hand wavey. Starting out I thought it would be more obvious what techs should get what and how they should link up but it wasn't always the case. About half felt 'Discover' to me just by reading the descriptions and ignoring the traditional benefits
Well, a specific objection, I can contemplate and decide if something really needs fixing.
A general objection? That's not really actionable. Tim's initial reactions, made me realize that the perceived quality of narrative and lore continuity is relative, not absolute. Like I don't think Tim considered any degrees of improvement, because he didn't really believe in improvement and didn't try at all. Other people clearly believe in it more than he does. But how much betterness can there actually be? What's the optimum fitting? I know that it can't all be made good. These are narrative elements, and they aren't designed in a coherent enough narrative to make something that's absolutely good. They're chunks of world building. They're like stones that you try to fit together to make a fountain with, without the benefit of mortar to hold them together.
So yeah, if you're looking for a transition that "doesn't make sense", you're going to find it somewhere.
I mean at least I did things like use Intellectual Integrity for a Zhakarov science project, not police and silly militia marching around shooting at illegal aliens.
Post by: Nexii on May 28, 2020, 05:20:23 AM
Nonlinear Mathematics was another one that stood out. It's short code is Chaos and the tech short says it harnesses Chaos Theory. Yet at some point it was swapped to give Impact weapons.
Post by: bvanevery on May 28, 2020, 06:33:03 AM
With the Aliens, in close to 20 years of play, I've rarely noticed these TECHSHORTS or seen anything amiss. So for me, that puts it at even less of a concern than, Cha Dawn talking about God because she's Extremist in my mod now. I'm not going to fix that, due to my licensing concerns.
Post by: bvanevery on May 31, 2020, 08:11:19 PM
Changed from version 1.42 to 1.43:
SOCIAL ENGINEERING:
- Extremist politics: moved to E1 Social Psych. It's actually one of the most basic ways that human beings have organized themselves. The Cult of Planet has an Explore only focus and needs to be able to easily research it. I think it's a better lore fit than putting it with E2 Centauri Empathy.
- Social Psych: set wealth=3. It gives Extremist politics.
- Eudaimonic future society: removed ECONOMY bonus. Added +1 PLANET bonus. Removed MORALE penalty. Added -2 POLICE penalty. Eudaimonia had already evolved to be pretty close to the Planet part of the tech tree. I realized I could make this a more appropriate home for a PLANET bonus, and that both GROWTH and PLANET are part of the Explore research focus. The act of making money can be moved to Cybernetic. Someone convinced me that a POLICE penalty was appropriate for Eudaimonic, that a utopianist society wouldn't want police.
- Eudaimonia: set wealth=2 and growth=4, making it an E6 tech. Eudaimonic now gives a PLANET bonus, and +2 GROWTH is the key to pop booming. The ECONOMY bonus has been removed. The JUSTICE bonus can make some money, as can increasing population, but it's not worth wealth=3.
- Knowledge value: moved to D4 Intellectual Integrity. Removed PLANET bonus. Raised RESEARCH bonus to +2. I've never actually liked that Discover oriented factions become honorary PLANET factions. I've tolerated it because narratively it could make sense, that mindworms are cooked up in labs. I don't want Green to be the only source of a PLANET bonus. Previously I didn't have any other logical place to offer the bonus, but repurposing Eudaimonic fixes that. I've moved it to Tier 4 as other Values are given on Tier 4. I've been allowing too many LABS boosts too early.
- Secrets of the Human Brain: set wealth=0. It no longer gives Knowledge, so there's no JUSTICE bonus.
- Intellectual Integrity: set wealth=2 and growth=0. A JUSTICE bonus can increase money. Knowledge has a POLICE penalty, which outweighs the happiness of a JUSTICE bonus.
- Wealth value: raised MORALE penalty to -2. Eudaimonia has lost its MORALE penalty, and I want a total of -2 MORALE to be a thing in the game.
- Power value: reduced GROWTH penalty to -1. Some playtesters have complained that -2 was a bit harsh. Preventing the player from pop booming, is more important than greatly inhibiting growth.
- Advanced Military Algorithms: now a C5 tech. While reshuffling techs for research and narrative continuity, this was the best place for it.
- Cybernetic future society: removed JUSTICE bonus and POLICE penalty. Added +1 ECONOMY bonus, -1 JUSTICE penalty, and -1 PLANET penalty. There's no good narrative reason for cyborgs to oppose to the use of police, nor for them to be especially just. In fact it is a natural surveillance state, and Miriam complains vehemently about the evil of such a state. I was just short on game mechanics for the future societies. With the changes in Eudaimonic, I realized this could be the money-and-research choice. The PLANET penalty contrasts it with Eudaimonic. I don't think a machine culture is especially friendly to the organic consciousness of Planet.
- Digital Sentience: set wealth=3 and growth=0. Cybernetic now gives an ECONOMY bonus. It no longer gives the Thinker citizen.
- Thought Control future society: added +1 SUPPORT bonus. Previously this choice wasn't useful. It may still not be. I experimented with giving it an INDUSTRY bonus, but the AI liked that so much, it wouldn't pick any other Future Society unless forced.
- Retroviral Engineering: set wealth=3. Thought Control gives a SUPPORT bonus.
FACTIONS
- Cult of Planet: added +1 SUPPORT bonus. Removed IMMUNITY to RESEARCH. Added IMPUNITY to Extremist politics. Changed personality to Erratic. The Cult was consistently underperforming in the mid to late game. It would take up a lot of space, and its mindworms would be hard to kill, but it would never develop the tech or build the facilities necessary to win the game. It would stagnate. Some modder believes that Aggressive factions do not build many facilities, so I'm trying their proposed fix. The Cult doesn't have enough military prowess anyways, they're just not that threatening on offense. In practice they will have +3 SUPPORT and will be able to support units up to the size of the base. In testing, the Cult actually made it to late game standing toe to toe with the Free Drones. However it refused to choose Extremist, instead preferring Frontier and amassing +4 RESEARCH with other social choices. This indicates that a simple IMPUNITY to Extremist, although boring, is more likely to aid AI performance than IMMUNITY to RESEARCH.
- Data Angels: changed secondary compulsion to nil. They have plenty of PROBE already and the AI can figure out if it wants more PROBE. This gives the AI more flexibility.
- Free Drones: changed primary compulsion to Socialist. Clearly, that's what their narrative is actually about. Also unlike the original game, my version of Eudaimonic is not about money and industry. It's about growing harmoniously with Planet.
- Caretakers: changed primary compulsion to Eudaimonic. I never really bought the Planned alien storylines in the original game. I think they used Planned because it wasn't already taken as a compulsion. It's a pity that Eudaimonic dialog doesn't have any alien flavor, but I already suffer that with Conqueror Marr's dialog about Power.
- Hive: changed secondary compulsion to GROWTH. Removed IMPUNITY to Cybernetic. Added IMPUNITY to Eudaimonic. Because the Hive has +1 GROWTH, if it picks Socialist and Eudaimonic it can pop boom without the need of a Golden Age. The -2 POLICE penalty has been moved from Cybernetic to Eudaimonic, so this is how the Hive's immunity to POLICE penalties must be implemented.
- Pirates: removed ROBUST to MORALE. Added IMPUNITY to Wealth. The MORALE penalty has increased to -2. I don't want the Pirates to be affected by it. Eudaimonic lost its MORALE penalty, and there are currently no other MORALE penalties in the SE table. This is the most straightforward way to keep the Pirates from being penalized for picking Wealth.
FACTION RESEARCH FOCI
Every faction AI now has a unique research focus combo. This is to diversify the AI strategies used in the game, and to improve the AI performance of some factions. In particular, the previously pure Conquer focus of the Data Angels, the Hive, and the Usurpers was judged to be ineffective. When combos are taken 1, 2, and 3 at a time, there are exactly 14 combos. These are distributed as follows:
Explore - Cult
Discover - University
Build - Morganites
Conquer - Spartans
Explore, Discover - Gaians
Explore, Build - Pirates
Explore, Conquer - Caretakers
Discover, Build - Angels
Discover, Conquer - Usurpers
Build, Conquer - Drones
Explore, Discover, Build - Peacekeepers
Explore, Discover, Conquer - Hive
Explore, Build, Conquer - Believers
Discover, Build, Conquer - Cyborgs
The Caretakers and Usurpers are given "less well rounded" choices because the AI will do Directed Research. They may not need to Build so much energy infrastructure, as the more bases they gain, the more money they make in their internal trade networks. The Data Angels are given a "less well rounded" choice because they're going to gain techs automatically through their faction ability.
TERRAFORMING
- Technology to allow 3 nutrients in a square: now E3 Centauri Genetics. It can be a lore fit.
- Technology to allow 3 energy in a square: now B3 Superconductor. It's a lore fit.
- Technology to allow 3 minerals in a square: now B3 Ecological Engineering. It's a lore fit.
- Ecological Engineering: set wealth=4 and growth=3. It increases minerals, doesn't increase food, and no longer gives Aquafarm.
- Aquafarm: moved to B5 Advanced Ecological Engineering. Now costs 10 and maintenance is 2. It's as powerful as a Soil Enricher, which has already been delayed until that tech. I never used to use Aquafarms all that much, so I didn't appreciate their overwhelming power. Lately in my test games, it has made me question why anyone would build a Tree Farm.
- Thermocline Transducer: moved to B6 Industrial Automation. Now costs 10 and maintenance is 2. The oceans still have too much easy energy in them. This puts the Aquafarm, Thermocline Transducer, and Subsea Trunkline on a tiered sequence.
- Fungal Payload: moved to E6 Eudaimonia. The strategy of peppering an enemy with fungus is not often used, and might as well be tried by someone so inclined. Previous experience is it's unlikely to be all that effective, but it might be a good invasion adjunct to the Xenoempathy Dome.
- Super Tensile Solids: now an E7 tech. Perhaps the AI will make bigger cities if Habitation Domes come a bit earlier.
- N-Space Compression: now a B8 tech. Set power=2, wealth=4, and growth=3. It is the ultimate terraforming tool, especially if Planet is sinking underwater. The game might be more interesting if land can be raised earlier. It is now made somewhat related to a Planet Buster, so I want it to have some Conquer continuity. It can be used militarily for bridging continents or raising sea bases out of the water for easier capture.
SPACEFLIGHT
- Drop Pods: moved to C6 Synthetic Fossil Fuels. C5 Doctrine: Air Power is overburdened with benefits.
- Missile chassis: moved to C6 Synthetic Fossil Fuels. This is when the Missile Launcher weapon is given. I wish to regard the missile chassis not as "space flight", but merely a rather long range missile. This will allow me to put the spaceflight techs later and make them for satellites only.
- Conventional Payload: moved to C6 Synthetic Fossil Fuels. This is when the Missile Launcher weapon is given, and I want to move the Planet Buster higher up the tech tree.
- Salvage Unity Fusion Core: moved to C6 Synthetic Fossil Fuels. An expendable missile should be enough to knock it out of orbit. 500 credits is not worth anything later in the game.
- Planet Buster weapon: moved to C7 Probability Mechanics. None of the earlier weapons systems have sufficient power to put large holes in the surface of a planet. This is fairly high up the Conquer tech tree, so will require a lot of Conquer focus to obtain.
- Flechette Defense System: moved to C7 Probability mechanics. Graviton Theory was overloaded. It's a ground based defense, and it is about spraying clouds of small particles at an incoming missile.
- Orbital Spaceflight: renamed to Orbital Construction and made an E8 tech. New short id "OrbCon". Set power=3, wealth=3, and growth=4. It gives the Sky Hydroponics Lab and the Space Elevator. I did not like having abundant food available earlier in the game. The satellite UI activates when Sky Hydroponics Labs are available, it's hardwired into the game. Thus, all satellites must be given by either this tech or a later dependent tech.
- Launch Solar Shade: moved to E8 Orbital Construction.
- Increase Solar Shade: moved to E8 Orbital Construction.
- Melt Polar Caps: moved to E8 Orbital Construction. It's nonsensical that humanity would have a magic means of melting the polar caps instantly through terrestrial effort. Earlier in the game it should be accomplished via eco-damage.
- Sentient Econometrics: now a B8 tech. I need a Tier 8 Build tech as a prereq for Tier 9 satellite techs.
- Advanced Spaceflight: renamed to Orbital Supremacy and made a C9 tech. New short id "OrbSup". I want it to take more work to get an Orbital Defense Pod screen up.
- Geosynchronous Survey Pod: moved to C9 Orbital Supremacy. It fits, and Graviton Theory was overloaded.
- Graviton Theory: now a C10 tech. It just didn't fit at Tier 8 and it was making the Space Elevator not so interesting to obtain for orbital insertions.
CONQUER TECHS
- Command Center: moved to C1 Doctrine: Loyalty. It's a lore fit.
- Doctrine: Loyalty: now a C1 tech. Set power=4, wealth=0, and growth=0. It only gives the Command Center. I had way too many low tier Explore techs.
- Punishment Sphere: moved to B2 Ethical Calculus. It's a lore fit. Options to be weighed in the balance.
- Deep Pressure Hull: moved to C2 Adaptive Doctrine. It's not an interesting ability because the AI just ignores it and cheats. Might as well let players try it as a tactic if they want to. Makes C3 Advanced Subatomic Theory less cluttered.
- Skunkworks: moved to D3 Optical Computers. It can be a lore fit and the tech didn't have any ordinary facility to offer.
- Optical Computers: set power=3 and wealth=3. The Skunkworks saves on minerals when prototyping units and gets them into the field faster.
- Monopole Magnets: set power=4, wealth=0, and growth=2, making it a C3 tech. I don't have enough Tier 3 Conquer techs. It now only gives Heavy Transport and mag tubes. They are better for conquering and internal defense than they are for exploring.
- Doctrine: Initiative: now a C5 tech. I have too many Conquer techs on Tier 4, and not enough on Tier 5. There's no particular reason it has to come before Doctrine: Air Power, they could be simultaneous developments. Players can get around Huge maps with Foils just fine because they move 5, even if Cruisers are better. I don't think the Maritime Control Center needs to be handed out too quickly.
- Carrier Deck: moved to C5 Doctrine: Initiative. If a faction doesn't actually know how to build planes yet, it's not important. They just won't have anything to land on the Carrier yet. It makes C5 Doctrine: Air Power less cluttered.
- Neural Grafting: now a C4 tech. It's only important for making Cruisers and Needlejets have 2 abilities. It's now a prereq for both C5 Doctrine: Initiative and C5 Doctrine: Air Power.
- Deep Radar: moved to C4 Neural Grafting. This allows Cruisers and Needlejets to have free radar.
- Gatling Laser: moved to C5 Doctrine: Air Power. Superconductor has Morgan talking about the economic value of superconducting fiber. I'm repurposing it as a Build tech. The strict weapon sequence remains intact and it's totally reasonable for planes to have gatling guns.
- Covert Ops Center: moved to D5 Pre-Sentient Algorithms. This tech didn't have any normal benefits, only the Hunter-Seeker Algorithm. C5 Advanced Military Algorithms was overloaded with benefits. The research focus of the Data Angels has changed to include Discover.
BUILD TECHS
- Industrial Base: now a B1 tech. Set power=1, keep wealth=5 and growth=3. It now only gives Formers, which are mildly useful for conquest. Nexii convinced me that it's more logical for Formers to be given by this tech than Centauri Ecology. I agree, as I think of them as strip mining tools, rather than anything nice to Planet. It has irritated me that Centauri Ecology has been a non-Gaian non-Explore tech.
- Terraforming Unit: moved to B1 Industrial Base.
- Recycling Tanks: moved to E1 Centauri Ecology. I find I always want these at the beginning of the game, and I usually rush them. Having them available earlier may help the AI factions.
- Centauri Ecology: now an E1 tech. Set power=0, wealth=3, and growth=4. It gives food, minerals, and energy, so it's a toss-up whether it would be an Explore or Build tech. It's better lore to have this in the Explore tree, as it's an obvious prereq for E2 Centauri Empathy. I have found the Tier 2 prereqs to be a little crowded and wouldn't mind some pressure relief.
- Capitalist: moved to B2 Industrial Economics.
- Industrial Economics: now a B2 tech. Keep wealth=4 as it only gives Capitalist.
- Energy Bank: moved to B3 Superconductor.
- Superconductor: now a B3 tech. Set power=0 and wealth=4. It gives Energy Bank and the Merchant Exchange. It has Morgan talking about how superconducting fiber alone makes our present economy possible.
- Quantum Converter: now costs 30 and has maintenance 5. I forgot that the factories appear in a restricted sequence, where you must build a Quantum Converter before building a Nanoreplicator.
- Nanoreplicator: now costs 36 and has maintenance 6.
- Matter Editation: now a B11 tech. It needs to come after B10 Quantum Machinery.
SECRET PROJECTS
- Merchant Exchange: moved to B3 Superconductor. Superconducting fiber alone makes our present economy possible.
- Ascetic Virtues: moved to E3 Cyberethics. It can be a lore fit, philosophy and ethics are sorta similar.
- Human Genome Project: moved to E3 Centauri Genetics. It can be a lore fit. It didn't fit Cyberethics. It keeps mindworms and the lifting of food restrictions from being traded.
- Pholus Mutagen: moved to D9 Secrets of Alpha Centauri. This makes that tech have more substantial benefits, is commensurate with Temples of Planet being available there, and makes it possible to delay the earlier Planet oriented secret projects.
- Neural Amplifier: moved to E8 The Will To Power. I did this mainly to make room for E6 Eudaimonia.
- The Will To Power: now an E8 tech. Set wealth=0. It no longer gives Empath or any other wealth benefit.
- Psi Defense: moved to E8 The Will To Power, which gives Psi Attack. They are useless abilities, so might as well keep them in one thematic place.
- Empath Guild: moved to E7 Homo Superior. I did this mainly to make room for E6 Eudaimonia.
- Empath Song: moved to E7 Homo Superior. This is when the Empath and Empath Guild are given, so it's a better lore fit. It's also not necessary to give such a powerful anti-mindworm benefit earlier.
- Homo Superior: now an E7 tech. Set wealth=3. Winning the Governorship with the Empath Guild is worth a lot of money. Empaths also make money.
- Xenoempathy Dome: moved to E6 Eudaimonia. Since Eudaimonic is now about singing kumbaya with Planet, it's a lore fit.
- Secrets of the Manifolds: now a D10 tech. The Manifold Harmonics and the Brood Pit are both really powerful. I want them to come later.
- Manifold Harmonics: now costs 100. It's really powerful.
- Space Elevator: moved to E8 Orbital Construction and now costs 100. Being able to put out cheap satellites is really powerful.
- Industrial Nanorobotics: set power=0 and wealth=0. It no longer gives the Space Elevator.
- Nanominiaturization: now a D8 tech. This is to keep the Discover tree continuous after moving Secrets of the Manifolds.
- Biomachinery: set wealth=2. The Paradise Garden makes people happier, which increases wealth. A population boom increases wealth. Removing the negatives of Power increases wealth.
- Clinical Immortality: moved to D11 Secrets of Creation and now costs 100. 2x voting at this stage of the game is the key to Diplomatic Victory. I'd like Secrets of Creation to have something more interesting to do, and it's a lore fit.
- Matter Editation: set power=0 and growth=0. It no longer gives Clinical Immortality.
- Secrets of Creation: set power=3 and growth=3. It gives Clinical Immortality.
- Bulk Matter Transmitter: moved to E12 Matter Transmission. I don't see why anything should be transmitted before then. It's also not an important or interesting secret project, it just adds minerals.
- Matter Transmission: set power=2, explore=1, and wealth=4, making it a Build tech. It now gives the Bulk Matter Transmitter. The logistical value of a Psi Gate should not exaggerated this late in the game. They take time to build and they only let through 1 unit at a time on both ends. The whole map is long since explored by now. Orbital insertions, mag tubes, and fast gravships have long since provided movement alternatives.
CITIZENS
- Empath: moved to E7 Homo Superior. This is when the Empath Guild is given.
- Thinker citizen: moved to D8 Nanominiaturization. It is not necessary to give the player a better researcher earlier in the game. Advanced labs are already available plenty early. As a Thinker makes people happy, it is a better category fit with Nanohospital.
PLANETARY COUNCIL
- Repeal U.N. Charter: moved to B2 Ethical Calculus. This is a lore fit. Options to be weighed in the balance.
- Unite Behind Me As Supreme Leader: moved to C6 Fusion Power. Diplomatic Victory now has the same tech requirement as Economic victory. Planet Busters are now higher up the tech tree, and I don't want the peaceful victory options to require extra waiting time.
PREDEFINED UNITS
- Formers, Clean Formers: moved to B1 Industrial Base. I think of these as strip miners, not anything Planet friendly.
- Rover Formers: moved to E3 Monopole Magnets. They are the most useful for laying down lots of roads. The AI doesn't really need to be doing that before it has mag tube capability. The Speeder chassis has probably been discovered by Tier 3 and if not, it's not important.
- Sea Formers: removed. The game is supposed to design this unit automatically. This only existed as a failsafe in case that didn't happen.
- Clean Sea Formers: new predefined unit available with E3 Centauri Genetics. Takes the slot that Sea Formers had. It's a fairly cheap unit, costing only 30 minerals, and will help AI factions not run out of SUPPORT. It's also a failsafe in case the game doesn't design a Sea Formers unit.
- Probe Defense: moved to the slot previously taken by the Probe Team.
- Probe Team: removed. The AI will be relying on the armored infantry chassis probe teams.
- Cloaked Recon Rover: moved to C3 Advanced Subatomic Theory. All the prereqs are available by then.
- Cloaked Impact Squad: moved to C5 Doctrine: Air Power. This lags C4 Nonlinear Mathematics by 1 tech.
- Sealurk: changed to a Cruiser chassis. It moved the same speed as an Isle, cost the same, can't carry any passengers, and has a bug where it can't freely pass through sea fungus like an Isle. Also the AI ignores its stealth ability. This made the unit worthless to a human player. Speeding it up, makes it worth building.
- Locusts of Chiron: moved to E8 The Will To Power. They are powerful and the player doesn't need to be given them earlier.
- Cruiser Probe Team: replaced by Cruiser Probe Firewall.
- Cruiser Probe Firewall: new predefined unit with Silksteel armor. Available with C6 Photon/Wave Mechanics. An unarmored Cruiser Probe Team cost 70 minerals and this armored version only costs 90, so it's a good trade for the survivability.
The attachment limit per post is 5, and I eventually ran out of room at the top of the thread. Consequently, this becomes the new home of version 1.43. It was downloaded 154 times before I moved it here.
Post by: bvanevery on June 01, 2020, 05:10:56 AM
;buttdance
;miriam; ;miriam; ;miriam; ;miriam; ;miriam; ;miriam; ;miriam; ;miriam; ;miriam; ;miriam; ;miriam; ;miriam;
:adore:
Post by: bvanevery on June 06, 2020, 07:31:18 PM
I think I'm winning a game of 1.43 as the Caretakers. I'm going for Habitation Domes. However Yang has gotten himself some nukes. Somehow I did not see this coming. I took a city at the periphery of Yang's empire a long time ago, marching some mindworms way across an empty continent between us. Mindworms don't have a lot of holding power though. Eventually he came with a new generation of overwhelming force and took the city, right as I was about to finish a Genejack Factory on it. He used older units and I didn't see any Chaos or Probability troops among them, which is my new threshold for Planet Buster technology. Really surprised that he got a prototype done.
He didn't nuke me, and the city he did nuke, wasn't even that important. Nor would it have been that difficult for him to conquer conventionally, since Miriam only had an isolated foothold of 2 erstwhile Cultist cities on his continent. One of them was completely empty. Yet, there he goes, nuking nuking nuking! Although I don't seem to be targeted, my genuine concern is, what if he nukes one of Miriam's Secret Project cities? She's got the Planetary Energy Grid and I'd rather have that myself. She's sitting on the Monsoon Jungle and she's my nominal next door neighbor. In fact I built a land bridge almost to her, during the Weather Paradigm era. I begged off of invading though. My tech was advancing in such a way, that invasion seemed quite a bit less profitable than just building up my cities.
I think I've got the fastest overall research rate of the game. Nobody else seems to have focused on Discover techs much, and I can pinpoint what I want with Directed Research. I've thought that I could win with a Progenitor Victory, building my Subspace Generators eventually. But I might have to take a detour towards some nuclear self-defense! Might have to do a ground invasion of the Believers, to secure those Secret Projects before Yang blows them to smithereens.
Post by: bvanevery on June 07, 2020, 04:01:47 PM
Seems to be happening either during the Pirates' turn, or as it transitions to the Usurpers' turn, as that's the next faction in the turn order before the crash. In the past, crashes were usually due to an "Interceptor bug". Interceptor would fly out and that would make the game crash for some reason. However none of the factions seem to have any Interceptors. Lots of Needlejets but no Interceptors. Another genre of crasher was "Fungal tower bugs", like when they inappropriately showed up inside of cities, or they're intermixed with regular units in a square. I don't see any of that sort of thing either. So I'm a bit stumped. I figure I just have to write off this game.
I was wondering if Scient's patch could overcome the bug. I tried installing a fresh copy of the game in a new directory, Scient's patch on top of that, and my mod on top of that. Loaded the game successfully. Unfortunately it crashed exactly the same way. So, it isn't a bug that Scient's patch fixed.
I haven't tried it on a different computer. Maybe I'm triggering a graphics card issue.
Post by: Douglas on June 07, 2020, 04:51:35 PM
If you find a bugged square that's showing another location's fungal tower, you could try going back through auto saves to a point before the square became bugged, and play from there.
Post by: bvanevery on June 07, 2020, 09:45:12 PM
Also saw transposed monoliths in that weird game. Guess I'll check those too for sake of form, but I'm expecting nothing.
I wouldn't play this game from an earlier position. Although a somewhat interesting game, it's not that worth it. At this point my interest in the game is getting cold and I'm inclined to just start another one. Maybe I'll be more directly violent instead of sitting back and building. I always say that and rarely do that, lol.
Let this bug entry stand as a record, in case I have further problems. I hope that by improving things, I haven't inadvertently exposed a behavioral bug, that previously my mod wasn't exposing much. That would be annoying, to make progress only to not make progress. I don't think I've actually won a game of 1.43 yet.
[Limit reached]
Hmm, this looks suspicious to me. A fungal tower that might be about to be attacked, that is sitting on 10 meter terrain. I will try deleting the fungal tower and see if things magically get better. Hmm, nope, still crashes.
[Limit reached]
When watching everyone make their moves, the explosion of this Usurper ship, got seriously stuck for awhile. I can't remember if the game crashed afterwards or not. I don't think it did, I think something else happened, or I would have remembered differently. Nevertheless I'll try deleting this ship and see if it solves anything. Hmm, nope. Strike two.
Differential analysis might be to delete an entire faction and see if that changes anything. I'll try every possible deletion of 1 other faction and see if I get control of my game back. The turn order:
- Caretakers - that's me. Can't meaningfully eliminate.
- Morganites - once deleted, game still crashes.
- Cultists - previously eliminated.
- Hive - once deleted, game still crashes.
- Pirates - once deleted, I get my turn.
- Usurpers - once deleted, I get my turn.
- Believers - once deleted, game still crashes.
This suggests to me that the bug is due to Pirate - Usurper combat. But what?
I tried switching my view to the Usurper turn. I saw the Morganites attacking. I saw some human elections. Then the game crashed before the Usurpers ever moved anything. This suggests to me that the Pirates attack the Usurpers, then the game crashes.
I tried switching my view to the Pirates turn. I saw my ally the Morganites moving around. Then Yang attacking me in a few places. Then elections. Then a few of my ships started to move, and then the crash. I never saw any Pirates attacking anybody. Perhaps it is the 1st possible naval battle with the Usurpers somewhere. That will take some guessing.
[Limit reached]
Aha! This is definitely wrong. There wasn't any particular reason why I should have looked at this city. It's at the entrance to part of the Usurper empire, but there aren't otherwise any Pirates particularly near there. Some of the sea bases in the area did used to be Pirate bases though. Some were taken over by probe team actions. In fact I think some passed into Morganite hands first.
Deleting all the units in the city, does stop the crashing. So this is clearly the problem. Now the question is, is there a way to delete only the Pirate ship? Last time I had to do this sort of thing, I didn't find one. The Scenario Editor tools are a bit crude when it comes to units in cities. I'll fiddle around.
Instead of deleting multiple units, I edited the 1 unit to make it Usurper, and I changed its Home to the city it's in. Problem solved!
Post by: bvanevery on June 09, 2020, 07:37:53 AM
Then to add insult to injury, the Pirates came through with a bunch of ships into my back water. I pummeled them with artillery upon their approach, but with ships + someone else's CM, they actually took a size 9 sea base. Since I'm an Alien it immediately dropped to size 1. I can't remember how many facilities were in it, but there wasn't too much left to take back. I didn't have the means to do it either, as other CMs had destroyed my Cruiser Probe Teams in another sea base.
At the same time, an island I had connected to my mainland via the Weather Paradigm, had its land bridge broken by rising waters. The global warming was primarily due to the Morganites and the Believers. So I was isolated from being able to reinforce 2 cities. 1 of 'em, kept getting hit with CMs and Needlejets. I quit when this was really turning into a mess.
I think my position was viable, if I was willing to fight heroically. I wasn't. I was bored out of my mind by this relentless pounding of minor damage, ultimately amounting to major problems. I clearly hadn't used a viable strategy. I wanted to get to Orbital Power Transmitters quickly and somehow do an Economic Victory. I also wanted to grow big cities and use Eudaimonia for pop booming. Both turned out to be pretty much pipe dreams, not even remotely production reality. My original thought of bridging to the Believers and invading them, would have been the correct idea.
So I sorta lost really. To 1.43. There's definitely a period of time when I don't even know how to play my own mod. At least, I lost because I wasn't willing to try harder. I think some things I've done have upped the level of AI competitiveness, resulting in more Needlejets and Conventional Missiles over the long haul. They can be a problem.
Post by: Geo on June 09, 2020, 11:30:52 AM
Post by: bvanevery on June 09, 2020, 03:07:35 PM
Well the AIs stopped fighting each other so much, and started directing a chunk of their forces at me! And aside from the missiles, they started using the Needlejets to actually attack my garrisons, not just my Formers. This would seem to make the building of AAA units mandatory. Or else Spore Launchers. I've found Spore Launchers to be remarkably good defense against Conventional Missiles, at least when the AI builds them. Haven't really tried it myself. It's a lot more garrisoning than I wanted to do.
One of the major things I didn't do, is build any factories. For one thing, I thought I was going to take advantage of easier access to Hab Domes and grow really big. I never pulled that off in the real world. I never did a +2 ECONOMY, so I probably didn't have enough money to afford the infrastructure or putting more of the budget into PSYCH. Also, the AI factions made global warming into a problem. I didn't want to exacerbate it.
-3 PLANET is possible in my mod again, if you choose Capitalist and Cybernetic. For a long time I only had -2 PLANET for Capitalist and no other way to make your PLANET rating worse. I'm not sure if any factions actually did Capitalist and Cybernetic. Checking on that, it seems not. The new Thought Control is proving much more popular with the AI. The Pirates went Cybernetic because they're not allowed to use Thought Control, and they were also Socialist.
Post by: bvanevery on June 18, 2020, 05:13:10 AM
Looks like there will be a 1.44 release, if only for this. I haven't run into anything else yet. I'm getting used to the new research foci regime and might win my 1st game of 1.43 soon. Having Recycling Tanks as a Tier 1 tech encourages building early cities more vertically.
Post by: zoneplate on June 18, 2020, 12:03:05 PM
Post by: bvanevery on June 18, 2020, 06:28:49 PM
That particular method of revealing the world map isn't about space borne exploration anyways. You're learning the "Secrets of Alpha Centauri", like suddenly you become aware of everything on Planet at once through a mind meld.
You can certainly explore the map yourself by flying a Conventional Missile around if you want, as they have a huge range. If you want to reveal the whole map automatically, you need to either launch a satellite, or use woo. One advantage of the woo approach, is you get to see everything as it exists at that time, fully updated. Even if you already had the entire map explored.
In short, I think Secrets of Alpha Centauri is a narrative rather than functional embellishment. You probably already knew where everything was by then.
Post by: bvanevery on June 20, 2020, 06:18:46 AM
Taking over the Empath Guild from the Cyborgs and half their cities, I voted myself Diplomatic Victory. I had an absurd margin of votes, thanks to 2 major allies that sided with me. If they'd decided not to, the game could have kept going.
This game has taught me that mindworms are seriously overpowered. All that great expense progression I've made for conventional units, it doesn't even matter, because mindworms can trash anything. I'm thinking the whole "mindworms ignore reactor size" thing is actually a pretty bad idea.
Post by: bvanevery on June 22, 2020, 01:43:47 AM
In version 1.43 I changed the Free Drones primary compulsion to Socialist. Check out their diplomatic dialogue!
Quote
It appalls me that you seek to perpetuate the crimes of the unjust
capitalist system here on this young world, Datajack. I must appeal to
your basic sense of justice, Roze, and implore you to consider a more
equitable distribution of goods.
I didn't change a thing about this and it's exactly correct. I feel very much vindicated that Planned was always Socialism in anything but name.
Now if only the existing dialogue for the 3rd Politics slot weren't all about God. It doesn't fit the Cult of Planet at all, and I find it annoying. It does suggest the possibility of changing Extremist to Theocratic, since that's what the diplomatic dialogue is about.
If I did that, I'd feel it necessary to abandon -2 RESEARCH as a play mechanic. It is extremely harmful to AI performance and I've designed this whole Extremist non-category around the idea of the AI not wishing to use it. I just can't stand the whole "religion equals bad research" idea, it's way too much of a negative stereotype. Early Muslims actually did the best research once upon a time, and Isaac Newton was as Christian as it gets.
Haven't thought about what I'd do for a penalty. The idea only occurred to me just now, when I saw the pre-written Planned / Socialist dialogue actually working.
The other problem is what I'd do with the Cult of Planet, since the whole point is their dialogue is wrong.
Post by: zoneplate on June 24, 2020, 02:40:47 AM
This game has taught me that mindworms are seriously overpowered. All that great expense progression I've made for conventional units, it doesn't even matter, because mindworms can trash anything. I'm thinking the whole "mindworms ignore reactor size" thing is actually a pretty bad idea.
Yeah, I tried playing a game in which I went for conquest victory as Gaians and generally for land conquest found the best solution through the game to be just pouring waves of mindworms on everything - I guess that's helped by gaians having a leg up w/ natives also though (until I got tired and just PBed everyone else, and in the process learned that probe teams can apparently destroy planet busters, which I'd never seen before). Also the AI in almost all the games I've played seems to near-exclusively use native units past the midgame. This being said though, high-morale elite psi infantry seem to be better than mindworms generally, if your SE allows em to be commando or elite on production and you've got the industry to churn em out quick enough.
Also re: SoAC tech, I suppose that makes sense yeah. I never considered that you could use a missile unit as a scout, aha.
Post by: bvanevery on June 25, 2020, 07:25:24 AM
Changed from version 1.43 to 1.44:
SOCIAL ENGINEERING
- Socialist economics: removed GROWTH bonus. Increased JUSTICE bonus to +2. This is no longer going to be the category that provides early game growth. It was a pretty useless tradeoff anyways, taking such a big money penalty to get a tiny amount of growth. I've wanted to represent Socialism as being more just than Green anyways, and now with the reconditioning of the 3rd Politics choice, I have the opportunity to do it.
- Extremist politics: renamed to Theocratic. Removed SUPPORT bonus. Added +1 GROWTH bonus. Removed RESEARCH penalty. This category was deliberately designed to be useless for a long time, so that the AI factions would not pick a RESEARCH penalty. This play mechanic is extremely harmful to AI performance. I have decided it's so harmful, it's worth eliminating entirely. With that gone, the category can be useful again, but I don't want the AI getting too excited about this choice. I want the AI to pick Democratic or Police State as well and not "lock on" to this category as an obviously best choice. Lacking options for a penalty, I choose to have none. I minimize bonuses in order to compensate. This has been a reasonably successful AI conditioning strategy in the case of Green economics.
All of the diplomatic dialogue for this category talks about God. I hate hearing AI factions talk about God when it has nothing to do with them. I also miss the old Believer godly warpath dialogue. Due to copyright and licensing issues, I'm never going to change the dialogue, as I only mod what is unquestionably 100% legal for me to redistribute. Since I'm stuck with God, it's time to make this category what it always was. I just want to reduce the anti-Christian tonality of it. 'Theocratic' has a slightly less American and negative connotation than 'Fundamentalist'.
The RESEARCH penalty will not be coming back. I'm opposed to the trope of "religions do inferior scientific research". Historically it's simply not true all the time, as Muslims used to do the best research, Isaac Newton was strongly Christian, and Gregor Mendel was a monk. And despite contemporary Evolution debates, denying Evolution is not an inherent tenet of many Christians or churches.
FACTIONS
- Believers: now have Theocratic as their primary compulsion. This is is to restore all of the original game's diplomatic dialogue about God.
- Caretakers: now have Socialist as their primary compulsion. This is to restore the original game's Alien dialogue for social engineering choices. They only implemented such dialogue for the Planned / Socialist category. It is sufficiently appropriate and in character for the Caretakers. I cannot abide a similar restoration for the Usurpers though. Marr is a conqueror, and there's no reason for Caretakers and Usurpers to share ideological convictions at all. Having Marr utter human dialogue about Power is a wart, but I still think it's better than both Aliens prattling on about Planned / Socialist.
- Cult of Planet: made Eudiamonic future society their primary compulsion. Removed IMPUNITY to Extremist politics. Added explanation for why Democratic politics cannot be used. Eudaimonic has evolved to be the Planet-friendly endgame. Although the diplomatic dialogue occasionally mentions a "worker's paradise", Cha Dawn himself will never actually utter those lines. Rather, those lines are uttered by a compulsively Cybernetic or Thought control AI faction, at a human player who has chosen Eudaimonic. That wart won't go away, because Eudaimonic being Planet-friendly is a good play mechanical contrast with the other options. Cha Dawn's dialogue won't be perfect, but it's much less objectionable than hearing him prattle on about God and the Lord's Salvation.
- Cyborgs: may not choose Theocratic politics. The category was renamed. Added explanation for why it can't be used. I'm keeping the restriction because the choice would be grossly out of character.
- Gaians: added explanation for why they can't choose Capitalist. I'm keeping the restriction because it's way too out of character to imagine Deirdre as anything but a nature looney.
- Hive: set secondary compulsion to nil. Added explanation for why they can't choose Democratic. I'm keeping the restriction because it's way too out of character to imagine Yang as anything but a despot. Previously they had GROWTH as a secondary compulsion. Now that +1 GROWTH has moved from Socialist to Theocratic, it's not possible for the Hive AI to get an early game pop boom going.
- Morganites: may now use Socialist economics. *Compulsions* restrict AI behavior. An AI Morgan will always choose Capitalist or Simple economy, and will never choose Socialist or Green economy. *Aversions* restrict the human player. They should be implemented for important play mechanical reasons, or because the choice would be ridiculously out of character. Socialist in my mod is not a valubable social engineering choice, unlike Planned in the original game, which provided a big GROWTH bonus and the overpowered INDUSTRY bonus. If a human player is perfectly free to play Morgan as a Green, I see no particular reason why he couldn't also be played as a Socialist. Neither one is supposed to be "good for business" from a Capitalist's point of view, yet real companies have done such things and turned profits from it. Maybe such a Morgan is the CEO of a non-profit corporation, or a benefits corporation.
Also, SMACX is not played with just the original 7 factions. Any 7 out of 14 could be chosen. Many of the original restrictions were to keep an equal level of animosity between the original 7 factions. That's simply not relevant to a game with 7 random opponents. If a player wants to hand pick 7 factions so that they "don't have alliance preferences", they can do so.
- Peacekeepers: added explanation for why they can't choose Police State. I'm keeping the restriction because although it's tempting to imagine Lal turning the UN into some kind of New World Order, I think such conspirational thinking does a disservice to the original narrative material. The adversarial dynamic between Lal and Yang will be maintained.
- Spartans: restored the original dialogue about private armies, as my versions weren't actually better. Added explanation for why they can't choose Wealth. I'm keeping the restriction because Wealth has a -2 MORALE penalty. It's completely out of character to imagine the Spartans choosing this. I abandoned the Spartan Warhawk Legion idea, replacing it with just the Spartan Legion. I objected to the original term, Spartan Paramilitary Legion, because in my view they're military, not paramilitary. The latter is pretty much 1990s clowning of militia survival movements, rather than a narrative about what the Spartans logically are on Planet.
- University: may not choose Theocratic politics. The category was renamed. Added explanation for why it can't be used. I'm keeping the restriction because the choice would be grossly out of character.
- Usurpers: added explanation for why they can't choose Democratic. I'm keeping the restriction because Democratic is actually a rather valuable social engineering choice in my mod. It's a basic key to making money.
PREDEFINED UNITS
- Battle Ogre MK1, M2K, MK3: now all cost 50 minerals. When their cost was autocalculated, they were worth 260 minerals! When an old, nearly dead unit was disbanded, it would contribute 130 minerals to a Secret Project. That's almost as good as 3 Artifacts. Now they only contribute 25 minerals, equal to half an Artifact. Since they can never heal and tend to end up 90% dead, I don't think they should be worth much. I also don't want the player to get any major minerals benefits other than from Artifacts. They should have to cash those if they want to hurry Secret Projects along.
- Unity Lifter: now costs 50 minerals. Autocalculate made it worth 200 minerals! It would add 100 minerals when disbanded.
The attachment limit per post is 5, and I eventually ran out of room at the top of the thread. Consequently, this becomes the new home of version 1.44. It was downloaded 150 times before I moved it here.
Post by: bvanevery on June 26, 2020, 03:13:21 AM
My 1st game after releasing version 1.44. I haven't completed a game yet. This one, the Peacekeepers started off unusually close to me. I've never been quite sure what to do if I want to keep a Noble reputation. Couldn't shake Lal down for tech as he didn't indicate having anything. This is only MY 2113. I popped Social Psych from a pod. Otherwise, who's got tech?
I demanded his city, and told him I'd crush him like a bug if he didn't comply. He gave it up! Now I've probably got a 3 to 1 city advantage over him. Neato, it's like the game gave me something, instead of it being just a cramped colonial mess.
I'm taking advantage of the new penalties-free Theocratic, as so many AI factions now like to do. The good news is, most of them do move on to Democratic or Police State eventually. Religion is like a phase, which is actually subtle if serendipitous commentary on my part. Pretty easy to yak about God when you're in a survival situation, right? See if it holds up when the society is more organized.
Cha Dawn's schtick isn't Extremist or Theocratic anymore. Now it's Eudaimonic! That's evolved to be the Planet-friendly choice, so it's gameplay correct. The dialogue is generic enough that it almost works too. Domai went Socialist, since that's always what he really was. So my opportunistically Godly politics aren't totally out of character for me anymore, I'm just lying to the masses any way that will work for now. This is gonna tick Lal off though. I don't currently consider that to be a problem. After all, he can provide me with more free cities.
With my city growth advantage, it may not even be necessary. This one action may have completely crippled him. Hm, that said, I'm still not allowed to go Democratic. Can't have self-determination getting in the way of The Prophecy! So yeah, he's gonna be my vassal or else die. I'll wait until turn 101 until I actually kill him. Why let someone escape, especially if they're a natural enemy? They'll just be ticked and make trouble from afar.
Post by: bvanevery on June 26, 2020, 04:57:42 AM
MY 2156. It's not been the cakewalk I thought it would be. The Peacekeepers eventually 'surprise' attacked an almost dead mindworm larva that I was wandering through their territory. I was hoping to heal at a Monolith right next to one of their bases. I don't exactly blame them, but it did start a war that I wasn't planning on having anytime soon. They made a few forays with Scouts that have bounced. I've built up my cities with Recycling Tanks and eventually garrisoned them with untrained Synthmetal units. No big deal except...
...there were Usurpers to the southeast of me. They didn't turn up peaceful. Despite some attempts at battlefield precaution, they flanked me and wiped out my units and an Artifact I was trying to bring home. They just had too many Scouts running around. I'm not that powerful if I don't have mindworms and they've really limited my ability to rustle up new ones for awhile. That's often a problem with captured mindworms, they're often not where you need them to be. I was trying to bring my 1 mindworm and 1 spore launcher home when like I said, they got flanked.
I see now that Marr has not got just 1, but rather 2 Battle Ogres to bother me with. Fortunately I'm garrisoning this city pretty well. Unfortunately I still don't know Doctrine: Loyalty, so no Command Centers. I hope my bodies will wear them out. I do have 1 mindworm larva coming, that arrived when an Isle came to my shore. I'm trying to make Synthmetal Foils to go get Isles and mindworms. Marr has got Applied Physics and I can reasonably expect a trained Recon Rover threat soon. That kinda sucks. I'm already being shelled.
I'm being very stubborn and sticking to my default Explore research focus. I want to see how bad this is from the AI's standpoint. I think an AI Cha Dawn would probably get wiped out. I might yet prevail, if I can just get some mindworms and Command Centers in here.
I might also meet some others who can trade me what I need. I met Yang and got a little bit of stuff from him, but he doesn't have the needed stuff. He's not too pleased with my Theocratic politics. I'm not married to it, but I don't yet have a better option.
MY 2157. Crap, the Recon Rovers are already here. At least they're untrained, which for Marr is Disciplined. I do have 4 Synthmetal Sentinenls and a Sensor Array to oppose them. Marr failed to bring up his Ogres for some reason, so I'm ok this turn. Maybe I'll get lucky and they'll attack foolishly. I've brought in 2 Scouts for defense this turn, so if the Ogres haven't advanced next year, I can counterattack. 1 more Scout coming in after that. Got a Transport to move units past the fungus that's in the way, but nothing to move up. Hope my base holds. At least it looks intimidating to a stupid AI.
MY 2158. The Ogres advanced. 2 Recon Rovers died. 1 did some wounds, 1 just outright died doing no damage. So, that's good. I may take casualties next year but I think I'm going to hold. Kids, don't ever forget your Sensor Arrays. The life they save, may be your own!
Also conveniently captured a Spore Launcher larva while moving my mindworm larva towards the combat zone. Got 2 supply pods to pop in the middle of that lake.
MY 2159. Lost a Synth, but the Ogres are at 30% and 40% wounds. They can't pound indefinitely, and I do have some help coming.
MY 2160. I've researched E2 Centauri Empathy and have gone Green. Next year when my larvae attacks, it'll have +30% bonus! The Spore Launcher is also close enough to pop off a round. This might be enough to wipe out an Ogre. They didn't attack this year, instead they consolidated onto 1 square, which seems a bit dumb.
MY 2161. Interestingly, the Recon Rovers are merely bouncing, and thereby training my Synth Garrisons. One of the Ogres is leaving, and the other is just sitting. So I'm just going to sit back and shell them. I've realized that Centauri Empathy lets me build roads through fungus, so I'll soon have my resupply problem solved.
MY 2162. I captures an Isle and a mindworm on the lake. I also fished out an Artifact.
MY 2163. I trained my mindworm larva on a 2-2-1 that got too close. I also brought in another Synth by transport, and garrisoned my flank against a Recon Rover trying to advance. If I had been a little more careful in my movements, I probably could have transported the 2nd mindworm larva for attack this turn. I've also discovered that the Manifold Nexus is nearby in Lal's territory. Aside from being a desirable conquest, it means Lal could in principle attack me with mindworms.
MY 2165. A massive Spore Launcher hit severely weakens one of the Ogres, and I destroy it with a mindworm larvae. I rush forward to attack the 2nd Ogre with my wounded pre-boil, but it's going to be an even fight so I beg off. I pop Doctrine: Loyalty from a supply pod at sea! I've got tons of money for building Command Centers rapidly, so I'd say my enemies are officially in trouble. Lal offered a Truce and I blew him off, because I want the Manifold Nexus.
MY 2167. I finally wipe out the 2nd Ogre, and all the Recon Rovers have died. I'm in the clear for now! That only took 11 years. I'll beg off the reportage until / unless something interesting happens again. That was an unusually close proximity opening for my mod. Now it'll be a process of pushing past the Usurpers, and coming up around underneath the Peacekeepers. I want to capture the Manifold Nexus, then make them surrender.
Post by: bvanevery on June 26, 2020, 06:42:05 AM
MY 2176. Rather than the elaborate plan I imagined, I just wiped out UN Headquarters. This triggered the surrender of the Peacekeepers and I accepted it. Then I told Lal he must cede control of one of his bases. He wanted to be paid for it. He sold me the Manifold Nexus base for a mere 225 credits! So that's a good trick I can't say I remember using in the past. Just buying cities from your vassal for not much money.
I was already starting to go nuts in the ocean capturing Isles. Now I'm at +4 PLANET! I'd have to go Eudaimonic to do any better than that. That'll be awhile.
Post by: bvanevery on June 27, 2020, 06:49:42 AM
I started a new game and got the Morganites. I ended up with the Caretakers right next to my first 2 cities. This is happening more often than I think is reasonable for a Huge map. Once again I'm facing a Battle Ogre, and I just wasn't going to put up with exactly the same kind of game I just played. I quit. It's late anyways.
I think I'm about ready to nerf the Ogre again. A Particle Impactor may not be that big a deal against Synthmetal and Sensor Arrays. You can put cannon fodder in the way and wear them down. But they're absolutely devastating against Scouts and more often than not, this is all I've had in a First Contact situation.
Couldn't believe that one game where my 2nd colonist got immediately wiped by someone's Ogre. That totally crippled me and although I kept going as an experiment, the experience was lame and didn't result in a game I wanted to invest further effort in.
I think dropping it to a R-Laser would be appropriate. That would help a little with the AI's suicide missions in the bush. I think I'd also remove some of the special abilities, and make it more of a weak scouting unit. I say I nerfed the Aliens, but they keep screwing with me inappropriately. I think it's time to retire the "Aliens get a superweapon to start with" idea.
I don't feel nearly as negative about the Battle Ogre MK2. I've gotten a few of those lately. As in games I remember from a long time ago, they tend to stand around devastating unit after unit after unit in an enemy base. But the AI just keeps spamming more units. If the MK2 is unaided, it just can't destroy enough of them, and eventually it runs out of gas and dies. It can sure tie up a lot of units until then though.
For the Scout version, I could give it Deep Radar. That would be a unique early game land capability.
Post by: bvanevery on June 29, 2020, 04:26:14 AM
MY 2280 in a new game, where I'm the University and I'm fighting the Morganites. They are dominant on the graph by 2x. I've been working on the Network Backbone and recently they started on it. In MY 2278 they were at 17 turns to go, and had a Supply Crawler in the city. In MY 2279 they had 11 turns to go, and a Supply Crawler in the city! Now they're at 6 turns to go. Fortunately they don't have any more Supply Crawlers active. They have 1 in production with 2 turns to go. It can meet Morgan Industries immediately when it's done. I find it interesting that the AI is using these 100 mineral Fission Supply Crawlers effectively. It doesn't know how to design a Fusion version, but for this purpose, it doesn't matter. In fact it can be kind of a rude shock for a crawler to make such a big jump in Secret Project progress. This is a 600 mineral project.
I'm in danger of coming up short, so I switched from Green to Capitalist. This doubles my money, as I previously only had +1 ECONOMY from Democratic. However now instead of being spiffy with mindworms, I'm weak. I've got a siege line against the Spartans far to the east that I haven't made any progress with. It's just a holding pattern, a stalemate. I had thought I'd wipe somebody out with a horde of mindworms "soon enough", but I really need the money.
I totally forgot that Cybernetic is now a moneymaking option. I'd been waiting to complete the Network Backbone in order to avoid the disadvantages. I probably should have switched a long time ago. Well I think I will pull it off, with just cash. I'm awfully close to having the money I need. I can switch back to Green after I go Cybernetic.
MY 2282. The Morganite supply crawler got interrupted by unhappiness. He switched to making a Hologram Theater, and started production on 3 supply crawlers elsewhere. I rushed the Network Backbone with cash. So it was a threat, but not insurmountable.
Post by: bvanevery on July 01, 2020, 07:01:02 AM
MY 2340. I finally quit that game. Rather than invade the Morganites, I invaded the weaker Spartans that were more nearly adjacent to me by land. I did not build any combat units to do it, I used the bare minimum. I was determined to keep building all kinds of lab facilities all the time. As I had extremely weak base defenders, often no more than Synth Police, Morgan would occasionally lob missiles at me and leave one of my bases empty. I just plodded along covering them with next to nothing, and building no new Formers. All the money went into labs, facilities, and secret projects. I definitely pulled ahead of Morgan in that regard, although we stayed even on the graph.
I let Morgan do his thing for so long, that he built factories that triggered global warming. I tried to Launch Solar Shade but the Council voted against it. The floods started slightly disrupting my nice rail network. This triggered immense feelings of boredom, that I'd played the game in basically a non-productive way for far too long. I believe I could have stomped everyone eons ago and that all this labs stuff represented a massive and unnecessary stall. It just doesn't seem to be worth it to bother, even with Corporate Labs and Nanohospitals available relatively early.
One of these days I'm going to flood the world with mindworms, like I said I would. They're the best weapons in the game and all this other stuff is probably superfluous. I got Quantum reactors, but I built very few garrison units with them. I never built factories at all, because I kept thinking I wanted to avoid unhappiness from Genejacks. I even kept my budget at 50-10-40 like forever, being super cheap about making anyone happy. This was also probably dumb after awhile. I was about to buy the Cloning Vats outright when I quit, around 2 AM. Mild fatigue was another trigger.
I played as Democratic Green Knowledge Cybernetic, achieving the maximum RESEARCH of +6. Eh, whatever! It's not that fast. Least not how I did it.
Seems like, if you spend all this effort avoiding eco-damage, someone else is just going to do all the damage. Maybe not just anyone, as Morgan is compulsively Capitalist. But Capitalist is popular with the AI, so it's likely someone has a big mega-polluting empire after awhile. I've definitely seen the Pirates do it, although they could go Green.
I just wanted to note that research seems to be a slow, dull path through the game. A big waste, even with the best research faction.
Post by: bvanevery on July 02, 2020, 03:42:15 AM
[Limit reached]
I've had just about enough of this! I just founded that 2nd city, I haven't even walked anywhere yet. Even on a Huge map, even with land area of continents rather much increased to make them more "continentally", this "close quarters with the Ogres" stuff is happening a lot. I don't think the faction placement algorithm is making much effort to spread everyone out. It's pretty common to have someone breathing right down your neck. And when they start with an armored Particle Impactor and you don't, it's a problem. They may not attack, but if they want to wipe out 50% of my civilization, they certainly can.
I guess there's really going to be a version 1.45 after all. I only announced version 1.44 on Reddit today, even though I kicked it out the door some days ago. I just didn't feel like blah blah blahing about it. Well, at least for a 1.45, there won't be much to say or do. This is going to turn into a scouting unit, not an offensive unit. Time to nerf.
Gonna leave the MK2 and MK3 alone. MK2 didn't seem overpowered last time I got one, compared to all the spam my enemy put out. I caused them many years of grief, but ultimately, they killed me. And I hardly ever see a MK3.
Post by: bvanevery on July 07, 2020, 08:37:41 PM
[Limit reached]
How did it fall so low? It's hard to imagine Morgan's COMMERCE bonus being that big a deal. At what point in the game was it that low? Could I have won upon discovering Fusion Power and didn't even know it?
[Limit reached]
Choosing Capitalist made me less money due to a lack of JUSTICE, but it increased the COMMERCE bonus by 1. The cost of victory didn't get that much cheaper. I think this proves that other factions could have gotten this rate for Economic Victory, that Morgan's COMMERCE bonus isn't the problem. I am wondering if the time it takes to corner the energy market, is actually an input into the cost formula. In a previous release I changed it from 20 turns to 5. From a waiting around standpoint I don't regret it at all, it was time to win that bloody game! But if it has a major impact on cost then I'd have to reconsider.
[Limit reached]
Nobody's remotely as profitable as I am though, so maybe I really did just economically crush everyone. I did start on the Monsoon Jungle and made good early use of it. I just find the numerical expression of this to be quite odd, for it to require such a pittance. I clearly need to get into the gory details of how the cost formula actually works. Something's off.
[Limit reached]
Capitalists get people to capitulate. It's factual. ;morganercise
Now after typing this up, I'm realizing there's a factor in play that hardly ever is, when I play. Because I usually forget to think of it. I have a Global Trade Pact. This could have blown the dynamic range off of the COMMERCE bonus. Oh crap, the plain description is "Commerce rates doubled". I wonder what that actually means in the formula. It it literally means the COMMERCE bonus doubles for everybody, that could be a really serious problem.
Post by: Douglas on July 07, 2020, 10:19:55 PM
Now after typing this up, I'm realizing there's a factor in play that hardly ever is, when I play. Because I usually forget to think of it. I have a Global Trade Pact. This could have blown the dynamic range off of the COMMERCE bonus. Oh crap, the plain description is "Commerce rates doubled". I wonder what that actually means in the formula. It it literally means the COMMERCE bonus doubles for everybody, that could be a really serious problem.It means that the energy bonuses you get from commerce at your bases get doubled. If Morgan Industries without a Global Trade Pact has:
- UNIVERSITY: +3 Treaty
- PEACEKEEPERS: +4 Pact (They get +2)
- UNIVERSITY: +6 Treaty
- PEACEKEEPERS: +8 Pact (They get +4)
Datalinks says economic victory is supposed to cost roughly the total price to mind control every enemy base on the planet. I'm not sure whether and how treaties and pacts affect that, but other factions having few and weak bases would definitely make it cheaper. This combined with your probe cost increase might be why you've seen such high prices for econ victory before in this mod.
Post by: bvanevery on July 26, 2020, 05:09:11 AM
[Limit reached]
Playing as the Data Angels, some sunspots goaded me into a chemical war. I was intending to wipe out my far neighbor the Cyborgs, and drilled a rail through my near neighbor the University to achieve this. Just as I was about to launch my offensive, the sunspots lifted. :dunno: The University was a complete weenie and declared war on me, so I had to slaughter them wholesale. And then the Cyborgs per my original objective.
Meanwhile the Cult of Planet did a good job of trashing the Gaians and the Peacekeepers. The Cyborgs had previously trashed the Free Drones. In the endgame, I had built a massive core economic empire, the Cult had done nothing, and everyone else was completely wrecked. So it wasn't exactly wrong to think I could buy them cheap, but this seems a little too cheap. Even the Cult alone should be worth more than 2.7k.
I did establish a Global Trade Pact earlier, which must have goosed the victory requirements along. After I wiped the Cyborgs, I started plotting and scheming what to do about the Cult. They weren't near neighbors, they were all over the map, so it would be this senseless unit pushing exercise. I decided I didn't want any more chemical slaughter, so I Reinstated the U.N. Charter. Getting it repealed initially cost me something like 3k in bribes! Yeah I had a lot of money. Maybe I could have won with Economic Victory even back then and didn't notice.
I accidentally got the Cult elected Governor near the end of the game. I assumed my ally Lal would back me in my bid for Governor, but he didn't like the Police State I was running for awhile and Abstained. So that gave the Cult the Governorship bonuses. Didn't seem to matter for my cheap victory though. In the end I was Democratic Capitalist Wealth Cybernetic with a +2 Commerce bonus. That's the max that a non-Morganic faction could achieve.
I wonder if my +2 PROBE bonus was helpful in the buyout equation? I'll need to endeavor to understand it somewhere.
If the formula is just off, perhaps I could give every faction -1 Commerce. Except the Morganites, because they have a bonus. Although, perhaps I should nerf that and just have them rely on being able to reach +5 ECONOMY when no one else can.
Reading Victory (Economic) (http://alphacentauri2.info/wiki/Victory_(Economic))
and Commerce (Advanced) (http://alphacentauri2.info/wiki/Commerce_(Advanced))
I see that my CommerceTech rating is very high compared to the Cult. The discrepancy is amplified by squaring the ratings!
I am thinking there are way too many techs with the "Increase commerce income" flag set on them. You already get the benefit of facilities that generate more money, so why also give a path to victory that advances with a square law? It's a bit crazy. Perhaps I should get rid of all these flags, just as I got rid of the "Improves Probe Team base morale" flags.
Post by: Douglas on July 26, 2020, 07:07:17 AM
For energy production, what matters is the fraction of commerce technologies in the game that you have. For econ victory, your commerce rating and your opponents' commerce ratings are applied in directly opposite ways, so what matters is the ratio of your commerce rating to theirs. In both cases, the maximum effect from technologies is the same regardless of how many technologies it is distributed among.
Each point of commerce bonus from faction or economy is equivalent to one commerce technology, so having fewer commerce techs in the game makes each point of bonus count as a larger fraction of the normal maximum.
An alternative approach that might help would be to front-load a lot of commerce bonuses at the bottom of the tech tree. If everyone reaches 15 commerce rating early on, then getting 5 more is a much smaller advantage - 20/15 instead of, say, 7/2.
Post by: bvanevery on July 26, 2020, 03:06:02 PM
Removing commerce rating from a bunch of techs would just increase the power of faction and economy bonuses to commerce.
If that wiki page is accurate, CommerceTech disparities are a ratio of squares.
Consider factions at 6 vs. 5 commerce, assuming 6 is the aggressor:
(5^2 + 1) / (6^2 + 1) = 26 / 37 = 0.702 of buying price
Consider factions at 3 vs. 2 commerce:
(2^2 + 1) / (3^2 + 1) = 5 / 10 = 0.5 of buying price
More to think about, brb.
Consider even the case of 6^2 - 5^2 = 11, versus 4^2 - 3^2 = 7. Even getting 1 step above everyone else is a huge advantage, once many CommerceTechs have been accumulated.
For energy production, what matters is the fraction of commerce technologies in the game that you have. For econ victory, your commerce rating and your opponents' commerce ratings are applied in directly opposite ways, so what matters is the ratio of your commerce rating to theirs. In both cases, the maximum effect from technologies is the same regardless of how many technologies it is distributed among.
Each point of commerce bonus from faction or economy is equivalent to one commerce technology, so having fewer commerce techs in the game makes each point of bonus count as a larger fraction of the normal maximum.
An alternative approach that might help would be to front-load a lot of commerce bonuses at the bottom of the tech tree. If everyone reaches 15 commerce rating early on, then getting 5 more is a much smaller advantage - 20/15 instead of, say, 7/2.
[/quote]
Post by: bvanevery on July 26, 2020, 03:07:13 PM
Removing commerce rating from a bunch of techs would just increase the power of faction and economy bonuses to commerce.
If that wiki page is accurate, CommerceTech disparities are a ratio of squares.
Consider factions at 6 vs. 5 commerce, assuming 6 is the aggressor:
(5^2 + 1) / (6^2 + 1) = 26 / 37 = 0.702 of buying price
Consider factions at 3 vs. 2 commerce:
(2^2 + 1) / (3^2 + 1) = 5 / 10 = 0.5 of buying price
More to think about, brb.
The CommerceTechs are: Industrial Economics, Industrial Automation, Environmental Economics, Planetary Economics, Industrial Nanorobotics, and Sentient Econometrics. So that's +6 Commerce gained from techs. At a minimum, I'll have to do something with Superconductor and Global Energy Theory in my mod, if I keep any of these bonuses.
Morgan has a +1 Commerce bonus, and can get to +5 ECONOMY, which yields another +3 Commerce. So the maximum Commerce is 10.
Looking at Commerce (Advanced) (http://alphacentauri2.info/wiki/Commerce_(Advanced)) I see the linear (CommerceTech+1)/(TotalCommerceTech+1) ratio. Note that this is about making money in the game, and not about calculating Economic Victory! The latter is a ratio of squares, if that wiki entry is correct.
It also seems that a Global Trade Pact is irrelevant to Cornering The Energy Market. It doesn't make it cheaper. Of course you may be making a lot more money with that in place. Ditto the Governorship.
I'm willing to assume that I can whip most of the world's butt by late midgame, as happened in my recent game with the Data Angels. I didn't gain Sentient Econometrics but I got all the other techs, as they are a Discover Build faction and I kept the research focus defaults. I'm not Morgan so +4 ECONOMY is the best I can do, which yields +2 Commerce. At game's end (technically, when I quit to write this up) I had +7 Commerce.
At the end of my game in MY 2299, the Cult of Planet knew Industrial Economics and Planetary Economics. They probably stole the latter. Environmental Economics eluded them, probably from killing their victims too rapidly. They had conquered half the map, and I do not want to penalize them for achieving this. I've worked hard to try to bring up the military prowess of factions to something viable without being overpowered like the Aliens of old. There shouldn't be some parallel race that the AI doesn't even know about, where even though you think you're winning militarily, you're grossly losing economically. That's a human level of balancing concern and the AI is just not smart enough to juggle like that.
The Cult was Police State Socialist Survival. ECONOMY penalties do not seem to result in Commerce being lowered, at least judging by the text in alphax.txt. So their Commerce was +2.
(2^2 +1) / (7^2 + 1) = 5 / 50 = 0.1 cost multiplier to buy their bases! I don't think they wanted revenge against me, as I deliberately avoided interacting with them, preferring to trash my land adjacent neighbors instead. I didn't commit any atrocities. So I was probably paying 10% on the cost of their bases. Apparently my PROBE rating doesn't matter for Economic Victory.
Post by: Douglas on July 26, 2020, 05:19:03 PM
Commerce multiplier: (4 + 1) / (0 + 1) = 5
Econ victory price multiplier: (0 * 0 + 1) / (4 * 4 + 1) = 1 / 15 = 0.06666...
If there are 50 commerce technologies and everyone has them all, Morgan gets:
Commerce multiplier: (54 + 1) / (50 + 1) = 55 / 51 = 1.078
Econ victory price multiplier: (50 * 50 + 1) / (54 * 54 + 1) = 2501 / 2917 = 0.857
Morgan's advantage is a hell of a lot smaller when everyone has a lot of commerce techs than when everyone has none, and that's a trend that never reverses. The more commerce technologies there are, and the more of them that everyone has, the less each one of them matters.
If you want to reduce the power of faction, economy, and late game tech bonuses to commerce, you need to load up everyone with a high baseline that everyone will practically always have by the time it matters. You could do that by giving all factions a large commerce bonus instead, but that would also greatly increase commerce energy production.
Post by: bvanevery on July 27, 2020, 12:59:57 AM
and that's a trend that never reverses.
I think this may be the graph of a hyperbola on X Y. It's been too long since my high school math to remember what the graph looks like, but I suspect asymptotic convergence where further increments don't matter. Similarly, you'll see profound jumps in lower numbers, which is not desirable. Let's compare Morgan at +5 using different base commerce levels. For example:
(45^2 +1)/(50^2 +1) = 2026 / 2501 = 0.81
(40^2 +1)/(45^2 +1) = 1601 / 2026 = 0.79
(35^2 +1)/(40^2 +1) = 1226 / 1601 = 0.765
(30^2 +1)/(35^2 +1) = 901 / 1226 = 0.734
(25^2 +1)/(30^2 +1) = 626 / 901 = 0.694
(20^2 +1)/(25^2 +1) = 401 / 626 = 0.64
(15^2 +1)/(20^2 +1) = 226 / 401 = 0.56
(10^2 +1)/(15^2 +1) = 101 / 226 = 0.446
(5^2 +1)/(10^2 +1) = 26 / 101 = 0.257
(0^2 +1)/(5^2 +1) = 1 / 26 = 0.038
Notice that in the lower number inputs, the differentials are huge, whereas in higher regions they're more similar and stable. It's simply not desirable to have +5 vs. +0 when square functions are involved.
One way to clip Morgan's wings is to remove his Commerce bonus. In my mod he's already got a +1 ECONOMY bonus that nobody else has got, and that can make him reach +3 Commerce on the SE table, which nobody else can do. Everyone else would achieve at most +2 Commerce from SE.
The highest Build tech the Cult learned in my game, was B3 Superconductor. That's my tech that gives the Energy Bank and Merchant Exchange. It has a great quote from Morgan about how superconducting fiber alone makes our present economy possible. So if I made Industrial Base, Industrial Economics, and Superconductor all contribute +1 Commerce, and had no more Commerce bonuses, then a generic faction like the Data Angels could achieve a +2 Commerce advantage from SE. That would yield:
(3^2 +1)/(5^2 +1) = 10 / 26 = 0.38
That's not good, but it's a little better than the 0.1 I actually saw in my game. Another problem with my game, is that the Cult ended up with a massive, sprawling empire, most of it quite a distance from Dawn of Planet. DoP was also coastal near an ocean, so it had no potential to develop a "perfect radial core" like I built for myself. In fact some of the sea bases it put near me, were actually closer to their capitol than most of the rest of their empire. I never tried to buy them out since they had no productive benefit and were just outside of the "natural circle" I'd been establishing by that point in the game. They might have turned out to be annoying and troublesome that way.
Police State Socialist gave them +1 JUSTICE. Although that doesn't suck rocks, I think with a sprawling empire on a Huge map, with so many bases distant from their capitol, a lot of their cities would probably be easily bought. At least by the Economic Victory calculation method, where PROBE is ignored. If it wasn't ignored, well at least they had +1 PROBE from Police State.
I guess I really would have to front load the tech tree with a lot of low tier Commerce techs, to move the differential up to something more reasonable. Or start every faction with higher Commerce, which would amount to the same thing. This does have the tradeoff of bases making more money from Commerce. It could have the effect of making Treaties silly lucrative. You also get major discounts on the Economic Victory calculation for Treaties and Pacts, so I wonder if this really helps. It could turn into just a new way to exploit things.
My earlier solution to the "too cheap Economic Victory" problem was to time limit it. I used to require B9 Global Energy Theory. At the rate I was going, that wouldn't have been too long for me, and I could have easily coasted in to that. It really wouldn't have made it difficult to buy out the Cult, they would still have been an economic pushover. They were also a military pushover in the scheme of things, I could definitely have crushed them with conventional weapons. Particularly if I had not Reinstated the U.N. Charter and kept doing my destructive thing.
I'll come up with a candidate list of low level techs, to imagine what my minimum base Commerce could realistically be. The problem with "have more Commerce techs" as any kind of solution, is that a non-Build faction isn't going to learn them! They're too busy conquering. And on a Huge map, it's not a guarantee that they can actually reach you to harm you. Particularly since the AI does not exhibit competence fighting across oceans. And let's face it, I terminated all my land neighbors with extreme prejudice.
Maybe I just have to trust in the linear Commerce ratio for computing Commerce income. If everyone has the same base Commerce, then maybe cities don't get rich.
If I stuck to early Build techs, I'd have Industrial Base, Industrial Economics, Ethical Calculus, Superconductor, and Ecological Engineering. The Cult did learn all of those, and that's 5 techs. If I added cross-listed techs with wealth=3, then I'd also have Centauri Ecology and Optical Computers. So that's 7 techs, safely as a base within Tier 3.
If I added techs in Tier 4, I could have Environmental Economics, Planetary Economics, and Neural Grafting. However the Cult only learned 2 of these. If I added Tier 5, I could have Applied Relativity, Bio-engineering, and Advanced Ecological Engineering. However the Cult only learned 1 of these.
They didn't learn any Tier 6 techs at all. That would include Digital Sentience, Industrial Automation, Fusion Power, and Eudaimonia. I could blow off Eudaimonia giving a Commerce bonus, as it's really the Empath Guild giving more votes for the Governorship, as to why I've got it cross-listed with Build techs. Fusion Power is currently my requirement for Economic Victory, so I can't very well blow that off if this tier is included. It's another 3 points worth of Commerce bonuses.
I pretty much crushed the crap out of everything that game. I was gifted the Manifold Nexus at the beginning of the game and played "pseudo-Gaian", popping numerous supply pods and Artifacts. Using my shorter timeframe for Cornering The Energy Market, I would have won by MY 2304. That's a pretty fast game for me. I was disappointed that the Cult didn't represent any actual challenge at that point, despite them having conquered half the map.
If I only give Commerce through Tier 3, then a generic faction could have this advantage:
(7^2 +1) / (9^2 +1) = 50 / 82 = 0.609
If I gave them through Tier 4, then the Cult would slip by 1 place:
(9^2 +1) / (12^2 +1) = 82 / 145 = 0.565
If I gave them through Tier 5, then the Cult would slip by 3 places:
(10^2 +1) / (15^2 +1) = 101 / 226 = 0.446
If I gave them through Tier 6, then the Cult would slip by 6 places:
(10^2 +1) / (18^2 +1) = 101 / 325 = 0.31
If I nerfed Morgan, at Tier 3 he'd have a +3 differential:
(7^2 + 1) / (10^2 +1) = 50 / 101 = 0.495
At Tier 4, he'd have a +4 differential:
(9^2 +1) / (13^2 +1) = 82 / 170 = 0.482
At Tier 5, he'd have a +6 differential:
(10^2 +1) / (16^2 +1) = 101 / 257 = 0.392
At Tier 6, he'd have a +9 differential:
(10^2 +1) / (19^2 +1) = 101 / 362 = 0.279
I think this suggests giving Commerce bonuses through Tier 4, then calling it quits. I'd be willing to give a bonus for B9 Global Energy Theory, as pretty much a benchmark of "completing" the Economic Victory part of the tech tree. Or then again, maybe not! I mean if you can't win the game with Orbital Power Transmitters...
Ok I have now implemented a prototype Tiers 1 through 4 slew of Commerce bonuses. It's somewhat working. Loading the new alphax.txt into my test game, it now costs 15.4k credits to buy out the Cult of Planet. That's hardly difficult to do, as with a 50-10-40 budget I make 990 credits/turn. But at least it's a 6-fold increase over what it was costing before. And perhaps with an actual economic faction still left in the game, and a lack of chemical denuding, Economic Victory might actually turn out to be a slight challenge. We'll see.
I'll playtest with the Morganites. I'm also making Economic Victory available with Planetary Economics to see how it goes now. Morgan has been nerfed, no more Commerce bonus for him.
Douglas, I've given you a modder acknowledgement in my readme_mod.txt. I already had you listed as a playtester.
Post by: bvanevery on August 01, 2020, 04:34:13 AM
Changed from version 1.44 to 1.45:
LOYALTY
- Command Center: moved to C1 Doctrine: Mobility. It's not actually a great lore fit for Doctrine: Loyalty, as the Machiavelli quote is about running a government, not about running the military. I don't actually need more C1 techs, the dependencies aren't that compressed. It hasn't made any game mechanical difference having a Command Center as a separate C1 tech, as Tier 1 techs are easy to obtain. I might as well use Doctrine: Loyalty for something else.
- Children's Creche: moved to E2 Doctrine: Loyalty. E2 Adaptive Economics was too crowded with too many giveaways. Upon finishing a Children's Creche, Santiago's quote about parents defending their homes to the death, is spot on topical to the Machiavelli quote. Brainwashing children is also a main means of securing a regime, such as in the case of the Hitler Youth.
- Doctrine: Loyalty: now an E2 tech. Set power=3, wealth=2, and growth=4. The Children's Creche gives defense and JUSTICE bonuses.
- Theocratic politics: moved to E2 Doctrine: Loyalty. The lore fit is merely so-so, as the Machiaveli quote is not talking about religion. However it's been annoying having a lot of factions gratuitously believe in God, just because they got Social Psych. Moving Theocratic a bit later, lowers the odds of that happening. It also reinforces the "be fruitful and multiply" religious trope.
- Social Psych: set wealth=2. It no longer gives Theocratic, so the wealth value should only be that of a Rec Commons making people happier.
- Adaptive Economics: set power=0 and wealth=1. It no longer gives the Children's Creche, so no defense bonuses. Socialist gives a JUSTICE bonus but also an ECONOMY penalty. At the beginning of the game, this is unlikely to result in an increase in money. In midgame a hab complex allows for more workers which could make some more money.
ECONOMIC VICTORY
- Technology for economic victory: now B4 Planetary Economics as in the original game. With the following Commerce corrections, it shouldn't be trivial to Corner The Energy Market anymore.
- Morganites: removed Commerce bonus. They already have a +1 ECONOMY bonus that nobody else has, which enables them to reach +5 ECONOMY in the SE table when no one else can. That yields +3 Commerce instead of +2 like everyone else would get. I don't want Economic Victory to be a cakewalk for them. If they want the most advantage, then they should commit to Democratic Capitalist Wealth Cybernetic.
- Industrial Base: set "Increases commerce income" flag. In the calculation for Cornering The Energy Market, the cost of buying out a base is computed as a ratio of squares of Commerce ratings. Many techs increase Commerce rating, resulting in huge differentials of Commerce between Build and non-Build faction. It is possible for a more militant faction to conquer half of a huge map, only to thereby create an empire that is "economically worthless" and in essence be losing the game instead of winning. The distinction is obscure enough for a human to understand, and probably impossible for the AI, so it is not a good play mechanic.
To correct this, modder Douglas suggested pushing many Commerce techs to the beginning of the tech tree. That way, even militant factions are likely to obtain them by late midgame. The cutoff for Commerce bonuses shall be Tier 4, after which no more shall be given. At that point, only bonuses from high ECONOMY can increase Commerce. Morgan can gain +3 this way, and all other factions can gain +2.
- Centauri Ecology: set "Increases commerce income" flag. Techs with wealth=3 are considered to be cross-listed with Build. Any cross-listed techs in Tiers 1 through 4 will have the flag set.
- Ethical Calculus: set "Increases commerce income" flag. It has wealth=3.
- Superconductor: set "Increases commerce income" flag. It has wealth=4.
- Ecological Engineering: set "Increases commerce income" flag. It has wealth=3.
- Optical Computers: set "Increases commerce income" flag. It has wealth=3.
- Neural Grafting: set "Increases commerce income" flag. It has wealth=3.
- Industrial Automation: removed "Increases commerce income" flag. No techs past Tier 4 will give a Commerce bonus.
- Industrial Nanorobotics: removed "Increases commerce income" flag. No techs past Tier 4 will give a Commerce bonus.
- Sentient Econometrics: set tech=4 and wealth=3, making it a D8 tech. Removed "Increases commerce income" flag. No techs past Tier 4 will give a Commerce bonus. With the Commerce bonus removed, it didn't have any ordinary benefit to offer, only the Self-Aware Colony. Now it gives the Corporate Lab.
- Corporate Lab: moved to D8 Sentient Econometrics. I feel it is coming too soon after the Fusion Lab becomes available.
- Unified Field Theory: set wealth=0. It no longer gives the Corporate Lab. It is now a pure Discover tech and will be a bit of a difficult barrier to cross. This is going to make the Corporate Lab and then the Orbital Power Transmitter more difficult to gain.
- Retroviral Engineering: set wealth=2. Earlier I established that Advanced Military Algorithms gives Power, and that its SUPPORT bonus is only worth wealth=1, due to the JUSTICE penalty. Thought Control doesn't have a JUSTICE penalty, but SUPPORT is not worth much later in the game. It should not be weath=3.
FACTION RESEARCH FOCI
- Data Angels: changed to Discover, Build, Conquer foci. I made a mistake in not making them Conquer oriented. Their core compulsion, Thought Control, is a Conquer tech. It doesn't make any sense to have them not working towards it.
- Cybernetic Consciousness: changed to Discover, Build foci. I forgot that Cybernetic is now a moneymaker, so this is more of a fit than making them violent. In the real world, they're never going to steal a tech from attacking a base. They're going to be out-researching other factions and coming up with their own techs.
FLOWERS
- Xenoempathy Dome: now costs 600. It got moved to Tier 6 a few releases ago. Cost should be comparable to other SPs in that Tier.
OGRES
- Battle Ogre MK1: reduced weapon to a strength 3 R-Laser. Changed AI plan to "3=Reconaissance". Removed Empath Song and High Morale abilities. Added Deep Radar ability. At the very start of the game, this unit was overpowered. Starting right next to an Alien faction brandishing this weapon, when you've only founded your first 2 cities, is actually a fairly common occurrence. This happens even on Huge maps with my tweaks to make bigger continents. The faction placement algorithm just doesn't try very hard to spread factions out. An R-Laser is still a tough weapon at the beginning of the game, but it's not as tough as a Particle Impactor. With the High Morale buff removed, it should get fewer shots off before dying. The R-Laser is thematically appropriate for the way the AI actually uses it, typically scouting the fungus until the Ogre is dead. Deep Radar is added to make it more useful for scouting.
- Battle Ogre MK2: added Deep Radar ability, to make it more useful for scouting.
- Battle Ogre MK3: added Deep Radar ability, to make it more useful for scouting.
The attachment limit per post is 5, and I eventually ran out of room at the top of the thread. Consequently, this becomes the new home of version 1.45. It was downloaded 117 times before I moved it here.
Post by: bvanevery on August 19, 2020, 08:12:44 AM
Changed from version 1.45 to 1.46:
- Believers: changed to Explore, Conquer foci. Added +1 GROWTH bonus. They need to learn Theocratic quickly, and having Build as part of their focus dilutes that. Theocratic only gives +1 GROWTH which is not that useful. This is deliberate so that the other AI factions won't obsess over it. Other factions generally pick better politics when they can, but the Believers don't have that option. So, this raises their total to +2 GROWTH, enough for an early game pop boom if they can get a Children's Creche and Golden Age together.
- Caretakers: changed to Explore, Build foci. This is because I want the Pirates to do something else, and someone has to take these foci. If they get enough of a land buffer, they do ok with this.
- Free Drones: changed to Explore, Build, Conquer foci. Without an Explore component, they were never learning Socialist.
- Hive: changed to Discover, Conquer foci. Removed GROWTH bonus. Once they've got Police State, they don't need happiness, and there's no narrative reason for them to be interested in mindworms. GROWTH has become a Theocratic / Believer play mechanic, and I don't want that "brand identity" to be watered down.
- Pirates: changed to Build, Conquer foci. Without a Conquer focus, they were not learning Doctrine: Initiative and Adaptive Doctrine.
- Usurpers: changed to Explore, Discover, Conquer foci. Changed primary compulsion to Socialist. Giving them the same mindset as the Caretakers annoys me, but Socialist / Planned is the only dialogue available for the Aliens. When Marr pursues Power, he speaks like a human and that's annoying. I could give him no compulsion at all, so that he wouldn't speak any diplomatic dialogue. However Socialist is a practical choice for him, since he can't choose Democratic and therefore won't have a good ECONOMY. He will always choose Police State eventually, and Socialist offsets its JUSTICE penalty. Marr also gives the quote for Adaptive Economics, basically explaining something like Socialism to the humans. An Explore component is necessary to learn Socialist, and Discover reflects his desire to Transcend.
The attachment limit per post is 5, and I eventually ran out of room at the top of the thread. Consequently, this becomes the new home of version 1.46. It was downloaded 137 times before I moved it here.
Post by: WeMustConsentAI on September 01, 2020, 01:57:30 AM
:danc:
:mad:
???
:(
:-\
:'(
;lol
You forgot to edit ALL of the in-game “help” files in order to PROPERLY log ALL of the changes that you’ve made to the game. And also, I’m absolutely sick and tired of just not being able to get “Secrets of the Human Brain” first. Now obviously, the latter is something that LITERALLY ANYONE could EASILY fix (I.e. rename it altogether and simply make it a “non-secrets” discovery), assuming THAT they had simply ADEQUATE competence in computer/video coding. But doing the former myself would just take WAY too long for me.
Post by: bvanevery on September 01, 2020, 04:31:33 AM
You forgot to edit ALL of the in-game “help” files
Actually I did not forget. Most Datalinks entries are automated and simply read values straight from alphax.txt. Sometimes the correct values, say for a unit's stats, are at the bottom of the Datalinks page instead of in the text. You have to look for that, and accept that it's a limitation of this style of modding.
Some few entries will indeed be wrong, and I'm not going to change them. Why? Because it's illegal. My mod is unusual compared to the various binary hacker mods, in that the 14 faction *.txt and alphax.txt file are 100% legal to change and redistribute. Firaxis put notices to that effect at the top of those files. They didn't do that for every file in the game, so I have to assume it's illegal. Why do I care what's legal or not? Because unlike the binary hacker modders, I'm an aspiring indie game developer. If Firaxis or Electronic Arts wanted to send me a cease-and-desist letter someday "down the road", I don't want any legal exposure. With my current approach, I don't think there's anything they can do to me, or would want to do to me.
I did license my work under CC-BY-NC. Someone could take it and "correct" it in any way they deem necessary. I will only do what suits my purposes, which includes keeping things legal. Others may not be so encumbered.
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in order to PROPERLY log ALL of the changes that you’ve made to the game.
It is not important to tell a player what's changed in the Datalinks. It's only important to have the information be correct. I agree that it is not all 100% correct, per above. But knowing what's changed is a separate issue.
If you want to know about changes, the CHANGELOG section of readme_mod.txt is extensive and gory. 2.5 years' worth of changes. I guarantee you there's way more changes than you're ever going to be able to keep in your head at once. So there's no point saying, "You have to tell me what's changed, in the Datalinks themselves." You simply have to learn the game all over again, that's the only way. It's that extensive of a mod. If you're experienced at the game, that won't take you too long.
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And also, I’m absolutely sick and tired of just not being able to get “Secrets of the Human Brain” first.
Meaning, you want it to give you Hypnotic Trance like in the original game, and it doesn't? And so you have to wait a long time to get Hypnotic Trance from E3 Progenitor Psych? That's a valid criticism, and I wondered if any players would object to it coming more like midgame. My response is, I don't find mindworms difficult to fight in the early game, so why care about Trance units? Also in my mod, Trance is not a free ability. You have to pay for it. In the early game when production is limited, I'd much rather crank out more armored units, than more expensive anti-mindworm units.
Or, do you mean you want it to give Theocratic / Fundamentalist politics like in the original game, and it doesn't? Theocratic is given by E2 Doctrine: Loyalty. That's a Tier 2 tech, the same tier as Secrets of the Human Brain in the original game. Granted, my Tier 2 has more techs in it, which can make it much longer to get any particular Tier 2 tech. However there are no Secret Projects until Tier 3, so other factions will freely trade anything in Tier 2 to you.
Theocratic is on the Explore tech tree path, not Discover. Everything about population growth and happiness is under Explore in my mod. Theocratic is only worth +1 GROWTH. It's an early game freebie with no penalties, and is of no long term use to anyone but the Believers. Unfortunately I ran out of play mechanics. I don't want big MORALE bonuses in the early game, and PROBE became a Police State thing. I considered adding a SUPPORT bonus but the AI thinks +1 GROWTH and +1 SUPPORT is way too good a deal. It obsesses about it, and I don't want that. So in version 1.46, after testing the alternative I stuck with only +1 GROWTH.
If you meant you want Secrets of the Human Brain so you can get a free tech very quickly, well, my opinion is that's not important. If you focus your research on Discover, you should get SotHB soon enough, and you'll get your tech jump.
If you meant you want to get the Virtual World faster, well sorry. Nobody gets any Secret Projects until Tier 3. That's bedrock design, non-negotiable. Go study Discover if you want it that badly. Be advised that Hologram Theaters aren't that expensive in my mod anyways, either to buy or maintain. So the Virtual World isn't that amazing a thing to get. You can afford to build Hologram Theaters everywhere, manually, if you don't manage the Virtual World. The Human Genome Project is way more valuable because it doesn't replace a facility, it gives you a bonus you can't otherwise have.
Also be advised: the University does not have a "drone every 4 citizens, due to lack of ethics" penalty in my mod. In fact he's got a lack of ethics BONUS in my mod to his POLICE rating. You don't strictly need the Virtual World to get the University chugging along with its free Network Nodes. It is useful, you should try to build it, and you should be able to finish it before others. But it's not the end of the world if it doesn't work out for some reason. Also note that the University has no PROBE penalty. They're tougher than the original game.
Quote
Now obviously, the latter is something that LITERALLY ANYONE could EASILY fix (I.e. rename it altogether and simply make it a “non-secrets” discovery), assuming THAT they had simply ADEQUATE competence in computer/video coding. But doing the former myself would just take WAY too long for me.
Before discussing a "fix", please verify which of the issues with SotHB is important to you.
If it were made into a tech that doesn't give you a free tech upon discovery, the art assets would still have the big "Circle X" logo that indicates it's supposed to. I never change art assets, that's not my thing. So someone else would come along and complain that I messed up that. Thus, I won't do that. Not without a super duper good reason, and presently I'm not seeing one. It might as well be a "Secrets..." because it's got the art assets for it.
Post by: bvanevery on September 15, 2020, 06:12:25 AM
Changed from version 1.46 to 1.47:
TRANCE
- Progenitor Psych: now an E2 tech. This makes Hypnotic Trance easier to get. My opinion is that mindworms are overpowered, especially because they ignore a Perimeter Defense when attacking a base. To balance this, anti-mindworm defenses need to be easier to get, not harder. This also ends the diplomatic silence between humans and Aliens sooner. When playing an Alien, I've abused diplomatic silence by avoiding E1 Social Psych as long as possible. Previously I was managing that for almost 100 years!
- Field Modulation: now a C3 tech. This is to preserve Alien tech as a more independent branch, somewhat harder for humans to get.
- Neural Grafting: set growth=3. It gives Deep Radar, which is quite useful for exploring the oceans. It's also a prereq for C5 Doctrine: Air Power and C5 Doctrine: Initiative, so Explore continuity is appropriate.
PREDEFINED UNITS
- Clean Plasma Garrison, Plasma Police: moved to C3 Advanced Subatomic Theory. This makes a Plasma armor prototype instantly available. Previously the AI was making Synthmetal units for rather a long time. It really needs the defensive assistance. I've decided it's ok to give early game biases towards defense, as I previously did with the Synth Police unit. Offensive units still require all players to struggle with prototype creation.
- Probe Wall, Foil Probe Wall: new units available with C3 Advanced Subatomic Theory. Like their Firewall counterparts, but they only have Plasma armor. They don't cost any more than the Synthmetal based Probe Defense and Foil Probe Defense units.
- Cloaked Recon Rover: moved to E4 Bioadaptive Resonance. This is 1 tech after C3 Field Modulation.
- Cloaked Impact Squad: removed. When it was created in version 1.35, it only cost 30 minerals. Infantry chasis cost was revised in version 1.39, making this unit cost 40 minerals. It is not as cost effective as a Cloaked Recon Rover, which still only costs 30 minerals. The AI is probably better off focusing on the cheaper, faster unit.
The attachment limit per post is 5, and I eventually ran out of room at the top of the thread. Consequently, this becomes the new home of version 1.47. It was downloaded 299 times before I moved it here.
Post by: bvanevery on September 19, 2020, 08:30:22 AM
I installed a clean copy of SMAC, then dropped Thinker on top of it, then dropped my mod + my Alpha Centauri.ini on top of that. So it's my alphax.txt and faction.txt files being used.
I set tech_balance=0 as it shouldn't be necessary or desirable for the AI to chase the cap lifting techs. They're only Tier 3, they're not that hard to get. Otherwise I kept the defaults in thinker.ini.
My mod doesn't allow Condensers, Thermal Boreholes, or Supply Crawlers until later. That was all done quite awhile ago to kneecap Thinker mod, as well as any players looking for these exploits as a golden path through the game. I also doubled the time it takes to build that stuff. I made SCs hugely expensive to penalize the strategy of making oodles of them to harvest resources. This doesn't affect Secret Project completion much, as a more expensive denomination of SC is still cashable at its full value.
There's still the Weather Paradigm somewhat early in my mod. Morgan got it. I was playing the Cyborgs. So, Morgan probably did some bangup job getting ahead. I didn't really see because he was halfway across the map. I was allied with him and Domai at the beginning. However in my mod, Domai is compulsively Socialist, so I couldn't make everyone happy if I wanted to make an Economics choice. For awhile I didn't make one. Then sunspots came up, and I went Socialist because Domai was next to me. Domai and Morgan eventually went to war. Domai eventually asked me to join the war. The moment I did, Morgan hit a base at the edge of my empire with a Fusion Gatling Speeder! I had like, uh, a Scout. I quit.
I actually did reasonably ok on the Secret Project races. I got a few things, and my position was fairly viable. The Scout thing just made me feel stupid and imperfect.
The main threat is that the AI is really spammy about settling cities. I often don't care to be, and it did hurt me. I was isolated enough not to have any big military problems, just some incursions from the Pirates. Eventually though I seemed to be falling behind on the production wars, culminating in that Scout incident. It could be remedied by being equally aggressive about spamming early cities. I think that's probably necessary when playing with Thinker mod.
I did an odd strategy with Socialist. I got up to +5 JUSTICE; at +4, you can adjust your budget to anything you want without penalty. So I set it to 80-10-10. Even without +1 energy per square, I made money pretty fast. I did a way better job spending it on Secret Projects than the AI seemed to do. Because I really wasn't doing much tech, and I had allies, I'd just buy a lot of techs from them for very cheap. I hardly stole anything or even went anywhere.
I don't think the early to mid game is all that different than without Thinker mod. The AI is better at establishing an empire, but it doesn't matter so much early on, as nobody's really in fighting contact yet. I definitely saw that things were going to heat up with Morgan.
Post by: bvanevery on September 26, 2020, 06:51:04 AM
One thing I notice is that the faction placement algorithm is far more distant, and fairly consistent in putting factions much more equally apart. Although that results in a fairer game, it's also often a slower game, on the Huge maps I'm used to.
The other is I sure keep getting a lot of fungus. I'm not sure if this is a change in the map generator, or I'm just having consistent bad luck. My alphax.txt is being used, so it's my world generation settings. I've been choosing the "normal" level of fungus like I always do. The fungal mazes are a big factor in my quitting. It's not fun to have to spend a lot of time wandering colonists around without really being able to settle safely. And it is important to settle safely, because things like the Cult of Planet will show up to bother you.
My last game, my empire was pretty much split in half at the beginning, due to all the fungus. Although my position was plenty viable, it also felt inelegant and boring, so I quit. There's a point at which, if the game isn't going so well or doesn't "feel good", I'd rather either get sleep or do some internet chore or something. Something better than continuing with a blah game. A few hours of unit pushing and road laying tends to refresh my brain enough to do something more productive. I do have a lot I need to get done right now, and I can't really justify a mediocre play experience, when it consumes many hours.
Burnout from 2.5 years of modding may also be a factor. It is too soon to tell.
Post by: EmpathCrawler on September 26, 2020, 03:47:02 PM
To speed things up on a huge map you could give them more starter resources in thinker.ini. The extra nutrients really give them a goose.
Post by: bvanevery on September 26, 2020, 05:04:07 PM
I'm not concerned about the growth rate of the AI factions. They will get obnoxiously spammy soon enough. The different faction placement algorithm simply makes it a lot less likely that we'll come into fighting contact in the early game. Although one can be totally isolated in my mod + the stock binary, I'd say that's no more than a 50% chance. The stock binary does tend to start a fair number of factions right next to each other, no matter what the map size is. Whereas with Thinker, great distances between capitols are guaranteed on a Huge map.
Post by: bvanevery on September 28, 2020, 07:39:41 PM
I definitely started closer to an enemy as well. As the Peacekeepers, got into early fisticuffs with the Morganites. I quit that game though.
I am finding the spamminess of the Thinker AI deeply irritating. It really throws off the progressions of the game and it might be determining the game. It's hard for me to say for sure, because I just become too aesthetically irritated and game mechanically bored to continue past midgame. It's like what's the point of continuing to play with all this mildew growing all over the map? I actually make roads and decent sized cities. The AI plays like a viral infection, like chickenpox. I don't feel like I'm playing against a civilized enemy, I feel like I'm fighting a natural phenomenon. I know it's somehow been handed way too many resources, and I'm not sure a dumb and spammy resource challenge is what I want out of the game.
I make beautiful civilizations. Every square hand cultivated, every road and rail thought about. The AI makes incredibly ugly civilizations. No style.
I am wondering if the frequency of fungal blooms when popping supply pods has been cranked up. I know I'm the Cult of Planet, and this again could be selective observation. But this is irritating:
[Limit reached]
That river used to be clear. Sure I'm the Cult, but I actually need to eat and grow in the beginning of the game, same as anyone else. Also, I walked towards this land, since I was out on the peninsula. It wasn't great land, and it wasn't a central location for putting a capitol. Dawn of Planet was settled late after I popped a Monolith and a nutrient special. My 2nd pod, kept trying to go north, and ok river land kept turning into crap.
Ridiculous amounts of early fungus is possible in the stock binary. I remember some AAR with Miriam where I got something truly heinous. I seem to get it a lot lately and I don't know why.
Come to think of it, the feeling that I'm getting a lot of early obstructive BS late starts, like the first 10 moves of the game are seriously putting me behind schedule, is a lot of why I end up quitting by midgame. It just doesn't seem valuable to continue a spammy substandard game, as compared to getting sleep or doing something productive. It's like those random events in the first few turns, have seriously determined things and set me up to waste a lot of time. So if this particular game goes meh, I seriously doubt I'm going to hold onto it.
Post by: bvanevery on September 28, 2020, 08:43:03 PM
MY 2143. The game started the Peacekeepers too close to me, and they paid the price! That can't happen with Thinker mod faction placement on a Huge map. Now we'll see if owning an AI faction makes up for the spam coming from the other ones. 2 other factions summarily declared war on me when I got their commlink frequencies from supply pods. The Spartans are nearby, and I have no idea where the Free Drones are.
Post by: bvanevery on September 29, 2020, 08:07:15 AM
MY 2197. Santiago wiped out pretty much all the wild caught mindworms I sent against Fort Liberty. I took it once before, but she took it back with enormous numbers of Recon Rovers. It's possible to win against a close quarters opponent early in the game, but against a distant opponent, mindworms can only harass. They're just too fragile.
Amusingly, I do keep capturing more of them, due to my world network of Isles and other mindworms sweeping Planet. I managed to build the Planetary Datalinks and the Virtual World, with all the money and Artifacts I gained. No other faction has managed to build anything yet, although Zhakarov did try to start the Datalinks. Also since my captured mindworms were doing all the work, I managed to build a lot of Biology Labs and Network Nodes.
The Thinker mod faction placement may be "fair" in the sense of distance, but assuring distance also gives the advantage to the player with superior production. That would be the Thinker AI opponents, as they do have all the traditional Transcend advantages. It might be ok on a Standard map, but my mod is balanced for Huge and stock AI. Huge and Thinker AI and guaranteed distances is too much of an advantage. So I'm pretty settled on faction_placement=0.
This game went better, and suggests that the combo of mods might be playable. However the misadventure with the mindworm war, doesn't make me feel like continuing the game past 3 AM. Sleep sounds more worthwhile to me.
The only thing Lal contributed to my empire, was the votes to make me Governor. Spammy allies and vassals also ruin your borders. Imagine if the USA invaded Mexico in the 19th century and actually conquered it. Then in the 20th century, Mexico gets to have parts of the USA ??? Nonsensical.
The game needs a firmer border system. Didn't they solve that in Civ III ? Borders don't just "melt", you hold onto what you've already taken. Unless your Culture becomes a lot weaker than their Culture. Not sure that's a 100% solution now that I think about it. The USA and Mexico aren't flipping borders just because of cultural dominance. The right solution would be a better system of treaties and wars.
Post by: bvanevery on September 30, 2020, 08:58:26 AM
I'm deleting my combo installation. I get the idea what it's like. It's mildly interesting to know that the combo works. Like, doesn't crash or anything.
This just isn't what I'd want an AI to do. I'd like it to play with a sense of "grace". Instead of spam tedium.
Post by: bvanevery on January 29, 2021, 10:51:58 PM
Changed from version 1.47 to 1.48:
SOCIAL ENGINEERING
- Theocratic: increased GROWTH bonus to +2. Added -1 RESEARCH penalty. +1 GROWTH is just too worthless to bother with by itself. -2 RESEARCH used to hurt AI faction development quite a bit, so the penalty is minimal. I tried +1 SUPPORT instead of increasing GROWTH, but the AI liked that way too much. 4 factions went Theocratic. The only ones that didn't, were the University and the Cyborgs, who are not allowed to.
- Socialist: added +1 SUPPORT bonus. Some factions cannot choose Democratic, so they typically choose Police State. That gives a JUSTICE penalty, which encourages the choice of Socialist or Green to offset it. Green has obviously been a better choice though. This tries to make Socialist actually worth something. SUPPORT is only influential in the early game though, when minerals output is low.
- Power: removed SUPPORT bonus. Power becomes available in late midgame, and by then, SUPPORT is irrelevant. It's only influential in the early game, when minerals output is low. No alternate bonus is provided because the AI already favored this choice too much. I'd like it to try the other Values choices.
- Eudaimonic: increased JUSTICE bonus to +2. From a simulation standpoint, it's surely as just as Socialist. Game mechanically, it's actually pretty hard to get people happy enough to consistently pop boom. This may help slightly.
- Thought Control: increased POLICE bonus to +3. Increased PROBE bonus to +3. Removed SUPPORT bonus. Increased RESEARCH penalty to -3. Previously Thought Control wasn't worth anything in the real world. Police aren't that useful unless they're 2x strength. PROBE is increased because I don't want the pairing of Police State and Thought Control to be a given. Thought Control becomes available in late midgame, and by then, SUPPORT is irrelevant. It's only influential in the early game, when minerals output is low. The RESEARCH penalty should actually sting, as 2x police and immunity to mind control are worthwhile abilities.
The attachment limit per post is 5, and I eventually ran out of room at the top of the thread. Consequently, this becomes the new home of version 1.48. It was downloaded 182 times before I moved it here.
Post by: Patient Ember on February 22, 2021, 06:53:09 AM
Reddit brought me here and I was so thoroughly pleased to find people like yourself still modding this game to this day. Really enjoyed skimming through this thread! I will be installing your mod when I next have time to play.
So I just wanted to wish you good health and thank you for sharing your work :)
Post by: bvanevery on February 22, 2021, 09:34:34 PM
I've found the thing is somewhat capable of beating me if I start badly enough. Like, I think you actually have to open well. I could be wrong about that, because it may be that if my early midgame sucks, I just quit rather than stick it out. But it's somewhat interesting to arrive at an early midgame that's kinda sucking for me.
In my current game I'm doing a legalized chemical extermination of several factions. For some reason I'm still being nice to the Hive. I think it's because I had enough enemies to dispose of already, and they're the farthest away. I've also been nice to the Pirates who are all over my coastline. They got uppity the other year, but I took 1 empty sea base they'd just built, and that quieted them down. That'll last for X number of turns I suppose.
Post by: Patient Ember on February 22, 2021, 10:16:28 PM
If I have any cool stories to share about my playthroughs I'll be sure to share them. I'm especially curious to see how the morganites are doing now because I often like to play with the original 7 factions, but I notice that in vanilla, the morganite AI consistently under performs. Usually I would just replace the morganites with the Pirates or the Drones, or maybe Cyborgs. I'll definitely give the SMACX faction lineup a try to see see how the Angels and Cult are doing now too!
Post by: bvanevery on February 24, 2021, 03:50:45 AM
Post by: Patient Ember on March 15, 2021, 01:57:56 AM
Spartans are now blobbing out a bit on the main landmass and setting their sights on their neighbours the gaians. Haven't seen much of the believers other than their capital, but I think they got stuck on like an indonesia sized island. Seen some of their sea colony pods scooting around though; sunk a few into the sea when I refused to send them tech and they DoW'ed me.
I'm playing as the university ;zak; and my closest neighbours are the hive ;yang;
Yang is on an australia sized mini-continent right off my coast while I'm on the same mega landmass as the gaians spartans and ex-morganite territory. Got DoW'ed by him and the battle on both sides is revolving around plasma foils escorting transports with laser sentinels. I recently landed some captured mind worms on his island and going to see what damage I can do with those.
I like how everyone is making better use of sea colonies and also they are using probe team foils now which is cool to see. Gotta watch what I leave parked in recently conquered sea colonies now or else they could get captured! Hive also tried to colonize some land and sea bases right next to me which was cool to see. Of course I had to go out and squish them but it was still cool to see.
Year is 2220 and I just researched superconductor. One of my favourite parts of your mod so far is the tech tree. It just flows better and makes more sense now. Example: Morgan's quote for superconductor 'I would go so far as to say that superconducting fiber alone makes our present economy possible.' Well now it's actually a build tech! --which unlocks energy banks instead of what it was before which was kinda silly --> a conquer tech that unlocked the gatling weapon which, in the old tech tree, often got skipped over to the chaos weapon anyways! It's the touches like these that I really enjoy.
And of course the balancing you did for social engineering looks great so far although I haven't gotten far enough to see the values and future society choices yet.
Overall enjoying it very much!
Post by: bvanevery on March 15, 2021, 02:53:24 AM
Single-Sided Surfaces is my rename of Frictionless Surfaces. I used to have it for Clean Reactors, the idea being that you needed a Klein Bottle topology to recycle fissile byproducts. That's ancient history though. It's been used as "ECM and Pulse stuff" for a long time now. I think it needs a rename, but Frictionless doesn't make any sense. So I have to think about the quote and come up with something else.
In my current game, I'm the Data Angels. Spartans settled quickly on the Monsoon Jungle reasonably far to the south of me. They've been spamming me with hostiles ever since. I've found that even with the bias I've put in towards early game defense, Recon Rover spam from a nearby Conquer faction can still be quite dangerous. I turtled up and went vertical in my scrunched corner of the continent. I have been barely fending off the spam, building infrastructure, and emptying almost the entire world of supply pods. Police State Green Knowledge. I'm about to finally turn the tide with a Fusion Power offensive. Mission Year 2249, so this hasn't been complete cake.
I'm playing my prototype version 1.49, which has a number of minor changes that came together yesterday. A couple of months of playtesting has given me an itch here and there. Like, I've played plenty of games where I've gotten planes, long before I've gotten cruisers and Carrier Decks. I want Carrier Decks on smaller ships.
Gatling Laser will be separated from Doctrine: Air Power. Fusion Power and Quantum Power will be more Build than Conquer, to make the build vs. conquer progressions a bit more varied. They're also gated by Discover. High Morale becomes expensive and comes later; basically I want it out of the game. So that frees C5 Advanced Military Algorithms to be the bearer of the Gatling Laser.
Most importantly, University RESEARCH bonus will go to +3, and they lose the POLICE robustness. I've played enough University now, to think that +2 really just doesn't mean all that much, compared to what the AIs do. They seem to get ahead of me on tech no matter how many advanced labs I build. That ain't right!
Data Angels will no longer advocate Thought Control. Having a "darker" interpretation of Roze has been fun, but there's no practical value in them pursuing it at all. Rational play is choose Police State at the beginning of the game and call it a day, to get +3 PROBE. AI will no longer have any agenda, it's total free will for the Angels now. I did the Believers that way for awhile, so I know what the consequences will be. They won't get angry at your social choices, but if they do get angry with you for some other reason, there are no social choices to suck up to them with. So it's a two edged sword.
Conqueror Marr will become the poster child for Thought Control. Yes the dialogue won't be in alienspeak, but if you overlook that, it's in character. Version 1.48 has 3 Socialist factions and I'm tired of it. Proper alien dialogue ain't worth it.
Post by: Patient Ember on March 15, 2021, 03:09:45 AM
I think I concur with your thoughts on university. I was a little surprised but not at all upset when I didn't have to deal with the extra drone or two during the early game. As for research I'm currently leading but for difficulty I'm just doing librarian this game and haven't been building a lot of miltary units so been focusing on colonizing a lot and getting those network nodes out. There was a time in the past when I used to only play 'abundant' setting for fungus and worms because I like the feeling of having to really struggle to colonize bases. I stopped doing that though because I noticed the ai factions really struggle with lots of fungus and worms so I switched back to average.
Thanks for the reply and looking forward to any future updates. Will let you know how the University / Hive / Spartan power struggle goes!
Post by: bvanevery on March 15, 2021, 03:26:43 AM
I design for Transcend and only play on that difficulty. The University has historically been one of the underperforming factions. Even when I got rid of all their penalties. Pure Discover just probably isn't a good research focus. But in my paradigm, someone's gotta do it! Other modders have noticed that +2 RESEARCH just isn't that great, in their own mods. I think we nearly have consensus on this, that RESEARCH is a weak bonus compared to others.
Whereas, RESEARCH penalties of -2 or greater, seem to greatly harm AI empire development. That's why my Theocratic only has the very modest, token -1. I didn't have any penalty for a long time, but very recently, went back to Miriam's roots as a bible thumping moron. I seriously toned down the anti-Christian stuff, but, y'know, gotta have game balance.
;miriam;
Post by: Patient Ember on March 15, 2021, 01:31:24 PM
Despite having played the game a ton, I'm not super good. I can do transcend if I'm willing to save scum but I'm trying to get out of the habit of save scumming. So for my first game and first try of your mod I figured I'd do librarian but no save scumming (iron man mode?).
Good to know that you balance your mod for transcend difficulty though. I will definitely be trying to work my way up to transcend + ironman mode.
Post by: bvanevery on March 15, 2021, 04:18:10 PM
My great Fusion Power offensive hasn't been so great. It's taken time to manufacture all the units. I have secured my borders from the spam, and terraformed all sorts of land around my cities that was previously overrun by the Spartan horde. I've even squashed 1 Spartan city. But the great invasion, hasn't really happened. I'm now Police State Green Wealth Cybernetic. PLANET is 0 and I'm doing a surprising amount of eco-damage in some cities. This has made me cautious and I'm preparing to produce Hybrid Forests in some places. I'm hoping a few fungal pops here and there will calm things down, and that I don't need so many of them. Also some tree planting.
So now it's Mission Year 2080. I just got C5 Doctrine: Air Power. I think that means my changes to make it a more distinct and delayed path, worked. The Spartans were already going to be toast, and now they'll really be toast. Thing is they've built very little infrastructure, they've been producing spam all this time. So they're this continental sprawl of spam spam spam sausage and spam.
I've reconsidered the renaming of C4 Single-Sided Surfaces. Given what the quote talks about, it's still a decent name. Maybe it's not the best name I could ever fantasize about, but I do have to work with the quote. I don't really want to talk about things being frictionless, and stuff being single sided, does go with the idea of a surface "hiding from itself".
Post by: desertsasquatch on March 18, 2021, 10:59:44 PM
Post by: bvanevery on March 19, 2021, 05:27:23 PM
Post by: Buster's Uncle on March 19, 2021, 07:27:02 PM
Post by: zoneplate on March 22, 2021, 10:16:06 AM
Single-Sided Surfaces is my rename of Frictionless Surfaces. I used to have it for Clean Reactors, the idea being that you needed a Klein Bottle topology to recycle fissile byproducts. That's ancient history though. It's been used as "ECM and Pulse stuff" for a long time now. I think it needs a rename, but Frictionless doesn't make any sense. So I have to think about the quote and come up with something else.
if you're looking for something like that, how about advanced metamaterials? works well as a stealth/ECM tech thing, after all.
Post by: bvanevery on March 22, 2021, 02:54:13 PM
Now metamaterials, that depends on how well one thinks it relates to the quote. Which is thus:
Code: [Select]
##Frictionless Surfaces
#TECH14
As I stepped onto the Magtube, a thought struck me:
Can there be friction where there is no substance?
And can substance be tricked into hiding from itself?
^
^ -- Dr. Gayle Nambala,
^ Morgan Industries ResearcherI don't think it's a fit. The key concepts are surfaces, friction, substance, tricked, hiding, itself (self-referential).
A single-sided surface is tricky / odd / unexpected / self-referential. That's why I came up with it originally.
"Metasubstances" is more on the mark, although I think one could do better. Another consideration is that this is what gives the Pulse and ECM capabilities. Focusing on the substance doesn't speak to that. Focusing on the surface properties does.
Post by: Veiveismart on March 25, 2021, 07:27:52 AM
Post by: bvanevery on March 25, 2021, 03:24:58 PM
Post by: zoneplate on March 28, 2021, 03:24:26 PM
Quote from: brianevery
Now metamaterials, that depends on how well one thinks it relates to the quote. (...) Another consideration is that this is what gives the Pulse and ECM capabilities. Focusing on the substance doesn't speak to that. Focusing on the surface properties does.
See, the ECM was actually why I thought of it - metamaterials can be used to produce systems that divert EM radiation, an "invisibility cloak" that'd render things like radar and lidar useless. Modern technology's only afaik achieved this with very very small objects, and only with microwave radiation, hence the advanced bit in there. There's also iirc metamaterials that can adjust their own friction that've been considered for active microelectromechanical control surfaces on aircraft (it's kind of a catchall term for a variety of technologies, really).
Post by: bvanevery on March 28, 2021, 05:49:40 PM
For ECM and Pulse I've actually got things in reverse. ;lol A jamming technology is not about a surface, it's about radiation. But I never understood why ECM or Pulse were supposed to work against "fast" units anyways. The real explanation is they made a space age version of the Pikeman from Civ II. They wanted a game mechanic.
Hmm I wonder if there are any "radiation" techs that could be repurposed / reshuffled.
Field Modulation is slaved to Alien factions. Any benefit attached to it, the Aliens are going to get at the start of the game. I decided to give them free Cloaking Fields. Since the AI ignores cloaks, it's a nearly useless tech. Bypassing zones of control is occasionally useful, but not impactful at the beginning of the game.
Post by: bvanevery on April 01, 2021, 08:19:34 AM
Changed from version 1.48 to 1.49:
FACTIONS
- Data Angels: set PROBECOST to 100. Removed AI compulsion to pick Thought Control. Nerfing probe teams harmed their ability to do anything useful in the game. Thought Control came too late and they don't need what it offers. The AI now has complete free will. An AI that has no complusion, is less likely to get angry at you. However if it does, you can't imitate its compulsion to get on its good side.
- University: removed ROBUST to POLICE bonus. Increased RESEARCH bonus to +3. When I've played as a human, I've found the University to be poor at research compared to various AI factions. I've built every research facility and still other factions would keep pace or do even better. I also think the POLICE bonus, although game mechanically practical, is out of character for Zhakarov.
- Usurpers: changed primary compulsion to Thought Control. Changed secondary compulsion to nil. I'm tired of having 3 Socialist factions in the game. There's no reason for the alien factions to have the same economic system or beliefs. The dialogue won't be in alien speak, but it's appropriate to Conqueror Marr's character. Not having a secondary compulsion will give the AI more freedom to adapt.
ARMAMENTS
- Advanced Military Algorithms: set wealth=0. It no longer provides a SUPPORT bonus.
- Doctrine: Initiative: set wealth=1. Now has B4 Environmental Economics as a prereq. The cruiser chassis is useful for terraforming oceans. This also gives the Build, Conquer oriented Pirates more of a chance to research it.
- Doctrine: Air Power: now has C4 Single-Sided Surfaces as a prereq. I made a mistake where C5 Advanced Military Algorithms also had the same prereqs.
- Carrier Deck: moved to C5 Doctrine: Air Power. I've often gotten planes long before I've gotten the cruiser chassis.
- Gatling Laser: moved to C5 Advanced Military Algorithms. Giving it with C5 Doctrine: Air Power was way too complete of a weapons package.
- Photon/Wave Mechanics: now has D5 Applied Relativity as a prereq. This breaks Conquer continuity, but it's better lore, and I think having an armor delay at this point in the game is a good thing.
- Fusion Power: set power=3 and wealth=4, making it a B6 tech. Lore-wise it's better as a Build tech, and this could provide some research diversity for non-Conquer factions.
- High Morale: now costs 4 and moved to E8 The Will To Power. I don't want it messing up combat.
- Soporific Gas Pods: moved to E10 Sentient Resonance. I don't want them messing up combat.
- Quantum Power: set power=3 and wealth=4, making it a B10 tech. Lore-wise it's better as a Build tech.
The attachment limit per post is 5, and I eventually ran out of room at the top of the thread. Consequently, this becomes the new home of version 1.0. It was downloaded 201 times before I moved it here.
Post by: bvanevery on May 03, 2021, 07:17:54 AM
;mad I can't believe Conqueror Marr wiped out my capitol with a Trance Scout. That was defended by a Scout. Ok, granted, trained vs. untrained. This is my own damn mod. Ok, reintroducing Trance Scouts is my own damn doing, in upcoming version 1.50. There's a reason I was playing a test game. He must have jumped on a Transport to get here? I have a hard time believing that he just walked through my lines and I never saw him.
[Limit reached]
Yep, there's the Unity Transport. This is his only ship, so maybe he gained it by popping a pod. Vicious. Stock AI having one on. Maybe they nerfed the speed and capacity of free Transports for a reason? Like the AI was too good at gacking someone. Well, I've never really seen this before, and having it happen once doesn't exactly constitute a problem. So I'll just start another test game.
[Limit reached]
With the lesson learned, that Trance Scouts can be dangerous. This was also my doing: I set its AI type to "-1 Autocalculate". Well it calculated Assault! Is it going to stay that way the whole game? Is it going to obsess about that, producing way too many of them? It certainly counts as an assault unit now, it wiped out my capitol. But later matters.
I may have stumbled upon more scope for AI improvement than I realized. How many more unit types can do harm, if I just give them "-1 Autocalculate" ?
[Limit reached]
I'm surprised that the AI built a Command Center immediately. Used to be the AI would build CCs almost obsessively, but I haven't seen it build adequate numbers of them in quite some time. The deficiency arose sometime roughly in the past year of modding and I don't know why it happened. Maybe this is the explanation? The AI won't build CCs unless it has units to Assault with. Or, maybe Marr hasn't had a problem, since he's Aggressive.
Post by: bvanevery on May 29, 2021, 09:35:54 AM
Changed from version 1.49 to 1.50:
RESEARCH FOCI
- Progenitor Psych: now an E3 tech. Set tech=1 and wealth=1. These are bread crumbs so that all factions will eventually learn how to communicate with the Aliens. I want this as a prereq for E4 Bioadaptive Resonance.
- Field Modulation: now a C2 tech. I want it as a prereq for E3 Progenitor Psych.
- Centauri Genetics: now has D2 Information Networks as a prereq. A faction researching both Explore and Discover will be the most likely to learn E3 Centauri Genetics first. That's primarily the Gaians with their Explore Discover focus.
- Bioadaptive Resonance: set power=1. I want this to be a canonical mindworm / psi tech.
- Adaptive Economics: set power=3 and wealth=2. The Free Drones are compulsively Socialist. They have an Explore Build Conquer focus and need a clearer path to learning it. Socialist is the only choice in the SE table that gives a SUPPORT bonus. Having more units available for either conquest or terraforming, does matter at the beginning of the game. It fits well with Police State or Theocratic, as neither of those give an ECONOMY bonus. Having a -1 ECONOMY is not actually consequential. The main disadvantage is not being able to reach a +2 ECONOMY to make a lot of money.
- Doctrine: Loyalty: set wealth=2. This was supposed to be set in version 1.45, but for some reason was not. Having a higher population increases wealth.
ABILITIES
- Hypnotic Trance: now costs according to the ratio of weapon to armor, as in the original game. Long term testing has shown that mindworms are the one true weapons platform of the game. They ignore Perimeter Defenses and can take out any unit regardless of reactor type. If Trance costs 0 for some defensive units, the AI will tend to rush those units when needed to defend a base. In a test game, I tried to take over a sea base with captured Isles of the Deep. A few AI generated Trance Synthmetal Garrison units kept me from taking it. I was playing as the Cult of Planet with +4 PLANET and had also leveled up some of the Isles, so that was pretty much a best case attack.
- Heavy Artillery: now costs 0. Weapon, armor, and chassis costs are far more expensive in my mod than in the original game. There is no need to have artillery cost increase with armor and mobility.
UNITS
- Cloaked Recon Rover: moved to C3 Advanced Subatomic Theory. C2 Field Modulation is now a prereq for that tech. I can't make the unit available with C2 Field Modulation, because then the Aliens would be starting the game with that unit.
- discovery about Scout unit: If set to "-1 = Auto Calculate", the AI will designate it as an Assault unit. This can have spectacular early game effects, like the AI wiping out your Scout defended capitol with a Transport landing! However the AI can also obsess about producing Assault units and run out of SUPPORT. Leaving them as Recon units is safer for AI performance.
The attachment limit per post is 5, and I eventually ran out of room at the top of the thread. Consequently, this becomes the new home of version 1.50. It was downloaded 261 times before I moved it here.
Post by: NineCoronas on June 01, 2021, 08:48:54 PM
Couple questions: is it possible to update the datalinks to reflect the changes you've made?
Is it possible to get the AI to pay attention to supply pods/artifacts?
Is it possible to mod supply pods so that less spawn on the map?
Post by: bvanevery on June 01, 2021, 09:12:52 PM
This mod is fantastic! AI feels dangerous on Thinker+,
Heh, glad it has increased the challenge level for you. It can't be the be-all end-all of 4X AI challenge problems, but I do think I've gotten a lot more mileage out of the existing game AI.
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the factions feel much more balanced than their original incarnations,
Thanks! I put a lot of effort into that.
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and I appreciate the little nuances involved in making fundamentalist much more generic (I like taking Theocratic as Gaians now lol)
Oddly enough though, others will react to you as though you're basically God fearing, regardless of how you imagine yourself. I would have preferred my older Extremist category, but the diplomatic dialogue of a compulsively Extremist faction, would always be squarely about God. So I went to Theocratic, and put Miriam back in as the God monger.
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and removing some of the anachronistic contemporary political commentary in the diplomacy messages.
Yeah some of it was a little too stuck in the 1990s, particularly with Santiago.
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Couple questions: is it possible to update the datalinks to reflect the changes you've made?
It's possible but for legal reasons I myself won't do it. Some quantities are updated automatically and you need merely look at the bottom of the Datalinks page to get the straight dope. To the extent that something would have to be changed manually, I did license my work under a CC-BY-NC license. Anyone could take it, change the Datalinks or diplomatic dialogue that irritates them, package those changes, and distribute them as a new mod as they see fit. But I do not want legal responsibility for files that are not specifically authorized to be changed by the user. I'm an indie game developer and I don't want any conceivable liability from the likes of EA.
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Is it possible to get the AI to pay attention to supply pods/artifacts?
I can't change this behavior from a .txt only mod. I'm not sure what the stock binary's behavior is. A binary modder can probably do things in this regard. You could talk to Tim Nevolin aka Alpha Centauri Bear about his binary mod, The Will To Power.
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Is it possible to mod supply pods so that less spawn on the map?
It's a worthy idea, something I've thought of, but again not something I can do with a .txt only mod. I think it would also be better to change the frequency of what pops from a pod. I don't know if Will To Power, or Induktio's Thinker mod, has that capability.
Thinker, Will To Power, and SMACX AI Growth mod, all play rather differently from each other. It is likely trivial to combine my alphax.txt and faction.txt files with a Thinker or WTP binary, but I haven't tried to do that lately. I don't know what frankenstein would result! I certainly wouldn't vouch for the game design balance, as I can only do that for work completely under my control.
I suppose the last avenue is Scient's OpenSMACX project. I assume these kinds of basic game parameter changes could be made there. I have so far resisted getting into it, because I did put 3+ calendar years and 13 full time person months into this project. I need to focus on future commercial work that can make me money, if I'm ever to become a self-sustaining indie game developer not in poverty. However, I do wonder about "low hanging fruit" such as you talk about with the pods. It would definitely improve the player experience, to be able to control that.
Post by: NineCoronas on June 01, 2021, 10:31:48 PM
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It's a worthy idea, something I've thought of, but again not something I can do with a .txt only mod. I think it would also be better to change the frequency of what pops from a pod. I don't know if Will To Power, or Induktio's Thinker mod, has that capability.
I agree with you. I'll summarize the various thoughts I've had about supply pods below.
1) I like them because it compels me to explore as there is a tangible reward with some danger for doing so. Without them I tend to turtle pretty hard.
2) It's entirely possible to accumulate a huge advantage through pod-seeking as a player in the form of credits and tech, and if you have a high planet rating, boatloads of Isle's of the Deep (better transports than what you can build for what feels like at least half a game) and Mindworms, not to mention experience and credits from killing mindworms. Frankly it'd be a semi-viable strategy to [fuddle-duddle] around at your bases and rely on supply pods to keep you competitive even with Growth mod.
3) Since the AI cannot be easily programmed to seek them out, the next best thing would be reducing their frequency, IMO by about 1/3rd.
4) If it were reduced lower, then it'd be preferable to lower the rate mindworms spawn out of them.
Post by: bvanevery on June 01, 2021, 11:11:18 PM
Frankly it'd be a semi-viable strategy to [fuddle-duddle] around at your bases and rely on supply pods to keep you competitive even with Growth mod.
Semi-viable? It's my standard drill, and I have to restrain myself to do otherwise. ;lol
;hippy I'm kinda afraid of going Capitalist too early. Mindworms attacking over adjacent fungus kinda scare me.
Also, do you know how to "completion scum" ? That's when you set up supply pod pops to complete very expensive facilities or units.
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3) Since the AI cannot be easily programmed to seek them out, the next best thing would be reducing their frequency, IMO by about 1/3rd.
The other thing the AI does poorly, is leave its Artifacts unescorted. Sure it's fun to seize them from the stoopid AI, but it's not good play on the AI's part. I always march my Artifacts back with a Scout or whatever, because you never know who's wandering in the wilderness.
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4) If it were reduced lower, then it'd be preferable to lower the rate mindworms spawn out of them.
I think WTP has ways of controlling the mindworm spawn rate. I remember filing issues about that when it was cranked up too high, and things getting toned down as a result. Tim is anti-mindworm profit.
Post by: NineCoronas on June 04, 2021, 10:22:18 PM
Also, do you know how to "completion scum" ? That's when you set up supply pod pops to complete very expensive facilities or units.
I've read about it on ancient posts.
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The other thing the AI does poorly, is leave its Artifacts unescorted. Sure it's fun to seize them from the stoopid AI, but it's not good play on the AI's part. I always march my Artifacts back with a Scout or whatever, because you never know who's wandering in the wilderness.
I haven't even noticed them finding/taking artifacts. The last game I played there were unpopped supply pods within Brother Lal's territory. One right next to his base lol
Something else I noticed is sometimes you hit a pod and nothing happens at all. With zero evidence, it feels like a mindworm is trying to spawn but failing. Have you encountered this?
Post by: bvanevery on June 06, 2021, 02:33:11 AM
Air units can't pop pods. Were you using a Unity Chopper / Lifter by chance?
Otherwise, any ground unit will pop a pod. Except if you try to use an Artifact to do it, there's a good chance the Artifact disappears into another dimension!
I don't remember any pod ever not being popped. It sounds like some kind of User Interface error. Are you playing with any additional patches, like PRACX or Scient's patch? I've never changed the base game binary, it's only a .txt mod. There's nothing I do that has any direct effect on the UI.
Are you playing on a Huge map? That's the only thing I play on. If you're playing on a really extreme map size, like very small or very large, maybe there are bugs in the original game that I've never encountered.
Post by: gehennaliving on June 08, 2021, 10:06:57 PM
I'm enjoying myself greatly and I think you've done a wonderful job. I play Transcend on huge random maps with fairly standard rules, except I use tech stagnation and randomized personalities. I find the AI is much better at keeping up and it has taken me until 2250 or 2300 to get on top. Good mix of SPs and tech advances across the different factions. I have to take probe defense very seriously and plan attacks more carefully. I'm finding a need to leverage every non-cheese advantage I can to stay in contention. I'm going to keep playing this mod for the foreseeable future and I feel no need to try any of the other mods out there (none of which I have played before).
Last game I played the Spartans, I don't remember many details but I was running 3rd or 4th most of the game until I was able to get tech parity and eventually conquered everybody. Coop victory with Zakharov. Playing now as Morgans, also had the Aliens, Lal, Miriam, Yang, and Zak. I thought Zak would be my pal but he never gave me any tech even when pacted, and he ended up in long-time alliance with Miriam of all people. Lal took out Yang and I eliminated the Aliens, I shared the continent with both and they never really took off. That part was easy. World wars started between Me, Lal, Zak and Miriam started around 2300, I'm slowly grinding Lal down but Zak's research is just ridiculous. His faction bonus and SE choices give him like -50% research cost, so even though I am getting more total energy than him he is getting a tech every two turns for most of the midgame (I'm about every 5 or 6 turns). He also got Hunter Seeker of course. It's about 2360 now, I just got photon armor and chaos gun, but it feels a very marginal advantage and I feel as though I'm just doing everything I can to keep him from running away with it. Very great fun!
Here are the particular things that I'm not as fond of, mentioning just to make my feedback as useful as possible.
1) I was surprised to see magtubes come out so early. It's certainly useful in home territory, but it makes invasions so much easier because it eliminates maneuver. Once I take the first base, I just pick which square I want to attack the next base from and I'm there instantly. I get extra attacks because I spend no movement points. I would recommend removing it to a good deal later in the tech tree.
2) The removal of the infantry bonus vs base seems to have rendered infantry without a purpose. The only reason I've been able to find for building them anymore is if I'm attacking a base filled up with AAA + ECM units, which is rare. Again it makes invasions less complicated because I can just build a bunch of rovers or hovertanks and attack whatever units and bases are in front of me without discrimination. I think it would be better to be forced to build a diverse task force and to have to be attentive to which targets are attacked by rovers vs infantry. I do like the +25% base defense bonus, so I think restoring the infantry bonus vs base at 25% or even just 15% would be beneficial. It makes sense for base defenses to be better suited to destroying large tanks and jets rather than infantry.
3) +2 Economy is very easy to achieve and maintain via SE choices. I think I ran it the whole game as the Spartans, which just felt weird. It's too good to pass up though, so I'm having a hard time envisioning a scenario in which I wouldn't run it the whole game. I think the penalties should be increased or else the Economy bonuses removed from a couple of the SE choices. I do think it would be fine to allow +2 Economy (obviously for a non-Morgan) achievable with a Future Society choice, combined with an early choice. Hope that makes sense.
4) Lastly, and this may be luck of the draw on the maps I've played, but the Alien factions feel very weak, like positively weaker than most of the human factions. It was strange to end up next to them as Morgan, when formerly I would have nearly just given up, only to roll over them with ease. I am glad they are nerfed from vanilla, as I feel they were too powerful then, but it turns out I kind of miss being scared by being next to them.
I think that's about it. Again, great job on the mod and I look forward to many more very fun games playing it.
Post by: bvanevery on June 08, 2021, 10:37:06 PM
I'm going to keep playing this mod for the foreseeable future and I feel no need to try any of the other mods out there (none of which I have played before).
Well that's high praise! Thanks!
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I thought Zak would be my pal but he never gave me any tech even when pacted,
He's a real jerk that way. Nothing I did.
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and he ended up in long-time alliance with Miriam of all people.
Yeah Miriam's new arch-enemy is now the Cyborgs. She complained about them in the SP videos so much, I thought it was more appropriate. Now granted, Zhakarov can never choose Theocratic either, so he can still get on Miriam's bad side. But Miriam can choose Knowledge, so she doesn't have to get on Zhakarov's bad side. I suppose that means if the University is strong and the Believers are weak, an alliance between them can work.
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I'm slowly grinding Lal down but Zak's research is just ridiculous.
Funny you should mention that. I'm playing as the Believers on a different continent. My empire's fine, but I didn't take Zak's Monsoon Jungle driven empire quite seriously enough. I was building a land bridge to stomp him in the midgame, but I slacked. The Free Drones were pestering me and I carved a nice round empire out of their territory. No value in it other than not being pestered. Meanwhile Zak got the Hunter-Seeker Algorithm and later Fusion reactors. I'm pursuing my policy of only researching with AI default foci, so I am unlikely to learn Fusion Power on my own. It could spread to others eventually and then I'll get it through the Planetary Datalinks, as I've been a SP powerhouse. Right now though, Zak gave some units to others, and they're pummeling me with Fusion Gatling Speeders a bit. I'm just better than them though, so even with only Fission I'm doing fine.
What to do? Well I've been sending out unarmored Marine Gatling Cruisers, zipping around with the Maritime Control Center. My hope is to eventually board a Fusion unit, then reverse engineer all sorts of nice Fusion troops. So far no luck though. I had one battle against a Fusion ship ages ago, when I first thought of this stratagem. That 1 ship wiped out my Fission fleet! It's taken me a long time to get around to going at it again, because, well, you know, Industrial Labs and all that. I mean why attack when there's no profit in it?
Zak has started wiping a distant sea base I took from him, using his air force. If I lose it it's no big deal. He's been working on Conventional Missiles since forever. Don't know where or if he's launching them. So far I haven't been hit at least. It's really annoying when the AI shoots a base full of Artifacts with CMs. I've often quit games when that happened, or at least save scummed them. Quitting is usually because other things are going wrong, but actually this time I'm doing fine. I'm just technologically backwards. Theocratic Socialist Knowledge Thought Control, so -2 RESEARCH.
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It's about 2360 now, I just got photon armor and chaos gun, but it feels a very marginal advantage and I feel as though I'm just doing everything I can to keep him from running away with it. Very great fun!
Yeah if Zak has pushed that far ahead, you'll have to think a bit. Lift a finger and all that. And lucky for you, I just made Trance units cheaper. So hopefully you're not going to be able to run him over with mindworms so easily.
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Here are the particular things that I'm not as fond of, mentioning just to make my feedback as useful as possible.
1) I was surprised to see magtubes come out so early. It's certainly useful in home territory, but it makes invasions so much easier because it eliminates maneuver. Once I take the first base, I just pick which square I want to attack the next base from and I'm there instantly. I get extra attacks because I spend no movement points. I would recommend removing it to a good deal later in the tech tree.
I actually like mag tube warfare which is why I put it earlier. With a big fleet of Formers it is kinda overpowered though. It's also not easy to balance in a .txt only mod, as this Ultimate Strategy does become available sometime. I'm not willing to take mag tubes out of the game. It would really suck to have to push units manually all the way across a Huge map, which is what the mod is designed for.
I suppose I could make mag tube construction more expensive? Since it is so valuable, that's not unreasonable. Let's see... yes, the cost is independently adjustable. I can most definitely do that. Question is how much should it cost.
Rest later. A pizza calls me!
Post by: bvanevery on June 09, 2021, 01:06:41 AM
2) The removal of the infantry bonus vs base seems to have rendered infantry without a purpose.
They're cheaper to manufacture than Speeders. I guess you haven't been put under enough pressure yet to notice and care about the difference?
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The only reason I've been able to find for building them anymore is if I'm attacking a base filled up with AAA + ECM units, which is rare.
If AAA or ECM units are not actually getting built, I would consider that a problem. I haven't done a lot of long term testing of 1.50 to see how that plays out. I did just make Trance cheap again like the original game, which could have an effect on the force mix of AAA and ECM built. If you post a game with a .SAV attached that "didn't have AAA or ECM units" among the defenders, I'd like to see that.
In my current game with Zhakarov so far ahead, he's most definitely building AAA ships. Haven't noticed land units yet. I'm not in land contact yet, I stalled on my causeway building. I don't think the AI will build much in the way of a specific defensive unit, unless it knows you have a lot of the corresponding offensive unit. Since I don't even have C5 Doctrine: Air Power yet, it would be reasonable for the AI not to bother yet.
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Again it makes invasions less complicated because I can just build a bunch of rovers or hovertanks and attack whatever units and bases are in front of me without discrimination. I think it would be better to be forced to build a diverse task force and to have to be attentive to which targets are attacked by rovers vs infantry. I do like the +25% base defense bonus, so I think restoring the infantry bonus vs base at 25% or even just 15% would be beneficial.
Well yeah, it would benefit you, the human player. Not the AI. The AI isn't going to make great use of infantry against your bases, I don't think. I don't think you the human, are the one that needs help.
What is actually needed for greater AI challenge, is to make sure enough ECM units are getting built. It's always going to be possible for the human player to game this though. Get the AI worried about Speeders, then hit 'em with the air force. Humans are smart that way. Stock AI unfortunately is dumb enough to be vulnerable to such change-ups.
I don't think the Thinker or Will To Power binary mods have the AI combat sophistication to do any better at this point either. Lotta decompilation and reverse engineering necessary to write better AI algorithms for this. In short, a lot of work. I know Tim (aka Alpha Centauri Bear, WTP author) doesn't quite have the personal resources to take that kind of change on. Haven't kept up with what Indukto (Thinker author) has done about combat AI, if anything. Historically, he focused mainly on colonization and terraforming AI.
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It makes sense for base defenses to be better suited to destroying large tanks and jets rather than infantry.
Actually in futuristic simulation terms, it doesn't. This isn't WW II. "Infantry has to be better in cities" is a pure hand wave.
Artillery is extremely effective in real cities, as was proven by Iraqi forces cooperating with Iranian forces in Tikrit a number of years ago. They decided they didn't want to deal with their American counterparts anymore, took the gloves off, and shelled the crap out of the city. Lotsa collateral damage making Americans unhappy, but it sure got the job done. Got ISIS on the run that way. If tanks in the future just wanna blow stuff up, that'll work in cities just fine.
Although urban combat is 3D, tanks can be designed to handle that circumstance better. One problem with Cold War tanks thrown into urban problems in various places, whether American or Russian (i.e. Chechnya), is that these tanks were designed to fight other tanks on the steppes of Europe. That's a fast moving, mostly 2D problem. In urban combat you need things that can fire up or down.
Please do observe whether the cost of infantry vs. speeders vs. hovertanks matters to you. Maybe there's not enough difference to force you to think, especially by midgame.
Post by: bvanevery on June 09, 2021, 02:09:02 AM
3) +2 Economy is very easy to achieve and maintain via SE choices. I think I ran it the whole game as the Spartans, which just felt weird. It's too good to pass up though, so I'm having a hard time envisioning a scenario in which I wouldn't run it the whole game.
Play a faction that doesn't allow you to choose Democratic. That would be the Cultists, Hive, and Usurpers. Not the Spartans. Spartans can't choose Wealth though, so that means you were Democratic Capitalist through midgame at least. You were at a disadvantage with mindworms and you probably didn't do a good job popping all the supply pods on the map. I guess that didn't cramp your style enough?
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I think the penalties should be increased or else the Economy bonuses removed from a couple of the SE choices. I do think it would be fine to allow +2 Economy (obviously for a non-Morgan) achievable with a Future Society choice, combined with an early choice. Hope that makes sense.
It's totally non-sensical to remove the ECONOMY bonus from either Capitalist or Wealth, so that's not gonna happen. Cybernetic is at least midgame, sometimes early late game depending on your faction and research foci, so I don't think that's the issue. The issue would be how easy it is to perform economically in the early to mid game. Democratic is responsible for that ease.
I can think about changing Democratic, but it has to be considered against 3+ years of playtesting. You're not the only one making money from it, the AI is making money too. It may be that the AI doesn't use money as effectively as a human player, particularly since I made mind control 2x more difficult for most factions.
You should realize that the total amount of ECONOMY available in the SE choices, is actually less than the original game. In the original you could get +2 from Free Market, +1 from Wealth, and +2 from Eudaimonic, for a grand total of +5 from SE choices. In my mod you can only gain +4, but you have much more flexibility about how you do it, and all the Future Societies are available by late midgame.
I don't believe in the serious penalties attached to Free Market in the original game. The -5 POLICE penalty, in particular, is ridiculous. There's no reason for a capitalist pig society to be afraid of using police at all! Heck in the USA we've got the Prison Industrial Complex. It's a big moneymaker. I won't go for this kind of stupidity, and I know where it came from. Firaxis wanted to generalize the parameters of Civ II's Republic and Democracy governments. Well, this isn't Civ II, and it's a mod of whatever SMAC was. We don't have to tie the economy to squeamishness about making war. Modern day China certainly wouldn't. Police State Capitalist is basically modern China. Don't let the single party state fool ya, they're paying lip service to Communism.
Post by: gehennaliving on June 09, 2021, 02:14:59 AM
First just to clarify the AI *is* building plenty of ECM and AAA units — what I was talking about was a base full of both AAA and ECM units together. With these bases speeders and jets were both getting slaughtered so I had to recruit infantry just to reduce the defenses. I said that it's rare for the AI to have a base with multiple of both types of units. Typically, if it has ECM units I will reduce it with aircraft, and if it has AAA units I reduce it with speeders. I'm finding the AI to have either ECM or AAA on the vast majority of defenders and ships, and a fair number of normal land combat units.
Now, about the infantry. I'm seeing unarmored fusion chaos infantry is cost 50, unarmored fusion chaos rover is 70, and unarmored fusion chaos tank is 80. Surely the infantry should be 1/2 the cost of rovers and 1/3 the cost of tanks (that being their ratio of attacks) to still make sense to build them, assuming infantry has no other advantages? In other words, why would I not pay 20 more minerals to double the attacks, or 30 more minerals to triple the attacks, all else being the same?
Also, I've found that the AI is still building lots of infantry units. In my current game (2360), a quick headcount of combat units (not garrisons) shows Zak with 30 infantry, 8 rovers, and 1 tank. Miriam shows 64 infantry, 2 rovers, and 1 tank. Assuming those numbers are typical (and they are, from my limited experience - especially Zak) it would seem that any bonuses given to infantry would therefore benefit the AI *more* than the player, the player being highly unlikely to build such a lopsided amount of infantry. If the goal is to benefit the AI, maybe removing the rover's open terrain bonus would be more beneficial than nerfing the infantry. After all, the rovers are compensated by their number of attacks and movement points.
Just some things that are coming to mind, again in the spirit of discussion only. Please keep up the good work!
Post by: bvanevery on June 09, 2021, 02:45:59 AM
4) Lastly, and this may be luck of the draw on the maps I've played, but the Alien factions feel very weak, like positively weaker than most of the human factions.
Which one, Caretakers or Usurpers? AI Usurpers have a history of kicking plenty of ass, including in my current game. I don't see any problem with them. AI Caretakers have a history of underperforming. Now I can use their +1 PLANET to extremely powerful effect as a human player, but I don't think the AI really knows how to do that. Heck I think the privilege of directed research makes things really easy too. But Caretakers in the hands of the AI, definitely has been weaker than other factions. It may not be possible to resolve this, as any bonus given to them, is just something the human player would exploit.
The only AI-specific leverages I have, are faction personality and research foci. Maybe the Caretakers have an ineffective combo. It would definitely take some fooling around and luck to hit upon something that works better. We can definitely see that Conqueror Marr doesn't have any problem, he just steamrollers things. I've also seen games where the Caretakers didn't suck, so there may not actually be a problem worth solving. Different factions do better in different starting conditions.
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It was strange to end up next to them as Morgan, when formerly I would have nearly just given up, only to roll over them with ease.
You ain't playin' with your grandpappy's Morgan though. He's got +1 SUPPORT, not -1. Think Haliburton.
Meanwhile, Aliens are only as powerful as other factions.
If you can't destroy any AI faction with any faction you're playing, in a close quarters start, then you're really not an expert at playing the game. For an expert, any close faction is "food". This is a big part of why I recommend Huge maps. AIs are supposed to have some distance before you get into contact with them, so that they can dig in and provide resistance. And similarly, so you can have fun building your roads and mines and stuff. The ready availability of Clean Synth units in the early game, does put a stop to immediate Recon Rover rushes, but it's still possible to knock a close quarters neighbor off-balance, cut off their colonization, surround them, out-colonize them, and then finish them off at Mission Year 2200 so they won't rocket outta there. Out of an expert such as yourself, I'd expect no less.
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I am glad they are nerfed from vanilla, as I feel they were too powerful then, but it turns out I kind of miss being scared by being next to them.
Too bad. ;lol You'll have to exercise the CC-BY-NC license and change things to the kind of faction or Scenario you want. I've never gotten into third party factions, I've only balanced the standard 14. There are plenty of 'em kicking around, somewhere on this site, including "monster Alien" style factions of various flavors. Not my thing.
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I think that's about it. Again, great job on the mod and I look forward to many more very fun games playing it.
Cool beans! ;hippy
Post by: bvanevery on June 09, 2021, 04:43:27 AM
I said that it's rare for the AI to have a base with multiple of both types of units.
Unfortunately I don't have any direct lever to allocate the original AI's base defense priorities. I'm only a .txt modder.
Indirectly, I could make AAA and/or ECM cheaper, going back to the complication of them costing 0, 1, or 2 based on the weapons to armor ratio. This would cause the AI to build more of such units. Would it build the right mix of such units? I don't know. And what's to stop you from smashing them up with mindworms when they don't build the right mix of Trance units?
I could predefine some AAA ECM units, depending on when Neural Grafting / dual unit ability is available in the tech tree. Turns out that C5 Doctrine: Air Power already has exactly the prereqs needed for this. I could define an AAA ECM 3-Pulse Garrison. Question is, will the stock AI build an appropriate amount of such a unit? That's a serious playtesting question. It could fail to build it, because it costs too much, or it could obsess about it to the detriment of other units, because it costs too little. Coaxing a better defense out of the stock AI, is somewhat a matter of luck.
And, will the AI build anything like an AAA ECM 3-Pulse unit in the future, as armor advances and Fusion reactors become available? There's no way to predefine a Fusion unit in the stock binary. With Scient's patch it's possible, and that patch is known to work with my mod. I'm not going to package Scient's patch and require it though, for legal reasons, and because someone really should stick to just the plain game as an offering. It's the most trivial installation scenario, and it's also a baseline to measure other mods against.
I mean hey, who says binary modding actually improves AI performance, compared to staring at your tech tree and unit costs / weights really really hard? In principle, someone could binary mod something better than I've done. In practice, for the amount of work it requires, they might never get there.
Anyways, someone else could exercise the CC-BY-NC license to make a Scient-required version of my mod.
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I'm finding the AI to have either ECM or AAA on the vast majority of defenders and ships
You've never seen ECM on a ship. It's not allowed in my mod. All ships are fast units. I can't prevent the use of 3-Pulse armor, but I can definitely prevent ECM, and did so.
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Now, about the infantry. I'm seeing unarmored fusion chaos infantry is cost 50, unarmored fusion chaos rover is 70, and unarmored fusion chaos tank is 80.
70 vs. 80 is an unfortunate integer rounding error for that case. I'd usually expect a bigger gap.
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Surely the infantry should be 1/2 the cost of rovers
Why "surely" ? It's not just you the human player who designs and deploys units. The AI does this too. Costs have to be something that the AI will put up with. It's been awhile since I was juggling all that, and would have to refer to my CHANGELOG, but I remember something about "what the AI will really make" being a factor in the costs I arrived at.
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and 1/3 the cost of tanks (that being their ratio of attacks) to still make sense to build them, assuming infantry has no other advantages? In other words, why would I not pay 20 more minerals to double the attacks, or 30 more minerals to triple the attacks, all else being the same?
Because everything else is not the same. You may also want armor and abilities, which greatly increase cost.
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Also, I've found that the AI is still building lots of infantry units.
Yes I've noticed that as well. Which speaks to the issue of costs the AI will put up with. If the AI decides mobility costs too much, then no mobility. It sure seems to like Gatling Speeders well enough in my current game though.
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it would seem that any bonuses given to infantry would therefore benefit the AI *more* than the player, the player being highly unlikely to build such a lopsided amount of infantry.
The AI is not entirely competent at attacking bases. This bonus does not translate directly into an advantage, because the AI is hesitant when moving forwards, and doesn't know how to build a rail right up to a base. It is far more likely that the AI will simply lose big stacks of units in disfavorable terrain positions as usual, while the human player reaps the reward of the +25% base killing bonus.
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If the goal is to benefit the AI, maybe removing the rover's open terrain bonus would be more beneficial than nerfing the infantry. After all, the rovers are compensated by their number of attacks and movement points.
Do you think human players are pummeling the poor hapless AI by copious use of this tactic? I seriously doubt that. It just hasn't risen to the bar of "boy I sure am glad I'm exploiting this" in any game I've been playing. Much of the time, the AI properly moves infantry units onto defensive cover. Of course then it stupidly pillages the Forests that were protecting it, and then I kill them. But eh, so, some AI dumbness is fine. Good for the human player's ego!
The serious exploit was the mindworms. 1.50 just attempted to plug that.
You're right that mag tubes are the other major exploit though. Maybe making them as expensive as a Mine would do the trick.
Post by: bvanevery on June 13, 2021, 07:50:58 AM
Here's me getting my butt kicked by the Spartans in the early game. Make no mistake, even with the defensive advantages I've built in, Recon Rovers are rather dangerous in AI hands. 3 reasons for my utter, abject failure.
- Stubbornly refused to change my research foci from the default of Discover Build. This way, I try to become aware of what the AI is experiencing when playing the faction. Well in Aki's case they're often experiencing suckage.
- Will never, ever pay a faction to leave me alone.
- Allied with Lal, had common cause against enemies. Asked for tech exchange. He granted me E2 Doctrine Loyalty and cut me off! "What a pleasant chat". Tried him again in a few turns, asked for tech exchange. Made the mistake of asking for a tech swap. He cut me off because he was working on the Virtual World! I had the money to buy what I needed from him. Then, sunspots settled in.
I've been testing making mag tubes more expensive, per the feedback. Tried them 4X more expensive but that seems to be a bit too much of a drag. This game was to test 2X more expensive but I clearly didn't get that far!
Did I mention that I had to fight the Free Drones too, and they were even closer to me? Not militarily advanced like the Spartans though. I actually beat them off. Also got threatened by boats of Scouts at sea, from both the Spartans and the Hive. Eventually sunk one of them. Surprised they didn't land.
Post by: bvanevery on June 14, 2021, 04:45:54 AM
Here's the Pirates mind controlling 1 of my only 4 bases in the early game. It's kinda galling given how much I've tamped down mind control in my mod. It's not like my capitol isn't 7 squares away. The AI just loves to take over sea bases, to the point that I usually won't build them, but in this case I didn't see much choice. I was gifted the Manifold Nexus but otherwise had a completely abysmal start, choked off by fungus. Never captured a mindworm in my home territory. Got precious little at sea.
I was holding off Svensgaard's Laser Foils just fine, but... I'm way too runted to have developed Probe Teams. I have no idea how much money he spent to take the base. Activating the Scenario Editor, I see he has 418 credits after his action. Let's see how much he had last turn. 835 credits. So, that was a bit costly for him, but he could afford it.
I guess my toning down of mind control worked fine. Can't save me from an abysmal start. What's with the bad starts lately? I wonder if I'm willing to go through any kind of heroics to prove myself in a bad start. I could have used somewhat better tactics than I did, but geez. Probably shoulda spammed colonists onto miserable land and taken my chances with it. Oh well, better luck next time.
Lal shares a similarity with Aki in the last game: he doesn't study Conquer. His foci are Explore Discover Build. As usual I didn't change them. Guess the Pirates are dangerous if you're not going to learn armor and weapons. I actually had a problem like that a couple games ago, where the Pirates made a surprising Recon Rover assault on my land bases. Quit that game. Didn't think they had it in them, but I guess they do. So I suppose you're better off spreading on land if the Pirates are around, but eventually they'll come for you no matter what.
Post by: bvanevery on June 15, 2021, 10:03:09 AM
Back to the drawing board. Aarg. ;sven
Post by: pcangler on June 16, 2021, 05:16:28 AM
Glad I'm not the only one having this problem! Had this happen to me in my first AI Growth game. And this was only on Thinker! He built 75 fusion transports, then almost no assault troops to support them. This kind of colossal resource-wasting is hilarious to me.
Post by: bvanevery on June 16, 2021, 05:32:19 AM
I've also rearranged the early techs so that the Clean Sea Formers comes earlier and is straight on the Pirates' research path. I think sometimes a bug happens in the original game where the Pirates never design an ordinary Sea Formers unit at all. Clean Sea Formers is intended as a failsafe, but it can't very well do that job if the Pirates aren't learning the needed tech until midgame.
I hope I can retain the Pirates' Wealth orientation, because if they don't do it, I can't really think of anyone else who should. They wouldn't even pick Wealth last game, when they knew the tech. However they were also in a shooting war with me since fairly early (their fault). They didn't do much for terraforming, nor did they make any infrastructure. They maintained themselves with Police State Capitalist. Once they signed a Truce with me, at some point they went Democratic Capitalist. I hope that fixing their earlier unit decisions, will cause them to improve on a more economic trajectory. I hope their Build Conquer foci isn't giving the AI too much cognitive dissonance.
Post by: bvanevery on June 16, 2021, 08:09:27 AM
[Limit reached]
They only settled Safe Haven. They've got 2 Sea Colony Pods they don't appear to be doing anything with. I hope this is a map dependent bug and not due to my changes. I did set them up last in the faction lineup. I wonder if being 7th has something to do with it.
[Limit reached]
I wonder if they're cowering in abject terror from that sealurk to the west. Maybe it took out their 2nd base?
I did start the game with Scient's auto saving debug binary. I wonder if that has anything to do with it. I've zipped up all the autosaves. I don't see that Turn 1 save among them. I wonder if I'm supposed to use terranx_opensmacx_auto.exe ? It's dated 5 days later than terranx_opensmacx_debug.exe.
Hoo boy. Looks like in MY 2110, Svensgaard only had his original Unity Gun Foil, his base undefended, and was building a Clean Transport. That's not a smart way to start the game. In MY 2120 he's got a Clean Sea Colony Pod heading north, with a Sealurk just salivating for it. Did he just have really bad luck this game?
Post by: bvanevery on June 17, 2021, 05:27:32 AM
I'm changing the Cyborgs around, since there's no particular reason to be considering them Just. I'm experimenting with allowing them to earn INTEREST per turn. It was an ability listed in the faction template and I've never tried it before. I gave them a generous 10% per turn to see just how bad it would be. Well after 57 years they've probably got enough money to buy the current Planet outright, if they actually knew the tech for Economic Victory! As expected I'll need to tone this down. Pity, as I had a decent start trying to possess the Monsoon Jungle.
[Limit reached]
The Pirates had their usual terrible settlement of Safe Haven in the middle of the ocean. However they made a proper beeline for a good coast. They have 4 Laser Skimships, which doesn't seem unreasonable. They've explored a good amount of ocean around themselves, and that takes ships.
They have no Sea Formers yet. They have the Tier 1 techs needed to design such a unit, but checking their Workshop, they haven't done so. The original game has this strange line for a predefined unit:
Code: [Select]
*Sea Formers, Foil, Formers, Scout, 9, 0, 0, Disable, -1, 00000000000000000000000000I wonder if that asterisk is more than a formality? Plus it is marked Disable, so it shouldn't be available. Could using this predefined unit design slot be creating a weird problem?
My Clean Sea Formers failsafe is now available with B2 Industrial Economics. They haven't researched it yet. Instead they have lot of early Conquer techs. Their focus is Build Conquer foci so they probably aren't going to learn a straight Build tech immediately. I'll have to watch for whether they get around to terraforming at an appropriate time. I think their more militant disposition is ok for the early game.
They have 4 Clean Transports, which doesn't sound horribly outlandish. I see 1 Holding at Port Svensgaard. The other 3 are in Barbary Coast, Parrot Landing, and Crow's Nest and they're all Going to their respective cities. So I guess that's a funky form of Holding. Port Svensgaard is loading up a land Colony Pod, which would be a pretty good move considering the Monsoon Jungle nearby.
Perhaps there was no problem with the Pirates this game. The point of failure may be, if the Pirates don't settle their 2nd sea colony pod on a good coast, their development is gonna suck. Like if they get it killed somehow. They've really only got this 1 shot at a good start, because Safe Haven is almost always a complete waste out in the middle of a big ocean.
In a subsequent game, by MY 2167 the Pirates had built 4 Clean Sea Formers, with 4 more on the way. They didn't build any regular Sea Formers although they did know the design. They built 8 Laser Foils and 6 Clean Transports. Their empire development was reasonable, with the usual wasted Safe Haven, and a Port Svensgaard next to the Monsoon Jungle.
The Cyborgs with 5% INTEREST amassed 2001 credits. Still too high. Cha Dawn made 803 credits from pod popping. Svensgaard made 361 credits from oceanfaring. Domai made 258 credits from whatever the working class gets up to. Santiago was Pathetic. Zhakarov only managed 250 credits. As Morgan I've made lots of money from pod popping, since I was given the Manifold Nexus at start. Nowadays just under 1000 credits as I keep burning it off rushing stuff.
In yet another game, I had the easiest start ever, north of the Monsoon Jungle. The Cyborgs meanwhile were totally stillborn for some substantial number of turns. By MY 2184 they had a cluster of 5 cities just south of me, with their capitol and another city waaaaaaaay to the south of that. Looks like they split their colonists at the beginning and got confused by both the map and the Caretakers. Despite these woes, they have 680 credits, which probably means 3% INTEREST is still too good. I have 633 credits, but I've also built 2 SPs and rushed quite a lot of facilities when I didn't have any SPs to work on. Domai's got 359, Santiago's got 391, Zhakarov's got 649, Svensgaard's got 345, H'minee's got 401.
[Limit reached]
The Pirates have not built a single Sea Former, so reinstating the *Sea Formers predefined unit, didn't help. They still haven't learned B2 Industrial Economics, preferring more militant stuff. Thus the Clean Sea Formers failsafe hasn't kicked in either. Given their choice to intersperse themselves between the Spartans and the Free Drones, is their disposition reasonable? They're not at war with either. They have built 8 Clean Transports, which is a bit excessive. They have 14 Synth Laser Skimships which doesn't seem completely crazy.
Part of their problem is Port Svensgaard got earthquaked, so it's now landlocked. This and Deadman Tavern cut the Free Drone empire in half! Port Svensgaard has lotsa garrison troops.
What to do? Build Conquer is turning out to be a lot more Conquer than Build. Looks like the only way I'll get the Clean Sea Formers failsafe to work, is to give it with B1 Industrial Base. I don't like giving a foil design without Doctrine: Flexibility having been learned, but I'm running out of options.
Bizarrely, the Pirates did not design a plain Sea Formers. This bug is annoying.
After a night's sleep, I've decided the thing to do, is to get rid of the Build Conquer foci. Explore Build worked better for them, even if they didn't end up learning Doctrine: Initiative. Their early game is much more important than their midgame. If they get wealthy enough from all that free ocean energy and minerals, they can probably make bricks fly with their research. They used to be like that at one point in my modding, really scary. But these stumbling impediments have crept in, and they are not what they were.
In yet another game, as of MY 2147 the Pirates have not learned B2 Industrial Economics, so no Clean Sea Formers for them yet. Nor have they designed an ordinary Sea Formers. Whereas, I got it pretty much when I learned C1 Doctrine: Flexibility. Could it be that since the Pirates start with that tech, the code that designs a Sea Formers is never triggered? What happens if I don't give them C1 Doctrine: Flexibility to begin with, and they just learn it like everyone else? As an AQUATIC faction they're supposed to have some unit possibilities already.
In MY 2171 I bought B2 Industrial Economics from the Caretakers. Their research foci are Build Conquer. They swapped with the Pirates, and the irony is they've learned what I was trying to get the Pirates to learn. The Pirates have sucked me into a war with the Spartans, so maybe their unit development is not crazy. But this lack of Sea Formers is worrisome and makes me think I might have to give away a ship design in B1 Industrial Base.
MY 2183. Oh joy. The Pirates went Theocratic, giving them a -1 RESEARCH penalty. This makes it slightly harder for them to learn B2 Industrial Economics. This is just not working. 83 turns and no Sea Formers, ridiculous! Back to the drawing board.
The Cyborgs with INTEREST 2% made 595 credits, about twice what most factions are worth. A notable exception is the Caretakers who somehow became filthy rich with 984 credits. I don't understand that because the Usurpers are about to wipe them out. I don't think they got a lot of land pods, I think I got most of them. They could have gotten some sea pods I didn't notice, but I think I pretty much swept the oceans too. Ok whatever, it's a mystery.
Post by: bvanevery on June 19, 2021, 08:45:12 AM
If I give them Doctrine: Flexibility and Industrial Base for free, then they start the game with a Sea Formers design. Well at least I do, as a human player. I should check whether the AI players have it, because don't remember having a problem previously as a human player either.
Hmm, AI Pirates did not start with a Sea Formers design. They had Clean Sea Formers only because I temporarily put it in Industrial Base. I might have to make that permanent.
I could make a terraforming module have no tech prereq at all.
When I provide a Clean Sea Formers with B1 Industrial Base, other ship designs can be reverse engineered, such as a Gun Foil or a Sea Colony Pod.
Interestingly, if I inspect my Clean Sea Formers unit design, a plain Sea Formers unit is designed as a byproduct. Suddenly I have that design, when previously I didn't. I think this is a byproduct of the fake "high bit" abilities hack. It allows predefined units to be upgraded to those designs, but it also makes the UI behave a bit oddly.
When I provide a Clean Sea Formers with C1 Doctrine: Flexibility, I can reverse engineer a land Former unit.
This is converging on either giving the Foil chassis or the Terraformer module at the start of the game, no techs required.
I decided ships are going to be free for everyone.
Post by: bvanevery on June 20, 2021, 11:56:08 PM
Ok! After 43 years the Pirates have built 4 bases and 3 Clean Sea Formers. They've built 3 Clean Transports. 2 are sitting in port, 1 is out exploring. That might not be unreasonable and I'll keep my eye on it. They have built a lot of Clean units and have not run themselves out of SUPPORT. So far so good.
The Cyborgs have 4 bases and 54 credits, so 2% INTEREST has not proved important for them so far.
Post by: bvanevery on June 21, 2021, 06:58:56 AM
An example of Recon Rovers being dangerous early in the game. I still have a Scout empire. I did upgrade the nearest base to a Synth Garrison, but it's Green. I also neglected to make a Sensor Array, although I swear I was "going to" in that forested river square. I don't think the AI knows how to attack a Chopper, even though technically it's on the ground. So it's on blocking duty. I used the Unity Mining Laser to kill a 5th Recon Rover that was in the fungal patch next to my city. Such a battle.
Post by: bvanevery on June 23, 2021, 07:05:10 AM
I've reshuffled a lot of the AI research foci around, trying to match them better to what the factions have turned out to be. For instance, the Pirates are going back to Explore Build. It made them really terrifying, somehow, maybe 1.5 years ago. I hope I've corrected the other things that held them up, but heck I'm still doing better than them, at least this game. They make a few too many Clean Transports, but they're cheaper to make now, and they have plenty of Laser Skimships.
Post by: bvanevery on June 28, 2021, 07:12:28 PM
Changed from version 1.50 to 1.51:
FACTIONS
- Cyborgs: increased RESEARCH bonus to +2. Removed JUSTICE bonus. Removed Polymorphic Encryption ability. Added extra TALENT every 4 citizens. Added INTEREST 2% per turn. With the University getting +3 RESEARCH and free Network Nodes, and the Gaians getting free Biology Labs, the Cyborgs were underpowered as a research faction. The Cybernetic future society is dystopian and malevolent, per Miriam's endemic complaints about it. Giving the Cyborgs a JUSTICE bonus is dissonant from that, and is a leftover from when it was called EFFIC. The Polymorphic Encryption ability doesn't seem to stop other factions from mind controlling their units and bases. The Cyborgs are now portrayed as basically accountants. As such, they get to make money in a strange way compared to other factions. The extra money has not given the AI any decisive advantage, so they are also bolstered with more Talents.
- Pirates: now have Explore Build research foci. Removed free Doctrine: Flexibility tech. Removed special claims about free unit prototypes. Ships and their basic unit prototypes are now given to everyone at the beginning of the game. If they have a Conquer focus, they will bog down on the tons of early Conquer techs, and not learn B4 Planetary Economics and Wealth. It may take them a long time to learn C3 Adaptive Doctrine and C4 Doctrine: Initiative, but that sacrifice has to be made for the sake of moneygrubbing.
- Believers: now have Build Conquer research foci. This is to free up Explore Conquer. Miriam doesn't have any particular reason to be interested in mindworm / psi techs.
- Caretakers: now have Explore Conquer research foci. Changed faction personality to Aggressive. The faction has been very much an underperformer compared to the Usurpers, and perhaps lack of aggression was the problem. They were Aggressive in the original game.
- Data Angels: now have Explore Discover Build research foci. They are benefiting from everyone else's research anyways, so they don't have to research Conquer themselves.
- Peacekeepers: now have Explore Discover Conquer research foci. They tend to have dangerous undemocratic enemies and really could stand to buff up on the Conquer techs.
- Usurpers: now have Discover Build Conquer research foci. This is to provide contrast with the Caretakers.
TERRAFORMING
- Mag Tube: now costs 6. Playtester gehennaliving pointed out it's way too easy to conquer everything with early mag tubes. I tried making it cost 12 but it was a drag.
- Soil Enricher: now costs 12. The supply of easy food in the game was too high. Many bases can grow to size 14 without them.
- Forest: now costs 6. They're extremely valuable and way too cheap in the original game. "Forest and forget" is almost a master strategy, particulary in this mod that puts strictures on Condensers and Boreholes. The Will To Power mod has proven that forests are still worth building even when they're expensive. 6 is a modest cost increase, chosen mainly because it's an easy multiple for calculating the number of Formers needed.
- Aquifer: now costs 12. It's not that valuable in practice and I typically forget to build them.
- Echelon Mirror: now costs 12. Available with B4 Planetary Economics. It should stay at Tier 4. Placing one in a good location is difficult, making them not that valuable.
- Sensor Array: now costs 6. They provide an enormous defensive advantage, typically the difference bewteen taking a base and being repelled. 6 is a better multiple for calculating the number of Formers needed. I don't want this improvement to be too expensive, because I want the AI to have no trouble making them.
- Airbase: now costs 12. A long time ago it was made cheaper, but there's really no reason for it. Formers are typically plentiful by the time an airbase is needed, and not so many of them actually ever need to be built. 12 is an easier number for predictably calculating the Formers, Super Formers, or Weather Paradigm augmented terraforming necessary to complete the job, compared to the original game's 10.
- Bunker: now costs 12. However it is still disabled because even at this price, the AI still obsesses about building them. It is a wasteful use of terraformers, particularly in the early game. The AI doesn't defend these bunkers, making them an easy invasion route for the human player.
- Level Terrain: now cost 6. It's not needed much, and 6 is a better multiple for calculating the number of Formers needed.
- Raise Sea Floor, Lower Sea Floor: now require B6 Advanced Ecological Engineering. Previously they were bugged, requiring only Environmental Economics. It went unnoticed because I have very little reason to raise sea floors until late in the game.
SHIPS
- Foil chassis: now available from the beginning of the game. The precipitating problem is I couldn't get the Pirates to learn how to make a Clean Sea Formers. I tried it in various techs, and various shufflings of the prereqs. All resulted in a hundred years of delay. I was forced to choose between either giving the Terraformer module at the beginning of the game, or giving ships at the beginning of the game. Giving ships helps both the AI and the player immediately get off of bad island starts, which are possible even if my map generator settings have minimized their occurrence. It also solves dependency issues such as what's needed to make a Foil Probe Team.
- Troop Transport package: now costs 3 and available from the beginning of the game. This matches the cost of a Terraforming Unit package. The Pirates tend to obsess about building Transports, and this will reduce the number of minerals they waste on it. Moving infantry over water and onto land is a difficult problem that the AI is probably never going to cope gracefully with. Unlike other factions, moving units between sea bases is not optional for them.
- Pressure Dome: now available from the beginning of the game.
- Deep Pressure Hull: now available with C2 Doctrine: Flexibility.
- Heavy Transport: now available with C2 Doctrine: Flexibility.
- Doctrine: Flexibility: now a C2 tech. Set power=4 and growth=3. A Deep Pressure Hull is not that useful because the AI just cheats and looks at all units. However Heavy Transport could bring more troops to target, or carry more explorers.
- Adaptive Doctrine: now a C3 tech. Amphibious Pods and Marine Detachments really only make sense when Lasers are known.
- The Command Nexus: moved to C3 Adaptive Doctrine. This frees Polymorphic Software to be used elsewhere.
- Polymorphic Software: now a C1 tech. I had too many C3 techs and not enough C1 techs.
- Command Center: moved to C1 Polymorphic Software. Polymorphic Encryption is a pretty useless abilty, and this makes the tech acutally worth having. Doctrine: Mobility is still useful because a Speeder chassis is very much worth having.
- Neural Grafting: now a C2 tech. Makes it easier to predefine units with 2 abilities.
- Deep Radar: now available with C4 Doctrine: Initiative.
- Doctrine: Initiative: now a C4 tech. I didn't like having it parallel with C5 Doctrine: Air Power.
ALIENS
- Hypnotic Trance: not allowed for non-combat or terraformer units. I thought I did that ages ago, but it seems in version 1.26 I did exactly the opposite.
- Field Modulation: now a C3 tech. Now a prereq for E4 Bioadaptive Resonance. When I had it at Tier 2, D1 Biogenetics was a prereq for it, but that broke Conquer continuity.
- Progenitor Psych: now an E2 tech. Now a prereq for C3 Field Modulation.
- Biogenetics: note that power=0. Now a prereq for E2 Progenitor Psych. Version 1.40 said it was set to power=1, but it wasn't. I'm keeping it because nobody knows how to make mindworms at the beginning of the game. This means it's not a good prereq for Conquer techs.
TREE FARMS
- Environmental Economics: now a B5 tech. Has B4 Planetary Economics as a prereq. I seriously dislike having Tree Farms and the Planetary Energy Grid coming in parallel along different tech paths. It often causes me to build Tree Farms before any Energy Banks, because I want to get the Grid and not have to build them. This will make the Grid more likely to be finished before Tree Farms can even be built. I'm ok with Tree Farms coming later in the game, as their food allows for big mineral increases. "Forest and forget" has been pretty much the dominant strategy of this mod.
- Planetary Transit System: moved to C3 Monopole Magnets. It should be an early secret project.
- Monopole Magnets: note that wealth=2. Version 1.43 said it was set to 0 but that didn't happen. I'm keeping it because the Planetary Transit System does create more citizens, who will work more squares.
- Aquafarm: moved to B5 Environmental Economics. It should stay at Tier 5.
- Advanced Ecological Engineering: now a B6 tech. It continues the forest progression. The food it provides is really not needed until Habitation Domes are available.
PEACE OF MIND
- Thought Control: moved to C7 Mind/Machine Interface. Coming immediately after C5 Advanced Military Algorithms is too soon. It was also too popular with the AIs. They didn't seem to have earned its capabilities.
PREDEFINED UNITS
- *Sea Formers: reinstated this unit from the original game, in its original slot. I fear that removing it might cause a bug somewhere. I worry that this unit may be in the table for reasons I don't know or understand.
- Sea Escape Pod: reinstated this unit from the original game, in its original slot. Added Clean Reactor. I fear that removing it might cause a bug somewhere.
- Clean Sea Colony Pod: now available from the beginning of the game. Moved farther down the list of predefined units.
- Transport: now available from the beginning of the game.
- Clean Transport: new predefined unit available from the beginning of the game. The Pirates have been obsessing about building Transports, which hurts their SUPPORT. It's tough getting this to help though. I added this unit in version 1.34. I removed it in version 1.38 because the AI was producing hundreds of them. My CHANGELOG says I reinstated it by replacing the regular Transport in version 1.39, but a .zip archive of alphax.txt shows I didn't actually do it. No change was made. I probably found it didn't work in playtesting, reverted it, and didn't update my CHANGELOG.
- Clean Sea Formers: now available with B1 Industrial Base. Previously the unit was available with E3 Centauri Genetics, which was not along the Pirates' research path. B3 Ecological Engineering was readily researched by the Pirates, which gives Fungicidal Tanks. The Pirates were building exclusively Fungicidal Sea Formers and not any Clean Sea Formers. This hurt their SUPPORT. The Pirates also failed to design a normal Sea Formers unit at all. That's a bug in the original game, and Clean Sea Formers was meant to be a failsafe. However it's not much of a failsafe if the unit design is researched relatively late. I tried putting it in B2 Industrial Economics, but the Pirates were still taking 100 years to research that. Making it available as a Tier 1 tech was the only realistic answer. A human player could use the unit designer to make other ship or terraformer units, so I decided to give ships to everyone at the beginning of the game.
- Cloaked Recon Rover: moved to E4 Bioadpative Resonance. Due to changed prereqs.
- Cruiser Probe Firewall: now has 3-Pulse armor and available with C5 Silksteel Alloys. Doctrine: Initiative is now a Tier 4 tech so this can come earlier, provided the armor is appropriate.
- Probe Wall, Foil Probe Wall - removed. They no longer have C2 Planetary Networks as an ancestral tech. Their Plasma armor also seems to displace the more effective 3-Pulse Firewall variants in the unit designs.
- Rover Formers - removed. The AI never builds this unit. If a human player values it, they're going to design it themselves very early, so there's just no point giving them a redundant design later.
The attachment limit per post is 5, and I eventually ran out of room at the top of the thread. Consequently, this becomes the new home of version 1.51. It was downloaded 468 times before I moved it here.
Post by: fihttf on July 05, 2021, 04:45:08 PM
To add something constructive besides general praise, one small thing I noticed is that the bump to University's research rating in 1.49 and after seems to have only made it to the datalinks, the actual value in the SE screen is still +2.
Post by: bvanevery on July 05, 2021, 06:07:34 PM
Yeah we all kinda need another lockdown to self-actualize. Just without the negative parts!
Post by: broo on August 24, 2021, 02:39:44 AM
Thanks for all the work you do with this. Really appreciate it. You've made a great game so much better. I look forward to your patches and changes!
One issue I sometimes have is that I get to a certain point in the game (with your latest patch), say around turn 2273 it just crashes. I move a unit and then it just shuts the game down. Not sure what I need to do differently. I've got windows 10 pro, version 20h2, is it because I need to update to a newer version? Version 21H1? Would it be that simple and did I just answer my own question?
Post by: bvanevery on August 24, 2021, 03:06:53 AM
Crashes won't have anything to do with my mod. I don't do any binary modding, the .exe is simply whatever stock binary you've installed. Presumably the standard GOG binary.
Some versions of Windows 10 have been more unstable for SMAC than others. In particular, I remember 1803 having a lot of problems, but they went away in the 19xx series. I am currently using Windows 10 Pro version 21H1. It was installed on May 29th, 2021. I don't believe I've played much of my own mod during that time, as in recent months I've spent far more time playtesting The Will To Power mod. However in general, the stock SMAC binary is stable and doesn't cause problems. I never play with any kind of patch.
In the past 2 years, the 1 bug that has occasionally derailed my game, and is the 1st thing I look for when trying to overcome it, is the "enemies appear inside cities they shouldn't" bug. It has something to do with alliances suddenly being broken and AI units not getting moved out of cities they're supposed to be removed from. When the AI reaches a turn where its units are in the wrong city, or maybe some other AI is in its city when it's not supposed to be, the game will crash on the AI's turn.
I've been able to trace this reliably using the Scenario Editor, by process of deleting entire factions, to narrow down which faction is causing the crash. The workaround is to use the Scenario Editor to look at AI cities, find one that has units that are not supposed to be there, and then either delete those units or reassign them to the faction that owns the city. The latter is often less invasive with the Scenario Editor because deletion typically deletes all units in the city, which usually isn't appropriate.
I have speculated whether Scient's Patch prevents this problem or not. However it hasn't come up often enough for me to follow through on it. Really the problem is reasonably rare.
If you have recurring problems, and don't want to advance your Windows version just yet, you should definitely try applying Scient's patch. There is no incompatibility between Scient's patch and my mod. It will work. I just generally don't have a need for it, and don't have any idea what it is capable of fixing. IMO someone has to test the stock binary, and that might as well be me. I do have a sort of debug setup with Scient's patch, but I use it so rarely, that I really can't give any verdicts. Other than it does work.
Post by: broo on August 24, 2021, 03:15:16 AM
Post by: bvanevery on August 24, 2021, 03:55:53 AM
are you moving away from this mod?
It's the wrong question. My work on my mod is mature and stable. There simply isn't much of anything to do on it anymore, as there's only so much you can change with *.txt modding. If someone else notices some problem with it, then I can revisit whatever issue they find. But I've been all over my mod in 3+ years, and I don't see anything else that needs doing. There's an outstanding bug where the University doesn't really have the +3 RESEARCH they're supposed to, but in 2 months, that's the only thing that has come up. So I haven't made another release. I will probably kick that 1 trivial bugfix out the door any day now, in the name of "end of August". Otherwise, I got nuthin'.
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And unto The Will To Power mod? Or your just playtesting the other one?
"Only" playtesting. I playtest rather intensively, and probably drive Tim Nevolin / Alpha Centauri Bear up the friggin' wall, with my game reports and entries in the Issue Tracker. His work is good, there's a solid core of something worth experiencing, but there are also areas that still need refinement. Playtesting his work is like wrestling an elephant. I've come up with some major conclusions as to what I think "is wrong", but it's not entirely easy to put right.
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Whats the difference?
I thought yours was the one to use! :)
I stand by my assessment that from a balanced game design standpoint, I have the best mod bar none. Because I've put the most years of work into it, and have the most professional sensibilities about what a 4X game player "actually wants" to experience. But that said, my work is inherently limited by its scope. I will never do a binary mod. It is way too much work. For that kind of effort to be spent, I will make a brand new commercial 4X game and sell it. Which will hopefully finally get me out of poverty. That's my primary mission in life, to someday make it as an indie game developer.
Tim's mod is strong enough to be worth playing. Something still needs to change about it though. The overarching problem of his mod is SPAM. So much AI spam. I'm not sure what the solution is for that.
Tim has asked repeatedly for someone to come in and do some AI tuning for him. He doesn't want to be stuck with the job, and he's totally willing to share credit. Predictably, nobody has taken him up on it. The only reason I myself would do it, is if I finally figured out an easy fix, like 10 lines of code to fix a major major problem with how the game plays. I haven't figured out whether that's possible or not. I do a lot of playtesting and I've got some preliminary conclusions about how to reliably beat his current AI strategy. Basically, you go vertical and focus on early production. AI doesn't have a clue about that, spams, and ends up generating piles of horizontal helplessness.
There's no way in hell I'll break my back for WTP. Any back breaking is going towards a commercial title that will make me money. I've been shopping computers, trying to figure out what kind of minimum setup I'd need to write a DirectX 12 3D graphics engine. We're still in a chip shortage and GPU prices pretty much suck. I don't strictly need a new computer to make progress, but my current 13 year old laptop cannot do DX12.
Post by: broo on August 24, 2021, 11:16:12 PM
Post by: bvanevery on August 25, 2021, 08:46:01 PM
If there's some point in the future where seeking funds is appropriate, I'll cross that bridge when I get there.
Post by: Buster's Uncle on August 26, 2021, 01:01:07 AM
Post by: bvanevery on August 26, 2021, 02:59:52 AM
I really hate phones because of their small screens. I feel neutral about tablets, don't really have experience with them. I'm primarily a laptop guy.
I don't actually find the art asset aspect intimidating. I used to write 3D graphics device drivers for OpenGL workstations. That never translated into digital 3D art, but I certainly know enough about the underpinnings of rendering. The main thing that holds me up is the constructive aspect of the art, as I can't stand 3D modeling and animation programs. They're just these huge bags of junk that only really work for people in giant teams being paid lotsa money to only mess with that 1 program. Not for me.
Anyways one of the major problems I am contemplating nowadays, is "how will I do the 3D art assets". I'm not likely to do it the way the game industry typically does it. I think more like a programmer. And also like a woodworker. I make real physical 3D things all the time nowadays. And I ask myself, why can't 3D digital art assets, be simpler and more tangible like that?
Post by: esch1lus on November 15, 2021, 12:02:16 PM
A question: are you going to put a toggle on your alpha.txt? It could be nice to change variables from one game to another.
Or maybe I can revert an element to vanilla by just removing the code line in alpha.txt?
Post by: bvanevery on November 15, 2021, 03:39:16 PM
When you say "a toggle", are you asking for a version of my Alien Crossfire tech tree to be imported into the original Alpha Centauri game? It would have to be different because some of the techs don't exist in the original game. Things like R-Lasers, 3-Res and 3-Pulse armor. There would be fewer techs in the tree, which would force some constriction and reshuffling of the tree at some points, but it may be possible. Previously I would have declined to do so, as including the original game would double the amount of testing work I'd need to do. But the mod is much more stable now, so it may be in the realm of the feasible.
I'm going to decline to do it for my next mod release though. I've been just shy of a release for like, 2 months now, just insisting on doing some additional playtesting before finally kicking it out the door. I think I got the Hypnotic Trance adjustments sufficiently ok, but I need to see if the AI picks up on my air force suggestions or not. I'm in the middle of this game that tests that, but real life drama has stalled me out. Just haven't been able to get the game done. Maybe I'll finally get a breather today and finish it.
What is it you are hoping to gain by playing with the original game only? Do you hate the few techs introduced, like R-Lasers? Do you hate the new factions? You could just not play with them. Do you hate the new Secret Projects like the Planetary Energy Grid? Basically, what's the beef?
Or have I completely misunderstood you, and you're asking how to play the unmodded Alien Crossfire and my modded Alien Crossfire at the same time? That's easy: per the directions on my mod's home page and readme_mod.txt, just install another copy of the game in a different directory. You don't need any toggle, you just pick which installation of the game you want to play with. The game is so old that the installation doesn't take up all that much space by modern standards. I'm seeing less than 600MB, not that big a deal.
Post by: esch1lus on November 15, 2021, 07:44:43 PM
For example, if I want to do not make "clean reactors" available from first turn, should I delete the line code from alpha.txt?
Post by: bvanevery on November 15, 2021, 08:42:50 PM
Currently Clean Reactors has a line with the word "None" in it. That's because there's no tech requirement in my mod for them. They're available at the start of the game. First you would change that "None" to the abbreviation for some tech in the game. Then any predefined units in the #UNITS section that have the Clean Reactor ability, you're probably going to want to delete those. They will probably all be coming before wherever you decide the Clean Reactor should appear. You will also need to change the number of #UNITS accordingly, or when you start a new game you'll get an error.
Be advised that if you do this, you're probably going to hurt the AI's early game performance a great deal. As much as you may have been conditioned to think the Clean Reactor is a "big reward" that you shouldn't have in your hot little hands so quick, you should objectively reevaluate the situation. I didn't make that change for kicks. It solves the AI's early game SUPPORT problem in the stock binary, per my design notes.
Post by: esch1lus on November 15, 2021, 09:24:23 PM
Post by: bvanevery on November 15, 2021, 09:46:23 PM
Post by: esch1lus on November 16, 2021, 02:29:11 PM
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Be advised that if you do this, you're probably going to hurt the AI's early game performance a great deal. As much as you may have been conditioned to think the Clean Reactor is a "big reward" that you shouldn't have in your hot little hands so quick, you should objectively reevaluate the situation. I didn't make that change for kicks. It solves the AI's early game SUPPORT problem in the stock binary, per my design notes.
It was an example in order to understand how alphax.txt works. I don't think I'm going to make any relevant change to your work since I don't have any real proficiency in game mechanics; but I would like to experiment something on my own, just for personal fun.
I played WTP recently and the modder did a great job in many regards but he has to fix recycling tanks opness (and AI not building them at all) and the strange city spam which makes easier to conquer and win (especially if you add the "steal tech" rule after taking a city). If these fixes are made, it could be a nice addition to your mod (not sure if everything could be merged anyway).
Post by: bvanevery on November 16, 2021, 03:12:15 PM
I played WTP recently and the modder did a great job in many regards but he has to fix recycling tanks opness
I was Alpha Centauri Bear's biggest / most thorough playtester for awhile. Took a break from my own work. Totally agree about having an early minerals multiplying "factory" is a bad idea. Don't seem to have convinced him of that yet. He'll need to hear it from other people.
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(and AI not building them at all)
He did fix that. If it's not happening nowadays, it's a regression.
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and the strange city spam which makes easier to conquer and win
In all my playtesting I never actually finished a game. Too much city spam.
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(especially if you add the "steal tech" rule after taking a city).
Even without that, the frontage of poorly defended cities is so huge, that stealing anyone's tech with a probe team is trivial.
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If these fixes are made, it could be a nice addition to your mod (not sure if everything could be merged anyway).
Uuuuh, no. 8) I didn't do my mod just to pile up game features and ideas. I did my mod to push exactly how I want it as a game designer, to put my Quality Assurance on how things should be. I don't share credit with anyone, except of course the people who originally wrote the game. The modding is all my work. And it was a pile of work. The CHANGELOG is huge.
My mod occupies the development space of "doesn't need any binary modding to run". That imposes various limitations, but you can do a surprising amount, even with that restriction. Someone should have the arch ultimate example of what you can do without any binary modding at all, and that's gonna remain me.
If someone else wanted to integrate my mod and WTP, and be responsible for the release and quality of that integration, there's nothing stopping them. I put my mod under CC-BY-NC license and I think WTP is under the GPL. All a bit of a formality dance anyways as if Firaxis or EA ever got interested, I don't know what would hold up in court anyways. Anyways the point is that people have been encouraged to DIY.
Post by: esch1lus on November 17, 2021, 04:55:16 PM
Post by: bvanevery on November 17, 2021, 08:44:30 PM
What's a "SA" ? Special ability? I have just called them "abilities", but I guess alphax.txt does comment them as "special unit abilities".
In the stock binary, there's no way to specify a reactor size for a unit. However one of Scient's patch features is you can actually do this. I've never used it because I'm not willing to require Scient's patch for my work. However there's nothing stopping anyone from using Scient's patch with my mod. It's known to work fine.
When working with the stock binary and trying to get the AI to use your predefined unit designs, the big trick is whether the AI will actually find the design valuable and produce it. I've tried many, many designs where the AI completely ignored them. Nice ideas on my part, but eventually I had to accept that the AI wasn't going to bite.
And sometimes you get the opposite: the AI obsesses about the design. To the complete detriment of all other work it should be performing. Then you have to get rid of the design lest the AI cripple itself.
I never, ever provide designs for human player convenience anymore. Predefined units should strictly be for whatever you want to instruct the AI to produce, IMO.
Post by: esch1lus on November 17, 2021, 09:02:28 PM
So according to your experience AI choices are hardcoded/unpredictable so we can't hope for it to build everything we throw in. But it could be interesting to add something inside #units table, hoping AI will build it (never ever seen soporific gas SA attached to any unit, while AAA is in the top of the list of spamfest).
Maybe I would like to know how scent's patch works so I can work on reactors then ;) thanks for the answers, I really appreciate your dedication to this (very)old game (and you should make your own project maybe through patreon).
Post by: bvanevery on November 17, 2021, 09:58:59 PM
My point is, in my mod as it stands, the AI factions will have long since been beaten to a bloody pulp. At least, in my games they would be. People are at different levels of ability, and sometimes I've been surprised at the field reports of people, who are fighting really serious late game wars. As they tell it.
In my upcoming release, due any day now, I'm hard retiring High Morale. I don't want it messing up the game's Morale progressions. It's a boring ability anyways. Pay more to be better.
Post by: bvanevery on November 22, 2021, 02:23:10 AM
Pretty much all my fault. This isn't the 1st time that a militant faction has proven dangerous with Recon Rovers in close quarters in the early game. I've put plenty of defense biases and delays to keep AI factions from being gratuitously overrun, but nothing can save me from being complacent about an adjacent threat. I probably should have strangled the Spartans in their crib, using Scouts to block them up.
Post by: bvanevery on December 15, 2021, 08:08:20 PM
--------------
Changed from version 1.51 to 1.52:
FACTIONS
- Cult of Planet: removed SUPPORT bonus. I'm not sure if the faction AI needs to be propped up with it anymore, but it's certainly not needed by a human player. The Cult gets tons of mindworms for free and they're all Independent.
- Morganites: may not use Socialist economics. I decided it really is ridiculously out of character. All of those little gold domes on the map, just don't have any Socialist vibe to them.
- University: raised RESEARCH bonus to +3. It was supposed to happen in version 1.49 and it appears in the faction description, but the actual value was not changed. Playtester fihttf caught the bug.
OFFENSIVE ABILITIES
- Nerve Gas Pods: now cost 2. They're way too good an exploit to cost only 1. When used by Aliens, or when fighting Aliens, they have no penalty on their use at all. Other than making that faction want to kill you.
- Doctrine: Flexibility: set growth=1. Heavy Transport is not that helpful for exploration, given the extra cost. I want this path to me more firmly oriented towards conquest, since this tech is a prereq for C3 Adaptive Doctrine and the Command Nexus.
- Empath Song: now only gives +25% bonus. +50% is too powerful for only a cost=1 increase. The main value of Empath Song is making sure mindworms are not selected as defenders when attacking a base, so that the attack value of a big gun is not wasted on them. It's essentially like a R-Laser or R-Bolt that can fit onto any weapon.
- High Morale: set to Disable. I do not want this messing up the Morale progressions of the game. There are plenty of other ways to increase Morale.
CLOAK AVAILABILITY
- Cloaking Field: moved to E5 Centauri Psi. When the Aliens had this as a starting ability, it prevented any predefined units from being able to immediately use it, because the Aliens would have those units available at the start of the game.
- Field Modulation: set power=1 and growth=4, making it an E3 tech. It now provides no benefit and is essentially a speed bump / barrier technology. It's a prereq for E4 Bioadaptive Resonance. Aliens have an advantage overcoming the research barrier.
- Cloaked Recon Rover: removed.
- Cloaked R-Laser Speeder: new predefined unit available with E5 Centauri Psi. A better investment against mindworms.
TRANCE DEFENSE
- Trance bonus defending vs. psi: increased to 100%. Mindworms are the One True Weapons Platform of the game. They can defeat anything. They ignore Perimeter Defenses, which is terribly overpowered. Although my AI tweaks have caused the AI to produce more Hypnotic Trance units, it's not enough. The units that are produced need to be a lot tougher, to stop a human player from summarily walking all over the AI with mindworms and mag tubes.
- Hypnotic Trance: moved to C2 Neural Grafting. When the Aliens had this as a starting ability, it prevented any predefined units from being able to immediately use it, because the Aliens would have those units available at the start of the game.
- Bioadaptive Resonance: now has C3 Advanced Subatomic Theory as a prereq. This is to make sure C2 Neural Grafting is an ancestor so that 2 unit abilities and Hypnotic Trance are available. It also causes Plasma and 3-Res armor to be in a strict ascending sequence. When they are not, Plasma designs can end up canceling or preventing 3-Res designs.
MINDWORM AVAILABILITY
- Centauri Empathy: now an E3 tech. Due to the need to fix a bug in the original game binary, Green has no downsides in my mod. Since capturing mindworms provides the most powerful weapon of the game, and any faction can do it, the ability to do so should be delayed. This gives factions that start off with a positive PLANET rating more of an advantage.
- Centauri Genetics: set power=0 and wealth=2. It no longer gives Mind Worm or Spore Launcher. Removing nutrient restriction increases food, which increases growth, which does provide more workers.
- Centauri Meditation: set power=0 and wealth=1. It no longer gives Isle of the Deep. Increasing nutrients in fungal squares sligntly increases food, which slightly increases growth, which slightly provides more workers.
- Centauri Preserve: moved to E6 Eudaimonia. Putting mindworm techs later.
- Mind Worms, Spore Launcher: moved to E8 The Will To Power. Mindworms are the One True Weapons Platform of the game. It makes no sense to give out the best weapon of the game as a Tier 3 tech. It's possible to gain tons of mindworms by capturing them. Disallowing the captive breeding of mindworms until late game, will give conventional weapons systems a chance to be useful. Otherwise mindworms and mag tubes are the One True Strategy for conquering Planet.
- The Xenoempathy Dome: moved to E8 The Will To Power. Putting mindworm techs later.
- Isle of the Deep, Sealurk: moved to D9 Secrets of Alpha Centauri. Putting mindworm techs later.
- Locusts of Chiron: moved to D10 Secrets of the Manifolds. Putting mindworm techs later.
- The Neural Amplifier: set cost=80 and moved to E10 Sentient Resonance. Putting mindworm techs later.
- The Dream Twister: moved to D11 Secrets of Creation. Putting mindworm techs later.
- Clinical Immortality: moved to B11 Matter Editation. Putting mindworm techs later.
- Matter Editation: set growth=3. It gives Clinical Immortality.
- Fungal Payload: moved to D11 Secrets of Creation. With a big reactor on the missile, it's a consistent way to generate wild mindworms. These could be consistently captured by a human player. The mindworms and fungal towers could also be farmed for credits.
- Psi Attack, Psi Defense: moved to B12 Matter Transmission. Putting mindworm techs later.
- Matter Transmission: set growth=3. It gives psi attack and defense, and psi gates do help movement logistics.
POLICE AVAILABILITY
- Non-Lethal Methods: I tried moving it to C3 Advanced Subatomic Theory, but I really hated having to wait for it. I tried using cost=-2 increases with weapon value, combined with the "cost increased for land units" flag, so that minimum cost=1. Although it worked, it also displayed a confusing cost=0 in the unit workshop. It isn't worth confusing the player.
TRANCE UNITS
- Trance Synth Garrison: new predefined unit available with C2 Neural Grafting. The AI doesn't figure out to build this unit on its own.
- Trance Plasma Garrison: new predefined unit available with C3 Advanced Subatomic Theory. The AI doesn't figure out to build this unit on its own, and will typically rush a plain Plasma Garrison when a base is about to be overrun.
- Clean Plasma Garrison: removed. Trance Plasma Garrison is a better defense even though it costs SUPPORT. By the time the unit is available, SUPPORT is not quite as pressing a problem. Whereas, Clean Synth Garrison is definitely needed to mitigate the AI SUPPORT problem at the beginning of the game.
TRANSPORT OBSESSION
- Transport: removed. The AI obsesses about building Transports, particularly the Pirate AI. I was trying to stop it by removing this unit. However, basic naval units have no tech requirements, so the game just designs a Transport for the player anyways. At least this saves a predefined unit slot.
- Clean Transport: removed. The AI obsesses about producing this.
- *Sea Formers: removed. It's a disabled unit design. Recycling this slot makes the unit table shorter. Hopefully this does not trigger any bugs. I've been paranoid about that possibility, but I've never seen any evidence of it.
- Clean Plasma Transport: new predefined unit available with C3 Advanced Subatomic Theory. Takes the slot in the unit table that was occupied by *Sea Formers. The AI is determined to obsess about Transports, and some kind of unit will need to be provided sometime. Clean Synth Transport is an obvious design, but it is not offered. It causes the AI to start obsessing about Transports way too early. Starting with C3 Advanced Subatomic Theory is a compromise.
- Clean 3-Res Transport: new predefined unit available with C4 Bioadaptive Resonance. Takes the slot in the unit table that was occupied by Transport. The AI is determined to obsess about stacking sea bases full of transports, so it is best to offer a unit with the maximum defensive benefit.
PROBE TEAMS
- Probe Team package: now available with C1 Polymorphic Software.
- Probe Team, Foil Probe Team: new predefined units available with C1 Polymorphic Software. Infantry and foil chasses, no armor. These are the cheapest probe units. The AI can probably use them effectively in some circumstances.
- Command Center: moved to C1 Doctrine: Mobility. C1 Polymorphic Software already gives enough stuff.
- Probe Defense, Foil Probe Defense: removed. Plasma armor costs the same to make, so the AI will wait until it's available to make armored probes.
- Probe Wall, Foil Probe Wall: new predefined units available with C3 Advanced Subatomic Theory. Now that it's in sequence before C4 Single Sided Surfaces, we shouldn't have to worry about it canceling the 3-Res probe designs.
- Tank Probe: new predefined unit available with C7 Mind/Machine Interface. This is so the AI will use hovertank probe teams against the human player.
- Enhanced Tank Probe, Enhanced Cruiser Probe: new predefined units available with C8 Self-Aware Machines. This is so the AI will use Algorithmic Enhancement against the human player. They will be uneconomical fission designs, but the AI factions can afford that with their INDUSTRY bonus.
THOUGHT CONTROL
- Retroviral Engineering: set wealth=0 and growth=0, making it a pure Conquer tech. It only gives genetic warfare. Thought Control was moved to C7 Mind/Machine Interface in version 1.51.
- Mind/Machine Interface: set growth=3 and wealth=1. +3 POLICE increases happiness. As with Police State, an increase in happiness is worth a modest increase in wealth, since more squares are worked around the base.
DROP WARFARE
- Drop Rover, Drop Plasma Garrison: new predefined units available with C6 Synthetic Fossil Fuels. Set AI Plan = -1 Autocalculate. These are the cheapest drop units available.
- Laser Tactical: new predefined unit available with C6 Synthetic Fossil Fuels. It's cheap, can kill Formers, and can interfere with enemy planes.
- Drop Laser Needlejet, Drop Laser Tactical: tried offering these with C6 Synthetic Fossil Fuels, but the AI didn't make use of their drop capability. So, didn't add the designs after all.
UPGRADES
- Fake 30th ability bit: improved the explanation of when fake abilities need to be used with predefined units. Now using the 31st bit instead of the 30th. Used 0 for predefined units that have no abilities and cannot be upgraded to. Used only the minimum number of digits for units that have abilities but cannot be upgraded to.
TECHSHARE
- TECHSHARE: corrected its description in alphax.txt to how it actually works. You do not use it with SHARETECH and you must specify the # of players that need to be infiltrated. Data Angels in the original game have "TECHSHARE, 3".
The attachment limit per post is 5, and I eventually ran out of room at the top of the thread. Consequently, this becomes the new home of version 1.52. It was downloaded 395 times before I moved it here.
Post by: Believers_Eph2810 on December 16, 2021, 05:41:19 PM
I hadn't played smacx for about 10 years until a month ago. I played some partial games on 2nd-hardest difficulty on tiny map.
Then, I came across your mod (1.51) and scient 2.1 exe. I've only played one game, but it is an improvement over the original game.
I played on 3rd-hardest difficulty on tiny map with default land/water ratio. Using random factions, I got the Caretakers. Strongest opponent is Pirates.
I like to play on Tiny map for a quicker game, but it still takes forever. I'm going to start another game on 1.52, 2nd-hardest difficulty, Tiny map, 30% water.
Thanks!
Post by: esch1lus on December 16, 2021, 05:43:54 PM
Post by: bvanevery on December 16, 2021, 09:08:21 PM
Tiny maps? I'm not sure I've ever played my mod on a tiny map. It's been many years since I even played the original game on a tiny map.
I went in the opposite direction for awhile, making maps as large as possible. Still have some text-only After Action Reports from that period. Eventually started doing screenshots, and wrapped up my pursuit of the original game with a so-called Giant map, a format that's available in my mod. After that Giant map game, I think I finally started modding. Not counting the world generation stuff of course. That was sort of pre-modding.
Post by: Believers_Eph2810 on December 16, 2021, 09:56:11 PM
Post by: bvanevery on December 16, 2021, 10:09:40 PM
Morgan Gravitonics
Post by: glorsh66 on January 05, 2022, 05:08:02 PM
I don't like new factions.
BTW - have you changed supply crawlers or the limit on minerals per tile?
Post by: bvanevery on January 06, 2022, 04:27:03 AM
Is it possible to use this mod for vanilla alpha Centauri (without crossfire)?
Not straight out of the box. You'd have to mod my mod.
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I don't like new factions.
If that's your only objection, and not to other game elements introduced, then the path of least resistance is to hand select the original 7 factions to play with. Plenty of people think the 7 added factions are goofy. My least favorite character of all of them, is Svensgaard. Not the character in principle, but the voice acting that was done for it. Any permutation of a pirate I can think of, that's just not a pirate talking. It's some yuppie.
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BTW - have you changed supply crawlers
Supply crawlers are more expensive and you can't have them until late game. This penalizes players who want to spew out a lot of them to harvest minerals and energy and so forth.
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or the limit on minerals per tile?
The timing of the limits is similar to the original game. One might argue that I've made the food limit more difficult, by shoving it up the Explore tree. Energy, you have to be doing Build Morganite type stuff. Minerals, that's in Ecological Engineering, which is cross-listed between Explore and Build.
The quantity of the limits are the same as in the original game. They didn't provide anything in alphax.txt to change that. You can only change when the limits are lifted.
Post by: glorsh66 on January 06, 2022, 02:02:27 PM
Post by: esch1lus on January 06, 2022, 02:30:51 PM
Post by: bvanevery on January 06, 2022, 04:54:02 PM
I do actually use a slightly modified binary that Scient cooked up for me. It keeps saved games for every turn. We were trying to hunt down an obscure bug that doesn't show up very often. Can't remember if we nailed it! ;lol
I should see how OpenSMACX is doing nowadays.
Post by: glorsh66 on January 07, 2022, 01:07:56 PM
Gog > scient > pracx > growth modBut does pracx fix bugs or is it purely visual mod (although quite nice and pleasant on widescreen)?
Post by: glorsh66 on January 07, 2022, 01:09:07 PM
Yeah I don't personally use Scient's patch or Pracx, but there's no reason they shouldn't work. They don't interfere with anything.Am I right that i can just install your mod (by coping files) on Gog version of the game (or with pracx) so there are no additional requirements?
I do actually use a slightly modified binary that Scient cooked up for me. It keeps saved games for every turn. We were trying to hunt down an obscure bug that doesn't show up very often. Can't remember if we nailed it! ;lol
I should see how OpenSMACX is doing nowadays.
)
Post by: bvanevery on January 07, 2022, 08:18:35 PM
I say, Pracx does not fix any bug. It provides a few capabilities, that may have been more important in the past, but probably from Windows 7 onwards, were not important. For instance, task switching while playing the game. I hit CTRL-ALT-TAB, works just fine. More of a finger move than ALT-TAB, but so what, it's just learning how to do something. Screen resolution, I type "DirectDraw=0" into my Alpha Centauri.ini file.
Pracx provides some resource overlay displays. Although useful, I've played tons of games without it. Not like I need it.
Post by: esch1lus on January 07, 2022, 08:48:01 PM
Post by: bvanevery on January 07, 2022, 09:51:41 PM
What you call "terrain layer details" I called "resource overlay displays". Although useful, I don't need them.
My qol is fine.
Post by: esch1lus on January 07, 2022, 11:01:32 PM
Post by: bvanevery on January 08, 2022, 02:02:14 AM
Post by: bvanevery on January 27, 2022, 01:03:56 AM
Code: [Select]
^TECH: {Doctrine: Flexibility}An AQUATIC faction doesn't automatically gets this tech. It's not like the Caretakers and Usurpers, where being an ALIEN they get 2 techs and you can't do anything about it. In the original game, the Pirates get TECH, Mobile, TECH, DocFlex and I don't give either.
So, this is a documentation bug. But this 1 minor thing, is not enough for me to start opening up my readme_mod.txt and planning a new version. Wake me in another 6 months lol.
Post by: bvanevery on February 18, 2022, 09:08:14 AM
C2 Neural Grafting increases COMMERCE income. I think that's probably a relic from another time. That buff should be moved somewhere else. And, Economic Victory is probably broken. The whole COMMERCE regime could stand reevaluation. It used to be overpoweringly good, and now it may be nerfed too hard.
Post by: Alpha Centauri Bear on February 21, 2022, 06:03:47 PM
Economic Victory is probably broken.
Yeah. It was broken from the beginning. Nobody could make sense of this ending conditions. Therefore, nobody can agree on what they should be.
Conquest makes sense as a competition: who destroys whom first starting from more or less equals conditions.
Accent to transcendence makes sense either as a speed competition combining all economy and war and research and management skills. Again starting from more or less equal conditions.
Diplomatic is achieving voting dominance probably with the help of allies. Also competitive as others will try to do the same and deny you this.
Economic is an outlier in that it based solely on the size of player cash stash. This is pretty difficult to balance as it is pretty impossible to say how much cash is equal to total conquest? Besides, accumulating cash is completely counterproductive to the rest of the game. One has to willingly abandon production hurrying to just accumulate it for no other purposes but claim the win. This is not competitive in the way that nobody seriously compete in the same money saving rush and nobody can directly stop anybody else from accumulating credits and there is no common resouce to fight for either (like common votes, or territory, etc.)
Post by: bvanevery on February 21, 2022, 07:13:59 PM
Seems like only overwhelming numbers of Orbital Power Transmitters would win the game this way. Which begs the question, why do that as opposed to finishing some other way?
Post by: bvanevery on February 24, 2022, 09:26:53 PM
There is possibly a non-Thinker explanation for the spread though:
[Limit reached]
D1 Biogenetics is trivial for the University to obtain and expected. However, E1 Social Psych has no Discover component:Code: [Select]Social Psych, Psych, 0, 0, 2, 4, None, None, 000000000So the University could be learning completely random techs, until E1 Social Psych is finally obtained. Perhaps I should "bread crumb" Social Psych as a partial Discover tech, so that the University is not unreasonably delayed.
Post by: bvanevery on February 27, 2022, 06:56:14 AM
Yeah. It was broken from the beginning. Nobody could make sense of this ending conditions. Therefore, nobody can agree on what they should be.The techs that have the "increases commerce income" flag set on them, define a sort of footrace, for differentiating your faction as being more economically badass. The problem is... someone steals your tech, suddenly they're as badass as you are. You don't really do anything. Rather than create an economic infrastructure, you just steal the idea of having an economic infrastructure.
I'm going to try to rework the "increases commerce income" flags. But given that they just mean "you learned something", I'm not expecting much.
Post by: bvanevery on March 23, 2022, 03:02:27 PM
Changed from version 1.52 to 1.53:
FACTIONS
- Pirates: fixed documentation mistake about TECH. They don't start with any.
- Social Psych: set tech=2. Previously, D1 Biogenetics was the only Tier 1 tech with a Discover weight. This caused the University to research random techs for a long time, until E1 Social Psych was finally obtained.
ABILITIES
- Hypnotic Trance: changed Desc to +100%. Forgot to change it when I increased the psi defense bonus.
- Air Superiority: now costs 0. Costs 1 for a land unit. For planes, this is a simple weapon selection about whether it's going to be good at attacking things in the air, or on the ground. Much like Heavy Artillery is a simple weapon selection. For land units, there is no penalty to ground combat, so the ability is purely beneficial rather than a tradeoff.
- Non-Lethal Methods: removed "Cost increased for land units" flag. I accidentally released version 1.52 with it.
COMMERCE
- Industrial Base, Centauri Ecology: removed "increases commerce income" flags. Economic Victory cannot possibly be achieved so early in the game. It is pointless to differentiate factions with a tech that almost everyone is going to immediately have.
- Ethical Calculus, Industrial Economics: removed "increases commerce income" flags. Democratic and Free Market offer ECONOMY bonuses, and so increasing commerce income would be thematically sensible. However, these techs are very easily obtained in the early game. They do not sufficiently differentiate factions as pursuing Build techs. The 1st tech that definitely requires a Build focus to obtain, is B3 Superconductor.
- Neural Grafting: removed "increases commerce income" flag. It isn't thematically a good choice, as this tech is about producing units for less cost, rather than creating energy or enhancing trade. It's also now a Tier 2 tech, a bit too early to differentiate a Build focus. Finally, it's first and foremost a Conquer tech.
- Optical Computers: removed "increases commerce income" flag. It doesn't create energy or enhance trade. Its cross-listing with Build is about producing units with the Skunkworks.
- Advanced Ecological Engineering: set "increases commerce income" flag. Hybrid Forest creates energy and economy.
- Industrial Automation: set "increases commerce income" flag. Thermal boreholes and Thermocline Transducer create energy.
- Global Energy Theory: set "increases commerce income" flag. Orbital Power Transmitters create energy.
PREDEFINED UNITS
- Fake Transport: new predefined unit. Occupies the slot that Transport did in the original game. Has the 31st fake ability bit set to distinguish it from designs that the game comes up with, and is Disabled. This fake unit is for compatibility with the limitations of Thinker mod version 3.1. It assumes a plain Transport Foil is available in this slot and will just use whatever is there as such. The stock binary does not actually need a Transport Foil predefined unit. AI factions will eventually figure out how to make Transport Foils on their own. When and why they will do it is unclear, but it has to do with either land colonization or land assault. The AI might be denied some early game choices in the absence of a predefined unit. However, if any kind of predefined Transport Foil is available, the Pirate AI will obsess about building it in large quantities. This ruins the Pirates' empire development. They are far better off simply never using any such unit, and waiting until Cruisers become available. Even the Pirates will eventually figure out how to make a Transport on their own, although it takes a long time.
- Clean Sea Formers: now occupies the slot that "*Sea Formers" did in the original game. This is in case some kind of Sea Formers unit really is needed in this slot for some obscure buggy reason, despite the original having been marked as Disabled.
- Clean Plasma Transport, Clean 3-Res Transport: removed. In a test game, when Clean Plasma Transport became available to the Pirate AI, it built 190 of them! And it would have kept doing so.
- Clean Sea Colony Pod: now occupies the slot that Sea Escape Pod did in the original game. Sea Escape Pod is actually what AQUATIC factions start the game with. Since I make foils and clean reactors available at the beginning of the game, and I make the predefined Clean colonists the same cost as regular colonists, these 2 units are now completely redundant. I don't need the slight narrative value of calling it an "escape pod", so might as well save a unit design slot.
- Sea Escape Pod: removed. It's redundant.
- Plasma Police: removed. Trance Plasma Police costs the same.
- Trance Plasma Police: new predefined unit available with C3 Advanced Subatomic Theory. It happens to have the prereqs necessary to make the unit. Possibly I was working on that for 1.52 and then made the mistake with the "Cost increased for land units" flag, so didn't see the costs I was expecting.
Post by: bvanevery on May 31, 2022, 03:46:40 AM
Another issue: Air Superiority is now free for air units, and costs 1 extra for land units. However, I didn't think about naval units. It's free for them as well, and the only downside is using up an ability slot. Not sure I'm ok with that.
So, this means there will be a corrective version 1.54. I don't have anything else presently, although I wonder if I can teach the AI to use chemical weapons and commit minor atrocities? Like include a X Recon Rover unit and see if it'll fight with it. It's particularly relevant to Alien-Human warfare. I'm currently playing a game as the Believers and I've almost finished genocide of the Caretakers.
Post by: bvanevery on June 02, 2022, 06:22:05 AM
I didn't try legalizing atrocities. I don't think there's a point, as most of the time, atrocities will be illegal. That means X is just an extra cost to the AI's units, if it's not going to utilize the capability.
Post by: bvanevery on June 04, 2022, 06:21:40 PM
Changed from version 1.53 to 1.54:
AIR COMBAT
- AAA Tracking: cleared the flag for "Cost increased for land units". It was inadvertently set in version 1.53.
- Air Superiority: now costs 1. Cleared the flag for "Cost increased for land units". In version 1.53 I made it a free ability, thinking it would simply be a weapon selection for planes. However I neglected that this made it free for ships.
RESONANCE
- Resonance Laser: now has strength 2 and cost 2. When the R-Laser had strength 3 and cost 4, it simply wasn't useful for much of anything and the AI would never build it. Now it is reconceptualized as an improved recon laser that also destroys mindworms.
- Cloaking Field: now available with E4 Bioadaptive Resonance. It fits the lore of this tech, and it allows the AI to make earlier threatening use of it.
- Cloaked R-Laser Speeder: now available with E4 Bioadaptive Resonance. Set AI plan to -1 "Autocalculate". With the unit being cheaper and available earlier, the AI will build it and do damage.
- R-Laser Needlejet, R-Laser Tactical: new predefined units available with C7 Organic Superlubricant. These are the best cheap planes.
CHEMICAL WEAPONS
- I tried making X Impact Speeder, Artillery, Marines, and Foil. Also X Gatling Needlejet. The AI built them, but did not use them to commit atrocities. In my test game, I never tried to legalize atrocities, and neither did the AI. Even if the AI started using them when atrocities are legal, most of the time, they would be illegal. Thus, it's a waste of production. So, no predefined X units.
Post by: bvanevery on June 06, 2022, 05:39:51 AM
Since version 1.53, the Pirates don't learn how to make a Transport until later in the game. This seems to help their gameplay quite a bit!
Post by: bvanevery on August 05, 2022, 06:56:53 PM
Finished my latest test game with the Cult of Planet. Explore only research focus, per default. Never even made a Gatling Laser. Never learned how to make Needlejets, nor did anyone else. Slimmed down the Explore tech tree to make it shorter and more direct, put the Xenoempathy Dome earlier. Won the game by Diplomatic Victory before I finished the Dome. I mean heck once you get Eudaimonia you can go Theocratic and pop boom your heart out, so why fight anymore? I'd already taken over tons of cities to grow. The Believers were the only very distant second for competition, and that worked out well with the Theocratic.
Adjusted the research weights on Fusion Power, because it's been the requirement for Diplomatic Victory for a long time. Never actually built any fusion reactor unit, just needed to get my Diplomatic Victory. Thought about what other tech I might attach Diplomatic Victory to, but the only other logical ones are Planet Busters, or doing the same thing as Economic Victory. I think "midgame" is a good requirement for a Diplomatic Victory, as it's instant, and subject to Lal's 2X bonus. Wouldn't want him declaring DV very early just because he beelined to B4 Planetary Economics, or stole it. "Midgame" lets everyone on Planet grow enough of a population that you actually have to do something for a DV, instead of it being a fluke. Build Tier 4 ala the Planetary Energy Grid is a bit too early, and Conquer Tier 7 ala Probability Mechanics and Planet Busters is a bit too late. I don't think non-Conquer factions want to be bothered with all of that.
Anyways this game proves that you don't need to manufacture your own mindworms, to totally stomp everyone. Captures are quite enough. +5 PLANET is deadly. I had the whole ocean too, due to Maritime Control Center. I got sick of pushing ships around, they had nothing to do, so I just parked them. Then eventually I needed to make the Network Backbone, so I sent them all to my capitol and disbanded them.
I've gotten some feedback from a playtester that the AI doesn't do well with the Cult. I don't know if my tech tree shortenings are going to help that. The Cult sure is deadly in the hands of a human player though! Can't really see giving them any more advantages.
[Limit reached]
Post by: bvanevery on August 05, 2022, 11:07:12 PM
Changed from version 1.54 to 1.55:
EXPLORE TECH TREE
- Centauri Preserve: moved to E5 Centauri Psi. Since making mindworms isn't available until later in the game, this facility is only useful for reducing eco-damage. Centauri Psi was lacking any facility to give away, and E6 Eudaimonia was unnecessarily overloaded with stuff.
- Hab Complex: moved to B3 Ecological Engineering. Awhile ago I put it in E2 Adaptive Economics because it seemed to be overwhelmingly difficult to obtain. However having it available so early is not much of a development challenge, and also feels thematically incorrect. I shall try making removing population limits as a kind of Build tech, more like the original game.
- Super Tensile Solids: set wealth=4 and growth=3, making it a B7 tech. Now has B6 Fusion Power as a prereq, instead of E6 Eudiamonia. Having it as an Explore tech feels thematically and play mechanically wrong. I've played several games as the Cult of Planet where their natural progression was to hunker down and make their bases grow like crazy, instead of overrunning Planet. I want Explore progressions after E6 Eudaimonia to be about mindworm power, not base building.
- Xenoempathy Dome: moved to E6 Eudaimonia. The feeling of "overrunning Planet with mindworms" just hasn't been in the game since I moved the stuff so late, and this will help with that. Also Eudaimonic is powerful and this will block the AIs from trading it away for awhile.
- Pholus Mutagen: moved to E8 The Will To Power. It's more thematically appropriate and it makes the tech basically a game ender, the last thing any Explore faction needs to overrun Planet with mindworms. It will also keep the AI from trading mindworm manufacturing ability for awhile.
- The Will To Power: set wealth=3. The Pholus Mutagen limits eco-damage.
- Thought Control: moved to C6 Retroviral Engineering. This is to create more of an Explore prereq for E7 Homo Superior. I hope it doesn't become too attractive for the AI factions, which why I previously moved it to Tier 7.
- Retroviral Engineering: set wealth=1 and growth=3 as it gives Thought Control.
- Doctrine: Air Power: set growth=0, making it a pure Conquer tech. I've never played a game where the Needlejet chassis had any impact on exploration at all. They just don't have the range to scour Planet. Unlike the Cruiser chassis, which can persist in field indefinitely, and bring back Artifacts from far away. Having this as partially an Explore tech was diverting the attenion of the Cult of Planet towards making planes. That's wrong for Explore specialization as a strategy. I'll leave this one firmly in the hands of Conquer factions, which is how planes always get used in the real world.
- Mind/Machine Interface: set wealth=0 and growth=0. It no longer gives Thought Control and is now a pure Conquer tech. Now has D6 Digital Sentience as a prereq instead of Organic Superlubricant. I want Organic Superlubricant in a different part of the tech tree. The ideal faction to figure out MMI would now be a Discover Conquer faction, such as the Hive.
- Organic Superlubricant: set wealth=3 and growth=1. Now a C7 tech with C6 Synthetic Fossil Fuels and B6 Advanced Ecological Engineering as prereqs. I don't want this tech as a distraction in the Explore tech tree. Although a hovertank is useful for exploration, it's not nearly as useful as a captured mindworm. Nor is it needed for combat when you have captured mindworms as your basic combat tactic. It comes too late in the game to be all that useful for exploration. Meanwhile, it's tremendously useful for building mag tubes on top of fungus, or for clearning fungus. The ideal faction to learn the tech would now be a Build Conquer faction, such as the Believers.
- R-Laser Needlejet, R-Laser Tactical: removed. The Explore part of the tech tree is now more separate from Conquer. E4 Bioadaptive Resonance and C5 Doctrine: Air Power don't have any common descendent in the tech tree, until quite late in the game. By then we'd be using R-Bolts and possibly quantum reactors, which can't be specified in a stock alphax.txt.
- N-Space Compression: now has C7 Organic Superlubricant as a prereq, instead of C7 Probability Mechanics. Needed Organic Superlubricant to be a prereq for something. It turns out that N-Space Compression was made into a B8 tech in version 1.43. A partial build tech a better prereq than a pure Conquer tech.
- Tank Probe: now given by B8 N-Space Compression.
- Biomachinery: now has B8 N-Space Compression as a prereq, instead of E8 Orbital Construction. Orbital Construction was a prereq for too many techs.
- Enhanced Tank Probe: now given by E9 Biomachinery. Biomachinery has C8 Self-Aware Machines as a prereq. It is the 1st tech where both hovertanks and Algorithmic Enhancement are assured.
- Enhanced Rover Probe: new predefined unit given by C8 Self-Aware Machines. Need to give an Algorithmically Enhanced land unit earlier since hovertanks aren't assuredly available yet.
DIPLOMATIC VICTORY
- Fusion Power: set power=4, tech=1, wealth=3, and growth=3, making it a C6 tech. Although it doesn't give any direct research benefits, it's an important bottleneck in the Discover tech tree. It should not be an unresearchable barrier for Discover factions. It makes Diplomatic Victory possible, which is dependent on votes, which is dependent on population. I played a test game as the Cult of Planet where nobody got to Fusion Power before I stomped them. The technologically regressive Believers were the only distantly competitive faction. I was building Tree Farms and likely to win by Diplomatic Victory, if only I knew the tech.
- Industrial Lab: moved to D7 Unified Field Theory. I think having it in D5 Applied Relativity was giving it away too soon and creating too much of a Morganite flavor in the Discover tech tree. I did not want to move it to C6 Fusion Power as that would be giving away way too much stuff at once.
- Unified Field Theory: set wealth=3. It gives Industrial Lab.
- Applied Relativity: set wealth=0. It no longer gives Industrial Lab.
Post by: bvanevery on September 05, 2022, 04:17:24 AM
Even after all these years of modding, I'm still back to the single Number One thing I hate the most about the original game. The overpowered probe teams taking over cities. I even doubled the cost of probe team actions and still this happens. This has been a long and fairly uneventful game, to the point of starting to bore me, as what can anyone do to me? But that doesn't mean I want to be cheesed. I can't even remember if I defended this city with a probe team. I know I did all the others, that I've done this tedious drill of slowly forwarding my probe teams to the front line, every time I take a city. It was 10:30 PM when this happened and I'm tired. I hate, really hate the game of oops gee one little oversight. High maintenance babysitting game.
Oh, and this had to be the turn I didn't actually save the game before hitting End Turn. Of all the self-defensive bug prevention I've been doing, since there was a slew of "enemy factions in cities" bugs for awhile. Somehow I managed to get past all of them without having to invoke the Scenario Editor, by slightly changing the order of my moves. One time I disbanded a sea former to keep it from being hit by a conventional missile, and that seemed to get me past a problem. Whatever.
[Limit reached]
Ok in MY 2333 I did have 1 probe team in there. Pretty minimal defense, and hadn't seen any probe team actions by anyone previously. Domai had a lot of money and just plain spent it to get at my base. Hmm, how much for all that?
[Limit reached]
Doesn't look like he spent any great wealth to take me over. Better check whether he's got more income than I'd expect.
[Limit reached]
Nope. He's as po as someone getting trounced should be. He bought me for something like 2194 - 1712 = 500 credits, assuming he didn't have any other expenditures. He had Thought Control, which surprised me as I haven't been paying attention. That would put him at +3 PROBE to my +1 PROBE faction ability.
The action was taken really near to his home base and fairly far away from mine. I had just raised my JUSTICE to +3 but my empire is vast. I thought I'd forego the slight income advantage of Capitalist, as I was getting enough Bureaucracy penalty that an additional +1 JUSTICE for Green, was making me almost as much money.
So it was a legit move. I just think this whole game mechanic sucks. It's always been boring as hell having to worry about this. And after a long game, late at night, I'm bored. Not gonna even bother continuing this game. It's classic "4X takes too long when you won many hours ago".
If I were doing more of a "go your own way" mod, maybe I'd just get rid of mind control entirely. But I'm not. I've only outright killed game features if they're over the top egregiously bad. That has been: Copters, Bunkers, probe team base MORALE increasing with tech level, and High Morale. The last one wasn't so much about egregiousness, as it's just yet another buff that throws off the combat balance. Other buffs I put way late in the tech tree, to render them unimportant in practice, but available as toys if you want them. "High Morale" is too low tech to do that with though, so I removed it.
Well, this whole thing still bugs me. But this late in my modding development, I don't know that I'll do anything about it. I already doubled mind control cost for most factions. I don't think tripling it, would stop this from happening, because it would still be way way cheap. I need a hack that seriously increases the cost of mind control in cities. That works with the stock binary and doesn't break something else. There might not be any such thing.
I could have gotten the Hunter-Seeker Algorithm when it was available; I just chose other Secret Projects. I could have done Thought Control, which gives +3 PROBE and thus immunity to mind control. However it also penalizes RESEARCH and I'm playing a research faction.
Worth noting that in this game, I'm the victim of my own "relaxed conquest" play style. I deliberately didn't make very many military units, because it's boring pushing around too many of them. But if I had piles and piles of units, Domai might have been crushed in a few turns. Instead of me gradually taking 1 city, gradually doing the terraforming without building any new units, because again more unit pushing would be boring. I was starting to push out a navy because the Caretakers have to die for me to declare Diplomatic Victory. I even got chemical weapons legalized at the beginning of the game, and never used the capability.
Post by: bvanevery on September 10, 2022, 04:35:40 AM
This time I'm terminating with extreme prejudice. Chemical weapons with the Usurpers actually makes that rather easy. Maybe too easy. But I just can't in good conscience, deny a spacefaring race, a WW I era technology. I forgot that there's no consequence for using them, especially not on the Caretakers, in early naval battles. At least my early laser ships were cheaper. The only reason not to use them on the Caretakers, is to take over cities with their full population. My own cities are fine and better centralized.
The Caretakers wiped out the Spartans, who simply got a bad start. They actually gave the Cult of Planet a walk-in of Sparta Command, or something like that. Anyways it was conquered when I first saw it. The Consciousness was my next-door neighbor and I was fine with that, until they took over one of my ships! That's grounds for obliteration. Pirates did similar to me later. What's with these humans thinking they can just take what isn't theirs?
I was gifted the Manifold Nexus at the very beginning of the game. I used my first 3 colonists to surround it, preventing anyone from laying any claim to it. Getting to play like a Caretaker who also gets +1 MORALE, is pretty advantageous! I think the technical term for this particular game is a cakewalk. Sure there have been some probe teams, and I even allowed them to take some of my X Recon Rovers. It didn't matter because I had the Consciousness on the ropes.
[Limit reached]
eXterminating humans is just my day job. I'm about to bring it to my enemy proper, courtesy of the Weather Paradigm. Prototyped the X Impact weapons just in time for the onslaught, without benefit of a Skunkworks.
Could have stolen that tech from Lal if we hadn't made peace. He declared war on me because he's a sanctimonious pusillanimous wimp. I was about to start committing atrocities against his sea bases, when the Pirates pulled their shenanigans. So I did an about face and started wiping out the more powerful and closer enemy.
Post by: bvanevery on September 14, 2022, 09:46:18 PM
[Limit reached]
Roze is actually my ally. She was too expensive to bribe, but my rival Svensgaard was not! So we created a veto-proof majority. I should have made the proposal before she had a chance to call the election, but sunspots had just ended and I wasn't thinking clearly about it. If I had done that, likely I would not have had to pay anyone a darned thing.
I'm still contemplating that chemical weapons are overpowered. I could make them more expensive, 100% extra cost instead of 50%, but I don't think that would change what they can do. The AI just doesn't know how to use them as effectively as a human player.
One possibility would be to keep them illegal forever. Then at least they'd have serious consequences for human vs. human conflict. That, unfortunately, would also get rid of the fun voting mechanic. It also wouldn't do anything about human vs. alien or alien vs. alien conflict.
Hmm, what if I made them increase with the cost of the weapon? It would have to result in X Impact weapons being horrifically expensive though, because I've won my last few games almost entirely with Impact. Bet it isn't enough to work.
Post by: bvanevery on September 17, 2022, 05:37:22 AM
Going vertical with a few cities, doesn't seem to be worth anything. It's definitely not making me a tech powerhouse, despite +1 RESEARCH and a Biology Lab and Network Node in every city. I'm not really any better than factions that spread out horizontally. I'm worse than the University, which spread out a fair amount + got the Monsoon Jungle. I don't feel that bad about them being in the lead. I just don't feel like everyone else should be at parity with me.
For a long time, I've thought that tech bonuses aren't worth that much. It's why I upped the University to +3 RESEARCH some time ago. I don't have anyone who's at +2. I have certainly done well with PLANET though. Pretty much the undisputed pod popper of the game, especially at sea. This, however, still hasn't catapulted me greatly beyond any other faction though.
The game is a bit dull because my 1 enemy is very far away, and my nearest neighbor is an ally. I could betray them, especially since I completed the Ascetic Virtues and could go Police State instead of Democratic. But they're not near enough, or beneficial enough, for me to be terribly motivated to do that.
Hm, I've got more Artifacts than I thought. 11 of them. I could cash those for tech, but I generally prefer to rush Secret Projects with them. I haven't had much opportunity to do that this game, meaning that I've been behind others on tech.
I just keep making Clean Speeder Formers because I have nothing better to build. Everything is too far away to bother to invade. Even pushing foil probe teams is too much of a chore, and I've only got a few of them out and about.
This game seems like a complete waste of time. Going vertical in a few cities doesn't work.
Post by: bvanevery on September 17, 2022, 07:41:11 PM
I don't have anyone who's at +2 RESEARCH.I forgot that the Cybernetic Consciousness is my faction that has that. Reminded by starting a game and randomly getting them. Their bonuses were feeble enough that I made them a "collects interest on credits" faction, utilizing a play mechanic that's available in the original game, but wasn't actually provided in any of the stock faction files. I haven't gotten especially wealthy with the Cyborgs either, as I didn't intend to make them overpowered in that regard. But they are a hybrid research and moneygrubbing faction, with default AI research foci of Discover Build.
[Later] Well I managed to play not very well with them. Fights against my immediate land neighbors went fine, I did those right. Lots of Recon Rovers and some rails. At sea though, first I pushed all these Foil Probe Teams into a large large ocean. They were mostly summarily killed by a small number of Believer ships that are completely immune to Mind Control.
So later I thought I'd correct my mistake and push lots of Laser armed ships. They eventually reached Peacekeeper waters very very far away from home, and very exhausting to get them there 5 moves at a time. Lal just summarily took them over with a foil probe, even though I was Police State and had a +1 PROBE advantage for my faction, for a grand total of +2. Yes I could have doubled my ships up to prevent this, but good grief this is so tedious.
I did not do especially well on either research or money. Both the Peacekeepers and the Free Drones were really cleaning up this game, unmolested by me. I quit.
I think the moral of the story is, the Cyborgs don't have much in the way of special advantages. I guess I balanced them "correctly" that way, but it also bored me. RESEARCH just isn't worth much of anything. I also learned Knowledge, so even had +4 RESEARCH. And unlike the previous game with the Gaians, I spread out just fine and had plenty of cities.
I was doing Police State Socialist Knowledge and then Police State Green Knowledge most of the time. Maybe one has to do Democratic Capitalist Knowledge to get the +2 ECONOMY, really make money, and thereby really get research going. I had a lot of fungus to start with and the Cult of Planet as an enemy for awhile, so at first I didn't want to do that. Also I thought the stronger probe teams would buy me something, and in practice it never did.
As for making units, it seems like lots of Formers is the only correct thing to do. Building mag tubes is the only way to get anywhere quickly. Pushing ships around continents takes way way too long and is so godawful tedious.
Post by: bvanevery on September 21, 2022, 04:25:38 AM
I just did the most ridiculous and excessive amount of terraforming I've done in a long long long time. For awhile I simply didn't have anything useful to make in my cities, and I was too far away from anyone else to make military units. I'd already conquered the Morganites, who started on the same small island as myself. Got them to surrender without taking a single city actually, because I outsettled them. By the time I was ready to start taking them over, I had all these troops and they knew their situation was hopeless.
So here I am on this island, nobody else to fight. I build causeways to my nearest neighbors, one to the east, another to the west. Most of what you see here was open ocean. After the causeways were completed, I just kept building stuff until a resource special would appear.
I wanted my conquered Morganites to go make use of this, but they never did. That might be a result of their pure Build focus, which tends to strongly centralize any colonies. Explore, by contrast, causes the AI to scatter their colonies much farther over the map. Conquer does that to some extent as well.
I started out trying to raise mountains to see if I could get any useful farmland out of it, or ruin my neighbbors' farms. None of that worked though. I had already long since settled and terraformed my own land to perfection, and just didn't need farmland. No point in making energy parks either, as Supply Crawlers take a long time to get in my mod. I did make a bunch of Thermal Boreholes, but they were underutilized due to lack of food. I could have built more Condensers but I didn't want to ruin my forests.
I finally stole Tree Farm tech from the Believers, and was starting to work on food, when I thought Good God I've been terraforming for way too long. None of it was of any actual value, and it had gotten old! So I quit the game and wrote this up.
I actually started making military units as soon as my causeways were completed. But I had made so many Formers, that this was just the product of having them available. Hm, what was the final count? 63 Clean Formers, 13 Clean Fungi Speeder Formers, and 7 Clean Synth Speeder Formers that I completion scummed in the early game.
I probably should have cashed them in for Secret Projects, maybe saving my Artifacts for techs rather than using them to rush projects. Come to think of it, those Clean Synth Speeder Formers were worth a fortune, to the point of being a serious cheat / exploit. Whether that or armored rover colony pods, it's generally my policy to just use them instead of cashing them, because it would be such a cheat. Completion scumming can be pretty overpowered if you micromanage your unit production. It's pretty much how I exceed the AI in the early game. Somehow the AI always manages to leverage its advantages though and catch up. At least, someone catches up. Like Miriam was just stomping everyone this game.
Maybe I should have made an avalanche of Recon Rovers and just beaten up some neighbors by sheer attrition. Or X Recon Rovers and eliminated the Caretakers earlier, instead of waiting around until Needlejets became available. I only built 1 of those anyways, since it became time to do the Tree Farms.
Probably, Thermal Boreholes and Condensers are the only correct "Weather Paradigm" strategy. I just hate playing like I'm supposed to be the Thinker Mod AI. I'm seriously biased towards forests. They look so much better on Planet.
Maybe next time I won't bother with so many Clean Formers. That way, I won't feel like I need to keep them. I could just cash regular Formers to do SPs and get my SUPPORT back.
Post by: bvanevery on October 03, 2022, 06:56:39 PM
Morgan is threatening victory in 2178 ! And because of my good modding, having arrived at this point, he only needs 5 years to do it. This isn't what I had in mind. If I decide to regard this as a bug, the most expedient fix would be to require a tech later than B4 Planetary Economics to make Economic Victory possible. Probably when I readjusted the COMMERCE progression, it's too easy to pull way ahead in the early game. Factions have different research paths, haven't met yet, and aren't trading so many techs with each other. I don't intend Economic Victory to be some kind of early tech victory for focusing on Build research. One should have to build a bunch of stuff, and have a worthwhile empire. I seriously doubt Morgan's empire is actually worth anything.
Thought I'd better have a look at the game with the Scenario editor. Morganites have 9 cities. They have a Treaty with the University (me) and the Pirates, and get a bit of Commerce income for that. Other faction cities: University 9, Pirates 11, Drones 11, Cyborgs 10, Spartans 10, Cult 6. I think the Cult got eradicated at the beginning of the game, but I'm not sure. Could have been the previous game. Probably by stray mindworm, although if it was a faction walk-in, they could have renamed the base. I'm too lazy to go through all the bases to find out if any have been captured. It's not important; what matters is nobody's ahead on city development.
B3 Superconductor, B3 Ecological Engineering, and B4 Planetary Economics each increase COMMERCE by 1. Morgan doesn't get a COMMERCE bonus in my mod, since he already gets +1 ECONOMY. A high ECONOMY will give bonuses to COMMERCE. He's Democratic Capitalist Wealth, giving him +4 ECONOMY really early! That's worth +2 COMMERCE. So Morgan is at +5 COMMERCE, really early.
Other factions: University knows B3 Superconductor, Cyborgs know B3 Ecological Engineering, Pirates surprisingly don't know any B3 techs, Free Drones don't even know B2, and neither do Spartans or Cult. The Cyborgs and the Pirates are Democratic Capitalist, but this only gives +1 ECONOMY, no COMMERCE bonus. That means only 2 factions are at +1 COMMERCE and the rest are at 0.
The Economic Victory equation must give a really big advantage to Morgan. My memory is if the COMMERCE difference is big enough, a faction only needs 1000 credits to win the game. Which is pretty trivial for the AI factions to procure; I regularly see some factions with bank accounts in excess of 2000 credits. Hm, Morgan now has 44 credits. What about last year? Yep, 1039 credits. Morgan has paid the minimum to win.
The rest of my COMMERCE sequence: B5 Environmental Economics, B6 Industrial Automation, B6 Advanced Ecological Engineering, B9 Global Energy Theory.
Hmm, how many COMMERCE techs did the original game have? Hm, surprisingly only 6: Industrial Economics, Industrial Automation, Environmental Economics, Planetary Economics, Industrial Nanorobotics, and Sentient Econometrics. So we've got the same number of gradations, but mine are biased towards earlier in the game.
Economic Victory (https://alphacentauri2.info/wiki/Economic_Victory) formula:
Quote
Your commerce rating is equal to the number of commerce techs you know, +1 if you're Morgan, plus whatever you get from your ECONOMY rating (+1 for +3 ECONOMY, +2 for +4 ECONOMY, and +3 for +5 ECONOMY). This value is squared, then add 1; the cost is divided by the result.
So +5 COMMERCE is a huge early game bonus compared to +1 COMMERCE, because of the square. Like 25:1. No wonder Morgan can buy all these little bitty bases so cheap.
Early game COMMERCE techs, would create a more stable baseline of bonus differential. Like let's say B1 Industrial Base, B2 Industrial Economics, and B2 Ethical Calculus became COMMERCE techs. Then the factions would have had COMMERCE as follows: Morganites +8, Cyborgs and University +4, Pirates +3, Drones Spartans and Cult +1. 8^2 / 4^2 = 4:1 bonus over the leading factions though. Maybe it's more stable, but that doesn't sound stable enough.
Empires need time to get bigger, and bases time to get larger. Clearly, that means moving the tech for Economic Victory later.
Let's say I keep my mod's COMMERCE sequence, and Morgan gets to the B6 techs while others are back on B4. Further assume that Morgan doesn't learn Digital Sentience, so can't go Cybernetic, so can't do +5 ECONOMY, only +4. Makes me wonder if Digital Sentience should be a COMMERCE tech though, especially since the Cyborgs are my "techie moneygrubber" faction. Anyways, Morgan gets +5 COMMERCE from tech. Democratic Capitalist Wealth and his faction bonus give +4 ECONOMY, which is worth another +2 COMMERCE. So Morgan is at +7 COMMERCE, while most other factions are at +3 COMMERCE. 7^2 / 3^2= 49 / 9 = 5.4x bonus over other factions.
Let's say I add the B1 B2 B2 techs as COMMERCE. That would put Morgan at +10 COMMERCE while most factions are at +6 COMMERCE. 10^2 / 6^2 = 2.77x bonus over other factions. About half the bonus.
I dunno, maybe this COMMERCE thing is just a bad mechanic.
I'm going to try making B6 Industrial Automation the requirement for Economic Victory, and see if the Morganite AI pulls any more shenanigans.
Post by: bvanevery on October 16, 2022, 08:08:18 PM
Changed from version 1.55 to 1.56:
ECONOMIC VICTORY
- Technology for economic victory: now B6 Industrial Automation. When it was B4 Planetary Economics, the Morganic AI tried to corner the energy market in the early game for a mere 1000 credits. This is because COMMERCE bonuses are squared. Morgan was managing to reach +5 COMMERCE in the early game when other factions only had +1 COMMERCE, resulting in a 25:1 bonus. Since empires hadn't expanded either tall or wide much yet, the cost to buy them out was trivial. A later tech requirement, gives empires more time to expand, build up, and have competing economic value.
- Bio-Engineering, Industrial Nanorobotics, Sentient Econometrics: added "Increases commerce income" flags. Intent is to make it cheaper to Corner The Energy Market in the mid to late game, if one is ahead on Build techs.
Post by: bvanevery on June 19, 2023, 03:13:56 AM
Today, I returned to playing SMAC in order to playtest a minor predefined units change. Something I've thought about as far as improving the AI's effectiveness for a few months now, but got worn out bothering about it. Started up a game today and never really tested what I intended, because, uh, the AI kicked my butt.
[Limit reached]
The Galactic Civilizations III AI is crassly stupid, especially at the beginning of the game. This had gotten me in the habit over the past couple of months, of not treating it with much respect. SMAC is not the same as that! I built a line of cities straight towards the Cult of Planet, thinking I'd get the production drop on them and just summarily run them over. Didn't really think very hard about the Usurpers on my flank.
Well, the most extreme city on my road, the Cult took over with a probe team. That's because the rivers were positioned such, that I couldn't get a unit up there to intervene. Fine, ok, that city wasn't much developed anyways. Figured it would give me an opportunity to infiltrate them no problemo, steal a tech, and then finally liberate it. Not a big deal.
Well, the Usurpers coming in overland with lots of Recon Rovers, was a very big deal. I forgot how deadly that can be. I really didn't have adequate prep for that, and I'd stuck my neck out where it would be cut off. I don't usually get overrun, at least, not in the past when I'm used to playing the game and know what I'm doing. Between the 2 of them, they slaughtered me. And they'd probably keep doing it, because that's an awful lot of material coming.
So I quit. Lesson learned. Don't underestimate this AI. Sometimes, my own mod beats me.
Post by: bvanevery on June 20, 2023, 07:28:19 PM
Changed from version 1.56 to 1.57:
PREDEFINED UNITS
- Drop Plasma Garrison: removed. The AI did not make effective use of this unit and obsessed over building it, when other more effective units were available. Setting Plan=-1 "Auto Calculate" was a bad idea because the AI decided it was an assault unit. Also even if it had been used as intended as a scout, its lack of Hypnotic Trance made it vulnerable to mindworm attacks in the fungus.
- Drop Rover: removed. Setting Plan=-1 "Auto Calculate" was a bad idea because the AI decided it was an assault unit. It built lots of them instead of the far more effective and annoying Cloaked R-Laser Speeder. I tried setting AI Plan=3 "Reconnaissance", which did cause the Ai to build very few of them, like 2 units. However it did not make any use of the units, it just seemed to park them inside bases and forget about them. So, best to get rid of it entirely.
Post by: bvanevery on September 23, 2023, 07:46:51 PM
It is actually possible to win an Economic Victory after all. Meaning, the game circumstances can arise where it's rational to do so. I got the random draw of the Caretakers at the start, which is always expected to be easier than other factions. My previous game was a Lal game where I grew big cities and won by Diplomatic Victory, so those kinds of play dynamics were on my mind. It doesn't make as much sense for the Caretakers since they can't win that way, but eh, bigger is better? I didn't pigeonhole myself into any one strategy to start with. I just played the game, and reached a point where it seemed like Economic Victory could actually be a viable way to win with less effort.
I started in a very northwards, isolated, landlocked from the major oceans portion of the map. I did my requisite Explore thing, as a +1 PLANET faction is going to do, and I'd probably do in any event anyways. The Usurpers turned out to be very nearby, and so I initiated rather early war with them. They were behind an inland sea, so it was a matter of out-colonizing them while preventing their expansion into the main continental body. They did a poor job at Exploring, so pretty soon I felt confident that my big spread wasn't threatened. I just waited until I got all my cities connected by mag tubes and then pretty much creamed them with Recon Rovers. I didn't manage to exterminate them, but I did them so much damage that they never recovered as a force in the game. Just a few sea bases scattered here and there on the map.
Lal turned out to be my other neighbor on the eastern part of the continent. I didn't try to provoke him, I was even Democratic the whole time. But he did something, I can't remember if it was a surprise attack or a theft. So I walked all over him. Mostly Recon Rovers, eventually stole Impact weapons from somebody and finished the last few cities with them. It took me that long to get to his Secret Projects, as let's face it, Recon Rovers aren't exactly major ordinance. There were some sunspots for awhile, and by the time they lifted, Lal only had 1 offshore city left. Finally he surrendered as my thrall.
So I had this huge empire from landlocked early militarism on a large continent. But meanwhile, the Data Angels had had a totally unrestricted hand on the other half of the map. They'd built all kinds of Secret Projects while I was busy fighting. Fortunately, I had also collected all kinds of Artifacts. I never really stopped exploring, although I did tend to get killed venturing very far into foreign waters. I had very few sea ports and it took a long time to build those up into productive centers, since I had started so far inland.
I went on a campaign of trying to steal the technologies that other factions had accumulated, particularly the Data Angels. This took a long time, and the bulk of thefts were perpetrated by amphibious rover teams. My cruiser probe teams, they were consistently killed by the Believers patrolling the oceans. Hardly any of those made it through, and pretty much proves a real naval effort would have been necessary. Too much unit pushing work, and I had lots of clean land formers by then. I built rails all the way to the borders of the Data Angels empire, needing Advanced Ecological Engineering for the last few stretches. If I'd had the Weather Paradigm way earlier in the game, I could have bridged the continents and made a mag tube conquest very easily, but that didn't happen. And I'm too lazy to ferry lots of units around. Although I did a tiny bit of work with Marines, mostly I just stopped fighting when I got to this natural barrier.
Would the Data Angels come to me? They never did. They were happy to try to subjugate the Hive, and later the Morganites and Believers. Their Laser Needlejets would sometimes kill some of my formers, which is pretty much why I put that cheap unit into my mod, but it didn't really stop me from doing anything. There was a time period when I AAA covered all of my construction, and later on, I just didn't bother anymore.
Once I finally stole all the techs, I cashed in the huge pile of Artifacts I'd accumulated. I built all kinds of SPs and got just ridiculously far ahead in tech. I could have embarked upon a conquest right then, and it would have been a cakewalk. But it also would have been a lot of mouseclicks, I thought, so I embarked upon a path of less resistance. When I got the Habitation Dome tech, and the Cloning Vats, I thought seriously in terms of just getting monstrously bigger. Multiplying the advantages I'd already gained.
[Limit reached]
I never even bothered to garrison my empire with Fusion units, or anything beyond Silksteel. Nobody was actually making a move to threaten me. I didn't bother with advanced research facilities or factories either. I wasn't causing any floods and I intended to keep it that way. Made Hab Domes, made Hybrid Forests, did Aquafarms and Thermocline Transducers where appropriate. Global Warming happened because of the Data Angels and I had to do river flood repair work a few times.
Finally I started getting more money than I could actually use up buying new facilities. I looked at how much Economic Victory would cost, and it was only around 40k. That surprised me compared to previous games I'd played, where it was often 200k. I don't know exactly why. Maybe I had just gotten that much farther ahead of everyone else's economic development, with the big Artifacts cash in. Maybe my empire was just that grand. Whatever.
I'd already built a decent number of Orbital Defense Pods, in case of trouble. I started building a lot of Orbital Power Transmitters to augment my pretty profitable empire. Then I realized I'd seriously overdone it, that I'd built more than my city sizes could profit from. So I switched over to Sky Hydroponics Labs. Which then again I had plenty of, and hadn't quite reached the Cornering The Energy Market threshold yet.
So I made military units, preparing for an invasion. If there really wasn't anything else to do in the game, why stand on principle? I didn't have anywhere near as many formers anymore, so I didn't feel like doing the usual massive mag tube invasion. I made a lot of Shard Hovertanks. And a lot of Conventional Missiles, and a modest number of cheap drop units, thinking perhaps I'd take over the Manifold Nexus deep in Believer territory. Knock them out of the warmongering and so forth.
[Limit reached]
Well, none of that has happened yet. Many missiles are now in the sky and inbound off the Data Angels and Believers coastlines. I seriously doubt they'll shoot any down, as I've never seen the AI do that before. Even if they do, it won't matter because I'm going to win this game in 5 years. Them's my modding rules: it takes so long to pile up the money, I just can't see making the player wait another 20 years for the payoff. If your enemies can't do anything about the situation in 5 years, well they all deserve to be under your economic thumb!
I'll add the screenshots in a minute here. The Windows+G method of capturing is really good for getting the initial images, but the file sizes are too large for this site. So I have to process them into something smaller. I want to save my writeup meanwhile and not lose any of this work. My saved game files actually are marked Cheater. That's not my fault, there was an "enemy unit in the wrong city" bug earlier in the game, and I had to use the Scenario Editor to get rid of it. That's the one bug I consistently get with the vanilla binary. And unfortunately, Scient's patch doesn't fix that bug. Anyways, BRB with the pics. And then I'll do a final victory writeup in another post.
Post by: bvanevery on September 24, 2023, 05:29:28 AM
[Limit reached]
For sake of form I eradicated the last 2 Usurper enclaves, in an inland lake. The 1st one went down with some CMs and clever Elite amphibious speeder movement. The 2nd was just summarily overwhelmed by the gravships arriving. An early drop gravship wiped out a sea colonist that might have delayed their death. With this many resources, why shouldn't I be thorough?
I clearly could have won this game eons ago if I'd just done straight conquest. I guess winning by Economic Victory is a matter of style. It did make sense in terms of winning by just sitting around, as opposed to Transcending or building subspace beacons. I still don't quite have the techs for those yet. I was doing Knowledge Cybernetic for a long time, but I never built advanced research facilities except in my capitol. Maybe that's why I only got a tech every 3 to 4 turns. Once I decided to go for EV I switched to Wealth, to make it a little cheaper to pay the Cornering The Market cost. After I paid it, I went to Power, since I had the Cloning Vats and no penalty for that.
[Limit reached]
I hit End Turn expecting the factions to meekly submit to my economic rule. After all, the amount of force I have in theater to keep everyone in line, is absolutely overwhelming. Not to mention all the cheap cloaked hovertanks back home as a reserve, exactly in case Roze were to pull something like this. Well, here we are. Is she going to assault a few mindworms and then the game declares me the victor anyways? Or should I go through the motions and actually use all those offensive tanks? Or the incredible numbers of probe teams that have nothing to do, that could have bestowed endless plagues eons ago? In what style does this end?
[Limit reached]
Nope it's over. She killed at most 5 gravships. I'm always irritated by surprise attacks that don't do any real damage. You'd think the AI could weigh the odds of success better than that.
The score was 3600 or something like that. Since my game was marked as Cheated, it wouldn't do any real score analysis, so I'm not bothering with that screenshot. This game might have made it into my top 5 scores, but it's a long ways behind the top 2 slots. Those are games where I either built or conquered pretty much every SP, and I don't think I dawdled either. Lotta dawdling this game, when I think about it. My opening was extremely efficient and that's why I got so big and swollen. Could have just kept on rolling. Didn't.
Well, better luck next time? At least I now know that Economic Victory is as viable as Transcend or Progenitor Victory. But if I had played a human faction, I would have had Diplomatic Victory with all those big cities, possibly upon building the Empath Guild. Certainly upon building Clinical Immortality, I can't imagine anyone even coming close to me at that point.
I always say the next game is going to be the one where I really just keep the military steamroller rolling. And then I rarely actually do it. I just get tired of pushing the units around. I guess I spend too much time terraforming stuff. Every single tile. This time I did aquifers, a lot of soil enrichers, and the stupid floods kept making me do those rivers over again. That would have been a good reason to wipe out the Data Angels, right there. Gotta preserve Planet!