SMACX AI Growth mod

[bvanevery]

A faction can have immunity to subversion by giving it the MINDCONTROL power.  My Believers have this.  Probe teams can still do other things to you, like steal your tech or sabotage your stuff.  It does make a difference in AI to AI combat though.  When the Believers take a city in my mod, it does not change hands again.  No rich ass probe team to come bail the city out.  If the Believers get on a roll they continue to take ground.

[vonbach]

Every faction I play against will have probe costs raise until the cost is very prohibitive. I was wondering if its just the AI cheating.
I don't mind it keeps the probe teams from becoming over relied on.

[bvanevery]

In the unmodded game, the AI typically goes Fundamentalist and gains +2 PROBE to raise subversion costs to something prohibitively expensive.  If it got to +3 PROBE, you'd be unable to subvert the faction at all.

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.

[vonbach]

It does get old and I have rage quit because of Probe spam. But usually I just kill probe teams when the AI spams them.

[bvanevery]

CHANGELOG
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.

[Vidsek]

   Hurrah!  Been waiting for this release.

  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.

[Vidsek]

          Ok, I've made my new merge of Yitzi's 35d and AI Growth 1.29.

  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.

[bvanevery]

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, 000000000

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 Bonus
I think you have acquired 2 merge errors.  I'm thinking your alphax.txt wouldn't even work with such errors.  Mine works.

[Vidsek]

   The errors were in the unchanged AI Growth alphax.txt that I downloaded and was using as a stock file.

 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.

[bvanevery]

You aren't using something crazy old school like a Telnet terminal, are you?  I just don't know what would account for random character insertions or removals, if not a cut and paste error.

[Vidsek]

    Notepad++ is the editor I'm using.  I know it's different from the one you prefer, but wouldn't be responsible for errors like these.

  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.

[bvanevery]

Things like Notepad++ or the SciTE that I use, are way too venerable and battle tested to believe there's any possibility of them inserting random characters.

Now if you were using an editor with goofy command sequences, like arguably a 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.

[Vidsek]

  Good points.  Fortunately my keyboard is fairly new and clean (my days of smearing them with orange Cheeto's gunk are past).  However, creatures kibbitzing is a real danger around here.
  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.

[vonbach]

The social engineering choices all seem a bit harsh. police state seems to have too many negatives. Fundamentalism isn't much better.
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.

[bvanevery]

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.

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.

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.

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.

Wealth is too strong I think.

It's the same as the original game.

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.