SMACX AI Growth mod

[Vidsek]

   During my initial reading through the changelog I liked the cost increases to facilities and projects for the most part, many were too cheap before in my opinion.   The Tech tree rearrangements and reassignments of facilities and projects seem logical.   Same for the Faction adjustments.   

   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.

[bvanevery]

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.

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.

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.

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

Power is decent if weak with the penalties.

You're going to find that stacking up all those JUSTICE penalties gets pretty severe.

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.

Wealth is mostly pointless compared to power or Knowledge.

I think your play style doesn't embrace money.

[bvanevery]

Ok I added +1 SUPPORT to Fundamentalist, as I think it was almost a bug not to have that in there, or at least a lapse in judgment to remove 2 benefits and replace them with only +1 PROBE.  There is a new version of 1.30.zip available at the top of the thread, and everything is dated April 18th.  If you are one of the lucky 4 people who downloaded version 1.30 yesterday, you'll want to download again.  If you are in the middle of a game already, overwriting the alphax.txt with the new version will not affect anything.  You'll need to save, Start A New Game, then load your saved game to get the change.  I find that changes to the social engineering table are always picked up unprobelmatically that way.

[vonbach]

Here's a question did you get the AI to use GREEN?
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.

[bvanevery]

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.

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.

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.

support is nice I suppose.

It was definitely proven useful in my earlier versions of Fundamentalist.  It is also a progression towards Police State. 

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.

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.

[Vidsek]

   I've edited in the +SUPPORT to Fundamentalist with both my (one of four!!) copy of AIG 1.30 and my unofficial Merge of it and Yitzi 35d.   All of the merging looks good and has no bugs that immediately crash the game  .

  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.
 

[vonbach]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

[bvanevery]

   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.

All of the merging looks good and has no bugs that immediately crash the game  .

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.

  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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

[bvanevery]

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

[vonbach]

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.

[vonbach]

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.

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.

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.

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.

[Vidsek]

  Thank you for the heads-up:

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?

[bvanevery]

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.

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.

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.

[bvanevery]

Dammit, I meant to change this:

Code: [Select]

100,     ; Combat % -> AAA bonus vs. air units

This is what I actually changed:

Code: [Select]

50,     ; Combat % -> Air superiority unit vs. air unit
Which 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.

[Vidsek]

   Made those changes to my copies of AIG and the Merge.   I had wondered about the decrease in air to air combat.
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....