SMACX AI Growth mod

[bvanevery]

At this point I'd consider the exact balance of AAA to be untested, although I'm quite sure it should come down from the +100% bonus.  Currently I have it at +50% and I haven't gotten in any air wars yet.

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.

[bvanevery]

A few days of regional travel have disrupted my game.  I find I am too bored with it to continue.  My position is viable, or even good.  The Gaians have gotten free reign on the other side of the map, and have built some SPs that I couldn't even start on.  My near neighbors though, I've been mostly beating up.  But not swiftly.  It's been this slow slog and Power doesn't seem to have worked out all that well.  The stacked JUSTICE penalties seem like a bear.  Are they really?  Should I just be living with some excess unhappy citizens, medics, and focusing on conquest despite the distractions?  Or is there really something wrong with the social engineering choices now?

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?

[vonbach]

I've always disliked the justice idea. It never made sense. Like socialism having justice bonuses.
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.

[bvanevery]

Well, we know your politics and mine are different.  Dislikes borne of that difference, don't trouble me.  The original original play mechanic was building a Courthouse in Civ II to stop Corruption.  That's legal justice.  And you definitely don't get legal justice in a police state.  The regime just kills you because it wants to.

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.     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!

[vonbach]

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.

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.

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.

[bvanevery]

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.

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.

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.

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.

A planet penalty might fit [Power] but thats pushing it.

Nah.  Doesn't make any sense at all.  Deidre can want Green Power.

[vonbach]

Honestly Power values, wanting a strong secure country really doesn't have a lot of downsides.
Efficiency might be one or research but both are pushing it. But the real penalty is you're not choosing wealth
or knowledge.

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.

[bvanevery]

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.

Efficiency might be one or research but both are pushing it.

Like the Nazis were bad researchers.  Or war has ever slowed down research.

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.

[bvanevery]

Even after all this !#$#$!ing time, I still find myself rage quitting because of overpowered probe teams taking over my cities.  It's 1 AM and I'm trying to play the !#!$#@ game.  I'm too tired to just keep repeating turns over because of this !@#$@#$ bull!@#$.  I swear if I weren't a mod author I'd be deleting the game, just like I used to in the bad old days.

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.

[vonbach]

Just kill the probe teams. Thats what I do.

[bvanevery]

You can't kill probe teams that are connected to your cities by roads, especially when the probe teams just got produced by the next city down the road.  You need defensive blocking probe teams for that.

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.

[vonbach]

I like to use blocking units stacks of two and air power. Either that or leave midworms on the roads.
That said probe teams can be really annoying.

[bvanevery]

No planes yet.  Units are at maximum extent, I don't have extras to perform blocking functions.  Only recently had gotten mindworms when I started having probe team problems.  Didn't have the productivity to crank out many mindworms.  The ones I did have, were used on assaults.  Blocking with mindworms is risky anyways as something else can come along to wipe them out.

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.

[vonbach]

I got one of those Unity jets. That thing is very handy for killing probe teams and mind worms.

[bvanevery]

I haven't really tried them against mind worms, for fear of losing the jet, unless the mind worm was nearly dead anyways.  I have used them to obstruct the advance of mind worms though.

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.