SMACX AI Growth mod

[bvanevery]

I did a thread, make AI play itself? awhile back where I laid out the answer, but it's sinking into the muck of obscurity.

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.

[Rocky]

Thanks for the info. I have to try that out sometime.

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.

[Buster's Uncle]

Rocky, you okay, man.  Check under your handle.

[bvanevery]

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.

[bvanevery]

I left my AIs playing unattended for 2 hours.  This requires a physical weight on the Enter key, and sometimes that stops working.  They got far enough for several factions to learn E3 Intellectual Integrity and make some of my new Synthmetal Police units.

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.

[bvanevery]

My 1st test game with the version 1.33 tech tree tear-up is kinda weird.  At 4 AM I gave up and started analyzing the thing.  I played as the Hive.  Opposing me were the Free Drones, Cyborgs, Data Angels, Cult of Planet, Peacekeepers, and Gaians.  I got a large land area to start on and no problem with early spread.  Lal proved to be my land neighbor, but we actually allied for awhile, and as of MY 2220 we still hadn't come to blows.  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.

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".

[Jade Panther]

I've played a game to 2308. I was only intending to check the mod out, but I got a little carried away

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.

[Jade Panther]

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.

[bvanevery]

Thanks for the big feedback!  A lot to dissect here.  I'll start with the easy ones in one post, and save more complicated stuff for a later post, after I've done more thinking.

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.

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.     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.

[bvanevery]

I ran an AI only game to MY 2431.  The Cult of Planet got wiped out, but 6 human factions survived just fine.  They seem to be in interminable war.  The Hive, Gaians, Pirates, and Peacekeepers seem to be more or less evenly matched on the graph.  The Spartans are weaker, but they have a large continent to themselves.  The Believers are weaker still, but have a smaller continent to themselves.

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.

[bvanevery]

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?

[bvanevery]

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.     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.

[Rocky]

Thanks for the advice. I had forgotten about the Dream Twister.

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.
 

[bvanevery]

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.

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.

[bvanevery]

Details prototype SE choices for 1 33

prototype SE choices for 1 33

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.