SMACX AI Growth mod

[bvanevery]

They did QA around "does the AI make reasonable decisions under vanilla conditions?"

They weren't completely thorough about that either.  I've found enough holes over time.  It's a logical consequence of a game with lots of gewgaws in it, that doesn't have an ongoing way of being monetized, and that didn't get quite the sales of the Civ franchise in any event.  To me the moral of the story is 1) don't make so many gewgaws, 2) figure out some way to keep getting new revenue from the game.  'Cuz if you're not, well, the kind of stuff I'm working on now is clearly "diminishing returns" territory and won't pay the bills.  I hope someone recognizes all this polishing for what it is, but man, shiny shiny shiny is expensive!

"this AI's about to go to war, and choosing Democratic will give it -1 POLICE all by itself, and who knows what the POLICE implications of its choices for Economics and Values will be? Better not do that."

It could even be that -1 POLICE did have a bad effect at some point in their development, but that they nerfed it.  And didn't change any other logic, so they weight it as more catastrophic than it is.

I'm quite sure that the AI does not consider how large it's empire is when it decides how much to value EFFIC/JUSTICE. If it did, AI Yang in my game would not be running SE choices that leave 2/3 of his bases at 100% inefficiency.

I've definitely observed the AI to be more tolerant of JUSTICE penalties.  That's why I'm using them.

I'm currently playing as the Morganites.  I'm doing quite well, but my isolationist "don't elect a Governor" plan failed completely.  The Pirates met everyone including me, as one would reasonably expect the Pirates to do.  And they elected themselves Governor, as Pirates with all their kelp fed population are likely to do.  I'm not exactly close to Planetary Economics yet.  It'll be some time yet.

[bvanevery]

-2 Efficiency means that every base that's 16 or more squares from the headquarters will be at 100% inefficiency (unless it has a creche).

I don't believe that.  Do you have a screenshot proving it?  I've empirically experienced games with -2 JUSTICE and have found them to be "no big deal".  -3 has often seemed like a big deal though. 

Another big issue is whether you as a player tend to "build vertical", just the number of cities you think you need in a starting area, or you tend to "go horizontal", building as many cities in every direction for as long as you can.  In the limit, the latter is smallpoxing.  Heavily penalizing smallpoxing is a feature.

Conquest inevitably involves the acquisition of cities that are not in one's core.  My answer to that problem is to annihilate them or put a Punishment Sphere on them.  I don't really care what the AI does about it, because the AI is cheating anyways.  I can't even begin to quantify all the ways the AI cheats.

It's not a problem for the player, who can easily see that the tradeoff of Power, -2 Justice for Support and Morale, is not worth it.

IYO.  I just keep the "money and tech" cities in my core and crush everything else on the map.  You don't need lots of money or tech to win this game.  Troops will do just fine.

But why then are you nerfing Yang badly compared to vanilla, taking away the ability to run his Agenda without a -2 Efficiency/Justice penalty (as well as all of his other strengths) away from him?

Because he now starts with +1 POLICE and can trivially go to +3 POLICE without effort, resulting in 2X police effectiveness from the early game onwards.  Really have you simply not been inclined to play Yang much?  I've made him the Police State badass of the game.  Others can emulate him if they get the Ascetic Virtues.

The AI effectively gets +3 Industry at Transcend difficulty. It does not get +3 Efficiency.

Be that as it may, INDUSTRY penalties for Power don't make any rational sense.  Tell me how much of an INDUSTRY penalty the USA suffered in WW II.  Or the Soviets.  It works the opposite way in real life.  I think I even had some versions of my mod where there was a bonus, not a penalty, but I don't remember it working out. 

Anyway, it's your mod and I've nagged you enough about this.

Your feedback is good.  Bear in mind, there are more considerations than "what the AI was hardcoded to do".  There are narrative and thematic considerations, which is why things like Socialist and JUSTICE are in the mod.  SMAC wasn't famous just for being a collection of wargaming rules, that one minimaxes this way or that.  It's a narrative experience.  When you get a -4 JUSTICE penalty, you're supposed to be experiencing what it's like to run an unjust empire.  In GNS Theory, a Gamist might be made upset that their favorite formulae aren't what they were used to be.  But from a Simulationist standpoint, it's working rather well.  I also think it's working pretty well as a narrative, although I haven't thought what the "dramatic satisfaction criteria" of choosing Police State and Power is.

I researched (and built) the Manifold Harmonics (which gives, among other things, a food bonus to every fungus square, which rather makes SHL's irrelevant),

If you have a high PLANET rating.  Some factions won't.  For instance, it's not the Morganic way.

Really, by that point in the game, you've got the food problem solved.

It's not the food problem by then.  It's the voting yourself to victory problem.

In my house rules I nerf SHL's indirectly by making Cloudbase Academy much harder to get (Applied Gravitonics E14), so that every SHL is only worth 1/2 food to bases without aerospace complexes, as it was in SMAC before Cloudbase got introduced in SMAX.

You'd have to nerf the Space Elevator too.  It waives penalties for not having an Aerospace Complex.  Or so it is documented.

[bvanevery]

When AI factions consistently throw the game, it makes it less interesting for me as a player.

Look you know you can always beat the vanilla AI, right?  That it's only there for resistance.  Well, at least if you've gotten used to how things work in my mod.

Haven't you seen the Hive take half the map yet?  You either have to go conquer all that stuff, which is a PITA, or you have to come up with some other way to win.  I'm just not getting this "Hive always throws the game" idea.  I don't think you've played enough games to make that judgment.  It's possible that my perspective is skewed by recent developments, and that my current regime for the Hive isn't as well tested as I thought.  But I sure could swear the last time I tweaked the Hive's attributes, I had my reasons for what I gave them.

Balancing factions is empirical.  You play until you get the sinking sense that a faction can't perform.  Then you give them something.

but Miriam, even in 2300 when she was at peace with everyone, has been running it constantly too.

The question is not whether Miriam is running Power.  The question is whether Miriam's empire is large and dominant on the map, or feeble and stunted.  She's an Aggressive faction still.  It's rational for her to be into Power.

In my game, Lal was running Democratic/Capitalist/Knowledge/Cybernetic,

I thought that was odd, because I thought he had a secondary compulsion to pick GROWTH.  It looks like I removed his secondary compulsion a long time ago.  Back then, I also tried giving him +2 GROWTH as a factional ability.  But he was pop booming at the beginning of the game and it was seriously overpowered.  So I got rid of that.  He seemed to do just fine, so I never added back the GROWTH compulsion.

but he switched to Frontier/Socialist/Power/None,

The simplest explanation is he thinks he needs Power to fight.  But that gives -2 JUSTICE, and he wants that offset.  Socialist does that.  Also I don't know if you've noticed, but there are many circumstances where Capitalist, Socialist, and Green do not provide straightforward amounts of money.  You can be surprised at which one actually gives you the most money. 

A compounding factor may be, that Lal's actual research foci are Explore, Conquer.  He's got the same idea as the Hive, the Spartans, the Believers, the Data Angels, the Caretakers, and the Cult of Planet.  Why?  Because it's a rough neighborhood.  He's supposed to be the U.N. enforcer, he's supposed to keep the peace.  Yes he's Passive, unlike the other factions which are all Erratic or Aggressive.  But he believes in conquest, whether he calls it peace or not.  I can't tell you how many games I've played of vanilla SMAC where I've cursed the @#$! Peackeepers, they are not nice.

In vanilla, AI factions that will consider both Democracy and Fundy typically run Democracy when I think they're competitive at research and typically run Fundy when I evaluate them as needing to catch up with probe teams, but I don't see why that would be relevant here.

Vanilla Democratic isn't relevant.  It doesn't give +1 ECONOMY, it gives +2 GROWTH, and it has -2 SUPPORT rather than any POLICE penalty.  Apples and oranges.

and Fundy has a PROBE bonus.

Marginal in 1.32, and going bye-bye in 1.33.  Power will get it instead.

[bvanevery]

In the middle game the cost wouldn't matter as much as you would have more production + Brood Pits,

No you won't.     I moved Brood Pits to D8 Secrets of the Manifolds because they're seriously overpowered.  I've thought about moving them even later, but the narrative progression seems reasonable at present.  You're right that you'd have "more" production by midgame, from more squares worked per city, but you're unlikely to have Genejack Factories or Supply Crawlers midgame now.  Those are now early late game items.  Your actual production is likely to be determined by how many forests you've planted and Tree Farms you've built, and it'll be modest.

In my game I noticed an increase in Trance or Resonance Armor enemy units after I started to breed native life forms on a large scale. Until I got the Dream Twister, there were many encounters where my mind worms were not a match against them and had to mix them up with regular units/Spore Artillery.

I'm glad the AI has half a brain about this.  Otherwise it would be too much of a cakewalk.  This is reminding me that I meant to make more kinds of Trance units for 1.33, as I don't think the AI makes enough of them.

Thanks for the info about the atrocity. It's a good thing I didn't use it against Morgan when he was attacking my headquarters because chances are I might have had a Planet Buster used against me before being ready.

I've got some choice After Action Reports about what happens when you do it "wrong".   

[Jade Panther]

I don't believe that.  Do you have a screenshot proving it?  I've empirically experienced games with -2 JUSTICE and have found them to be "no big deal".  -3 has often seemed like a big deal though.

It's in the in-game documentation. Press F1, select advanced concepts, select inefficiency (advanced), plug the number into the formula.

I've always found it to be accurate, though you have to bear in mind that a base with a children's creche in a faction with -2 Justice has a Justice rating of 0 for purposes of this formula. So if, like most human players, you have creches in all of your major bases, it won't seem like such a problem, especially if your main bases are centralized. But some AI's won't have creches in most of their bases. (And human players can get around it with specialists, but AI's only do that by accident.)



Your tweaks to map configuration are awesome, BTW. It really feels like a planet.

I'm curious. In the test game that the Pirates were going to win in 2465, did any of the AI factions launch satellites? I've never seen them do so, and that game sounds like a best-case scenario.

[bvanevery]

I've always found it to be accurate,

I seriously doubt it is, but I'll see what I see.

But some AI's won't have creches in most of their bases.

I seriously doubt that as well.

Your tweaks to map configuration are awesome, BTW. It really feels like a planet.

It's been instructive to learn the influence of basic geography on the game dynamics.  In a 4X game I'd always make the planet generation fully under player control.  I seem to remember Civ III doing a good job of this.

I'm curious. In the test game that the Pirates were going to win in 2465, did any of the AI factions launch satellites? I've never seen them do so, and that game sounds like a best-case scenario.

I don't think they did.  I've played games where the AIs launched vast numbers of satellites, but lately I've been beating them long before they get to that stage.  It was the kind of thing I could expect Morgan or the Pirates to do.  The AI will actually completely wear you out with Orbital Defense Pod spam.  It's a complete drag to deal with an AI determined to launch those.

[Rocky]

@bvanevery

At first I was a little disappointed when I read about the Brood Pits, but after thinking about I realized you're right. When I first got Brood Pits I had a lot of fun with the boost they gave my units, but in hindsight I agree that it may have been too much at this point in the game.

From a lore/thematic perspective, having Brood Pits with Secrets of the Manifolds makes sense, as manipulating native life forms is something that should require a lot of research to master.

Can you direct me to one of those After Action Reports?

I'm curious. In the test game that the Pirates were going to win in 2465, did any of the AI factions launch satellites? I've never seen them do so, and that game sounds like a best-case scenario.

In the game I'm currently playing Morgan is building Orbital Defense Pods.

[bvanevery]

but in hindsight I agree that may have been too much at this point in the game.

They also give a +2 POLICE rating to the city they're in.  For me that was the last straw.  Totally overpowered facility.
 

Can you direct me to one of those After Action Reports?

Witness the poor slob Chairman Yang (i.e. me) getting what he fully deserves in the end.

In the game I'm currently playing Morgan is building Orbital Defense Pods.

Yeah, been there, done that.  Building your own ODPs to try to wipe out their ODPs is suicide.  The combat odds seem to favor defense, I think because they are defense pods.  An efficient and reliable way to get rid of ODPs, is to make cheap Conventional Missiles.  Just fire them at whatever you intend to nuke, before you drop your actual nukes, to get all the ODPs out of the way.  CMs aren't as cheap as they used to be though, so I'm not sure this strategy will be effective if you don't have Quantum Power or better.

I can't remember if you caught it, but in this thread I did an informal partial AAR about nukeing the entire planet at once using Singularity PBs.  That's another finishing idea: wipe out everything at once, before Planet can retaliate for your ecological transgression.

[bvanevery]

Details Planet is cheap

Planet is cheap

MY 2249.  I gain Planetary Economics and inquire as to the cost of Cornering The Energy Market.  A measly 1788 credits.  I have a +5 ECONOMY, Tree Farms in all 10 of my cities, and I make 194 credits per turn.  I can win the game in under 30 turns!  I'm not the Governor either, nor have commerce rates been doubled.  The AI's Economic Victory wasn't a fluke.  I've done something bad to the game's economics.  Could it be all those factions running Socialist with -2 ECONOMY?

Energy reserves of other factions: Free Drones 850, Gaians 321, University 673, Hive 328, Pirates 406, Data Angels 1266.  The latter is because I just gave them a big loan and bought a lot of techs from them.

Details typical Pirate BS capitol

typical Pirate BS capitol

The vanilla AI pretty much always puts the Pirate capitol in deep ocean and doesn't develop it.  It also tends to be far away from other sea bases.  Here we see that almost every Pirate city is more than 16 squares away from the capitol.  This will be a good test of whether low JUSTICE ratings are unmanageable.  The AI chose Fundamentalist Socialist, resulting in +1 JUSTICE.  I shall switch them to Fundamentalist Green Power, resulting in -2 JUSTICE.

Well, it didn't make any difference.  The real problem is the Pirates aren't building any Sea Formers.  They're in a war with the Data Angels and the Gaians, who are contiguous land powers intertwined with the Pirates.  They were allied with the Hive until last year.  I believe the Hive and the Pirates are dominant on the water, so I think it unlikely that Pirate Sea Formers got sunk.

When I look at their Security Nexus, they don't show any made, produced, or killed at all.  They have obsessed about Transports, producing 57!  They have 17 cities and have produced 22 Synthmetal Skirmishers.

Umm ok I just looked at their Workshop, and they don't even have a design for a Sea Former.  What's up with that?  Guess I'd better check my CHANGELOG and figure out if I did something.  This is weird.

The oldest autosaved game is from MY 2220.  Back then, they were in a war with the Gaians, did not have a Sea Former design, and had Doctrine: Initiative.  I believe I traded it to them.

The Hive, Gaians, Data Angels, and Free Drones also lack a Sea Former design.  The University has it though.  They also know Doctrine: Initiative, so I don't think that's the source of the bug.

The *Sea Formers line in alphax.txt is the same as the original game.  The tech for it is Disable.  Does the game barf if I have too many predefined units?  Currently I have 42.  Version 1.32 had 36.

Using the Scenario Editor I Discovered A Technology for the Pirates.  I got Centauri Meditation, and with it immediately came a Fungicidal Sea Former design.  However once I reviewed the design, it did not appear in the Workshop.  I look at the available design slots and it says 64 are empty.  6 units have been designed, but 2 of them perhaps shouldn't be because they have predefined equivalents.  Could that be the bug?  The offenders are the Sea Colony Pod and the Scout Rover.  Well, I guess not.  The Unity Rover and the Sea Escape Pod may duplicate them, but technically they're different units with different names I suppose.

I wonder if this is just some kind of fluke stale game start bug thing?  Like if I quit and restart SMAC, will this go away?

[bvanevery]

I have discovered that in version 1.32 the #UNIT count is wrong.  It's set to 36 but there are 37 predefined units.  The last unit is a Sea Supply, so maybe that just doesn't get added.  The error has been present since version 1.28.  In the CHANGELOG I forgot to make any note of adding predefined units in version 1.28, even though 5 were added.  In version 1.29 there's a note about adding Deep Radar to the new Sea Supply unit.

In version 1.33 that I'm working on, AI factions are not designing Sea Former units.  I have recently increased the number of predefined units to 42.  I thought that might have something to do with it, but commenting out new units and truncating the number to 36 doesn't make the problem go away.

Details original SMAC no Sea Former designed

original SMAC no Sea Former designed

The problem is present in the original game.  I am wondering if my recent update of Windows 10 is to blame.  I now have Windows 10 Pro, version 1803, OS Build 17134.885.  Previously I had Windows 10 Pro, version 1709, OS Build 16299.1087.

The other possibility is that Sea Formers have always become available to the AIs in a weird way that I've never previously noticed, for lack of paying attention.

[Rocky]

If I remember correctly the problem of the Pirates not building sea formers was present in vanilla Alien Crossfire as well. This happened so frequently that I ended up manually adding sea formers whenever the Pirates were in a game.

The other factions would often not build a sea former until they got their first sea bases, which sometimes was never.

[bvanevery]

I've run some AI test games.  I've seen the Pirates build Sea Formers sometime in the 2200's, but I'm not sure exactly what triggered it to happen.  It is very boring watching these games and I don't have the patience to watch any longer.  I know that Environmental Economics is not enough to get the Pirates to design a Sea Former unit, nor is Doctrine: Initiative.  Hmm, what if Advanced Ecological Engineering is the magic?  I can try just turning that on.

My Advanced Ecological Engineering makes a predefined unit available, the Super Cruiser Former.  The game then also designs the Fungicidal Cruiser Former.  A plain old Sea Former is not designed at this time.  The AI does start building a Fungicidal Cruiser Former almost immediately when it's available.  When a new tech is learned, no Sea Former unit is designed, so it must think the Cruiser based Formers are better designs.  Or it just doesn't know what to do.

I am thinking this problem can be ended by explicitly setting a tech where the *Sea Former predefined unit is given.  Even in vanilla SMAC, the tech for this design is set to Disable.  I've now set it for B2 Industrial Base, which happens to have C1 Doctrine: Flexibility and B1 Centauri Ecology as prereqs.  This seems to result in what I'd call "normal" early game behavior, and doesn't result in excessive numbers of such units.  I'd say problem solved.

[Rocky]

Sounds like a good solution. The AI is not unwilling to build (sea) formers, but it needs to get the designs around the right time.

[bvanevery]

Details excessive Pirate Transports

excessive Pirate Transports

MY 2236.  The Pirate AI has built 91 Transports.  FFS why??  Players have reported on excessive Transports at various times in this mod's development, but there's never been a clear pattern to it.  Nor am I sure if it happens consistently.  The Pirates are at war with 4 factions, so maybe it thinks it needs these for a war effort.  There's a predefined unit for a Transport, but even in vanilla SMAC, its tech prereq is set to Disable.  I wonder if giving it an explicit home would fix the problem?

The Pirates have 25 cities, 21 of which are sea bases.  They have built 20 Trance Synthmetal Sentinels and 29 Synthmetal Skirmishers.  The latter is a new predefined unit, which I'm trying to get the AI to take advantage of since the armor is basically free.  This many units for the defense of empire is not unreasonable, but could the Speeder units be making the AI obsess about delivering them to somewhere?

[bvanevery]

Details Pirates are Unionized

Pirates are Unionized

I'm trying a version of Socialist where INDUSTRY is penalized instead of ECONOMY.  It could be that the popularity of Socialist is destroying the Economic Victory conditions.  The Pirates like it.  Previously they were Democratic Capitalist.  In MY 2199 they acquire B4 Environmental Economics and immediately switch to Wealth and Socialist.  They are at war with the Hive and the Spartans.  The Hive is an immediately threatening neighbor, intermixed with Pirate home territory.  The Spartans are nearby but not quite as much of an existential threat.  The Pirates have built 20 Transports, which again, seems excessive.  They have 22 cities, 19 of which are at sea.  They have researched Doctrine: Initiative and have completed a prototype Cruiser chassis, so continuing with Transports is weird.

I'm also trying Power with -2 GROWTH instead of -2 JUSTICE.  I've done it before, but I thought the AIs wouldn't accept it before.  I may have been mistaken, getting confused with the Gaian Green problem.  Or it may have been a systemic consequence of liking Socialist.  I don't know yet.  I keep restarting test games.