SMACX AI Growth mod

[bvanevery]

Details buglike shenanigans

buglike shenanigans

An example of Recon Rovers being dangerous early in the game.  I still have a Scout empire.  I did upgrade the nearest base to a Synth Garrison, but it's Green.  I also neglected to make a Sensor Array, although I swear I was "going to" in that forested river square.  I don't think the AI knows how to attack a Chopper, even though technically it's on the ground.  So it's on blocking duty.  I used the Unity Mining Laser to kill a 5th Recon Rover that was in the fungal patch next to my city.  Such a battle.

[bvanevery]

In a completely different game, I gave the Cyborgs INTEREST 3%.  As of MY 2185 they have 2254 credits, which I guess is a bit much!  I will keep playing this game as I'm doing fine as the Free Drones and I want to see how bad their creditworthiness gets.  They had an ok start this game where they got left alone, and they're sitting on the Monsoon Jungle.  Despite that, they're not the power of the game.  That's me!  Heck I'm Governor, even though Lal is in the game.  The stuff I've done to make Svensgaard's life easier, also makes it really easy to explore the oceans at the beginning of the game.  It does feel a lot more colonial, in that you're more likely to move over water and then make landfall somewhere.  More likely to spread along coasts.  At least, if you've mastered Completion Scumming like I have.   

I've reshuffled a lot of the AI research foci around, trying to match them better to what the factions have turned out to be.  For instance, the Pirates are going back to Explore Build.  It made them really terrifying, somehow, maybe 1.5 years ago.  I hope I've corrected the other things that held them up, but heck I'm still doing better than them, at least this game.  They make a few too many Clean Transports, but they're cheaper to make now, and they have plenty of Laser Skimships.

[bvanevery]

CHANGELOG
Changed from version 1.50 to 1.51:

FACTIONS

- Cyborgs: increased RESEARCH bonus to +2.  Removed JUSTICE bonus.  Removed Polymorphic Encryption ability.  Added extra TALENT every 4 citizens.  Added INTEREST 2% per turn.  With the University getting +3 RESEARCH and free Network Nodes, and the Gaians getting free Biology Labs, the Cyborgs were underpowered as a research faction.  The Cybernetic future society is dystopian and malevolent, per Miriam's endemic complaints about it.  Giving the Cyborgs a JUSTICE bonus is dissonant from that, and is a leftover from when it was called EFFIC.  The Polymorphic Encryption ability doesn't seem to stop other factions from mind controlling their units and bases.  The Cyborgs are now portrayed as basically accountants.  As such, they get to make money in a strange way compared to other factions.  The extra money has not given the AI any decisive advantage, so they are also bolstered with more Talents.
- Pirates: now have Explore Build research foci.  Removed free Doctrine: Flexibility tech.  Removed special claims about free unit prototypes.  Ships and their basic unit prototypes are now given to everyone at the beginning of the game.  If they have a Conquer focus, they will bog down on the tons of early Conquer techs, and not learn B4 Planetary Economics and Wealth.  It may take them a long time to learn C3 Adaptive Doctrine and C4 Doctrine: Initiative, but that sacrifice has to be made for the sake of moneygrubbing.
- Believers: now have Build Conquer research foci.  This is to free up Explore Conquer.  Miriam doesn't have any particular reason to be interested in mindworm / psi techs. 
- Caretakers: now have Explore Conquer research foci.  Changed faction personality to Aggressive.  The faction has been very much an underperformer compared to the Usurpers, and perhaps lack of aggression was the problem.  They were Aggressive in the original game.
- Data Angels: now have Explore Discover Build research foci.  They are benefiting from everyone else's research anyways, so they don't have to research Conquer themselves.
- Peacekeepers: now have Explore Discover Conquer research foci.  They tend to have dangerous undemocratic enemies and really could stand to buff up on the Conquer techs.
- Usurpers: now have Discover Build Conquer research foci.  This is to provide contrast with the Caretakers.

TERRAFORMING

- Mag Tube: now costs 6.  Playtester gehennaliving pointed out it's way too easy to conquer everything with early mag tubes.  I tried making it cost 12 but it was a drag.
- Soil Enricher: now costs 12.  The supply of easy food in the game was too high.  Many bases can grow to size 14 without them.
- Forest: now costs 6.  They're extremely valuable and way too cheap in the original game.  "Forest and forget" is almost a master strategy, particulary in this mod that puts strictures on Condensers and Boreholes.  The Will To Power mod has proven that forests are still worth building even when they're expensive.  6 is a modest cost increase, chosen mainly because it's an easy multiple for calculating the number of Formers needed.
- Aquifer: now costs 12.  It's not that valuable in practice and I typically forget to build them.
- Echelon Mirror: now costs 12.  Available with B4 Planetary Economics.  It should stay at Tier 4.  Placing one in a good location is difficult, making them not that valuable.
- Sensor Array: now costs 6.  They provide an enormous defensive advantage, typically the difference bewteen taking a base and being repelled.  6 is a better multiple for calculating the number of Formers needed.  I don't want this improvement to be too expensive, because I want the AI to have no trouble making them.
- Airbase: now costs 12.  A long time ago it was made cheaper, but there's really no reason for it.  Formers are typically plentiful by the time an airbase is needed, and not so many of them actually ever need to be built.  12 is an easier number for predictably calculating the Formers, Super Formers, or Weather Paradigm augmented terraforming necessary to complete the job, compared to the original game's 10.
- Bunker: now costs 12.  However it is still disabled because even at this price, the AI still obsesses about building them.  It is a wasteful use of terraformers, particularly in the early game.  The AI doesn't defend these bunkers, making them an easy invasion route for the human player.
- Level Terrain: now cost 6.  It's not needed much, and 6 is a better multiple for calculating the number of Formers needed.
- Raise Sea Floor, Lower Sea Floor: now require B6 Advanced Ecological Engineering.  Previously they were bugged, requiring only Environmental Economics.  It went unnoticed because I have very little reason to raise sea floors until late in the game.

SHIPS

- Foil chassis: now available from the beginning of the game.  The precipitating problem is I couldn't get the Pirates to learn how to make a Clean Sea Formers.  I tried it in various techs, and various shufflings of the prereqs.  All resulted in a hundred years of delay.  I was forced to choose between either giving the Terraformer module at the beginning of the game, or giving ships at the beginning of the game.  Giving ships helps both the AI and the player immediately get off of bad island starts, which are possible even if my map generator settings have minimized their occurrence.  It also solves dependency issues such as what's needed to make a Foil Probe Team.
- Troop Transport package: now costs 3 and available from the beginning of the game.  This matches the cost of a Terraforming Unit package.  The Pirates tend to obsess about building Transports, and this will reduce the number of minerals they waste on it.  Moving infantry over water and onto land is a difficult problem that the AI is probably never going to cope gracefully with.  Unlike other factions, moving units between sea bases is not optional for them. 
- Pressure Dome: now available from the beginning of the game.
- Deep Pressure Hull: now available with C2 Doctrine: Flexibility.
- Heavy Transport: now available with C2 Doctrine: Flexibility.
- Doctrine: Flexibility: now a C2 tech.  Set power=4 and growth=3.  A Deep Pressure Hull is not that useful because the AI just cheats and looks at all units.  However Heavy Transport could bring more troops to target, or carry more explorers.
- Adaptive Doctrine: now a C3 tech.  Amphibious Pods and Marine Detachments really only make sense when Lasers are known.
- The Command Nexus: moved to C3 Adaptive Doctrine.  This frees Polymorphic Software to be used elsewhere.
- Polymorphic Software: now a C1 tech.  I had too many C3 techs and not enough C1 techs.
- Command Center: moved to C1 Polymorphic Software.  Polymorphic Encryption is a pretty useless abilty, and this makes the tech acutally worth having.  Doctrine: Mobility is still useful because a Speeder chassis is very much worth having.
- Neural Grafting: now a C2 tech.  Makes it easier to predefine units with 2 abilities.
- Deep Radar: now available with C4 Doctrine: Initiative.
- Doctrine: Initiative: now a C4 tech.  I didn't like having it parallel with C5 Doctrine: Air Power.

ALIENS

- Hypnotic Trance: not allowed for non-combat or terraformer units.  I thought I did that ages ago, but it seems in version 1.26 I did exactly the opposite.
- Field Modulation: now a C3 tech.  Now a prereq for E4 Bioadaptive Resonance.  When I had it at Tier 2, D1 Biogenetics was a prereq for it, but that broke Conquer continuity.
- Progenitor Psych: now an E2 tech.  Now a prereq for C3 Field Modulation.
- Biogenetics: note that power=0.  Now a prereq for E2 Progenitor Psych.  Version 1.40 said it was set to power=1, but it wasn't.  I'm keeping it because nobody knows how to make mindworms at the beginning of the game.  This means it's not a good prereq for Conquer techs. 

TREE FARMS

- Environmental Economics: now a B5 tech.  Has B4 Planetary Economics as a prereq.  I seriously dislike having Tree Farms and the Planetary Energy Grid coming in parallel along different tech paths.  It often causes me to build Tree Farms before any Energy Banks, because I want to get the Grid and not have to build them.  This will make the Grid more likely to be finished before Tree Farms can even be built.  I'm ok with Tree Farms coming later in the game, as their food allows for big mineral increases.  "Forest and forget" has been pretty much the dominant strategy of this mod.
- Planetary Transit System: moved to C3 Monopole Magnets.  It should be an early secret project.
- Monopole Magnets: note that wealth=2.  Version 1.43 said it was set to 0 but that didn't happen.  I'm keeping it because the Planetary Transit System does create more citizens, who will work more squares.
- Aquafarm: moved to B5 Environmental Economics.  It should stay at Tier 5.
- Advanced Ecological Engineering: now a B6 tech.  It continues the forest progression.  The food it provides is really not needed until Habitation Domes are available.

PEACE OF MIND

- Thought Control: moved to C7 Mind/Machine Interface.  Coming immediately after C5 Advanced Military Algorithms is too soon.  It was also too popular with the AIs.  They didn't seem to have earned its capabilities.

PREDEFINED UNITS

- *Sea Formers: reinstated this unit from the original game, in its original slot.  I fear that removing it might cause a bug somewhere.  I worry that this unit may be in the table for reasons I don't know or understand.
- Sea Escape Pod: reinstated this unit from the original game, in its original slot.  Added Clean Reactor.  I fear that removing it might cause a bug somewhere.
- Clean Sea Colony Pod: now available from the beginning of the game.  Moved farther down the list of predefined units.
- Transport: now available from the beginning of the game.
- Clean Transport: new predefined unit available from the beginning of the game.  The Pirates have been obsessing about building Transports, which hurts their SUPPORT.  It's tough getting this to help though.  I added this unit in version 1.34.  I removed it in version 1.38 because the AI was producing hundreds of them.  My CHANGELOG says I reinstated it by replacing the regular Transport in version 1.39, but a .zip archive of alphax.txt shows I didn't actually do it.  No change was made.  I probably found it didn't work in playtesting, reverted it, and didn't update my CHANGELOG.
- Clean Sea Formers: now available with B1 Industrial Base.  Previously the unit was available with E3 Centauri Genetics, which was not along the Pirates' research path.  B3 Ecological Engineering was readily researched by the Pirates, which gives Fungicidal Tanks.  The Pirates were building exclusively Fungicidal Sea Formers and not any Clean Sea Formers.  This hurt their SUPPORT.  The Pirates also failed to design a normal Sea Formers unit at all.  That's a bug in the original game, and Clean Sea Formers was meant to be a failsafe.  However it's not much of a failsafe if the unit design is researched relatively late.  I tried putting it in B2 Industrial Economics, but the Pirates were still taking 100 years to research that.  Making it available as a Tier 1 tech was the only realistic answer.  A human player could use the unit designer to make other ship or terraformer units, so I decided to give ships to everyone at the beginning of the game.
- Cloaked Recon Rover: moved to E4 Bioadpative Resonance.  Due to changed prereqs.
- Cruiser Probe Firewall: now has 3-Pulse armor and available with C5 Silksteel Alloys.  Doctrine: Initiative is now a Tier 4 tech so this can come earlier, provided the armor is appropriate.
- Probe Wall, Foil Probe Wall - removed.  They no longer have C2 Planetary Networks as an ancestral tech.  Their Plasma armor also seems to displace the more effective 3-Pulse Firewall variants in the unit designs.
- Rover Formers - removed.  The AI never builds this unit.  If a human player values it, they're going to design it themselves very early, so there's just no point giving them a redundant design later.


The attachment limit per post is 5, and I eventually ran out of room at the top of the thread.  Consequently, this becomes the new home of version 1.51.  It was downloaded 468 times before I moved it here.

[fihttf]

Great work, it's been a lot of fun so far and it's nice to be challenged by the AI after 20 years of role-playing vanilla. Just a bit sad to only have found it after every lockdown around here ended.
To add something constructive besides general praise, one small thing I noticed is that the bump to University's research rating in 1.49 and after seems to have only made it to the datalinks, the actual value in the SE screen is still +2.

[bvanevery]

I'll be darned.  Good eyeball that!  Pity I just released 1.51.  Well, sometime later this month I'll do a 1.52.

Yeah we all kinda need another lockdown to self-actualize.  Just without the negative parts!

[broo]

Hi bvanevery

Thanks for all the work you do with this. Really appreciate it. You've made a great game so much better. I look forward to your patches and changes!

One issue I sometimes have is that I get to a certain point in the game (with your latest patch), say around turn 2273 it just crashes. I move a unit and then it just shuts the game down. Not sure what I need to do differently. I've got windows 10 pro, version 20h2, is it because I need to update to a newer version? Version 21H1? Would it be that simple and did I just answer my own question?

[bvanevery]

You're welcome!

Crashes won't have anything to do with my mod.  I don't do any binary modding, the .exe is simply whatever stock binary you've installed.  Presumably the standard GOG binary.

Some versions of Windows 10 have been more unstable for SMAC than others.  In particular, I remember 1803 having a lot of problems, but they went away in the 19xx series.  I am currently using Windows 10 Pro version 21H1.  It was installed on May 29th, 2021.  I don't believe I've played much of my own mod during that time, as in recent months I've spent far more time playtesting The Will To Power mod.  However in general, the stock SMAC binary is stable and doesn't cause problems.  I never play with any kind of patch.

In the past 2 years, the 1 bug that has occasionally derailed my game, and is the 1st thing I look for when trying to overcome it, is the "enemies appear inside cities they shouldn't" bug.  It has something to do with alliances suddenly being broken and AI units not getting moved out of cities they're supposed to be removed from.  When the AI reaches a turn where its units are in the wrong city, or maybe some other AI is in its city when it's not supposed to be, the game will crash on the AI's turn.

I've been able to trace this reliably using the Scenario Editor, by process of deleting entire factions, to narrow down which faction is causing the crash.  The workaround is to use the Scenario Editor to look at AI cities, find one that has units that are not supposed to be there, and then either delete those units or reassign them to the faction that owns the city.  The latter is often less invasive with the Scenario Editor because deletion typically deletes all units in the city, which usually isn't appropriate.

I have speculated whether Scient's Patch prevents this problem or not.  However it hasn't come up often enough for me to follow through on it.  Really the problem is reasonably rare.

If you have recurring problems, and don't want to advance your Windows version just yet, you should definitely try applying Scient's patch.  There is no incompatibility between Scient's patch and my mod.  It will work.  I just generally don't have a need for it, and don't have any idea what it is capable of fixing.  IMO someone has to test the stock binary, and that might as well be me.  I do have a sort of debug setup with Scient's patch, but I use it so rarely, that I really can't give any verdicts.  Other than it does work.

[broo]

Ok thank you for the response. I'm not using any patches either. Last question: are you moving away from this mod? And unto The Will To Power mod? Or your just playtesting the other one? Whats the difference? I thought yours was the one to use! 

[bvanevery]

are you moving away from this mod?

It's the wrong question.  My work on my mod is mature and stable.  There simply isn't much of anything to do on it anymore, as there's only so much you can change with *.txt modding.  If someone else notices some problem with it, then I can revisit whatever issue they find.  But I've been all over my mod in 3+ years, and I don't see anything else that needs doing.  There's an outstanding bug where the University doesn't really have the +3 RESEARCH they're supposed to, but in 2 months, that's the only thing that has come up.  So I haven't made another release.  I will probably kick that 1 trivial bugfix out the door any day now, in the name of "end of August".  Otherwise, I got nuthin'.

And unto The Will To Power mod?  Or your just playtesting the other one?

"Only" playtesting.  I playtest rather intensively, and probably drive Tim Nevolin / Alpha Centauri Bear up the friggin' wall, with my game reports and entries in the Issue Tracker.  His work is good, there's a solid core of something worth experiencing, but there are also areas that still need refinement.  Playtesting his work is like wrestling an elephant.  I've come up with some major conclusions as to what I think "is wrong", but it's not entirely easy to put right.

Whats the difference?
I thought yours was the one to use! 

I stand by my assessment that from a balanced game design standpoint, I have the best mod bar none.  Because I've put the most years of work into it, and have the most professional sensibilities about what a 4X game player "actually wants" to experience.  But that said, my work is inherently limited by its scope.  I will never do a binary mod.  It is way too much work.  For that kind of effort to be spent, I will make a brand new commercial 4X game and sell it.  Which will hopefully finally get me out of poverty.  That's my primary mission in life, to someday make it as an indie game developer.

Tim's mod is strong enough to be worth playing.  Something still needs to change about it though.  The overarching problem of his mod is SPAM.  So much AI spam.  I'm not sure what the solution is for that.

Tim has asked repeatedly for someone to come in and do some AI tuning for him.  He doesn't want to be stuck with the job, and he's totally willing to share credit. Predictably, nobody has taken him up on it.  The only reason I myself would do it, is if I finally figured out an easy fix, like 10 lines of code to fix a major major problem with how the game plays.  I haven't figured out whether that's possible or not.  I do a lot of playtesting and I've got some preliminary conclusions about how to reliably beat his current AI strategy.  Basically, you go vertical and focus on early production.  AI doesn't have a clue about that, spams, and ends up generating piles of horizontal helplessness.

There's no way in hell I'll break my back for WTP.  Any back breaking is going towards a commercial title that will make me money.  I've been shopping computers, trying to figure out what kind of minimum setup I'd need to write a DirectX 12 3D graphics engine.  We're still in a chip shortage and GPU prices pretty much suck.  I don't strictly need a new computer to make progress, but my current 13 year old laptop cannot do DX12.

[broo]

Thanks for response, have you thought of Kickstarter or go fund me or whatever people use now days to get some seed money?

[bvanevery]

For an original effort, no, not presently.  Neither money nor labor would help at this time.  Many years of open source projects have taught me that it's best to put oneself definitively in charge of a project.  No partners arguing about what to do.  That's why I don't have any partners for this mod.  Trying to put some team together, is a recipe for disaster.

If there's some point in the future where seeking funds is appropriate, I'll cross that bridge when I get there.

[Buster's Uncle]

Have you thought about doing a limited low-res phone game?  You know, partly just to get your name out in the world...

[bvanevery]

My name's already out in the world via r/4Xgaming.  That was the whole point of putting this level of effort into the mod.  They're the largest single audience of actual high quality 4X gamers I've been able to identify.  That isn't a forum for a specific title, that is.

I really hate phones because of their small screens.  I feel neutral about tablets, don't really have experience with them.  I'm primarily a laptop guy.

I don't actually find the art asset aspect intimidating.  I used to write 3D graphics device drivers for OpenGL workstations.  That never translated into digital 3D art, but I certainly know enough about the underpinnings of rendering.  The main thing that holds me up is the constructive aspect of the art, as I can't stand 3D modeling and animation programs.  They're just these huge bags of junk that only really work for people in giant teams being paid lotsa money to only mess with that 1 program.  Not for me.

Anyways one of the major problems I am contemplating nowadays, is "how will I do the 3D art assets".  I'm not likely to do it the way the game industry typically does it.  I think more like a programmer.  And also like a woodworker.  I make real physical 3D things all the time nowadays.  And I ask myself, why can't 3D digital art assets, be simpler and more tangible like that?

[esch1lus]

Good job, your mod is awesome
A question: are you going to put a toggle on your alpha.txt? It could be nice to change variables from one game to another.
Or maybe I can revert an element to vanilla by just removing the code line in alpha.txt?

[bvanevery]

You're welcome!

When you say "a toggle", are you asking for a version of my Alien Crossfire tech tree to be imported into the original Alpha Centauri game?  It would have to be different because some of the techs don't exist in the original game.  Things like R-Lasers, 3-Res and 3-Pulse armor.   There would be fewer techs in the tree, which would force some constriction and reshuffling of the tree at some points, but it may be possible.  Previously I would have declined to do so, as including the original game would double the amount of testing work I'd need to do.  But the mod is much more stable now, so it may be in the realm of the feasible.

I'm going to decline to do it for my next mod release though.  I've been just shy of a release for like, 2 months now, just insisting on doing some additional playtesting before finally kicking it out the door.  I think I got the Hypnotic Trance adjustments sufficiently ok, but I need to see if the AI picks up on my air force suggestions or not.  I'm in the middle of this game that tests that, but real life drama has stalled me out.  Just haven't been able to get the game done.  Maybe I'll finally get a breather today and finish it.

What is it you are hoping to gain by playing with the original game only?  Do you hate the few techs introduced, like R-Lasers?  Do you hate the new factions?  You could just not play with them.  Do you hate the new Secret Projects like the Planetary Energy Grid?  Basically, what's the beef?

Or have I completely misunderstood you, and you're asking how to play the unmodded Alien Crossfire and my modded Alien Crossfire at the same time?  That's easy: per the directions on my mod's home page and readme_mod.txt, just install another copy of the game in a different directory.  You don't need any toggle, you just pick which installation of the game you want to play with.  The game is so old that the installation doesn't take up all that much space by modern standards.  I'm seeing less than 600MB, not that big a deal.