SMACX Thinker Mod

[PvtHudson]

> Gaians got Weather Paradigm and spiked no less than half of Monsoon Jungle tiles with condensers. I thought adjacent condensers are forbidden, not sure about that? This led to max size bases where half pop are doctors. When I took one of these, it had 2-digit eco-damage despite meager minerals.

Well, one could check this example of good old ICS. Probably the former code should be tweaked to prefer more forests on jungle tiles. Happiness management is a continuing problem because of various reasons. At this point I'm considering making some kind of NODRONE ability an optional boost.

> All AIs do heavy foresting, even Antimind, who previously relied mostly on fungus. The algorithm doesn't consider faction's fungus production?

Currently it tries to do its best to get rid of fungus. It would need some kind of a way to decide when using fungus is beneficial by considering the current techs and faction bonuses. This could be useful to implement but usually it's only relevant in the end game. What kind of stats does this Antimind faction have?

The Antimind is a classic NetworkNode faction:
TECH, Ecology, SOCIAL, ++++PLANET, SOCIAL, ---INDUSTRY, SOCIAL, --GROWTH, FUNGNUTRIENT, 2, FUNGENERGY, 2, IMMUNITY, PLANET, FREEABIL, 18, TERRAFORM, 0, MINDCONTROL, 0, FANATIC, 0, WORMPOLICE, 0, PSI, 50, POPULATION, -2, TECHSHARE, 3, ALIEN, 0
Economics, Green, PLANET,
Economics, Free Market, nil,

Currently they benefit from crawlers on forests, but in other regards forests are detrimental to them: all bases are size 3-5, while normally they should be all 8-9 at this stage, and almost no captured natives, that should constitute backbone of their army at this stage (I play with abundant native life on). With such INDUSTRY, they can't afford Tree Farms and Hybrid Forests. In kyrub's they work as energy-rich worm rusher with minimal terraforming and almost no facilities, providing sharp gameplay difference. Ideally they should buy most things, using farm/solar rolling tiles before Industrial Automation for all mineral needs and crawler on rocky tiles after that.

[Induktio]

The Antimind is a classic NetworkNode faction:
TECH, Ecology, SOCIAL, ++++PLANET, SOCIAL, ---INDUSTRY, SOCIAL, --GROWTH, FUNGNUTRIENT, 2, FUNGENERGY, 2, IMMUNITY, PLANET, FREEABIL, 18, TERRAFORM, 0, MINDCONTROL, 0, FANATIC, 0, WORMPOLICE, 0, PSI, 50, POPULATION, -2, TECHSHARE, 3, ALIEN, 0
Economics, Green, PLANET,
Economics, Free Market, nil,

Well, that is certainly an unusual faction. In nearly all possible ways, it plays different from the normal human factions for which this AI is tuned. Getting it to play this faction as well would require pretty extensive changes to the code. Normally fungus is relevant maybe for a couple of turns before the game ends, but with those massive bonuses, it could pretty much skip most terraforming. It would still need the minerals from somewhere though.

Do you know what kind of units the AI normally uses to capture natives? It appears you're saying the AI might normally have some different units that are more often used to capture/fight the native life. And which version of kyrub's patches are you referring to here?

[PvtHudson]

Well, that is certainly an unusual faction. In nearly all possible ways, it plays different from the normal human factions for which this AI is tuned. Getting it to play this faction as well would require pretty extensive changes to the code.

Well, I'll just place them past factions_enabled limit then.

Do you know what kind of units the AI normally uses to capture natives? It appears you're saying the AI might normally have some different units that are more often used to capture/fight the native life.

Unfortunately, most of this activity takes place before any AI observation sans Scenario Editor could be established. But I believe first worms are captured by basic scouts and sentinels on exploration duty, and then those first worms trigger something like chain reaction, capturing more while driving towards bases or exploring. Of course, if you employ natives in a war against AI, it will soon field empath scout rovers and trance scouts, but I guess that wasn't the point of your question?

And which version of kyrub's patches are you referring to here?

http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?action=downloads;sa=view;down=108
I checked SP movies from the save - without Thinker Mod they're played.

[T-hawk]

Adjacent condensors are not forbidden (and are a good idea since they'll always make both squares rainy.)  The only things forbidden adjacent are boreholes and drill-to-aquifer.

[Induktio]

But I believe first worms are captured by basic scouts and sentinels on exploration duty, and then those first worms trigger something like chain reaction, capturing more while driving towards bases or exploring. Of course, if you employ natives in a war against AI, it will soon field empath scout rovers and trance scouts, but I guess that wasn't the point of your question?

I was mostly asking what kind of units the AI normally uses to fight the native life. It might have something to do with the default unit plans or abilities. The AI might need some tweaking to be more aggressive in hunting down the worms.

I checked SP movies from the save - without Thinker Mod they're played.

Yeah, this issue has been verified now. The cause is still a total mystery. I don't remember any part of the code interacting directly with the movie playback stuff. Sometimes it's a little bit frustrating to develop mods by patching binaries without the source code because of these kind of unexpected interactions with the other parts of the game logic.

Other new option is "load_expansion" which can be disabled to turn off any expansion related features. Note that the tech tree will not adjust the dependencies without modding, so any techs or items depending on expansion-only techs will be unavailable, including some victory conditions.

This might need some clarification is somebody wants to create a vanilla game mod. The settings are still loaded from alphax.txt but the important thing here is that alpha.txt cannot be copied in its place, because many of the id numbers and item types in alphax.txt tables are hard coded. The game will crash if any of the tables has too few items when it's loading the data. To recreate the whole SMAC environment, one would have to keep the various expansion items in alphax.txt and set their requirements to "Disable" or similar. Load_expansion=0 will still disable many of the hard coded expansion-related stuff. It might even make sense to hide this option from thinker.ini because it's not relevant without a modded alphax.txt.

[dino]

I use modified txt files for the ai, but for each faction have the same few buffs.
Maybe instead of providing full support for separate ai factions definitions with all attributes and syntax, better implement few chosen optional buffs for all of them.
My first choices would be: ++GROWTH : so they can popboom, NODRONE : at least until ai psych management is improved,
Second choices would be: INDUSTRY,  INTEREST, TERRAFORM : some turn advantage, without changing drastically how the game plays out, or player perception when interacting with them.

As for smac mod, just add a line of description to thinker.ini variable about modified alphax.txt with SMAC tech tree and expansion features disabled being required and put it at the end of file.
Probably just replacing tech definitions with SMAC ones, while keeping unused ones in the file is enough, changing anything to disabled won't hurt, but probably is not required.

[DrazharLn]

I helped write a smac in smax mod that works pretty well a little while ago. The alphax, help, etc work has already been done if anyone wants to use it here.

For that mod we used features Yitzi's provided for removing some pods and stuff, iirc. You may have replicated that already.

[Induktio]

> I helped write a smac in smax mod that works pretty well a little while ago. The alphax, help, etc work has already been done if anyone wants to use it here.

Any download links?

> For that mod we used features Yitzi's provided for removing some pods and stuff, iirc. You may have replicated that already.

It's pretty hard to figure what was done there without any source code level documentation. Setting the smacx_enable flag in the engine is the only thing load_expansion config variable does. Reading some of the patch docs one gets the impression that load_expansion=0 disables even more of the expansion content than Yitzi's patch.

If you have already created new alphax, help, etc files it is possible to set the engine to read the modified content from different filenames, e.g. alpham.txt when expansion is disabled, so that users don't have to overwrite any files if they want to install that mod. I would actually prefer to do it that way.

Btw, the cause for the SP movies not playing has been somewhat narrowed down. If Thinker starts just with the normal GOG binary, movies play as usual. With Scient patch v2.0, movies are not shown even if they are enabled in the settings. I'm not sure what's going on there or if this is some kind of an undocumented feature of the patch.

[PvtHudson]

Reporting serious bug in Thinker-dev-20181013. Mimi, being in pact with me, off-loaded 2 colony pods on my soil and settled without any harm to the pact. Autosaves before and after event are attached. I play as Satori custom faction from http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?action=downloads;sa=view;down=264.

[DrazharLn]

> Any download links

http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=17869.0

On page 2 Yitzi briefly talks about what they did on the exe side.

[Induktio]

New version 20181023 is now available from downloads. Changes include:

- Fixed base creation bug on other factions territory.
- Improved spawn placement. Now it guarantees factions wont spawn on tiny islands.
- When expansion is disabled, modified txt files are now read from "ac_mod" folder (see thinker.ini).

> http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=17869.0

It must be said here this mod is not instantly compatible with Thinker because Yitzi's patch changed the alphax.txt file format. Those additions are not supported by this mod in any way. Otherwise smac-in-smacx should probably work with this mod after some changes.

If anyone has ideas how to get the SP movies working again, could be also useful to know.

[PvtHudson]

More test results. Large random map, random opponents, transcend difficulty. Miriam flawlessly crusaded Caretakers (who were being eaten by Antimind), then Antimind proper. Yang meanwhile annihilated University. He undoubtedly would conquered me if got Doc:Flex earlier. Pirates, as in previous test, were very passive and almost not settled - perhaps, some of my alphax.txt edits hinder them (but then again, in kyrub's they were always widespread and strong with the same settings). I cornered market for less than 10k EC just before Fusion Power. Probably, economic victory using Satori with their commerce bonus should be considered cheating.
Question to all: are AIs always so indifferent to player's attempt at economic victory? I didn't tried it in ages, so don't remember. Not a single hostile action in those 20 turns, despite being obstinate to seething.
Also noticed change in game behavior, could be bug: in kyrub's Unity pods inside base radius were skewed toward favorable pops - almost never worms, mostly monolith/resource bonus, oftentimes together with unit/tech/comm frequency. Now all 3 pods near HQ produced worms.

[DrazharLn]

I'm on a cycle tour atm, but I can have a look at the videos next week if you haven't sorted it by then.

I had quite a root around in that code a while ago.

[dino]

I'd consider both economy and transcend, but especially economy cheating and have these disabled in my games.
I think it's impossible to code AI to successfully counter them, I'm not even sure a human player can successfully counter these, short of initiating nuclear holocaust.

If you'll tell me that conquering the world is tedious grind, than don't do it ?
I quit the game and consider it won once I know, I can't be stopped.
I don't need a score on a victory screen to confirm that.

[PvtHudson]

I think it's impossible to code AI to successfully counter them, I'm not even sure a human player can successfully counter these, short of initiating nuclear holocaust.

This! One surgical planet buster at enemy HQ is all you need. Even before Orbital Spaceflight AIs could at least try to stop the offender with force. Particularly in that game I wrote last comment about, Mimi had resources of 3 factions at her disposal, and Yang those of 2. If they stopped their squabble and turned attention on greedy merchants sitting in 7 bases on medium island, in 20 turns all will be over for me.