An explanation for the AI rarely running Green

[bvanevery]

Basically I said your Planned is your problem.  You may have missed my point.

My Deirdre chooses Green.  No problem seen in my mod lately.

Think my Cha Dawn is also choosing Green lately, but haven't paid great attention, because their primary compulsion is Extremist (my Fundamentalist).  Increasing PLANET rating is merely a secondary compulsion for them.  "Nice to have".

Caretakers are compulsively Planned / Socialist.  The issue isn't relevant.

Morganites are compulsively Free Market / Capitalist.  The issue isn't relevant.

I have anecdotally seen other factions take Green on many occasions in my mod.  They often combine it with Police State.

I think the thesis that "you can't make stock AI pick Green" is wrong.  I did it.  The rest of the SE table had to bend to make it happen.  Lot of hand tuning to get real world results.

You might have other rows in the SE table, that are so beneficial, precipitating 1 clearly better choice, that this choice then affects what Economics choice is made to complement it.  Once upon a time, I felt my Fundamentalist and Planned choices were dominating in that way.  I adjusted them until they were no longer dominant to the AI.  For Fundamentalist, had to ditch MORALE, because AI loves it too much.  For Planned, had to ditch GROWTH.  Only +1 GROWTH given now.  GROWTH is seriously on a diet in my mod.

Another thing I've done, is a fair number of my factions don't have secondary compulsions.  I think sometimes this makes the AI less constrained.  I've noticed the AI will ignore secondary compulsions just fine in a number of cases though.  I'm supposing this ends up being an area of influence, not guarantee.

Delaying dual use is not an option in my mod.  I think I've made it come somewhat earlier.  I mainly want Deep Radar available to Cruisers.  I think the play mechanic of having to futz with non-Radar Cruisers is dumb.  I used to have other intended uses, particularly with various Police predefined units, but those went by the wayside in favor of single ability predefined units.  Nowadays, the relationships between my techs are pretty mature, and things are "where they should be".  It's typically a lot of work to reshuffle a tech now.

[Nexii]

After running more trial games, I found something. All AIs will consistently pick Green when the other choices have zero benefit or penalty. Except those that have FM/Planned agenda, they'll pick that even if there's no benefit. Which means the logical break isn't in not seeing that Green is better than Simple Economics. I think what's going on is that for Green agenda factions, if Free Market or Planned are strongly preferred, they stick in Simple rather than noticing that Green is the next best thing. Maybe Bearu can find something... I believe this is the bug though.

I think you got around it because at a breakpoint, a nerfed down Planned (or FM) wouldn't be considered 'strongly' better than Green. It's probably some amount of differential, since on the flip side Morgan was taking Free Market (with no benefit/penalty) over Simple and Green even when Green gave +2 PLANET, +2 EFFIC.

Seems that putting Planned to -2 ECONOMY hits that breakpoint. Gaia and Cult consistently pick Green from Simple now, with it giving just +2 PLANET, +2 EFFIC.

[bvanevery]

In the stock binary, an AI faction cannot pick something other than either their primary compulsion or the default / no choice option.  So Morgan for instance will pick Simple economy or Free Market, nothing else.  If the SE table is weighted such that he thinks Free Market is unattractive and instead takes Simple, then IMO it's a failure of the SE table design.

In some other binary modded code, it depends on what someone did to all that AI selection logic.

If an AI faction doesn't have a primary compulsion in a category, then it can pick anything that isn't an aversion.  It may take secondary compulsion hints into consideration, i.e. increase PROBE, but my experience is those hints will guarantee nothing.  Which is why I'm calling them hints.

To control what the AI chooses in the real world, I have made my SE choices "non-juicy", both for AIs and for humans.  They give mild benefits, and you'll need contributions from several categories to get significant benefits.  I call this a "mix and match" system.

In the specific case of Fundamentalist / Extremist, I specifically made the choice nearly useless to repellent.  I do not want the AIs to choose -2 RESEARCH.

To concretize exactly what I mean, about "non-juiciness" and limited dynamic range, here's a reminder if it's needed:

Details social engineering choices in version 1.42

social engineering choices in version 1.42

Note that this doesn't match my forum icon anymore.     At one time I was a bit heavy handed on the ECONOMY penalties.

Note in particular the paucity of benefits in the Politics and Economics categories.  This is partly because these choices are easily obtained in Tier 2 of my tech tree, without any Secret Projects blocking their attainment.  This mechanic is quite deliberate.  I don't want anyone blowing the lid off the dynamic range in the early part of the game, and I want it to be easy to make some faction customizations at the beginning.

Extremist is deliberately not worth having, unless you are the Cult of Planet.  The play mechanic is between Democratic and Police State.  A fair number of factions have compulsions or aversions to these.

[Nexii]

To rephrase, using Morgan as an example. If Green in your set gave very powerful bonuses, then Morgan wouldn't pick Free Market at all. He would stay in Simple Economics even if Free Market was better than Simple. That's the bug. It only affects factions with an agenda when deciding to pick their agenda or not.

[bvanevery]

I can't confirm or deny that, because all I ever did was remove things the AI liked, until the AI obeyed me.  The clear attractants were MORALE and GROWTH.  It may be that I never specifically solved a problem with the Morganites, because I had a problem with all factions.  It's pretty obvious when everyone's picking Planned / Socialist, that the AI is obsessed about GROWTH.  Reduce to +1 GROWTH, they don't get so excited anymore.

[Bearu]

After running more trial games, I found something. All AIs will consistently pick Green when the other choices have zero benefit or penalty. Except those that have FM/Planned agenda, they'll pick that even if there's no benefit. Which means the logical break isn't in not seeing that Green is better than Simple Economics. I think what's going on is that for Green agenda factions, if Free Market or Planned are strongly preferred, they stick in Simple rather than noticing that Green is the next best thing. Maybe Bearu can find something... I believe this is the bug though.

I think you got around it because at a breakpoint, a nerfed down Planned (or FM) wouldn't be considered 'strongly' better than Green. It's probably some amount of differential, since on the flip side Morgan was taking Free Market (with no benefit/penalty) over Simple and Green even when Green gave +2 PLANET, +2 EFFIC.

Seems that putting Planned to -2 ECONOMY hits that breakpoint. Gaia and Cult consistently pick Green from Simple now, with it giving just +2 PLANET, +2 EFFIC.

I cannot answer the question definitely, but I can provide a few pointers. A few different factors connect in the consideration of the AI's selection of Green:
1. The AI receives a benefit in points for the preferred social model equal to the number of bases the faction controls. This means the AI receives a bonus for the preferred model above other models calculated on the same line.
2. The function subtracts points from the calculations for SUPPORT, EFFICIENCY, and PLANET. The rest of the AI Social effects add values. I cannot say exactly what this means in the greater context of the function.
3. The function adds the TALENT output, then subtracts the PLANET total, and finally adds RESEARCH output before moving the final product back into the local register. This means the function combines the sums of TALENT/POLICE, PLANET, and RESEARCH into a single combined value for the final sum.
I suspect the subtraction of PLANET and EFFIC from the positive values of the total point sum after the faction modifier for the preferred social model may have something to do with the AI's weird switch between the Green and Simple.

[Nexii]

It's a very strange bug. I couldn't replicate it on Morgan with Free Market or Miriam with Fundamentalist. Have to test more. It seems to be very specific to agenda'd factions when deciding whether to pick PLANET and EFFIC bonuses in their agenda. Non-agenda'd factions clearly like Green when the other options are not as beneficial, so it's not zeroing out in the general case.