WtP SP costs

[dino]

SPs should be a bit overpowered, this is the charm and a reward for beelining certain tech category, so I don't think it's a great idea to "balance" them like we are trying with regular stuff.
The problem araises only when the leading faction gotta catch them all, if they are are more distributed it just gives each faction some unique flavor.

So my gamist idea ( and SP are the most gamist thing in SMAC already ) is too keep the base cost of SPs more moderate but increase it by 25% for each SP a faction did build themselves.
I've just stopped to bother with even considering feasibility of actually implementing these ideas I'm throwing, it's not for me to judge ;)

[lolada]

Sounds like you're too much of a spamming horizontal Infinite City Sprawl player.  The Bureaucracy penalty is there to punish people like you.

Hm i should probably try to change the style a bit - i locked myself into this playstyle trying to outspam thinker AI i think. B-drones are a pain ^^ expansion in waves is certainly an option. I blame Democracy - once you want to grow it removes free minerals from new bases so i want to finish expansion before switching. Democracy is not even that good in WTP with 1 growth, i was more in fundamentalism for industry bonus and war troubles.

False.  The enablers you're looking for are 1) a minerals special on Rocky terrain, 2) a Nutrient special combined with forests, 3) cashing in Artifacts to speed the SP along, and 4) spending money gained from popping supply pods out in the hinterland.  That said, my early SPs cost 300, not 800.  A 500 mineral SP is somewhat challenging to get done in my midgame.

You are right i wasn't precise with that statement. 4-5 pop is enough with enablers, so nutrient and mine resource, one can get near 15 minerals and thats sufficient to get early SP. Its usually not hard to get 1 in will to power - i just picked up first SP in game with Morgan - and it was new Command Nexus at 400 min - i had 15 production with 4 pop. Its actually easier to bump up early production in WTP due to unlocked resource yields - i could use three 0-4-0 mines and go into eco-damage because i had 4 nutr and 5 nutrient tiles. For drones - two police units and recreation commons were enough (i switched to police state at start, its -1eff, -1 planet it doesnt hurt much). Good Nexus is cheap because i again ran into Drones and it took <10 turns until we were in war.. again.
About pods and artifacts - i am playing without them - maybe i should consider turning them back in. Vanilla AI was awful so i considered it only to players advantage - its big source of money/artifacts for the player.. and i remember often getting production boosts.

SPs should be a bit overpowered, this is the charm and a reward for beelining certain tech category, so I don't think it's a great idea to "balance" them like we are trying with regular stuff.
The problem araises only when the leading faction gotta catch them all, if they are are more distributed it just gives each faction some unique flavor.

So my gamist idea ( and SP are the most gamist thing in SMAC already ) is too keep the base cost of SPs more moderate but increase it by 25% for each SP a faction did build themselves.
I've just stopped to bother with even considering feasibility of actually implementing these ideas I'm throwing, it's not for me to judge

These are good points. Its good to have them strong makes the game interesting - AC is about those great tech/human advances that radically change landscape. Making projects cheaper even if they are strong lets AI gets them - thats then strong AI - its attractive proposition to me. Broken one can be nerfed or moved to tech 10+. I was also thinking about making each consecutive SP more expensive slightly - not really 25% that seems a lot. But 10-15% would raise costs significantly after faction gets 4-5.
@tnevolin Is that possible? And is it dumb idea? ^^

Reduced SP cost a little. Let me know if not enough.
Released new version where AI hurry projects.

Well looking forward to try it - some playtesting will be helpful. I have my doubts, costs are still over 1000 but anything near 1000 is in realm of possibility for AI so its improved. Depends on how well AI will rush - i'll try to playtest some quicker games and to observe if AI rushes projects now.

Did you change crawler effectiveness? And did you teach AI to rush both with crawlers and energy? Or just energy and we presume AI rush already with crawlers?

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

SPs should be a bit overpowered, this is the charm and a reward for beelining certain tech category, so I don't think it's a great idea to "balance" them like we are trying with regular stuff.
The problem araises only when the leading faction gotta catch them all, if they are are more distributed it just gives each faction some unique flavor.

So my gamist idea ( and SP are the most gamist thing in SMAC already ) is too keep the base cost of SPs more moderate but increase it by 25% for each SP a faction did build themselves.
I've just stopped to bother with even considering feasibility of actually implementing these ideas I'm throwing, it's not for me to judge

They are still OP in WtP just slightly less than in vanilla. Essentially, their cost is nothing comparing to their benefit on normal map. I never tried to "balance" them. Just to make sure neither human nor AI can build them in less than 10 turns. Like I I used to in vanilla to build first four projects with artifacts only. That is too abusive.

You just argued against "balancing" them and proposed same exactly thing in your second paragraph trying to distribute them evenly across factions.
🤣
I don't know yet. It could be interesting.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Reduced SP cost a little. Let me know if not enough.
Released new version where AI hurry projects.

Well looking forward to try it - some playtesting will be helpful. I have my doubts, costs are still over 1000 but anything near 1000 is in realm of possibility for AI so its improved. Depends on how well AI will rush - i'll try to playtest some quicker games and to observe if AI rushes projects now.

Did you change crawler effectiveness? And did you teach AI to rush both with crawlers and energy? Or just energy and we presume AI rush already with crawlers?

Only too OP ones are over 1500. However, there are quite a bunch of OP ones.
🙁
Anyway, let me know if it still too much even with AI hurrying them. I try to be conservative. There are so many tangled features in this game.

Didn't do anything with crawlers yet. It is more difficult change. I take it AI needs 2000 cash (30% less on Transcend) to buy out a project outright. This should happen quite often in midgame. So maybe even crawler help won't save you.

[lolada]

Ok time to playtest. I argue for and against   

If Ai gets too good new meta will be to let them build and take it by force.. there's that. Extreme version of that is ugly lets hope we don't get there - reminds me of some civilization games/version where its absolutely not good idea to build wonders - but to conquer them. Some you couldn't even hope to build before AI.

I think/hope these changes could be ok..  This will likely affect only mid to lategame where AI is weak and player takes over. Now if player can (at least sometimes) insta build rush and energy buy projects - its fair that AI do that sometimes.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Ok time to playtest. I argue for and against   

If Ai gets too good new meta will be to let them build and take it by force.. there's that. Extreme version of that is ugly lets hope we don't get there - reminds me of some civilization games/version where its absolutely not good idea to build wonders - but to conquer them. Some you couldn't even hope to build before AI.

I think/hope these changes could be ok..  This will likely affect only mid to lategame where AI is weak and player takes over. Now if player can (at least sometimes) insta build rush and energy buy projects - its fair that AI do that sometimes.

I thought I made conquering hard in WtP. Are you still able to cut through AI defense easily on Transcend?

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

You know what, dino. Why am I defending this SP cost at all? It's not like it is some cornerstone of my mod. It is not something difficult to change either. This is all in txt configuration.

Just let me know what you want them to be and we be done with it. Even easier you can change them yourself in alphax.txt until you are satisfied and then send it over for me to merge into my release.

[lolada]

I'd stop with changes for now - its all theory until we test it - so lets see how rushing works and new prices and there are other changes as well. Then tweak further this if needs be.

I thought I made conquering hard in WtP. Are you still able to cut through AI defense easily on Transcend?

Its hard ^^ and fun its good. No its not easy to cut through. Late midgame/lategame becomes easy - tedious because player gets those huge SPs.
Lets hope with these changes lategame is challenging as early - mid.

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Late midgame/lategame becomes easy.

Any thoughts as why it becomes easy? Did you just economically outgrow them or they cannot withstand your tactics?

[Nexii]

I think general 4x AI does better with small empires. Once you get larger a human gets much stronger and can overcome the production deficits. It doesn't see the big picture the way a human can.

I once requested a sort of 'scaling up' AI bonus as the game went on from Yitzi. But I guess it would have been very difficult to implement. The idea was to make the bonuses mild at the start, so factions like Spartans don't just crush you right away. But scaling up so the game doesn't become trivial by the midway point

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

I think general 4x AI does better with small empires. Once you get larger a human gets much stronger and can overcome the production deficits. It doesn't see the big picture the way a human can.

I once requested a sort of 'scaling up' AI bonus as the game went on from Yitzi. But I guess it would have been very difficult to implement. The idea was to make the bonuses mild at the start, so factions like Spartans don't just crush you right away. But scaling up so the game doesn't become trivial by the midway point

I think SMACX already have this scaling up bonus on the high difficulty level. AI has 30% faster growth and production. Meaning when human doubles their economy, AI triples it. And this keep happening every next period over and over again, exponentially!
You will perceive it if you play as dumb as AI. The fact that you don't means that exploit you use are an order of magnitude more effective than sheer exponential growth.

Besides these huge bonuses AI should be taught to use them, actually. Otherwise, it may just waste them at times.

[Nexii]

No I mean as the game progresses, by turn or techs. Not by difficulty level

[dino]

You know what, dino. Why am I defending this SP cost at all? It's not like it is some cornerstone of my mod. It is not something difficult to change either. This is all in txt configuration.

Just let me know what you want them to be and we be done with it. Even easier you can change them yourself in alphax.txt until you are satisfied and then send it over for me to merge into my release.

It's fine, I was under impression that discussion is going toward increasing their costs even further.
It's your mod, don't design it completely by cometee. I'm unlikely to take it as it is anyway.
( but will try it again at some point for sure and I'm forever grateful for the changes to the combat you've made).

[lolada]

Any thoughts as why it becomes easy? Did you just economically outgrow them or they cannot withstand your tactics?

Outgrow them certainly - it takes time for player to overcome AI advantage - and it depends which faction you play, some are way easier than others. Once player achieve industrial parity - with same number of units human wins.. if you start to have more units than its overrun and going easy. So its snowball in that way and thats kind of expected and normal. Someone always snowballs - and if player is losing then one usually restarts the game ^^.
Its also tactics - because all those abilities give player edge. For example amphibious or drop make game easier - AI can't use it as well as player. Another one is mag-tubes.. i think AI should build magtubes even if player can use them, its lesser evil. Thinker disabled magtubes - i think thats mistake .. at least in WTP settings

Remind me of what Sid Meier talked in that GDC talk.. they envisioned game where civilization rises and falls (as in history) and you are supposed to rise again. And what happened is that noone would play it because players quit or reload -_-. Lel.

Anyway even when outgrowing in WTP it still takes time to conquer AI - you did great setup with combat - it really takes lots of time and effort to conquer the world. I've finished playing AAR -  just will need time to write it down so my struggles to bring down AI will be in pictures there^^. One thing that turns struggle to easy in the end is op superprojects - and i found i could get them all because they are expensive. If they were cheap AI would actually build them more often because i can't get tech in time - thats the logic behind my comments about price. Now with rushing that might change - and lategame will be harder. Cool.

[Nexii]

Yea for rise and fall you'd have to have more catchup mechanisms than ended up being in the Civ/SMAC series. That was more in line with how the Civilization board game was though. The larger your empire, the harder it got to keep cities up. There was a cap on the number of cities you could have. And as you got ahead other players would become a bit more wary to trade with you. It made for a very different game than one of exponential growth. Where SMAC feels like a sprint, Civillzation board game felt like a marathon.

There's a bit of that in SMAC, the leader tends to have a harder time getting treaties/pacts. And EFFIC hits you a bit as you grow. But then they put in the governor which is a huge benefit to a leading faction. EFFIC probably should have also applied to minerals (waste) like in Civ2. And specialists.