Changes to the Social Engineering models

[Nexii]

Yea I get that. In reality Gaians play out best as a very expansionist faction, to make use of their EFFIC. And we talked about how EFFIC gets conflated. SUPPORT in Civ2 terms was 'waste' as in wasting less resources, so I don't see it as a huge stretch either for Green.

Ideally PLANET would have been more tied to the productivity of Forests. They got halfway there with Fungus. Boosting up Fungus to be on par with other terrain definitely gives more of an 'anti-development' feel. That was something I tried out (more for Cult than Gaia) and it was interesting. But it also means that both FM and Planned have to have PLANET penalties (or you'll just go Planned as 0 PLANET allows for full fungus productivity).

Noted Gaia and other factions will pick Green with a less harsh penalty like POLICE. It's sort of fitting as many modern Green movements are somewhat anarchist

[bvanevery]

Hmm, ultimately I split up anti-POLICE between Democratic -1, Knowledge -2, and Eudaimonic -2.  It's worked out ok. 

I think I prefer the game's original possibility of a Green Police State.  Very Deirdre.  I've always seen Chairman Yang as her lover.  My head canon is Cha Dawn is their [progeny of unmarried parents] love child.

[Nexii]

Went back to classic SEs except:
- Balancing the amount of +/- given
- Replacing -EFFIC with -ECONOMY (the stock AI underestimates how crushing sub-0 EFFIC is)

Here's my points scoring scheme for balancing:
+2 ECON = 5
GROWTH & INDUSTRY = 2 per +/-
+3 PROBE = 2  (+2 probe is pretty useless, mind control immunity is solid though)
-2 PROBE/POLICE = -1
All others = 1 per +/-

So the first three tiers always give 2 points net benefit. Wealth is a little more extreme but with PS and Planned both giving negative ECONOMY, INDUSTRY becomes its primary benefit (with a more crushing -3 MORALE).

Didn't do much with the future SEs other than boost Thought Control to +3 PROBE.

Politics, Economics, Values, Future Society
Frontier,        None,
Police State,    DocLoy,  ++POLICE,   ++SUPPORT,  --ECONOMY
Democratic,      EthCalc, ++GROWTH,   +EFFIC,     ---SUPPORT
Fundamentalist,  Brain,   +++PROBE,   ++MORALE,   --RESEARCH
Simple,          None,
Free Market,     IndEcon, ++ECONOMY,  --PLANET,   --POLICE
Planned,         PlaNets, ++GROWTH,   +INDUSTRY,  ---ECONOMY
Green,           CentEmp, ++PLANET,   ++EFFIC,    -GROWTH   
Survival,        None,
Power,           MilAlg,  ++MORALE,   ++SUPPORT,  -INDUSTRY 
Knowledge,       Cyber,   ++RESEARCH, +EFFIC,     --PROBE
Wealth,          IndAuto, +ECONOMY,   ++INDUSTRY, ---MORALE
None,            None,
Cybernetic,      DigSent, ++EFFIC,    ++PLANET,   ++RESEARCH, ---POLICE
Eudaimonic,      Eudaim,  ++ECONOMY,  ++INDUSTRY, ++GROWTH,   --MORALE
Thought Control, WillPow, ++POLICE,   +++PROBE,   ++MORALE,   ---SUPPORT

Tried a game with Yang and got bogged down in a long war with University. Kind of stalemated and Gaia/Morgan got very far ahead in tech. Granted the factions are customized and Gaia/Morgan might just be flat out better. Morgan has crazy trade economy and Gaia has crazy fungus economy. If I'd warred better (using more mixed forces) might have had a shot by tech stealing Morgan while going for Gaia, but it wouldn't have been easy.

Thought I could abuse ICS with PS+Planned but it was rather slow. Felt like my economy picked up once I got non-lethal methods and my cities could get bigger. Basically I should have rolled over University and PKs sooner and got a massive sea probe army.

[bvanevery]

Giving ++MORALE with Fundamentalist allows the Spartans to have Elite troops in the early game.  I don't recommend that.

[Nexii]

Yea I went all the way back to square one lately, unmodded Vanilla.

It's kind of a higher level flaw, that offense massively outperforms defense. So the +1 move on Elite is an auto-win. The defensive unit abilities that were supposed to equalize offense and defense are just too expensive. Cities don't provide meaningful defense, etc.

Before I get to modding again, I need to step back and think about 'what flaws' are to be fixed. The main thing I didn't like about the default SE table was that there was too much interdependence between tiers. Negative EFFIC was not viable to run, so Police State for example could only be run with Green (excluding Yang here). Planned could only be run with Democracy. So the majority of SE combinations, while interesting, just weren't viable at all. Then you also had some choices which were just weak like Fundamentalism. Arguably Power too. Free Market is kind of borderline on Transcend, the loss of drone control is significant.

[bvanevery]

The error of the original SE table design is it subscribed heavily to that Sid Meier game design motto of "double it!"  Really exaggerated swinging effects.  Big changes in GROWTH or EFFIC or PLANET.  For a long time in my development, I deliberately toned all that down into a "gradualist" system, where bonuses and penalties were severely put on a diet.  The goal was to make it into more of a mix and match system, where different combos were actually viable.

Overall I think I achieved that, and maybe still do.  However along the way, I had to contend with some serious hardwired AI defects and work around those.  The AI simply wouldn't make certain choices if it didn't like the penalties.  So my mixing system, ended up becoming more of a "you gotta get up the tech tree" system in some cases.  Most recently, for Green, which in my mod had to have no downsides to work around the bug.

Weapons and armor, offense vs. defense, I haven't had a problem with conventional armaments for a long time.  I squashed those problems rather a long time ago.  It did take many iterations to arrive at an appropriate squashing, but eventually I did get there.

The big flaw that I only just addressed in my latest greatest release, was the status of the mindworm as the One True Superweapon.  Now, you just can't have them so easily.  You have to go capture 'em, and if you don't start the game as a PLANET friendly faction, it's gonna take some time for you to get Green.  Some factions generally won't get Green anytime soon, because of their research foci.  So the AIs can't all just be a bunch of Deirdre wannabes so easily.

Can't manufacture mindworms at all until late game.  Gotta go capture 'em.  That's a major change.  Also buffed Hypnotic Trance to +100%, not +50%.

[Nexii]

The AI does put a lot of weight on GROWTH and MORALE but this is only part of it. Sometimes factions won't take their preferred SE even if it has no downside. For example, Green with +2 PLANET and +2 EFFIC and no penalty. It's hard to pin down exactly why. Could just be a bug with the AI situationally putting no value on these two SEs specifically as I don't see it much with other SEs.

That being said yea. 3 tiers of default style SEs is more net benefits/penalties than even advanced Civ2 governments. And it's amplified by faction SEs. Future SEs come so late that it's whatever.

If not EFFIC/JUSTICE then what makes most sense for Green's secondary benefit? I can't imagine Green without PLANET.

[bvanevery]

For Green I only have +1 PLANET +1 JUSTICE (EFFIC), no penalties.  Deirdre does choose it.  Making no penalties was necessary to get her to choose it.  Otherwise she wouldn't choose Green until she'd learned how to make Locusts.  The bug exists even in the original game.  I made a thread about it in the Bugs forum some time ago.

Does your SE table give away a lot of PLANET elsewhere?  Maybe the AI thinks it's got enough PLANET and wants something else.

[Nexii]

Na the only other +PLANET is on Eudaimonic. I figured it out with your comment though, it's that the AI doesn't calculate any benefit to +EFFIC beyond +4, which it was getting from another SE. Generally I think it's putting a value on PLANET of 0. Whether the AI takes Green or not basically hinges on the secondary benefit.

Edit: Actually I think this can be a reason but there's more going on. Sometimes it will take Green when EFFIC is high. I'd have to revisit Bearu's notes on SEs.

[bvanevery]

In my mod, JUSTICE (EFFIC) is on a strict diet.  It's hard to obtain much of it.  So I would never have the "too much EFFIC" circumstance, most likely. 

[Nexii]

Going back over the old thread with Bearu we never quite figured it out. From what I can see with further testing, there seems to be two primary factors in whether Gaia will go Simple over Green:
1) Faction size (number of bases). Generally Gaia will not reject Green as much if at large faction size.
2) Availability of EFFIC (or whatever else you make Green give). Generally Gaia will not reject Green if there are bigger side benefits.

You may see it if Gaia goes Democratic + Knowledge in your mod. But that's kind of an unlikely combination since it doesn't hit +2 ECON.

[bvanevery]

Another thing is in my mod, Deirdre only gets +1 JUSTICE (EFFIC).  She may be more motivated to take JUSTICE choices.

[Nexii]

It's a strange bug, the small empire size thing on its own can prevent a faction from taking its agenda. Even at 0 EFFIC I have a game where Gaia won't take Green. Oh well, no sense making an SE set completely around it.

[bvanevery]

I dunno, I made a SE substantially around it, at a certain point of revision.  Generally speaking, factions not taking their Agenda choice, is not acceptable to me.  Means the penalties are too stiff, or some other choice in the category is too attractive.  I did "no downsides Green" for a very long time.  Only in my last release, did I finally decide that having it be as easy to get as all the other Politics and Economics choices, isn't cool.  So I delayed its availability, which makes starting the game as a Planet-friendly faction, more of an advantage again.  Previously in my mod, pretty much anyone could go Green and play pseudo-Gaian.

So, you can fiddle the bonuses and penalties, and you can make choices available earlier or later.

[EmpathCrawler]

The social engineering AI logic was decompiled in OpenSMACX which might give some clues to Deirdre's behavior with regards to not choosing Green.

PLANET

EFFICIENCY

GROWTH