Re-Balancing SMAX Factions

[Basil]

Re: -4 police penalty for FM. Yeah, what Blake said . Seriously, a couple of additional points. When Zakharov discovers D:AP he's going to build a lot of penetrators; that's just what the AI does. Penetrators cause unhappiness. AI-Zakharov can't do anything about that even if the police settings for Fundy and Power are changed. So if you leave the police setting for FM at -5, AI-Zakh can't run FM after D:AP.

Secondly, (& less importantly) in a normal SP game I'll get the Ascetic Virtues, which means that I'm running Dem/FM at -4 police anyway - it's only the AI's that have to run it at -5. So I figure it doesn't make the game any easier if I set FM at -4 police, increase pop limits with a hab complex to 16 or so, and remove the AV from the game. (I don't like it anyway, why are you using minerals to build a state of mind?)

Interesting changes to Dem, PS, Fundy, Planned, and Green. They all make sense for their purpose. I particularly like the change to Fundy - shades of Civ II Fundy! - in the context of the AI's playing styles. And I think something needs to be done about Green in any case, since AI-Dierdre rarely uses it and I don't find it advantageous (until the very endgame, or in a war) when playing the Gaians. I was only thinking about giving the Gaians and the Cult Robust: Green or Impunity: Green, though.

Regarding the AI's priorities: I don't doubt that the AI will play most competently with settings of Build/Discover/Explore, although it is possible that that would cause the Gaians to stop building bio labs and centauri preserves. However, factions like the AI-Peacekeepers, the AI-Angels, and the AI-Hive show that it's possible for the AI to be a competent builder with only two priorities, and I'm willing to take the hit in AI competence for the more distinctive AI's, such as a Miriam who won't build Planet-friendly facilities even when she needs them.

[Ned]

Basil, You hit the nail on the head. Building offensive air power and missiles per se causes drones. I believe this is a holdover from CIV, and is part of the design. Obviously, in retrospect, this is a mistake. If we could fix this, then your final objections to adding police to fundy and power would be overcome, I believe. Even Dr. Z can run power. Rose cannot, but she can run fundy.

However, Rose starts with -1 police. So, unless she gets the Astetic Virtues, she still will get two extra drones with a -4 police fm. There is no simple way around this unless we can reduce or eliminate the penalty for home-based offensive air power or somehow get the AI not to build them at all unless it goes to war, in which case, it should get out of FM. (FM is the AC version of Demo in CIV.)

BTW. with the altered agenda's, Diedre still alone builds CP's and ToP's. I have not idea why.

A potential solution is lurking in the wings: Brood Pits. Not a single AI builds them, and yet our friend fungboy gets them free. Perhaps if we changed the attributes of Bio Labs to also give +1 police, as sort of a mini Brood Pit, the AI might build more of them. However, this too may be out of our control as the only faction that seems to build Bio Labs is Diedre.

As to the other settings besides police, I would just leave them alone for the present. Setting the AI's priority to build seems to help them build tree farms. Giving them a starting former and preseeding the world with forests also helps - athough another way we could do this is set at least half the land pods to forests. How can we do this?

Making the AI pacifist mostly keeps them from building large numbers of units because it keeps them out of wars with itself. Howeever, there appear to be exceptions that I cannot explain: In a recent game, both Santiago and the Caretakers built endless numbers of units until their mineral production went to 0. Santiago was my pact sister and was at war with noone. The Caretakers were constantly at war with me.

However, making all units clean is, IMHO, not a good choice because it is too radical. Getting the AI to actually build clean units would be preferable. How can we do this?

Ned

[Basil]

This seems to be the thread for looong posts...

I found a way to make the AI terraform forests!! It's not original - I found it in Shining One's mod pack.
- Remove the tech prerequisites for formers (you have to do this in two places, in #WEAPONS you need to change the prerequisite for terraforming units to "none" and in #UNITS you need to change the prerequisite for formers to "none".
- Add prerequisites for farms, mines, and solar collectors in #TERRAIN. Shining One's suggestions are Centauri Ecology for farms, Industrial Base for mines and Applied Physics for solar collectors.
- Then the AI can (and does) build formers right away, and after it's built a few roads and a sensor it has nothing left to build but forests.

I like this quite a lot, better than the standard start in fact. It makes Centauri Ecology a more balanced tech - all terraforming is a bit much for one tech, but farms & +1 food from fungus isn't.

Originally posted by Ned
Even Dr. Z can run power. Rose cannot, but she can run fundy.

As I understand it, AI-Zakharov won't run Power. A player playing the University can choose Power, of course, but my understanding is that when the AI is in charge of a faction, the faction will either choose its agenda (Knowledge in the case of the University) or the default (Survival in the case of the University, since Knowledge is a Value), but it won't choose a SE choice that conflicts with the faction's Agenda (ie any other Value for the University).

Originally posted by Ned
BTW. with the altered agenda's, Diedre still alone builds CP's and ToP's. I have not idea why.

This surprises me, but I have a guess. If you look at the faction files, on the same line as the faction's agenda there is a "social factor". I don't know what this does, but it's "Planet" for the Gaians - I wouldn't be surprised if it has something to do with them building Centauri Preserves, etc. It may also have something to do with the Spartans turning out so many units.

Originally posted by Ned
Giving them a starting former and preseeding the world with forests also helps - athough another way we could do this is set at least half the land pods to forests. How can we do this?

I know you can edit the contents of pods in the scenario editor, but I've never looked into it. There's a thread here

Originally posted by Ned
However, making all units clean is, IMHO, not a good choice because it is too radical. Getting the AI to actually build clean units would be preferable. How can we do this?

It should be possible to do this by adding additional default units to the alphax file. If you went to the #UNITS section, you could add a unit:
Clean Formers, Infantry, Formers, Scout, 9, 0, 0, BioEng, -1, 00000000010000000000000000
... and that will give you clean formers as one of your default units (if I've guessed the '1' correctly; I may be wrong). Then you have to add another default unit for each chassis/offensive military unit/defensive military unit combination you want the AI to build. A fair bit of work, but possible.

Edit: changed the name of the "Clean Formers" from "Formers". It works correctly, except that when it was called "Formers" it crashed not only SMAX but NT

[Ned]

Basil, I think you are right about Dr. Z. I have never seen him run Power. But perhaps we can fix Dr. Z by giving him free Brood Pits on discovery of Centauri Genetics. However, with the other changes we have proposed here, Dr. Z is a real monster to begin with. In a game with the preseeded forests, a starting former, and altered insterest to -1,0,1,1,1, Dr. Z expanded, grew and built infrastructure with the best of them. He captured the Astetic Virtues and grew his large number of cities to size 14 each. With cities this size, one can have quite a few units creating +1 drones before cities go into riot.

Dr. Z appears to be overpowered with the new settings, so I would leave just as well enough alone.

All the other factions run Power or Fundy or both in a war.

As to Pods, I checked the thread. One has a limited ability to affect what comes out of pods from the SE. However, it is easier to simply dot the world with forests and leave pods alone. What I was looking for is something in Alphacx.txt that would make the adjustment for every game without going into the SE.

The alternative suggested is to delay the introduction of the ability to build farms, collectors and mines. This is a good suggestion, but we need to have the AI first build a number of bases up to the bureaucracy warning before he gets the ability to do anything but plant forests. This would suggest something like the following:

Gene Splicing for Farms, Adative Economics for solar collectors, and Industrial Automation for mines.

All are level 3 techs. This should provide sufficient time of construction of forests only - except for the faction that has the Weather Paradigm.

Gene Splicing allows 3 nuts per rainy square. This is where Farms begin to shine. Delaying their construction to this point seems appropriate.

Delaying Mines to IA is obvious.

Delaying Solar Collectors and Tidal Harnesses to Adaptive Economics seems appropriate because this is also the tech that permits the Thermocline Transducer.

Just an update: I am playing a game with me as Aki, and with AI Domai, LAL, Rose, Sven, Morgan and Yang. I can report that all the factions are doing quite well at building infrastructure, not units and staying out of war with each other. As well, Rose has actually built several CP's!

I am ahead, but barely so, even though I have snagged virtually all the SPs. The AI factions, save Yang, are running Demo, FM, Knowledge (Sven Power). All have built offensive airpower and have units beyond their borders. However, none have drone problems. I believe this primarily due to the fact that with cities of size 14, one can have several units creating drones before a cities goes into riot.

As well, none of the factions this time have build endless numbers of units. Possibly the lack of an Alien faction may be a contributing factor.

The bottom line: adding +1 Police to Fundy and Power, setting all factions to Pacifist; setting interests to Explore, Discover, Build; giving all a free former; and preseeding forests, really seems to work (i.e., make the AI stronger) without fundamentally changing the game or overpowering one faction. Give it a try.

Ned

[Ned]

Basil, I changed the required techs for farms, mines and solar collectors as stated above. It worked like a charm! The AI fully expanded and build forests at all bases - except of course for Sven!

Actually, the Weather Paradigm does not allow one to build farms, mines or collectors early. One can still build condensors and boreholes, though.

Sven, however, can build kelp farms, tidal harnesses and offshore mining platforms. So the game balance is maintained.

The "perfect" solution to getting the AI to build forests.

Basil, Thanks for the idea.

Ned

[Scipio Centaurus]

Originally posted by Ned
...you can actually run tests to see which [faction] is consistently better. This is what the game designers actually did to balance the factions.

What you do is set up a game, then turn it to full automatic and see who wins. The game would have 3 of one faction and 4 of another. This way, accidents of location minimized.

Can anyone explain how to get a SMAX scenario to run on full autopilot? Thanks.

- Scipio

[Ned]

Scipio, I like your handle.

To answer your question: From a game, press Ctrl-K. Then select scenario from the menu popup on the left. One of the options is switch sides. Pick a faction. One of the options is to let the AI play. Select that option.

The computer will then play all the factions. However, the game will stop on informational popups. To keep going, put something heavy on the enter key. I use a letter opener and a book.

Ned

[Avenoct]

I've now run 3 test scenarios with the above settings (but reduced FM police penalty to -3), and indeed, they work like a charm. The AI gets so much advantage this way. I'd suggest keeping some variety to the [-1, 0, 1,1,1] plan so that various factions research different branches of tech. Otherwise I have a question: Is this basically SNAC? I've not tracked down that mod of the game, but if this is SNAC, credit is due to the SNACer (Shining One). If this is vastly different than SNAC you might want to consolodate the changes and give them a name! I'd suggest......STAC Smart Terraforming AC. Thanks for the great posts Ned, Basil, Blake, et.al..

Agreed that simply restricting mines and not farms and solar does Not make the AI plant forest exclusively. However it appears that the AI plants forest when it needs minerals, ie in SP bases or for unknown reasons. What I've seen in my tests is that about half the AI bases have some forested areas. I've switched to restricting all three and it seems to give the AI mineral muscle, but a lack of nutrients....is this why I'm seeing them build a few more tree farms?

One more question. Has anyone tried altering techs or SP's? It would seem that this is possible though I havn't ventured down this road myself. I've often wished there were twice the SP's with the additional ones being weakened versions of the primary ones, and perhaps exclusive of them. EG: Command Nexus. if you don't have it you can build the...Officers University? +1 morale and prototypes reduced 25%...heh. Also, playing with the techs could be devilishly fun in a similar vein.

-Smack

[Ned]

Smack, I don't have a clue since I have not played SNAC.

One question, did you set the starting techs for farms, mines and collectors as I suggested, or to some other techs? My suggestions were

"Gene Splicing for Farms, Adative Economics for solar collectors, and Industrial Automation for mines."

What I see with the above is that the AI, except Sven, builds roads on wet, rolling squares and plants forests on arid and moist squares.

And, just as you said, with forests present they will build tree farms and hybrid forests when the time comes. These facilities so build up Pysch, in addition to their ED beneftis, that AI FM drone problems are virtually gone even before the Fundy and Power police adds.

I still resist setting FM police to -3.

Finally, why don't you try changing the "interests" to what ever they started with plus "build" and report what happens.

Ned

[Basil]

If people want a copy of SNAC, send me an Apolyton-mail with your email address and I will email the zip. It used to be available in the download section of Apolyton, but that broke a while back.

SNAC is a mod of SMAC, not SMAC-X, and it includes changes to just about every aspect of the alpha.txt file and to all of the faction files, as well as changes to the help files so that your datalinks give you the correct information and new audio files for the new techs.

If you are going to install this, I recommend making a second installation (in a separate directory) of Alpha Centauri, and then unpacking the zip over the new installation.

Be warned: the zip is nearly 1M long.

[Avenoct]

Ya, I shouldn'a posted in terms of the 'above settings'. What I meant was that I changed the SE settings as above. As to the faction tendencies I ran one scenario with all the factions to [-1, 0, 0, 1, 0] but I got the feeling that everyone was trying to be Morgan so I reverted to merely adding the build '1' to whatever they had and changing them to pacifist. EG: Miriam is now ( I think ) [-1, 1, 0, 1, 1] or somesuch. I mention the Believers because in the 2 other automated scenarios and 2 SP games I've played at these settings, Miriam has been the first faction to initiate war. As an aside, I've changed the victory conditions to just conquer and diplomatic victories (ala your earlier suggestion Ned), which seems, at a first few looks, to make all the factions much more interested in conquest, treaties of convenience and tech witholding. Am I losing my mind or is the AI playing to the victory conditions?

As to the tech requirements for Mines, I restricted them to need EnvEco. I've tried a few varieties of this, but I've come back to this b/c I like that the AI forests not exclusively, but in a mix with farms and solar, seemingly dependent on FOP needs. However I think Ned's suggestion is quite reasonable. The only thing I might change would be Adaptive Econ as that must be a SMAX tech. If you used a tech found in both games it would make for a broadly distributable mod-pack.

As a variation, and pursuing my interest in adding a less linear element to the game:

(I wonder if it's possible to..) Use the 'User Defined Techs' to create three additional techs. Maybe they could be called 'Planet Cultivar' for farms, 'Igneous Protocols' for minerals, and 'Cyclic Entropy' for solar. Different factions might even start knowing one of these. They might or might not lead to other techs, but would really just serve as that 'difficult choice' for human players, and to delay the AI's abuse of these terraforms.

-Smack