How the AI performs the factions

[Skanderbeg]

Apart from the different weaknesses of the AI (weak use of former and crawlers, doint stupid things with needlejets, weak use of copters, not building probe ships etc.), I have remarked , that the AI plays some factions quite good, and others very weak. This is also valid for selfmade factions.
The reason for this seems to be, that the AI can't handle some disadvantages.

I have remarked that the AI plays bad two groups of factions. First are factions with a growth disadvantage like the Cyborgs, despite all their other advatages. The AI seems not to be able to handle the growth disadvantage by building childrens creches and using SE. It is the same with my selfmade factions with growth disadvantages, you can give them a lot of other advantages, the AI isn't able to play them right.
Second are factions with "unreliable diplomatic behavior", the guys who are normally in vendetta with everybody, like Cha Dawn, Lal, and sometimes Deirdre.
The reason is easy, played by the AI they are dammed to have no friends, and they will be crushed by their enemies sooner or later.

The AI plays good factions which have no growth disadvantage, a straight diplomatic behavior (from Miriam or Yang you know how they behave), and two advantages in this categories: economy, industry, morale, science. With this, they can equalize one disadvantage in economy, industry, morale or science.
Good examples for these stronger factions are Yang, Morgan and Domai, which, despite they all have one bigger disadvantage, they all will be played relatively strong by the AI.

Not very important for the strenght of the factions for playing by the AI seems to be advantages or disadvantages in the categories support, planet, effic and probe, perhaps they allways be related to other advantages/disadvantages (i.e. good probe/money with the Morganites and Data Angels).

And, from my selfmade factions I have learned that the AI plays stronger with averadge factions. The AI will play stronger with a +1/-1 faction than with a +3/-3faction, no matter of the category of the advantage or disadvantage.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Skand,

Good points.

My own thoughts on what allows the AI to play a faction well.

High Growth - Is probably the most important feature for the AI to play well. The AI nevers grasps or implements a pop boom intentionally. As a consequence any faction with an inherent growth bonus will even out this serious AI flaw and allow the AI to play the faction reasonably well. (Yang and Marr)

High Support - The AI never grasps the concept of 'clean' units and will as a consequence builds 'dirty' units to the point of stimying its industrial capability. As a cosnequence factions like Yang in police and Miriam fare well, while Morgan is doomed in the hands of the AI at Midgame.

Programming advantages given to the AI (in order to work around some of these issues)

At higher levels (especially transcend) - Bonuses are given to the AI in order to minimize these effects

Growth - Number of cells per row is reduced (see other threads) yet eh AI still doesn't know how to pop boom.

Industry - Number of cells reduced yet the AI will build units until all mins are consumed in the form of support

Research - labs required are significantly less the human. As a result penalties to research aren't as huge a deal to the AI as to a human. (Miriam can often times keep pace enough to be a threat) The Ai however, seems only able to implement technology inthe form of units (weapons/armor moreso than chassis as evidenced by the little emphasis on choppers) produced and does a substandard job of building infrastructure.

If I were to rank factions the AI can handle reasonably well

1. Yang
2. Marr
3. Hminee
4. Miriam
5. Lal
6. Domai
7. Others
...... Lastly Morgan.

'Course even the AI can do reasonably well with any faction in the Jungle (not well enough but reasonably well )

[Skanderbeg]

Hi Ogie!

Good arguments, especially that about support. Perhaps I didn't look very much at this argument because I use to build "dirty" units until the end, because my play-stile is more builder like (I have few but excellent units), so the support in relation to total mineral production don't hurt me very much.

I don't agree about Morgan played bad by the AI. He normally is a big Pain in the A. for me. But I have to confess I don't can deal with this character, I have also the greatest difficulties playing him.

My ranking of the strength of the factions, played by the AI, would be:

1. Domai
2. Miriam
3. Marr
4. H'minee
5. Yang
6. Sven
7. Morgan
8. Datajacks
9. Spartans
10. University
11. Deirdre
12. Lal
13. Cha Dawn
14. Cyborg

Perhaps the differences a related to different playing styles of us as human players, which "tick off" different AI factions. I normally go the demo/green SE-path and not the free market/wealth-path.

[Martin Schmidt]

I agree with you Ogie :
Morgan is played notiriously bad by the AI !
(though i dont like to play with him either)
I find Hive the most challenging opponent
(only in the Original not at Crossfire , they
weakened Hive there seriously :-( )
Because he will come with masses of 4-3-1 troops
in many games i played and it was almost always
difficult to defend .
I would say he is played even stronger as the
alliens because he has no unfair advantages.

What is interesting that nobody mentioned
Deirdree, i like to play with the Gaians ,
no disadvantages (ok no free market but that's
not a to big problem for me) and therefore
very good units in the beginning (mind worms)
and later (isle of deeps) especially useful
to capture almost all seaartifacts .
Do you like to play the Gaians too ?

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Martin,

To be truthful of all the factions the planet friendly ones are the ones I tend not to use. Perhaps it stems from my inability to catch natives as frequently as I like. More often than not I don't kick up enough for my tastes and then when I go to capture them I'm not fortunate enough to capture them. I guess it comes from my desire to ensure I have what I want when I want it. Conventional units you can count on being produced and are not necessarily at the whim of a random number generator. (Sure you can produce IoD, worms etc. but they are gawdd awful expensive for my tastes)

Your points are well made though on pod popping ability extrordinaire for Dee et.al. Worms and IoD's for pod popping detail are da bomb. Its all a matter of style and taste just like any particular faction.

OTOH, as a Kudos to people on this board, I finally was set straight that in order to maximize ability to capture natives a full movement point has to be available. So maybe all the planet friendlies are worth another look see. Point is you can always learn something and I've either been lurking or posting here since Apolyton started SMAC forums and lurked a long time on OWO forums before that.

Thanks all .

Og

PS. Skand, Probably the reason why you hate Morgan and I hope to see the AI as Morgan stems from the same reason. I tend to go FM/Wealth and this allies me with Morgan 90% of the time. I've from expereince realized Morgan is a PIA if you go for a conquest 'gainst him with his &%$#@! probe teams. As such I stay freindly with him reaping the benefits of FM/WEalth and trade until such time as Hunter Seeker is in my possession. At that point Morgan is a paper tiger. He is either to be ignored or conquered at that point.
[This message has been edited by Ogie Oglethorpe (edited December 18, 2000).]

[Basil]

A while back I compiled records of my games, to see how the AI's had delt with each other. I counted the number of times a faction had been played by the AI, the number of games it had survived the other factions (I counted factions destroyed by me as surviving), and the number of other AI factions it had destroyed. Here are the results:

	Games	"Survived"	Kills
Believers	10	8	6
Usurpers	2	2	2
Peacekeepers	9	7	3.5
Hive	7	6	1
Spartans	7	5	2
Pirates	2	2
Gaians	4	3
Caretakers	2	1
University	9	6	1
Morgan	10	5

(I usually play as the Gaians and usually play using the original seven factions even if I am playing SMAC-X.)

Make of it what you will. I was surprised by how often the Peacekeepers killed other factions. I agree with those who say Morgan is played badly by the AI, since in my experience he's killed by the other AI factions in half my games.

One interesting experience I had was setting up a game using the original seven factions, then using the scenario editor to turn them all over to the AI, and seeing what happened. The University did the best - it was lucky and was on a southern continent by itself, while all the other factions were in the north. By 2300 the University was dominating the game quite thoroughly. The Hive did second best despite a poor starting position, and the Gaians were third. Normally the University gets stomped early if it starts near any of the warlike factions, but this time it had a huge tech edge when it finally met anyone else; the Hive would throw cruise missiles at the Gaian bases until they were empty and then the University would do orbital insertions and take the bases over before the Hive got there . The Believers nearly conquered the Peacekeepers, but then they ran into Morgan, who calmly bought the Believer army . A bizarre game.


(Edited to format the table).

[This message has been edited by Basil (edited December 19, 2000).]

[Skanderbeg]

Hi Martin!

I like to play the "green" factions, the Gaians and the Cult of planet.
But it is a difference wether You play this factions yourself and have the skill to use their strenghts right, or let the AI play them.
Especially Cha Dawn is played very bad by the AI, mostly because he uses to be in vendetta with everyone.

[DilithiumDad]

The most important factor in how the AI plays is the map. If you want a quick victory, play a random map with sparse cloud cover (although Deirdre will be strong because of her fungus nutrient bonus). The AI factions will make 4 or 5 bases and then stop expanding.
If you want strong AI, play a premade map like Map of Planet or Ultimate Builder Map. The UBM has a large number of possible base sites that the AI base-location algorhythm finds acceptable, so you will find the AI factions saturating an entire continent with bases. This makes them very strong, and they will usually out-research you and out-build you until mid-game.
The UBM has widely separated start sites that are separated by fungus, so that works against momentum factions. The AI factions that do best on the UBM are
1. Gaians (expand like crazy over the map)
2. Hive (expand lots, build many seabases for energy)
3. University
4. Spartans (high morale helps against abundant worms)
5. Believers
6. Peacekeepers
7. Morganites (always pathetic! but at least on UBM he can survive long enough for you to rescue them!)


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Creator of the Ultimate Builder Map, based on the Huge Map of Planet