Three proposals that might give the AI a chance.

[Helium Pond]

I bet the AI would put up a better fight if a player made three sacrifices:

1) Always play with "stop for end of turn" off. That way, sometimes you'd forget about doing all the base maintenance and stuff. Plus, the game would be a little more exciting, riskier.

2) Never Pop Boom. Just don't do it.

3) Never hurry stuff. This also might make the game go faster, as there's less base maintenance to do.


Whaddaya think?

[Sindai]

Lol. The Ai's hard enough as it is for me because I already tend to do #1 and never use supply crawlers. Note that this isn't done INTENTIONALLY by me to make the game a challenge. I just hate supply crawlers and suck because of it.

[mark13]

Something that might give the aliens a chance - no nerve gas!!

[big_canuk]

HP:

I like your ideas.

The key to this is finding ways of helping the AI in the later game, without making it overpowering at the beginning.

I have often used, no crawlers, trawlers, or probe skimships, blind or double blind, no nerve gas, and aggressive. But even these games become easy shortly after fusion power.

I really like the idea of no pop booms. The AI doesn't do it, so you shouldn't. This would also help the AI more in the later game. No hurries sounds interesting, but what would we do with all those ecs?

I fear it may take some more late game conscessions, such as no choppers, and perhaps no SP's beyond tech level 4. I think someone also suggested making all the AI units clean, after they discovered bio-engeineering.

What the AI really needs is a way to wage a coordinated war, and to concentrate its research efforts.

Alas, we must wait for the next generation HAL
[This message has been edited by big_canuk (edited January 08, 2001).]

[Xarathas]

well at least the SMAC AI actually makes an effort to coordinated warfare. I remember when in Civ2 the biggest AI threat was a single ship knocking out units in a coastal base with no coastal fortresses, sheesh.
Not to mention CTP2... the word "threat" wasn't even in that game's civilopedia after u secured a city.

[Helium Pond]

I think not rush-building things might do a lot even in late game. In the game I just posted on my website, Lal declared Vendetta on me when I had only scout patrols in every base. In fifteen turns I had him pleading for a submissive Pact. This would be impossible without hurrying. Granted, that wasn't exactly in late-game, more like mid-game. But not rushing things means you have to be *prepared*, and that could make a lot of difference even near the end.

[big_canuk]

HP:

Oh, I agree with you on the rush building. The AI does occasionally rush build, but that does not stop us from limiting ourselves. I'm just wondering what we would do with all the ecs.

We may be reduced to playing stratagies which use the ecs to the warefare roles of upgrading units and buying bases. Or factions with high efficiency, to be able to run closer to 0/0/100 economy, Gaians come to mind. Maybe more economic victories.

Maybe we should pay a tax of say 30% of our ec's each turn, 5% to each of the AIs. Just mumbling out loud. That wouldn't work, cause we can't always contact all of them.

[niteowl]

if i may add my 2 cents worth....

i rarely "rush" anything...only when i am working on a SP that i "have to have" (such as hunter-seeker algorithm) and i get a notice that another faction is nearing a major breakthrough on the same.

i agree totally that the AI has no sense of combat tactics...they lose one or two units and you never hear from them again....you take out a base and they are willing to roll over and play dead....

ah well, such is life in outer space....

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"My dear girl don't flatter
yourself. What I did this evening
was for king and country. You don't
think it gave me any pleasure do you?

--- James Bond
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[Blake]

I rarely use crawlers for anything other than SP construction, and I win with no difficulty on transcend. I used to build energy parks, but I find nothing slows the game down (in terms of scroll rate) than a screenfull of crawlers and formers.

I heavily invest in terraforming, replacing all of my early forests with condensors and boreholes (In fact i even lay my cities out to get the maximum number of boreholes in), but then I work the terrain with workers rather than crawlers, no doubt the strongest strategy would be to crawl all of the condensors too, but sheesh, do people really do that?

The things I would probably do to make the AI a challenge is:

No crawlers (and I mean NO crawlers)
No advanced terraforming (boreholes, condensors)
No gassing (it's still okay to gas miriam)
No airpower

The AI doesn't really use any of the above to anywhere near there potential, with the +2 industry/growth they may almost be a challenge. Possibly also add blind research, and choose all fields, that could make things more interesting.

Ah crap, I realised I used none of the above tatics last time I played miriam, and it was my most effortless victory ever, better add no momentum too.

[Christmann]

Here's a challenge:
Never switch SE choices, always stay on "Simple", "Frontier" etc.
Makes for a much tougher build-up.

[big_canuk]

So we have a choice. Either take away some (most) of the tools we have learned to play this game well, the same which make the game interesting, or use them all in PBEMs. I choose the latter. Playing the AI is just not fun, except for the occasional challenge, or to practice, or check out some new stratagy or idea.

Mind you, if you play PBEMs, then patience is nescessary, as they often fail, and they often move very slowly. But one can easily now find enough to keep oneself very busy.

[Helium Pond]

I also feel that things like SE setttings are necessary. Sure there are ways to make the game hard--for instance, never use anything but impact weapons. But that's not the point. The point of my proposals is that we've all learned to take *extreme* advantage of certain aspects of the game. I think that having to wait the full amount of time it takes to make every unit, facility, etc will add a lot of strategy to the game, not to mention save the hassle of figuring out the optimum rush cost for tons of bases every turn. I think my proposals are reasonable parameters, considering that the AI hardly uses the listed tactics, and considering that they still leave most aspects of the game available to the player.

[Blake]

Another option to make the game faster, and riskier is to turn on the option so that the view doesn't move to units with orders (for example a terraformer doing some terraforming), this way the view jumps around less (speeding up play), and sometimes you miss things, like that worm sneaking up on your base. I use it all the time now, along with any other option which results in more speed.

[Qilue]

This is the method I use to give the AI an edge.

To all factions (except the one I'm playing) I add;
FACILITY, 24 (hab complex)
FREEABIL, 16 (clean reactors)
IMPUNITY, #### (what ever that faction's fave SE choice is)

Then, remove all their negatives where appropiate. Seems to play ok most of the time.


[This message has been edited by Mouse (edited January 11, 2001).]

[Artemis]

Mouse, for those of us completely new to the idea of altering files (which is what I think you are refering to) can you please expand with a bit of detail? What do we alter and where?

Also, "Seems to play ok most of the time", by this do you mean it is usually a challenge or it usually doesn't crash the game?

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-you become responsible for what you tame-

[Sindai]

Artemis -

It's VERY simple. For every faction in the game, there is a corresponding .txt file in the main SMAC directory (ie, the Hive's txt file is "Hive.txt", the Peacekeepers are "Peace.txt", etc)

It's very easy to learn everything you need to to edit them. Just open the "faction.txt" file in the main SMAC directory, it contains all the information you need on what controls what in each of the faction text files, as well as an example.

It should take under half an hour to figure out the basics, and that's all you really need to know to make the changes Mouse proposes.

[Wiglaf]

Don't forget to save a new file after each major change, else you'll have to reinstall the whole thing

[Helium Pond]

Actually, if all you're doing is modifying text files, it should never be necessary to reinstall the whole thing. All the text files are on the CD, so if you need to recover the original versions, you can grab them off there.
[This message has been edited by Helium Pond (edited January 12, 2001).]

[Qilue]

You should 'always' backup any game file you're going to modify.

I doubt there's a poster here who modifies game files who can't recall an incident where they made the wrong change and had to reinstall the game because they forgot to make a backup.

Artemis - What I meant, was that game balance between AI factions doesn't seem to be affected.