Ok.  I can say with 100% confidence that the Central Mine isn't that big an influence in the Torian explosion.

One of the last things I did was to remove Inherited Technology from the Torian TechTree and replace it with Market Economics and Industrial Revolution.  I then neglected to buy Industrial Revolution for my custom race with the Torian TechTree.  Aaaaand . . . they still went nuts, even without any factories until Xeno Industrial Theory.

 

Interesting note:  The changelog says the Drengin should have gotten Counter Espionage in v2.0.  Better fix that up.  Whoops.

I'm playing Drengin now and I don't see a CEC.  In this game I don't miss it. 

I think I'm starting to get the hang of this espionage thing.  "Build an economy and they will come."

 

One side effect of the AIValue inflation is that the races - because they generally can't trade - stay within their tech trees.  I do miss trading, but there's something to be said for enforcing racial purity of essence. 

Btw, if you are stronger and offer an Economic Treaty, they will trade their ancestors to get it.

 

In this game (Painful) I got a Thalan opponent.  He expanded very quickly.  I thought, "Here we go again," though Painful is kinda low for his nuclear game.  Then I discovered that his HM is sitting on a +700% Research tile.  Never mind.  (Naturally he also picked up a 700% Industry tile on a remote HighG world.  Maybe the Thalan's secret weapon is Luck.)

Iconian was stuck in a corner but rushed and developed well.  Korx did not.  He looks like Mini-me over there sandwiched between Thalan, me, and some minors.  Apparently he got so busy mining that he forgot about settling planets.  Yor started slow but is catching up.  Altarian also got stuck in a corner but is doing okay, though if the Iconian had access to his worlds, he'd have done better.

 

You say all these races are using the same AI now? 

 

 

 

I know.  I fixed it for v 3.x

Yessir.  The mod ships with all races set to AIPersonality 11.  Now, I guess that doesn't mean that all races use exactly the same AIP.  Those races that normally use AIPs 7,8, and 10 default to Generic when assigned AIP 11.  However, those that normally use AIP 11 (the Altarians, Arceans, and Korx) default to their specific racial AIPs.

Now ask me how those racial AIPs differ from each other and the Generic AIP. (I don't know)

 

In unrelated news, I now also know with 100% certainty that getting rid of farms and addressing population limits by upgrading the Civ Capital/Initial Colony doesn't work.  At least, not in a straightforward way.  I ended up with the AI building extra a second Initial Colony on some worlds.

There's a problem with population limits? 

 

Sometimes the AI will build way too many Farms for the world to support, but I, Lord Kona, don't consider that to be a problem since excess population means low Morale means easy invasion (especially if your Soldiering makes the defecting population better than the defenders).  If you consider that to be a problem, oh Speaker for the Buggers, I see the solution as making the AI go after better Soldiering.  Could you define an Improvement with a Soldiering boost? then make it as attractive to build as Farms?  I would hate that.

 

Or is the problem that the AI won't build Farms?  My fleet of rape ships have raped way too many developed Class 15 worlds with populations of 6B.  Not enough victims.  Make more victims.

 

 

Here's one.  Trying to place an Agent on a Korx Mercenary Academy causes instant program crash.  Tried it three times, got three crashes.

 

Here's another.  No event (yet), just 100 Super Dominator Corvettes sitting in orbit of Drengi.  "I don't need them!", says Lord Kona.  "Go away!"

 

There is a problem with the way the AI uses farms, yes.  Too many, none at all, built on the wrong spot, etc.  If doing away with them won't work, I'm thinking of a multi part approach to tackle the issue.

1) Make farms +% rather than + food.  Then, no more dropping farms on the +300% tile and ending up with wicked overpopulation.

2) Make farms 1 per planet.  No more overpopulation and wasted tiles.

3) Give everyone access to a very basic farm through starting tech, perhaps Biological History.  Like how the Yor get Charging Stalks via Cybernetic History. Give that farm a very high AI value to ensure that it gets built immediately on every AI planet.  No more AI planets ending up without farms due to the AI not getting the tech soon enough or botching the build order.  No more underpopulation.

Those 3 changes should ensure that AI worlds end up well populated and fairly happy.

 

As for increasing Soldiering, there is the Planetary Defense improvement.  It doesn't increase the Soldiering ability, but it does make planets much harder to conquer.

Speaker for the Buggers.  Heh.  I finally read Ender's Game in summer of 2011, 14 years after a college friend lent me his book.  Haven't gone on in the series, though.

Can't see any reason why, at a glance.  I'm thinking I'll make it so you can't place agents on the Academy.

I'll just carry on a conversation with myself . . .

An example of why we should never say 100%, always, or never.  Despite all the things I changed, my last test was broken because I had the Trilarian (my custom Torians) set to Thalan AIPersonality.  Of course they went nuts, that's what the Thalan AIP does.  What's even more interesting is that I had Super Abilities turned off.  No starting factories and no Super Breeder and they still dominated the colony rush.  That's just how the Thalan AIP rolls.

That's what I did in my mod, but the verdict is still out. I'm using the stock AIPs for all races (except the Torians and Iconians, which use AIP 11) and not all of them are building farms. Well, at least not as much as I'd like them to. The Terrans, Yor and Iconians do a pretty decent job, but some of the other races build farms only sporadicly. My current AIValues are 50 for the stock farms, Robotic Farms and the Torian Harvesters, and 100 for the Drengin/Korath Slave Farms and the Yor Charging Stalks. I will tweak the values some more, but testing has to wait until my current game is finished. (Playing as the Korath and it is finally going up again. I had the Mega Pirates appear for the first time ever in one of my games, and boy are those guys annoying! Sure, they occasionally helped in protecting my planets from enemy troop transports, but I wouldn't be at war in the first place, if it weren't for them!)

Also, a heads-up: I found a bug regarding upgradeable 1pp improvements. In my Arcean game, I lost a planet to the Terrans. After retaking it, I couldn't rebuilt my Arena (unique Arcean morale-improvement in my mod). This is similar to how Power Plants were bugged in Dark Avatar. It also reminds me of the problems I had when trying to limit the number of early factories/labs you can build. If I didn't build all factories/labs the limit allows (because there is not enough place, for example), upgrade them to the next version, and later want to build more of them, I couldn't. The upgrade seems to count as building a second one (or third and so on). So, when the building gets destroyed after an invasion, for example, it still counts as being built.
I'm not sure yet what I'm going to do with this. Remove the 1pp limit from farms and morale-improvement? Change them into a more powerful, non-upgradeable version (not really)? Keep it as is (which could be bad, especially for the AI)? We'll see.

"Speaker for the Buggers"

The sequel to Ender's Game is Speaker for the Dead.  Well worth the read,.  I actually have my copy listed on eBay right now (the whole series, actually) if you'd like to save a few bucks.  Item 281039875447

 

Mega Pirates.  I got them last night, little bastards.  My starbases were safe, but all my freighters and staged transports (and old Defenders) were not.  I went along with it for a while, then backed out to a save point and consigned them to oblivion. May have to do the same with these bloody Corvettes.  Shouldn't they be accompanied by an Event?

 

BTW, both the Iconian and Korxian have supposedly discovered something that will make them infinitely powerful over time.  Are these real now, or fake events like they used to be?

 

 "Of course they went nuts, that's what the Thalan AIP does."

Ah ha!  I was right!  What level are you playing?

 

Farms

Oooo!  I got it.  Add a Soldiering bonus to Farms.  Too many people means that human wave assaults and suicide defenses are thinkable.

I don't actually play anymore. There's no way I could develop the mod at any reasonable pace if I tried to play through each game.

My playtests involve having the AIs auto-play against each other.  I set the diffculty at Tough - maximum capabilities, no bonuses, no penalties.

AIPersonality 8 (Thalan, Terran, Drath, and Krynn) is something of a monster.  It expands rapidly and is hyper-militant.  The counter balance seems to be that it has an aversion to Colonization techs, leaving extreme planets for the slower-expanding races.  AIP 8 always seems to outperform, though, becoming an economic and military powerhouse.  The 11s can end up in trouble early on, but can also manage to do alright in the long run.

 

These were always real; the catch is that there's two different versions of them. The normal event version increases one stat of the affected race veerrrrrry sloooooowly, whereas the mega event version (which is distinguished by having a cutscene) increases multiple stats at a much quicker pace. I can confirm that it does have a noticeable effect over time on research and manufacturing (and possibly other things), while the normal version really doesn't.

It seems like an awful lot of people are confused about these events, honestly.

I got a third one; all  three are different.   The latest for the Iconians (Good) is some sort of artifact from the Arnor.

Lord Kona is curious, but may want to just kill them.  Yor (R.I.P.)  made the foolish mistake of attacking and his blood is still up.

 

---

Re: AIValue determining willingess to trade.  Shouldn't that work both ways?  A high-AIV tech is good to keep, but it is also good to get.  Should balance out.  What does the AI use for evaluation, just the research cost?  Fooey.

 

The AI seems to only consider the special value of techs with regard to selling them, rather than buying them.  For example, the AI guards its weapons techs jealously, but doesn't assign the same inflated value to obtaining a weapons tech.  Likewise, they value the extreme colonization techs very highly when selling them, but don't place any value at all on buying them - to the point that they won't offer you anything for them.

I guess that's the totally unoptimized, crude way to make sure the player doesn't rip off the AI by, say, colonizing all the barren worlds, then selling off the Barren World Colonization tech to all the AIs.  Or, conversely, of buying up the AIs colonization techs and snatching all the extreme planets.  Same with weapons.  The unreasonable demands are there just to ensure that the player can't buy an AI's most powerful weapon, then turn around and use it to attack them. The AI has no way to decide whether something has inherent value, or if it could be used in any special way.  It can't study the map, count extreme planets, formulate a long-term strategy, consider whether it's dealing with an ally or enemy, or weigh cost vs benefit.  All the AI has to guide its decisions is a few numbers, such as research cost, AIValue, WillingnessToTrade, and whatever premium the programmers hard code in.

The limited capabilities of the AI to assess the situation sometimes makes me want to scream.  On the other hand, there's only so much that you can glean by looking at those values anyway.

Research cost should not even be a factor in consideration when your civ is leading the field in research.  Instead the technological disparity between their civ and yours should be more important.  If you're ahead, you don't want to give anyone a leg-up unless it helps you in some way.

For example, selling off a weapons tech is great if you already have a defence against it and it means that the other party will make war on your enemies.  Selling technologies that another civ is coming up on researching is good because it's probably going to be your only shot at selling them anyway, and because they will instead be able to research something that you haven't researched yet or can't research because it's not in your tech tree.

I used to love selling techs that AIs were researching because I knew that it valued them highly.  Nowadays (with the mod) that doesn't work, so I rarely even look at the trading screen any more.

One technique that is still with us is to offer an AI a treaty just before you attack it.  (assuming that you're strong enough to make the treaty "of interest")

 

Game over, btw.  Lord Kona just had too much charisma <choke> for the lesser races.  This after he destroyed most of his Ascension Stars...

Anyone need a race played?  I thought about Korath, but just don't have the stomach for it right now.  Arcaean? 

I can try a different AI set or experimental mod.

 

 

Tricky thing to deal with.  It's linked to another issue that I have with 1pp farms - Charging Stalks.  With two different farm-type improvements, there is the risk of doubling up.  I could make all farming type techs no-trade, no-steal, but that still leaves a problem with the buildings being destroyed during invasions and such.  Say the Yor invade a planet and destroy the farm, then they lose the planet and the charging stalks get destroyed.  Now nobody can build a population boosting improvement.

I'm considering having one universal population boosting improvement shared by all.  Something generic like Planetary Infrastructure or Advanced Population Support, or something.  It would be a little immersion breaking to have something that equally allows more robots, humans, and living rocks, but at least it would prevent the improvement from being destroyed due to the conquering race not having the technology.

Worse still, I knew about this bug since February (or March, not sure). However, I neither realised the problems it could case, if the buildings get destroyed, nor made a bug report (which I now rectified).


The "can't build" part would only happen if both Farm and Charging Stalks got upgraded.


Your idea of a generic "farm" improvement would definitely solve this part of the problem, but wouldn't work for me. Immersion and lore is very important to me, and is a big part of my mod (if only my writing skills were better). I also set all factory, lab, morale and farm techs to 'can't be traded/stolen', which made the bug even more obvious. Changes were really necessary in my case, and this is what I finally decided to do:

I removed all the upgrades from the 1pps. The only exceptions, for the moment, are the Power Plants (just like in vanilla) and the Slaveling Training Center (still upgrades to Artificial Slave Pods). I'm currently considering to remove those and add the bonuses to the techs instead, but have no idea how the AI will react or what it will do to the balancing.
In the case of farms and morale improvements, I took a page from my original attempt. The first tier stays as is. From the second tier on, however, the 1pp limit gets removed, but the farms are slightly weaker than before. There are two exceptions to this. First, the Robotic Farms and Dream Conclaves don't have a second tier, so I kept them as they are. Second, the Torian Harvester now adds 1mt food, making it the only improvement that increases the base-amount. I removed the advanced versions of the Harvester, I added, because I want to keep it as a 1pp. In exchange, the Torians got the Xeno Farms back.

So far, the changes work quite well in my test games. It remains to be seen, if it stays that way. I haven't optimised the AIs tech research yet, because I wanted to wait until I get some feedback on the balancing in my mod. However, this proves to be the most difficult part yet.

You could make the farms/charging stalks indestructible.

Yeah, so it means that you have a population-boosting improvement that your people aren't compatible with and it laughs in the face of immersion, but from a gameplay point of view, what will the AI do?  Will it take advantage of this and build more population boosters, or will it use the tiles for something that doesn't cause mass unhappiness?

Obviously it would help if the improvement destruction code was bug-fixed, but if the last few years have shown us anything it is, in the words of Jenna Casey, not gonna happen.

 

IMO, the occurrences described are rare enough that they don't merit "fixing".   Besides, one could legitimately argue that  a world conquered multiple times *should* have infrastructure problems.

 

 

I'm inclined to agree. In fact, I'm not sure exactly what the problem with the AI and farms is supposed to be in the first place.

I don't know either. The AI does a satisfactory job from what I've seen.

It's the auto-upgrade and the food multiplier tile that messes up the AI.

Basically the AI will happily research and auto-upgrade all the way to the end of the Xeno Farming line of improvements, regardless of its situation.  If it has two or even three farms on a planet, it will upgrade all of them to Advanced Farming at (by default) +7mt a go.  If it builds just one farm on a bonus tile, then a massive population cap is similarly the result.

This in turn creates a very unhappy population which are easily conquered using the propaganda tactic.  But also, it pulls down the AI's approval rating, which it then attempts to fix by reducing taxation.  The AI doesn't actively consider other strategies like filling up transports or just considering the median approval rating (what its approval is on the vast majority of its normal-population worlds) when deciding on a tax rate.

That's why in most cases it's best to make farms a one per planet improvement and a percent bonus to food rather than an addition.

Ok, that makes sense.

Hmm, you know I wonder if it's possible to have a negative food modifier.  You could have factories powered by biofuel.

That being said, I think the AI would have an even more difficult time figuring out what to do with those.