First contact with Yang

[arginine]

Given the amount of discussion about encountering Yang, in "2112 end turn + 2113 discussion" I have set up this thread.

[arginine]

Mead

Originally posted by Chaunk
***

Agree with probe to Yang, good idea Perhaps we should try to rush one in our 5th or 6th base (With the 10 free mins?)

Infiltrating Yang and probing him for all the Tech (plus map) he has is worth considering.

#endgame

The CTO recommends that once the first former rolls out, road 2 squares directly north from Morgan Metallurgy, dump a forest and plant a base, working the rolling/rainy/volcano tile.

--CTO #endgame

Micha

Originally posted by Mead
Infiltrating Yang and probing him for all the Tech (plus map) he has is worth considering.
Mead

Hm...
While tech is always good to have, the effects on tech cost are quite high. Of course I see the need for a modern military once we´re at war with the Hive, but it will considerably slow down our own research...

But then I think you´re right with the assumption we´ll go to war against Yang anyway...

Archaic

I disagree with the idea of probing Yang, beyond an infiltration of his datalinks. There is nothing to gain in pissing him off before we are ready to confront him.

The tile 2 north+1 north west of Morg. Ind. looks like a nice base spot to me. Not on the river, but really, we don't want to put a base smack on that area and crowd it out. It would be childs play to situate, say, 3 bases in that general area, and have them all work natural 2-1-2 tiles (2-3-2 in the case of the Min special). We could then use those 10 mins for something other than a former build, say, to jump start our first crawlers with 10 minerals already having been put towards production.

TheLoneAmigo

He'll already be pissed off... we are running a democracy, right? And free market. His two least favorite things. So why not probe him?

It really depends on his power. If he is too powerful to piss off, we don't probe him, if he ain't, we probe his sorry bases until they give us their secrets.

jtsisyoda

We aren't running Democracy yet, and probably won't for a while. The support hit and the loss of free minerals should be delayed until efficiency becomes more critical.

Impaler[WrG]

Yang only hates Democracy, he has no opinions on Economics at all, he will not be offended by FM (why dose everyone think Yang is a Comunist?). Even under Democracy confilict with him will not be inevitable if we play our cards right *winks at Archaic* so we should not form a conflict centric view of Yang, he is infact a valuable tool, he shields us from the other human factions, can provide us with comlinks and comerce too. Yang will also tell us when or if Sparta has desided to attack him, we can then either cut some deal with the spartans to carve him up or support Yang against sparta, (like give him Plasma Steel or something). If Sparta can be goded into an unwinnable war then they will have basicaly lost the game vs our Economic power.

I reiterate our need to explore southward and found bases southward as well, even thoguh the land to the north may seem more promising at the moment we cant run the risk of having a THIRD to a HALF of our avalible land consumed by Hive expantions. I think we need to have bases in the 32 or 33 Latitude within the next 20 turns. It will only take 1 base to do it, a single base on the end of a long southrunning road would be sufficient, we could then fill in the surrounding territory later once the best build sites in the north are used up.

Micha

Originally posted by Impaler[WrG]
Even under Democracy confilict with him will not be inevitable if we play our cards right *winks at Archaic* so we should not form a conflict centric view of Yang, he is infact a valuable tool, he shields us from the other human factions, can provide us with comlinks and comerce too. Yang will also tell us when or if Sparta has desided to attack him, we can then either cut some deal with the spartans to carve him up or support Yang against sparta, (like give him Plasma Steel or something).

I see your point and I support it (though I don´t like the idea of giving military tech to Yang ). I´m currently reading the Spartan Chronicles, where Yang and Morgan are allies. This is a very powerful alliance, although I don´t trust Yang enough to share such sensitive research data...

I reiterate our need to explore southward and found bases southward as well, even thoguh the land to the north may seem more promising at the moment we cant run the risk of having a THIRD to a HALF of our avalible land consumed by Hive expantions. I think we need to have bases in the 32 or 33 Latitude within the next 20 turns. It will only take 1 base to do it, a single base on the end of a long southrunning road would be sufficient, we could then fill in the surrounding territory later once the best build sites in the north are used up.

I wholeheartedly agree with Impaler. Let´s grab what´s most likely to be claimed by others soon!

[arginine]

I think Yang will see us militarily weak Morganites, and demand tribute. I would really like to know how to influence Yang's personality. There is the possibility he will not demand much tribute. In that case, we might want to gift a small gift (25 ECs), infiltrate him quickly and then decide what to do.

We should have a decision on how to initially proceed once the terraformers have been built. Hopefully, we will have infonets by then.

Earlier on, Yang will be friendlier and we will have ****ter techs to give. Later on, we'd be more able to withstand Yang. Also, if Yang meets someone else earlier on.

I wish I knew what the Spartans were up to. Their strength will reduce the chance of Yang demanding tribute. In a worse possible case scenario, I see them joining up with a Yang already at war with Morgan.

I thus feel we should meet them earlier, to get control of this situation, and late enough so that we can grab HGP before having to shifting a defensive war. Also with the HGP, size 1 cities are immune to drones

If Yang has no new techs for us to steal, we can get his map info, which would be quite nice. There will be a tech slowdown, so we might want to decide which techs we really want before probing. If we could meet the angels, we might want to gift them some of our probe teams before they probe to use the angel's +2 (+4 w/ fundy) probe skill.

As for a buffer, I think a human will just turn to ships to invade bypassing yang. If we have a sufficiently strong navy, then Yang would definately be a good barrier.

[Kody]

The real question is Archiac's tricks are actually legal. I mean we all know it's possible to change the SE when we want to talk to an AI, but I'm fairly sure that's considered illegal in multiplayer. I'm guessing that the AI has a threat analysis algorithm that checks whether you have units next to it's non-military units. I guessing Archiac may have figured out that by putting a military unit next to a former or colony pod the AI becomes more friendly. This is because the AI likes to park it's military next to your bases and units so I'm guessing it's been designed to respond in a likewise manner. Anyway Drogue really needs to be informed what exactly Archiac does to "make the AI eat out of his hand", because there's a possibility that it may be a bug exploit. If he really wants to keep these tricks to himself, I'm fine with him only telling Drogue.

[jtsisyoda]

Good idea having a separate thread, arginine.

Strong navies require either getting out of FM, pun spheres, or using specialist bases. Sometimes navies are essential, but often you can just wait for aircraft. This is starting to get into the military strategies, though...

Gifting probes would require a pact, a big step that would require serious deliberation.

Kody, I don't see how using a military unit to "say hello in a big voice" is a bug exploit. But I don't know Archaic's tricks, so maybe it's best if Drogue reviews them.

[Impaler[WrG]]

I dont see anything wrong with Infiltrating Yang as long as that wont make him hostile to us. I dont think we can risk stealing tecnologies from him, firstly he is likly going to have very few and better oportunities will almost always be avalible from a Human teams of the PK's who will presumably have access to most of Uni's tec.

Given that theirs nothing wrong with Probing I dont think their is any reason to delay contact through scouting. Without any bad SE he shouldnt require anything more then a small brib for a treaty and the contacts we can get through him will more then make up for that. I think the AI only takes your total powergraph into conderation, we can be naked militariy but if our Powergraph is neirther too high or too low he wont be beligerant (unless we take Democracy). AI is always friendliest when your about equal to you, they dont fear your or fell they can exploit you.

If Yang were to make war upon us we would have to come out of our builder stance and would loss atleast a decade of growth which could easily cost us the game, further more Sparta would have an excelent oportunity to launch an attack durring the Chaos and likly make huge advancements. We want to keep the whole planet in peace untill we have achived an insurmountable lead in our economy and tec, this will play to our strengths and minimize the strengths of the other teams.

As for Archaics plans I dont know many details of it but I doupt that it makes them a puppet, it sounded to me like simply balancing the love/hate equation of the AI so that things become predictable, he is simply trying to find clarity in the underlying game math as far as I understand it.

[TheLoneAmigo]

I would definitely be averse to giving Yang any technologies at all, even Explore/Discover ones. Any sort of technology will enhance his power, which I think is an outcome that should be avoided. We don't want to let him trade our tech to any of the other teams.

ECs, on the other hand, are fine, because the AI doesn't know how to use them effectively, and we will have an EC edge no matter what. I would say give him the gift as soon as we meet him and keep him happy with the occasional EC bundle. By happy I mean not actually attempting to crush us.

I support probing Yang currently, but it depends on his strength when we reach him. We need to be careful with probes though: a pissed off Yang could cause us to lose the game.

We need to get a southward base to stop Yang colonizing that territory, and fast. It's a lot more valuble than the northern zones.

Changing SE before contacting an AI? That sounds like cheating to me...

[Archaic]

No exploit. Hell, most of the time when I'm doing actual negociations, I don't even change out of my SE choices (Or if I do change before contacting, I don't change back until the following turn. In fact, it's best to hold in that SE for a full turn before contacting the AI, if possible. Seems to give the SE choice a much greater weight in the equations.). If you do chop and change, it seems that the AI gets more angry in the long run, like it's programmed to notice your duplicity. If you've been running the same SE for long periods, and managed to retain good relations, the AI, while still *voicing* objections, does very little about it, so long as you make efforts to keep those relations good.

Really, it's all simply a manner of right timing, and situation. You've noted one of the little tricks it's possible to do Kody, though it's not one I generally employ, with my usual setup (Crawlers and Formers only).

I'll be quite honest here that I have no understanding whatsoever of the underlying game math. It's all very instinctual. There are some things I *know* must have equations governing them, since the AI has repeatedly had the same or similar reactions in similar situations, but I have no idea just what all the variables are, or how much influence they all have. What I *do* know however, is that SE is likely one of the smaller influences, but it's the easiest to actually control (It's not like you can control your player slot, but that undoubtably has an influence in SP. MP....jury's still out, but I think CMN intervention in AI personalities screws that up.).


Of course....actively going out of one's way to retain good relations is a real pain in the neck. You will reach a point where you *need* to trade techs. And that point is usually first contact. Honestly, it's not that bad a thing. Improve the AI's ability, bribe him into making your enemies his own, and keep him friendly until you have no more use for him. The more you improve him, the more value as a trading partner and an ally he becomes. It's true that that goes for other human players the AI is allied to as well, but you really have to have faith in your own abilities over those other players. It's better to be the one trading those things to him rather than from him anyway. Makes them much more happy and loyal in the long run.

[Drogue]

No tricks I've seen are illegal yet, but contacting me to ask if there is any hesitation that it might be is much advised. I'd also like to remind people changing SE settings to get a favourable AI is illegal, unless it's kept for at least a turn. You may not change twice in one turn.

[arginine]

I am bringing up probing because I assume he will go to war with us, and least he will later on. One of the few beneficial things about war is freedom to probe. Another could be using marine detachment ships to steal enemy sea formers.

I thought it was possible to give any faction units. Guess not.

My experience is with the AI is from single player.

[Kody]

I wasn't saying that using military to muscle an AI was illegal. Rather I was giving a illegal example and an legal example so my post didn't seem too much like an accusation.

I didn't know that Archiac played the whole thing by ear. I figured he had a specific strategy in mind.

[Archaic]

Whatever the diplomatic equations are, they are complex. Any specific strategies I made could potentially be totally destroyed with even one change in an impotant variable. Without the Empath Guild, there's no way we can discover the exact current situation anytime soon, so even if I did have the equations, I'd still have a lot of unknowns I couldn't account for.