Looking For Empire Expansion Modification

[mrdynamic]

This has happened to me in 3 separate games now. I free an eradicated leader, they build 2-3 bases and then stop expanding. Has this been the experience of others ? I usually free leaders around the mid-game time frame. Is this why they are not expanding ? Anyway, I would like to find a mod to the game that might place a priority on factions to keep expanding their empires, whether they are freed or not. Seems like in my SP games all of the AI factions quit expanding after the beginning phase of the game, even when they have room to expand geographically.

[Sith123]

I've only ever noticed that with the morgans (in normal smac though..I don't have smax)

Last game I played the gaians, hive, and spartans spread like the plague, the university was just of moderate size with bases spread out, and morgan had 3 bases on a small island (I took care of that though....the island isn't there anymore )

[Yxklyx]

I've seen this behavior after they surrender to you (with University) but I've seen the Hive bounce back in strength after surrendering also. The AI's just not always up to the task. Don't know what you could do to fix this.

[Flubber]

To me, the behavior of the AI is often inexplicable when it comes to expansion. Without evengetting into things like restarts, I have often seen one or more AI factions that just do not grow despite ample arable land all around.

I recall one case where the gaians, alone on a mid sized continent had 2 bases only and no close neigbors or evidence of being attacked. Perhaps Deidre thought that more than 2 bases would be ecologically insensitive

I have also seen it with pretty much any faction. For some reason you will find a faction that for no apparent reason just stopped growing after 3-4 bases in situations where there are no geographical or military impediments to further growth. I have given up trying to figure out any rational reason for it.

[Fitz]

The AI seems to give up when you far outstrip them, especially if they have surrendered to you. In any game in which I am 5-10 times more powerful on the powergraph, most expansion by the AI stops. This isn't a universal truth though. It seems to hold for a particularly weak faction relative to all other factions though (ie a freed leader, or one way behind anyway).

Ways to jumpstart a freed faction's expansion include giving them bases to get their power up (pop is the biggest factor), sharing lots of tech (do it individually to be sure of what you're giving away), and gifting colony pods/clean military.

This just makes them all the more submisive/grateful to you as an added bonus.

On the flip side regarding AI expansion, try giving them enough bonuses (typically through the *.txt files) before you start that they will generally be ahead of you during the whole game. You'll find that if they are ahead by the late early game, they will go ballistic. You'll start seeing rarely used AI tactics, such as choppers & satellites.

[johndmuller]

Quite often, I've seen AI factions shift into Sea Base Mode, where they start establishing lots of junky sea bases all over the place - of course, they seem to make a bee line directly for the continental shelf just off Your coast. The Pirates, naturally, follow this strategy all the time, skipping over the land based approach. Many times, the switch to sea bases seems to be related to the AI faction either filling up their original starting continent and/or being kicked off it by another faction. This behavior seems to me to be especially true of the Spartans and the Believers, and almost as much w/r the Hive and seemingly least of all with Morgan, but all of them seem to do it.

I have also seen them do this when they start out on a bad piece of land, such as a lot of fungus and/or arid patches.

They also seem to all have the ability to plant a sea base in deep water, but there is not much to be had out there in the way of resources, so the bases don't do much, especially when they build more Sea CP's shortly afterwards.

[Sikander]

If you are doing well in midgame it is fairly easy to gift bases to your erstwhile ally, especially if you can use orbital insertion or chopper colony pods to set them up far enough away from you so that they don't interfere with your plans, and close enough to their other bases that they can defend themselves better and don't lose all of their energy to ineffiency. Plus it makes them really grateful and all it costs you is a turn or two of production at one base, and a population point. Since I tend to be booming more often than not, it's not too much to lose.

As for the larger problem of weak AI expansion in general, there have been a lot of good ideas put forth by Blake and others regarding how to edit the AI factions and the map to give them some more impetus to expand and build. Selecting the build priority was one thing IIRC, and another was seeding some forests on your maps so that they make better use of the stuff. Even though forest produces an inferior amount of resources for the majority of the game compared to human terraforming, it is miles above the normal AI forming.

About the AI seabase thing:

I wonder whether the AI has the capability to plan an operation to haul a colony over the ocean in order to plant it on another continent. I suppose it can do this, but it doesn't do it well or all that often. It would rather send troops to an occupied continent in the hope that it can capture a base. This is probably one reason why they build those crappy seabases, and why the Pirates rarely step onto land. It might be worth getting rid of the sea colony pod in the design workshop so that the AI doesn't build them, at least for games where the Pirates are absent. I wonder if the AI would ever use a copter colony pod if it were included?