Re-Balancing SMAX Factions

[Ned]

Hey Basil, I think you got something there. Add +1 Police to Fundy as well as to Power, and the AI is set.

In the Diedre vs. Aki sim, above, one of the Aki factions pulled far ahead in tech and took all the SPs after a point. I call that a victory for Aki.

I just got through playing a game as the Pirates. As always, I had a rough time. Lal pulled ahead in tech, not by much, but just enough so that he got virtually all the SPs. He also built Tree Farms and Hybrid Forests in virtually every base. It was pleasant? to see AI bases producing 25-30 minerals without ED.

Even so, I will also modify the game to give the AI a starting terraformer, "build" agenda, and seeded forests. Most probaby, I am going to get killed.

Ned

[Marid Audran]

Basil, I agree with you about the Aliens. They SE themselves to death more than any other faction; I've tried changing their social agendas but it's difficult when they only have one choice as an agenda and one aversion. Basically, they find a new ways to botch their government up. Additionally, their model of play is still too similar to the human factions to really give an alien vibe. After I got past their horrific novelty I'm more annoyed by their presence in a game than anything else. Their honorless diplomancy, lack of Council participation, and necessity for elimination for a Diplomatic Victory is yet another grievance since one ends up gassing them to death anyway.

Anyhow, about the Angels, my tinkering was as much for ideological reasons since I couldn't see the Angels ever functioning as a Police State, but could perhaps sponsor "Power." She's still a Democracy most of the time; mostly my agenda was to give her a proclivity to the Valies choice I think makes the most sense for the Angels, Wealth (and keeping her out of anti-probe Knowledge).

Factions by the way don't care if you run their Aversion, only the polar opposite SE choice of their Agenda. Zak for instance doesn't care if you run Fundy, his aversion, but gets in a huff over Wealth or Power, the polar opposites of his Knowledge agenda. Same with running Knowledge in Miriam's presence; she only cares if you're running Police State or Demo opposite her Fundy. Ditto Domai if you're running Green, he only cares about Future Society choices (he cancelled a pact with me for running Cybernetic). So far the altered profiles for the Cult and Angels have worked out but I think I'll renege the morale penalty for the Consciousness, whom in the AI's have trouble enough overcoming their growth penalty to become a presence.

On the Police State SE choice, I have seen other factions besides Yang use it. Santiago, Sven, and Aki (interestingly enough) all drag it out from time to time, though they typically don't remain in it as long as Fundy or Demo. In that regard it's similar to Wealth, which also has a short half-life among factions. The SE choice I've really seen rarely used is Green, even among the eco-friendly Gaians and Cult. Fundy and Planned are waaaaay overused.

Speaking of police in free market, that's another thing the AI has going against it; it NEVER uses non-lethal methods with its home troops to help suppress drones. If it learned to maybe it'd warm up to Police State more.

That's an interesting game you have going Ned; it's interesting that you mention a rough time handling the Pirates but ease with the Cult, since with me it's the opposite. Anyhow, I agree with you about Gaian strength in most Single-player games; I find alongside the Hive those are the AI's best factions. I think Dee's extra nutrient production in fungus forgives sloppy terraforming, and even plays into her hands if she gets Centauri Genetics. Additionally, starting with Centauri Ecology allows her to pump out formers immediately. It's also a breeze for her to a get a Paradigm economy. Those little edges adding up...

[Ned]

Guys, I'm having a game like I never had before in CIV, CIV II or SMACX. I rejigged Alpahax to add +1 police to Fundy and Power, as the AI usually likes to run one or both with Free Market. In my current game, all but Diedre are of course running FM. Domai is on the warpath. He is Demo, FM, Power and with the +1 police, he hasn't had drone problems yet.

I also started with forests everywhere and gave the AI a free starting former. It still terraformed farms. But when it came time to build TF's and HF's, it did - everywhere - due to the forests, I believe, but also due to the following:

I rejigged all AI agenda's to interest in technology, growth and building and set every faction to Pacifist. Aki still declared war on me at the drop of the hat. So did Domai. However, the AI is not fighting itself. Pacts and treaties are the rule.

The result is that AI is playing just like a human player. Expanding rapidly and investing in infrastructure - even Dr. Z and Domai. I am very lucky to be Rose. I have the Empath Guild. Otherwise, just as I suspected, I would have no chance at all.

I don't think I am going to win this game. All the AI factions are just as large as mine, with equal or better infrastructure. Every AI faction's research rate is greater than my own - mostly because they are running 60-80% labs. I however have enormous income, and am slowly catching up in infrastructure.

Wow!

Clearly our complaints about the AI being a poor builder are largely related to its overly hostile settings. This can be fixed by editing their profiles along the lines of the above.

[Blake]

Well, our complaints about the AI being a poor builder is more due to the poor AI programming, it is unable to minimise it's weaknesses, so the weakeness's have to be nullified in other ways. I did my own experimenting and changed the SE settings as follows:

Police State : -2 -> -1 Effic
Demo N/C
Fundy: +1 Police

Free Market: -5 -> -2 Police (but I think -3 would suffice)
Planned: -2 -> -1 Effic
Green: -2 -> -1 Growth

And then played with completey standard SMAC factions on preforested Standard MoP (Approximately 2 tiles of forest per 8x8 patch of land). But forest spreads VERY quickly. Also this is Thinker difficulty, because I want to compare them without the Transcend bonuses.

Of particular interest was Morgan, usually weak he built a decent number of bases, first tree farm in 2213, and many hab complexes & treefarms by 2225. When I stopped the game at 2163 he had a few Hybrid Forests, and was getting tech at 1 every 3 turns (!). So AI's DO know how to build if they get the terraforming done for them, also Morgan avoided the support trap AI's fall into due to his low agression. Even more interesting he had a couple of condensors, and all his farms were in Rainy spots.

The biggest remaining problem the AI's had was eating up there minerals on vast numbers of useless units. Low agression/no conquer emphasis helps, but free clean reactors would help even more, the AI would then have a real late-game punch, instead of fading away. The human player can either use an unmodified faction, or accept the free clean reactors too

Ever noticed that AI's like to build bases really close together in the jungle, and often squeze 3 bases onto the crater? You can exploit this further by laying trails of Uranium all over the map, the AI's see everything as a landmark and build heaps of bases packed in quite close.

Anyone else think it would be a good idea to make a "AI enhanced SMAX" mod with specially modified Alphax.txt, factions, and maps? I would prefer to make it "fair" in the sense that no special AI factions are used.

[Ned]

Blake, I am near the end of the game I mentioned above. What a tech/infrastructure horserace! I was able to stay with the AI because of Roze's Datalinks abilities and because my pact Bro, Dr. Z, gave me up to 15 techs. I could have stayed with the AI, tech for tech, but I too would have had to set research to 60-80%. However, instead, I set it to 40% and spent my money on infrastructure and relied heavily on Rose's talents.

I cannot even imagine playing Miriam against AI mussle such as this (Diedre, Aki and Dr. Z) and Domai having the largest continent all to himself.

What I no believe is that the lack of emphasis on building and more emphasis on war was probably a game design decision to give the Human a chance.

Next game, I am going to put back some aggression in the AI and see what happens.

FYI, None of the AI factions overspent on military. They all invested in infrastructure. At some point though, they had to stop investing in factories because of ED (at around 60 minerals per base) - all except Diedre. Diedre alone invested in CP's and TOP's. We know what benefits these bring.

[Blake]

I just played an interesting test game. The settings as follow:
Police State: -2 -> -1 Effic
Demo: -2 -> -1 Support
Fundy: +1 Police (but this didn't seem to show up ?!)

FreeMarket: -5 -> -3 Police
Planned: -2 -> -1 Effic
Green: -2 -> -1 Growth

Power: +1 Police

SMAC (not SMAX, because SMAC runs faster)
All factions changed to all priorities except Conquer
Agression = 0 for Hive, Believe, Spartan (others -1)

Transcend Difficulty
Huge MoP seeded with forest, kelp and dotted with uranium.

I went as Lal and got the whole of the jungle continent to myself (I started on the coast above the dunes). I only built 12 bases.

I stopped the game at 2212 because I was having serious cashflow problems, 10000 cash (800 per turn) and no good way to spend it And getting 2 techs per turn (shows how much more powerfull you are with preseeded forest) I was about 20% ahead of the next strongest AI, had govoner and trade pact. Latest tech was Adv.Eco.Engineering and SilkSteel Alloys.

The AI's in order of strength: This is year 2212(!) :

Miriam: Miriam started near the crater and I attribute that to her strength.

Yang: North of FW sea.

Others equal strength:
Morgan: Started below FW sea.

Santiago: Same continent as Miriam, got a smaller chunk of the land and neither Crater nor Flats.

Zak: On that northen Isle.

Dee: East of FW sea, weakest Faction.

All factions except Gaian's had income of about 100 per turn. (gaian's about 50/turn)
Morgan, Zak were getting techs every three turns, the others at about every 7 turns (still pretty good).
Every faction except Gaian's had atleast one Pact, and combined with the Trade Pact and emphasis on commerce techs huge amounts of income was generated by commerce.

Miriam won on infrastrucutre, with several Hybrid Forests built (this is by 2214!). I attribute this to the crater, which gave a boost to several of her cities. She also got the best land (other than me).

All AI factions had a decent number of hab complexes.

All AI factions had a good number of Tree Farms.

Morgan lagged slightly in facilties such as CC's, but was AI tech leader. He also had a condensor+farm+enricher combo

Of particular interest is Yang and Miriam, both of them had a very good number of bases, and high populations too. They also both have a support bonus, when running power they had +4 support which meant support base size for free, and with the large bases meant they didn't fall into the support trap.

The SP's were evenly distributed, with no faction having none, and no faction having a clear monopoly (I had 3, the VW, AV, and Neural Amp).

All factions except Dee, Yang were running FM and none had drone problems, then again D:AP hadn't arrived.

Overall despite the fact the game was still a pushover for me the AI had done a lot better for themselves than usual. I may continue playing to see what happens once Space Flight and other high tech arrives, they might even launch some satellites.

[Ned]

Blake, Your game and mine were very similar. The AI was broadly treatied and pacted (as was I). When it came time to vote for the Global Trade Pact, the vote was 7-0! All benefited from huge amounts of commerce income.

The tweaks to the SE settings are less important than setting the aggression levels lower. It has been my impression that the single biggest fault of the AI is that it is constantly at war and is therefor constantly building units - even if the enemy is nowhere in sight.

To test the above, I rejigged the agression levels to put them back to "sometimes" with Yang, Santiago, Miriam, and Sven. I am playing that game now. I am playing Rose again. Yang, Santiago and Sven have all declared war. So I suspect its back to normal for these folks with overinvestment in units.

The presence of forests speeds the game up. But most important, it seems to provide, just as you suggested, the AI the incentive to build Tree Farms and Hybrid Forests when the time comes. However, with the tech speedup, Tree Farms may come before the AI has built up enough mineral production to expreince its first pop. As a result, they may not be getting the "full" clean mineral benefit of these units. So it might be advisable to not preseeed planet with forests to see if the AI will build Tree Farms and HF's all by itself on reduced aggression.

BTW, +1 police on Fundy, and Power keep the AI going for a long time in FM - the only exception was Dr. Z, who kept to Demo, FM, Knowledge and still build up his air force and conducted agressive wars. I believe the only reason I caught him was because he was having significant drone problems.

Also, all the other factions were right back into it when Cyber came along. It has -3 police. All were running it and Free Market, so police was at -7 or -8, depending on whether they were running Power. (In case you never had an appreciation for it, the Network SP really is important b/c it eliminates this -3.) None switched to Police State, even though the combination of Police State and Cyber looks like a very attractive setting.

Even though it makes Yang more of a monster, you might think to keep Police State at -2 eff, but boost "police" to +3. This would make Police State, Cyber even more attractive. It would also make Police State a very attractive setting earlier, in combo with Green and Non Lethal Methods - especially if one is getting energy and labs from specialists.

[Basil]

Interesting experiments...

One idea I got from SNAC is to technologically restrict the building of mines until the discovery of ecological engineering. This prevents the AI from building mines in the early game, and the theory is that it makes the AI build forests early instead. If this works, it would make a much more "general" solution: you wouldn't have to create a map and preseed it with forest, but could play randomly generated maps with only a modified alphax file.

Just something you may want to add to your experiments...

[Ned]

Basil, Thanks for the hint. I'll give it a shot. Ned

[Blake]

Another way is to play on Arid, high ersosion maps. Practically everything is arid, and most is flat. Even the AI can figure out it is best to plant forest.

The main problem is the AI can't figure out that it is meant to build formers, so unless they start with one it could be 50 years before they start on terraforming (for Miriam especially)

[Blake]

Well, I spoke too soon on the game being a pushover because I failled to take into account the AI transcend bonuses.

I lost the govoner to Miriam when she bribed morgan (and after all I did for him!). Then most of the AI's declared vendetta and I ended up with only 1 pact (morgan) and 1 treaty (yang).

Morgan ran away with the tech, because he had 1 pact and 4 treaties, and combined with the trade pact and his inherint trade bonus... he was getting 2 turns per tech and with my self imposed no expansion rule I was reduced to 4 turns per tech and begging for tech from Morgan and stealing it from Yang (framing ). Altough my final pop-boom to size 18 helped remedy some of my problems.

I rememedied the cash situation by building an army of 8-4-2, Clean, ECM tanks and assorted other goodies for defense. I kinda don't want to get caught with my paints down should an AI decided to invade my territory, because it will probably be with well equiped troops, backed up by missile bombardment, possibly a joint attack too.

I was researching to Hab Domes, and then before I even had MMI someone was building the CV SP. I launched a fleet of food & energy satellites which bought my techs back down to 3 turns, researched to the CV tech and immediately rush buyed it. The CV was something I had hoped to let the AI's play with, but I was concerned at the concept of Miriam or Morgan clones. All my bases had been maxed out by pop-booms so I'm waiting for hab-domes to use it.

so, now later in the game:
I'm still on top, getting 3/turns per tech, my bases are producing 40-60 minerals, and I'm getting 1200 cash per turn.
Morgan is the true AI powerhouse, getting techs every 2 turns and 200 cash per turn. He just started running Thought Control (I'm nowhere near that :-\) which made all his units cost 2 to support, but also completey nullified the police problems.
Miriam is technically 2nd after me, but thanks to -2 research + fundy is nowhere near Morgans sheer researching power, but she is still doing pretty good for herself.

[Ned]

At least you got the CV. I didn't. It was the very first game EVER that I did not get it - had no chance to get it - since I was living on fumes from my pact-mate Dr. Z, who did get the CV.

A non aggressive AI and a preforested MAP is a real challenge! It might be best to tone down the challenge by not preforesting and just setting the aggression settings to -1.

The very high commerce income for the AI reminds me of CIV I where trade routes between AI Civilizations magically appeared - across oceans and continents - without having to have a caravan make the trip. The AI always seemed to have the advantage on trade income. The took that away in CIV II, which made the game a lot easier than CIV I. SMACX with these revised settings restores a key AI advantage that we have not seen since CIV I.

Ned

[Basil]

Marid: dropping the morale penalty for the CyC makes sense, since (in my experience) they're one of the weakest factions when controlled by the AI.

I've started a test game with minimal changes from the standard game: Free Market -4 police, Power +1 police, and no mining until Environmental Economics. I haven't gotten far enough yet to find out how the changes to Police effect the game, but the restriction on mining hasn't caused the AI to build forests; it's just caused the AI to build lots of farms (even on flat arid squares!) and solar panels. So that didn't work.

I also did some checking of old games to see how the different AI priorities (Build/ Conquer/ Explore/ Discover) effect the AI's construction of facilities. I was rather surprised by the results. The AI's broke down into 3 groups:
- Factions which had a priority of Building (Wealth), regardless of any other priorities, built many facilities of most types. These factions include Morgan, Hive, Drones, Data Angels, and Usurpers. Except for the Usurpers, all of these built a wide variety of facilities including the workhorses (recycling tanks, creches, energy banks, network nodes, and tree farms).
- Factions which had a priority of Conquer (Power) but not Build normally build few facilities beyond the 4 which seem to be built when needed. These factions include the Believers, the Pirates, the Cult, and the Caretakers.
- Factions which have neither Conquer nor Build as priorities built a reasonable number of facilities with some holes. This group includes the University, the Gaians, the Peacekeepers, and the Consciousness.
- I did not have any save games showing the AI-controlled Spartans as an advanced faction, but they should fall into the Conquer group.

Facilities also fell into categories:
A few facilities appear to be built on an as-needed basis: recreation commons, holo theatres, hab complexes, and of course pressure domes.
Most facilities were associated with the Build priority. An emphatic example is tree farms, which were built by every faction with the Build priority except the Usurpers and, in my sample games, only one faction without it (the Peacekeepers). (Even in an AI-only game where the University had discovered 71 technologies and built 5 fusion labs, a paradise garden, and a nanohospital, Zakharov did not build any tree farms, while both Morgan and Yang did, despite being far behind him in tech.)
Discover was associated with research hospitals, Explore with biology labs (emphatically) and with creches (weakly), and Conquer with morale-enhancing facilities like command centres and aerospace complexes (although Build factions also like aerospace complexes).

I only had records of one Alpha Centauri (non-X) game and it was a SNAC game. These rules did not hold there. For instance, Yang is Conquer/Explore in SNAC, (the same as Miriam in SMAC/X), but he builds lots of facilities anyway. I don't know whether the difference is due to SNAC (the mod pack) or whether the AI works significantly differently in SMAC than it does in SMACX.

These results were also somewhat dependent on circumstance. In one game with six human-controlled factions, the Cult (as the lone AI-controlled faction) built a lot of facilities despite its Conquer/Explore priorities. Perhaps this was because it was a much more peaceful game than usual for this faction?

All of this seems like a no-brainer in retrospect. But it does suggest some tweaks to make the factions stronger when run by the AI. For example, the Pirates default to Conquer/Explore, with the result that Svensgaard builds almost no facilities. If you made him Build/Conquer or Build/Explore you might significantly improve the play of the AI. The Caretakers also should be given a Build emphasis if they're to have any hope of creating size 10 cities for their subspace generators. Since they also have a Planet emphasis they need an Explore priority, leaving them Build/Explore or Build/Explore/Conquer. Miriam isn't interested in Planet, so take away Explore, and replace it with Build, making her Build/Conquer like Yang.

[Ned]

Basil, I am still holding out on reducing FM to -4 Police in favor making Fundy +1. Most factions in a serious war use Fundy, so the effect is the same. However, those who wish to stay in Demo + FM and fight a war should have a severe penalty, IMHO.

Your comment about Aki not being played well by the AI is the opposite of my experiene where Aki is typically the toughest opponent. I personally think she is overpowered, so giving her more "benefits" is the wrong approach.

I agree with your observation that the AI is extremely reluctant to build forests. Preseeding seems the only option.

I also agree that adding "build" to the AI is critical to getting them to build facilities such as Tree Farms. However, I still have observed the AI building endless numbers of units regardless, especially if they are at war. Making the factions "pacifist" seems to help most of them spend less on units and more on facilities. However, some factions, such as Santiago, still seen to build endless numbers of units. Perhaps we need tweaking elsewhere.

None of the factions, in my observation, build CP's or ToP's except Diedre. These facilities are critically important to building up clean mineral capacity. We should think more on this.

Ned

[Blake]

another long post...

Basil, I am still holding out on reducing FM to -4 Police in favor making Fundy +1. Most factions in a serious war use Fundy, so the effect is the same. However, those who wish to stay in Demo + FM and fight a war should have a severe penalty, IMHO.

Ned, it is for exactly the reason you stated that reducing FM penalty is a good idea. Any smart human player is going to see that running both FM and fundie will result in lower police, enabling a serious war effort while still having FM cash. But the AI isn't smart enough to reason about things like that, and the factions which gets really screwed is the Peacekeepers and University (Roze also). Put simply AI's can't work around the FM penalty. Putting police in fundie to negate some of the FM penalty will only benefit human players and AI factions which like fundie.

I changed FM police to -3. Then the AV wonder reduced it to -2, meaning police still couldn't be used. It also made police state very viable.

I also reduced penalties on the other economies, because the potential exists for the AI's to screw themselves on planned also, the -2 effic can kill most income in a sprawling AI empire, mainly because the AI doesn't know to run Demo with planned, and wont use specialists. So I reduced planned penalty to -1. When Sven or Aki runs green it results in complete growth stagmentation (without Demo, or CC's), so again the AI can potentially trap themselves. This isn't a major problem but I thought I would halve the growth penalty anyway (also Dee needs a break with the enhanced FM)

Then I got carried away and reduced the PS and Demo penalties too. PS for the same logic as planned. Demo because AI's benefit greatly from support (if only because they continue expanding throughout the game, meaning the 10 free minerals helps).

I wasn't sure what to do with Fundie, reducing the penalty is tempting, but in the end I gave +1 support (That makes a lot of sense for fundie too, fighting for a cause and all). It also makes fundie + power rather deadly, gaining the magical +3 support, which otherwise only Yang, Miriam can achieve (or any other faction running PS).

The Values looked alright, AI's can easily cope with Industry, Probe, Morale penalties so no tweaking was required. Also power + fundie is now so powerfull that increasing power seems like overkill.

The major exploit from my changes is that PS + FM is now a real power setting, and ICS is made a bit easier. However seeing as I changed the settings for myself (making an enjoyable challenge for me, rather than a new balanced ruleset) that was quite acceptable, as I'm not an ICS'er and don't enjoy managing lots of bases.

For all AI's I then reduced the agression setting by 1 (if it wasn't already -1).

As far as priorties go, presumably BUILD encourages the construction of the economy boosting facilties (including TF's) while DISCOVER the labs facilties. This would seem to make them both important to encourage AI builders. EXPLORE may increase the chance of a few other facilties being built, but does encourage growth and expansion. CONQUER seems to put the AI into attack frenzy mode, where every mineral is put into new military units. Prehaps give all factions BUILD, DISCOVER, EXPLORE and then also give Yang, Miriam, Aliens, Cult the CONQUER priority (which would be diluted by the other 3 priorites). But even without conquer in my game Miriam easily crushed Santigo, so they hardly need conquer in order to conquer.

On a preforested map my changes mean the AI can't hurt themselves however bad there choices are, this means they just keep growing and building, the only thing stopping expansion being the borders of another faction. This made the game alot more interesting for me, it could be summarised by the time when Miriam took the position of govonership, depsite me being Lal and #1 on the power chart.

No doubt the easiest way to play against such AI would be NOT to be in first place, because of the AI's tendency to form global alliances against Player 1. Normally this is just something to laugh at, but with each AI having power comparable to yours their global alliance can easily take the tech lead (and get the majority of SP's, espically seeing they build crawlers). It would probably be easier to be in 2nd place and keep the AI's fighting between themselves (if only to reduce the trade income ).