Aki doesn't terraform?

[SerapisIV]

Well, after my third SMAX game, I've had Aki in as an opponent everytime, yet there's a really funny thing I've noticed, she doesn't terraform. I've taken games to 2300, she's been building research hospitals in her bases, yet her land terraforming consists solely of roads. Every other AI is busy, bettering their territory, but Aki has yet to. On a 70% land map Aki had 1 coastal city with which she went sea former happy, but barely used land formers. Is this an anomoly or does she do this regularly? If she does, I don't want to use her as an opponent anymore, too poor an AI.

[Method]

well it seems to me that aki does terraform at least in my games, and sea terraform. maybe her land is all arid ( ) because i have never seen the AI (except deirdre) plant forest. in fact in my current game, she has quite a bit of 'forming and had a lot of sea forming until i (sven) achieved naval superiority and wiped out everyone's sea bases . nevermind, that doesn't matter.

anyways what i'm getting at is that Aki does 'form.

[SerapisIV]

Well then I've seen something different as well, in my last game, even fairly early about 2230 or so, both alien factions were terraforming about half forest. That and Miriam whe I got around to her, her eastern cities (beyond mountains) were loaded with forests. It was a relatively arid planet, even though things were on rainy, the faction sites were mostly large, flat islands or islands with two giant mountains and little else, so plenty or arid land.

[Sindai]

Sure sounds like an anomaly to me. Aki plays more or less like any other AI faction for me....

[Lefty Scaevola]

Originally posted by SerapisIV
Well then I've seen something different as well, in my last game, even fairly early about 2230 or so, both alien factions were terraforming about half forest. That and Miriam whe I got around to her, her eastern cities (beyond mountains) were loaded with forests. It was a relatively arid planet, even though things were on rainy, the faction sites were mostly large, flat islands or islands with two giant mountains and little else, so plenty or arid land.

Sometimes the AI pops a hdroponics pod early.

[Earwicker]

Originally posted by Lefty Scaevola


Sometimes the AI pops a hdroponics pod early.

That would be my guess as well, although I frequently see Aki's land with major forestation, reaching arcoss large land masses or covering most of sizable islands. Now this could be the result of "new growth" but I suspect otherwise. Maybe I'm just giving her too much credit? To be fair, she at least had some tree farms built so her folks weren't starving to death (but her FM economy and dozens of needlejets weren't helping in that regard).

[Ned]

I have seen this phenomenon in virtually every game, but not necessarily with AKI. Santiago come to mind as the faction that most often does not terriform at all.

In an effort to fix this, try creating your map before you start a game and spot it with forests. As well, modify your faction's .txt files to give them a free terraformer to start. Unit=1.

Ned

[Blake]

I believe it's a combination of EXPLORE and BUILD priorities, factions with a heavy emphasis on EXPLORE (or which start with Cent.Eco) tend to have the ability to build formers early, factions with BUILD tend to build formers more promptly than those which dont.

I'm not sure which factors determine HOW the AI terraforms, but I do know playing on an extremely arid map usually results in more forest, while on a wet map the AI tends to think it doesn't need much terraforming other than roads and sensors. I usually play on arid maps.

Ned's advise is very sound, a free former avoids the "doesn't build a fomer until 2200" trap, and AI in any scenerio benefits from a bit of pre-foresting (if you want killer AI's pre-condense and borehole the AI territory too). Slapping down a patch of forest in every AI's territory is very quick to do, you can set up a game in about 5 minutes.