Spartan Ideologists

[Mart]

It is a single player game with intense rivalry turned on. I am leading in ranking as PK and Spartans are the weakest. I have pact with them, though run values Knowledge. We are at war with the strongest military faction which is Gaians. The last standing Spartan base is Sparta Command, where I keep two plasma rovers (1-3t-2) at veteran level defending their base. Santiago does not have any plasma armor units, and I have feeling soon they will fall even with my defense. And there is something which I really want and need from Spartans - Nonlinear mathematics - Santiago is the only one having it for long time now, and she does not want to give it away even to her pact mate who defends her. I open commlink and say that if she does not share nonlinear mathematics I end the pact. She gets pissed off, ends pact, my plasma rovers are saved in my base this way, and Santiago next turn is overrun with Gaian veteran mindworm boils, she has them like over 30 for 13 bases next to 40 other units.
What was it:
extreme ideology (they run knowledge, bastards...)
briliance of AI - so that human player has harder than we
stupidity of AI - if I had it earlier, my impact units would have saved Sparta Command.

[Dis]

they protect impotant war techs like nonlinear with their life-apparantly.

[Mart]

Life and very own existence, that was the last Spartan base. Santiago was captured and interrogated.

[babbler]

extreme ideology (they run knowledge, bastards...)
briliance of AI - so that human player has harder than we
stupidity of AI - if I had it earlier, my impact units would have saved Sparta Command.

I would say 1 and 3 -- the AI simply looked at the SE values for your faction and decided that it you evil. It forgot to factor in, you know, the fact that you were the only thing between them and obvilion.

Reminds me of a quote: The attribiute to malice what you can attribiute to stupidity.

[GeoModder]

If it's a SMAX game, free her with a covert ops action.

OTOH, it sounds like the Spartans were doomed anyway with 30 boils writhering towards Spartan Command. This way you saved two rovers...

[Commy]

There are two reasons why the AI holds certain techs. One is that they are building a secret project and don't want you to be able to. And the second is, unfortunately, not yet pinpointed, but probably what happened is that you are more powerful, the AI says 'hey, I have something that the powerhouse doesn't, I ain't giving it up...

[smacksim]

Originally posted by Commy
And the second is, unfortunately, not yet pinpointed

From the alphax.txt and spartan.txt

; Name, id, ai-mil, ai-tech, ai-infra, ai-colonize, preq(1), preq(2), flags

Nonlinear Mathematics, Chaos, 4 , 3, 0, 0, Physic, InfNet, 000000000

+

; formal, desc, noun, masc/fem, sing/plural, name, gender, ai-fight, ai-power, ai-tech, ai-wealth, ai-growth

Spartan Federation, The Survivalist, Spartans, M, 2, Santiago, F, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0,

=
Important to Santiago

Do homework before declaring pins and points for the lot of us

[Dis]

what I meant above is nonlinear is one of those techs that I find it is very hard to get from almost any faction.

[Mart]

Anyway, don't you think in that particular case it would be smarter for Santiago to release that tech? Just simple decision based on what is important and what is not is not very wise here. There should be factor of survival the strongest in decisionmaking here.

[Dis]

of course he should release the tech.

but that's just not how the computer "thinks"

[Mart]

Originally posted by Dissident
.... not how the computer "thinks"

But if you write AI correctly it will recognize such cases correctly. The turn by AI will last longer then, I agree, but imagine something like Santiago saying:
"You are lucky Lal, in my position I am forced to release this technology to you, as my last base is threteaned by our mutual enemy"