Automatic Forests

[lmeyer]

Is there a way to make transformers automatically build forests?

[RedFred]

You can go into the 'former preferences' screen and basically prevent them from doing much else.

[lmeyer]

Automatic Forests

Got it, thanks.

[Petek]

Originally posted by RedFred
You can go into the 'former preferences' screen and basically prevent them from doing much else.

I don't think this will work. I loaded up a game in progress, unchecked all former automation preferences except "plant forest" and then automated all 15 of my formers. Fourteen of them started on farm/solar collectors and mines. Only one planted a forest.

When this question has come up in the past, no one could suggest a way to get a former to plant forests and nothing else. Perhaps someone can now figure out a way to do this?

[Darsnan]

Originally posted by Petek

Perhaps someone can now figure out a way to do this?

For the Aldebaran mod I think Smacksim changed the alpha(x).txt settings such that the only thing that could be terraformed immediately were forests, thus forcing the AI to build forests first, which then naturally spread for the AI. He also changed the number of Former turns to build a forest from 4 to 3, which also seemed to stimulate the AI to build more forests. Other than that I think your right - the AI is always gonna go farm/solar collector crazy....



D

[smacfan]

The problem could also be the elevation bonuses for individual squares. See Chris Traber's terrain analysis spreadsheet over on captcomal's AC Heaven website:

http://members.tripod.com/ACHeaven/files/terrain-v95.zip

For instance, on flat and rainy terrain 0k-1k elevation, it's a tossup in terms of total factors (forest = 4, 1-2-1, F+S = 4, 3-0-1), but at 1k-2k elevation forest is the same but F+S is 5, 3-0-2 because of the energy boost from elevation.

I suspect the AI goes for max production factors and not necessarily strategic benefit.

[Blake]

The AI actually seems to be slightly more inclined to plant forest once it already has tree farms in place. Also restriction lifting will alter the AI's terraforming priorities very slightly - the AI does seem to factor in restriction lifting, like it wont farm rainy in the early game.

It's almost cetain that the AI is incapable of performing cost/benefit analysis, the following experiment does indicate part of the madness behind the AI's method:
First, edit Alphax.txt and make forests really good. Say 3-3-3 and 1 turn to plant. The AI will now plant forest wherever it can in favor of farms/mines, altough it will not make it a priority over roads or sensors, it'll happily go around linking up bases with roads before planting the uber 1 turn forests.
Now edit the Forest so it takes 50 turns to plant. The AI still happily goes around planting forest in favor of farms... ofcourse the chance of the forest ACTUALLY getting planted is pretty slim...

Also if you give forests base stats the same as Hybrid forest, ie 3-2-2, then the AI will plant lots of it. It will not plant anywhere near as much around a base with treefarm and hybrid using unmodded rules, in other words it's incapable of recognizing facility bonuses properly, if at all.

One of the best solutions I've seen was in SNAC, changing forest to 1-2-0, 2 turns to plant, formers available at the start to everyone, and the only intial terraforming plant forest, drill to aquaduct and build road. Then other stuff like farms, mines, sensors, solar panels came later in the tech tree. Base tiles were changed to 3-0-2 (IIRC) to improve the energy situation sans forest energy & solars, while impairing ICS. It all worked out rather well.

[smacfan]

Pardon a newb question -- SNAC? Did you mean SMAC?

In any case, is the mod you described already available somewhere, or was that a private mod? Sounds like fun to play.

[binTravkin]

Pardon a newb question -- SNAC? Did you mean SMAC?

SNAC is a mod for SMAC!

[Blake]

I'm not sure if SNAC is hosted anywhere anymore, anyway I uploaded the SNAC zip to poly. It's a little over 1meg.

[smacfan]

Thanks, that would be the Modpack labeled "ShiNing1's Alpha Centauri v1.2", from the SMAC page here, correct?