balancing the Morgans for the AI

[Dis]

perhaps this should go in the creation forum, but I'll put it here. I'm not really creating a faction, I just want to do a little modification to make them more competitive. While a human player can excell with them, the AI cannot. They get stomped in every single game. I cannot recall a game in which they survived and did well.

If anyone has a save game of a dominant Morgan, I'd like to see it.

But it's not just them, all the peaceful factions suffer in my games. Except perhaps the University. Their tech keeps them in it. Though they still frequently get stomped. Occasionally the peacekeepers and gaians will do well.

So basically my question is how to balance the "peaceful" factions to make them copetitive in the middle and end game. I get bored of my end games being the same. This is why I'm asking this.

My last 2 games had the drones become the most dominant faction. Especially in terms of size. They were even larger than me. Much, much larger in fact. I'm tired of dealing with the same warmonger factions that continuously declare war on me. I thought it would be different to compete with the Morganites.

As a side note, is there any way to make the factions less likely to go to war with you?

And there is one "war" factions that needs beefing. The Spartans. Another faction that never amounts to anything by the late mid game late game.

[Blake]

The AI has huge problems with Support, because they build too many junk units and have low mineral outputs. They also have huge problems with drones under free market. No wonder the AI sucks with Morgan.

If you want to make an AI faction for Morgan, that reduces his weaknesses while leaving some, I suggest something like this:
Remove the -1 Support.
Add Free Clean Reactors.
Add a free former.
Add robust police.

If you want Hardcore morgan give Impunity Free Market (or Immunity Police if you want him to fight Psi fair), and free treefarms, possibly free fusion labs too.

For Spartans:
Add a free former.
Add +1 Support.
Add Impunity Power.

For more hardcore sparta give impunity Police State too, then (assuming the silly wench runs it) she'll have permament +3 police and support.

***

General boosts which are good for all AI factions:
To cover their weaknesses:
Give a Free Former, this is essential as the AI usually(!) wont build a former for 30 turns, and often(!) for up to 70 turns.
Reduce severity of SUPPORT and POLICE penalties they must face. (-1 Police doesn't matter, but remove it if you run out of room for new bonuses)
Grant them Impunity or robustness to their favorite SE, unless it's got a "combat weakness", such as Knowledges probe weakness, Free Markets police weakness, Wealths morale etc... In this case give them something else.
Give free Clean Reactors if they don't have support bonuses, otherwise their minerals WILL get locked up in support.
If they should run Green atleast sometimes, give robust growth to encourage them to run it.
Possibly reduce agressivness one level. Reccomended for Miriam, Zak, not reccomended for Spartans. Others depend on taste, basically use of force SOMETIMES for warmongers, NO for builders. Note this will make them really easy to mass pact... but they also wont be infighting as much.

For more Hardcore AI factions:
Give Free Rec tanks (without tech!). This is a massive boost to their performance across the board.
Give another free facility (with tech!) that makes sense, Tree Farms (or even Hybrid Forest) for econonic/green factions, genejacks for industrial, possibly bioenhancment for warmongers but they might be better off with genejacks or some other production booster. If you want add another (economic) later, such as Fusion Labs. Don't bother with non-economic, as AI's are always in the war mindset by that point so will probably build wartime facilities.
Make sure they never have to face drone problems, one option to bring AI drone control up to human level is to give them +8 police.
Give impunity, robustness or immunity on more non-military penalties.

Generally don't bother with bonuses to industry or research as they already get those in spades. They also get a lot of free drone control (but nowhere near enough to handle free market or late game drone issues), but you might consider some +talent and more drone control for an AI that can GA in many bases.

Remember, whatever bonuses you give the AI, they are still impaired by their crummy terraforming, bad tatics and poor judgement....

[Darsnan]

Re: balancing the Morgans for the AI

Originally posted by Dissident
So basically my question is how to balance the "peaceful" factions to make them competitive in the middle and end game. I get bored of my end games being the same. This is why I'm asking this.

I asked this same question a couple of years ago, which led me down the road to becoming a SMAC(X) CMN. You ask similar very good, and very valid questions. Are you interested in becoming a CMN? If not, are you interested in being experimented on by us?

D

[Quezacotl06]

what's cmn?

ai problems 4 war could be solved by being more specific. "Conquer" is too broad a term. It could be divided into "conventional", "PSI", and "Probe" Each is conquer, but in ways that favor the type (ie, conventional makes u build production facilites, PSI makes u build mworms, biology labs etc, Probe makes u build probes, convert ops, economy-boosting facilities, etc.) Not exclusive, just favoring.

Morgan can be probe, Gaians can be PSI, Peacekeepers can be all 3, Yang, Sparta, and Miram are all conventional, etc. It allows their advantages and edges in certain combat modes to be more synergetic.

[Darsnan]

Originally posted by Quezacotl06
what's cmn?

CMN are the people that set up PBEM games for other players, as well as the ones who typically build Single Player Challenges .

Originally posted by Quezacotl06
ai problems 4 war could be solved by being more specific. "Conquer" is too broad a term. It could be divided into "conventional", "PSI", and "Probe" Each is conquer, but in ways that favor the type (ie, conventional makes u build production facilites, PSI makes u build mworms, biology labs etc, Probe makes u build probes, convert ops, economy-boosting facilities, etc.) Not exclusive, just favoring.

Actually there are controls for these options in the Scenario Designer section of the game.
Oh yeah, and you forgot one option: "Commit Atrocities Wantonly"!


D

[Dis]

Originally posted by Quezacotl06
what's cmn?

ai problems 4 war could be solved by being more specific. "Conquer" is too broad a term. It could be divided into "conventional", "PSI", and "Probe" Each is conquer, but in ways that favor the type (ie, conventional makes u build production facilites, PSI makes u build mworms, biology labs etc, Probe makes u build probes, convert ops, economy-boosting facilities, etc.) Not exclusive, just favoring.

Morgan can be probe, Gaians can be PSI, Peacekeepers can be all 3, Yang, Sparta, and Miram are all conventional, etc. It allows their advantages and edges in certain combat modes to be more synergetic.

yes morgan should be probe. maybe give them free probes and such.

[kraftplax]

A lot of the outcome seems to depend upon where the factions start out. I've had dominant Morgans (moreso than me - until I resorted to nuclear war and invaded the drones), who had a lot of space to develop. They started out on the uranium flats/garland crater island, and were either alone, or shared it with one faction, which they may have defeated in war.

If peaceful civilizations are given room they can become quite strong, and more annoying than others, as they can build wonders of the world faster than you.

[Dis]

they seem to expand so slowly. Even in my last game, which was only a "test" game (see the score percentages thread). They remained alive the entire game though. Because they started next to me. . I thought about wiping them off the face of the earth ealry in the game, but they gave me 225 gold not to. It's nice having a peaceful faction as a neighbor for a change.

Eventually they did build a few cities, I didn't allow them much room to build anyways. They kept pushing back my borders so my closest city could not utilize all its squares.

[Clear Skies]

I've seen my flatmate play a game on the Ultimate Builder Map (bless you DilithiumDad), which isn't exactly devoid of expansional opportunities. Morgan started on a continent all to himself. When she discovered him, he had four bases. When she finished the game, he had...four bases.

And this is a faction that has to expand to avoid running up against crippling hab complex restrictions. Perhaps flipping his priorities to Explore as well as Build might help; obviously it's not going to be a panacea, but he does need a kick in the direction of expansion, bless him.

[Dis]

yes, any good coroporation should want to expand to increase profits.

[Sikander]

I played a game a few days ago on the UBM where Morgan got to be pretty good sized, and without being located in the Jungle. But I agree that he like most of the AIs will more often than not quit growing at a small size even when there is great terrain available nearby within his own borders. Yang seems to be the best AI on average because he usually manages to expand (he isn't afraid to pack his bases close together which offers a lot of advantages and few disadvantages).

If I had to pick one modification which would have a positive impact on AI performance I would have to pick the presence of jungle. You might want to seed the AI start areas with jungle to give them a better chance. Second place goes to either uber support or free clean reactors.

[Dis]

hmm in my recent game last night I realized there's a faction that sucks even worse than the Morganites. Data Angels.

I've only had the expansion a few months, so it's taken me a while to see that they never do anything in any game ever. They actually did mind probe one of my bases early in the game, but I quickly took it back.

They were slaughtered by the Spartans.

I was playing earth map though, that may scew things. Spartans stared in the jungle, making them stronger.

The morganites actually surived until the end of the game! Mainly because they started in Australia and had the continent to themselves. But they kept declaring war on me, I ended up taking about 1/3 of their land cities to get them to truce. I tried ignoring them, but they pay other factions to go to war with me. It's tough battling the whole world at the same time. But I really had to wait until I had orbital insertion to clean them up. Sure I could have built transports, but I'm too lazy to use transports anymore.

I started in the desert, it took me a loooong time before I could dominate the game.

[Clear Skies]

...okay, my experience with the Angels is totally different In most games I play against them, they're the dominant AI faction; if not steamrollered early on by a momentum faction, I've seen Roze grow into quite the powerful faction. She often beats me to probability (not on my beelines) and can set up a nifty little empire if I let her.

[Flubber]

Idon't believe that anything other than very strong advantages can make the AI compete with a good human. I have played Darsnan's scenarios where he gives them loads of advantages and HUGE numerical superiority but will then march a hundred units into your prepared trap.


But the simplest fix for most AI is give them the clean ability. They will probably use that to build twice as many useless units but at least those useless units don't totally paralyze their industrial capacity

[fender]

Anyone tell me where I can get the builders map? Thanks