Editing the AI

[sammy1339]

Yes, I do find that changing the AI's social priorities can be helpful. However, I think that if the game encourages a player to make a choice other than his faction's natural preference that's more a fault in the SE choices, not the AI. In particular I disagree with your statement that no human player would play fundy with Miriam. I do, and I have squashed people that way. However I think it's true that Deirdre usually best chooses planned and Morgan best chooses Green, so I modified my rules such that this was not so. I also find that giving Deirdre Green, EFFIC instead of Green, PLANET makes her play Democratic politics. In addition to that I make the ai choices 1,1,1,1 for Santiago and Yang, 1,1,0,1 for Miriam, and 0,1,1,1 for everybody else. I find this produces the best play.

Yet none of this prevents the AI from stockpiling colony pods or from making egregiously stupid terraforming choices or from failing to attack with air units or from building piles of useless military units that choke up all its production or from not rushing projects or from not pursuing important technologies or from building loads of military units while not developing infrastructure because somebody on another continent took a potshot at their former 30 turns ago.

[binTravkin]

then miriam would be a challange?

Miriam on Monsoon with a popboom ability as I described above is challenge herself.
And if you give her AAA and ECM abilities for free, it'll be hard time beating her.
Try also adding Clean ability as a superior bonus to AIs stupid unit stockpiling habit.

If you want to test it out, I will soon be presenting a game here on Poly and also on CGN where you will see how it works live.
You will just need to sign up and get infiltration on AI.

[Chaos Theory]

IIRC, giving more than one free ability causes problems.

[GeoModder]

It does, at least if the AI is inclined on prototyping units with more then one ability.

In my experience, one ability is omitted if you give a faction 2 for free, and load up a unit with 2 abilities in the workshop.

[binTravkin]

By my expierence it just keeps them from protoing 8e^-3-1 units or some similar crapload..

[Googlie]

Originally posted by binTravkin
The most obvious thing in AIs stupidity is it's preset stupid ideology. It is of course characteristic for Mim to take Fundy, but no human player would do it.

Strongly, strongly disagree.

In ACDG3 we (Sparta) ran Fundy for 25 years or so - was crucial in getting our units to Elite for our probe operations as well as the Morgan HQ raid. That extra movement point for our amphirovers was what made it a successful raid (notwithstanding that we self-destructed the units to avoid them falling into Morgan hands)

So for a faction geared to be a momentum, militaristic faction, such as the Believers, Fundy makes a lot of sense. It's only when players try to modify them to be builders that it ceases to be appropriate.

Of a builders' battle is wanteed, why not just make 2 University clones and 2 Morgan clones?

G.

[Kirov]

Fundie is great, but you have to know how to use it, which is one thing AI sucks at. AI-Miriam setting Fundie usually means just she will hopelessly lag behind in research forever...

[binTravkin]

Okay I may have not phrased it right.

I think most players, even hardcore momentum strategists will usually take other SE choice while not at war.

It is actually done by most AIs as well. Even Lal sometimes goes out of his Demo and into Fundy if he feels really pressed.

So more realistic it would be if a factions' usual choice would not be fundy, but it will take it in a case of war.

Also AIs are a lot less capable of "HQ raids" and other cool strategistic stuff, and they do not plan their units to be Elite, they just build them not even looking if the base doing it has CommandCenter + BioEnhCenter for maxed out morale.

And generally I think that making Believers run Demo by default and Fundy in war will make them do better not only as Builders but as Momentum as well.

[binTravkin]

BTW did Sparta run Power at any moment in this ACDG?

[zsozso]

Originally posted by Kirov
Fundie is great, but you have to know how to use it, which is one thing AI sucks at. AI-Miriam setting Fundie usually means just she will hopelessly lag behind in research forever...

That's exactly a mind-set question. If anybody (be it AI or human) plays Miriam, he/she/it should not try to gain techs by research - that's a builder strategy, not suitable for Miriam. When you are Miriam, you are supposed to gain technologies by stealing them rather than researching them! I.e. use Fundy to make strong probe teams and catch up with tech without spending resources on research. Just think about the saving in ECs and minerals if you don't allocate ECs to research (all to economy, or maybe some to psych) and don't waste minerals on research boosting base facilities.

In terms of bad SE choices, I see the AI often trying to balance out things so that no measures are too deeply negative. While this maybe a nice ideal, it lacks purpose. Humans will more focus in certain short term goals at a time, e.g. when you need to get a certain tech quick, you will max out research even at the cost of other things (police, ecology, morale etc.) going deep negative. On the other hand if you are planning an invasion, you will max-out morale at the cost of industry, research etc. The problem with the AI is that it is lacking such a campaign-style focused settings. It does everything in a react-ve manner, i.e. if it has problems with something than it may try to fix it, but it will never "think ahead" and purposely set SE choices or unit/facility production in order to reach a specific short term goal more efficiently.

This is because the AI is lost in the details , each city and unit makes decisions in isolation rather than being directed by global strategic decisions. That's the same reason why it does not make well planned, coordinated attacks.

[Googlie]

zsozso !!!!!!!

[Kirov]

zsozso, I meant exactly what you said: that problems with research are the _only_ effect of AI believers running Fundie. She will not use Probes to catch up with research, use Morale bonus to her advantage, and so on.

If I set Fundie, I definitely don't use it to pursue Builder tactics.

[zsozso]

Originally posted by Kirov
zsozso, I meant exactly what you said: that problems with research are the _only_ effect of AI believers running Fundie. She will not use Probes to catch up with research, use Morale bonus to her advantage, and so on.

If I set Fundie, I definitely don't use it to pursue Builder tactics.

I am sorry I misunderstood you...

Master Googlie!
It is good to see you are still smacing away happily!

[binTravkin]

She will not use Probes to catch up with research, use Morale bonus to her advantage, and so on.

And this was exactly the reason I proposed to change her Social agenda.