Does the AI ever build boreholes?

[chuft]

I have never seen the AI build a borehole or a condensor or an echelon mirror, in SMAC or SMAX.

In a friend's game, he has seen the Drones and Morgan build boreholes and condensors in SMAX. I saw his saved game and they are there.

I am trying to get to the bottom of this, since I would like more challenging AI opponents. How do I get the AI to build these improvements?

He did not choose "More Aggressive AI" either.

Thanks.

[Sarxis]

The AI is notorious for being bad terraformers.

Someone else on here will probably have better information concerning the specifics of what makes the AI build certain improvements.

[Mart]

Hi, you could try challenge scenarios. there are some here on Apolyton or CGN forum:

http://www.civgaming.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=4

There are various ways to improve AI. The best are preparing scenarios where AI is given bonuses or editing files, faction files or alpha/alphax.txt
Some mods are improving AI also, the ones I remember are Aldebaran and SMAniaC

[Hydro]

I can’t remember the AI building boreholes. As Sarxis says, the AI is terrible at terraforming, with Farm+Mine being a terrible but common combination.

The SMAniaC mod goes a long way to fixing this problem by making Mines come later in the tech tree, so the AI can’t plop them all over the place in its initial terraforming. The AI then builds more sensible terraforming, such as forests and farm+solar. In particular, seeing the AI regularly build forests is huge since the forests spread and are one of the best bets for early terraforming choices. SMAniaC mod also gives the AI a cheap (1 row of minerals instead of 2) “AI former” that has free fungicidal enhancement – this means the AI has terraforming at the start of the game and less likely to be hobbled by fungus. SMAniaC also re-does the tech tree and makes other strategies (such as Green) truly viable, and it spreads out the Projects in a thoughtful way. It’s like a new game in many ways. I haven’t played the Aldebaran mod in a long time so I don’t recall how that mod addresses terraforming.

As Mart notes, the scenarios are a great place to rev up your SMAC skills. Give them a try.

Hydro

[Sarxis]

I need to check out those mods.. I am very interested in improving the AI on top of my own personal mod.

[CEO Aaron]

The unmodified AI not only never builds boreholes, it will terraform over them if you gift them a base that has any in its radius.

[Sarxis]

I suspect that it was too difficult to program proper borehole use into the AI.. boreholes have specific requirements and placement issues, as well as contribute a great deal of eco-damage.

It would not suprise me if the devs had to deal with the AI this way.

[BlackCat]

At a point when I have too many formers (well, not too many, I just get lazy ) I switch most of them to autoimprove home base, and they certainly can and do build boreholes - if they can, then the other factions formers can too.

[RedFred]

I agree with BlackCat. I've seen the AI do it although it is rare. Last time I saw it, AI Morgan put a borehole down in the jungle he owned. I've never seen it in SMACX only vanilla SMAC.

There is basically two different AI. The one that never seems to do much (when you are ahead) and the one that can occasionally surprise you (when you are at parity or losing to the AI).

If you haven't experienced AI chop & drop, AI boreholes, AI teleport thingy (psi gates?) or even AI satellite wars then you haven't played enough challenges. Challenges often put you well behind on the power chart for much or all of the game.

[RedFred]

I should clarify that I NEVER use the autoformer feature unless required to do so by the terms of a challenge.

[Nims]

Apologies for the Thread Necromancy but this fits here best:

I've just seen Yang build a Borehole in SMAX. Got him to surrender pretty early on and let him live in his small corner. He seemed to get some basic terraforming going so didn't bother helping him. Now that I've contained Sparta I was looking at The Hive to see what he was doing and lo and behold there's a Borehole

So many years and this game still manages to surprise me

[gwillybj]

I've played a lot of solo games on various map sizes and I've seen all seven of the SMAC factions use all of the advanced terraforming in both SMAC and SMAX. I can't recall the SMAX human factions doing it - not saying they didn't, just not remembering it - but the Progenitors do.

[Darsnan]

I've occasionally seen boreholes in AI's territory, but I've never actually seen an AI building a borehole: I've always thought that it was a corruption of the map tile which was causing it, rather than the AI actually building a borehole.


D

[Nims]

Well, I just looked through the Auto-Saves and found one where he had a former on that square with the build borehole order. So definitely no map corruption.

[CEO Aaron]

Not only have I never seen the AI build a borehole, in a game where I used the Scenario Editor to switch places with the lowest rated faction, and the AI, after taking over my pristinely terraformed paradise, paved over my forests, condensers and boreholes to plant its farm/solar trailer park.