SMAC 444 (AI experiment)

[kittenOFchaos]

In terms of balance...mind worm harvesting as Gaia is rather too good lol.

[kittenOFchaos]

Believers are so keen on boats they have two of them in their capital alone. Somehow they're getting 2 unhappy per boat and so there capital is a mess.

[kyrub]

Somehow they're getting 2 unhappy per boat and so there capital is a mess.

Hmmm. Free market socio, but for the believers? I have seen Lal with same problem, but I thought it was a one-off.

It seems I inadvertently nudged the AI towards a mistake. The tech beeline to Industrial Automation leads to Industrial Economics, and the AI switches immediately to early free market. Dumb. - Very bad.

[kyrub]

AI is still able to build cities super-close.

In my tests I have seen nothing like this. Anyway, this feature is already half way out of the patch. My intention was to force the AI to cover more ground, but many times it does not serve well. Next release.

[kittenOFchaos]

AI - it may be beelining, but this causes a problem. I'm able to trade a B1 tech for Fusion for example as a result.

The beelining means some very tasty trades for humans.

[kittenOFchaos]

In terms of balance...mind worm harvesting as Gaia is rather too good lol.

Perhaps it should cause sanctions to use mind worms etc against humans...

[kyrub]

Gaian harvesting is a dumb feature of the game (for me), blind alley. It's funny first time, then it takes all the challenge from the game. I never play harvesting Gaians.

There is a probability mechanism that makes the harvesting unlikely the more worms you own. One easy way is to make the mechanism much more strict. Another way would be to not let "worms induce worms" in fungus, which would reduce harvesting to more hazarduous situations (I like the second one better.) As for attrocities, mind worms are anything but atrocious in SMAC, to count as one.

[kittenOFchaos]

Hmm. It isn't running today for whatever reason. Weird.

Until I put it in the SMAC folder. Didn't need to do that yesterday.

[kittenOFchaos]

AI doesn't seem to go for airpower as much. But, I've just spotted that Yang is about to go nuclear already. Far sooner than I'd expect!

Update: Yang has one fission planet buster with a second on the way. The Believers are eating through his territory...I wonder if Yang will resort to his planet buster against them, or his many other enemies.

Update: The AI are expanding well overseas. The University are only alive because of this as their homeland was taken by Yang. Yang has lost University base to the Peacekeepers who had to do an sea-bourne invasion for this.

With my bug testing, it has to be said I'm using a slightly modified alpha.txt to stop sea bases (which are annoying) and made most SPs more expensive. Also removed mine penalty (food) to help AI. I also made all AI take a stronger interest in power so they'd build more military.

[kyrub]

Oops. I uploaded a bad file, incredible! That's what happens when you finish your work at 4 in the morning.

kitten, to let the patch work, you need to:
- copy the smac_444_j.exe to SMAC folder
- rename + overwrite it to terran.exe

I will post correct file later.
(Incredible. My apologies.)

[Petek]

kyrub,

First, let me say how appreciative I am of your work to improve the AI. I played a couple partial games with your patch, and also ran several all-AI games using the scenario editor. I haven't played SMAC for many years, only SMAX. Perhaps some of my observations reflect my unfamiliarity with SMAC.

Terraforming - To be honest, I don't see any difference in how the AI terraforms. Still lots of farms + solar collectors, not many forests. If you could document what changes you made to the terraforming routines, perhaps we could make some suggestions.

Crawlers -- Better, but not enough to help the AI. It seems that the AI builds more crawlers, but they're still not very good at using them. Here's how I see the AI using crawlers: If a base is building a SP, the crawler is sent to that base and cached in. That is reasonable behavior. If the AI isn't building a SP, the crawler will be sent to a nut, min or energy special and will harvest nuts, mins or energy as appropriate. However, the AI won't send a former to improve the tile to increase the harvested factor of production. Also, if the AI subsequently starts to work on a SP, the crawler will stop harvesting the FoP and will be cached in to build the SP. What's needed is more intelligence about which FoP to harvest (early, mins are usually better, later nuts and energy are better) and coordination with terraforming.

ETA: In a current game, I see a crawler working a rocky tile that was mined and roaded. The tile isn't within any base's radius, so it appears that the AI did coordinate terraforming with a crawler!

Base spacing -- I agree with the other comments that the AI should be allowed to build bases closer together. Even in the unpatched version, they tend to spread their bases out.

Early Formers and Recycling Tanks -- This seems to work well.

Here are some suggestions for improving the AI:

1. Formers should plant more forests.
2. The AI defends poorly against Probe Teams. They should station their own Probe Team in bases.
3. As far as I can tell, the AI never (or almost never) initiates combat against native life. They therefore lose the combat bonus against land-based native life.
4. The AI loses lots of Colony Pods to native life. I think that this happens because their routing routines send them through fungus, when a fungus-free (but possibly longer) path is available.
5. The AI needs to be more intelligent about building Colony Pods. They will build more CPs than can possibly fit on their land mass. The CPs then just sit around and use up minerals.
6. Some factions, especially Morgan, never seem to found enough bases, even though plenty of space is available. The Hive, the Spartans and the Believers usually found lots of bases. The other factions should emulate that.
7. When Bioengineering is discovered, the AI should build more clean garrison units and clean formers.
8. Along those same lines, the AI builds too many non-clean garrisons in bases that will never be attacked. This uses up minerals that could be used to build more useful units and facilities.

Does any of this sound like something you could do? Thanks again.

Petek

[kyrub]

Hi Petek, thanks for feedback.
First off, this is a small info I posted somewhere else:

Terraforming: the AI should be able to make a good use of the basic LAND terraforming, e.g. farms, solars, mines. Yes, and FORESTS too, a lot of them. No more mine_farms or bare solar collectors. I am not responsible for anything beyond that (roads, sensors, boreholes etc.). To test it, try automating your own formers (shift + A). It is not perfect, but overall pretty good. Suggestion for improvement are welcome.

Technology bee lines - I made a very strong link to Centauri ecology for everyone. I made another link to Industrial Automation (crawlers). This seems to backfire so far, since many AIs go for Free market early because of that.

Unit design - Cleared a lot of illogical stuff. More clean units for AI, some unused abilities should show up from time to time, deep pressure, cloacked, blink units and some more. Some other surprises, which hopefully come up. (Tried to put Trance on defenders, but it somehow does not work.)

Crawlers - much improved chance, hopefully.
Speeders - got a big building advantage bonus over infantry.

[kyrub]

Here is the terraforming algorithm I did employ.
The second section is dedicated to special terrain bonuses.
FOR stands for forests, M/ R is mine + road, F / S you get the idea. 1k, 2k, 3k indicates the altitude bonus when over 1000, 2000, 3000 meters.

(I am surprised that you miss forests, I see a good number of them in my testgames.)

ARID
1) arid + flat = FOR
2) arid + rolling + 2k = FOR
3) arid + rolling + 3k = F / S
4) arid + rocky = M / R


MOIST
1) moist + flat + 1k = FOR
1) moist + flat + 2k = F / S
3) moist + rolling = F / S
4) moist + rocky + 2k = M / R
5) moist + rockx + 3k = S

RAINY
1) flat = S / F
2) rolling = S / F
3) rocky +1k = M / R
4) rocky + 2k = S

------------------------------

MINERAL
1) arid + flat or rolling = FOR
2) arid + rocky = M / R
3) moist + flat / rolling = F / S
5) moist rocky = M/R
6) rainy flat / rolling = S / F
7) rainy rocky = M / R


NUTRI
1) arid + rolling + 3k = F / S
2) any other arid = FOR
3) moist + flat + 2k = FOR
4) moist + flat + 3k = F / S
5) moist + rocky = FOR
6) moist + rolling = S / F
7) rainy flat / rolling = F / S
8) rainy rocky = M / R


ENERGY
1) flat + arid / rolling = FOR
2) flat + moist + 3k = F / S
3) flat + moist + 2k = FOR
4) rocky + arid / moist = FOR (M /R *)
5) moist + rolling = F / S
6) rainy + rolling = F / S
7) rainy + rocky = S only

[kyrub]

Comments...

Crawlers -- Better, but not enough to help the AI. It seems that the AI builds more crawlers, but they're still not very good at using them.
....
ETA: In a current game, I see a crawler working a rocky tile that was mined and roaded. The tile isn't within any base's radius, so it appears that the AI did coordinate terraforming with a crawler!

So far I did try to change the building frequency. Believe me, that was quite hard itself. If ever I understand how (and where) the AI uses them, I certainly can try some of your suggestions. Coordination - if there's any, it was there in the original. SMAC AI should not be underestimated, it's pretty complex. They should have tested it more, that's all.

Base spacing -- I agree with the other comments that the AI should be allowed to build bases closer together. Even in the unpatched version, they tend to spread their bases out.

OK. I've actually seen the Hive claim much bigger territory than before, but other factions are rather badly affected.

Suggestions...

1. Forests - see above algorithm.
2. Probe team defenders - once we understand how AI moves (OWUHAM, and that is one big ONCE as it may never happen). Even then it won't be simple. And there are more quirks to probe movement, arn't they? Like: to stop moving 2 squares away from enemy / city. That would be awesome.
3. and 4. native life - AI does initiate combat but seems to be quite shy. Yes, Colony pods are moving stupidly. When damaged they go all the route back to repair. OWUHAM
5. Nr of Colony Pods - can be adressed.
6. Factions nr of bases - can be adressed. By the way, look at the socio numbers of factions. About 85% of what AI does is guided by those little "-1,0, 1, 0, 1". About 10% is due to other faction settings. Kudos to Firaxis for making a flexible AI in a 1998 game !!
7. clean garrison units and clean formers. - Note taken, although I slightly prefer ECM / AAA because it is foolproof. I could probably make some trance / clean variant, though. Or clean patrol. Clean formers are attainable.

[kittenOFchaos]

So I've been basically testing my alpha.txt editing?

Well, I'm not sure why the AI in my current game was beelining so much that I could sell dead cheap techs for expensive ones.

I really like not having sea-bases in my game, that is for certain.

Will try to actually test your work on Sunday and I've also let my brother know. I'm pretty excited by this if you are able to make some significant and worthwhile changes to what I consider to be the best of the Civ-esq series of games in terms of atmosphere and options.