Fungus bonuses for factions

[Mart]

Recently I tried to experiment with giving factions bonuses of:
FUNGNUTRIENT
FUNGMINERALS
FUNGENERGY

I noticed that when an AI faction has too many of these, it plants fungus like crazy. I guess, it just optimizes the gain from a tile before planting the fungus and after. I would like to give some AI factions a bons by it, however such as the fungus is not the only choice for terraforming in late game - what happens if you give too many/much of this.

When I gave just
FUNGENERGY, 2
AI does not use it at all in early game. I guess there is a balance there, that AI uses it early, but later does not plant fungus.

Is nutrient gain here the most important? E.g. I can give:
FUNGMINERALS, 3
FUNGENERGY, 3
and AI will use it early, but not later?

Any experience? I would not have to repeat some path someone else did already.
Thank you!

[binTravkin]

Well, I did not really get your question but regarding the "priorities of resources" for AI:

1.Early game (I guess there's some hardcoded number when it ends, could be first 70 turns) - Nutrients and Minerals (energy is almost ignored, if there's choice 2-1-1 and 2-2-0, AI will take the latter).

2.Mid game(lasts till some 2220 or so) - Energy becomes more and more important but still you'll see strange cases with AI choosing mins over energy.

3.Late game (usually never appears in MP) - AI seems to put erqual priorities to all resources.
It also tends to use more ECONOMY and EFFIC at SE (like going FM at last).


I doubt AI will use 0-3-3 at anytime.
2+-*-* squares seem to be of much higher value to them, sometimes they would choose 1-*-*, but only if other bonuses are big..
You could experiment with extreme Min and Energy values, there's some threshold at which AI will choose a zero nut square, the threshold could be 0-5-5, because AI takes boreholes although unwillingly.

[Maniac]

In the SMAniaC mod centauri techs give fungal boni earlier than in the standard game. I've seen the Cult and Gaians plant a couple fungus tiles, but I've also seen them defungus those same tiles a while later...

[Mart]

Interesting finds. Then for early game combining minerals and energy can make AI to use fungus.

For me it appears that not giving nutrient fungus bonus does not force AI into fungus planting. Gaians might do it anyway, as well as Cult.

BinTravkin, thank you for the insight. Actually, if you take a closer look into some games, that have AI boosted like giving nutrient bonuses, AI then more willingly chooses squares without nutrients. Having an AI on a mine doing 0-4-0 or 0-7-0 is often possible. It is exactly as you say, nutrients are most important. If AI has them provided in other way than workers on tiles, it seems it can place workers on other tiles with no nutrients. Nutrient satellites are good, however, I know that there are events destroying them:
- minerals - meteorite hits Nessus moon
- energy - solar flares on alpha centaui star destroy satellites
- Is there something like that for nutrients?

Maniac, it is a good thing that AI can plant fungus and then harvest it. I would like to find some balance between having fungus squares and those with farms or forests. i can see now, that it will require some work checking tile bonusses with terraforming. Then the amounts of fungus bonusses may be shown as to which are in the balance. I remember seeing some work on similar stuff, was it SMAC Academy or else? Excell spreadsheet should be the best for this work

[Mart]

I tried recently
FUNGNUTRIENT, 1
FUNGENERGY, 5

In early game, AI still prefers having +1 mineral, than having +5 energy.
So:
1-1-0 wins over:
1-0-5
However, like within first 30 turns, a faction in fungus reach areas got, after Centauri Ecology, and not free market lowering planet rating to get fungus harvesting for: 2-0-5. And this is what I wanted to achieve. AI have better economy by that even if only few bases really use it.

And here I wonder, if giving:
FUNGMINERALS, 1
FUNGENERGY, 5
would be then superior. It does not occupy more slots of that precious 8 limitted bonuses, just replaces one.
Instead of AI placing a worker on moist, rolling tile for:
1-1-0
it get from fungus when having Centauri Ecology and not Free Market;
1-1-5

Fungnutrient, 5, is still to be determined, as I said, I would like to avoid mass fungus planting by AI

[Mart]

FUNGMINERALS, 1
FUNGENERGY, 5

Not quite what I wanted to get. Morganities at some point went from Free Market into Simple and started planting fungus. I wonder if the minerals is causing this or just large energy bonus. If Morgan resigned from Free Market, then it might point to energy, but also without minerals some 1-0-5 might be not sufficient for fungus planting.

[binTravkin]

I think if you tune it down to 0-1-4 Morgan won't be acting so stupidly and 4 is still a good bonus.

[Mart]

Having
FUNGMINERALS, 1
FUNGENERGY, 5
Morgan started to plant fungus even when in Free Market. For short time he even was happy with some tiles with fungus being worked as 3 energy only, then from Democracy-Free Market he switched to Fundamentalist-Simple.

There is however a small detail, which might cause this behaviour. In the scenario I tested it, in 2159 Morgan was able to attempt to corner global energy market for merely a bit less than 1500 EC. He got into vendetta with near Hive. The social engineering change was made by Morgan in 2168-2169. In 2174 Yang took over Morgan Industries and the attempt failed. Just 5 turns before the "deadline" Both Morgan and Hive are AI in this scenario. The change might be thus made to better defend against threat of the Hive.

However, planting of fungus is evident, as Morgan even in Free Market did it for a tile
6-1-2
after switching to simple he got:
1-1-6

[binTravkin]

6-1-2?

As, I said, tune it down a little to avoid this strange behaviour.

[Mart]

I think I may have this around right. Soon I'll post a scenario with other stuff. Thank you for input.

And with some other setup of bonusses, other factions seem to go to Fundamentalist governments quite often. It seems for better morale effects. Gaians, Morgan. Hive initially on Police State- Free market, resigned to Simple. Is it for vendetta purposes? quite possible.

[Mart]

Some new finds based on recent experiments, in Nexus and Deimos.

So I gave FUNGUSENERGY, 4 --- to several factions, and while in some cases it was ok, I mean AI was using it, still making a lot of other terraforming than planting fungus, after a while I found that when balance of needed minerals changes, e.g. AI needs a bit less minerals from the field, having for example more minerals from satellites, then it starts to plant fungus again. Large fungus energy is like that. It is also quite powerful source of energy in later game, when AI having more population puts many workers on fungus tiles.

At present I would more decrease fungus bonusses to maybe FUNGUSENERGY, 2 --- then give it to only Planet Cult or Gaians. More for playstyle (ideology) purpose with a bit of bonus for these factions.

I have some other ideas, as for how to boost AI energy. There are actually some quite nice ways. >>> Nexus 2 experiment.

[Blake]

The AI will actually choose sub-optimal worker placement.

For example something like a treefarm+ bunch of forest tiles and then some condensors and boreholes. The AI will prefer the well-rounded forest tiles, while a mix of condensors and boreholes will give higher Minerals, Nuts AND energy! There would be no comprimise in shifting their workers to the specialized tiles but they won't. The AI is just plain stupid.