Forest/Fungus Mods

[Yxklyx]

I was thinking of making mods to alphax.txt to make the game more interesting and was wondering if anyone's tried this (SP in mind):

I. Forests

a. Remove the energy from forest (1-2-0). With Tree Farm you get 2-2-0 and with Hybrid Forest you get 3-2-1. AI doesn't really go the forest way - might make it harder to beat.

II. Fungus

a. Remove some or all of the fungus improvements with tech advances.

b. Give Cult of Planet a significant bonus in fungus to make it viable for them to have a fungus-only strategy from the start. Perhaps give them a penalty in some other area.


The AI should be able to handle the Forest change but Fungus Boy might not know what to do with the fungus advantage but it might be playable for a human player.

[Shai-Hulud]

Forests are perhaps little too useful. I guess the forest improving facilities explain the effectiveness. Hybrid forest combines the genetically engineered forest with fungus. It can't be anything but efficient But the AI doesn't make much use of the forest.

I've always wanted Fungus to play more important role in the game and giving Gaian's and Cult some more significant bonuses might do the trick.

If you get it done I'd be interested try it out.

[Yxklyx]

Some problems...it looks you can't give a faction more than one of the FUNG abilities - the others are ignored. One new idea I have is to give Planet Cult the Secrets of the Manifold (D13) right from the start! Reduce the cost of the SP so they can build it early. I fear though that the AI won't play a good game in the fungus.


As for the AI and Forests, I saw something that looked odd in the alphax.txt file that I need to check tonight. Is it possible that the AI is being prevented from planting Forests because of a setting in the alphax.txt file? Why does the AI Farm flat arid squares?!?!


I think removing the energy from forests would really improve SP games and make them more challenging. The AI should not be hurt by this.

[Shai-Hulud]

Some problems...it looks you can't give a faction more than one of the FUNG abilities - the others are ignored

That's an odd feature. I wonder what were they thinking.

I haven't really took a deep look into alpha.txt, just some minor changes, like making council available every 10 years. I'm really puzzled if it prevents AI from building a forest. The AI terraforming is very unsophisticated and an important reason for it's inferiority. The resources are the basis of any faction.

Computer wouldn't probably knew how to take full advantage of Fungus. But then again, It's not particulary goot at ANYTHING. So with these tools is it even possible to make AI act any smarter? The point is: It really doesn't take much advantage of any terrain - even less the Fungus.

[gwillybj]

a small request

Originally posted by Yxklyx
As for the AI and Forests, I saw something that looked odd in the alphax.txt file that I need to check tonight. Is it possible that the AI is being prevented from planting Forests because of a setting in the alphax.txt file? Why does the AI Farm flat arid squares?!?!

Would you mind quoting that item here, including which section it is in? I ask for two reasons:
I don't see anything in alpha.txt (SMAC 4.0) that looks like it prevents forest in arid, but...
I have seen a message while playing stating I could plant forest in any square that is neither rocky nor arid, yet, as we all know, we are not in fact prevented from planting forests in arid squares.

This may be a bug, allowing the human player to forest arid, but preventing the AI. If so, that is a huge advantage, and would merit adjusting the resource output in forest. Removing the energy does look like to most logical change . This is despite my need to heat my house with firewood, unless that would be considered minerals not energy?

Thanks.

[Shai-Hulud]

This may be a bug, allowing the human player to forest arid, but preventing the AI.

Kind of interesting since the arid squares are the best places to plant forest. That might explain it since AI is most probably programmed to get most out of any square. But I've heard a tip "plant forests to make arid squares productive" somewhere in the manual...or in the game. I doubt it, but it's interesting.

[Yxklyx]

Nope, misread alphax.txt; nothing in there of interest regarding the AI and forests.

[wheathin]

Forests: Check out the "Forest energy" thread in the main forum from December. The AI doesn't use forests because the AI doesn't KNOW about forest energy. The AI thinks forests are just 1,2,0 and thus doesn't think they are worth it. If you want to see an AI play with forests, you could create a "Chironian Forest Rangers" faction that gets Tree Farms at every base to start with.

As for fungboy, I gave him an extra Bio Lab free in every base. Makes him a bit stronger. Living off the fungus is tough - I think giving Cult the ability to build Manifold Harmonics early would be very powerful. The +2 PLANET means fungus starts off at 1,1,1, and since the Cult gets CentEco, that's another +1 nuts! Look out if they get the Nexus early...

[Yxklyx]

Too powerful? Maybe a little - that can be fixed by removing some other advantage. The AI probably won't take advantage of the situation anyway but for a human player it sounds interesting. Advantages are that if the base has fungus nearby, formers aren't needed. So, we have a faction where formers are not needed except to plant fungus and build roads. Movement can be tricky though since roads can't be built on fungus until later. Fungus will be 2-1-1 at the start, 2-1-2 once the Planet rating gets to 3. Give them some disadvatange to compensate.


Possible major problem is: can a faction learn the tech that comes after Secrets of the Manifold without learning everything else below it? I also noticed other factions wanting Secrets of the Manifold in trade, etc... For some reason the AI Cult would not build the Manifold Harmonics early on even with the low cost - will need to test more - don't want another faction to trade for the tech and build it. I bet the AI has no concept of how long a SP takes to build.

[wheathin]

Set the cost for the Manifold Harmonics to about 10 mins. Then set the AI-priorities for it a lot higher.

Fungboy has 1,1,0,0,1 priorities: Aggressive Conquer and Explore.
MH has -1,0,1,2,2 - a poor match (passive Discover Build)

Set the MH ai-priorities to 1,2,0,0,2. If that doesn't work, try 1,3,0,0,3.

[Yxklyx]

Thanks! Do you know if there'll be problems with factions being able to research beyond Secrets of the Manifold?

[wheathin]

SotM: It's just another tech. I think it leads to String Resonance, but SR has another pre-req that comes very late in the tech tree. There should be no problems - the Cult certainly won't Ascend on turn 17 if that's what you're worried about.

[Impaler[WrG]]

Diable Forests?

How about Disabling Forests completly and incressing the mineral output of a mine to +2 and removing its nutrient penalty.

Thus a mine/farm in a rolling moist square would net you 2 nutrients and 3 minerals, a very forest like output that the AI is cuttently getting 1, 2 for.

TreeFarms and Hybrid forest could be Renamed and have their costs adjusted to compensate, they would still provide several nice abilites to Pych and Econ.

[Impaler[WrG]]

Dose anyone know how to go about doing this? I have been fidaling around with the Reosorces outputs but I cant seem to get mines to produce more then 1 mineral bonus in flat and rolling and Rocky remains at 4.

I think we can all agree that the Mine is the weakest of all Terraforming options. It takes a very long 8 turns to make, nets you ZERO production (-1 nut, +1 min) in a square thats being farmed. Its only usefullness is in Crawling 4 minerals from rocky squares. But becasuse most Rocky squares are high in elevation they are much more efficiently leveled, farmed and Solar Collected which can net you upwards of 8 total production in the late game.

If I could get mines to give 2 minerals then they would become very atractive for low elivation mid and early game. If anyone has any good ideas please post them, I have been having a rotten time altering resorces
(I suspect their hard Coded)

[Rubin]

An interesting observation, Impaler[WrG] Increasing the mine output automatically increases the output of farms and solar collectors. The only interesting option seems to be eliminating the -1 nutrient production from mined squares (in the #RULES section).

The problem, as I see it, is that the AI uses the farm/mine combo extensively -- effectively crippeling the AI's resource output. I find the normal use of mines in rocky squares (4 minerals) quite effective when using supply crawlers. Increasing this mineral output to 5 or maybe even 6 may make the game very unbalanced, IMO.

I'm currently working on a Guide to editing the alpha/x.txt file. If you are interested, I can send you a copy of the version 0.4b. Maybe you have some interesting points to add. Feel free to send me a PM.