RE: AI Improvement Mod (1.05 Extended Release)

RE: AI Improvement Mod (1.05 Extended Release) (Full Version)

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ASHBERY76 -> RE: AI Improvement Mod (1.05 Extended Release) (7/5/2015 3:22:49 PM)
I'm not convinced that the A.I empires being overly aggressive actually help them at all.Logic suggests fighting a 10 front war is not good option for the A.I that already struggles to understand strategic targets.In my test game most of the A.I are at war with 6+ empires in every game due to alliances etc and takes a fair whil for them to get peace.War weariness is another issue that will be effecting the A.I empires a great deal in this mod.I think Haree original is relations text is better for the A.I. Of course the human player tends to get peace and only attack 1 empire at a time which is the smart thing to do.

RiftHick -> RE: AI Improvement Mod (1.05 Extended Release) (7/5/2015 5:36:57 PM)
From what you wrote the problem is not the aggression but how readily alliances get made, coalition based wars are going to be more damaging but they wouldn't be occurring as often if there where fewer of them. You would see a lot less multi-front wars if the AI empires had less friends I know for a fact they prioritise peacing out if a third unaffiliated (to either existing groups) jumps in with their own war declaration. Sometimes the other empire accepts the peace and sometimes they don't, it honestly should take tremendous effort to get anything like a defence pact or trade agreement in vanilla and most mods you barely have to do anything since the diplomacy biases are so low that it's just a matter of time waiting out the starting first contact penalty before agreements start showing up.

Icemania -> RE: AI Improvement Mod (1.05 Extended Release) (7/6/2015 11:12:55 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: ASHBERY76 I'm not convinced that the A.I empires being overly aggressive actually help them at all.Logic suggests fighting a 10 front war is not good option for the A.I that already struggles to understand strategic targets.In my test game most of the A.I are at war with 6+ empires in every game due to alliances etc and takes a fair whil for them to get peace.War weariness is another issue that will be effecting the A.I empires a great deal in this mod.I think Haree original is relations text is better for the A.I. Of course the human player tends to get peace and only attack 1 empire at a time which is the smart thing to do. The most significant factor that influences how often the AI goes to war is the Aggression level in settings at the start of the game. As I’ve mentioned here previously the Mod will use the literal interpretation for the Aggression setting (e.g. Restless is Restless). So if you find that there are too many wars for your taste, change that setting when you start a game to suit. With this Mod there is a catch-22 with the Aggression setting to consider. On the highest aggression settings there are many wars which will weaken many of the AI but on the other hand it’s also much more difficult for the human player to dictate the timing of wars. Sometimes I’ll be caught out by the AI before I’m ready. Sometimes I’ll face multiple opponents and have engagements involving many races. If you can survive that early to mid-game onslaught though, as the AI have weakened each other, it can quickly become a mop up Operation. On the lowest aggression setting, it’s trivial for the human player to dictate the timing of wars, which is obviously bad news for the AI. So to get that balance personally I tend to play on “Restless” aggression but I can see a lot of people preferring “Normal” aggression as well. Some of the AI’s are more aggressive, some AI’s will fall and yes in that sense it’s “bad” for the AI. But other AI’s will become more powerful and more of a threat to the human player as a result. Sometimes I’ll be caught out by the AI declaring wars or sanctions and can’t always dictate the timing of wars. Sometimes more than one AI will declare war. Now if you play the Vanilla game or with Haree’s Mod only, in my view, there is no catch-22. You can go through the game without the AI declaring war at all and control the timing of all wars you are involved in (even with the Chaos Aggression setting). This is bad news for the AI because again as a human player I can just pick off an AI one at a time and cruise to a win. And even if the AI does declare war you’ll most likely have only ever have one opponent. The main reason for the difference is the changes to War Willingness which were aimed at making those races that are meant to be aggressive, actually aggressive in the game. Passive races still won’t be declaring war unless it is really deserved. There is a wider range of behaviour across the races. But it’s most certainly not the case that all races have been set to be overly aggressive. Race biases have an impact as well. If you wish to play with Haree’s racial biases, it’s easy to copy and paste that file over and start a new game. Race biases contribute to the chances of war but again the most significant change I’ve made is to the parameter War Willingness.

ASHBERY76 -> RE: AI Improvement Mod (1.05 Extended Release) (7/6/2015 5:43:16 PM)
Just because they might spam more DOW's vs the player does not make any difference to the fact the player can still manipulate the system and get peace and it's even easier if the A.I factions have a 10 front war.This is a weakness of the diplomacy system with no cool downs or enforced game time for anything. I think from my experience if you play with 20 races it makes the A.I empires very splintered.I see no evidence of the aggressive empires getting bigger empires more like they bite of more than they can chew and the human player still dictates the game. In Galciv3 they do not allow invasion's until way down the tech tree so the A.I empires have a base and exploration stage without war hindering their focus.

Icemania -> RE: AI Improvement Mod (1.05 Extended Release) (7/7/2015 10:00:21 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: ASHBERY76 Just because they might spam more DOW's vs the player does not make any difference to the fact the player can still manipulate the system and get peace and it's even easier if the A.I factions have a 10 front war.This is a weakness of the diplomacy system with no cool downs or enforced game time for anything. Hold your horses there Ashbery ... that's a different subject. I agree Diplomacy can be exploited excessively and needs to be improved for Distant Worlds 2. In the meantime we both know House rules are needed here. And once again, if the AI factions in your game have 10 front wars, turn down the Aggression setting, and get the right balance as I mentioned before. What aggression setting and difficulty are you playing on? quote: ORIGINAL: ASHBERY76 I think from my experience if you play with 20 races it makes the A.I empires very splintered.I see no evidence of the aggressive empires getting bigger empires more like they bite of more than they can chew and the human player still dictates the game. Sometimes yes they bite off more than they can chew. Sometimes the passive races have better designs and military production so can leave a nasty counter-attacking bite. But also there are definitely AI's that get well ahead of others in my games. Again, you need to apply those House rules so it's not so easy to dictate the game. Thankfully it's not as much of a runaway as the game below ... but that said I would agree the AI could runaway more than what it does right now in Distant Worlds 2. quote: ORIGINAL: ASHBERY76 In Galciv3 they do not allow invasion's until way down the tech tree so the A.I empires have a base and exploration stage without war hindering their focus. Actually it's a little down the tech tree, not way down, you can rush Invasion technology fairly quickly. For example in my last game on Suicidal difficulty I had finished full invasions of 2 other empires by Turn 100 on a Large Map. You can also still Declare War and tie them up while waiting for Transports. With Distant Worlds you can't invade homeworlds successfully for quite a while as it takes some time to build up a strong enough force (and economy to support it). While in Gal Civ 3, I can go from having no invasion forces, to a force which can take out any homeworld in 1 turn.

jradishurr -> RE: AI Improvement Mod (1.05 Extended Release) (7/7/2015 7:15:59 PM)
Icemania, I want to thank you for all the work you've put into this mod. This will be the first MOD I download for Distant Worlds and I hope it delivers. Are you still actively developing this MOD?

Icemania -> RE: AI Improvement Mod (1.05 Extended Release) (7/9/2015 3:15:17 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: jradishurr Icemania, I want to thank you for all the work you've put into this mod. This will be the first MOD I download for Distant Worlds and I hope it delivers. Are you still actively developing this MOD? If there are any good ideas that I can Mod to improve the AI and make it harder (noting that what we can Mod is fairly limited) then I'll likely update. Hope you have fun!

emeralis00 -> RE: AI Improvement Mod (1.05 Extended Release) (7/10/2015 11:48:26 PM)
Is it possible to remove the excess UI graphical changes and changes to the resource images from the extended version? I want to keep the AI boost and races but not the UI mod.

GripHAHA -> RE: AI Improvement Mod (1.05 Extended Release) (7/11/2015 4:57:02 AM)
Download 1.04 under 1.05.

SirFinbar -> RE: AI Improvement Mod (1.05 Extended Release) (8/8/2015 6:34:00 PM)
Hi Icemania. I have a question: I always play with tech trading turned off, and I think I will introduce some house rules for diplomacy. I also tend to play with research automated with your mod. It makes each faction feel more unique for me. What difficulty shall I play on? I have tried very hard, and won a war against the Riktoh (big whoop), but I messed it up a bit and my neighbour found Way of Darkness, and had double my colonies. I was very unlucky with desert planets however. Also, how do you feel about leaving tax automated? It's enjoyable with peaceful races, but frustrating with warlike ones when your economy is broken, but could be fixed with some tax changes. The reason I play it is, as far as I know, the AI races always play as if they have this option enabled. They do not change their tax rates on the fly, am I right?

Icemania -> RE: AI Improvement Mod (1.05 Extended Release) (8/14/2015 3:06:46 PM)
Yes some diplomacy house rules are essential. With respect to difficulty, Extreme of course! [sm=fighting0056.gif] Anything else is ... [sm=sign0003.gif] Personally I tax manually as I don't find it much of a burden from a micromanagement perspective. The AI has a fixed way of dealing with taxes, which depends on the population of the planet.

Steelwarrior7 -> RE: AI Improvement Mod (1.05 Extended Release) (8/27/2015 4:45:38 PM)
Thanks for your awesome mod - just love it - now about humans - they only use rockets and seem to be pretty weak, when I play them if it comes to firepower - I play VH and very expensive research - so am half way to the second tier techs... Do you recommend to manually design ships at a high difficulty? How dou you get enough cash? By tech trading? I play prewarp Age of Shadows - what are your recommended settings for this?

Dipluz -> RE: Possible AI Improvement Mod (8/31/2015 1:10:37 PM)
I love this mod, though what I do hate is the Gravitic weapon centralized races. There are almost no real counter to this. Except for remaking your whole 20-30 something fleets from brawling (gun-point) to Fast-Sniper fleets with torpedoes, tractor beams and a LOTS of speed. I refer ofcourse to the Enton Race. They are sending HUGE Capitals ships my way in fleets of 6-10 with 10.000 shields and only weapon they have is gravitic weapons. They are basicly tearing my ships apart and withstand so much damage I manage to kill 1 fleet with considerable losses to my own. At late game fighting Enton the only thing im doing is pick a target, reinforce all fleets about every 15-20 seconds.

Icemania -> RE: AI Improvement Mod (1.05 Extended Release) (9/1/2015 11:59:07 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Steelwarrior7 Thanks for your awesome mod - just love it - now about humans - they only use rockets and seem to be pretty weak, when I play them if it comes to firepower - I play VH and very expensive research - so am half way to the second tier techs... Do you recommend to manually design ships at a high difficulty? How dou you get enough cash? By tech trading? I play prewarp Age of Shadows - what are your recommended settings for this? Before I started looking at Weapon Balance I thought missiles were probably under-powered but when they are actually pretty good so long as use your range advantage. I used to manually design ships a lot but now only do it for some designs and sometimes play without any manual designs at all. For cash I avoid technology trading entirely. The AI doesn't seem to do it very much unfortunately and I can't mod it. Cash is a long discussion but the short version is that I'm hyper-aggressive in securing Super Luxuries, target a Wonder or two early (varies depending on the race) and as soon as I'm ready invade homeworlds to set-up regional capitals. As for Age of Shadows I wouldn't really recommend a setting. It's fun to mix it up.

Icemania -> RE: Possible AI Improvement Mod (9/1/2015 12:17:06 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Dipluz I love this mod, though what I do hate is the Gravitic weapon centralized races. There are almost no real counter to this. Except for remaking your whole 20-30 something fleets from brawling (gun-point) to Fast-Sniper fleets with torpedoes, tractor beams and a LOTS of speed. I refer ofcourse to the Enton Race. They are sending HUGE Capitals ships my way in fleets of 6-10 with 10.000 shields and only weapon they have is gravitic weapons. They are basicly tearing my ships apart and withstand so much damage I manage to kill 1 fleet with considerable losses to my own. At late game fighting Enton the only thing im doing is pick a target, reinforce all fleets about every 15-20 seconds. Gravitics are tough to counter early game. Early on I do everything I can to stay friendly with Gravitic races and when the time is right go hard for repair bots and armor. Gravitic enemies become much easier to handle as the game progresses. I didn't want it to be easy like Vanilla, you have to think more about who you go to war with and when. My main remaining gripe with the Distant Worlds AI is that it isn't Adaptive. It's got a strategy and it going hard for that Strategy but it won't swap strategies to counter your designs if you are that races main target. I hope we get that with Distant Worlds 2. Gal Civ II with the Dark Avatar expansion combined good AI strategies with the ability to counter and still is to me a benchmark for human player ass kicking. Unfortunately the Gal Civ III AI at this point is absolute trash (can't build decent ships, rarely builds fleets at logistics capacity, doesn't prioritise logistics research, can't specialise planets and so on) although I'm sure it will improve in time. So I hope Distant Worlds 2 looks closely at Gal Civ II not Gal Civ III!

Steelwarrior7 -> RE: Possible AI Improvement Mod (9/1/2015 5:37:57 PM)
What setting fo colonization distance would you recommend? How to beat the Shakturi - I set up 8 defensive platforms and a fleet - but the shakturi still blow up my planet - how many worls destroyers do these gusy have? A little feedback - I am playing on VH with all Shakturi events on - was destroying 2 World Destroyers - the Ancient Guradians 1 or 2 - now the Ancient Guardians run wild - conquering 12 colonies - and attacking the Shakturi - keeping them busy...so no Shakturi threat anymore for now ...maybe even for never? Is it supposed to play like that?

Keston -> RE: Possible AI Improvement Mod (9/3/2015 8:02:29 AM)
I've had Extended Universe 1.03 for a while which was packaged together with Blue and resource UI (thread I found is June 2014). I just updated to 19512. I like the discussion of the AI Mod. From the mod installation description for the UI mod it sounds that flavor elements like the UI icons etc. can be overlaid over an installed gameplay mod in its theme, with the warning that it should not change files the other mod uses. For Extended 1.05 would the blue and resource icon mods be a problem? There was also a ship images mod that provided more differentiation, but I don't recall if I have it installed in my current reinstall of the game. Your advice is appreciated. Thank you.

Aeson -> RE: Possible AI Improvement Mod (9/5/2015 12:14:07 AM)
quote: What setting fo colonization distance would you recommend? Unfortunately, reasonable colonization range limits are very dependent upon map setup (size of the map, number of stars, and how the stars are arranged - ring, for example, tends to pack stars in fairly close to one another, whereas clusters has small regions of tightly-packed stars separated by fairly large empty zones that can be difficult to colonize across without first conquering something) and personal preference. To me, a limit of about 1.5 sectors is about the shortest reasonable colonization range limit as anything shorter is heavily luck-dependent for expansion opportunity in my experience, though it might be okay on small maps with large numbers of stars and a high number of habitable planets. I suggest trying out several games with varied colonization range limits and seeing what you like; I tend to go with ~1.5-2 sectors on huge (15x15) maps with 1400 stars, varied clusters, and max colonizable worlds.

Steelwarrior7 -> RE: Possible AI Improvement Mod (9/5/2015 11:25:53 AM)
Thanks - yes 1.5-2.0 seems reasonable ;-D

1stStrikeRecon -> RE: Possible AI Improvement Mod (9/6/2015 9:34:34 PM)
Perhaps I'm flirting with heresy, but which researches do I need to remove from the research.txt to remove the death ray and super laser research from the mod? I prefer the idea that the only way to acquire those sorts of weapons is through the vanilla mechanics of locating them and repairing/rebuilding the derelict ship(s).

HerpInYourDerp -> RE: Possible AI Improvement Mod (9/6/2015 11:26:26 PM)

The game crashes whenever it has to deal with non-sequential listings, so the best way to do it is not to remove them (otherwise you'd have to re-number literally everything), but just to lock them out by making it event-accessible only.

Change:

quote:

PROJECT			;272, Super Beam Weapons, 8, 6, 		0, 19, 0, 64.0, 
COMPONENTS		;23
PARENTS			;10, Y, 303, N, 374, N

PROJECT			;273, Advanced Super Weapons, 9, 6, 		0, 24, 0, 64.0, 
COMPONENTS		;25
PARENTS			;272, Y
ALLOWED RACES		;Shakturi, Boskara, Gizurean, Dhayut, Sluken, Phaerax, Keskudon, Yl'ta

quote:

PROJECT			;272, Super Beam Weapons, 8, 6, 		0, 19, 5, 64.0, 
COMPONENTS		;23
PARENTS			;10, Y, 303, N, 374, N

PROJECT			;273, Advanced Super Weapons, 9, 6, 		0, 24, 5, 64.0, 
COMPONENTS		;25
PARENTS			;272, Y
ALLOWED RACES		;Shakturi, Boskara, Gizurean, Dhayut, Sluken, Phaerax, Keskudon, Yl'ta

None of the default events or ruins will be able to trigger them either.

Icemania -> RE: Possible AI Improvement Mod (9/7/2015 10:02:14 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Keston I've had Extended Universe 1.03 for a while which was packaged together with Blue and resource UI (thread I found is June 2014). I just updated to 19512. I like the discussion of the AI Mod. From the mod installation description for the UI mod it sounds that flavor elements like the UI icons etc. can be overlaid over an installed gameplay mod in its theme, with the warning that it should not change files the other mod uses. For Extended 1.05 would the blue and resource icon mods be a problem? There was also a ship images mod that provided more differentiation, but I don't recall if I have it installed in my current reinstall of the game. Your advice is appreciated. Thank you. You should be able to overlay changes to the UI/icons/images to the Mod without difficulty. I can't be responsible for any issues that might arise, but if you do find any issues I don't mend helping and I'm others will as well.

Steelwarrior7 -> RE: Possible AI Improvement Mod (9/8/2015 7:24:37 PM)
Some feedback playing the mod on VH and Extreme with the Shakturi story line - really like the challenge and feeling to it. The only gripe I have is the capped research - each time I am getting tech wise far behind, because I am capped at a very low point - I have mostly 50%+ bonuses from scientist all over, but still falling hopelessly behind midgame. Then when the Shakturi come - my fleets are a joke - even a destroyer or two cruisers of them take out a whole fleet of mine - even though I have 800 - 1500 firepower per ship - but I just cannot hit them - they evade and kill my ships extremly quick - I still win due to the Gaurdian fleet and the Gaurdians going wild - they first reduce the Shakturi fleet and then go to their home planet and wipe every Shakturi ship out - so I just have to destroy their planet or take it with lots of troops and special units. But my native fleet and defenses are just a joke...same in a normal game without Shakturi, when the AI gains more and more tech adavtage on me - so I like the challenge but not the hopelessly falling behind in techs...is there a possibility to have the cash reduction, growth reduction, increased corruption but a reasonable level of tech research? Or are there any tipps how to noot fall so far behind?

Icemania -> RE: Possible AI Improvement Mod (9/9/2015 11:22:27 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Steelwarrior7 Some feedback playing the mod on VH and Extreme with the Shakturi story line - really like the challenge and feeling to it. The only gripe I have is the capped research - each time I am getting tech wise far behind, because I am capped at a very low point - I have mostly 50%+ bonuses from scientist all over, but still falling hopelessly behind midgame. There is nothing different in the Mod when it comes to capped research. It can be hard to get many Wonders before the AI with the Mod but keep in mind there are planets with significant technology bonuses around the galaxy. Repairing and retiring ships in debris fields and elsewhere can help quite a bit. I normally play Quameno who get huge technology bonuses. Research locations can help a bit. And of course, if you allow technology selling, you should be able to crash a lot of research as well, but I don't recommend that at all as it basically breaks the game!

Steelwarrior7 -> RE: Possible AI Improvement Mod (9/9/2015 1:48:50 PM)
Thanks for the feedback - just thinking I can deal with lesser finances with smart playing but the tech cap is hard to take - do research stations in special locations make the cap higher - cause I can always only see my scientists in the stat and there also only the one with the highest bonusses in each category...?

SirHoraceHarkness -> RE: Possible AI Improvement Mod (9/9/2015 9:43:39 PM)
Nothing wrong with going into the game editor and buffing your home system a tiny bit if you get a bad universe generation so you can at least compete. Word of warning on seeding the rare luxuries like zentabia fluid, loros fruit and korrabian spice as they will spawn a sandworm at the planet or moon you stick them in which comes right back after you kill it screwing up your civilian traffic causing them to endlessly flee and never dock. Learned that the hard way making a super home system with literally everything you could want.

Steelwarrior7 -> RE: Possible AI Improvement Mod (9/9/2015 11:30:31 PM)
Thanks for the hint ;-D

SirHoraceHarkness -> RE: Possible AI Improvement Mod (9/10/2015 8:41:57 AM)
Sure. :^) I actually use the editor more to buff the ai than anything else especially the races that tend to not fare too well under ai control like the humans. Add a dozen or so continental planets and a few gas giants with the key resources needed for a healthy start along with lots of trade goods and they blossom quite well and either become a powerful ally or dangerous opponent depending on the racial bias settings.

Dipluz -> RE: Possible AI Improvement Mod (9/12/2015 2:40:34 PM)
Answer to your armor, the description of gravitic weapons says it bypasses armor and shield. So adding more armor wont do you any good, except for praying it dosent hit your 5-10x robotic repair systems. but yes I found out death ray is my friend and stay at range tactic in the design window.

Icemania -> RE: Possible AI Improvement Mod (9/14/2015 1:42:10 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Dipluz Answer to your armor, the description of gravitic weapons says it bypasses armor and shield. So adding more armor wont do you any good, except for praying it dosent hit your 5-10x robotic repair systems. Quite right Diplux!

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