Slitherine

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ORIGINAL: OzoneGrif

I think the Tax system is the problem, not the AI using it.

The growth shouldn't be increased so much when taxes are at 0%.

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ORIGINAL: Icemania

Fantastic to have you back MartialDoctor! Your advice when I first joined this board was great.

1. In my experience the AI hordes money less than last we corresponded. I believe one of the later Shadows patches improved this ... but there is still plenty of cash available to farm.

2. With AI ship building it's a bit of a mix. If you look at my current AAR the Gizurean built plenty of ships but other races have very few.

3. Coordinated AI Fleet attacks of Allies are improved in Universe. You'll notice it the most in the Ancient Galaxy Storyline game.

There are simple improvements possible with technology selling I've posted about on many occasions since you convinced me it was an issue in the early days to no avail as yet.

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ORIGINAL: Icemania

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ORIGINAL: OzoneGrif

I think the Tax system is the problem, not the AI using it.

The growth shouldn't be increased so much when taxes are at 0%.

I've wary of suggesting changes to mechanics at this stage of the game's life cycle.

Care would need to be taken to avoid unintended consequences. For example the impact of this suggestion would be to reduce growth rates of new colonies meaning it would take even longer for them to get to maximum population and become a major factor in the game. It's slow enough as it is.

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Has it been considered to allow additional population transfers from developed worlds to new colonies?

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ORIGINAL: Icemania

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ORIGINAL: OzoneGrif

I think the Tax system is the problem, not the AI using it.

The growth shouldn't be increased so much when taxes are at 0%.

I've wary of suggesting changes to mechanics at this stage of the game's life cycle.

Care would need to be taken to avoid unintended consequences. For example the impact of this suggestion would be to reduce growth rates of new colonies meaning it would take even longer for them to get to maximum population and become a major factor in the game. It's slow enough as it is.

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ORIGINAL: Shark7
OK, give me a couple of days to get it all compiled and I'll post it in the modding forum.

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ORIGINAL: Icemania
<Snip>

Still no idea how to make material changes to Ship Designs with these policy files .. help!

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ORIGINAL: Bingeling

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ORIGINAL: Icemania
<Snip>

Still no idea how to make material changes to Ship Designs with these policy files .. help!

Good suggestions, but buffing mines that much would have to be combined with a pirate update. There would no longer be any purpose for small pirate fleets, or single pirate ships. It is a good thing for an empire to be safe from pirates, but pirates should be a fitting threat.

What is the problem with policy files?

The design files are easy to update, just look at them, but updating all of them is probably a chore.

To Shark: Does your designs give some variety to different race's designs, at least in what weapons are used? There has also been an idea of better designs for more militaristic and more intelligent races, do you have this to some degree? Also, things like more speed/less weapons, less size for the gizureans?

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ORIGINAL: Shark7

To all of those complaining about the AI, yet designing over-powered ships, I offer this challenge. Play the game with the AI designing your ships and do not design your own.

You will fast find out that its not the AI that is the problem, it is ship design. Namely the fact that most players cannot resist the urge to make their own ships so powerful that nothing could stand against them.

I made a mod that brought up all AI ships to my typical designs. I get beat routinely...by my own designs. It really does come down to ship design and the undeniable urge to over-design for the player, while the AI is not capable of adapting.

The AI is quite capable, when its not competing against a player designed navy that is undeniably over powered.

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ORIGINAL: Oberst_Klink

Im a not a modder, neither I am good about AI scripting, but there's an article I posted for TOAW III, regarding AI design, behaviour and possible scripting that might be ancient, but proved to be very efficient in a 90s wargame that was unfortunately scrapped. The AI script and philosophy was quite advanced for that time.

http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/fb.asp?m=3535976

Klink, Oberst

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Small Space Port
• General. Plants: reduce from 2 to 1. The extra plants do not change construction speed.
• General. Labs: reduce from 3 (1 of each type) to 0. The AI should be keep them in more heavily fortified installations.
• General. Construction yards: reduce from 4 to 2. Important from Small Space Ports to build quickly to aid defence.
• Race Specific. Weapons: there are three weapons (e.g. torpedo, beam and fighters) instead focus on one primary weapon where the majority of research is done for that race.

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Large Space Port
• General. Construction yards: increase from 12 to 36. The number of yards is far too small, the AI has backlogs far too often.
• General. Docking bays: increase from 24 to 48. The number of docking bays is far too small, the AI has backlogs far too often.
• General. Plants: reduce from 4 to 2 (or even 1?). The extra plants do not change construction speed.
• General. Empire Policy: Large Spaceports are built at 3B, change to 10B. 3B is far too early for such a massive structure. Smaller worlds do not merit a Large Spaceport.
• Race Specific. Weapons: there are three weapons instead focus on one primary weapon where the majority of research is done for that race.
• Note. Labs could be optimised but I'm wary of potential knock-on effects.

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ORIGINAL: Gregorovitch55

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ORIGINAL: Oberst_Klink

Im a not a modder, neither I am good about AI scripting, but there's an article I posted for TOAW III, regarding AI design, behaviour and possible scripting that might be ancient, but proved to be very efficient in a 90s wargame that was unfortunately scrapped. The AI script and philosophy was quite advanced for that time.

http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/fb.asp?m=3535976

Klink, Oberst

I guess this is a bit of a side line to the main discussion which is focused on practical tweeks, but I have known that war games based largely on scenario maps use scripting like this to good effect (the good ones anyways, TOAW, Steel Panthers etc) to provide a decent challenge to human player against programmed opponent, especially played first time blind.

I know GalCiv2 also uses this technique, which is instructive in the context of a 4X. An interesting example is it's methodology preparing for an attack. What it does is to prepare a number of troop ships in advance of declaration of war which it hides conveniently near to its target systems but just out of scanner range of the victim's patrols (it knows the scanner grade of the opponent after meeting some of it's ships in open space) so the player can't see them. After declaration it sends in its attack fleets to clear system defenses than immediately invades with the troop ships that are typically only 2 turns away if that from target. Against less experienced players this tactic is very effective.

However there is one big flaw in this script: the player can build scout ships that have multiple scanners which are additive in range, so instead of seeing maybe four or five parsecs they can see everything in a 20-25 parsec circle around them. This renders the AI's preparation transparent giving the player ample time to prepare an ambush to destroy the entire troop ship armada on declaration and intercept and destroy the attack fleets easily.

So one small flaw or oversight in a scripted approach renders a previously deadly AI tactic laughably easy to counter once a player discovers it because a script cannot adapt. This doesn't really happen in war games (unless you replay the same scenario over and over) but it argues that generic algorithms that are less powerful are better in 4X games since they are at least to some extent adaptable.

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GalCiv2

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ORIGINAL: Bingeling
Buio, there is not much of an AI design process. There are templates, and the AI design after what is in them. The only exception is that the AI tries to fit the designs under the maximum build size by dropping some stuff when necessary.

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ORIGINAL: Buio

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ORIGINAL: Shark7

To all of those complaining about the AI, yet designing over-powered ships, I offer this challenge. Play the game with the AI designing your ships and do not design your own.

You will fast find out that its not the AI that is the problem, it is ship design. Namely the fact that most players cannot resist the urge to make their own ships so powerful that nothing could stand against them.

I made a mod that brought up all AI ships to my typical designs. I get beat routinely...by my own designs. It really does come down to ship design and the undeniable urge to over-design for the player, while the AI is not capable of adapting.

The AI is quite capable, when its not competing against a player designed navy that is undeniably over powered.

Wasn't it Stardrive that let the AI use the players designs automatically? I think that can be a good idea, maybe made somewhat more realistic with a delay to simulate industrial spionage over time. Probably also the easiest method to implement in the game. Redoing the AI design process could be a more daunting task, perhaps not possible until an eventual DW2.

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ORIGINAL: Icemania

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ORIGINAL: Shark7
OK, give me a couple of days to get it all compiled and I'll post it in the modding forum.

Shark ... just having a look again at the ship design policy files.

I was hoping to see conditional logic with construction size as this is the biggest factor in determining the number of components that are feasible. If this was in place the vast majority of my ship designs could be emulated.

A specific example would be Explorer Ships. My pre-warp size 160 Explorer has 16 Ion Trusters so it can get around my home system very quickly but only 4 fuel cells because no more are needed. However, my post-warp size 300 Explorers has 14 fuel cells because there is a massive galaxy to explore and it can't afford to be refuelling all the time.

I was hoping this could be implemented but alas it appears not. Hopefully I've missed something? When I then consider what could be done with the constraints of these policy files it's extremely limited.

Base designs we could probably improve a fair bit.

The Empire Policy files could also use rework.

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ORIGINAL: Icemania

Some other suggestions after looking through the Empire Policy files and Modding guide:

1. A lot of the Ship Designs and Empire Policy files show a focus on two primary weapons technologies (or even more in some Ship Design Templates). For example Quameno mix up Beams and Torpedoes. The problem with this is that it doubles the time required to get to higher tier weapons. The Ship Design Templates could be rationalised to focus on one primary weapon per race and Empire Policy files changed to focus on one weapon as well.

2. In the Empire Policy files all races should have a ResearchTechFocus for Construction and Hyperdrives (at least for pre-warp starts until the first couple of technologies are done as a minimum). Very few Empire Policy files have this at present. There is also a Tech Focus field in the Race Files where this could be applied.

3. Something I've done already is change the proportion of small versus large ships in the Empire Policy Files. It's far too focused on small ships I would recommend this is changed substantially. Not sure about the knock-on effect though.

4. I was hoping we could set a Tech Focus for the Wonder Research lines e.g. through the economy line for the Teekan say. Unfortunately most are not on the list except Medicine and Recreation. This would help make the AI more competitive with Wonder Building.

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ORIGINAL: Icemania

•Note. Labs could be optimized but I'm wary of potential knock-on effects.

No major comments on Defense Bases

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ORIGINAL: Spidey
No worries, I'm happy to discuss most things, but it's hard to discuss without disagreement in the first place. Playstyle does make quite a difference ...

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ORIGINAL: Shark7
I'm going back through all of mine, making sure they're balanced, so it may take longer than originally planned.

There are only one set of templates unfortunately, so you have to design with the end game in mind.

As far as the design templates, the AI will modify them (to an extent) to fit within the current construction size constraints. Basically I have found you will always have a functioning Escort, Frigate, and Transport design at game start. In my case, the frigate has reduced numbers of shields, engines and weapons (when compared to the template) to make it fit under the 230 limit. The destroyer design is not modified and I have to research up to large scale construction (size 500) to build any.

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ORIGINAL: Bingeling
You make a lot of sense, some comments, though.

The "2 weapon" setups are a feature and a choice, your 1 weapon way is probably stronger and should be considered.

I believe AI research is pretty scripted in pre warp. It seems to always put warp precursors as the "next" project, and hyperdrives right after that. There is a set of things needed to really "roam the skies" in style, and quite a few are in construction (230 construction size, shields, energy collection). The AI also has it pretty scripted to build research stations at the capital to work on reaching research potential, always preferring an energy station first.

I have run a lot of automated games starting in pre warp, and issues I have reported from watching the AI fumble at the start have been adjusted. They still run off to die at any kaltor, though ;-)

Research has its issues after getting hyperdrives, though. It ignores the "irrelevant weapons", but it is very "all at the same level, tech focus one level deeper" or something like that. Energy research suffer the most with multiple engines, hyperdrives, shields, all being researched to level 1 before moving to level 2 on anything. Of course, there are different roles that benefit from different hyperdrives, but the AI is not that fancy, it is just confused :)

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ORIGINAL: pycco

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ORIGINAL: Icemania

•Note. Labs could be optimized but I'm wary of potential knock-on effects.

No major comments on Defense Bases

building the majority of research stations at the primary space port, would allow for the science stations to not need as much and could be ok with no defense and attacking features. this would save lots of $$ for other things while still giving the bonus.

defensive bases need more firepower and defenses, this would go along way in helping them hold ground, free up ships for attacking and not have as many unguarded planets.