Icemania
Posts: 1847
Joined: 6/5/2013
From: Australia
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quote:
ORIGINAL: solops
I tried this mod for about three months but I have gone back to stock. I have found that AI Imp Mod 1.3 is easier to beat than the stock 1.9.5.9 or 1.9.5.10 in all of the different game set-ups I tried. It is simply too passive. It may build better ships or do better R&D or a host of other things, I do not know. I do know that it simply will not fight as well or as often, even though I always play with high aggression settings against a collection of opponents consisting of mostly hostile bug races. I won two games on hard against aggressive bugs without ever having anyone declare war on me. That NEVER happens in stock DWU.
I have no doubt you’ve had two passive games. There are some options to explore which we’ll get to but to start with I need to respond to some of your comments.
Firstly I’ve had many passive games against Vanilla on Chaos Aggression, which I’ve posted about going all the way back to Shadows with my very first few posts on this forum. To suggest you always get war declared on you in Vanilla is simply wrong.
Secondly the vast majority of my testing was done with half of the races improved and half of the races Vanilla. I played a couple of dozen test games with this split and every single time an improved race won. Every time. Improved or not, some of the AI’s will find ways to gimp themselves, most commonly due to resources e.g. the AI still builds too few construction ships early game, something I can’t change, but is on my wishlist for the developer. On playing the mod myself, it’s clearly more difficult, and I’ve had many comments supporting the mod being more difficult from others. In short, stating this is easier than Vanilla is ridiculous.
Now with that said let’s focus on what was changed in the Mod and what we can do about peaceful games.
“All Insect races were changed to be more willing to go to War
Racial Biases
Increased positive and negative biases (without going overboard) with the races split into 4 groups (ensuring each group uses a variety of weapons).
By increasing the positive biases for races within a group they are more likely to form Mutual Defence Pacts. With the changes to fleet coordination in Universe this should mean more mega fleet battles.
Each group has negative biases set against another group, so they are more likely to go to war i.e. Group 1 v Group 2, Group 3 v Group 4. I've had too many games in the past where nobody declared war even on Chaos throughout the entire game. So now, if you decide to take a back seat and your partners go down, you could then be facing a strong alliance of opponents, without as much support ...”
With the Racial Biases changes you will find about 1/3rd of the races in the galaxy naturally dislike you, about a 1/3rd are neutral, and about a 1/3rd really like you. The intensity of the dislike and like is higher than Vanilla and is at the limit of what can done in the biases file.
The impact is that if you declare war, as other races are much more likely to be in a Mutual Defence Pact, you’ll find yourself in war against a bunch of other races as well, making it more problematic to go on the offensive. That said, you can still play in a silo like Vanilla and turn down any Mutual Defence Pacts that are offered to you, so you are not obligated to go to war. If the races nearby are friendly or neutral, absolutely you can have peaceful games. If the races nearby are part of the alliance that naturally dislike you, it can get rough, as all of them may gang up on you … but there are various way to avoid war being declared on you even then.
Initially during testing I had more of the races disliking other races i.e. the races in Group 1 all like each other, but they hate everyone in Group 2, 3 and 4. It’s far more likely you’ll be declared war against. It’s still possible to have a peaceful game but if you play on high aggression most games end up being like World War 2. Personally I like that; however, I was mindful that not everyone likes to play games where an all-in style Galactic War is almost inevitable.
Either way you can still sit in that silo, let others slug it out, let your friends fight without lifting a finger to help them and win.
So …
The other parameter I tested was War Willingness. I played a few test games where that was increased for every race not just the Insects and there is absolutely no doubt they declared war more often.
Now if you want to play with this arrangement, these changes are easily made, and I can upload a new version to test, but consider it a BETA.
I also see you are playing on Hard. Hard is the minimum for this Mod and I’ve been in two minds for a while about making the minimum Very Hard. While there are changes that help the AI economy (such as extra mining engines, faster freighters and so on) there are also changes that cost more (such as more exploration ships, tax at 0% for longer). Either way, you’ll notice the difference the most on Extreme difficulty, and more of a difference on Very Hard. Hard really is pathetically easy for an experienced player, keep in mind how complex this game is compared to many other 4X games (which makes it even harder for an AI to compete).
< Message edited by Icemania -- 12/23/2014 11:05:38 AM >
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RE: AI Improvement Mod (1.03 Release) - 
I hope lurchi come's back but from week to week, my hope slowly fades away.
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