04-07-2004 08:17									#1
	Giving AI free satellites makes them more competitive Inflate your Upload Space

Lately I've been searching for simple ways to beef up the AI. I've found that the explore and build priorities helps, but I still ran into the same problem:

Whenever I beefed up the AI, they were really strong, almost overpowering in the early game. Then, once the human player resisted the first wave of attacks and got IA the human player started cruising ahead. Or, if the human player started to fall behind, the AI started to get exponentially more powerful to the point of running away with the game.

What I want (and probably what you want too) is an AI like a good human opponent - challenging from the beginning of the game to the end, but never hopelessly powerful, and never pathetically easy.

Well, a while back in the creation forum I created a thread to ask how to decrease satellites in the scenario editor. What sparked from that was some speculation as to how giving the AI free satellites might help it.

So, I created a scenario to test it. I gave all of the factions only 2 Cp's and 1 scout to start out with (same for AIs and human). Thus, everyone started out on equal footing - no boosted starts for the AI. Then I played around with giving the AI factions different #'s of satellites. I quickly noticed that giving the AI nutrient sats along with the other sats is a BIG NO-NO! This causes them to exponentially rocket up the powerchart in the early game, and gives the human player no chance whatsoever. As the AI faction grows insanely fast due to its nut bonuses, it harvests more and more from the mineral and energy sats, and thus becomes unstoppable.

However, I did find one setting that seemed to work. I gave all of the AI factions 30 min and energy sats, but NO NUTRIENT SATS! This allows the AI to gain the benefit of the satellites GRADUALLY as their population grows naturally. Thus, for instance, let's say in 2130 the AI has a pop of 10. The AI at this point gets +10 min and +10 energy total throughout its empire. As the faction grows, so do the sat benefits. In 2160, with a pop of 30, it is getting +30 of min and energy throughout its empire. In 2200, with a pop of...oh, let's say 100, +100 for each, and so on. This effectively compensates for the AI's poor terraforming and lack of crawlers, and the bonuses increase gradually, keeping the AI at a competitive level throughout the majority of the game. With 30 sats, the AI only stops receiving benefits after hab domes, and by then the game is either usually over, or the AI can build more sats as it sees fit, which it is much more likely to do with a decent infrastructure in place.

Some minor problems with this modification:

*Either shrink or edit out completely the monsoon jungle from such a scenario. The faction who gets this will experience the monstrous growth of the jungle, which will enable its satellites much earlier, causing this faction to practically run away with the game.

*Obviously, factions with a growth bonus will tend to benefit more from the sats than others, and vice-versa. Likewise with popboom enabled factions. Although in my test runs this wasn't an unbalancing function in the game. In fact, I found it somewhat curious that most of the factions stayed in a tightly packed swath on the powerchart throughout much of the game, everyone pretty much at the same level most of the time. Each faction benefits in its own way from the early sats. Zak has awesome research in the early game due to the energy sats. The min sats make the momentum factions more powerful by giving them good +20 min bases with which to build and support many units, etc.

Another added benefit of the early sats is that the SP's are much more competitive, not only between the human and AI factions, but even amongst the AI factions themselves. In my tests every faction managed to score an early SP or two. I, the human, only barely managed to snag the HGP with 2 AA's!

So far I've only run 4 test games, but it looks very promising, and I recommend trying it out. To give the AI factions early sats, just give one faction orbital spaceflight. Then go to the F6 screen (with the scenario editor on) and right click on the numbers of sats (shift + rightclick to decrease sats). Then go back and take away orbital spaceflight from the faction. The sats will still give their bonuses, but the AI won't be able to build more until they get orbital spaceflight in the game.

I hope this is of some help in making the AI better. Of course, the AI still makes the same dumb military manuevering and tactical mistakes as before, but the sats compensate for the bad terraforming and lack of crawlers, which, added to the AI's already huge bonuses on transcend level, seem to make the AI quite competitive for most if not all of the game.

	04-07-2004 08:31									#2
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Ingeneous.

The only downside is that satellites can't be given to a faction profile, only via the scenario editor. Though I s'pose one could make min-sats an un-researchable technology and then give that to all the AIs. They'd waste time building them tho'.

But for a scenario, that sounds excellent. You remind me of Tokamat Zeiter, with your ardor for creating very tough scenarios.

Blatent ad: You could come play Aldebaran, where these things are all somewhat taken care of.....

-S

	04-07-2004 09:16									#3
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Good idea, but what do you set as the upper limit of sats for a faction?

I'm guessing 32 (Ascetic + Habcomplex / 2), but if not, correct me.

	04-07-2004 09:32									#4
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Usually I put the number at 30 sats.

also, in the faction stragety section of the scenario editor, if you toggle the flags on for building more colony pods, terraformers, and probe teams, it helps the AI, as the AI doesn't make enough of them normally.

Is there a classic SMAC version of the Aldebaran scenario?

	04-07-2004 10:15									#5
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Yeah there is classic Smac Aldebaran, but I havn't worked with it since 2001. The links are there in the Aldebaran-2 thread. Eventually I'll put up the sweet new intaller for it. Like perhaps next week.

I don't know if there is an upper limit on sats. In doing a lot of playtesting for mods (all AIs fighting each other, with the return key held down), I've seen, if I remember right, 80+ sats and bases with 99 pop and all fungus (from pops). I kinda doubt there is a limit.

-S

	04-07-2004 10:27									#6
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The project sounds really cool. When you get the new nifty SMAC version installer thing ready I'll give it a shot. Now, will it overwrite my SMAC already on my computer, or how does that work?

Yeah, there really isn't a limit to the number of sats you could put up. I gave the AIs 30 so that you could try to inflict some damage to the AI with some ODP's later in the game. If you give them 1000 sats, it really makes no difference as far as their benefit is concerned because it is capped by population, but you'll never be able to destroy all of those.

	04-07-2004 10:52									#7
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Even though it's off topic, I'd better answer you here, 'cause it's an easy thing to overlook.

I wrote an fileswapping utility that keeps track of the original and modded files for any mod and makes shortcuts to the original and the modded versions. Clicking on a shortcut to Smac would automatically swap the correct files back in place, if need be.

-S

	04-07-2004 12:12									#8
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I'll have to try free orbitals for the AI's, in particular they should help keep the AI's tech rate up.

Some things I find help the AI without overpowering them early:
Give them an insane police bonus, like +5. This allows them to run FM without dying a slow painful death, and also improves drone-control for non-freemarketeers.
Give them free Clean Reactors, so when bio-engineering rolls around, the AI never has to worry about support again. This is a big boost, because often by then the AI is down to like 3 minerals per base due to support.

Note that drone control and support are both things human players deal with effortlessly. The bonuses to the AI will NOT be significant early game, as the AI already gets enough free drone control to deal with early SE's, it's only when they run FM post-DAP or get very large bases that they become crippled by drones. Basically, in both cases the benefits to the AI start at lvl5 techs - basically mid game.

Unfortunately, or fortunately as it may be, these changes require the use of AI factions, making them unsuitable for simple scenerios.

	04-07-2004 15:35									#9
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I'm guessing that the updated factions can't be loaded into a scenario? :/

	04-07-2004 18:21									#10
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Z:

What you missed in the telling was:

You rightly say that you need to give one faction Orbital Spaceflight as a tech in order to get the satellite grid active with the F6 key

Then, even after you have disabled that tech from that faction, it immediately can build missiles and PB's (and does) and also has all further weapons immediately prototyped after it's first PB build

The workaround is to give a faction orbital spaceflight as a tech, set the # of various satellites you are giving them (eg 30), disable the tech, then go into the faction editor and replace that faction with another. This replaced faction cannot then build the missiles

The downside is that this replaced faction has no satellites (so you make this one the player faction for the sceanrio that you are creating.)

one of the better (says he, modestly) scenarios can be found here

Googlie

Last edited by Googlie on 04-07-2004 at 18:30

	04-07-2004 21:41									#11
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quote: Originally posted by Enigma_Nova I'm guessing that the updated factions can't be loaded into a scenario? :/

Which updated factions? The one's Blake is talking about are changes you can make to any faction, scenario or not. There are limits to how many attributes a faction can have tho', so know that.

Just add NODRONE, 10 or IMMUNITY, POLICE or SOCIAL, +++++POLICE to the line shown below, in any faction. Also know that some abilities, like NODRONE are for Smax only, while most work in both Smax and Smac

#BELIEVE
The Lord's Believers, The Fundamentalist, Believers, M, 2, Miriam, F, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1,
TECH, Psych, SOCIAL, --RESEARCH, SOCIAL, +PROBE, SOCIAL, ++SUPPORT, SOCIAL, -PLANET, FANATIC, 0

You could do TALENT, 1 which makes every citizen a talent

-S

	04-07-2004 22:32									#12
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Googlie: If you're making them the player faction, just have the player avoid building those units.
Can't you use your CMNage in the Design workshop to un-protoype the missles?

	04-07-2004 23:15									#13
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Whoa, Googlie, are you sure that that faction can then build missles? In all of my tests, that never happened. Hmmmm, so would choosing the "reset all factions" option on the scenario editor take care of that. It says it resets all SE choices, unit automation, prototypes, etc, so I think that might be an easy way to get around the problem.

	05-07-2004 07:56									#14
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Hmm - doesn't mention prototypes

But in the first iteration of my yang game I gave the orbital spaceflight tech to yang, set up the F6 screen to give all but the Spartans 30 energy satellites, then took the tech away from Yang.

I did hit "reset all factions" (it's the last thing I do in my checklist - unless a faction is to be eliminated, in which case I reset, then eliminate)

In that first iteration, Yang started his PB around 2150, and had it completed before the end of the century, but didn't get orbital spaceflight as a tech until well thereafter.

When I redid the scenario, I swapped the drones for Sparta, and gave them the orbital tech. Then inserted the sats via F6, then deleted the tech, then swapped the Spartans for the Drones.

Worked like a charm

But it's not to say that between us we stumbled on 2 different ways of making it work - I'm dubious re the reset button as I've tried it and also, it doesn't mention protoypes or weapons - just SE choices and AI lists of preferences and unit orders and automation of units

G.

Attachment: reset.gif
This has been downloaded 61 time(s).

	05-07-2004 08:14									#15
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I added satellites to my factions in my scenario, but never had the problems you describe. I actually set up satellites fairly clumsily, and needed a base for each faction that would get them. When I was done, I eliminated the faction, and reloaded it from the original file. The satellites stuck, but not the ability to build missiles.

	05-07-2004 14:34									#16
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As Darsnan once commented giving sats to ai:

Nuts: no use, they only get much drones to fight
Mins: no use, they just support LOADS of obsolete units
Energy: BIG USE: they upgrade units, research, hurry & probe efficent enough to counter a human player!


I must admit that giving energy sats (and only them) to AI is:
1.fair (you dont get disappointed by Monsoon Lal who booms with his Demo/Planned+Creche+Talents & gets minerals to finish PTS in 5-10 turns)

2.efficent: giving +1 energy per citizen is the same as AI using FM (which is not so often seen in early game)
+they get shorter min rows
+they dont get -5 drones & -3planet for those loads of energy
&I think no need to prove that energy is the resource AI uses the best -> mins are often wasted by HUGE support costs & nuts are wasted by increasing drone problems..