Re: PvK Balance Mod Version 1.1 posted (for SE4 Gold Version 1.91 - Patch 4)
 

You know what would make this even better? Modify the AI files so that they create empires taking into account the adjusted costs.

Re: PvK Balance Mod Version 1.1 posted (for SE4 Gold Version 1.91 - Patch 4)
 

Thanks Ran-Taro!

Yes Deccan, that would be good. Anyone feel like doing the work? It's a fairly time-consuming project which I won't have time for until maybe February of next year, so if anyone wants to supply the AI files, I'll include them in a patch to the mod once they're ready.

PvK

Re: PvK Balance Mod Version 1.1 posted (for SE4 Gold Version 1.91 - Patch 4)
 

Actually, what would be even better would be to do this for the TDM modpack Version AI's...

PvK

Re: PvK Balance Mod Version 1.1 posted (for SE4 Gold Version 1.91 - Patch 4)
 

PBW Anyone http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: PvK Balance Mod Version 1.1 posted (for SE4 Gold Version 1.91 - Patch 4)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Wouldn't the re-balancing of relative values mean the whole AI's would need to be remade, not just the general files?

I guess just the general files would do in a pinch, but I'm guessing this mod would make for a greater variety of effective AI tactics in research etc...

Re: PvK Balance Mod Version 1.1 posted (for SE4 Gold Version 1.91 - Patch 4)
 

Hmm, a difficult question. You'd of course want to be sure to keep any racial tech areas. I don't think you'd want to change the research order, or the ship designs. Offhand I'd think the main issue outside the AI_General file would be the design construction AI file, which determines how many of a ship to build, because if the AI has lower resource or maintenance reduction values, it may not be able to afford as many as it could before. I'd only expect that to be an issue for TDM modpack races which were highly tweaked in that regard, and/or that took heavy advantage of the cheap maintenance reduction in the unmodded game.

I'd actually think the unmodded AI's would tend to be better off in Balance mod than the TDM ones, inasmuch as the unmodded ones weren't very well optimized, so they'll benefit from the Balance mod giving them balanced value for points. I expect the existing TDM races take a lot of advantage of the unbalanced unmodded empire costs, so they'll be in worse shape, relatively speaking. All the more reason to work with those files if one were to make custom AI's for the balance mod.

PvK

Re: PvK Balance Mod Version 1.1 posted (for SE4 Gold Version 1.91 - Patch 4)
 

Sorry for this slightly (well, okay, really really really...) offtopic idea, but I lacked a suitable place to bring this up, and seeing as this mod is about "balance", I had an idea that might bring some more balance to the game, or at the very least, open up new strategies.

Before I get to the meat of it though, what strikes me most about SEIV is that there isn't just ONE set strategy for weapons and ships and what not. You have options. You have counter measures upon counter measures upon counter measures. That's fun becuase you have to keep being flexible. Every game can be slightly different.

Well, one thing I have noticed, and one thing I have seen repeated is the short half-life of fighters in the game. Yeah, you can make them still work in late game, but really, you're just building fleets to get chewed up by those pesky Point Defense weapons.

So i ask you, what is the counter measure to overcome point defense?

Beam weapons.

But the answer is the problem. Beam weapons are your only real long term solution. So much so, people tend to neglect the Torpedo and Seeker techs. It's a dead end, right? So everyone is running around with beam weapons, not much variety there.

So here is what i was thinking, a new component.

Call it the "Shotgun whatever".

The idea behind this component would be that it shoots out a bunch of cheap seekers to overwhelm the enemies Point Defense, thereby allowing your fighters and more powerful torpedos to get through.

Now, in order to simulate the "overwhelming shotgun" effect of these, the size of the component should be small- maybe 1 - 5 Kt. So you could put dozens on a ship. Now the damage caused by these seekers would be negligible because they are little more than 'dumb rocks'. So maybe 1-3 points of damage, if any at all.

What this does is provide an enffective means to COUNTER point defense. (One need look at the Missle Defense argument to see what I am getting at).

Sorry for the intrusion. I will delete this post if any feel it neccessary. But it would be nice to get some feedback on this.

Does anyone think the AI coulb be modified to implement something like this?

Cheers.

Re: PvK Balance Mod Version 1.1 posted (for SE4 Gold Version 1.91 - Patch 4)
 

*sees no reason why it wouldn't work. good idea.*

on the other hand, what i know about ai modding could be fit on one page.

[ October 15, 2003, 20:41: Message edited by: narf poit chez BOOM ]

Re: PvK Balance Mod Version 1.1 posted (for SE4 Gold Version 1.91 - Patch 4)
 

If you have the peace time and spare resources, drones can provide the shotgun. PD has problems with shielded ECM drones. Combine with fighters and/or seekers, and some nasty no-maintenance stuff will get through the PD. Drones which launch their own seekers are also good for generating a large swarm. However, PD is still very powerful and cost-effective in the unmodded game.

PvK

Re: PvK Balance Mod Version 1.1 posted (for SE4 Gold Version 1.91 - Patch 4)
 

I just made a new Version 1.1 of PvK Balance Mod, for seamless use with SE4 Gold Version 1.91 (Gold Patch 4) which was just released.

There are no changes except to make it so no 1.91 changes will be undone by applying the Balance Mod.

See the link below my signature.

PvK

Re: PvK Balance Mod Version 1.1 posted (for SE4 Gold Version 1.91 - Patch 4)
 

I happen to have a question about your mod PvK: why lowering Happiness give many points? According to the general consensus, lowering Happiness hardly hurts the Empire. (That is, according to many players in KOTH and the Newbie FAQ)

Unless the patch altered something, lowering Happiness shouldn't make your Empire more prone to suffer from riots. I played with average Happiness and with 50% happiness and my planets were rioting as fast in both cases, only troops and UPC would prevent these riots.

Beyond this small question, great work! I will have a closer look at your mod once I start a solitaire game, so that the enemy Empires will be both varied and still effective. (Playing against 19 Clones isn't exactly appealing, nor is playing against much weaker Empires)

[ February 29, 2004, 16:34: Message edited by: Alneyan ]

Re: PvK Balance Mod Version 1.1 posted (for SE4 Gold Version 1.91 - Patch 4)
 

It's only easy to counter if you lower it moderately, and I this mod only returns a fair number of points if you reduce it a lot, at which point it does become a disadvantage. As I write in the readme & web page:

PvK wrote:

Quote:

Threshold lowered to one in order to reduce reward for lowering happiness a small amount, since in the unmodded game a little unhappiness is easy to counter with troops. A lot of unhappiness can be a problem however, so the Negative Threshold cost was increased. Positive Threshold can be low, because for the most part, a high value gives diminishing benefits which can be accomplished by others using troops. Minimum setting of -50 gives 750 points (and would be hard to survive long enough to develop troops before riots took over).

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">So I don't think you can abuse it as you can in the unmodded game. I'd say it's worth 750 points to have to endure the effects of -50 Happiness.

One can counter the effects of unhappiness when one has the technology and resources available, mainly using troops, but this requires the player to focus on this immediately, and throughout the game. The effect is worse for a typical low-tech single-planet start, than for high-tech start where you can deploy troops on turn one, but it will still waste your time and resources and lower your research and intel by at least a bit throughout the game. I'd say this is probably well worth 750 points for -50, even if you become expert at dealing with it. It might be a somewhat over-valued, or not - I'd be interested to hear more discussion.

At -50 happiness, for example:

* By turn 2, the homeworld happiness will drop from Happy to Indifferent (loss of 10% production bonus, or 20% compared to someone else's Jubilant planet).
* Usually, two turns after a planet is colonized, it drops from Happy to Indifferent.
* An average-research low-tech empire suffering from -50 happiness will take about 10 turns to get to Construction 1, and another 10-15 to get to Troops 1, even if those are the first techs they go for, which in itself is a disadvantage, since they will probably want to delay useful early-game research to do that first. If they get attacked while they don't have anything useful researched, it could be game over. If they do research other things, they're going to suffer a lot of unhappiness effects.
* Alternatively, a player can build some cheap ships and leave them in orbit to keep happiness up, but that too is a waste of time and resources.
* Even in a high-tech game or late-game, the need to worry about happiness on every new planet is a distraction and an expense.
* During major wars with large empires, a major setback (large fleet and/or planet loss) can cause many planets throughout a large empire to riot. The rate at which they recover gets multiplied by the number of planets they have, as does the cost of building even more troops for all of them.

(Note too that if you read this thread's history, we discussed this and most of the other values, and pretty much everyone agreed [or some slightly thought something should be higher, where others slightly thought it should be lower] on most of this. There may still be some things that can be abused here or there though, so do let me know if you have any other ideas.)

PvK

Re: PvK Balance Mod Version 1.1 posted (for SE4 Gold Version 1.91 - Patch 4)
 

I might be a bit stubborn and what not, but do you have any formula highlighting how 50% happiness affect the happiness level on a given planet? Or rather, how does reducing the characteristic alter the happiness level? I had a look at the happiness.txt file, but saw nothing regarding this. (I am not speaking about increasing happiness, as this effect is known)

Here is the quote from the Newbie FAQ I was referring to:
<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">According to this calculation, it means natural decrease (or increase here) is higher than increasing happiness (or raising it here), and the only side effect would be if you were experiencing battle losses and other harmful events. There you would only gain a +10 each turn instead of +20 to help offsetting the happiness decrease due to these events. Or am I missing something obvious here? It is also possible the patch introduced a few changes to how happiness was handled, as I admit I am not yet familiar with the changes.

I read the whole thread before replying to check if the negative effects of lowering too much happiness have been discussed before, and it looks like it wasn't, unless I missed a page of course, as it wouldn't be unusual given my natural silliness.(Environmental Resistance was discussed, however.) My other questions were answered by reading the previous Posts, so I will not bug you about how to tweak AI files and the consequences of it or something along these lines. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: PvK Balance Mod Version 1.1 posted (for SE4 Gold Version 1.91 - Patch 4)
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I expect they add together, so you go from natural -2% per turn, to natural -3% per turn. Assuming the FAQ is correct - I noticed a couple of errors in the FAQ just while searching for this.

I ran a test just now in 1.91 and the effect isn't as strong as I expected, so you may well be right that it isn't worth as much as I thought.

What's the common wisdom on number of troops to offset a -1%/turn happiness? 10? Let's see... 5? Geez. (I remember I had good reasons for removing that factor from Proportions mod - I didn't remember them being that good.)

Let's see. The top brackets are 15% apart, while the lower ones are 25% apart. So all else being equal, assuming the FAQ is correct, a planet would drop 10% production in 5-9 turns, instead of 7-13 turns. Of course, in practice, events tend to dictate happiness level.

Overall, looking at the supposedly-correct FAQ numbers, I'm tending to think you're right. Happiness itself is a big factor, but the Happiness attribute looks extremely minescule in effect, if the FAQ is right. Maybe I need to run my test game longer, and/or do another test. (Except I have no free time to do that.)

Any other opinions or sources of info on this?

PvK

Re: PvK Balance Mod Version 1.1 posted (for SE4 Gold Version 1.91 - Patch 4)
 

It looks like the natural decrease is actually a variation back to Indifferent level. Jubilant Empires tend to go back to Indifferent if there are no troops or an UPC on the planet, and Angry worlds can go back to Indifferent level as well. (I have never seen a rioting world going back to another level on its own though)

I ran a test with two Empires, one with 100% happiness and the other one with a mere 40% happiness. (50% Environmental Resistance and 50% happiness) Here are the results:
- Both Empires go back to indifferent level in the first few turns. (On turn 2 for 40% happiness, on turn 3 for 100% happiness) I will assume it would be the same if you raise happiness, unless you do go overboard on this characteristic to offset natural decrease.
- After many turns, both Empires remain at indifferent level, thanks to this natural decrease. If there were no natural decrease, the worlds of the 40% happiness would slowly go down in happiness. (With 1,2% more angry people every turn, your Empire would collapse easily I guess) Then troops would obviously be a priority, and lowering Happiness to 50% would be very risky to say the least.
- However, my 40% happiness didn't seem to be able to overcome the effects of losing several planets (including the homeworld) and battles, as all the worlds were on angry. On the other hand, the 100% happiness Empire eventually recovered from these effects, although the process needed about 15 turns to go back to Indifferent level. Please note that in a regular game, other attacks would have been likely, thus offseting this natural increase if no troops/UPC are present.

So, it seems like the only disavantage when lowering happiness is that you are a bit more vulnerable to happiness loss than before. But you will still have +1% happiness per turn, so it should be enough to deal with minor events such as the loss of a few ships here and there. If the situation is much worse, such as the destruction of several planets each turn, I would believe there isn't much left to do and +2% happiness will not help as losing a planet means -5% happiness. In both cases troops seem the only proper solution along with the UPC, and you would need 10 troops per planet to offset the 50% happiness disadvantage. (Or you could rely on the UPC with its +6% happiness per turn at level III)

Re: PvK Balance Mod Version 1.1 posted (for SE4 Gold Version 1.91 - Patch 4)
 

Thanks Alneyan!

I'm convinced. My values were based on the assumption that lowering Happiness to 50% would be more like -5% or -10% per turn, and would keep going all the way to rioting. Your tests show that the effect is minescule in the extreme - essentially a non-factor (sigh). Therefore it's only worth perhaps 1/5 to 1/10 as much as I had it (and just plain ridiculously less than the unmodded value).

If you have time, I'd be interested to know if raising Happiness to the maximum has any worthwhile effect, or if it just delays the drop to indifferent by a couple of turns.

PvK

Re: PvK Balance Mod Version 1.1 posted (for SE4 Gold Version 1.91 - Patch 4)
 

Don't forget this line from happiness.txt (Peacefull)

Any Planet Colonized := -10

This is more than enough to keep a 50% empire jubilant for a while in most games. The problem is to remember to have your troops and UPC's ready before you run out of colonizable planets http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: PvK Balance Mod Version 1.1 posted (for SE4 Gold Version 1.91 - Patch 4)
 

I ran a test in the early game, and here are the results:

- For 150 happiness: the homeworld remains happy for 6 turns, is Indifferent the next turn, then becomes Happy against, and so on. (I checked for 120 turns)
- For 170 happiness (150 Environmental Resistance, the Artisans Culture, and 150 happiness): the homeworld stays Happy for 100 turns, and so it seems the value needed to fully offset natural decrease. (But you will not go to Jubilant)

These results are a bit better than what I expected, and it seems that +5% happiness does slightly more than increasing the happy people by +0,1% a turn. (+2% per turn is needed to offset natural decrease) But the effect isn't impressive, as other events would likely alter happiness. Thanks for mentioning this bonus about colonizing planets Primitive, I now understand why I am always at Jubilant, even with 50% happiness. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif (bar such trivial events involving enemy fleets, troops and the Primitive one)

So raising happiness would give a small boost to your Empire by helping a bit to reach Jubilant status (other events or troops/UPCs are needed though), and would help to reduce the happiness loss when harmful events happen. However, once again, if these events are truly nasty, 150% happiness will not help much and you *will* be in trouble if you don't have many troops and UPCs able to keep your subjects peaceful as an armada is heading their way.

Re: PvK Balance Mod Version 1.1 posted (for SE4 Gold Version 1.91 - Patch 4)
 

Yeah. There are also bonuses for building ships, and for having ships (or, say, construction bases) in orbit over a planet.

Happiness rating... another non-factor - sigh.

PvK

Re: PvK Balance Mod Version 1.1 posted (for SE4 Gold Version 1.91 - Patch 4)
 

You could always raies the max to 200, min to 0, and halve all of the costs associated with it. Make it possible to actually get a bonus or penalty. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: PvK Balance Mod Version 1.1 posted (for SE4 Gold Version 1.91 - Patch 4)
 

That had occurred to me, but it's against the design of this particular mod, which is to "leave in all the lame unmodded crud in, but just price it fairly."

Is the minimum setting for race values zero? Of course, having to click 100 times to get a minor advantage is a penalty in itself. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif Love this game in general, but some aspects are ... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif .

PvK

Re: PvK Balance Mod Version 1.1 posted (for SE4 Gold Version 1.91 - Patch 4)
 

Ok, how does this adjustment to Happiness look to everyone?

Happiness:
==========
* Basic cost lowered from 25 to 1.
* Threshold unchanged at 20.
* Positive Threshold cost lowered from 100 to 2.
* Negative Threshold cost lowered from 10 to 1.

Thanks to Alneyan for bringing my attention to the practical irrelevance
of this attribute. His test results show that it does extremely little
to the happiness level of planets, even at extreme values, and even when
not using anything (like troops or UPC's) to boost happiness. Therefore
I reduced the basic and negative threshold value to 1, and the positive
threshold value to 2. Minimum setting of -50 gives 50 points. Maximum
setting of +50 costs 80 points.

Re: PvK Balance Mod Version 1.1 posted (for SE4 Gold Version 1.91 - Patch 4)
 

Any opinions on that Last change idea?

PvK

Re: PvK Balance Mod Version 1.1 posted (for SE4 Gold Version 1.91 - Patch 4)
 

about right.

Re: PvK Balance Mod Version 1.1 posted (for SE4 Gold Version 1.91 - Patch 4)
 

Not that the world is waiting on my comment, but it seems pretty good for me, and I would even consider raising Happiness to 150 to use it as a safety net. (You can never be *too* cautious after all.)

Lowering it to 50 will not earn you many points, so this choice could be reconsidered, and would make Happiness more likely to be raised. (Or kept at 100)

[ March 06, 2004, 11:17: Message edited by: Alneyan ]

Re: PvK Balance Mod Version 1.1 posted (for SE4 Gold Version 1.91 - Patch 4)
 

Thanks Alneyan and Narf.