AI Races Expand Too Slowly.
 

I believe that I have identified a problem with all AI races for this game: they expand too slowly. Installed the TDM mod pack in hopes of getting more of a challenge out of the AI. While the new AI did provide more of a challenge, I basically left every single race in the dust in just 80 turns.

When the game starts, I expand rapidly. Very rapidly. Expand, expand, expand. I had forty planets when the other races had only ten or fewer. While the AI was busy building obsolete ships and useless satellites, I was constantly expanding. When the AI finally got their act together, I had colonized twenty percent of the map. My massive empire could turn out ships faster than all the AI players combined. I simply steamrollered over everyone who was in my way. Diplomacy? Trade? Who needs ‘em?

I decided to alter the quadrant map in hopes of helping out the AI. I made a quadrant with nothing but rock worlds. I made sure that all five atmosphere types were represented in absolutely even proportions. I modified the AI files so that every race was native to rock and that there were the same number of races breathing each type of atmosphere. Every system in the new quadrant has 9 to 15 planets. Even the most addle-brained AI should have no problem finding good worlds to colonize.

My efforts resulted in a very nice custom quadrant. (I actually modded the system types file with 100 system types so that I still get “random” maps.) The AI still managed to bumble around, expanding ever so slowly. In my current game, my score is 2.4M at turn 83, while my nearest opponent has 417K. I have 160 planets while only two of the AI have more than 25. I control 45 systems, the most any AI player has is 7. Seven? SEVEN!?!? LOSERS!!!

Does anyone know if it’s possible to alter the AI to make it focus more on expansion?

Re: AI Races Expand Too Slowly.
 

I agree 100% - see my posting TDM-Modpack politics in really big game. It is raining soup and none of the AI have a bowl if they have met any other race. They switch strategy from complete colonization to prepare for war or war. It should be fairly easy to split them 50/50 between colony and war production in the ship building schedule. I think the problem is that the AI has been optimized for small quadrant low resources and just assumes there is nothing worth colonizing.

[This message has been edited by LCC (edited 27 May 2001).]

Re: AI Races Expand Too Slowly.
 

It is possible to make the AI expand faster. AI is ALWAYS on exploration state until it makes contact with another race. Depending on the size of this race and possibly on some other things the AI chooses another state which usually is not exploration. By boosting the AI's colony ship production (in exploration state) and making sure that the first few planets it colonizes are colonies with space yards you can get it to expand very rapidly. Also one way to make the AI expand more rapidly is to make sure that the first few exploration (attack) ships it builds are built in 1 turn (escorts). This aproach has few setbacks though (very little defense on AI planets when it makes first contact). But if you are playing in very large galaxies (200+ systems) the AI has enough time to build up its defenses when it changes its AI state away from exploration...

Re: AI Races Expand Too Slowly.
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by HreDaak:
[b]By boosting the AI's colony ship production (in exploration state) and making sure that the first few planets it colonizes are colonies with space yards you can get it to expand very rapidly. /B]<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Is that why low value planets are colonized domed when a good planet nearby begs to be colonized ? The AI should make up a priority list ranked by planet value and range to plant from nearest homeworld. It should look at that list every time the space yard completes construction on a homeworld. It also occurs to me that colonizing may be low on the AI prioity list when the resource stockpile is full and a good surplus is available of all types. But if that is so then the excess should be absorbed by building base yards or colonizing or a combination of both to get an exponential growth rate.

Re: AI Races Expand Too Slowly.
 

I've been trying to mod AI to colonize faster but there is quite a few problems with it. I'd really appreciate any thoughts from more experienced modders.
1. AI needs more space yards to be able build colony ships.
2. If you add more space yards AI doesn't build them immediately because it uses space yardless planets to build units.
3. If you remove units and AI builds space yards it stops building facilities to those planets because its busy with building ships.

[This message has been edited by Zarix (edited 27 May 2001).]

Re: AI Races Expand Too Slowly.
 

Speaking of space yards, on a high tech test game I noticed that new AI colonies just started building facilities per two turns rather than building a yard III first to make it a facility per turn. That is dumb except on tiny and small planets.

Re: AI Races Expand Too Slowly.
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Zarix:

3. If you remove units and AI builds space yards it stops building facilities to those planets because its busy with building ships.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

If the AI wants to build ships faster then it should build base yards like I am doing - see TDM-Modpack politics in really big game. If the problem of maintenance cost arises then the yards can always be mothballed. But that may create a problem with the limit on number of ships per player. So maybe the AI really just needs a better ship slot / scrap management algorithm.

Re: AI Races Expand Too Slowly.
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>If the problem of maintenance cost arises then the yards can always be mothballed.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>I don't think the AI knows how to Mothball or Scrap, and I know it can't Analyze. I suspect it can't Retrofit, either, but I'm less certain of that.

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Cap'n Q


The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the
human mind to correlate all of its contents. We live on a placid
island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was
not meant that we should go far. -- HP Lovecraft

Re: AI Races Expand Too Slowly.
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by capnq:

Quote:

If the problem of maintenance cost arises then the yards can always be mothballed.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>I don't think the AI knows how to Mothball or Scrap, and I know it can't Analyze. I suspect it can't Retrofit, either, but I'm less certain of that.

Oh the AI can retrofit, but unfortunately it does it kinda dumb. I occasionally swap the AI's back to my control to debug/monitor their progress since most of my games are half for fun, half for testing mods. I see Messages about retrofits being completed on occasion, but I also see many Messages about how such and such ship cannot be retrofitted because it is carrying cargo or the retrofit design is the same as the current design. I'm not sure if the AI doesn't check to unload cargo or if it's a problem with the planet with the space yard having no cargo space remaining. I should probably pay more attention. As for the second problem, I still have yet to figure out why the AI constantly creates new designs that are exactly the same as the older ones. I guess some sort of flag variable that is supposed to be checked for making new designs isn't being checked correctly or is being reset all the time. The AI will scrap ships if it's maintenance is greater than its budget and it's running out of stored resources, but I can't be sure that it's scrapping obsolete designs.

Re: AI Races Expand Too Slowly.
 

I hear you loud and clear, guys. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif

I will try to make my races expand more rapidly for the next Mod-Pack.

The problem is, as some of you have guessed, that some people play small galaxies with small number of planets and some play large galaxies with large number of planets. It is very hard to make AI that will play both types of games good, so most of us make AI that prepares for war rather then colonizing.

Re: AI Races Expand Too Slowly.
 

I also slowed the expnsion of the Rage because of complaints that they were too weak if met early. It is difficult to balance for either small or large quadrants.

I tried putting shipyards on most planets and ran into huge resource problems for the reason already mentioned: they all get tied up building ships instead of facilities, so you wind up with a big fleet and no resource production.

I'm getting better results now by putting shipyard base up early and trying to ensure at least one "Resupply Base" planet type with a shipyard in almost every colonized system.

I would like to get the AI to send a colonizer out to explore. As a human, I will frequently send a colonizer out a warp to see if there is a planet on the other side to colonize. The AI needs to explore the warp first with an attack ship before it will send a colonizer through.

In summary, I agree that the AI needs to expand faster. I am working on the Rage. as well as a couple of other projects, to improve that rate without making them a pushover in a small quadrant game.

Re: AI Races Expand Too Slowly.
 

I play large clusters with low bonus on hard with the tmd mod and other then the neutrals, the AI expands like a mother f...er. Dozens of colony ships and more planets then you can shake a stick at. Also they seem to have good facilities on them. Where the computer does fall down is research and population. While I'll shuttle my populations the computer just lets them build it seems or mostly which means they will have a lot of 34m colonies. Right now I have about 157B empire in population and #2 who controlls more planets has about 30B I think. The other thing I"m sure the computer doesn't do is use diff population types for diff atmospheres. If I capture an O2 colony and my guys are hydrogen I'll empty the pop off my O2 planets and replace with the O2pop for obvious reasons.

Research - about 2/3rds of my early planets are research, I'm always head of the computer here.

Other things, I've yet to see the computer try to capture one of my planets, its always glassing.

- Why would one turn after I take over an enemy home world they would be jubilent? I just destroyed 1/3rd of their population, bombed them from space, and they are acting like I'm their favorite uncle.

- Speaking of bombing from space, whats the point of planet bombs (not destroyers but normal damage types), I've never seen a use for them to date. In Moo1-2 they had a nice use cause beam weapons were like 1/3rd damage.

- Satalites are useless. Just thought I'd say that too.

- There should be some 'super massive' beam weapons you can put on planets to increase standard range or something, right now planet defenses seem like so much fluff after you get point defense and nullify all seekers.

- Now this REALLY annoys me. If you are moving from A-C and in system B you see an enemy ship your ship stops moving. I can understand why you might want that but there is NO warning, nothing to let you know it happened. Its been more then once I see a colony ship or fleet held up at a wp thats been sitting there for god knows how long because it saw a colony ship 3 turns ago on the other side of the system.

Re: AI Races Expand Too Slowly.
 

There is a mod that increases weapons platform range, Dev mod includes it. You should try that, PPB with range 12, APB with range 15. Tough to get close to a planet with this mod. Also, in the empire window you can remove the check mark to clear movement orders when entering a system with enemie in it.
As far as AI's being slow to grow I think with the number of possible starting conditions that the only way to overcome this is to have different AI files for different types of play, ie a fast expansion Version, a strong military Version, etc. but that would be a lot of work to make and set up.
I would guess that the most common set up is large mid-life and most people seem to play large quadrant so the AI should be based on this.

Re: AI Races Expand Too Slowly.
 

As Daynarr and Alpha Kodiak have indicated, controlling the expansion rate of the AI is a fine balancing act. With the Romulans, Klingons etc, I ended up putting in an extended queue in the Construction_Vehicles file for Exploration state in order to get bases, colonisers and warships built in the right order. I also extensively modified the queues for the other AI states.
Also, the AI really does seem to need a low bonus as a minimum in order to operate well (even mod pack races), so anyone not playing without a bonus should consider doing so.

Finally, I also agree that planetary defense weapons are basically crap - hence the fact that I designed the Klingons not to use WP's, Defense Bases and Satellites. They do build lots of fighters instead though...
Might give Devnulls mod a try down the track though just to make life interesting....

[This message has been edited by God Emperor (edited 28 May 2001).]

Re: AI Races Expand Too Slowly.
 

As an Ancient race I know what is worth colonizing. So on the very first turn I plan what will be my first 39 colonies. As the AI explores, it should keep a list of the 20 (At least) highest production potential planets known, and update the list with every change to its map. Each entry is marked as pending with a note of the scheduled planet when production starts. Then in transit when built, and finally taken off the list when planted. That may require a code change to the colonization minister, but would not be affected by quadrant size and richness of the environment. It might also solve the problem of forced production on low quality minerals when it should be doing high quality organics or radioactives.

Re: AI Races Expand Too Slowly.
 

Actually, weapon platforms are useful if you have the mod that increases the ranges of platform-based weapon mounts, that is.

Of course, the main problem is that the AI doens't jettison obsolete platforms and build replacements with the latest tech for that turn. 30-50 turn old designs should get rid of the seriously outdated ones while keeping the obsolescent ones in place til the new ones get built.

That and maybe some way to get the AI to build planetary defenses in some way that doesn't overload their cargo storage.

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--
"What do -you- want?" "I'd like to live -just- long enough to be there when they cut off your head and stick it on a pike as a warning to the next ten generations that some favors come with too high a price. I would look up into your lifeless eyes and wave like this..." *waggle* "...can you and your associates arrange that for me, Mr. Morden?"

[This message has been edited by Sinapus (edited 28 May 2001).]

Re: AI Races Expand Too Slowly.
 

In a high tech game the AI can build some nasty Weapons Platforms, especially with the range increase mods. Neutrals build Large WP with 2 heavy WMG on each, range 17 damage 420. Try attacking a planet with 6+ of these, you WILL take some damage closing on with the planet. The Dev mod also increases the range of the Satellites. Between WP and Sats, attacking planets is no piece of cake anymore.
It would be nice if every so many turns the AI checked to see if their WP were in need of replacement with better ones. Maybe these units should be given the ability to upgrade like ships. It would certainly help the AI's defense ability.

Re: AI Races Expand Too Slowly.
 

Bump.
Have the AI for the newest TDM been modified to increase their expansion rate as requested here ?

Re: AI Races Expand Too Slowly.
 

Yes, at least my races.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by LCC:
Bump.
Have the AI for the newest TDM been modified to increase their expansion rate as requested here ?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Re: AI Races Expand Too Slowly.
 

While working on my Taera race, i made them to expand quickly, and infact they do.
Even though using the rare Ice planets, and even rarer atmosphere Oxygen, my Taerans expand quickly. Quicker than most races, as i've seen.
You might want to try them.

Not the best enemy, but still.

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Emperor Klis't of the Taera Republic.
Proud member of the League of Empires.

E-Mail -
Ora Planet - Taera Republic - League of Empires

Re: AI Races Expand Too Slowly.
 

The Rage should be back to rapid expansion again. Hopefully, I have found a balance that doesn't leave them too vulnerable early in small quadrant games. We shall see....