AI Colonisation - Colony/Planet Type Observations

[God Emperor]

Not sure whether anyone else has picked this up before, but, I have just made an interesting observation about how the AI determines what planet type its new colonies should be. The AI appears to use two criteria;

1) If the current maintenance bill is greater than the Maintenance maximum value in the Settings file (default = 80%), then the next colony will be a Mining colony.

2) If the Maintenance maximum has not been breached, the PlanetTypes file is used to determine the planet type.

The above explains why the AI builds Mining colonies on crappy worlds in contravention of the PlanetTypes file settings.

Hope the modders out there find this information of use (took me heaps of play testing to discover it).
Regards,

God Emperor

[Master Belisarius]

But something about it, was wrote here.

When the AI go lack of resources, the AI skip the Planets.txt and build a colony for the resource that is lack of.
I think that your observation about the 80% setting, is not right (I believe that the AI do it when is in red numbers), but who knows?

[capnq]

This has been discussed extensively; try a search on the words "mining colony".

In the thread "odd 1.30 observation"

( http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/For...ML/001980.html ),

it's been reported that the 80% maintenance maximum isn't working.

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Cap'n Q

[God Emperor]

Master Belisarius,
You may be correct about the 80% setting not working, but, I thought I did observe a race switch to mining colonies before it was in the red. Must admit, though that I didnt check it that closely as I was really focussing on 80% being breached. I have set my AI's to 99% now anyway which at at least eliminates any confusion (ie if they are spending more than they are mining, they definately will be building mining colonies, one way or the other).

Thanks for your reply...