Getting a fight out of the AI

[Jubala]

From my experience in my games my ability to beat the living snot out of the AI's early in a small universe with max AI's at max diff. and bonus was mainly because I built alot of base space yards the first thing I did and then flooded the AI with smaller technically inferior ships so sheer numbers killed it.

So I thought, what will happen if I teach the AI to build alot of base space yards? Well, now I know and it aint pretty. I'm actually on the defense in my homesystem fighting just one AI. And it's kicking my ***. There is one system between my homesystem and the homesystem of the AI I'm fighting and I had two colonies in it and was actually pushing the pace in the AI's homesystem attacking it's homeworld and destroying it's base space yards. But I made a mistake and let a salvo from the weapon platforms land on my fleet which crippled alot of ships in range so I had to tuck tail and run with the remainder. They where hunted down and destroyed by a second AI fleet coming from another system and since then I've been on the defense. One of my colonies in the system between us killed several single destroyers and light cruisers with it's weapon platforms until the AI finally attacked with enough force to wipe it out.

The only thing that kept me afloat at all is the fact that I moved ship capture up one notch in military science so I had it available from start. If I hadn't been capturing the AI ships and analyzing them I would have been hopelessly behind in technology years ago and probably dead long since. It's now 2404.0 and the AI has pushed me into a defensive position in my homesystem. I hade a fleet of 12 ships of which 8 where fighting (the rest troop transports and repairships) annihilated just after they captured an AI planet. The AI glassed the planet of course. Just Last turn it actually attacked my homeworld with a fleet of 7 superior technology Light Cruisers and I expected that to be the end of me as all I had to defend the place with was 3 inferior Light Cruisers and 5 Weapon Platforms. My entire shipbuilding infrastructure of 5 base space yards was going down the drain just one year before they finished building the latest Light Cruisers in my arsenal with upgraded shields courtesy of the Sergetti Empire (the AI I'm fighting).

But due to AI stupidity in choosing it's targets I won with minor losses. All weapon platforms, about 500M people and 4 facilities (including the planetary space yard) are my complete losses. I held my 3 fighting shpis back close to planet so the planet and the ships could work together. The AI fired at the ships when the planet wasn't in range but as soon as the planet was in range it's just like the AI forgot anything else even existed. It shot only at the planet, even after the weapon platforms where gone leaving my 3 inferior ships free reign to bLast all 7 AI ships to pieces. Had it instead killed my ships (which it could have) and the base space yards it would have crippled me. Now the follow up fleet of 6 light cruisers right behind the first one will meet with my 3 old ships and 5 new ships I wouldn't have had if my base space yards had been destroyed.

But still, the small changes I made has given me a pretty good fight out of the AI. Had I been fighting 2 AI's at once I doubt I would have made it this far. Thankfully my homesystem only has 2 warp points of which one leads into a black hole with all warp points in/out of it causing damage. Not many ships coming through that way, thank the lord.

I have also tried to get the AI to research, build and use troops and armor but it doesn't seem to work yet.

[Jubala]

I forgot to mention I don't use mines. Makes defending alot harder.

It's now 2404.4 and I have now have a fleet of 12 light cruisers and have destroyed 8 more AI light cruisers with a fleet of 9 more being next on the list. I am now in AI territory once again.

[Lupusman]

You failed to say exactly how you altered the files to get the AI to build those base space yards.
Seems like a good idea, cause I noticed that every AI race has tons and tons of extra resources that it could be using for building and maintaining lots more ships than it usually has.

[Danny]

Tell us and post the file. ;-)

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I AM Canadian.

[Jubala]

Sorry about that. Here's a quick description of what I did. I'll post the files later when I have more time.

Default_AI_Construction_Vehicles.txt:
-------------------
Changes made:
Exploration:

Inserted entry 1 Base Space Yard

Infrastructure:

Changed entry 8 to must have 4 Base Space Yard
Changed entry 32 to must have 1 Boarding Ship
Changed entry 12 to must have 10 troop

Prepare for Attack, Attack:

Moved entry 2 colonizer to entry 10
Changed entry 2 from colonizer to troop, same settings as for Fighter
Inserted entry 8 Troop Transport, same settings as for Carrier
--------------------

Default_AI_Research.txt:
-------------------
Changes made:

Added Research of Armor at 3 locations. The first 3 found when doing a search for armor.
Added Research of Troops at 2 locations and Troop Weapons at one location. The only ones in the file.
-------------------

It doesn't seem to research or use armor and troops. Haven't really checked all that much yet though.

[Talenn]

Jubala:

I have been able to get them to armor their ships without a problem. You have to make sure that Chemistry and Armor are in their Research tree though. I have the Terrans now building a good mix of armored missile ships with gun armed point defense ships for support. Now if only there was a way to get them to stay together as opposed to always wandering around alone...

Note to all who are using Jubala's changes:

In order for this to work, you have to be playing with AI set for a High Bonus. Otherwise it will just choke the AI's econ trying to build that many shipyards and paying upkeep on them. The high bonus gives it enough resources to be able to do so and then be able to continue with their usual build queue.

Talenn

[Bakunine]

Jubala I´m waiting for your files with great anxiety. Please post them as soon as you can. Talenn could you please also post your modified files.
I think it will be very addictive for me to play games with diferent files especialy if it wasn´t me who modified them and i skip the description of the changes so that i won´t know how the AI will act.
I would also modify the files but i don´t fell confident enouth since the first time i modified the number of max sistems i had to reistall the game. So rookie that i don´t even backup the original file.
I promise that you can count with my feedback after i play with the files.

[Talenn]

Bakunine:

Well, my mods are very much a perpetual 'work in progress'. I play a game, tweak something, play again, tweak some more and so forth. I dont think it will ever truly be 'finished' in that sense.

Also, I have changed quite a bit of the way the game flows and I'm not sure that people would be that interested. I've reduced the number of facilities that the larger planets can hold, have slightly increased the number that 'domed' colonies can hold. I do stuff like this to mitigate the luck of a player finding a Huge breathable world in their home system. On a small map, a single stroke like that is almost a game breaker as others will have a VERY hard time catching up.

I've also done things like make pop count more at the low end by reducing the production and build rate for colonies under 100M and slightly reduced for under 200M. This encourages more population transfer...something the AI actually does fairly well.

Lets see, I've reduced the amount of resources generated from Extractors, Farms and Refineries in an effort to make expansion more necessary (ie to promote conflict). I think my data gives a more 'MOO2' feeling to the game in that Empires and fleets tend to be a bit smaller overall (at least until the late game).

Organics and Radioactives are more necessary in my set as well. Both figure more heavily into facility costs so that heavy amounts of colonization require more investiture in these resources. Both are also a bit more prominant in ship costs in my set.

I've renamed and tweak many of the weapons in the game. Some were just no brainers to research and some were such a LONG way to go to get any payoff that I never saw them being used in my multiplayer games (we play hotseat and can get a fair amount done in a sitting). I renamed many of them to give more 'flavor'...Gun I/II/III etc just doesnt have the same feels as 'Gauss Cannon', 'Heavy Gauss Cannon' and 'Advanced Gauss Cannon' etc. Its purely subjective stuff, but it adds a lot IMO.

Finally, I've been having to tweak the AI to respond to all these changes. This is by far the biggest challenge and I'm quite pleased by the results. Unfortunately, there are AI things that I cant (or dont know how to) tweak and that still leaves it feeling a little bit flat.

OK, so anyways, I guess it comes down to the fact that my 'mod' would be all or none. And there are ALOT of files that have changes in them. I've even replaced many of the sillier Race Portraits with .bmps I've found on the web and by inserting other people's racial portraits in for some. It CERTAINLY adds a lot to the game when you can 'respect' the enemies you run into rather than laugh at them! I think the worst was the 'skinned teddy bear' look of the Toltayan thing...lol...I just couldnt bring myself to EVER be worried about insulting that face.

Oh well, so thats my story and I'm sticking to it. If you still want to take a look at it even with all of the above, I'll see if I can compile something, but no promises. The files are scattered all over creation and I dont even REMEMBER all the changes I've made in that Last month.

Talenn

[Jubala]

Bakunine:
I have uploaded the files I changed but I don't consider it be a finished mod. Not much of a mod at all since I didn't change much. But you wanted it so you got it.

Go read the readme in the modarchive if you want to know how my game ended.

Talenn:
How much begging will it take for you to upload your custom set? I have seen alot of people ask you for it now, including me, several times. You keep teasing us by mentioning changes you have made that sound good to say the least. So, pretty please, just upload the damn thing already? Please?

[Talenn]

Jubala:

Ok, let me see what I can do. I have to do alot of collating to find out what all I have to upload. I'm not going to bother with the extra graphics files cuz I only have a 56k connection and I dont want the file to be monster sized. I cant guarantee that it will be easy to install either as I'm not overly savvy about Winzip etc.

BUT...I will get it out there one way or another.

Talenn