New Mod Posted - Have fixed faults in AI Research files

God Emperor · #5 February 11th, 2001, 05:09 AM

Baron,
I humbly wish to disagree with your statement.
The AI maintains a research queue of four items and adding other theoretical techs just slows downs its research on vital ship components.

I have developed a fix though.

My Research V1.02 is now available and SIGNIFICANTLY improves the AI's ships. I mean SIGNIFICANTLY.

What I have done is to create two dummy techs called Filler Tech 1 and Filler Tech 2 in the TechArea file. The techs only cost a couple of research points but act as spacers so that only two normal techs are in the queue at any one time.

I have modded the AI_Research files to include Filler Tech 1 and Filler Tech 2 and have fixed some typos that I and others had introduced for the tech Armor (was spelt in the English form "Armour"), which caused a few odd things to happen very late in a game. I also advanced the research of armour for all races.

The mod is stable and the AI now builds some VERY tough ships as it spends less time researching theoretical techs early on.

I have lost two ships in my first five battles in my latest game, when I normally only lose ships very late in the game when large fleet battles occur. Be prepared to be challenged!!!! Be warned!!!

PS:The TechAreas file needs to go into your SEIV/Data directory.

Just to reiterate, I see a potential problem in the AI_Research files when the computer gets down to researching Rock,Ice, Gas colonisation, which I'm interested to see whether anyone has encountered. The fact that the three colonisation techs are next to each other and set to 100% appears to mean that the AI has to research 1,000,000 pts before it will move on to any other tech. I am thinking of separating the techs, but am unsure of the implications.

If anyone has any ideas or seen the AI players researching two of the colonisation techs in a row late in a game, I'd be interested to know.

Also, does any one know whether the four item queue problem will be fixed in the new patch?

Regards,
God Emperor

PS: I am very happy for any one to mirror V1.02 as I have no more major changes to make to it am now enjoying a very tough game, which I will play to the end for a change (normally I stop because my empire is too powerful and I cant be bothered going on).