1 Bug, 1 Comment, 2 Suggestions, 1 Complaint

[gbraley]

First, the bug: I'm pretty sure that the costs/time to completion for Counter Intelligence projects is being miscalculated. I usually do 6 or 12 CI projects with points divided evenly, because I don't want to bother with intel most of the time, and the minister isn't very good (see my first suggestion). If I have, for example, 120000 intel points and set up 6 CI3 projects (I think they are 500k each), they should take 500k*120k/6 turns, or 100 turns/10 years. I usually finish all of them in ~1 year, and that just ain't right!

Suggestion 1: Separate CI from Intel. Make CI a set portion/number of points and no projects involved. Leave the intel projects. The problem is that, when I finish all CI projects, there is a window in which all enemy intel projects succeed. Or, if I want to actually do intel projects of my own, I leave myself open to attack.

Comment: I get a much, much better game out of the AI when I quickstart than when I create a race and start a game. I haven't tried yet, but I think adding the pre-generated races to a non-quickstart game may be good too?

Complaint: This is a common problem with most 4x games - the tiny little empires irrationally declaring war on the big player empire. My suggestion would be this: the AI should check, before declaring war, if the computer empire would surrender if asked. If it would, it shouldn't declare war. Does that make sense? When a computer player declares war on me, I immediately demand that it surrender. Many of the small ones do so, quite rightly. However, they should never have declared war in the first place. Instead they should seek alliance with me, or maintain it if it already exists.

Suggestion 2: I often want/need to know about system wide resources (computers, shrines, urban pacification centers, etc), not only those that already exist, but those in the build queues. I'm not sure of the best way to handle it, but maybe a table set up like the planets screen, with all of my known system wide facilities as radio buttons and all systems down the side. When I select a button (i.e. Urban Pacification Center), the planet, level (Urban Pacification Center II) and status (complete, building (xx turns), in queue, upgrade in queue) and so forth would be shown for each system. So for system AXF, I might see AXF IV Urban Pacification Center II building (3 turns).

Those are my comments and so forth...


Scott

[Taqwus]

Regarding CI:

Not sure. But in my most recent game, my usual intel settings towards the end (255-system, ~230 turn game for reference) were

- Intelligence sabotage, 1 per known enemy
- A roughly 50/50 split between economic disruption and industrial sabotage
- 1 counter-intel III

with 'repeat' on, and 'divide evenly' off. The intel sabotage took care of defense, destroying one enemy intel project per turn.

I would like to see counter-intel separate, 'tho, because if I'm doing something pricey like PPP, I might want to allocate more points to PPP than counter-intel.

- Re: quickstarting -- are you customizing your race to your playing style? Maybe that makes a better fit?

- Re: tiny empires. Maybe it's a byproduct of the MegaEvilEmpire. But in such a case, they should consider surrendering to one of their allies against you.

- Re: system facilities in queue. Agreed. It's a bit of a pain checking to make sure that I don't have multiple such facilities in separate queues in the same system. Also, a 'find facility' command, both system-level and galaxy-level would be nice. Right now, in a large galaxy you'd better write down the location of your resource converter(s), because finding them manually takes too long.

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-- The thing that goes bump in the night

[Ungor]

quote:

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Originally posted by gbraley:
If I have, for example, 120000 intel points and set up 6 CI3 projects (I think they are 500k each), they should take 500k*120k/6 turns, or 100 turns/10 years. I usually finish all of them in ~1 year, and that just ain't right!

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By my math it should take 500k * 6 / 120k = 25 turns. (Cost per project) * (Number of projects) / (Intel points per turn). Still longer than you're seeing, but a lot closer.

quote:

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Suggestion 1: Separate CI from Intel. Make CI a set portion/number of points and no projects involved. Leave the intel projects. The problem is that, when I finish all CI projects, there is a window in which all enemy intel projects succeed. Or, if I want to actually do intel projects of my own, I leave myself open to attack.

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If you don't select "Divide Pts Evenly" one project will follow on after another. As near as I can tell this should give you constant coverage. You can also slip an active intel project in there if you can complete it in one turn, which shouldn't be a problem with 120k intel points.

[gbraley]

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By my math it should take 500k * 6 / 120k = 25 turns. (Cost per project) * (Number of projects) / (Intel points per turn). Still longer than you're seeing, but a lot closer.
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Right, hard to believe I'm an engineer sometimes! You are correct. I am still seeing them much faster than I should...

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- Re: quickstarting -- are you customizing your race to your playing style? Maybe that makes a better fit?
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Haven't explored the various combinations yet. When I play a custom race and let the computer generate races, the AI is very passive and the game is a breeze. When I quickstart with one of the existing races, the AI puts up a decent fight. Not a great one, but I was actually #2 in the scores for a long time I haven't tried yet a custom race with computer-controlled preexisting races to see how they do.

Scott

PS How do you generate quotes in these silly html webBoards?

[Freyland]

Hello Scott

To generate a quote, use one of the icons at the bottom of the message you wish to quote. It will generate a "reply window" with the poster's information in quotes, and you may edit as need be. Good luck!

Jonathan

[Tomgs]

I have noticed the "bug" with counter intell also. I do not split the points evenly very often but usually I repeat them. Many times I will have many turns to go on my counter intell as I end a turn but on the next turn it will be 1 turn to completion with 0 point required to complete it. The reason for this I believe is that when you have spent enough points on that counter intell project to disrupt one enemy operation then that completes it and another needs to be started. This means even though it says that many turns are left if you have disrupted the random operation it was countering that project is finished. I am not certain this is what is happening but I know every time one of the projects gets completed early I get a message stating that I had disrupted intell from a certain race.



[This message has been edited by Tomgs (edited 17 December 2000).]

[ender]

If you're going to have the AI team up on you why not make it more "historical" and intersting. For instance instead of having a AI player surrunder if the player gets to big or a threat is issued have the AI instead make a check of it's relationships with other AI's. If it has a certain relationship level with other AI players it should offer to "surrender" to them instead (to team up to defeat the evil empire), thus forcing their new ruler to protect them from the big bad player.

In fact NO AI should surrender to an opponent unless it's recieved a certain critera of damage from that player (unless the AI is scripted for that race to purposely to be whimpy).


Some wish list items

I like to see the AI get more and more jumpy with a player the more the AI explores and recons new systems that are owned by another player. Thus forcing neighbors to be by default more squirly (again a historical aspect). While distant empires would tend to be more freindly till their borders started meeting. Modifiers for AI behavior should include ships passing through yoour system or encountered and planets you recon for the first time tht have an oppossing player occupying. I haven't looked at the AI files yet but if these aspect are there they should be increased! This needs to be slightly modified to take into account things like information gathered from treaties and the games use of warp lines but you get the general idea.

[Talenn]

Personally I think the whole espionage area could stand a reworking. Its confusing and counter-intuitive as it stands now. I've used it a bit and I like the missions etc, but the layout could really use some help.

I appears that the intent was to make the research and intel screens have the same functionality, but it doesnt seem to fit quite right. I think the intel screen from SE3 with some appropriate modernization would better fill the role.

At the very least, I would like to see the 'Counter Espionage' be a separate 'mission' altogether and allow points to be split between the 'attack' missions and the defense without regard to 'split evenly' or not. Give the player more control over what goes where when it comes to intel.

Well, thats my $.02 on the subject.

Talenn

[Daynarr]

There is another thing I had in mind about intel. Since finishing counter-ops opens screen for enemy intel, maybe counter-ops shouldn't be ever finished (make them cost endless amount of points).
Also IIRC the number of counter-ops going on in the same time is important, so making counter espionage a seperate process would require to change how the whole inter works. Maybe just making counter-ops a never-finish project could be more easaly implemented than changing the way the whole counter intel works.

[Psitticine]

I'd like to see a slider system, where you just drag over the bar to set a proportion of Intel Points to be put towards Counter-Intel. Also, if you aren't running any offensive projects, the points should be automatically put towards defense.