AI Tweaks and Personalities and Other Thoughts

[Grifman]

Well, the game is fun, and you certainly have enough options, but the AI still needs some "adjusting". (BTW all my comments are using the latest patch, medium galaxy, hard difficulty).

First off, the patch does seem to have made the AI's more calm - they didn't sign treaties with me, and then declare war on me half a dozen turns later. But now (I know, hard to please) they are too passive. I just expanded as fast as I could until I met the AI's, then just developed my space to maximum efficiency (all three planet types, emphasis on science and economic development). Only, about the time I was starting my "war" buildup did all of them at the same time start to get "nasty" with me. But it was too late. I outproduce all three of the survivors combined, and they are all at war with each other. It's all over except for the shouting at this point.

Some things I'd like:

1) Right now the AIs have no personality. One of the things MOO/MOO2 got right was differences in the aliens. Some were xenophobic, others friendly (at first), others warlike. They really had personality - from the Mrrshans to the Psilons to the Meklars, they were memorable. To me the SEIV empires are all the same. None of them seem to treat me any differently than the others. All will eventually sign treaties of one sort or the other. None seem inherently hostile, none seem standoffish, none seem overly friendly. They are all rather bland. This really takes the roleplaying out of it for me.

The different races in SEIV all have quite detailed backdrops, but right now those mean very little, as they seem to make very little difference in how the AIs act/play. This is an area of the game that definitely needs bulking up.

2) I as the human player don't like being ganged up on for that sake only, but if they are all fighting me, the baddest guy on the block, it seems only logical that they would put aside their petty disputes and focus on me. Seems like they should have enough sense if not to ally with each other, to stop fighting each other.

3) Trading techs is a big pain and pretty worthless. As far as I can tell, I have no idea what they might be interested in. I have to pick a tech and hope they like it - on both sides. I much better like the MOO/MOO2 system where lists on both sides of the exchange are provide for me to choose from. As it stands now, I don't trade tech (which is one of the most fun things in games of this sort) because it is too big of a pain, and you don't even know if it might work. Unless there is something I have totally missed here in how it works.

4) Back to the AIs, several of them tell me that they cannot be friends with me if I have treaties with "X" or "Y" or "Z", but they never do anything about it. None ever break off relations with me - they still remain "brotherly". They should follow up on their threats by cancelling treaties and becoming less than friendly.

5) I have had military treaties with several AIs but they never ask me to attack their enemies - they have responded to my request for attacks on my enemies, but they never ask for my help. Seems like they should - which then would force me to decide whether I should honor that treaty or not.

6) Sort of off topic here but in several games I've never seen the AIs research computers. All of their ships have to have bridges, life support, crew quarters, etc. making them much less efficient/powerful than my ships with Master Computers.

Like I said, this game has all of the options that you could ask for in a space 4X game. Reseach, diplomacy, economics, ship design, etc. But its promise remains only partially fulfilled until the AI is made more robust and some personality is added to the races.

Grifman

[Talenn]

Grifman:

I agree with you 110%. That is really my only gripe with SE4 (but a major one). The MECHANICS of the game are VERY good, but the AI/Diplomacy/Role-play atmosphere is sorely lacking IMO. You are right, all the AI races seem the same.

SE3 was far better in that regard IMO. The player could select the enemy races and assign a 'personality type' to them which triggered different Messages and different responses. I am REALLY sorry to see that go in SE4. In fact, I used varying shipsets and judicious selection of the personality types to create the MOO/MOO2 Races as well as popular Sci-Fi races. It really added so much to the game to run into the Star Wars 'Empire' and know that 9 times out of 10, they were going to be hostile (I had them set to 'Genocidal'). The same was true for all the rest, from my Version of the Darloks (Intelligists) to the Alkari (Marauders). They actually seemed like distinct personalities and responded accordingly.

The AI Races in SE4 are indeed VERY bland by comparison. This is especially disconcerting as its the same basic ENGINE as SE3 had, but without the simple ability to do the same things. Messing with AI files in SE4 is a major chore and there seems to be no way to really increase their aggressiveness or xenophobia etc. One thing that SE4 DOES do far better is varying the AI player's research and ship designs. SE3 players all had identical ships and that was silly after a while. I think a good merge of the two game's mechanics would be great.

Heres hoping that continued tweaks will be made or perhaps a major re-coding of the way the AI players function. I think if anything causes me to relegate SE4 to the shelf it will be this shortcoming. Multiplayer is fine and all, but its nearly impossible to get commitment to a long-term game and at any rate, its just that...long term. In a game like this, the Single Player experience is VERY important IMO. And in that regard, SE4 seems to be a step backwards from SE3.

Perhaps some details for how to edit and tweak the races will be forthcoming from MM and player created scripts will be available to alleviate the problem. We can hope.

Talenn

[Grifman]

Thanks for the feedback - nice to know I'm not the only one!

However, I do think you can do what you want under the "Players" option in the game setup. Under there, you can create a new race, and one of the options there under "Description" is "Demeanor". Under that you have options such as psychotic, serene, aggressive, violent, honorable, etc. I am assuming that these somehow modify created races' behavior?

Well, I guess for my next game, I'm going to have to move beyond the stock races shipped with the game and create my own - perhaps a reprise of some of my favorite MOO races, with the specialties - too bad I can't recreate a Silicoid race that can colonize everything - that doesn't appear to be an option The only thing that makes this difficult is play balancing. If I create a Meklar like production oriented race, how do I know if a 10%, 30% or 50% bonus is enough or too little.

Hmm, maybe I'll create 6 psychotic races for my next game and see what happens! If I do, I'll let you know and post it here!

Grifman

[ashbery]

Grifman your Posts 100% correct,in the game you have loads of so called race traits but like you say it doesnt make any difference,a evil xenophobic race seems just as keen to offer alliances as a peacefull merchant,just as peacefull merchants wage the same kind of genocidel warefare as the evil xenophode.

The roleplaying side really suffers because of this,i hope that the developers sort this out,ive added a few of my own races and theres no difference,maybe you should email that bottom post to malfador see what they say because this is a major flaw in my view.

[Tampa_Gamer]

Just backing you up - I agree 100% with the initial post below. As a 4x fan back to the days of Ascendancy and MOO, I would like the design team to tweak the AI. I have started some mods myself, but you can only do so much with the AI files.

[ksean]

"- too bad I can't recreate a Silicoid race that can colonize everything - "

Actually you can ..
Create a racial trait that gives the Tech Area Ability. (use some value above that for Organic tech, I start at 255 and work down.)
Add a new Applied Tech "Universal Colonization," that requires that racial trait, then make a new component "Universal Colonizer" that requires Universal Colonization, has all three colonization abilities from the other colonization modules and give it a family number of 5004 (one more than the highest colony module).

Voila' a race that can colonize any planet from the start.

[Jubala]

ksean, sounds like something all neutrals should have imo.

[mafia]

Yes AI can be bolstered a bit but I think AI will never be up to human standars and improving the multiplayer aspect of this game is the *only* way to face a worthy foe. PBEM is a thing of the past. Malfador needs to focus on vastly improving the multiplayer. Until then we'll all be griping about the AI's stupidity.

-m

[Talenn]

Hope and Help for the AI:

Well, I am happy to report that after much tweaking and futzing, I finally have my AI giving me a good run for the money in quite a few games. Its still not up to human standards, but it can sure keep up in production right now. I have been giving it the 'Computer Player Bonus:Low', but I'm beginning to think that it may no longer be needing it.

A few of my friends who had played the game at first (out of the box) were stunned when the AI pummeled them into submission.
I cant vouch for distinct AI personalities (yet), but overall, it is performing far better. I am going to start working on the personalities soon.

Does anyone know if the default AI files are replaced by any with the 'correct' name? Or is it just the ones in the current 'Race' directory? I will experiment with the 'Speech' file first as that will be most obvious one to see. I think the AI programming aspect has GREAT potential if everything works the way it appears to me at this point. I'm not sure how much 'personality' can be injected, but if speech and treay/anger levels can be adjusted in addition to the (already present) ship and research lists, we should be able to eventually get VERY distinctive feeling AIs.

Anyone else have any thoughts or success yet?

Thanx,
Talenn

[Jubala]

I beg to differ. Yes, multiplayer is coming strong, but pbem and single player is not a thing of the past. People who don't have internet access (yes, they do exist) want to play single player, and for that they need a competitive AI so I say keep improving it. Even players who have internet access may not have the time or incliniation to spend several hours a day or an entire weekend playing a game over the net. They want pbem so they can spend a few minutes a day on the game and have plenty of time for indepth diplomacy and roleplay via email. Then we have the LAN people. They can play SE4 now with a little work distributing the files but the workload can be minimized with a script or a batchfile so they're pretty much setup. Then there's always people who want to play cooperative against the AI and they want a strong AI. Then there's people like me who wants all the above and then some!

Bottom line is options people. The more the merrier. SE4 already have plenty of options but there's nothing wrong with adding more imo.