AI Improvement Mod (1.05 Extended Release)

[Tanaka]

ORIGINAL: Icemania

ORIGINAL: Tanaka
I think its safe to say you will see a lot more playing and testing from most people when the extended version is out. Im really looking forward to it! Also waiting on the official patch to be released! [:)]

Agreed ... and it's coming. However, if people come up with good idea for changes that apply across races after the Extended version is out, I will need to modify 62 races (i.e. 22 Vanilla plus 40 Extended). So the earlier I get good comments the better! And for that reason I really appreciate everyone who has commented to date!

ORIGINAL: Tanaka
Any chance of engine re-balancing to be included with your weapons re-balancing?

How would this improve AI performance? I would suggest this is an item to discuss with lurchi for Research Reloaded.

For one I find that the less that automated ships are allowed to run off and fly across the galaxy by researching just one engine the more they stay close to home and do what they are supposed to do. Constuctors, defense fleets, mining ships etc... If engines were balanced to reasonable ranges not only would it be more fun and make more sense by adding a reasonable pacing to the game I do think it would help the AI! It would force the AI to the same reasonable ranges as human sends their ships. We don't send our ships off to the other side of the galaxy to mine or build stuff. This should not be until late game when the appropriate balanced engines would be researched.

But if your mod is being included with lurchi's mod and he is balancing the engines then that would be great too! But if he doesn't then I really hope you do! When your mod is finished will his take much longer to complete and combine?

[Icemania]

Thanks Tanaka, a good point about the AI tendency to travel too far early and mid-game. Let me get the Beta release out for Extended first and have a think about whether to do it in an update or leave it to lurchi.

It will require a fair bit of work to apply the AI Improvement Mod to Research Reloaded due to the massive changes in the Tech Tree. lurchi needs some support from Elliot to make his mod work. I have a long list of Developer support in my wishlist in the OP ... and they are very quiet at the moment ...

[lurchi]

ORIGINAL: Tanaka

But if your mod is being included with lurchi's mod and he is balancing the engines then that would be great too! But if he doesn't then I really hope you do! When your mod is finished will his take much longer to complete and combine?

Lower Speed And Range V2 is included in Research Reloaded.

[Icemania]

Hey All:

As a surprise for you all I'll shortly be updating the OP with an Alpha Release for an Extended Version of the AI Improvement Mod.

Note that I have only tested 4 of the 16 Extended races so this is a genuine Alpha. I'll test other races in the near future, as time allows, but if you want to pick you favourite race and see what happens please do so and report back any observations. I have not yet implemented Race Biases changes and also I'm sure some of the designs could use some optimisation. So fair warning, you will probably find issues, but I could use your help to test.

The download is a new theme to avoid copying and pasting files between Mods. This way, if Haree78 updates his Mod, the AI Improvement Mod will not break (e.g. adding a single component is enough). I'll be able to review the changes and update this while everyone can keep playing.

Cheers,
Icemania

[Tanaka]

ORIGINAL: Icemania

Thanks Tanaka, a good point about the AI tendency to travel too far early and mid-game. Let me get the Beta release out for Extended first and have a think about whether to do it in an update or leave it to lurchi.

It will require a fair bit of work to apply the AI Improvement Mod to Research Reloaded due to the massive changes in the Tech Tree. lurchi needs some support from Elliot to make his mod work. I have a long list of Developer support in my wishlist in the OP ... and they are very quiet at the moment ...

Thanks for considering it and thank you both for replying! Glad to know he has balanced them in his mod with his Lower Speed And Range V2 but do hope you consider at least adding his Lower Speed And Range V2 into your mod so I don't have to wait quite a while for you to combine your mods. Selfishly [:)]

[Tanaka]

ORIGINAL: Icemania

Hey All:

As a surprise for you all I'll shortly be updating the OP with an Alpha Release for an Extended Version of the AI Improvement Mod.

Note that I have only tested 4 of the 16 Extended races so this is a genuine Alpha. I'll test other races in the near future, as time allows, but if you want to pick you favourite race and see what happens please do so and report back any observations. I have not yet implemented Race Biases changes and also I'm sure some of the designs could use some optimisation. So fair warning, you will probably find issues, but I could use your help to test.

The download is a new theme to avoid copying and pasting files between Mods. This way, if Haree78 updates his Mod, the AI Improvement Mod will not break (e.g. adding a single component is enough). I'll be able to review the changes and update this while everyone can keep playing.

Cheers,
Icemania

Awesome looking forward to testing thank you! Small request would it be possible to only include only the files from Extended that you modified and not all the files as I am using a modified Extended version of my own and it makes it hard to figure out which files I need to replace and which files I don't. [8D]

Also realized that balancing the engines would also help the AI by giving the pirates a reasonable range and would prevent them from being able to do so much destruction of AI empires so fast. AI nations would have more room to grow before being attacked. AI has a hard enough time with pirates and monsters.

[Tanaka]

Not sure if it is the mod or the game but I got this crash while testing and running your ai extended version?

[Icemania]

Tanaka, please raise this in Tech Support. From a Modding perspective I have no way to robustly answer your question. What I can provide is the following observations:

1. I have not seen this specific error message during testing of the AI Improvement Mod.
2. From the text in your error message it appears to be drawing related. The AI Improvement Mod makes no changes to images etc.
3. The AI Improvement Mod related errors during development have almost always occurred during galaxy generation.

[Icemania]

ORIGINAL: Tanaka
Small request would it be possible to only include only the files from Extended that you modified and not all the files as I am using a modified Extended version of my own and it makes it hard to figure out which files I need to replace and which files I don't. [8D]

The files changed as part of the AI Improvement Mod are:
1. Everything in the "designTemplates", "Policy" and "races" folders
2. components.txt
3. research.txt

I would prefer the theme is used so I can focus my community support on that theme, rather than get caught up in problems that are unrelated to this Mod.

[sayke]

Icemania - Getting a playthrough started now, with slow Gerax drives from the "Lower speed and range" mod, and a couple shipsets from Extended, but otherwise just your settings =) Am looking forward to it yay!

[Icemania]

ORIGINAL: Tanaka
For one I find that the less that automated ships are allowed to run off and fly across the galaxy by researching just one engine the more they stay close to home and do what they are supposed to do. Constuctors, defense fleets, mining ships etc... If engines were balanced to reasonable ranges not only would it be more fun and make more sense by adding a reasonable pacing to the game I do think it would help the AI! It would force the AI to the same reasonable ranges as human sends their ships. We don't send our ships off to the other side of the galaxy to mine or build stuff. This should not be until late game when the appropriate balanced engines would be researched.

ORIGINAL: Tanaka
Also realized that balancing the engines would also help the AI by giving the pirates a reasonable range and would prevent them from being able to do so much destruction of AI empires so fast. AI nations would have more room to grow before being attacked. AI has a hard enough time with pirates and monsters.

ORIGINAL: Icemania
I really like the changes to early game drives as the jump from speed 2,000 to 12,500 is far too extreme. Cool.

What I'd suggest reconsidering is the late game, where I consider default speeds to be far too slow. It's often a mop-up operation, faster speeds would help speed-up the late game. So I would prefer more than default speed, not less ... at least once you get to Tech Level 5 and above.

Also, once Gerax is available, I'm finding in the AI Improvement Mod that there is little incentive to focus early on Hyperdrive research, as other areas provide more significant benefits. This may change if there was more of a range in Hyperdrive speeds. It always struck me how limited the change was from Tier 1 to Tier 7 ...

ORIGINAL: lurchi
Oh, don't worry. There will be more and higher speed drives in Research Reloaded. Also a new one with extremely high speed. The drive tree will be completely redone like the rest of the research.

While lurchi has this in hand for Research Reloaded, I'm currently testing my own interim changes that combine slower Gerax Hyperdrives with increased speeds from Tier 5 and above.

If anybody objects to this in the next release please let me know real quick because I really like what I'm seeing ...

[Blackstork]

Hey mate, great job, but i been trying to understand what are the files that relate only to your mod - since you provided full theme i would like to separate files that do changes in order to make some merging experiements/pre-integration tryouts

Is that all racial txt files, all templates, all policies, and components files? Do i miss something?

[Sithuk]

+1

Hi Icemania, I'm looking forward to the tweaks to the hyperdrives. I think on higher research cost games there is an issue with the over-dominance of the pirates in the pre-warp era, which hampers the AI empires as they can't deal with the pirates as effectively as the human player. I'll be interested to see the results of your tests.

What (other) improvements do you foresee for the AI by the hyperdrive tweaks?

While lurchi has this in hand for Research Reloaded, I'm currently testing my own interim changes that combine slower Gerax Hyperdrives with increased speeds from Tier 5 and above.

If anybody objects to this in the next release please let me know real quick because I really like what I'm seeing ...

[hewwo]

+1 on the hyperdrive tweaks!

[Icemania]

ORIGINAL: Blackstork
Hey mate, great job, but i been trying to understand what are the files that relate only to your mod - since you provided full theme i would like to separate files that do changes in order to make some merging experiements/pre-integration tryouts

Is that all racial txt files, all templates, all policies, and components files? Do i miss something?

Yes that's right Blackstork.

The other file in the Vanilla AI Improvement Mod that I have changed in raceBiases.txt. This isn't yet in the Extended version but is coming in the next release.

Depending on what Tcby comes back with, I may also consider changes to governments.txt.

[Icemania]

ORIGINAL: Sithuk
+1

Hi Icemania, I'm looking forward to the tweaks to the hyperdrives. I think on higher research cost games there is an issue with the over-dominance of the pirates in the pre-warp era, which hampers the AI empires as they can't deal with the pirates as effectively as the human player. I'll be interested to see the results of your tests.

What (other) improvements do you foresee for the AI by the hyperdrive tweaks?

Tanaka's observations above match well with what I have seen so far. What I would add to his list is the offensive fleets, without the tweaks I've grown frustrated watching them fly to very distant targets. It won't resolve that problem, but keeping the AI fleets closer to home until more research is done, should help.

[Blackstork]

I'll wait till you finish your work and merge things with you then, its become complicated since i update biases/race files alot in my work, and testing outside my modifications will take me out of advancing with characters and races.
My hat down for job done, ive browsed it and its alot of work mate, queues, optimizing templates) .
I am back to building and art abit, i will just finish pre-integration templates/policies for new races as we discussed, and will anxiously wait till you release final version/become free to advance with additional content and perhaps, if you desire so, peer into character system which is actually another complete rebalance, because denying certain skills on characters/providing abundance of skills/traits on characters for different races could change race gameplay completely.

[Icemania]

Fully agree with holding Blackstork and thanks.

[Icemania]

I've now included the Racial Bias file changes in the Extended AI Improvement Mod (as described in the OP), so now everything I had in Vanilla will be in the Extended version (when the next release is issued).

I've also tested modified AI Energy Research Build Orders to more strongly reflect the styles of each race i.e. balanced / speed & agility / power / efficiency. In the previous release, while Special Technologies always had focus, the Energy Build Order was fairly generic since I always felt AI Empires that focused on speed/agility were at a disadvantage. However, now that the benefits of hyperdrive research are greater, there is more value is pursuring different paths. As a result you'll see a lot more variety in the AI.

[Tanaka]

ORIGINAL: Icemania

ORIGINAL: Tanaka
Small request would it be possible to only include only the files from Extended that you modified and not all the files as I am using a modified Extended version of my own and it makes it hard to figure out which files I need to replace and which files I don't. [8D]

The files changed as part of the AI Improvement Mod are:
1. Everything in the "designTemplates", "Policy" and "races" folders
2. components.txt
3. research.txt

I would prefer the theme is used so I can focus my community support on that theme, rather than get caught up in problems that are unrelated to this Mod.

Well I was mostly just using changes to images and governments/wonders and engines but now that I see that you will be balancing those as well (hurrah!) I will not need to worry about those files anymore!

Thanks for looking into the energy changes and governments those were the last things other than world wonders I had hoped for balancing of. Your engine changes sound great! [:)]

As a very last request would it be possible to look into balancing world wonders as well? There are several mods out there that worked on governments and wonders so that might help to add or use them if possible. Also adds new ones! I would say balanced governments and wonders help the AI by preventing overpowering issues from happening...

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