AI Improvement Mod (1.05 Extended Release)

[Retreat1970]

If I remember right, ultra genius trait gives 20% to total output, not a 20% bonus. Maybe I'm wrong, been awhile since I've played.

[Haree78]

Hi Icemania

Great work here, looking forward to seeing the improved designs etc. in game, will have to give them a go. So glad someone else went to work here, it's been a loooooong time since I went through all them designs and I think the originals took me something like 2 weeks full time work to do, if not more so I really appreciate what you have done.

One observation is that you have edited the race biases file extensively, what was the reason for doing this? A large part of the personality of the Extended races based on their background and their intended game effect was put in to effect through the race biases file. The entire point of the X-Humans for example was to in some games cause a massive rift in the repeated humanoid alliance that will occur in every game.
I know with your changes most of the balance work I did is probably redundant but their place in the galaxy and how they perform was largely based on the biases between the races. For example the new Avians are very unlikely to do well with these biases unless you have done something to counter this somehow?

A cursory glance shows things I don't understand also. Why are the Keskudon neutral towards the Keterov?

I don't intend to concentrate on the negative to an obviously stellar piece of work here but I wanted to ask what was going on here before I revert to the Extended version of race biases to keep the personalities and dynamic games I have come to expect.

[Icemania]

Hey Haree78:

Good to see you here! There is a long story on this topic.

When I joined the Distant Worlds forums my initial concern was that the game was too easy. One of the main reasons for that was that I could always dictate terms to the AI. Even on Chaos Aggression the AI hardly ever declared war and I could simply pick them off one by one. In parallel, I would have a Free Trade Agreement with almost everyone and be able to trade technology with almost everyone. The personality of the more aggressive and unfriendly races was curtailed because they often played like a peaceful race with only relatively minor variations.

When you start the AI Improvement Mod you’ll see that most races don’t like you. You’ll have a couple of friendly races only. This is very, very deliberate … it’s a not a tea party anymore. Since relations start weaker generally, some of the AI’s are far more likely to declare war or blockade, you’ll have fewer Free Trade Agreements and fewer Technology Trading opportunities to exploit the AI with. Within a group, races may form a Mutual Defence Pact and therefore declare war on you as a group (although I’m considering whether to increase the friendly biases within a group a little further). There are also modifiers based on the race's characteristics.

And even more important change was to the policy file parameter “WarWillingness”. I realised that these were set to very low values in the range made available in the Modding guide … even for aggressive and unfriendly races. When I tested the impact of changing this parameter I was very pleased to see the AI declare war more often so I made changes to ensure there a much wider variety aligning with their racial characteristics.

The end result is you can’t simply dictate terms to the AI all the time. If you want to play a peaceful race you can but there will be times when the Space Nazi’s come along, declare war or blockade when you are not ready for it, and you’ll have to find a way to do what is necessary. How frequent this is will be determined by the aggression slider where the literal interpretation of the aggressive setting is what you will see in game. Restless is indeed Restless etc.

With respect to personality in the broader context I’ve enhanced that in a wide variety of ways. This was important because sometimes I have to get the AI’s to do the same thing to be competitive and I wanted to more than offset that. Some examples are … the races use a much wider variety of weapons and tactics. The Insect races use Bombardment and Planet Destroyers more. There is vastly more variety in what world types that different races target for colonisation and how they prioritise them. There is more variety in what structures the races build e.g. focused on the right Academies for their strategy. Different races have different Wonder targets that align with the racial preferences. Every race has a different research order aligned with their strategy (some parts of their research order are the same but not in combination across all three fields), so for example races that focus on speed/agility have much more focused research on speed/agility and you’ll notice the difference in-game. This includes race specific technologies including those you added in Extended, which you are much more likely to see being used and earlier. And as I mentioned already, aggressive and unfriendly races are actually aggressive and unfriendly, with every shade of grey in between depending on racial characteristics.

Now the choice I made was for the groups to be split primarily along racial lines. Some races are grouped together to avoid highly uneven numbers (such as Ursidian and Reptilians which explains your specific question on the Keskudon and Ketarovs). So what you are seeing is that it’s different to what you were expecting. Since different people have different “stories/backgrounds” they want in the game … I have a solution that anyone can apply with very little effort required. If you go to the Excel sheet in the Mod, go to the Summary worksheet. There you can choose which race is in which group to suit your liking via the column "Alliance". All the modifiers for aggressiveness, friendliness will calculate automatically through to the Race Biases sheet. Then just copy the Race Biases in that worksheet (in column CH) to the xml file and start a new game. I’d certainly be interested in how you split the groups up, if done this way we could probably get the best of both worlds (i.e. both align with the changes above and your original intent between the races) which could be a cool change for the next release.

[Icemania]

I've just received a temporary ban from Dropbox due to excessive traffic. I changed to Dropbox some time ago as they could host the Mod for free while ensuring no advertisements when you download. However, they seem to have a pretty tight upload limit. I've been able to reset it but I'm not sure what they do on repeat bans.

[ASHBERY76]

Did the last update break the race families.The Yl'ta are showing up as humanoids and the Avian?

[Icemania]

ORIGINAL: ASHBERY76
Did the last update break the race families.The Yl'ta are showing up as humanoids and the Avian?

I just checked the race files and started new games with the Yl'ta and Humans ... and as far as I can see everything looks fine. The Yl'ta are indeed Avians etc. Could you be more specific? The only thing I can think of is that you might be looking at the race biases. The way the Mod works is that there are 4 groups (this ties into the discussion with Haree78 above). Within those groups, races tend to be friendly ... but only within those groups. Now some groups contain more than one race family to ensure the number of races in each group are very similar. Otherwise the number of races in each group are completely different which means some races would have an advantage or disadvantage. The Humanoids and Avians are part of the same group. It's been this way for a long time, nothing changed in the last patch. If you don't like the race biases (noting that I do), just copy the vanilla race biases over to the Mod. Or change it to suit your personal preferences.

[Pymous]

Just a message to thank you for this mod

[ASHBERY76]

When I look at the diplomacy screen the Yl'ta are classed as humanoid.

[Icemania]

ORIGINAL: ASHBERY76
When I look at the diplomacy screen the Yl'ta are classed as humanoid.

They are clearly shown as race family "Avian" in the diplomacy screen in a couple of test games at my end. The race files clearly have them in the Avian family. Note that which race is in each family was not Modded beyond Extended and during testing I never saw a case such as this.

[SirHoraceHarkness]

ORIGINAL: Icemania

I've just received a temporary ban from Dropbox due to excessive traffic. I changed to Dropbox some time ago as they could host the Mod for free while ensuring no advertisements when you download. However, they seem to have a pretty tight upload limit. I've been able to reset it but I'm not sure what they do on repeat bans.

Unless the terms have changed recently all that happens when you run into your limit is a temp suspension until your bandwidth allocation resets. A simple solution is to drop the file on several services and add a mirror list so there is always an option. Tbh a lot of modders I know from world of tanks and homeworld use adfly and at least make a few bucks if they have popular work. It's no big deal to me to wait five seconds on an ad page to get to the files someone put hard work into creating.

[ASHBERY76]

I'm not convinced that the A.I empires being overly aggressive actually help them at all.Logic suggests fighting a 10 front war is not good option for the A.I that already struggles to understand strategic targets.In my test game most of the A.I are at war with 6+ empires in every game due to alliances etc and takes a fair whil for them to get peace.War weariness is another issue that will be effecting the A.I empires a great deal in this mod.I think Haree original is relations text is better for the A.I.

Of course the human player tends to get peace and only attack 1 empire at a time which is the smart thing to do.

[RiftHick]

From what you wrote the problem is not the aggression but how readily alliances get made, coalition based wars are going to be more damaging but they wouldn't be occurring as often if there where fewer of them. You would see a lot less multi-front wars if the AI empires had less friends I know for a fact they prioritise peacing out if a third unaffiliated (to either existing groups) jumps in with their own war declaration. Sometimes the other empire accepts the peace and sometimes they don't, it honestly should take tremendous effort to get anything like a defence pact or trade agreement in vanilla and most mods you barely have to do anything since the diplomacy biases are so low that it's just a matter of time waiting out the starting first contact penalty before agreements start showing up.

[Icemania]

ORIGINAL: ASHBERY76
I'm not convinced that the A.I empires being overly aggressive actually help them at all.Logic suggests fighting a 10 front war is not good option for the A.I that already struggles to understand strategic targets.In my test game most of the A.I are at war with 6+ empires in every game due to alliances etc and takes a fair whil for them to get peace.War weariness is another issue that will be effecting the A.I empires a great deal in this mod.I think Haree original is relations text is better for the A.I.

Of course the human player tends to get peace and only attack 1 empire at a time which is the smart thing to do.

The most significant factor that influences how often the AI goes to war is the Aggression level in settings at the start of the game. As I’ve mentioned here previously the Mod will use the literal interpretation for the Aggression setting (e.g. Restless is Restless). So if you find that there are too many wars for your taste, change that setting when you start a game to suit.

With this Mod there is a catch-22 with the Aggression setting to consider.

On the highest aggression settings there are many wars which will weaken many of the AI but on the other hand it’s also much more difficult for the human player to dictate the timing of wars. Sometimes I’ll be caught out by the AI before I’m ready. Sometimes I’ll face multiple opponents and have engagements involving many races. If you can survive that early to mid-game onslaught though, as the AI have weakened each other, it can quickly become a mop up Operation.

On the lowest aggression setting, it’s trivial for the human player to dictate the timing of wars, which is obviously bad news for the AI.

So to get that balance personally I tend to play on “Restless” aggression but I can see a lot of people preferring “Normal” aggression as well. Some of the AI’s are more aggressive, some AI’s will fall and yes in that sense it’s “bad” for the AI. But other AI’s will become more powerful and more of a threat to the human player as a result. Sometimes I’ll be caught out by the AI declaring wars or sanctions and can’t always dictate the timing of wars. Sometimes more than one AI will declare war.

Now if you play the Vanilla game or with Haree’s Mod only, in my view, there is no catch-22. You can go through the game without the AI declaring war at all and control the timing of all wars you are involved in (even with the Chaos Aggression setting). This is bad news for the AI because again as a human player I can just pick off an AI one at a time and cruise to a win. And even if the AI does declare war you’ll most likely have only ever have one opponent.

The main reason for the difference is the changes to War Willingness which were aimed at making those races that are meant to be aggressive, actually aggressive in the game. Passive races still won’t be declaring war unless it is really deserved. There is a wider range of behaviour across the races. But it’s most certainly not the case that all races have been set to be overly aggressive. Race biases have an impact as well. If you wish to play with Haree’s racial biases, it’s easy to copy and paste that file over and start a new game. Race biases contribute to the chances of war but again the most significant change I’ve made is to the parameter War Willingness.

[ASHBERY76]

Just because they might spam more DOW's vs the player does not make any difference to the fact the player can still manipulate the system and get peace and it's even easier if the A.I factions have a 10 front war.This is a weakness of the diplomacy system with no cool downs or enforced game time for anything.

I think from my experience if you play with 20 races it makes the A.I empires very splintered.I see no evidence of the aggressive empires getting bigger empires more like they bite of more than they can chew and the human player still dictates the game.

In Galciv3 they do not allow invasion's until way down the tech tree so the A.I empires have a base and exploration stage without war hindering their focus.

[Icemania]

ORIGINAL: ASHBERY76
Just because they might spam more DOW's vs the player does not make any difference to the fact the player can still manipulate the system and get peace and it's even easier if the A.I factions have a 10 front war.This is a weakness of the diplomacy system with no cool downs or enforced game time for anything.

Hold your horses there Ashbery ... that's a different subject. I agree Diplomacy can be exploited excessively and needs to be improved for Distant Worlds 2. In the meantime we both know House rules are needed here. And once again, if the AI factions in your game have 10 front wars, turn down the Aggression setting, and get the right balance as I mentioned before.

What aggression setting and difficulty are you playing on?

ORIGINAL: ASHBERY76
I think from my experience if you play with 20 races it makes the A.I empires very splintered.I see no evidence of the aggressive empires getting bigger empires more like they bite of more than they can chew and the human player still dictates the game.

Sometimes yes they bite off more than they can chew. Sometimes the passive races have better designs and military production so can leave a nasty counter-attacking bite. But also there are definitely AI's that get well ahead of others in my games. Again, you need to apply those House rules so it's not so easy to dictate the game. Thankfully it's not as much of a runaway as the game below ... but that said I would agree the AI could runaway more than what it does right now in Distant Worlds 2.

ORIGINAL: ASHBERY76
In Galciv3 they do not allow invasion's until way down the tech tree so the A.I empires have a base and exploration stage without war hindering their focus.

Actually it's a little down the tech tree, not way down, you can rush Invasion technology fairly quickly. For example in my last game on Suicidal difficulty I had finished full invasions of 2 other empires by Turn 100 on a Large Map. You can also still Declare War and tie them up while waiting for Transports.

With Distant Worlds you can't invade homeworlds successfully for quite a while as it takes some time to build up a strong enough force (and economy to support it). While in Gal Civ 3, I can go from having no invasion forces, to a force which can take out any homeworld in 1 turn.

[jradishurr]

Icemania, I want to thank you for all the work you've put into this mod. This will be the first MOD I download for Distant Worlds and I hope it delivers. Are you still actively developing this MOD?

[Icemania]

ORIGINAL: jradishurr
Icemania, I want to thank you for all the work you've put into this mod. This will be the first MOD I download for Distant Worlds and I hope it delivers. Are you still actively developing this MOD?

If there are any good ideas that I can Mod to improve the AI and make it harder (noting that what we can Mod is fairly limited) then I'll likely update.

Hope you have fun!

[emeralis00]

Is it possible to remove the excess UI graphical changes and changes to the resource images from the extended version? I want to keep the AI boost and races but not the UI mod.

[GripHAHA]

Download 1.04 under 1.05.

[SirFinbar]

Hi Icemania. I have a question:

I always play with tech trading turned off, and I think I will introduce some house rules for diplomacy.

I also tend to play with research automated with your mod. It makes each faction feel more unique for me.

What difficulty shall I play on? I have tried very hard, and won a war against the Riktoh (big whoop), but I messed it up a bit and my neighbour found Way of Darkness, and had double my colonies. I was very unlucky with desert planets however.

Also, how do you feel about leaving tax automated? It's enjoyable with peaceful races, but frustrating with warlike ones when your economy is broken, but could be fixed with some tax changes. The reason I play it is, as far as I know, the AI races always play as if they have this option enabled. They do not change their tax rates on the fly, am I right?