AI Improvement Mod (1.05 Extended Release)

[fruitgnome]

You can see this while you want to save see above in the Explorer Window.

[QuestGAV]

Sorry, I should've been more specific. I know what directory the autosaves are going to. Games that I manually save are either in a different directory or they're not saving (and not giving an error message) for whatever reason.

This is the directory that the autosaves & vanilla manual saves go to:

C:/Users/Username/My Documents/My Games/Distant Worlds Universe/Saved Games

I don't think it's an install problem as the mod works correctly. Has anyone encountered a similar problem?

[Tanaka]

ORIGINAL: QuestGAV

Sorry, I should've been more specific. I know what directory the autosaves are going to. Games that I manually save are either in a different directory or they're not saving (and not giving an error message) for whatever reason.

This is the directory that the autosaves & vanilla manual saves go to:

C:/Users/Username/My Documents/My Games/Distant Worlds Universe/Saved Games

I don't think it's an install problem as the mod works correctly. Has anyone encountered a similar problem?

Did you install the new patch? When a new patch is installed the saves go in the new or old patch save folder...

[QuestGAV]

Strangely, I started another new game and it seems to be working just fine now. Carry on!

[Bingeling]

I am just trying my first game with extreme difficulty and the latest of this mod. Normal home system and expensive research.

Allowing the AI to run the first 20 years of pre-warp may not have been the best idea ever.

Oh, and the pirate spaceport I busted hurt quite a bit more than previously observed. At least it cured my cashflow problems while going down.

[Icemania]

ORIGINAL: Icemania

Extended AI Improvement Mod 1.05 Beta Changelog

1. Patch 1.9.5.10 introduced the ability to flee at 50% Armour or 20% Shields. Aggressive races with Short Range Weapons which were previously set to Never Flee now use the new setting.

2. Shifted Caleph Special Weapons Research Technology in the Tech Tree to match other races Special Weapons, otherwise the Caleph get to high tier weapons too early.

3. Shuffled Colonisation tree design based on feedback on the relative benefits and costs of each tier.

4. The AI now builds Planetary Shields at 1B population rather than 5B and Massive Shield Projection is researched much earlier. To ensure this change does not effect AI cashflow the maintenance cost of Planetary Shields has been reduced.

5. Zenox Shield Technology is nw an optional pre-requistite for Massive Shield Projection (so the Zenox don't need to research weak shields just to get pre-requisites for Planetary Shields).

6. Added Banoserit Special Technology for Long Range Scanners to their research build order.

7. Fix made to Kiadian Research Order which sometimes meant they would not research their Special Technology.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ls3pzrr874nun ... 5.zip?dl=0

For those interested please give it a run and let me know how it goes. It's just uploading to Dropbox now, should be 30 minutes away.

Since there has been no feedback of any problems I've updated the OP with the 1.05 Extended Release. I haven't had a chance to do the same with Vanilla and since almost everybody downloads the Extended Version anyway I'll probably just focus on the Extended version for any future changes.

[Icemania]

ORIGINAL: Bingeling

I am just trying my first game with extreme difficulty and the latest of this mod. Normal home system and expensive research.

Allowing the AI to run the first 20 years of pre-warp may not have been the best idea ever.

Oh, and the pirate spaceport I busted hurt quite a bit more than previously observed. At least it cured my cashflow problems while going down.

Glad to hear that Bingeling! Suggestions to continuously improve the Mod are always welcome.

[SirHoraceHarkness]

The planetary shield tweak seems to have the desired effect. Started a game as boskara for the plasma firestorm and went on a bombard policy and by the time I had wiped the first empire and started on a second they started building shields so I had to resort to planet destroyers to quickly take out core worlds of the remaining empires.

I imagine on a game with the shakturi as the bad guys this will give the ai empires a much better chance to survive as you build up to be able to take them on.

[Lyoncet]

Hey Ice,

Great work on this mod! I was on the forums time to time when you were just laying the theoretical framework of the mod, so it's great to come back and see you've done so much great stuff with it!

I'm probably just misunderstanding this, but it seems to me like changing some point-blank ships to retreat at "armor 50% or shields 20%" would make them run away SOONER than just "20% shields" rather than later like you seem to want. I'm assuming you set that as a medium between never running and running at 20% shields, but since hitting 20% shields still triggers the run behavior, it seems like it would have the opposite effect of what you're going for.

Although like I said, I'm probably just misunderstanding either your intent or the mechanic. Apologies if that's the case!

[Bingeling]

ORIGINAL: Icemania

ORIGINAL: Bingeling

I am just trying my first game with extreme difficulty and the latest of this mod. Normal home system and expensive research.

Allowing the AI to run the first 20 years of pre-warp may not have been the best idea ever.

Oh, and the pirate spaceport I busted hurt quite a bit more than previously observed. At least it cured my cashflow problems while going down.

Glad to hear that Bingeling! Suggestions to continuously improve the Mod are always welcome.

I think I just gave up on this game, it hurt too much, and was too much like work. Some thoughts that are from a single game that never expanded from the starting system, but I added two colonies there that never got far enough to be profitable. And I am quite rusty in playing the game in general, in addition to not being a "power gamer".

I started with normal home system and got the Gizurean by random. I tried to run with AI taxes, research, design. And characters, I hate characters. Expensive research. 30 years or a bit more to get the gerax drive, and that was with manually retrofitting the spaceport to energy labs only while doing the last 50% gerax research.

I may have been hurt by my start at the edge of a cluster. The rest of the cluster was grabbed by my neighbor who had way of the ancients by the time I got my gerax drive. By the location I lost a half circle of controlled systems, but of course, the other half was tightly packed. Starting "central cluster" with no neighbor interfering would be rather golden.

The AI spamming ships in pre-warp made sure I ran out of fuel. The early resupply ships helps a lot, but I had issue with the AI being very greedy for ship size and medical tech. I manually had to research the first transportation system to help my resupply ships. My home system gas giant being a caslon/hydrogen source did not help, of course, but refueling any decent size fleet on those ships was too much of a chore. I think they had about 3400 caslon after the first transportation upgrade, not a lot when carrying 20-40 ships in a fleet.

The good thing about medical tech focus was that I actually got the wonder. That surprised me, as I felt very far behind, which may have been because my local rival colonized very fast and had the ancients government. I saw his exploration ship probably 10 years before I left the system. I saw another empire (Ketarov) grab the trade wonder while I was building the medical one.

The AI researched basic fighter tech, but does not appear to use it. Maybe it is needed for something later, but no big deal as it is cheap.

The AI was all construction size, and insisted on getting 800 or whatever even though we have a 650-ish size capital ship size. It totally seemed to ignore researching the core energy techs, the reactor, hyperdrive, engine stuff is very cheap compared to higher tier techs. I would think that with 500 size available, it can be a good time to research the upgrade of the basic techs (for instance upgraded gerax).

The Gizzie ships felt weak, but I have never been much of a fan of those long range lasers. It is not like it prevents them from getting hurt by keeping out of range.

I liked the mining base design. They seem more tanky, and local defenders will have time to make a (first tech gerax) hyperdrive jump to the attackers and save the base if they are present. Maybe the quite fast gizzie ships helps in getting there in time.

The last thing I did was trying to take out the LSP of pirates bribed to attack me. I think I had about 45 cruisers where 6 were a distraction force (landing away from the spaceport and "first"). My guys barely scratched the shield, gravity weapons can be nasty

I tried to grab a local independent, and failed twice. I am not sure what went on, but they appeared to have no troops, I attacked with 10 or so, and appeared be considered as raiding. It could be some game issues with invading as a raid is happening. The pirates hurt too much to really pick the best moment to drop troops...

It was weird to wield more than 70 cruisers, have one colony system, and feel weak when it comes to military force [&o]
It also felt weird to watch my cruiser lose a 1 on 1 with a pirate escort.

One reason why the AI sucked so badly in pre-warp is of course that it was on the wrong side of extreme difficulty. It was on bubble drive with 4 construction ships, 5-10 troop transports and 20 (or more?) exploration ships. Or something like that. I doubt you can fix this in the mod, as there is no logic of "before and after gerax". And with enough money and gerax, it is a good setup, apart from building troop transports with no invasion target present.

It is always fun to watch the AI build troop transports according to late game percentages with no known colony apart from the capital, and no warp drive.

The game really needs a split in "before/after gerax" when it comes to construction percentages. 20+ exploration ships trying to bubble and explore nearby systems (where they can reach a lot, but run out of fuel) with a single fuel source that they can't defend because they use all the maintenance on exploration ships and troop transports.

[Icemania]

ORIGINAL: Lyoncet
I'm probably just misunderstanding this, but it seems to me like changing some point-blank ships to retreat at "armor 50% or shields 20%" would make them run away SOONER than just "20% shields" rather than later like you seem to want. I'm assuming you set that as a medium between never running and running at 20% shields, but since hitting 20% shields still triggers the run behavior, it seems like it would have the opposite effect of what you're going for.

You might be right. What I had asked for a while back was a 50% armor setting which would be really cool for aggressive races. When you enter it in the design templates the text is just "Armor50" but the patch notes mentioned "or 20% shields". Since I'm playing other games at the moment I'm not really sure but I'm very interested in what you actually observe in-game ... ?

[Icemania]

ORIGINAL: Bingeling
The game really needs a split in "before/after gerax" when it comes to construction percentages. 20+ exploration ships trying to bubble and explore nearby systems (where they can reach a lot, but run out of fuel) with a single fuel source that they can't defend because they use all the maintenance on exploration ships and troop transports.

Nice write up Bingeling and very much agree with your suggestion above. Different percentages for other milestones would be great as well. For example after the explorers finish exploring they just sit around consuming maintenance costs but unfortunately there is nothing I can do to change that without gimping AI exploration.

[ciadude2]

ORIGINAL: Icemania


Different percentages for other milestones would be great as well.

I think it'd be cool to be able to set it for specific tech levels for the aforementioned reasons. On top of that it would be cool if instead of the regular "explore system" option, if you could set your exploration ships to have a go at specifically just stars, or stars + ruins. Automated exploration would be far more efficient for outlying planets you don't plan to build at for a while.

[ciadude2]

Hey Icemania, I have a quick question.
Sorry if this has been addressed before, but I'm running into some weirdness with automated ship designs. When I change the techs to be focused on in the empire policy screen, the automated ship designs don't seem to take this into account. Like for example, I started a game as the Quameno and swapped it from missiles to torpedoes, researched all the way up to the second tier torpedoes(the long range fast moving ones) but my space port and ships still for some reason insist on using maxon blasters.
I'm not a huge fan of designing my own ships but at the same time this issue kind of makes it impossible not to. I also had my construction tech up to the point where I had the shipyard wonder and the capability to build cruisers so I know it wasn't merely that I was out of space. Power also wasn't a problem with their unique reactor. I had plenty of credits as well.

Otherwise this is a fantastic mod. I haven't had any other glitches or issues besides this. Thanks in advance.

[Bingeling]

The reason why it uses maxos blasters, is that the design tells it to. The designer does not consider what the empire policy on research is. And in this mod, neither does the AI researcher.

The mod has a fixed research order to improve the pathing.

Independent of this mod, the AI designer always creates the design specified in the template. They are found in the designTemplates folder.

In the vanilla game you will see that tech focus is set to make the AI focus research on the weapons used by the design templates.

Looking at the Quameno design files in this mod, it appears that they are using area graviton weapons and a couple of graviton beams and a single blaster. They will do this whatever you research.

[ciadude2]

Ah, that makes a lot more sense. Thanks Bingeling!

[Kaien]

I have a scientist, with gifted (+20% on my empire).
I dont have any bonus when I check my research page and I use my calculator.

Vanilla bug ? This mod bug ? I dont understand something ?

[Fishers of Men]

Hello kaien! I am guessing that you are using the AI Improvement Mod with your current game. As far as I know, this mod does not make any adjustments to the research formula or individual scientists. Someone else might jump in here if I am wrong on this.

You might want to ask this question Tech section. I hope you get help you are requesting.

[Kaien]

I use 3 mods. This one, a french translatiaon and a graphic one.
So, I think only this mod or the vanilla game can give this bug.

I will try to have this bug in vanilla version and go to tech section.

[mordachai]

You have deployed your scientist to a research base / station with science labs on it?