Pandora Update 1.6.0 is live!

[Daniele]

Hi all!

Pandora has been updated to Version 1.6.0. and this is a truly huge update!

This large free update tremendously improves the AI, overhauls espionage and rebalances diplomacy. Thanks go to community member Alexander Stumpp's hard work for making it possible. The update also adds the long-awaited French translation, thanks to Steve Torres.

The AI will now play a lot more like the best human players play the game: expand slower, dynamically improve tiles, adjust the tax-rate, handle resource emergency situations, prioritize refitting, perform flanking and out-of-sight maneuvers, build more diverse units, effectively use artillery and much more.

To address the repetitive nature of the espionage mechanic, success chance for missions can no longer reach 100% and agents can now lose health even if they complete a mission successfully. To combat exploitative behavior when factions have cities close to eachother, agents now lose all their movement points when entering another faction's territory.

Diplomacy has also been rebalanced and improved to make both dialogue and gameplay interactions more meaningful.

This update is only for those who have the base game and the expansion "Eclipse of Nashira"

Here's the entire changelog:

Added:
* Added custom mouse cursor graphic.
* Added number of turns each pact has been in effect to the diplomacy screen.
* Added new population icons to show the yield each colonist provides.
* Added AlternativePopulationIcons option in Pandora.xml to switch to an alternative set of population icons.
* Added support for unicode characters up to and including the Cyrillic script (0x4FF), allowing those characters to work correctly with the Plain (DejaVu Sans) font as well as any other custom unicode font that has the corresponding glyphs.
* Added video setting for choosing the title screen.
* Added AI ability to dynamically alter the tax-rate.
* Added AI ability to raze cities if their morale gets too bad.
* Added a mechanism for the AI to check how useful a war will be and make its decision to go to war depending on that.
* Added AI ability to flank targets.
* Added a new mechanism for the AI to determine whether it should build units or economy. It prevents overcommitting on either by tying them together with a dynamic percentage-value.
* Added better support for teams in AI's diplomatic behavior.
* Added a new algorithm for the AI to always try to land troops outside the vision of the enemy.
* Added mechanism for AI to process multiple loops for it's unit moving sub-agents so it can give a new command to a unit that has already moved but is left with movement points after all units have moved.
* Added Alexander Stumpp and Steve Torres to the credits.

Changed:
* Increased Agent production cost by 33% and reduced movement by 25%.
* Success chance for infiltration missions is now directly deduced from infiltration attack/defense power and can't reach a 100%.
* Different infiltration missions now provide a bonus or penalty to the infiltration attack power based on their difficulty.
* Agents now lose health when performing an operation.
* Agents can now complete or fail their mission independently of dying. The chance to lose an agent is now equal to half of the operation failure.
* Adjusted advancements, buildings and devices that provide an infiltration attack or defense power bonus.
* Agents now lose all remaining movement upon entering another faction's territory.
* Difficulty now defaults to easy.
* The percentage of trade and research pact income as well as the Ambassadors parasitic trait now dynamically adjust to a players share of global population. On average the treaties will be about 35% less powerful.
* Population lost by using the "Raze" button will now include migration from takeover.
* Moved Planetary Market to one subtier earlier in the research tree.
* Moves of human factions are now prioritized over moves of alien factions.
* When there is no pollution a negative number will now display how much pollution the city can bare before it becomes a problem.
* Positive pollution is now shown as a red number.
* Made terrain-colors on the minimap darker to make it easier to tell it apart from cities and units.
* Improved mouse wheel scrolling of GUI components.
* Increased maximum amount of playable factions via advanced setup in a game from 9 to 13. Only makes sense with a mod that adds new factions.
* AI now chooses technologies to research in a similar fashion of how experienced players choose technologies.
* AI will now, on average, commit more scientists to research.
* AI now considers pollution when assigning population to jobs.
* AI will now expand much slower and focus more on improving its existing cities instead.
* AI now considers quality more important than quantity when it comes to building units.
* AI now has an emergency behavior to resolve economical crises.
* Reworked how AI determines it's tile-improvements; it should now be much closer to what an experienced player chooses.
* AI will now be more careful with its units when exploring.
* AI will now heal wounded units before sending them to attack.
* AI now considers more sophisticated criteria when choosing locations to expand to.
* AI now considers more sophisticated criteria when choosing tiles to expand it's existing cities borders to.
* AI no longer builds new formers as long as enemies are within the area of their city.
* Improved AI behavior when it comes to avoiding the loss of formers.
* AI can now perform several diplomatic actions within one turn.
* AI will now gradually lower their diplomatic relations to whoever is closest to victory.
* AI will no longer grant you gifts all the time just because they like you.
* AI players are now more difficult to convince to declare war on others.
* AI will now prioritize devices that best fit the unit type.
* AI will now consider the tier of unit components when evaluating which unit to build.
* AI now can and will use fungus once it has the two advancements boosting its yield.
* AI will now allocate more minerals into boosting its newly found cities.
* AI will now lower their standing to someone capturing a city depending on that cities importance for its previous owner.
* AI now takes device and unit type into consideration when deciding which units to use as defenders.
* AI no longer considers distance when picking defenders for its cities.
* AI no longer voluntarily gifts away its credits.
* AI will now use bombardment and nukes primarily to kill transports and disrupt healing in besieged cities.
* AI will now be much more careful about where to use blackholes.
* AI will now rather save a WMD for better use than to risk over-nuking a target.
* AI will now rather pillage tile improvements instead of retreating if it considers the defenses of a city too strong.
* Improved AI behavior when confronted with long-range units.
* AI will now keep units inside their cities if they are not needed otherwise.
* AI will now consider WMD buildings more valuable.
* AI is now much more likely to build naval units in coastal cities.
* AI will no longer value research once it has enough science for a research victory.
* AI will now prioritize enemy units in their territory as more important target.
* AI will now use a certain amount of artillery units in their offenses.
* AI will now use mineral sources with less than two minerals only if there's almost no other minerals available.
* AI will no longer build watercraft when it is at war with someone who only has cities with no access to water.
* AI decision when to make peace is now more in line with its decision when to declare war.
* When refitting the AI will now stick to the same weapon type to stay cost-efficient.
* AI will now always prioritize refitting their units over purchasing other things.
* If the AI is at war with someone and doesn't know any cities of that someone, but it has seen the border, it'll prioritize exploring there.
* Made sure that AI always uses their artillery units before its other units.
* When at war with another faction, the AI will be much less likely to attack native wildlife.
* AI will now rather upgrade its formers to amphibious than using harvest.
* AI is now more sensitive about whether it should perform a rush or prepare to defend against one.
* AI will now try to avoid getting its transports spotted by its enemies.
* AI will now value forests more for fighting pollution before it has Pandora Construction.
* AI will now prefer tiles that are most suitable for their units when approaching an enemy city.
* AI will no longer retreat heavily injured units to a city under the effect of an ion storm.
* Improved AI behavior in city defense.
* AI will no longer try to heal units other than the necessary defenders in a city that is under siege by artillery units.
* AI will now consider food less important when looking for city locations.
* AI will now consider minerals more important when looking for city locations.
* AI border expansion will now consider if additional food tiles are needed or not.
* AI will offer friendly deals less frequently in order to not annoy the player. The frequency is about 10%.
* AI will no longer declare war on factions it hasn't scouted yet.
* AI artillery units now prefer the device that allows them to attack multiple times a turn over other modules.
* AI will now use a more dynamic defender count.
* Lowered number of scouting units for the AI once it has a contact to not be caught off-guard with a significant amount of troops away from home.
* AI will no longer waste precious scans on hives.
* AI will no longer try to surround cities with too complicated surrounding geography like canals or peninsulas that make surrounding really hard and take long.
* When needed, the AI will now switch between first tier automatic and first tier missile weapons since this doesn't cost anything.
* AI is now much less likely to sign or request open borders treaties.
* Added more diversity to AI unit designs to make it harder to hardcounter them.
* Improved AI spy handling by allowing them to preposition for an operation next turn instead of just going straight ahead and risk ending up with no movement left.
* AI shall no longer attack aliens or sieging units when the success chance is 100% but the attacking unit might die in the process.
* AI is now more likely to backstab its neighbor when he is at war.
* AI spies will no longer steal research when the AI has all technologies.
* AI will now reduce its food production in order to fight overpopulation once it does not find any more spaces to colonize.
* AI will now rather expand than produce buildings or advancements that do not combat unhappyness when it is unhappy.
* AI will now always run the highest tax rate when there are no technologies left to research.
* AI is now aware of circumstances where certain buildings and advancements are so useful that it should get them even if it would want to build military.
* AI will now use formers as a last resort defense.
* AI now prioritizes cities without research or industry boni for obtaining food and minerals.
* AI artillery units should no longer attack enemy cities on their own.
* AI artillery units will now always try to keep their distance to enemy units.
* AI units will attack enemy units with first strike device even when they will lose in order to damage them.
* Slightly increased the amount of artillery units the AI builds.
* When considering whether a city is under siege, the AI now also looks at besiegers outside of its actual borders.
* AI is smarter about when to avoid walking through fungus and when to not care.
* AI will no longer use artillery units for exploring.
* AI will no longer let its artillery units be lured out of its cities when the city is being sieged.
* When playing without scientific victory enabled the AI will no longer consider relations when deciding whether to declare war or not.
* Language tweaks.

Fixed:
* Fixed a crash that could occur when loading a save game in a specific state.
* Fixed operations not replacing durations when deployed on territories.
* Fixed Scites and Carcharodons turning aggressive before Xenomorphs.
* Fixed water suburbs and water purifiers costing 2 credits instead of 3.
* Fixed Fungus Mutagenesis and Fungal Hormones not providing bonuses for water fungus.
* Fixed army panel sometimes showing units that are no longer in the territory.
* Fixed mouse wheel sometimes not scrolling drop lists.
* Fixed purchasing from the economy panel not always working.
* Fixed water fungus not appearing in territory hints.
* Fixed Ambassadors leeching from pacts not actually being added to their income.
* Fixed an exploit that allowed you to interrupt AI formers by stepping a unit onto them when you had open borders.
* Fixed a bug that swallowed the majority of diplomacy messages sent to the player by the AI.
* Fixed an exploit where you could reduce the amount of credits an AI asks for during negotiations by spending them before stating you are willing to pay.
* Fixed an issue where paying tribute was considered the same as denying to pay.
* Fixed game pace not affecting the duration of temporary tile modifications like the ion storm cast by the Messari.
* Fixed a bug that under certain circumstances led to miscalculation on city growth when using the growth project.
* Fixed an issue where morale was not properly applied to credit income from non-tax sources like gold deposits.
* Fixed the algorithm that determines whether a tile is a chokepoint.
* Fixed Terra Salvum's Ecologic trait not working on water fungus.
* Fixed an issue with war declaration on third party requests.
* Fixed issues with Steam overlay on Linux.
* Fixed errors in German translation.
* Fixed AI not building advancements that are unlocked by killing sea monsters.
* Fixed a rare case where the AI would waste some of its mineral income each turn.
* Fixed AI ships acquiring targets near unreachable inland lakes.
* Fixed AI upgrading units into options that aren't actually better.
* Fixed AI ignoring how you react to a tribute demand. Standing will now properly change.
* Fixed a bug that prevented AI from realizing it cannot heal in water fungus.
* Fixed an issue where AI units could get stuck when they targeted something they could not see.
* Fixed AI not using as many units for defending as it should.
* Fixed AI artillery and sniper units not always attacking targets when they should.
* Fixed AI not caring about their new cities for the turn they are founded.
* Fixed an issue causing AI land units to try and pillage improvements inside lakes.
* Fixed waterborne artillery units of the AI not acquiring targets further inland.
* Fixed an issue where the AI would downgrade formers.
* Fixed an issue that could prevent the AI from going to war.
* Fixed automated formers no longer feel responsible for city defense.
* Fixed an issue that sometimes caused the AI to attack units that it shouldn't attack.

[tombo]

Big Thanks!

time to get back to this great game.
cheers