EFS Questions

[Grimly]

exactly!

so does desert tech mean megacity tech?

ponder ponder

[Maur13]

Those techs (barren/frozen/jungle - there isn't desert tech) were supposed to give accuracy bonus on those worlds.

I've never checked it, though, or heard of such test.

[Grimly]

thanks!

[Grimly]

I think I've figured out the sole mechanism by which an AI House decides to go for the Emperorship. It has to do with the number of Scepters it controls. I have a "hidden scepter" unit that the AI was building like crazy even though it has no value whatsoever, and I hadn't observed this in the House screen.

The next question is: what determines the AI's choice of Ministry for itself as Regent? right now the Regent prefers the Eye . . . it hates the Garrison no matter how much power I give it.

So now I'm working on a way to manipulate this. If I allow the AI to build units like Electors, which would be sort of like delegates to the House of Representatives in that their number can expand as wealth increases, then it could become very tedious to keep up with the Houses in Elector production. On the other hand, the number of Scepters could be increased or they could be spread around or both, so that (if the AI actually gets aggressive) ratios of votes between Houses could get radically imbalanced as cities and planets fall. Or I could insert city markers that can be disbanded to Scepters so that Ministries could not produce them, but then neither would the AI Houses.

If anyone has fooled with this and has obervations, please post them.

[Grimly Fiendish 2]

Some updates to previous observations.

1) Now that I am running XP and the game is stable, I get robot games ending pretty consistently around 5027. LiHalan, Decados, and Hawkwood always seem to win.

2) The winner is generally NOT Stigmata Commander. I believe this is because the Regency is given to the weakest player, or the third strongest, not to the strongest. I have yet to see the Stigmata Commander take over BZ2.

3) The way I have done this is to make Scepters = Electors, and Electors are buildable. To build one, you need 100 of several different basic resources so that the number of Electors you have directly represent your economic power. AIs love to build them. No one has any on turn 1 and they take 10 turns to build, so no one is elected in the first election. Gaining a lead in Elector production requires aggressive growth or killing enemy Electors.

4) Next step is to go all the way and make all Imperial Guard cities Stigmata cities and rename Stigmata to Regency. The Regency, or more properly the Commander of Regency Forces, now controls most Imperial cities on BZ2 and half of those on Tethys. But no Stardocks or advanced cities, so existing forces are stuck onplanet and no new ships will be forthcoming. What SHOULD happen is that the Regent cannot resist making him/herself Regent Commander and would have access to a lot of forces on BZ2 at declaration. I'll report here on the result.

[Grimly]

1) As suspected, if you add enough cities to Stigmata on BS and make the Garrison part of the Regency, the Regent will reliably choose to command his own forces.

However, I just made changes to League and Church units, and now have lost the balance between houses and with it this reliable behavior. (Hawkwood keeps winning, and I'm not sure how to weaken them yet without starving them or giving them more money left at the end of the first turn . . .)

2) I just discovered a way to discourage those pesky Water units from wandering all over land---indeed, potentially to stop the AI from building them at all, though that would be stupid:

(a) make water movement through land terrain very difficult (values of 9.9), with river/delta/ocean values 0.1 and 1.0, and

(b) make water movement on land very visible (values of 0.0 for desert or grass vs 4.0 for ocean and 9.9 for river and delta in unitspot.dat).

(c) keep movement less than 10

(d) keep hide values low (6 or less---nonstealth range)

Gunboats no longer wander through the desert! They stick to coasts and rivers. Very gratifying . . . unfortunately this does not work for stealth units. My mod treats water units as shallow-draft boats, and shallow-draft subs would be absurd anyway.

__________________________________________________

Note: The positive effect of this is admittedly limited. I have only 2 water units: a gunboat and a transport, and both have to be built in Farms. The reason for this is that Farms are VERY likely to be built next to rivers, and in fact a little editing of the original galaxy will ensure that ALL original farms are on rivers. But the result is that (a) the AI has means to attack you by sea, and can probably even capture your coastal/river cities because the gunboats aren't naval units and (b) it's aesthetically pleasing. Win-win.

<small>[ 29.07.2005, 01:32: Message edited by: Grimly Fiendish ]</small>

[Grimly]

I have found a zone of EFS.exe that MAY control some aspect of Vau and Symbiot unit building. The following sequence starts at BDF50:


FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF 2D 00 00 00 FF FF FF FF
34 00 00 00 54 00 00 00 55 00 00 00 56 00 00 00
57 00 00 00 38 00 00 00 53 00 00 00 25 00 00 00
1F 00 00 00 FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF 20 00 00 00
1E 00 00 00 21 00 00 00 22 00 00 00 38 00 00 00
24 00 00 00 2C 00 00 00 27 00 00 00 FF FF FF FF
FF FF FF FF 2B 00 00 00 26 00 00 00 28 00 00 00
29 00 00 00 00 FF FF FF FF 2A 00 00 00

In decimals, this is:

[255 255 255 255 255 255 255 255 45(noble?) 00 00 00 255 255 255 255] 52(clergy?) 00 00 00 84 00 00 00 85 00 00 00 86 00 00 00 87 00 00 00 56 00 00 00 83 00 00 00 37 00 00 00 31 00 00 00

[255 255 255 255 255 255 255 255] 32 00 00 00 30 00 00 00 33 00 00 00 34 00 00 00 56 00 00 00 36 00 00 00 44 00 00 00 39 00 00 00

[255 255 255 255 255 255 255 255] 43 00 00 00 38 00 00 00 40 00 00 00 41 00 00 00 00

[255 255 255 255] 42 00 00 00

Or:

[????]
Militia
Flak
AT
Arty
MissilePTS
Vau Worker
Vau Mandarin

[????]
Vau Guard
Vau Fighter
Vau JetBike
Vau WarSkiff
MissilePTS
Vau Janissaries
Symbiot Nester
Symbiot Minder

[????]
Symbiot Reaver
Symbiot Spitter
Symbiot Shuffler
Symbiot Arcer

[????]
Symbiot Butcher

I observed this a while ago but haven't figured out how to observe the effects of setting all the bytes to zero, as Vau and Symbiot space are hard to observe. I suspect that these are units built by Vau and Symbiot when they control human cities and/or are at war with humans.

Anyway, with the human garrison units and Matt's discovery of the Symbiot and resources controls, this is the last bit of unexplored territory under the UNIT ITERATOR header. it must mean something . . . Will report when I find something out for sure.

[Grimly]

Sad to say, I've tentatively concluded that this section does nothing. It probably was intended to govern some aspect of unit building at one time, but is no longer used. I don't see any effects on Vau or Symbiot behavior. The section Matt found seems to run Symbiot building, and the I still have never actually seen the Vau build anything.

Might still control what these factions build when they own human cities . . .

<small>[ 20.08.2005, 05:47: Message edited by: Grimly Fiendish ]</small>

[Grimly]

I just figured out: The League NEVER votes. It ALWAYS abstains.

The Church, however, ALWAYS votes. So the rule that no one vote on the first round of elections is dumb. The Church will always vote for its favorites, starting with LiHalan, unless it is at war with them. So you may as well vote, because if no one votes then LiHalan wins.

So what anyway?

[Grimly Fiendish 2]

I don't know if anyone reads my reports, but I've been continuing to tinker with the game to get the AI to behave in a more challenging manner. I think I have succeeded, and I hope others can use in their own mods what I've discovered.

I recently got the galaxy and unit file balanced so any AI House had a reasonably equal chance of winning (with the first unit file). This morning I had the pleasure, as Otello Hazat, of seeing Fativa Li Halan claim the Crown for herself.

(I regret not destroying her when I had the chance, but the Houses did not support my own claim.)

Tonight I'll see how far she gets . . . because the AI cheats, she declared just after getting elected, and may win next turn. !!!

What I really like about the mod so far is that it forces me to play differently. I have always found building my way to victory to be boring, and I like being able to make warlike choices (attacking, taking over, building Electors) instead of peaceful ones (always building, building, and struggling to find resources to build). I'm not fighting the other Houses much currently because the League flipped out and destroyed my fleet, but I did invade Grail before that happened. As The Hazat, I have all the resources I need, but what I need to win is Palaces, Shield Cities (urban cores), and Cathedrals. So I do more fighting and build only where I find a resource marker or have to replace a city I've erased. Engineers build fortifications as well as farms. It's 4997 and I have yet to build any city in a less-than-ideal place.

The reason for all this is the following main changes:

Buildable electors, only in those 3 city types
Prebuilt harvesting cities, both House and rebel
Advanced units for all factions at the start of the game
More planets per House to reflect historical situation

For the first time, I'm not bored!

[UnFleshedOne]

Where can I get this mod? Or it isn't finished yet?

[Grimly Fiendish 2]

Unfinished, unfortunately!

I can send the existing files (a mess, really) to you or to anyone who wants to help polish it. Obviously I'm still working out very basic gameplay stuff and I'd love some input. I keep observing interesting behaviors that I want to exploit.

For example, I just noticed that when I autorun with the epoch 1 unit file, Li Halan builds a hospital with its free engineer. When I use the epoch 2 file to start, it builds a lab. I can only conclude that the AI reads the unit file and, by first assembling the combat/build table, judges how much research capacity it needs to reach the most powerful units. That's actually a pretty smart AI, but you can see how small changes produce a major and unexpected functional response.

One thing I need to look into before I can consider it complete is whether I can or balance the 2 unit files (early and late epochs). The Houses all start with enough advanced units in my galaxy that the 2 previously developed approaches (forced building of Garrison units and division into tech epochs) may be unnecessary. It might be OK if the AI never builds guns. But it does build a lot of peasant/worker militia, and these move so slowly that they hamper Stigmata's ability to fight the Symbiots. Hmmm . . . bring back guns or increase movement?

Anyway, I promised an update. Seems that the AI always declares as soon as it becomes Regent. So BS became an exciting place for a while, but as each House declared in turn (Li Halan, Decados, Hawkwood) I attacked that House on BS, killing each noble AND the Regent unit and capturing the palace and most House cities. Finally I ran into the situation where the Regent is reelected but has no noble on BS.

So now I need to think about balance of forces on BS and the Houses' ability to build up strength there.

[UnFleshedOne]

Sure, send it to zolenkoe (at) yandex.ru. i'll be glad to take a look at it. Don't expect proper beta-testing from me though .

[Grimly Fiendish 2]

Don't worry, it's not even ready for that!

I'll zip it up and send it tonight.


Domingo, your email address gave me a bounce.

<small>[ 23.09.2005, 03:39: Message edited by: Grimly Fiendish 2 ]</small>

[Grimly Fiendish 2]

I find the EFS AI to be endlessly fascinating!

I just adjusted my mod so that powered armor legions would be easier to build, and the AI would build them. This involved shortening the distance to the PAL tech, both in total cost and terms of the number of nodes, and this affected the regular Armored Legion as well as units descended from the PAL and units that use the monopol canister (fusion cell), which I use as the tech that allows a monopol to be safely contained and directed (opened/closed) to produce a plasma "beam" that can be used as a crude weapon or as an energy source.

The result was more energetic building of labs and advanced processing cities by the AI, as well as fortresses. For the first time, building seems to be directed in an intelligent manner, not just haphazard and random.

Unfortunately, this also put an end to AI Regents declaring for the Crown! at least before a loop arises on the Symbiot turn sometime in the late 5000s and freezes the game. I don't know whether the AI is putting more energy into building weapons and less into Electors and thus no Regent has the political strength to declare, or if AI Regents are set to declare only when they max out on available units, or what.

I'll need to playtest the AI directly to find out, i.e., I can't depend on autogames to investigate this. My goal, after all, is to get an AI that can defeat a human.