Hyperion Gamma Changes

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Hyperion Gamma Changes

Postby Matt Caspermeyer » Mon May 24, 2004 8:41 am

The following is a list of changes in the Hyperion Gamma:

1. The EFS.EXE has been "doctored" to allow the Symbiots to build all their units. I found the hex locations of the Symbiot unit build order in the EFS.EXE file. The hex locations used the unit's Unit Number (i.e. 26 (38 decimal) for Spitter, 28 (40 decimal) for Spore Ship, etc.) and made the following changes in the EFS.EXE file:

000BB980: 26 -> 00 ( Spitter -> Grappler )
000BB98C: 28 -> 03 ( Shuffler -> Pod Ship )
000BB994: 26 -> 02 ( Spitter -> Spore Ship )
000BB9A4: 26 -> 01 ( Spitter -> Blow Ship )
000BB9A8: 2A -> 02 ( Butcher -> Spore Ship )
000BB9AC: 2B -> 00 ( Reaver -> Grappler )

This change to the EFS.EXE file now allows the Symbiots to build all their units including their space ships!

Included in the ZIP file is EFSHYP.EXE. When you extract the files included in the ZIP file, EFSHYP.EXE will be extracted to your EFS folder. Simply run it to play the game with this enhancement (or rename your EFS.EXE file to EFS.EXE.BAK and then rename EFSHYP.EXE to EFS.EXE to make the change to your EFS shortcut to launch the game with these changes).

2. There are no longer any units that use the Naval movement class. I did not like the hard-coding of Naval unit immunity to Ranged Space weaponry and so have moved any units from there to either the Crawler or Water (Wheel) movement types.

3. All Crawler and Water units are now "Amphibious". This means they can move on water and land. Their movement on land is significantly encumbered unless moving on roads. Now these units are going to play a much bigger role in Hyperion games.

4. The Direct Attack Mode can now attack Foot units. The accuracy of Direct Attacks has been carefully attenuated so that they are less likely to hit Foot units, but will cause serious damage if they do.

5. The Close Attack Mode can now attack all ground units (Crawler, Hover, Tread, and Water (and still Foot, of course)). The Attack Strength of Close Attacks has been carefully attenuated so that they are less likely to damage heavily armored units.

6. The following statistics are now auto-generated using a base statistic and shaping formula:

Movement Rate
Spotting
Camouflage
Agility
Armor
Psy Def

These statistics are now linked to a unit's technology level, class, type, movement type, and faction. Examples of classes are Space Destroyers and Covert Operatives; examples of types are Scouts (i.e. Spies, Covert Operatives, etc.) and Flagships; the movement types are Air, Crawler, etc.; and the Factions are Symbiots, Vau, Houses, etc.

Unit Accuracies and Strengths are still tied to specific units that the specific unit is designed to hit, but since these relate to Unit Agilities and Armor strengths, they are attuned to the the specific statistics in which they reference.

This should be thought of as a "mechanization" of what I have done with Hyperion in the past that I would describe as my "feel" for balancing units. Now I have formulas that apply this feel to the units in Hyperion and it ensures that a unit is matched to its technology level as well as its purpose.

I am really excited about this feature as I think it will make the game more balanced and also encourage more strategies.

Since there are so many units in Hyperion, however, there is still the possibility of anomalies and I'd appreciate any comments where things seem "out of whack".

7. Unit upkeep prices are now significantly higher and are matched to the amount of resources a unit uses in its construction, technology level, and strength weighting. The strength weight is compared against technology level and so units with a higher than average Strength Weight compared to their technology will be more expensive. An example of this is the Gunship unit. The Gunship unit has an impressive array of weaponry, good agility and armor and therefore has a pretty high Strength Weight (112) compared to its technology score of 12. The ratio of 112/12 is taken to the 1/3 power and then multiplied by the unit's upkeep to get the new adjusted upkeep cost. This makes Aircraft much more expensive than, say Foot units, and ensures that if certain units have exceptional abilities for their technology level (i.e. Nobles) that their upkeep is more expensive than average.

8. To offset the higher upkeep cost of units, certain unit types now produce income. All terrestrial-based transports (Freight Haulers, Amphibious Transports, Cargo Planes, etc.) and specific space-based transports (Freighters, Bulk Haulers) now produce income.

In some cases, the amount of income generated is small (i.e. a Freight Hauler generates 2 Firebirds / turn), but in other cases it is higher (Bulk Haulers generate 51 Firebirds / turn).

These values might seem very low, but remember you can generate a limitless number of these units and so I think you'll find that it is a nice bonus to have with these units and it is not significantly high that you don't want to not move these units around.

And so these units can be thought as enhancing trade in your empire. Whether you use them is up to you, but since transports play such a key role, there is really no reason why you'd let these units sit in a city when they can be moving your units around.

Sceptres also still generate income and the Royal House Standard (3227 Firebirds / turn) and the Statue of the Prophets (7788 Firebirds / turn) have had their income increased dramatically.

9. There are still 5 galaxies included in Hyperion. To offset the higher upkeep costs, I have changed Sceptres to either Royal House Standards or a Statue of the Prophets so that in most galaxies players will actually have a surplus of income at the beginning of the game.

I'm going to check with Tiberius about creating a "Hyperionized" Fulcrum galaxy. If he gives me the okay, I'll include that in a future release.

10. Technological Research Cost has been effectively doubled for all technologies. This is designed to change the pace of the game to allow players more time to build certain units. This also places more emphasis on Labs and technology research and also in PBEM games players will need to coordinate better on which technology trees they wish to specialize in so that doubling up is minimized and technological research and trading maximized.

There are 358+ units in Hyperion. This should allow players more time to actually build certain units and be "mired" in a certain technology level even in PBEM games where the trading is quite rabid (and rapid!).

It also means that players are going to be spending quite a few years building Tanks, Amphibious Frigates, etc. before they are able to research technologies that allow their units to be upgraded to the next levels.

This means that if you start with advanced units, you better be careful with them otherwise it'll be even longer before you can build them again.

11. Epochs. To deal with limitations of the AI Build Combat tables, I had to create 3 separate UNIT.DAT files (UNIT1.DAT - UNIT3.DAT) that work around this problem.

At the heart of the issue, is that there are only 3 different Combat Build Types: Air, Land, and Space. With these 3 different Combat Build Types, there are only 70 units that can fit into the 3 Combat Build Types for a total 210 units. Since there are 358+ units in Hyperion, the Combat Build tables spill over and those units that are the weakest (i.e. researched the earliest) fall off the table and the AI can't build those units.

This is the big reason why the AI is so pitiful in Hyperion games until you trade them some good research technologies and they can build units that are in the Combat Build Tables. So I came up with the ideas of Epochs. There are 3 Epochs and bascially the only difference is that units that are not available to way late in the game (i.e. high technology research costs), cannot be built in that specific UNIT.DAT file. The Combat Build Tables skip units that can't be built and so this allows the Combat Build Tables to be filled with units that the AI can actually build at the beginning of the game. This allows them to actually build units and capture cities much better than they used to!

Epochs have no bearing on players, until a player (either human or AI) researches a technology that allows them to build a unit that is disabled in the specific Epoch UNIT.DAT file. When this happens, the player copies the new UNIT.DAT file (i.e. UNIT2.DAT or UNIT3.DAT to UNIT.DAT) and continues the game. Since there is overlap between the epochs, the AI will be able to still build most of the early units if they still wish. There will be more detail on this in another post.

12. Resource Production and costs have been changed to match the number of materials that are going to be in high demand. Refined Chemicals are a very high demand resource as they power all production facilities and are used in virtually every unit's construction. Other resources are in very high demand as well and Gems play a more prominent role in the construction of Psychic units. Wetware now requires Exotica instead of Ceramsteel to produce.

Resources, overall, are cheaper, allowing the player to afford to purchase more resources from the League and keep up their production. Also, certain resources may become abundant, allowing the player to trade excess resources to the League to help finance their various construction tasks.

I'm hoping that these changes will encourage more resource trading and allow players to purchase sufficiently from the League Agoras. This will also make the declaration of the 3rd Republic more prominent in games if a House rule is instituted to not purchase resources when building units after the 3rd Republic is declared.

13. The League now needs at least 150K Firebirds before declaring the 3rd Republic. This should put their declaring around the 5025 era. Hopefully ~70 years is sufficient for all players to get their act together and be prepared to deal with them.

There are a lot more changes, but the above are the most prominent. Please feel free to provide comments and I am going to post more about the "doctored" EFS.EXE and Epochs in separate posts.

Matt
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Re: Hyperion Gamma Changes

Postby Tiberius » Tue May 25, 2004 12:57 am

Matt,

The changes all look great. Epochs are a brilliant idea! I haven't looked at the dat files yet but I'm assuming that you're limiting the units in the standard build categories from five to one or two and then increasing them as epoch dat files are changed. Brilliant!

That way the initial or base units are produced for one period of play (Epoch 1) and maintained in the second epoch because they are still included in the second dat file. I assume the next epoch adds the next line in the standard build categories so that the AI will build from the lowest position in the build slots.

The determination of when to start a new epoch may need a bit more clarification but I'm sure you'll clarify it.

As for the EFS.exe I'm amazed that you were able to locate the Symbiot build info. I'm not a programmer so for me it was next to impossible when I looked at all the lines of code I really couldn't identify much. Very impressive that you found that info.

I'm not sure how this change will effect Subversion since I moved all of the Symbiot units out of the 1-4 slots they were originally given. Looks like I may have to do a bit of unit reorganization to take advantage of your breakthrough. In any case it's a pretty huge breakthrough. Kudos! :)

Unfortunately I've been so busy with work that I haven't had time to continue on with my unit balancing work for Subversion. Glad to see you've found a good means of balancing for Hyperion.

As for you're question concerning the Fulcrum galaxy feel free to Hyperionize it. Shouldn't take too long to do the unit changes. City reorganization may be a different matter. Anyway, I'm honored you want to convert it.

Guess that's it. Keep up the good work!

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Re: Hyperion Gamma Changes

Postby Matt Caspermeyer » Fri May 28, 2004 4:37 am

Tiberius:

The changes all look great. Epochs are a brilliant idea! I haven't looked at the dat files yet but I'm assuming that you're limiting the units in the standard build categories from five to one or two and then increasing them as epoch dat files are changed. Brilliant!
Thanks! That is correct, typically there are only the 1st and 2nd units available in a slot and the remaining units become available in Epochs 2 or 3.

That way the initial or base units are produced for one period of play (Epoch 1) and maintained in the second epoch because they are still included in the second dat file. I assume the next epoch adds the next line in the standard build categories so that the AI will build from the lowest position in the build slots.
Yes, although lowest position is only important for the Garrison units (Infantry, Militia, Anti-Air Gun, ATG, and Artillery categories). For "normal" combat units, the AI uses its Weight to determine which units to build.

The determination of when to start a new epoch may need a bit more clarification but I'm sure you'll clarify it.
Right, I started working on the list Tuesday night, but I think it is going to take me a little while longer. Actually, I was talking to someone at work today, and I can identify which tecnologies are in Epochs 2 and 3 by putting a (2) or (3) identifier in the technology name so that on the technology research screen a player will know when they are researching a technology in Epoch 2 or 3.

As for the EFS.exe I'm amazed that you were able to locate the Symbiot build info. I'm not a programmer so for me it was next to impossible when I looked at all the lines of code I really couldn't identify much. Very impressive that you found that info.
Thanks! The hard part was figuring out how it would be stored, but once that happened, I was able to look for the build order signature in the EXE and find it.

I'm not sure how this change will effect Subversion since I moved all of the Symbiot units out of the 1-4 slots they were originally given. Looks like I may have to do a bit of unit reorganization to take advantage of your breakthrough. In any case it's a pretty huge breakthrough. Kudos!
Thanks! - You don't really have to change anything if you use it, except that the build order will be different because your Symbiot Space ships are in unit categories 36,39,41,43 (I think) while they are normally in categories 0-3.

Unfortunately I've been so busy with work that I haven't had time to continue on with my unit balancing work for Subversion. Glad to see you've found a good means of balancing for Hyperion.

As for you're question concerning the Fulcrum galaxy feel free to Hyperionize it. Shouldn't take too long to do the unit changes. City reorganization may be a different matter. Anyway, I'm honored you want to convert it.

Guess that's it. Keep up the good work!
Thanks - actually it looks like Fulcrum is going to take a little bit of time to convert as the unit positions in Subversion are quite a bit different for some units. With Mitchell's EFS Editor, though, it won't take long, but the hardest part is trying to line up equivalent units in Hyperion for those in Subversion so that it is still somewhat the way you intended it to be.

Matt
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Re: Hyperion Gamma Changes

Postby Matt Caspermeyer » Tue Jun 01, 2004 12:05 am

8. To offset the higher upkeep cost of units, certain unit types now produce income. All terrestrial-based transports (Freight Haulers, Amphibious Transports, Cargo Planes, etc.) and specific space-based transports (Freighters, Bulk Haulers) now produce income.

In some cases, the amount of income generated is small (i.e. a Freight Hauler generates 2 Firebirds / turn), but in other cases it is higher (Bulk Haulers generate 51 Firebirds / turn).

These values might seem very low, but remember you can generate a limitless number of these units and so I think you'll find that it is a nice bonus to have with these units and it is not significantly high that you don't want to not move these units around.

And so these units can be thought as enhancing trade in your empire. Whether you use them is up to you, but since transports play such a key role, there is really no reason why you'd let these units sit in a city when they can be moving your units around.

Sceptres also still generate income and the Royal House Standard (3227 Firebirds / turn) and the Statue of the Prophets (7788 Firebirds / turn) have had their income increased dramatically.
Due to a problem with Unit Pay and combat units that generate income, I needed to removed the income generating ability from all the units above except the Sceptres and Flagship Engineer. These units now cost their normal upkeep cost.

The problem had to deal with a change in the sign (from negative to positive) of your Unit Pay. The game would compute the Unit Pay upkeep correctly until there was a dramatic shift in unit pay at which point, it would invert the sign of the Unit Pay and instead of paying units for upkeep, they were paying you!

The best way around this problem was to make it so that only non-combat units are the only units that generate income. Apparently, they are bookkept differently and do not have the same bug as combat units.

I could make the above tranpsorts non-combat, but I tend to not like that idea very much because I think there should be risk in moving your transports around. Also non-combatant transports would allow players to determine where hidden units were hiding (by the mere fact that you can't move onto that hex) and there would be no way to rid the planet of them except by disbanding them (which no one would do since they were free income).

9. There are still 5 galaxies included in Hyperion. To offset the higher upkeep costs, I have changed Sceptres to either Royal House Standards or a Statue of the Prophets so that in most galaxies players will actually have a surplus of income at the beginning of the game.

I'm going to check with Tiberius about creating a "Hyperionized" Fulcrum galaxy. If he gives me the okay, I'll include that in a future release.
The Fulcrum Galaxy has been Hyperionized and is now part of the Gamma release. Now there are 6 galaxies included with the Hyperion ZIP file.

11. Epochs. To deal with limitations of the AI Build Combat tables, I had to create 3 separate UNIT.DAT files (UNIT1.DAT - UNIT3.DAT) that work around this problem.

At the heart of the issue, is that there are only 3 different Combat Build Types: Air, Land, and Space. With these 3 different Combat Build Types, there are only 70 units that can fit into the 3 Combat Build Types for a total 210 units. Since there are 358+ units in Hyperion, the Combat Build tables spill over and those units that are the weakest (i.e. researched the earliest) fall off the table and the AI can't build those units.

This is the big reason why the AI is so pitiful in Hyperion games until you trade them some good research technologies and they can build units that are in the Combat Build Tables. So I came up with the ideas of Epochs. There are 3 Epochs and bascially the only difference is that units that are not available to way late in the game (i.e. high technology research costs), cannot be built in that specific UNIT.DAT file. The Combat Build Tables skip units that can't be built and so this allows the Combat Build Tables to be filled with units that the AI can actually build at the beginning of the game. This allows them to actually build units and capture cities much better than they used to!

Epochs have no bearing on players, until a player (either human or AI) researches a technology that allows them to build a unit that is disabled in the specific Epoch UNIT.DAT file. When this happens, the player copies the new UNIT.DAT file (i.e. UNIT2.DAT or UNIT3.DAT to UNIT.DAT) and continues the game. Since there is overlap between the epochs, the AI will be able to still build most of the early units if they still wish. There will be more detail on this in another post.
I've updated the Epochs information in this post: http://www.kborek.cz/forum/NonCGI/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=4;t=000170#000001

Basically, now players can see which technologies belong to the next Epoch when they start researching them so that they know exactly when to switch.

14. Unit Rank has been totally redone such that it takes into account the unit's Class and Type in determining their Rank. Before I had done this manually, but the Unit Ranks seemed outdated with the new changes to Hyperion and so now I hope that there is a better organization of units in Hyperion during combat.

15. Minor unit balancing tweaks done to the Infantry and Heavy Infantry Legion units.

That's it for now!

Matt
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Re: Hyperion Gamma Changes

Postby Makinus » Fri Jul 07, 2006 2:28 am

First, sorry to ressurect this old thread, but what i want to know is related with the efs.exe alterations made by Matt.

Now, i was browsing with an Hex Editor in the EFS.EXE and found some interesting things:

Assuming that all references to unites uses the format found by Matt for the Symbiots, if i wanted to find where the House List of units to construct are in the EXE i would need to convert the unit numbers to HEX and find all references to units in the EXE.

So, the Gunship is number 73 in the Unit.Dat file, converting it to HEX it is 49, now, using the format "00 00 00 <Unit Number> 00 00 00" found by Matt, i searched for "00 00 00 49 00 00 00" and suprise: there is only one place in the EXE with this format and, in the same place, i found several other references that correspond to units...

I´m still experimenting, and i still don´t understand very well the way it´s arranged, but apparently the House List for unit construction is located from BDA00 to BDB00 in the exe file (keep in mind i´m still not sure about it)...

All units that i saw the AI building in my games have the corresponding HEX number in this place, and several of these "unit codes" can only be found at this place in the EXE.

My main doubt, and the reason i´m posting it, is that in this "list" there are references to units that are no buildable, inexistent units, and units of the Vau and Symbiot...

Using the "code format" found by Matt we have the following references, already converted from Hex to Dec, (I´m using Nova):

16 (Carrier), 79 (Xyll Warbeast), 110 (null), 108(null), 14 (Destroyer), 23 (Submarine), 13 (Cruiser), 105 (null), 15 (frigate), 17 (space fighter), 11 (stealth ship), 103 (null), 12 (dreadnaught), 07 (Corsair), 09 (Vau Carrier), 21 (Bulk Hauler), 46 (Warlock), 55 (Partisans), 48 (Dervishes), 70 (Rocket Artillery), 10 (Vau Transport), 69 (Assault Gun), 24 (Battleship), 68 (Sp Artillery), 44 (Symbiot Nester), 39 (Symbiot Minder), 06 (Destroyer), 02 (Spore Ship), 08 (Interceptor), 22 (Starbase), 20 (Freighter), 00 (Grappler), 78 (Rangers), 76 (Bomber), 74 (Fighter), 72 (Genetic Warrior), 50 (Merchant), 102 (null), 120 (null), 116 (null), 43 (Symbiot Reaver), 71 (Pest. Artillery), 05 (Cruiser), 86 (Light Artillery), 38 (Symbiot Spitter), 34 (Vau War-Skiff), 36 (Vau Warrior), 96 (null), 45 (Noble), 73 (AS Gunship), 88 (Plague Bomb), 84 (Militia), 56 (PTS Laser Canon), 100 (null), 03 (Pod Ship), 65 (Battle Tank), 41 (Symbiot Arcer), 53 (Engineer), 04 (Dread), 64 (Pereg. Hover AA), 52 (Clergy), 32 (Vau Guard), 01 (Blow Ship), 19 (Lander), 22 (Starbase).

Now, several itens in the list don´t make sense, like the Vau and Symbiot units, and numbers that go beyond the Unit.Dat allowed numbers, but i believe that it´s only because i´m misreading the format somehow...

I will experiment and post my results, but i wished to share what i found until now in the hope that someone with better understanding of programming can spot the real list among the numbers i found...

So, if anyone can see a pattern in the list of numbers that i found that can clear the list, please help...

Thanks

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Re: Hyperion Gamma Changes

Postby Grimly Fiendish 2 » Fri Jul 07, 2006 5:39 am

I've noticed the same sequence, but I doubt it does anything. I tried deleting/changing some of those numbers and found no effect. :(

I have an email from Matt in which he included a snip of code for what he called the Combat Build Table. it's what is supposed to determine what the AI likes to build, other than garrison units. It's more complicated than a sequence of numbers.

But keep working on it!

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Re: Hyperion Gamma Changes

Postby Makinus » Fri Jul 07, 2006 12:59 pm

You are right, i tried changing it and didn´t have any effects in play.....

I was analizing what the AI builds or not and noticed some trends, apparently the AI decides what to build in any given city in this way:

1. It seeks, in the order of the Unit.Dat file, all the units that given city is able to build with the tech currently researched, then builds the first unit that it have enough resources to do so.

2. After that unit is built, it continues in the list of the units buildable for that city until it finds the next unit it is able to build.

3. If after step 2 it don´t find any unit, it start from the beggining of the Unit.Dat file again, until it finds another unit it is able to build or concludes that no unit can be built in this turn.

That would explain the huge numbers of Militias and Anti-Tank guns (Small Artillery in Nova) that the AI keeps building...

I noticed in Nova that, aside from the odd space and advanced unit, the AI mainly builds Militias, Small Artillery, SP Artillery, Gunships, Strategic Bombers, Spies and SEALS (and some Engineers)...

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Re: Hyperion Gamma Changes

Postby Grimly Fiendish 2 » Fri Jul 07, 2006 3:15 pm

I wish I could get to the code Matt sent me, but it's in another computer! When I get to it, I'll post it. Maybe someone can make sense of it.

Makinus, I think your observations are probably correct: the AI builds in the order of the unit table, selecting what it can and then skipping that unit next time so there is a chance of some rotation among units. The unit table is set up so that advanced/powerful units tend to be higher, so that means it builds the most powerful units it can. It also seems to operate under some directive to build Engineers, but maybe not.

However, there are 2 conditions on this:

(1) The AI can only handle (according to Matt, who has spoken with the developers) 70 units per movement type. That is why Matt includes more than 1 table: all the added foot units add up to more than 70, and so the lower foot units drop off. This problem does not arise with Air and Space units.

I have tried to verify this number and have failed. I probably have not found the right experimental conditions. Makinus, if you could (a) verify the dropoff point at 70 or (b) find out where in the EXE file this dropoff point is determined, you would be doing mankind a great service. :(

You could try giving Li Halan infinite resources and observe its behavior by setting all houses to AI in the EFS.INI file.

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Re: Hyperion Gamma Changes

Postby Makinus » Fri Jul 07, 2006 5:39 pm

I´ll make some testing with the numbers you gave, and if you can post the codes Matt found, please do so...

Strangely, i found that (at least in Nova) the AI occasionally builds DNA Assault Legions (like one for every twenty militias or so)...

Just to make a test, i´m changing some things in Unit.Dat..., I changed the militia build time to 20 turns, and excluded (-1 in bldgs) the Anti-Tank Gun (Smal Artillery in Nova)... i also increased the Howitzer build time to 10 turns... hopefully these changes will make the AI spend less resources in militias and other poor units and store resources to build mor advanced units... i really think that the real bottleneck for the AI is the quantity of metal it have available to build...

Makinus

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Re: Hyperion Gamma Changes

Postby Grimly Fiendish 2 » Fri Jul 07, 2006 6:24 pm

Other people in this forum have done more work with resources than I have. But you have to wonder if garrison units suck up food and metal that otherwise might be used on, say engineers. Higher units do tend to use less of these resources.

But according to the unit table theory the AI won't build garrison units if it can build higher units. So it's an open question. I have either deleted my garrison settings (set at 99 or something) or changed them to different units (I like light tanks) or increased build time to about 3 or 4. You can also restrict the build cities so that every single mine/farm/well/etc. is not pumping out a militia unit every turn. Because they are so cheap, they should not steal too much food/metal anyway.

According to the code, the AI builds a table of, say, foot units and rates their combat value based on movement, agility, and armor (I think it's Mo x Ag x Ar x .1 + Acc x Dam). I have worked out those values but don't think they are good predictors of what gets built. It is possible there is a random aspect—that is, that the AI simply checks the table for buildable units and either randomly picks a unit or builds a garrison unit. If the AI does (a) work from the top of the file downward or (b) pick randomly, then it can't also be assessing combat value (c). Unless the combat values are used to weight the random selection . . .


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