[Disclaimer: Stardock does not endorse or support this mod. This thread has merely been stickied so users can more easily direct comments or questions to the authors of this popular modification.]
Some time ago the modding community started poking around in the TA tech trees to see why the AI was reluctant to develop certain techs. We found that some weapons techs were categorised as PD, instead of Military, meaning that unless missile weapons were deployed, those techs would never be researched by the AI. Obviously, an AI that can't fight back isn't much of a challenge.
The idea behind this mod was originally just to get the TA AI on the right track as far as weapons are concerned. However as suggestions have been put forward by the community, more improvements have been made to the tech trees. Some features have been driven by my own need to fix annoyances.
For example there is the AI's passion for spamming factories or labs onto every tile, crashing their early economy. These basic improvements would get upgraded and then cost the AI even more in terms of miantenance and production cost, forcing the AI to run inefficiently with the production slider at far less than 100%.
So my approach has been to deprive human and AI alike of early structures that can cause economic meltdown, and in their place have Super Projects which allow for some single-planet focus.
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For obvious reasons, updates to the mod are on hiatus until the community update is completed.
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Oh yeah, posting on Twitter again tonight as I war with the Yor.
I'm going to balance the defences slightly in the next version. In some cases there's not really a lot of difference between the last module in a series and the first in the next. I don't know why the AI insists on spamming the miniaturised modules (they're less cost-efficient) onto a frigate design but it may have something to do with this.
So I discovered for myself in my latest test game how whacked Creative is. The end tier of beam weapons? Got through them in just under a year. By my estimates I am three years further ahead than I would be if I didn't have Creative, just from working on the Disruptors line of weapons.
Also, interestingly, I've seen the Yor AI abandon mass drivers in favour of beam weapons - well at the very least, it's doing research into beam weapons. I think that's because it's looking for something that will work better against my ships equipped with armour. The problem with this line of research is that I also have ships with shields, in fact many of the other races have shields.
Of course as we've previously established, if a research project will take too long, the AI tends to abandon it in favour of something else, and as I've been wearing down the Yor, their research capacity has diminished.
So I think that I'm going to have to go through the tech trees and set some of the technologies to not complete using the Creative ability.
The AI doesn't seem to get the hang of doing long research projects either, except when the Creative ability kicks in. The Iconians in my current game, up at Phasors, have gone back to the drawing board and are doing Mass Driver Theory. Don't even get me started on the AI's obsession with Terror Star research.
In my mod, I set Terror Stars to ID Defense, Category Null and AIValue 0. While it doesn't prevent the AI from researching Terror Stars, it does slow it down. Especially as the AI isn't researching Advanced Starbase Construction in a timely fashion (except the Korx). Due to this I'm currently thinking of removing the Starbase Fortification techs, and moving the Battle Stations and Defense Stations modules back to the hull techs.
The only race, that will never research Terror Stars, are the Korath. Their AI's hatred of Invasion techs makes them one of the easier races to control. At least when it comes to preventing them from researching something. Just set the tech to Category Invasion and the Korath will never touch it.
It's too bad I can't just tear out the AI's tech chooser and start over from scratch.
I made a start on setting the techs to not work with the Creative ability but I think it only needs to affect the techs with research times that I extended by a large factor. Otherwise I could be here all week.
That reminds me, I haven't really done much with the Drath tech tree.
I've just balanced the numbers for shields on the spreadsheet.
The starting shields got a little boost, with four points of protection instead of three, and they will be a few points of space less bulky. Shields will now be 7 points of protection instead of 5.
Along the shield tech tree I have tried to ensure that each successive shield module is noticeably better than what came before. Basically, you will get a bigger nudge in shield rating compared to the size the module takes up. When you start a new series of shield, this jump is a bit more, when you're working on the second or third version it's a little bit less.
The downside is that the module sizes are going to increase a bit. Not loving this part myself but it is needed so that when the AI designs a ship with one module (for example) they should get a decent boost out of it. The miniaturised components will still be around if you need a smaller shield component, but they will be slightly inefficient in terms of space taken up, so the AI's ship designer should pick the bigger component if it has space to spare.
The costs will be going up in proportion, and there's a slight spike in the cost ratio when you get Barriers and Force Field, which decreases as you get further on in the Shield tech tree.
I'll also be backing up my GC2Types file in the mod folder anyway in case I want to reverse the changes.
Also in my next test is a cut-down speeded-up Minor tech tree. Axed a lot of stuff and set the research time to be a bit quicker on some techs. They also don't start on the basic weapons or defences after Beam Weapon Theory, Shield Defence Theory, etc. They skip the first tier of weapons entirely and the first two tiers of defences. It's in line with them being a one-planet race and having to fend for themselves.
I've started a new test game to try out the changes and you can follow it on Twitter.
By the way, after I've finished testing this version and have looked at balancing the other defence types, there likely won't be any more, unless there are any new annoyances that I can fix.
It's time to look at actually solving some of the problems in code rather than manipulating the data files to fool the AI into pursuing the 'right' tech. I'm going to start with being able to load the tech tree XML data (including mod folder data) into memory and go from there. Not that I expect things to go anywhere, but it will kill some time.
As I mentioned on Twitter, the Scottlingas have a transport on turn 68.
They also have some defenders armed with missiles.
Since I only know about the Terran tree, for now, I was wondering if it was your intention to make it take a long time to get to planetary invasions and build factories as Terran. I feel like I have very little choice in buildings and tech early on in the game like I do with the Original game.
I am not doubting that you have made the game better/more fair. I bought the game a few weeks ago and to get used to it I have been playing Terran only. I saw some mentions of mods and I found my way to this section of the forums and have been testing a few out.
TA Expansion: My map setup is typically, for now, Small, 3 AI, 1 Minor, occasional on most anything else, Tech set to normal and Challenging AI (about to go for Tough and higher). Thanks for contributing to the community even though I am new.
Well I didn't intend for it to turn out that way, but the way the AI approaches planetary building spurred me to take drastic steps. These steps curb its tendency to spam many structures and then deal with the economic meltdown by raising taxes and dragging the production slider to the left and living in denial.
So instead yes, both AI and human player have very few structures available to build to begin with and slowly unlock more through research.
I will freely admit that when I play as the Terrans, I frantically rush up the middle of the tech tree to get weapons techs. That's why the route is littered with Core Technologies groupings. These are techs that I have always needed, that the AI has always needed, to perform well with that race.
The way I structured the early Terran tech tree accounts for the possibility that the human player or the AI has still somehow managed to overstretch during their colony rush, and research is severely cut back. In particular, Planetary Improvements (usually a 400tp tech) is replaced with bite-size projects which the AI will manage to get through even when research output is very limited. Constraining the choice in this way reduces the opportunity for the AI to goof off and pursue three 50-week projects on and off instead.
There's the obvious benefit that the slower rate of technology advancement gives more time for colony populations to grow before they're being burdened with taxation.
Overall, it's a mixed bag of rubber-band fixes and outright 'no, research THIS' lobotomy. Considering all I have to work with is observing what the AI picks in a given situation, it's not bad. Considering what the AI has to do, it's a small miracle it does that much without cheating. But sometimes I wish it had a Marvin the Martian advisor subroutine to direct it to the Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator. I mean, the Nightmare Torpedo.
I haven't actually played with this mod yet, but the description looks like all good stuff. I just checked the data files for some of my particular grievances, though, and you missed one: cost scaling of the Industrial Sector.
You hit the prices of the high-end research buildings fairly well, and the bank, but the top construction building still has its way out of line unmodded cost.
While I'm on the subject of price progressions, though, I think even for research and banking it still needs some tweaking. In a game designed to handle it, the current model with tradeoffs for high space efficiency would be good. As is, however, the game interface and automatic upgrading mechanic are clearly based around the idea that any more advanced building is automatically better in every way. If you have Research Centers, Xeno Labs are now an outdated relic of the past, and likewise for any other new/old pairing. It is technically possible to build the obsolete version and prevent or delay upgrades, but it requires a lot of micromanagement.
Given that interface design choice, which I think is beyond the reach of modding, the tech progression should be designed so that that assumption is in fact correct, so that extreme micromanagement will be neither necessary nor beneficial. As it is, in both the unmodded game and this mod, it is not. Higher tech buildings produce more per tile, but typically less per build cost (the first few industry buildings keep the cost-to-production ratio constant for a while, but that's it). For about the first half of the progression industry and research improve production per maintenance cost, but then the trend reverses.
I suggest a progression as follows:
Industry costs 12.5 per point to build, 1 base plus .5 per point to maintain. This matches the Traditional Factory, Xeno Factory, and Advanced Factory, requires a minor tweak of Manufacturing Center, and a major change of Industrial Sector (which is extremely out of line any way you look at it).
Research costs either 7.5 or 10 per point to build, and 2 plus .5 per point to maintain. This matches either the Xeno Lab or the Research Center for build cost (there is no stretch of constant cost ratio here, unlike for industry), and Xeno Lab through Research Academy for maintenance.
Banking... on review, I think banking is actually ok. It holds steady within a narrow margin of 4.5 build cost per percentage point of bonus except for a slight extra for the Stock Market, but you get a free influence bonus extra on that to compensate. Maintenance is constant at 1.
With this model, the build cost ratio would remain constant throughout the tech tree, while per tile output and maintenance would always improve. With this, unlike with both the default game and your current mod, I would actually be content to always build the latest of these types of buildings.
I haven't looked at any race-specific buildings for this, but for thoroughness they should also be checked and potentially tweaked to follow similar progressions.
Good work on all the rest, I'll enjoy trying it out over the next few days.
Yeah, I guess I could take another look at the factory costs.
Bear in mind though that as upgrades are completed on a tile, the cost to do so rises. It's one of the reasons why the AI takes so long to do its upgrades - it does every upgrade as and when they become available.
If what I read elsewhere is accurate (and I remember it correctly), it's not that the number of upgrades costs extra, but that the discount is the cost of the existing building - and if the building was upgraded, its cost is considered to be the cost of the most recent upgrade. Upgrade from something costing 100 to something costing 125? That upgrade will cost 25. Upgrade again, to something costing 150, and it'll cost 150 - 25 = 125, though.
I have not tested this, but it would have an effect resembling what you describe and seems like something that could happen by accident and then slip by without much attention. That seems more likely to me than a deliberate "how many times has this been upgraded" counter, as I'm having trouble coming up with any logic to justify such a design.
Makes me wonder what happens if you upgrade a market directly to a bank (unmodded, so 200 cost), and then to a stock market.
Anyway, I'm not particularly concerned about the upgrade mechanism, but rather what makes sense for new construction. As is, I think the most powerful building technique is to fill a planet with low end cost-efficient buildings first, and then go back and upgrade them later, and that's a serious pain to do if any of your new construction is done after researching the upgrade tech.
Is there a specific reason you dropped the Initial Colony's research production so low? I'm leapfrogging ahead of the AI in tech despite a heavy manufacturing emphasis, and I think that's a big part of the reason. I suspect it would be worse if I hadn't traded Xeno Labs to several of them a while back.
Yup.
The initial colony's research output means that when the AI does a colony rush, it ends up shelling out quite a bit of cash on funding research that it can't afford to at that early stage of the game. To compensate, it drags its production slider some or all the way over to the left, essentially slowing down or halting all industrial activity, or it raises taxes which hurts early population growth.
This is also why I have tried to tailor the early stage of the tech tree to a low research output.
When the AI is done colony rushing and it actually has an economy to support research, it has a lot more tiles to build labs on, so eventually as those get built its research output will climb. It will just take time.
The tech tree isn't really balanced as far as tech trading is concerned, I always have it turned off.
Got some bad news everyone.
If you haven't already seen it in the news or elsewhere, the UK government is imposing an under-occupancy penalty to benefit claimants from April 1st.
The reality of this is that myself and many other households in the UK that are too poor to afford this tax by another name have no place to go, because there is a shortage of housing that meets the requirements to have no penalty imposed.
Yes, it is possible for us to fill those rooms but many are concerned for their safety and hey, finding someone reliable to help with the rent in just two months, that's going to be tough. Not saying that we won't give it a try but, especially where there are children in a household, it may not be workable.
While this is going on, I won't be working on any modding. It's not that I don't want to, but I have other things in my mind now, like how I will eat, how I will keep this place heated, are there any changes I can make in case I have no choice but to pay up for the extra room.
Sorry to hear that mate, I really appreciate the time you've been putting in to try and fix the AI in this game. It makes it so much more playable.
This is actually the only building where I noticed a strange (and big) increase in costs with upgrading. Going from a market to stock market is generally cheaper than going from a bank to a stock market. I always blamed this on "something being wrong with orders of buildings or something" as rushbuying prices when upgrading something, or rushbuying when replacing one type of building (i.e. a research building) with another (i.e. a farm) sometimes feel really out of whack...
Anyhow, I don't research banking unless I know I'll research Stock Markets straight after, to prevent my planets from upgrading to banks.
By default, banks have a disproportionate price compared to Stock Markets and Trade Centres. It's something I fixed in the mod, too.
Disproportionally high, aye. Bank upgrading to SM is shockingly expensive, making banks even more of a moneybleed either way. (Don't know about the situation in your mod, was just answering a vanilla question.)
I've released the v5E version that I've had sitting here for three months so you can take it for a spin, it's mostly just minor race tweaking.
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