Ever noticed how poorly the AI handles its wars? It builds transports and sits on them, loads fleets up with tiny ships that were obsolete ages ago, and rarely does anything but annoy you. Here's a neat little fix for that.
http://www.mediafire.com/download/edf9fdx86hxlz5q/VidWarAIv3.zip
With this, when the AI goes to war, it will almost exclusively build transports and capital ships, which means their fleets are much faster, and far more dangerous. Additionally, they are now invade much more aggressively, and will sometimes line up several invasions back to back. Ever wonder how scary the Drengin would be if they actually finished their wars? Oh man... brace yourselves.
This is compatible with the 1.10 opt-in.
Note that the AI doesn't seem to use anything for planetary defense except for Tiny ships, so as a side-effect, when they are at war for a long time, they will very often start to neglect their defenses to smash the front line. However, if you tell it to build tiny ships, it loads them up in fleets absent-mindedly, so it's best to just tell them not to, especially since they are very inefficient once you get Medium hulls. Tiny ships are ineffective defenders anyway, so until the AI learns how to defend with larger ships, this is the next best thing.
UPDATE: v2 is now up. It makes the AI even more aggressive on larger maps, and additionally helps it build more Constructors once it has secured a decent-sized empire.
UPDATE 2: v3 is now up. It makes the AI much better at defending its own planets. Due to necessity, while this is compatible with 1.11, I have refrained from using the new BestDefense modifier that the devs added, as I find it quite counter-productive, and it often makes the AI worse at defending.
I have a game playing with Version 2. The Borg and the Altarians are duking it out right now.
I must say this is some fun. I have been brokering and fomenting war with all the ai.
I build a nice balanced medium hull, I use 2nd or 3rd tier tech, give it 2 engines, 2 thrusters, 2 life support, 2 of each defense (tier 2) and it usually has 2 Stingers and a Laser on it. or a Singer and proto durantium driver. I call this design "Lend-Lease" and Ill just crank out dozens. These show up easy enough and Ill 'sell' 4 to 10' to various ai I think are a bit week, Altarians got 10, the Glamourians got 10 and the Cyborgenitics got 6.
I'd love to see a diplomatic penalty against me on factions that were at war with these guys but that is another thread.
Anyway this mod does seem to help the ai in defending against invasions. Great job.
Seems to me that about 75% of the ships in the base game's ShipClassDefs.xml have the wrong AIShipClass... there's interceptors being classed as bombers, support being routinely categorized as Transport, almost all defensive ships are under 'assault'... even stuff which has it's class in it's name, like bombers, are being routinely dumped into completely the wrong category. This is a mess! Running through and correcting it now; as ever, feel free to pick it up and add it if you want to. No point in both off us doing the same drudge work when it comes to fixing outright bugs.
EDIT: Good grief, this is actually worse than I thought it would be. Everything over medium is just classed as 'capital ship' for most races - except the Altarians, who class all bigger ships as 'assault'. The rolse don't even match up from race to race - Terrans and Drengin think snipers are bombers, while Altarians and Iridium think they're assault. It's like whoever was writing it was distracted at the time or something.
EDIT 2: This might actually explain the AI's terribad fleeting - what if it's trying to build a balanced fleet? It WANTS to have x assault, x capitals, x escorts etc... but the ships it can actually build are all classed as one thing, so it just builds 2 or 3 and puts them together and then reserves the rest of the space for whenever escorts or whatever become available...
I wouldn't screw around with those too much. I tried that, and the AI started doing very strange things. The only ones I would change are the Transport classes, make sure nothing Small/Tiny is set as an Escort, and set Carriers as Assaults. Then in the AI build defs, make them always prefer to build Capitals, Transports, small amounts of Assaults, decent amounts of Colony/Constructors, and the rest set to 1. That way, the AI only builds bombers and such if it physically can't build Medium hulls yet.
It seems to use Sentinels as patrol craft, staying inside their borders to kill things that enter. Of course, it can use capitals for this too. Escorts are what it prefers to send with Capitals and Transports, but it isn't anal about that. It will use whole fleets of capitals if that's what it has, and it will send transports with capital escorts if that's what ends up in the fleet with it. Bombers are its strategic resource ships - hard hitters that it only builds early game. If we had higher levels of strategic resource ships, it would build those instead. Interceptors are what it prefers to hit transports with, but it will use what it has if it sees a transport.
Anytime it decides to build a class of ship, it almost always prefers the largest size it can build. Give it more options, and it takes them. If you want it to love bigger ship, make it build capitals. It seems to understand that this means bigger ships, regardless of settings. Don't set Carriers to Capital, though, because it will spam those if you let it. Set them to Assaults and it will mix them in occasionally.
It should be noted that 1.1 nerfed assault fighters. They now stop at one set of each weapon/armor and no longer have sublight drives.
Did Stardock nerf fighters or is this your mod?
Stardock. I actually agree with the nerf, though drones need a buff.
I think it depends pretty heavily on the build weights in AI strat defs tbh; the class-strats are fixed (so defenders always sit on defence) but the build choice is largely what we tell it to be in the strat script that's active at the time. I want to see a decent mix of stuff, and I'd like to see it upgrading certain types past Medium (bombers, interceptors) - even if that means setting up additional ship types and blueprints. Other stuff can max-out later, or only come into effect later, but the ship classifications need to be heavily influenced by whatever we put in the strategies at any given time - and I've got about 200 of those now
Any idea what might make the AI target shipyards a little more? I'm seeing lots of action but the ships kill the enemy then wait for transports to come up, ignoring the shipyards; if they just took them out then it'd actually be a pretty good AI.
Vid and Naselus, Thank you both for your hard work. Today they are releasing the map editor and map pack as well as update 1.1.
Vid will you be updating your improved war mod this week?
Yes, as soon as I get back from being out of town. Likely this Saturday.
That's a bug caused by a value I changed in v2, but i forgot what it's called. It over-values defenses as a result, so it sees a shipyard and thinks it's way stronger than it actually is. I fixed this in v3, and it does hit shipyards once it has medium fleets.
Ok Will your mod be compatible with the 'official' update? I see they are going to push out a patch to 1.1 tomorrow. I am holding off on a new game till I can get your War mod up to V3.
Thanks again, your work is most appreciated!
It should be. I just got back, so I'm testing that right now. If all goes well, I'll release v3 immediately.
Updated.
I did notice that since I was gone, there was a new modifier in the Blueprints called BestDefense, but since this seems to stack all of one type of defense to the blueprint's detriment, I have decided against using this in my new Defender blueprints. Upon testing it, they did significantly worse with the BestDefense tag instead of one of each defense.
Keep in mind, if you use a mod that changes the original FactionShipStyleSetDefs.xml, this mod is not compatible.
Thanks for making this mod.
I'm giving this a try in my current game (I think....). How do I confirm that the mod is active? If there are multiple mods in the mod directory, what determines what loads and what doesn't (especially if they are incompatible...ie, using the same files)?
I like your mod. Have you thought about posting it on Nexus?
I will say that this mod does what it says. The ai builds fleets with transports and sends them to your planets. It also builds medium hulls in number and will fleet them up. I am very happy happy with this mod and hope Vid will continue to work and update this as Stardock updates the game.
On the Ai conversation thread (on Steam), I plugged Vids mod to Brad on how it makes war/combat much more fun and perhaps he should take a look at it.
Vid, will your mod work with the new 1.12?
It should do, there's no structural xml changes in the relevant files.
Historically, GC is a single player game and had to be dragged kicking and screaming to multiplayer. Those of us that have been around forever consider ourselves fundamentally different from multi-players.
Part of our passion for single player is the quest for the perfect AI. Short of quantum computing we will never find perfection but that is what most quests are about.
i haven't tested that, but I don't see why not.
Good afternoon Vid.
Can you check on the Opt in Update 1.2? I really like your wartime mod and wondered if it is compatible with the new update.
Any word on 1.2 compatibility?
Problem found with 1.2 - see https://forums.galciv3.com/470324/page/1/#3581250
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