This mod trys to improve the AI in regards to Colonization through out the timeline, better ship loadouts, limit the crazy AI Surrender routine and increased awareness to danger towards its colonies and Starbases.
Requires 1.82 Patch, Snathi DLC and Mercenary DLC (Can be used without if you remove the TechDefs.xml associated with the races you do not have, not that I think it makes a difference but a warning is always wise)
Changes
Battle Behaviors
Some other things that I have no doubt tweaked but forgotten about.
DOWNLOAD
Credits
Go4Celebrity for Battle Behaviors.
rog214 for some excellent Feedback from testing!zuPloed for Additions/Changes to some of the code.
Improved AI
All in one mod consisting of AI Tweaks 1.4, Informative Diplomacy Cosmetic and Gameplay 1.8, Two Way Alliances 1.1 and ESL 1.2.
Available as an optional download on the AI Tweaks Nexus link. (1.82)
Install
Install either AI Tweaks or Improved AI to your ....Documents/My Games/GalCiv3/Mods folder.
Did you add this stuff to the Star Trek mod?
Yup and its been edited to death and back, now includes some of the changes from IAB.
OK I expect to be able to try this later this weekend after I finish mopping up the few remaining AI in my Godlike game. Then I can happily start a new game with your mods. I also want to try your added traits and features mod and the new 1.2 for colonization events. I trust that I can just install all the mods and they will stack and work together. I expect that even these AI improvements may make Godlike too tough for me to win militarily. A few comments now from experiences playing Large vs 7 AI's on Incredible or Godlike.
1) Ships. AI ships are much more threatening when they have good drives (which seems to be never early on) and the Arcean movement buildings really help make them into the nuisance and threat they are supposed to be.
2) Once we have higher movement ships from the AI due mostly deciding to put a couple decent drives on its ships, then assuming the DEVS make the AI able to attack more than once per turn, we may really have AI's that can really do some damage.
3) It might be nice to see the AI better defend critical planets from invasions with some planetary structures.
4) Yes, AI also must do a better job of upgrading starbases.
5) Re: AI transports. Do they make them capable of carrying 6 pop like many humans do? Do they launch them with just 2.5 pop? AI could use transports MUCH better and also needs to prioritize P.I. research!
6) Re: AI colonization. Good,as they need to colony rush faster and better, but once there's clearly nothing left to colonize they need to stop making extra colony ships until they have techs for more extreme colonization. Many times playing Incredible, I am all over an AI with early attacks and they still are making colony ships to be promptly destroyed and of course their constructor spam when they need warships instead. Last night vs Godlike, there's rather quickly nothing left to colonize and yet several game weeks later I destroyed 3 colony ships when I attacked the ship yard. These ships should've been docked at the planet so as to DL their pop and put them to work. Better yet, if the AI could upgrade them to something more useful like constructors.
Thx .. neilkaz ..
i made a post about this while it was primarily about helping the player the issues would be even worse for the AI
https://forums.galciv3.com/477916/page/1/#3638527
I think theres a bug here im not sure if it affects the ai so much but whenever I load an autosave game if there was a ship built that turn it will remain docked in the shipyard unless i manually eject it
Sadly the AI does not seem to know how to use the Population slider, I have experimented with this alot. The AI seems to use what ever the default setting is set in Global Defines. I have it set to 3(Max you can start with in the early game), I have been toying with making all colony/troop components 6 by default and then adjusting the mass so its balanced(player wise), but i think it might well gimp the AI with the early colony rush using 6 pop every time. I wish the Colony & Troop were split into two setting tbh, would be able to make it far more intresting then .
My last game the Klingons were at war with the Romulans after 100 or so turns they had managed to grab 7 planets(that I could see) off the Romulans and they were doing a pretty fine job of Guarding the taken planets, 5-20 ships is what I observed. I saw 50+ klingon ships(10 or so transports) heading to take more planets, I think they were all headed to a rally point as most were in singles(no all a couple fleets too) before I shut it down to do some more coding.
The AI use better movement too, 6-14 is what Im observing last game or two. Prolly still needs tweaking.
I have found most the Colony ships the AI have floating around are left over from the inital rush (50-70 turns). I have oberved 3-4 races all rushing planets then the loser's end up with a few floting around. And yeah I wish there was a way to get them to dock at planets too.
I have seen quite a lot of decked out AI starbases, they can be troublesome to kill
I only play on Gifted/Genius btw, Gigantic Map and the Colony rush is usualy over by turn 80ish.
Edit:
I updated the OP Download, you may want to re-download. (9pm GMT 10/6/16)
i should have been clear here this is not a bug with the mod but with the vanilla version of the game
Will this work with the 1.8 opt-in?
*Yawns* I will make it 1.8 compatible
Edit:-
Done!
OK am trying a Godlike game with my usual large map vs 7 AI's. I also have your 25 new colonization events and planetary traits mods installed.
Quite a lousy start as I am in a small remote cluster with Terrans and Alterrans and was lucky to beat them (thx to 12 movement) to my 3rd and 4th colonies.
It was very clear that the AI's now come more quickly with colony ships and these colony ships have better movement speed.
I got around to cleaning up the AIStarbaseGoverner.xml today and re-added it in, along with a new GalCiv3GlobalDefs.xml.
The AI should for 70 turns alternate between waves of colony ships(they will rush build them when possible) and and building starbases. In these 70 turns it will also alternate between Research and Manufacturing.
Since at gifted it gives the ai unfair bonuses it would be better to play that hard instead.
Eh?
You may want to be careful with this. AI shouldn't be wasting money and production on CS if there's no planets remaining that they can currently colonize. However, if find one, then they should prioritize a CS. Once they hit the appropriate extreme colonization techs similar.
The default AI on Godlike reaches extreme col. techs rather quickly but then it often colonizes planets in places where it cannot stop them from revolting and often quickly. The Devs should tweak the AI to not colonize planets deep in other spheres of influence when they'll quickly revolt.
Oh and speaking of Starbases. I took Alteria and Wisp about T30 eliminating the Alterrans once I killed their remaining CS and they left me with some econo SB's in their system each with 103 combined attack and 30 combined defense! It appears that indeed you or v1.8 or both have taught the AI's to defend critical SB. This will mean that it will be a long time before I can clear them out and install my own econo SB's.
You may want to be careful with this. AI shouldn't be wasting money and production on CS if there's no planets remaining that they can currently colonize. However, if find one, then they should prioritize a CS. Once they hit the appropriate extreme colonization techs similar. The default AI on Godlike reaches extreme col. techs rather quickly but then it often colonizes planets in places where it cannot stop them from revolting and often quickly. The Devs should tweak the AI to not colonize planets deep in other spheres of influence when they'll quickly revolt.Oh and speaking of Starbases. I took Alteria and Wisp about T30 eliminating the Alterrans once I killed their remaining CS and they left me with some econo SB's in their system each with 103 combined attack and 30 combined defense! It appears that indeed you or v1.8 or both have taught the AI's to defend critical SB. This will mean that it will be a long time before I can clear them out and install my own econo SB's.
I may need to do a tweak or two for smaller maps(or maybe a different Strategy file for them), I have only really tested it on Gigantic and Huge. How long does it normaly take you and the AI to fully colonize a Large map?
Looking at 1.8 code the AIStarbaseGoverner.xml has not been changed. So I'll put that down to my edits
The area around me was colonized very quickly as there wasn't much to colonize. I got 4 new planets and the Terrans and Alterrans only got Mars and Wisp and were barely beaten by me to two planets. This took clearly less than 10 turns. However, I think this is unusual.
I expect that playing vs your AI mod on Godlike, however, with the quick appearance of lots of AI CS, that a dozen turns would be a good average. Lessor levels of AI would require longer. of course.
Oh and I forgot to mention that when I took Altaria and Wisp on T30 every structure was destroyed! I've never seen this before and normally if I am able to conquer a planet that early on Godlike or even Incredible they are quite well built up.
Is this a feature of 1.8 now or your AI or some bug caused by the combo?
I have no code that destory's improvements.
I made a rough AIStrategies.xml for Tiny to Large maps, get it here. Replace the one from the OP download.
Yep, I just took Sleeping Eudrao T37 as a test and since I need more planets to have a chance at Godlike. All 17 improvements were destroyed! This is quite the nuisance! Is anyone else having this problem with 1.8.
I'll copy in your new files now, but don't expect much time to play more til tomorrow.
I started a new Godlike large game without mods last night to see if I have the same problem with destroying all planetary improvements when I invade. This evening I should get far enough to tell.
It was clear that the Vanilla AI doesn't colonize as aggressively very early when compared to your AI.
Perhaps I'd installed the wrong mod since I was surprised to see Culling Projects and other projects to gain 1 Ideology point per turn for a planet.
No they are enabled too, I un commented them from the projects file and gave them some niffty icons.
Slight feedback delay due to 1.8 issues freezing my game....200 turns in so far.
Huge-antic galaxy (which I stole from you), me +11 ai. Genius difficulty.
I'm no modder, so all these are just gameplay observations. Forgive me if my comments have an easy answer related to modding that I'm unaware of
1) The engine tweak definitely works. But perhaps too well. While 3 engines on a ship is good, it's a bit of overkill on a lot of ships that could do fine with 2 engines and more other stuff. Putting them on scouts and colony and survey ships is great. But a medium ship with 3 engines and an attack value of 4 isn't so useful... The ai definitely uses them more, but it loads up almost too much now at the expense of other things. As a human I can redesign my ships around that issue, but the Ai can't.
2) There seems to be a reluctance on the part of the Ai to research larger hull sizes. I'm on turn 200, and I have encountered 7 Ai. None of which has researched ship hulls above small. A couple of these had 2-3 planets due to bad start position, but the rest have 5-8. They should have at least medium by turn 200. Curiously in the trade window, they seem to have a lot of high level tech in general (normal for genius) so I'm not sure why they are averse to hull sizes.
3) The Ai seems reluctant to use range modules now. I realize engine space has to come from somewhere, but still....as a human, I can build starbase bridges to extend range. The Ai isn't so smart in that regard, so their ships not having range is a handicap really. Also, having more aggressive colonization is fine, but if the ships don't have the range to colonize in the first place, it's an issue.
4) The ideology points was a great idea. But it gets OP really fast, especially mid game when you get a lot of planets in combo with ideology buildings. You should cut the production to .5 or .3.
5) Starbases are definitely getting maxed out, which is good. But the Ai is wasting a lot of resources putting 8-10 defense modules on each economic and mining starbase. Seems a more balanced approach might be called for.
I have yet to see an Ai invasion fleet so I can't say about transports. The 3 empires I've taken over so far have all been small and the war ended fast.
I've taken many planets now, and the improvements are destroyed on all of them when using conventional warfare. I have noticed that info warfare now costs 400 (not sure if that was the mod or 1.8's doing), but I haven't used it yet to see if it keeps buildings.
I changed Invasion costs, same cost for any type seemed a bit silly to me, why would dropping leaflets cost the same as peppering the planet with planetry bombardment?
I noticed the same things in regards to the AI taking Engines over anything else, I have recently (last week or so) done a balance pass on the blueprints to re-adjust the order in which AI pick components (Engines are no longer grouped).
I'll take a look at the Hull issue. I have included IAB's way of using "Weighted" tech choices over a select order like vanilla, I have not adjusted any techs to compensate for this as I did not see an issue untill you mentioned about Hulls.
I left the Ideology Projects as default, easy enough to adjust. (I have yet to tell the AI to use them too btw)
I can adjust the modules for Eco/Mining starbases. Fell free to recommned any you feel could be removed.
I recently upgraded this old computer so I am up to Gig-ense now
EDIT:
I can update mod, but, it includes Enhanced Ship Leveling, not sure I can or will re-do the blueprints to vanilla.
I also added Targeting and Jamming to a bunch of ships.
Additonal download link. See OP.
Whenever you change ship components of any kind ecept mercs, and don't change vanilla blueprints then the ai can't use it. The ai build ships by it's blueprints. Without changing blueprints to fit mod changes. The ai can only build ships from the blueprints.
Urm okay? You know this mod contains changed blueprints right? For the AI....Specificly for the AI.
This is what you can do to this game if you know how to play 4X a bit. Today was GC3 day here, but I'm mostly tied up with other stuff until after our 4th of July holiday although I could likely find a couple hours to start a game. Anyhow...Godlike Huge vs all 12 AI's Turn 91 tech victory. http://tinyurl.com/j8zyf9t. This with 1.8 whatever it is now and NO mods.
I tried your AI mod before and yes, it is an improvement as the AI's do better in the colony rush. They also make somewhat better ships and beef up their starbases.
Anyhow, I'd like to help out here as I think my input can lead to a more challenging game but I simply want only your mod to improve the AI. Enhanced ship leveling while a grea idea will favor he human player. Projects to generate IP will most definitely favor the human. I want none of that, just the standard AI improved by your enhanced AI instructions and NOTHING else.
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