Reasons why the AI runs out of resources

[Atrocities]

This may sound a bit off, but I like to switch the AI to manual and check on there progress every 50 turns or so. I may spend hours fixing the AI's inept use of resources, and thus improving the game.

It takes a lot of time, but its well worth it. Believe me, when you finally get back to your player, you will be ready for a long deserved break, and come visit these forums. Hey look, here I am.



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"We've made too many compromises already, too many retreats! They invade our space and we fall back -- they assimilate entire worlds and we fall back! Not again! The line must be drawn here -- this far, no further! And I will make them pay for what they've done!" -- Patric Stewart as Captain Picard
UCP/TCO Ship Yards

[Daynarr]

There is a way to make a game really difficult with a minimal effort before this gets patched. All you need to do is to edit these lines in settings.txt:

Planet Value Low Percent := 0
Planet Value High Percent := 150

You can give the low percent a value of 80 or 100, and high percent (to give more variety) 200. That will make a high resource game and nullify AI stupidity at least for selecting mining colonies, simply because ALL the planets will give lots of resources.
I should also recommend playing this in 200+ system galaxy with preferably 20 Empires in it, but it will most likely cause RC errors since most of the empires will have huge fleets.

I think this is an easiest way to get a good fight from AI.

[Tampa_Gamer]

I agree. In the bug/wish list thread, I suggested that we remove these lines from the "Settings" file so that they are hardcoded. This would then enable the AI_PlanetTypes file to be useful b/c the mineral percentages criteria for choosing planets can be based on static mineral values instead of "relative" comparison values which does not appear to be working currently.

[jowe01]

Atrocities, seems you have already significantly improved the construction files for the standaard AIs. Would you mind posting your Versions ? Thanks !

[HreDaak]

I have also encountered this problem and i have been doing some tests with the AI_PlanetTypes file.

All the other lines in this file work just fine but the Mineral value, Organics value, Radioactives value lines work only partially IMO.

An example:

Mineral value := 110
Organics value := 100
Radioactives value := 100

This works as it is supposed i guess, because the AI "always" will reject this if the Mineral value on planet is not 110 or more. You could adjust this as long as you dont change the Organics value or Radioactives value from 100 and will keep the Mineral value above 100. Same thing works if you set the Radioactives value above 100 and the mineral value and organic value to 100 (as it will work with organics value too). I have made my own Version of this AI_PlanetTypes file which eliminates most of the problems with AI making a research compound or something else on a planet with mineral value 100+. This file also corrects the problem of AI making a mining colony on a planet with mineral value less than 100. I could upload it to the
mods thread or here if there is someone interested in it...

[This message has been edited by HreDaak (edited 11 January 2001).]

[Eisenhans]

HreDaak!

It's great you made those improvements. Just - I seem to be too stupid to get your exact meaning! You write "it works as it is supposed to...". Could you explain to me how it is supposed to work and why this will fix the AI being too stupid to use planets in a sensible way? I'd be very interested in improving my games that way too. Thanks in advance.

[HreDaak]

Oh, i'm sorry if my Posts dont make much sense, but it's a bit hard to write these things in english .

But here goes...

I think it is supposed to work this way:
You just keep the other two values in 100
and change third value to whatever number you want. If the third value on the planet is less than the value stated in the AI_PlanetTypes.txt file the AI will not choose this colony type.

How it works now? (Based on my observations)
If you put this third value lower than 100 it does not work. It either rejects all planets or accepts them all, i dont remember
which way it was in this case. If you change the other two values to something else than 100 it also gets screwed (regardless what the third value is).

Huh.. i hardly understand myself what i've written here . I'll try to give few examples...

Example1:

Mineral value := 130
Organics value := 100
Radioactives value := 100

Now let's just forget everything else and concentrate what AI decides based on these values.

AI now has a planet with values:

Mineral 140%
Organics 105%
Radioactives 147%

This planet it will accept because the mineral percentage is above 130%, it just simply ignores the organics and radioactives value (propably because they are set to 100).

Now AI has this type planet...

Mineral 125%
Organics 5%
Radioactives 133%

This planet the AI will ignore because it's
Mineral percentage is less than 130%. Both the Organics and radioactives values are ignored.

Example2:

AI is now looking a planet with these values.

Mineral value := 100
Organics value := 110
Radioactives value := 100

It has this type planet under consideration.

Minerals 7%
Organics 115%
Radioactives 77%

It will accept this planet because the organics percentage is above 110%. It ignores the other two values (reasons same as in Example1.)

Notice the pattern...

Problems start if you change the other two values to something else than 100 or the third value to less than 100.

Forexample this does not work:

Mineral value := 70
Organics value := 100
Radioactives value := 100

Whatever the values on the planet are it rejects or accepts all planets, i dont remember which way it was, but surely this is not the way it was supposed to work...
or who am i to say how it was supposed to work, dunno...

This is also complete jibberish to to the AI:

Mineral value := 100
Organics value := 90
Radioactives value := 90

It rejects or accepts all planets regardless of their values...

You should be on the safe side as long as you keep the other two values to 100 and the third value above 100. In all the other cases it seems not to work, although this could use some more testing.

Why will it fix?

Umm, do you mean that modified AI file or something else?

You can test these value things yourself also: Just create your own modified Default_AI_PlanetTypes.txt file and put it
in data folder (remember to save the original one). It only needs 2 entries:

AI State := Exploration, Infrastructure, Prepare for Attack, Attack, Secure Holdings After Attack, Incursion, Prepare for Defense, Defend (Short Term), Defend (Long Term)
Planet Type := Mining Colony
Max Per System := 100
Percent of Colonies := 100
Minimum Planet Size for Type := Tiny
Mineral Value := 0
Organics Value := 0
Radioactives Value := 0
Maximum Total in Empire := 0

AI State := Exploration, Infrastructure, Prepare for Attack, Attack, Secure Holdings After Attack, Incursion, Prepare for Defense, Defend (Short Term), Defend (Long Term)
Planet Type := Research Compound
Max Per System := 100
Percent of Colonies := 100
Minimum Planet Size for Type := Tiny
Mineral Value := 0
Organics Value := 0
Radioactives Value := 0
Maximum Total in Empire := 0

Just change those Mineral, Organics, Radioactives Values and see how the AI reacts
. Use Hot Seat with two empires, the other one being AI controlled. Press F2 and choose players, from there you can choose which race is run by AI, just dont put both on AI .

Any info on this subject is welcome...