AI Mod for Nashira

[Xilmi]

Installing-Instructions:

Unzip the contents of the File into this folder:

C:\Users\<AIL>\AppData\Roaming\Proxy Studios\Pandora\Data

But replace <AIL> with your own Computer's name.

Note: Windows might not show the "AppData\Roaming"-Path, even if it is there. In this case enter the folder name manually in your Windows-Explorer. If the Data-folder is not there, you have to create it first.

Changes over the Non-Eclipse-Version:

The mod is similar to the old AI-Mod.

It just adds compatibility for Eclipse of Nashira.

However, I currently have not altered the AI-Aggression, so they are back to their basic-aggression. If you consider em to tame, just tell me and I'll raise it.

Contents:
Greatly increased AI evaluation of most buildings, advancements and updated unit-components.

This prevents the AI from falling behind economically starting in the midgame and causes them to design and construct much stronger buildings.

[Xilmi]

Here is the aggressive-version of the same mod.
I feel it's a lot harder.

Agression by faction is:

Ambassadors: 0.15
Divine Ascension: 0.75
Imperium: 0.75
Noxium Corperation: 0.65
Solar Dynasty: 0.65
Terra Salvum: 0.65
Togra University: 0.65

[Apheirox]

[Praises publicly] You deserve a medal, sir!

Just want to say thanks for taking your time to create and share this seeing how the thread looks so empty currently. Anybody playing Pandora should be using this -vast improvement over base game.

For those wondering about the aggressive version of the mod, here are the default values:

Ambassadors: 0.15
Divine Ascension: 0.75
Imperium: 0.65
Noxium Corperation: 0.35
Solar Dynasty: 0.55
Terra Salvum: 0.25
Togra University: 0.45

So, in aggressive version the traditionally peaceful factions are changed a lot while the militaristic ones stay close to the same.

[Xilmi]

Praise accepted!



I really hope to soon be able to officially announce something potentially much more amazing than this mod. ^^

[JurisDocta]

Question Xilmi: Does the AI build fortresses? If not, could you possibly put that in the next update?

[Xilmi]

They do. I could increase the priority if this seems to be a necessity.
Oftentimes when they do not build something it means they have not researched the tech. They don't really seem to like backtracking and researching wide.

[Xilmi]

I'm currently experimenting with improvements about how the AI improves its surroundings with Formers.

So far the following is working:

Plant forrest on all sorts of plains unless it's grassland or tropical as long as pandora-construction is not researched.
Fixed a bug introduced with 1.5.3: that the AI would plant Fungus on these tiles if it researched Fungus Cultivation before Pandora Cosntruction.

If pandora-construction is researched build either suburbs or research-labs with the same likelyness on these tiles.
On Grassland or tropical there now is the same likelyness for farms, research-labs and suburbs.
On Hills there now is a chance to build suburbs or research-labs instead of mines.
On non-special-ocean-tiles it's the same as for grassland: farm, suburb or research-lab with equal likelyness.

Note: As long as the AI has not researched Pandora-Construction the only change will be that it builds forrests instead of farms on 1-food-plains.

What I tried to get working but didn't work is:

Getting Terra-Salvum to plant forrests on all hills and with a likelyness equal to other stuff also on plains.
Getting the AI to grow fungus when both fungus advancements are researched.
Getting the AI to terraform hills with mines into mountains.

In all three cases the syntax I used to try and accomplish this looks like it should work in theory and also loads at the game start. But in practice it just doesn't work/is ignored. :\

I'd also like to increase the chance for purifiers just for Solar Dynasty but this would most likely be the same as with forrests and Terra-Salvum.

Either way, I'll upload the changes I've done so far later today. This will also fix an issue where the 1.5.3 change for the requirements of Suburbs and Purifiers was not moved to Pandora-Construction.

In one test-game an annoying issue also occured because the AI only considers techs it can currently reach. In this test the only way to get Pandora-Construction was through Sniper-Rifles. So the Divine Ascension was the only Faction that researched this prerequisite.

[Xilmi]

New version.

As I said, this fixes an issue where some of the contents of 1.5.3 did not apply.
It improves (at least according of what I think) the AIs selection of tile-improvements.
And it is also a cleaned up version of the mod containing only the files I actually modified.
This makes it less likely to be incompatible with future patches.

[eidolad]

Hi,

just upgraded to Nashira DLC and was interested in stopping the stupid AI spawning tons of infantry and thinking it had a chance against a human player. I *think* this mod addresses this.

However I might humbly suggest that the title page for the mod have a list of the changes such that we know exactly what the intent/effect of the mod it.

Thanks for working on this.

[Xilmi]

Well, I summarized it as this:

"Greatly increased AI evaluation of most buildings, advancements and updated unit-components.

This prevents the AI from falling behind economically starting in the midgame and causes them to design and construct much stronger buildings."

I don't think it makes sense to go through the 80ish files that I modified and say:
"changed AIValue for Armor5 from 1 to 1.6 so the AI values it over previous armors"
"changed AIValue for Rocket1 from 1 to 1.3 so the AI values it over previous weapons"
"changed AIValue for Lab from 1 to 2 so the AI values it over units"

Also I'll probably have to update this in order to get some improvements from the Spyless-Mod that I made to the tile-improvement-AI. It was not quite as I wanted it to be in this version.

[eidolad]

You're correct...most players don't want to know the under-the-hood stats changes that make the mod work.

Let me be more specific: The first thing I would want to know, from the first glance, if the AI mod will result in the AI factions to field a more effective/mixed army. i.e. economy and buildings are great and everything...but I find that, as a casual player, the AI spams cities faster generally than I can...so what sort of knuckle duster do they have planned once they have all those cities and buildings...

i.e. it's nice to know that the AI mod will enhance that Demolisher tank that the AI faction could build to use better components. However all I've seen of the (pre-Nashira build, I just started with the Nashira DLC) is great episodes of AI spamming infantry units (or rarely, planes). So would I actually see that unit get built in adequate numbers by the AI.

My first night with mod was nice: as in, nice to see that the "angry pink lady" doesn't automatically want to punch me even though we're nowhere close to each other...and yet, it is a bit concerning that she just build a nuke launch silo sooooo early ahead of everyone else. Hmmm. She probably still wants to punch me. I'll see what happens once one of the factions decides I'm weak enough to pick on.

edit: used "Improved_AI_153.zip": found that the AI is really passive...very few wars going on and (gasp) the "angry pink lady" is not at war with anyone by the time I've reached the transcendence era. going to fire up another game and see if this is also true. I might be a customer for an "aggro" version of v153+...

[Xilmi]

Yes, the AI will build the stronger units in adequate numbers later in the game with the mod.

What map size do you play on?

Since I cannot really do anything about their city-spam with the mod... Hold on!

Just as I said this, it appeared to me that the Colonizer has a Strat-Score too. Maybe tweaking it can slow down the AIs expansion. I'm gonna try how halving the Expansion-Score of the Colonizer will work out right after this post. ^^

What I wanted to say: The AI usually overexpands. And with the Mod they will try to get all the buildings and thus devote a lot of Minerals into buildings and less into units. This also means they'll have a smaller military and thus are less likely to wage war.

Smaller maps help because they obviously will stop colonizing when there's no room left and then they have more minerals to spend for units instead of pushing the constant flow of new cities.

[ukjohn]

How do you know any mod is active though? It's not a friendly mod system in terms of letting the gamer know a mod is installed right or is working okay.

[Xilmi]

Are you the same guy that asked on steam?

Forget about the mod, the games' current version "1.6.4" has every AI-improvement I've ever made it in. And it's much, much, much more than what this mod could ever dream of accomplishing. ^^