AI personalities

fulano

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I just wanted to start a thread to discuss what personalities the AIs should have and how to edit them.

First, how to edit them:
There are 8 personality types defined in MoO2Civ:

FLAVOR_MILITARY
FLAVOR_RELIGION
FLAVOR_PRODUCTION
FLAVOR_GOLD
FLAVOR_SCIENCE
FLAVOR_CULTURE
FLAVOR_GROWTH
FLAVOR_ESPIONAGE

Each leader can be assigned one or all of the flavors accompanied by a value from 1 to 10, 10 being the highest value. This number is then used by the AI to decide what to research and build next. This information is in the file "Civ4LeaderHeadInfos.xml"

Currently all the leaders are set to the culture flavor, and all the techs are set to the military flavor. This might be one reason the AI isn't very smart in MoO2Civ.

So here is my suggestion for what to set the races, then vary it a little for each leader. Most of the info came from here: http://www.angelfire.com/empire/ezixl/picture/moo2race.html#Alkari. (Some leader pictures could come from here by the way!)

Alkari: FLAVOR_SCIENCE: 8, FLAVOR_MILITARY: 7
Bulthari: FLAVOR_MILITARY: 10
Darlok: FLAVOR_ESPIONAGE: 10, FLAVOR_MILITARY: 5
Elerian: FLAVOR_ESPIONAGE: 4, FLAVOR_MILITARY: 6, FLAVOR_PRODUCTION: 4
Gnolam: FLAVOR_GOLD: 10, FLAVOR_RELIGION: 5
Humans: FLAVOR_CULTURE: 10, FLAVOR_RELIGION: 5, FLAVOR_SCIENCE: 4, FLAVOR_GOLD: 4
Klackon: FLAVOR_PRODUCTION: 8, FLAVOR_GROWTH: 5
Meklar: FLAVOR_PRODUCTION: 8, FLAVOR_MILITARY: 5
Mrrshan: FLAVOR_MILITARY: 9, FLAVOR_GOLD: 3
Psilons: FLAVOR_SCIENCE: 10, FLAVOR_RELIGION: 2, FLAVOR_GOLD: 3
Sakkra: FLAVOR_GROWTH: 10, FLAVOR_MILITARY: 5, FLAVOR_PRODUCTION: 2
Silicoid: FLAVOR_PRODUCTION: 10, FLAVOR_MILITARY: 4
Trilarian: FLAVOR_GROWTH: 6, FLAVOR_SCIENCE: 5, FLAVOR_RELIGION: 6

What do you guys think? Would you make any changes?
 
Good idea. ;)

I checked out that site (good find, BTW!) and think the Gnolam Spy picture might fit well for an 2nd Gnolam LH (the only race currently using the same pic for 2 LHs), seeing as it's in JPG format.

As for flavors, I'd add a bit of FLAVOR_RELIGION to the Gnolams and Psilons. with regard to the Science and Wealth values. (Alternatively, the Gnolams might even start with Wealth as a value and the Psilons with Science.)
 
I edited the first post to include your ideas.

Edit: You know I would love to see each leader image here: http://www.angelfire.com/empire/ezixl/picture/moo2race.html#Alkari used for a leader eventually. But alas, when you work on mods you can only work on one idea at a time. :) And for some reason I decided to work on a huge idea first, but it's prgressing. Anyway, I know other people had interest in this, I hope they see this thread and post their thoughts.
 
I've checked and most of them are. In addition I'd like to include a new pic for the Elerians from there as well. ;)

If you are referring to replacing the picture for the second Elarian leader with an actual picture of an Elarian I'm especially all for that!
 
That's what I meant; I just need to convert the JPGs to DDS files and they can be included in the next version. ;)
 
The flavors look fine except I might give the Trillarians some religion because I think in MoO3 the Trillarians and the Nommo fought a holy war over their homeworld. I know the Nommo were religious so I think the Trillarians were described as religious too. I think in MoO3 the Psilons were atheists, but that might just be because of the mod I used that had religion picks and that modder thought they would be. However in this mod they aren't actually religions, they're values so this could be described better as 'philosophical' rather than religious.

I'm going to volunteer to do the rewrite on the leaderheads.xml file, because on several occasions I've looked into it and thought of how to rewrite all the details in there to mimic the MoO2 personalities, i.e. Pacifist, Honorable, Erratic, Aggressive, Ruthless, and Xenophobic. Plus the objectives which I think were militarist, expansionist, ecologist, techno-something, etc. The flavors part I didn't have anything specific in mind other than the obvious, so I'd just use what's here, but the rest I do have many thoughts on.
I have the MoO2 guide with lists the possible personalities and there are two leaders for each civ so there.
 
Cool! :) On that subject, I was thinking it might be appropriate to give the different/second leaders a slightly differentiating Trait combo, so it'll actually make a difference which leader you pick for a race. (Like for the Humans Strader could be bit more of an Aggressive leader than Durash, to name but one example.)
 
I'm going to volunteer to do the rewrite on the leaderheads.xml file, because on several occasions I've looked into it and thought of how to rewrite all the details in there to mimic the MoO2 personalities, i.e. Pacifist, Honorable, Erratic, Aggressive, Ruthless, and Xenophobic. Plus the objectives which I think were militarist, expansionist, ecologist, techno-something, etc.

I was really hoping you would volunteer. Thanks!
I think it would be great to vary each leader's flavors a tad to make things interesting.

Are you planning to give the leaders individual traits like Civ4 does? Like expansionist increasing health and aggressive decreasing ship cost or something? Just trying to understand a little clearer of your plan.
 
I was really hoping you would volunteer. Thanks!
I think it would be great to vary each leader's flavors a tad to make things interesting.

Are you planning to give the leaders individual traits like Civ4 does? Like expansionist increasing health and aggressive decreasing ship cost or something? Just trying to understand a little clearer of your plan.

I'm just going to do the AI behavior, which includes most of the relations moddifiers, under what circumstances they go to war, how long their memory is for previous actions good or bad against them, how likely they are to offer different deals, how much they have to like you to accept deals, how likely they are to betray a friend, favorite religion, favorite civc, etc.

Later I'll post some descriptions of what I think each MoO2 personality would be like in civ4 terms to see what everyone thinks.
 
Oh by the way, each leader had a disabled free tech that referred to the old tech tree. I updated the tech name but left them in. I think they were originally put in there just to remember how to make the changes.

You could rename the files or just use the leaderhead file from the new tech tree to avoid any problems.
 
OK here are some of the characteristics of MoO2 personalities that I can model in civ4 leaderheads.xml

In MoO1 the personalities were basically just a scale of what bonus is added to diplomatic reactions. A base +20 for pacifist, +10 Honourable, +40 or -40 (random) erratic, -10 aggressive, -30 ruthless, and -50 for Xenophobe. That's rather simple but a good starting point. Generally with any reaction you could expect them to follow that basic formula. But there's more some more detail for each which I'll get into now.

Just to be clear, by "reaction" I mean how big a change is diplomacy points.

Pacifist
Good base relations
Big reaction, Long memory for good actions
Small reaction medium memory for bad actions
Unlikely to betray
Very rarely declares war

Generally they would be hard to anger and easy to please, although I gave them a medium memory for bad actions just so they wouldn't be totally taken advantage of.

Honourable
In MoO honourable leaders were a hybrid of pacifist and xenophobic. They would react like a pacifist to good actions and like a xenophobe for bad actions.

Good base relations
Big reaction long memory for good actions
Big reaction long memory for bad actions
Never betrays a close friend
Does not often start wars without reason

Erratic
This one is a little hard to do since there was a random factor in MoO that isn't in civ4 so they can't be truly erratic. Although I could do something in the SDK for that but I don't think it's worth the effort. Basically my method for making erratic is to make them in some ways like an honourable leader, but mostly the opposite.

average base relations
big reaction very short memory for good actions
big reaction very short memory for bad actions
small reaction to continuous effects (like treaties shared/different civics, religion etc.)
betrays and breaks agreements without second thoughts
short contact delay (this is how long they will refuse to talk after the start of wars, broken treaties etc.)
likely to make demands

The key detail is the short memory but big reaction. With this it should be easy to win over an erratic leader, but it will be fleeting and just as easy to anger them but they will forgive. The small reaction to continuous effects is also so they can't be continuously kept happy or angry, and the short contact delay is so they will always be active in diplomacy and the affects of their changing minds can be seen. So for example you could make them like you at first then they'll forget, and someone else will win them over and bribe them have them attack you. Then they'll forget to be mad and make peace. At lease that's how it might work. Just have to wait to see how it works out in practice.


One problem is that aggressive, and ruthless, and xenophobic are a little hard to differentiate if they're all just hostile. Something different would have to be done so they'll be enough difference that the three actually seem different.

Aggressive
The least hostile of the hostile personalities. The best way to keep them far enough from ruthless is to make them more competitive than thuggish, making them a more middle of the road personality. You know it's a harsh galaxy when aggressive is considered middle of the road.

bad base relations
average reactions and memory length for everything
average change of betrayal and war declaration
likely to make demands

The MoO1 guide also said that aggressive leaders are also more likely to peacefully expand, but I'm not sure if I saw anything that would effect that. Generally they'd be just over the line of friendly/unfriendly to the unfriendly side.

Ruthless
These ones are the thugs

bad base relations
small reaction medium memory for good actions
big reaction long memory for bad actions
likely to betray
likely to declare war
likely to make demands

Basically they are as evil as they can get while still leaving room for xenophobic to be worse, unless...

Xenophobic
There are two ways to go with this one. In MoO1 they were evil, genocidal, and highly aggressive. That's one way to go but might not be very interesting or significantly different from aggressive and ruthless. Now I heard from one person (never had it confirmed or really noticed myself) that in MoO2 they were more isolationists than they were in MoO1. So although they hate everyone they prefer to not engage anyone at all. More defensive than aggressive, although still very willing to fight.

So those are the two xenophobic options I see:
A) make them as aggressive and hateful as possible with ruthless between it and the Aggressive personality
B) make ruthless as aggressive and possible (and make Aggressive personality a little more so) and make Xenophobe as hateful as possible but less active unless attacked.


Something else to consider is reactions for favourite civic or religion. Again this could be done different ways. I could just have them the same as the other good/bad things, or something else. I could make more peaceful leaders care more about civics/religion and hostile leaders less. The idea being peaceful races being less concerned with making war have time to get angry about differing beliefs, while warlike races don't care what you believe, they're about winning territory, not hearts and minds. The third option is to decide it by race rather than by leader personality.

Some things I'd base of of the race rather than the personality. Like there's a setting for how much more powerful they have to be than a potential target before they declare war. Now promotions don't add to a civs power rating, making the Mrrshan for example with their attack bonus stronger than the power rating makes them appear. So they should be fine declaring war with less of a power advantage. There's also a setting for how much of an advantage attack odds for individual units to attack. The Klackons can replace ships faster than others so they should be more willing to sacrifice them with less chance of survival. While the Alkari should not attack with bad odds because their combat bonus is for defence.

I'll be back a little later regarding which races should have which personalities.
 
This is awesome! I really like how you have converted MoO personalities to Civ.


My thoughts:
I like option B for the Xenophobic race. You already have friendly and unfriendly races, one that likes to keep to itself would make things more diverse and interesting.


I think pacifists should care little about your civics and religions because they're passive or tolerant to new ideas. I also think the ruthless wouldn't care about your civics either, if you choose a non-military civic all the better for them so they can destroy you faster.

I think the honorable and xenophobes should care the most about what your civics are. Xenophobes hate or fear anything that is different than them and the honorable think their ways are the best ways.

Aggressive should be closer to average importance for religion and civics.

Erratic... I'm not sure. To be more erratic I guess they would care little of what you choose because it's hard to keep them on your side anyway.

Those are my two cents, great work done here!


By the way, is it possible to make trade treaties overall a little harder to obtain? Currently once they get the tech the AI's all ask for open borders immediately. Then they declare war on you without the slightest thought.
 
Xenophobic
There are two ways to go with this one. In MoO1 they were evil, genocidal, and highly aggressive. That's one way to go but might not be very interesting or significantly different from aggressive and ruthless. Now I heard from one person (never had it confirmed or really noticed myself) that in MoO2 they were more isolationists than they were in MoO1. So although they hate everyone they prefer to not engage anyone at all. More defensive than aggressive, although still very willing to fight.

So those are the two xenophobic options I see:
A) make them as aggressive and hateful as possible with ruthless between it and the Aggressive personality
B) make ruthless as aggressive and possible (and make Aggressive personality a little more so) and make Xenophobe as hateful as possible but less active unless attacked.

I'd go for B. I do seem to remember that Xenophobic meant the race was less likely to sign treaties and/or exchange techs (isolationist effect), but that over time this might be negated (even a xenophobic race can become more friendly towards you, but it takes a sustained effort).

I think pacifists should care little about your civics and religions because they're passive or tolerant to new ideas. I also think the ruthless wouldn't care about your civics either, if you choose a non-military civic all the better for them so they can destroy you faster.

I think the honorable and xenophobes should care the most about what your civics are. Xenophobes hate or fear anything that is different than them and the honorable think their ways are the best ways.

I think again we can agree here. (Except it seems to me xenophobes won't care about other races' civics/values period, because of their isolationist attitude.)
 
OK now on to what each races personalities will be. Most of them do have a signature personality so one leader is pretty much settled. The second is up for grabs. I'll list all the possible personalities from the two guides I have to see what has been used before, but they could always just be ignored if there's a more interesting option. The numbers are the likelihood of that personality being picked in that game. I'll bold the one that should be the obvious first choice and underline or write in my thoughts on the second personality.

Alkari
MoO: honourable 60, pacifist 20, erratic 20
MoO2: honourable 7, pacifist 2, erratic 1
Their ability is more defensive so pacifist would compliment that, but it is a combat ability so maybe getting into fights serves them well too. Honourable should get into some fights so that would cover it.

Bulrathi
MoO: aggressive 60, ruthless 20, erratic 20
MoO2: aggressive 7, erratic 2, ruthless 1

Darlock
MoO: aggressive 60, ruthless 20, erratic 20
MoO2: aggressive 7, ruthless 2, xenophobic 1
I could go with ruthless, but a xenophobe with super espionage could be interesting. They make no direct contact and keep to themselves, but they're actually everywhere...

Elerian
MoO2: ruthless 5, aggressive 3, xenophobic 2

Gnolam
MoO2: Pacifist 3, erratic 3, aggressive 2, ruthless 2
Their bonus comes from having trade routes so being aggressive would prevent them from having those trade routes. So it's best they don't get too hostile.

Human
MoO: honourable 60, pacifist 20, erratic 20
MoO2: honourable 7, pacifist 2, erratic 1
If they are pacifist then with their diplomacy bonus they might never get in a war, and if they did they could bring in all their allies to help them, but I think honourable should be good enough for a coalition building personality. Erratic might be more interesting, with constantly shifting alliances and backstabbing and with the diplomatic bonus they'll get away with it. A charismatic sociopath could cause some really cool chaos.

Klackon
MoO: xenophobe 60, ruthless 20, aggressive 20
MoO2: xenophobe 7, aggressive 2, ruthless 1

Meklar
MoO: erratic 60, honourable 20, ruthless 20
MoO2: aggressive 7, ruthless, xenophobe 1 <-- This is clearly wrong as they were often erratic but the guide I have was often in error.
I once saw a documentary on game theory where they had an experiment simulating a spy game using computers, in which you could cooperate with an opponent to both gain points or betray them and just get points yourself, but they could betray too and then you both get nothing. All the winning programs had two things in common. They were 'nice' and didn't betray first, but vengeful and would always counter betrayal in the next until their opponent begins cooperating again. So it was mathematically determined that to win a game that requires cooperation with competitors, an 'honourable' strategy is best. That's why I think the second Meklar leader should be honourable.

Mrrshan
MoO: ruthless 60, aggressive 20, xenophobe 20
MoO2: ruthless 7, aggressive 2, xenophobe 1

Psilon
MoO: pacifist 60, honourable 20, erratic 20
MoO2: pacifist 7, erratic 2, honourable 1
They're supposed to keep themselves safe and research to their advantage so honourable might be better suited for that than erratic, but a 'mad scientist' personality might be fitting.

Sakkra
MoO: aggressive 60, ruthless 20, erratic 20
MoO2: aggressive 7, erratic 2, ruthless 1

Silicoid
MoO: xenophobe 60, ruthless 20, aggressive 20
MoO2: xenophobe 7, aggressive 2, erratic 1
I like erratic for them. They're supposed to very different from the other races, so having a personality that's unpredictable and doesn't make sence to others fits well, but I'm not married to it. I could just as easily go with aggressive if xenophobe is enough of a 'too different to get along with others' personality for them.

Trillarians
MoO2: Honourable 6, pacifist 4, erratic 1


So those are my ideas. Anyone else have opinions go ahead.

Also somewhere there was talk about making the AI less likely to make open boarders. That can easily be done by increasing the minimum relations level where they would accept or offer such a deal. I'd probably still keep it very low for the Gnolam to the point that they might trade with their own worst enemies, because with their bonuses from trade routes, it would almost always benefits them more than the other empire.
 
I like all the picks very much!! But I'll throw in some thoughts just for fun. :)

I really like the darlok as agressive and xenophobic. They'll put up with you, but if you get too nosy they'll take you out. :)

I like the humans as erratic. It would be interesting as you said, and also they won't be the same as the alkari.

I like the Klackon pick, I'd really hate to see them be ruthless!

The psilons as erratic sounds interesting. The only reason they wouln't win in MoO2 is because they never declared war. They always were the galactic power in the games I played until I conquered the rest of the galaxy and hit their weak spot (and spied all their techs away. :) )

I like xenophobe and erratic for silicoid. Makes more sense to me.


And with the open borders. I remember in MoO2 always having to give gifts to get open borders. I think the AI should require such a thing in this mod as well. Currently they just offer as soon as they meet you. I also agree the gnolam should open their borders easily.
 
Sorry for not responding, but with such a thorough proposal there's not nuch left to comment on! If I would comment I'd say that too much erratic may be overdoing it. (A bit.)
 
Sorry for not responding, but with such a thorough proposal there's not nuch left to comment on! If I would comment I'd say that too much erratic may be overdoing it. (A bit.)
The current breakdown of personalities are:

3 pacifist
4 honourable
5 erratic
6 aggressive
4 ruthless
3 xenophobe

The only ones that I'm convinced should be erratic are humans and Meklar.
Making the Psilons honourable might be too much honourable then. That leaves Gnolam and Silicoid, either of which could be aggressive, which is a middle of the road personality so it doesn't need to be limited. Erratic is also middle but because it's random. Gnolam might be good as aggressive because although they do best with peaceful trade and aggressive goes against that I can make them offer/accept trade easily and have a large positive reaction and long memory for trade. That should work for them.
 
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