AI and units

[byss]

hi i'm a new member, and i'm designing star wars/trek scenarios for my own amusement. the info here has been a great help to me, and i now have a good grasp of the essentials. thanks for putting up such a great site

my question relates to the game AI. i'm using single isolated land squares to simulate planets. will the AI make optimal strategic use of settlers and marines in this context, especially in the early growth period?

my trek scenario is based on the microsoft birth of the federation game. i'm using graphics from the game files, and also from other trek/wars sites across the net. i've built up a huge image library i'm making use of. i'd like to post them here, but would there be copywrite issues with that? all of the images are ok for personal use, but some are the property of microsoft or other authors

also, i'm using the resource squares to allow more variation in terrain graphics. the resource icons will be of an image which will overlay the entire land image. this way i can triple the amount of images for a single land/planet type. has this technique been used and refined before?

 

[clockboy]

1. No, it won't. Check out the scenario Star 2399. That will you a lot. I tried making similar scenarios, but over coming this is difficult, and sapped all the fun out of it. You will have to make extensive use of the events text. A suggestion which I found to work well when there are already a lot of cities/planets, is to give the enemy infantry the paradrop ability. The AI will use it to take cities that its warships have opened up. It's not much, but it's all I can offer.

2. I'm not too familiar with this. It should be okay, but wait until someone who knows what they're talking about tells you.

3. Not a clue. I wanted to do the same thing with a Escape Velocity scenario, but ran into problems with the graphics working together.

 

[yoshi]

1. The main problem I found with the AI in 'island' scens like this is that the AI keeps all its ships in cities, let alone transporting land units. For some reason the program doesn't like the fact that there isn't much land or something. Did you have this problem? (Note that I had this problem a while ago while using an earlier version than MGE so the added aggressiveness of the AI in MGE may have changed this--to tell the truth, I got so sick of the AI doing this that I gave up the scen altogether.)

2. People use stuff from other games here all the time (especially PG2 vehicle graphics, which seems to standard issue for many WW2 scenarios at this point). AFAIK, as long as you don't make a profit (i.e. use them as an official part of another game) and provide the source in the Readme--or even in the Units.gif file itself--, there should be absolutely no problem.
And quite frankly, even if you do none of the above and just use them without saying where you got them, I doubt anybody will care--as long as you don't go around saying that you made them (and even then, I don't think anyone would care much). That's the beauty of modding: NO LIMITS! (Just note that if you're going to use graphics made by someone here--as opposed to someone at Microsoft--be sure to mention their name out of respect if for no other reason.) In the end, your scenario will be judged by its playability, not it's graphics.

3. If I understand this correctly, the problem is with the coastal grapphics applying to the land square and not the Resource (i.e. water/land icons in Terrain2.gif or as 'Coast' icons MGE's Terrain Editor--next to the Cheat Menu).

I suppose it's that the coast graphics overlap the borders of the terrain sqaure but the resource graphic (sqaure) overlaps both.

Why don't you just get rid of the coastal graphics altoghether (i.e. no borders since it's planet/space and not land/water)? (Unless you've already done that of course.)

I would just see how other 'space' scenarios handle this--I'm sure someone has thought of using resources as alternate planets before.


BTW, If you're using Civ2:ToT there is also the alternative of having an all-land map by checking the impassable flag for all Space terrain so that land units can only be on planets whereas SSs can move anywhere. The bonus of this is that you can have land trade units 'with 'override impassable' flag checked so they can trade between cities without using a transport. The only downside to this of course is that you can't transport units with sea transports, thus you'll have to limit land unit movement to the presence of cities with the Airport improvement or give them the paradrop ability as clockboy said.

 

[byss]

thanks for the replies

from what you've said, it seems as if getting around the island limitations might be difficult. what about using only helicopter-type units? infantry would have to be ignored for the scenario, but spacebase units with zero movement could be used as defence. this would simulate the relative uselessness of infantry in an era of planetary bombardment, i guess. i could use either air settlers or domain 3 units as settlers...but again, would the AI make optimal use of them? i've never played domain 3/air settler units in a scenario...how does the AI use them?

i'm posting the units here...microsoft, please don't sue lol
please note that i'm NOT taking credit for them. the infantry units i've adapted from other sources, and the rest are from 'the birth of the federation'. i'm too lazy to create my own graphics

 

[yoshi]

Those are some cool-looking units--I can see why you wanted to use them.

Island limitations: Well, keep in mind that I'm biased towards the AI. Then again, those other space scens may have been designed with MP in mind.

Nevertheless, if land units don't play a part in this scen (aside from immobile units) then perhaps things would be simpler (i.e. you wouldn't have to worry about coast and the AI would see it as one massive continent--rather than mostly Ocean).

Note however that if you use all land tiles, Settler units (regardless of the air domain) will be able to build on ANY tile and they will also be able to build Roads 'in space.' Yopu can remedy this to a degree by making Roads invisible, lowering Road Movement Bonus to zero and giving all Space terrain a very high movement cost.

One way of making Settler founding cities in space make some sort of sense is to have cities BE the space stations. That way, if a Star Base is built in the middle of space, it will not grow and have no shields (or trade?). Hence the player sees this as nothing more than a space port.

Of course, the fatc that space has no food means that a human player wouldn't settle in space anyway and you can prevent the AI from doing so by making the Space terrain type infertile so that it will probably never choose to settle there (this woud technically be done using Map Copy but I think it has yet to be designed to set fertility for a specific type; I think it's limited to specific squares or everything--the former meaning that you would have to set each individual square, thus you'd be an old man by the time you finished and the latter meaning that the AI would not settle on any terrain type). Well, that wasn;t much help...

If using ToT, you can limit Settler movement by making all terrain but planets impassable and checking 'override impassable' flag for all but Settler units.

BTW, have you thought of using RRs as wormholes?

The other thing is that Trade units have to be land units in order to work. This means that they will have no range limitation.

Zero-fuel air units: Sounds okay but if you have an all-land map, these units will never run out fo fuel or lose health (which only takes place when on Ocean tiles). Of course, as far as I know, dilithium crystals last a pretty long time.

AI uses air settlers the same way it uses land settlers--only the units aren't stopped by Ocean tiles.

An alternative to settling is to have all the cities placed already but make the owner the Barbarian civ. That way, you can just cature the cities. The main probelm with this is that the regular AI civs tend to ignore Barbarian cities unless it's units happen to pass that way.

Hope that helps you decide which format to use.

 

[byss]

thanks for the reply using all land squares as you suggested is a good idea. one issue with it is that with infertile space squares, the planet squares will need to have extremely high fertility. this would be necessary to support large cities, but it will create extremely fast pop growth. using all air units with a full-land map seems best right now. i'll try to expore all the options through playtesting. the top priority is that the AI is competitive.

there will be some barbarian cities to simulate minor species who have a desirable wonder (vulcan sci academy...), but i want settling to be the main form of growth.

i haven't decided whether to use the dominion/borg races, because they've been done before in other scenarios here. the scenario will be as close to the source material as possible. this means that i'll be using an accurate map, rather means than creating my own. i've got most the elements planned out already, i just need the time to put it all together then playtest it. i hope to finish it by early summer, after i finish my exams

here are the best of the other units that i've collected. again, i haven't created them so i don't want credit. hopefully, other people will make use of them too

i've also got a large stockpile of star wars units. it'll be a while before i get around to posting them here, but if anyone wants copies of the files that i currently have, PM me.

 

[byss]

btw, i've included non-canon units here.

 

[yoshi]

If range is not an issue, then you can just have an all land map with the star ships as land units--there is littl ereason to use zero-fuel air units without Ocean as they function very similarly to land units only there are different attack bonus versus helicopters for the different domains (hence, is unnecessarily complicated).

Another reason for using land units is that the AI won't send them beyond their range as it has a nasty habit of doing with air units--if you're using non-zero-fuel air units.

Tile output and fertility are two different things. Tile output is just the food, shields and trade produced for a terrain type (the values are set in Rules.txt in the @TERRAIN section) Fertility refers to the information contained in the .SAV file that, where fertility is concerned, determines whether or not the AI will settle certain terrain types. You need Map Copy or some other means of hex-editing to change these values.

See the following thread for more information (and on what map Copy is and how to use it):

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=2466945#post2466945

This thread explains the data found in the .sav file:

http://www.civgaming.net/mercator/reference/mapstruct.htm

Find Map Copy and other utilities here:

http://www.civgaming.net/mercator/mapedit/index.htm

If you want to slow population growth, you can do so in Rules.txt in the @COSMIC section (same goes for production and research).

Also note that the mini-map will be useless for finding uncolonized planets (i.e. everything appears as green since there is no Ocean; only cities show up).

The other 'downside' to not using Ocean is that you can't take advantage of the 'lost at sea' effect.