AI personalities

I've finished writing the 'template' model of each of the six personalities, so the next step is to copy them into the leaderheads file for each leader, and then tweak them individually for each race.

 

Cool. Thanks for the heads up.

 

Excited I am! It will be awesome to see the AI act more uniquely!

When you finish the file would you mind if I included it in the "minimod" so it can be tested with my latest changes? (mostly with the new flavors on the tech tree).

 

Also I was wondering, I noticed that if an AI hates you they won't trade with you unless you offer a really good deal for them. If they are cautious they will pretty much make a 1:1 trade. Is it possible to change that so only friendly AIs make a 1:1 trade, maybe 1:1.5 for pleased, 1:2 for cautious, etc (or 1:1 friendly, 1:1.25)?

Currently I think it is way to easy to trade with the AI and you can get every tech available pretty easy. Especially if you get some of the more useless techs then go down the list of AIs and get several more things from that useless tech.

 

There's nothing I can see to do that in the leaderheads file

There are some ways to deal with that. There's a setting where leaders with stop trading you tech when you've gotten a certain number of techs from trades, but most people hate that and some mods remove it from the game. It's "We Fear You Are Becoming Too Advanced" or WFYABTA.
It can be set so you need to be at a certain relations level to trade tech, but if that is increased and the required level for open boarders then empires might not have much reason to talk to each other to increase there relations to a point where they can deal, if they can't deal because of their poor relations.
There is <iTechTradeKnownPercent> which is the percent of empires that need to have technology before a leader will trade it. So if it's set to 0 the will trade right away, 50 and half the empires will need to have gotten a given before they will trade it. This is there they say "we don't want to start trading this just yet". I can increase that so they will hoard new technology longer. It's set to 20 now which is 1/5, so if it was a five player game they'd trade everything right away. In the regular game it goes as high a 100 (that isolationist Tokugawa) but more are 30 or 40.
Turning on no tech brokering is another way. That also goes with one idea I had to have creative/uncreative races, which would operate at one level higher or lower in the brokering setting, but it's only even if the default is no tech brokering so there is a higher and lower level. So in that case, no one could trade tech they didn't research themselves, except the Psilons, and the Klackons couldn't trade tech at all. But that requires more work.

 

Here are some of my ideas for favourite value and civic. I've made Honourable the most concerned with civic and aggressive second, and aggressive the most concerned with values (religions) and honourable second. The rest have low diplomatic effect from these.
Keep in mind that favourite religion is only used when the chose religion option is on, in which case this is the religion they will chose. So in many games it won't matter what this is so don't agonize over it. Also, if I get to redoing the government civics to be the ones from MoO2 I would likely make any race that had a unique government (humans, klackons) favour that one. The Elerian and Sakkra both have feudal but I'd make at least one of their leaders favour it.

So tell me what you think of these:

Alkari
honourable: survival, squadron doctrine
pacifist: knowledge, pacifism

Bulrathi
aggressive: wealth, police state
ruthless: power, slave state

Darlock
aggressive: survival, police state
xenophobic: religion, police state

Elerian
ruthless: power, police state
aggressive: power, monarchy

Gnolam
Pacifist: wealth, industrial economy
aggressive: wealth, industrial economy

Human
honourable: survival, democracy
erratic: wealth, democracy

Klackon
xenophobe: survival, industrial economy
aggressive: survival, industrial economy

Meklar
erratic: power, mechanized workforce
honourable: wealth, mechanized workforce

Mrrshan
ruthless: power, police state
aggressive: power, police state

Psilon
pacifist: knowledge, technocracy
erratic: knowledge, technocracy

Sakkra
aggressive, survival, green economy
ruthless: power, slave state

Silicoid
xenophobe: survival, industrial economy
erratic: survival, industrial economy

Trillarians
Honourable: religion, utopia
pacifist: knowledge, green economy

 

Sounds pretty good to me. (Though I'd have no problem with both Elerian and Sakkra favour Feudalism (= basic Govt tech?). Also, one more Erratic might be OK (assuming that's not already covered in leader traits - which, I believe, it was?).

I'm using that for now in some scenarios to be added w/v, 5.0.

 

OK, it's done. As per requested the relations level required for open boarders is higher that it is in FF or the base game. However since having open boarders is one of the easy ways to improve relations, it possible that it's too high and few leaders will like each other enough to ever have open boarders, except the Humans who are well liked by everyone, and the Gnolam who will trade with anyone. I also increased the number of empires will have to have a technology before a leader will consider trading it, but it's not higher that in the base game so see if it's better than before.
The way I made this was to make one file for each personality and then went to each field and set it for each personality so I could make sure each is right relative to each other. Then I copied those files for each leader with that personality and went through some fields again to differ them by race. For instance races with combat bonuses will declare war without a power advantage because their individual units are stronger. On the other hand races with a production bonus won't declare war until they've used it to build up an outnumbering advantage, but will be more likely to sacrifice units in battles with poor odds because they replace units more quickly.
I wasn't able to change the effects of the erratic personality exactly how I thought I could, but I think I'm maximised the temporary effects and minimised the long term effects so they should be pretty chaotic. In the base game, no one declares war on someone they are friendly with, and most will rarely do so at pleased, but erratic can declare war on anyone at any time.
There are a lot of factors that can be set, like how difference in rank affects relations. So aggressive will respect the strong and dislike the weak, while honourable will side with the weak against the strong. So with things like that and others there should be more variation in behaviour.

Once it's posted, which is now, all y'all can do what you want with it.

I've attached the new leaderheadsinfos.xml file which goes in the Civilizations folder in the XML folder. I've also attached the templates I created in the process of making all the new personalities. You don't need them for anything, the leaderheadsinfos.xml is all set up already, but if anyone wanted to switch around or create new leaders or personalities they're available for reference.

 

Cool! Will check ASAP.

@fulano: Perhaps you can make a link to it in post #1?

 

Awesome! I'm quite excited to play it!

Hmm, I do remember it being hard to get trade treaties in original MoO2 but I will have a look at what the settings are! I'm excited to try it out and nervous to play against the erratic players.


Do you have plans to update this file as suggestions are made?

 

I can.

 

That's cool.

Just wanted to report that the changes work perfectly with my pre-upload version of 5.0. It's more difficult to get Open Border agreements and the traitrelated changes are definitely visible when playing. Very nice job, thanks!

 

I haven't done a fair test yet since I changed the file then loaded a game I already had open borders with everyone, so now they all love me after 150 turns of open borders (except the darlok, they declared war on me out of the blue and then everybody got mad at them, declared war and destroyed them)

But I do notice the changes, and I like them!

 

There's something weird with AI: this is the second game where AI for no reason ask me to accept them as vassals in first 15 turns. Also it is another reason to move vassal states further in the tech tree .

First time it was silicoids, 2nd time Darlok.

P.S. Started 3rd game and vassalized AI by my own will. 2 civs at once >.<. 20th turn. Darlok and silicoid again.

P.P.S. Turn 27 now. Bulrathi asked to be my vassal too....

Spoiler :

P.P.P.S. I think it may be because of Humans' +7 to relations. Overall humans are too strong. I guess their bonus should be cut to +25% instead on +50, and attitude to +3 or about that.

P.P.P.P.S. It looks like Silicoid's -7 to relation do not work on humans for some reason. They are always pleased. Or maybe it's a 1-sided "-7"?

 

Now I'm one step ahead of you: I've changed around the Human/Psilon/Gnolam race bonuses around a bit for v. 5.0. (Also, maybe +7 and -7 cancel eachother out somehow?)

As concerns Vassal States: it's recommended not to use that option with MOO2Civ, as it's way different from MoO... (I never use it.)

At any rate the Humans will be less easy in v. 5.0.

 

I just tested and +7/-7 for some reason do not cancel each other. If I play as humans, silicoids are pleased without visible modifiers.

Also I didn't use fighters at all (beelined Titan) but I think AI bombarded me with them. What would be nice is replacement of Fighters' bombardment with high withdrawal rate (and maybe additional engine "promotions" to increase it). Bombardment feels like a "long range" attack, because it doesn't bring retaliation. I'd rather want to see fighters dogpiling battleships and retreating with damage to repair, it would suit the way they are supposed to "work" (mass on a big ship, get some casualties, fly away).

 

As they're supposed. (I wasn't really expecting the +7/-7 to cancel eachother out: the +7 makes the Humans likeable, the -7 the Silicoids unlikeable. It doesn't mean the Silicoids can't 'like' the Humans.)

That sounds like good news! About retaliation: I use fighters/bombers plentiful and they do get damaged or even shot down - as do missiles.

Appreciate the feedback, BTW; we don't get enough of that.

 

I think you're looking at the Siliocids opinion of the hunmans, which would be pleased, due to the humans +7 bonus. If you look at the humans opinion on the Silicoids you'll see they are annoyed with them, because of the -7. Everyone automatically hates the Silicoids, but the Silicoids don't automatically hate everyone.
The frequent vassals are probably because they like the human and also because at the start of the game a small advantage means a big difference in score. So those empires might be half your size, but that could be a difference of one city. So yes, vassals would be farther in the tech tree.

I'll state again my plan to have MoO2 governments as civics and have the races that had it start with it available plus other advantages with it but still have others researchable. So at some point there will be humans starting with democracy, but laters Psilons and Gnolam may switch to it too, and humans would have federation available. But I have some other things to do first.

There are several invisible modifiers. Like bonuses for being above or below someone in rank, or a penalty for having won a war against someone. Someone made a mod that showed all modifiers but it's more complicated then you'd think, so I left the charisma modifiers invisible.

 

Great idea. MOO2 had quite different mechanics from Civ4 and it had no changeable "civics" at all. In civ4 mod it would be nice to have those governments of MOO2 as starting points and then be able to move from them.

 

Cool! I didn't know you had this plan in mind, I had a few ideas I wanted to try out with this, I'll share them here so they can be seen and used if good.

First was to use a government civic column to include the MoO2 governments in a way that balanced them to Civ4. I haven't thought of specific numbers yet.
Democracy: +n% gold, +n% research
Unification: +n% food, +n% production
Feudalism: +n of free units, +n% spaceship production
Dictatorship: +n% espionage, (not sure what else)

Second, I wanted to use an advanced government in the second civic column that started as none until you research the advanced governments. This column will just include an extra bonus similar to the first column
Federation: +n% gold and research
Collective (Galactic unification): +n% food and production
Confederacy: +n free units, +n%spaceship production
Imperium: +espionage, (+something else)

Third, I wanted to have a Communications column to simulate the command point bonus from the communication techs in the game that increase the number of free units you get.
Tachyon Communications: +5ish free units
Subspace Communications: +10ish free units
Hyperspace Communications: +15ish free units

Then the other civic columns I was going to experiment to add more to the game, I wasn't sure what yet. I don't know how to change the civics yet so I didn't plan to change these things for a long time, possibly the end of the summer but if you're going to look into it then I won't worry about it.