Any hints for a newbie?

[vmxa]

I ran a quick test as best as I could on impossible. Watching Nazin.

2300 40 pop 30 fact. Guessing about 105 production at 50%.
2301 42-37
2302 45-46
2303 47-56
2304 50-67
2305 54-80 colony ship pops out. The best I can tell is they are t 211 production. The ship should have had about 380 BC into it. No other AI made a ship so far.

Ship cost 591BC for me.

2306 56-95
2307 60-112
2308 63-132 2nd new colony ship, no other have one.
2309 66-132 3rd new colony, still no others. Note they did not make any factories this time.

 

[vmxa]

I put a bit more into the test and maybe someone can explain things better, as I am not sure of any of it.


2300 40 pop 30 fact. Guessing about 105 production at 50%.
2301 42-37 [120]
2302 45-46 [137]
2303 47-56 [155]
2304 50-67 [183]
2305 54-80 colony ship pops out. The best I can tell is they are at 211
production. The ship should have had about 380 BC into it. No other AI made a ship so far. [211]

Sssla 66 pop, 81 factories.
Altair 53 pop, 85 factories. Note they are not making as many scout/fighters as Sssla.

Colony Ship cost 591BC for me.

2306 56-95
2307 60-112
2308 63-132 2nd new colony ship, no other have one.
2309 66-132 3rd new colony, still no others. Note they did not make any
factories this time.

Now if the book is correct they really should get .5RP for each pop and 1 each factory and a 50% bonus. That is 75 and is if it 100%, it would make 100.

So how can we get the numbers to work for a ship at turn 5 and 50 more factories? Cost are about 591BC for the ship and 500 for the factories.
Using .5 for pop and 100% for bonus:

2300 100
2301 116
2302 132
2303 160
2304 184
2305 224

total 916 not too far off.

I took no consideration of any tech as none should be available at this point.
The numbers are nearly the same for the first 4 turns with either calculation, but start to change as the number of factories goes up.

I also did not have a means to consider waste or any cost.

 

[vmxa]

The one thing it does look like is they do not get free colony ships, else the other two races I looked at would have gotten at least one. The darloks had 3 cranked out.

It does appear as if they are getting 100% bonus, that is the only way I could see it. I also did not factor in any increase for the pop, which is affected by Planet techs. I think the true value is not .5 per pop, but .53. Klacs of course are double.

I am not sure if the .03 makes any difference of any significance in this sample.

 

[sargon0]

vmxa, we seem to be talking at slightly crossed purposes. When I said on impossible you could 'see' the AI production I was referring to using a hex editor to interrogate the savefile where all the information you see for your own planets is also stored for AI planets - if you know the format you can see the AI production of 102 (ie. floor(30*1 + 40*.53) + 100%). Production bonus is 50% for Hard and 25% for Average.

Also in save is AI slider settings starting on impossible at 17% ECO 83% IND building factories until MAX for current pop, as you reached in 2308 in your example, then switching to even split, after ECO, between DEF and TECH until sufficient bases. Despite all this ECO/IND/DEF/TECH spend the AI will still show up with extra Colony ships without a single investment in SHIP. The AI do not get extra free Colony ships at start but appear 'at random', I suspect it goes something like: AI has opportunity to expand, a random roll determines if it will expand this turn and if successful it is given a free Colony ship to allow it, simplifying a key phase of the game for the AI. You cannot see this all from GALAXY cheat but you can verify AI is staying clean, building factories and bases (at discounted cost) while Colony ships appear cheaply (and in fact free).

I will look to do a more detailed turn by turn example, if you wish.

 

[vmxa]

I figured out the .53 and 100% with a simple test run, as I do not have the offset to examine either saves or memory. It looks to me like they could run the ECO at the standard levels to stay clean and build the number of factories that they build each turn and still pump cash into a ship.

83% should have make more than 7 factories on turn one? Anyway it looks like something strange is going on.

With no knowledge of the internal settings, I could see they appear to make enough to build all the factories that they built and do ECO and still put something into a ship, but not enough to pop the first one.

The second one is a bit off, the third one is crazy. No legit way for them to do that. I have no clue why neither of the other races got a colony ship. A glance around does show they may not have had habitable planets beyond the start colony ship.

Anyway my purpose was to see if A) they got 50 or 100% and B) see if thy get free colony ships. It looks like they get 100 and free ships. I wonder why they did not get that correct in the guide.

 

[sargon0]

On production values 102 total prod is 89 after maint (same as human) and 83% produces 7 factories at 10 BC each. I assume the production bonuses changed after the guide was compiled. Either playtesting or early release (final game is version 1.3) showed the game was fun but too easy so they increased the production bonuses. It would always be nice to see a smarter AI but I'm happy with the change since it produced a fun and challenging game.

 

[Megafrost]

Third time's a charm.

Medium galaxy, 5 opponents, Impossible, victory date of 2575. I find it interesting that my first victory on this difficulty was with one of the weaker races, although it helps both that I didn't draw a Psilon opponent, and that the #2 in power ended up being the computer-challenged bears.

 

[sargon0]

Well done Megafrost on your first impossible win

Vote losses to the diplomatic Humans and peaceful Psilons can always happen and this is a good win with a lesser race

 

[jmas]

@Megafrost: Congratulations on the win. I am also playing an Impossible game with the Darloks right now.. not sure how it will turn out, though having the Darloks could be the thing that will get me some better range tech... if I can just make contact with another race!

@sargon0: Thank you for posting the corrected production bonuses. Out of curiosity, what about the Simple and Easy levels? I'm guessing that on Easy the computer has neither bonuses nor penalties, and on Simple a small penalty?

Regarding using a hex editor for saved games: is there an editor you recommend? and I'm guessing you have at least a partial "roadmap" that you can refer to to find out where to look in a save file for various pieces of information... is such a roadmap available somewhere? I'm not recalling seeing posts in this forum about that although I could be forgetting something.

 

[sargon0]

@sargon0: Thank you for posting the corrected production bonuses. Out of curiosity, what about the Simple and Easy levels? I'm guessing that on Easy the computer has neither bonuses nor penalties, and on Simple a small penalty?

You would think so, wouldn't you? Well how about no bonus/penalty for Simple and a 20% penalty for Easy. I did re-check but it seems a bug gives the AI worse production on Easy. Higher player tech cost, cheaper AI MB's amongst other factors could still make Easy tougher but not the challenge it is supposed to be.

Regarding using a hex editor for saved games: is there an editor you recommend? and I'm guessing you have at least a partial "roadmap" that you can refer to to find out where to look in a save file for various pieces of information... is such a roadmap available somewhere? I'm not recalling seeing posts in this forum about that although I could be forgetting something.

I use Freeware hex editor XVI32 - check on the web. I got some basic savefile locations for pop & factories from an old RB post then slowly worked out others. I'll PM you a list when I get a neat one together. I'm not sure what experienced players would make of this being public knowledge, although others will certainly have more knowledge than me. The game is easy to cheat, for those so inclined, but competive games are being planned although this is always friendly so should not promote spoiling tactics.

 

[jmas]

You would think so, wouldn't you? Well how about no bonus/penalty for Simple and a 20% penalty for Easy. I did re-check but it seems a bug gives the AI worse production on Easy. Higher player tech cost, cheaper AI MB's amongst other factors could still make Easy tougher but not the challenge it is supposed to be.

That does sound like a bug. I suppose it's possible that a new player might find a game on Easy--well, easier--than a game on Simple, depending on other factors in the game as you allude to, though I place a heavy emphasis on Production and I always work hard to raise the production of my empire unless there is an imminent threat.

I use Freeware hex editor XVI32 - check on the web. I got some basic savefile locations for pop & factories from an old RB post then slowly worked out others. I'll PM you a list when I get a neat one together. I'm not sure what experienced players would make of this being public knowledge, although others will certainly have more knowledge than me. The game is easy to cheat, for those so inclined, but competive games are being planned although this is always friendly so should not promote spoiling tactics.

Thank you. I was thinking of using the editor to find out more about game mechanics as you have done with production. I hadn't even thought of cheating; I don't think I have ever even used ALT+GALAXY or ALT+MOOLA although I could see using GALAXY on a throwaway game if it would help me to learn more about the intricacies of the game, like vmxa apparently did here. I do think I would be tempted to use the editor to fix the negative fleet bug for games played by myself, or if there were an agreement about doing that for a Succession Game or (less likely) an Imperia game.

 

[sargon0]

jmas, it has taken me longer than expected to get together a neat mapping of the save file, mainly because I found some additional fields to include! I have decided to post the list for everyone but this thread is perhaps not appropriate so I will start a new thread for easier reference - it will be up soon.