Does the AI build boreholes?

chuft

Chieftain
Joined
Feb 1, 2008
Messages
94
I have never seen the AI build a borehole or a condensor or an echelon mirror, in SMAC or SMAX.

In a friend's game, he has seen the Drones and Morgan build boreholes and condensors in SMAX. I saw his saved game and they are there.

I am trying to get to the bottom of this, since I would like more challenging AI opponents. How do I get the AI to build these improvements?

He did not choose "More Aggressive AI" either.

Thanks.
 
He means the computer players, and no I never seen the AI build one, or even Echelon mirrors come to think of it. :hmm:
 
the AI is notoriously dumb about terraforming... they mainly stick to farms, mines, and the occasional solar collector, regardless of difficulty or settings. i think the developers did some last-minute changes to terraforming without fixing the AI to use them wisely.

short of hacking into the game's programming, the AI will never build boreholes, echelon mirrors, or condensers, and rarely builds forests. i don't think they will raise/lower terrain or drill to aquifier either.
 
Actually, the AI DOES build Boreholes.

I was conquering the Gaians at one point and I saw they had a few Boreholes lying about.

I found it ironic and funny. Seriously, why would they build Boreholes?
 
the ironic thing is that their green ecology probably allows them to build more minerals since they are more planet friendly. The strange thing about this game is that mineral production was mainly limited by eco damage, since once you started into the minus, it becomes more likely that you will trigger a fungal bloom on those big mineral improvements.
 
I build Boreholes on mineral bonuses and sometimes on level Rocky squares.
Do Boreholes produce more on a Mineral Bonus, or am I wasting effort?
 
I build Boreholes on mineral bonuses and sometimes on level Rocky squares.
Do Boreholes produce more on a Mineral Bonus, or am I wasting effort?

A borehole on a mineral bonus produces +8 minerals, regardless of rockiness.

A borehole on a non-mineral bonus square produces +6 bonus, regardless of rockiness.

A mine on a rocky mineral bonus square with a road produces +7 bonus.

A mine on a rocky square with a road and no mineral bonus produces +4 minerals.

Note that a borehole produces +6 energy (+1 if there is a river there).

So you never waste effort by building a borehole, but you would partially waste the effort if you crawled minerals from a borehole rather than working a borehole.
 
You could use two Supply Crawlers to get the Minerals and Energy from the Borehole, so that way nothing is lost if you were to work it... right?
 
Oh. I thought a Crawler could take one resource from the square, and a second one can take what's left.
So one takes Energy, and the other takes minerals...
 
Why would you think that? It is not in the manual.

If a square is being crawled by you or another faction, you can't crawl a second resource.

It is easy to test. Use the scenario editor and crawl a resource. Now try to crawl a second resource from the same square.
 
I just tried it with both a fully patched SMAC and SMAX games. When I hit the command "convoy resources" with a supply crawler on a square that already had a supply crawler on it convoying resources, I got the message "Resources cannot be extracted from areas already used by other bases or supply convoys."

Perhaps your experience had been with an earlier version and Firaxis eliminated the ability to crawl two different resources.
 
I build Boreholes on mineral bonuses and sometimes on level Rocky squares.
Do Boreholes produce more on a Mineral Bonus, or am I wasting effort?

If there is a resource bonus on a square, the max cap is lifted, so if you can build boreholes thanks to Weather Paradigm only, you can build one on a mineral resource and it will deliver 8 minerals even before the mineral cap is lifted, the same with energy (and nutrients).
 
the AI is notoriously dumb about terraforming... they mainly stick to farms, mines, and the occasional solar collector, regardless of difficulty or settings. i think the developers did some last-minute changes to terraforming without fixing the AI to use them wisely.

short of hacking into the game's programming, the AI will never build boreholes, echelon mirrors, or condensers, and rarely builds forests. i don't think they will raise/lower terrain or drill to aquifier either.

They do raise/lower terrain CONSTANTLY
have you ever seen the message "rainfall patterns near "XXXX" city have been altered by "XXXXX"'s faction's formers?

it's annoying when they island hop that way too.
 
Part of the problem with the AI's terraforming is that Fireaxis made a late change to the tile production values which was not changed in the AI. Thus things that made some sense (but were probably not exactly optimal) are done by the AI that make no sense whatsoever in the final version of the game. It seems like mining flat tiles is one of those things iirc.

On topic, I've seen the AI build condensors more than any other advanced terraforming. I think I've seen perhaps one echelon mirror and a few boreholes.
 
Not sure if it's always the case, but my consistent experience is that the AI seems to do the most w/Yang. Have repeatedly seen the AI execute the X base pattern w/the original base at the center. Have also seen the AI build up Yang to extensive use of Mag Tubes. Have been AI chopdropped by Yang & others. But yeah, AI terraforming is always disappointing. The AI is overly fond of sensors & bunkers.
 
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