Teaching the AI the Hybrid strategy

[Maniac]

With the Better AI mod now implemented, thus having the best available baseline to work from, the next thing I want to focus on is teaching the AI how to perform a pro-Planet Hybrid ecological strategy (and a Terraformer strategy, but the AI already mostly does that naturally).

Which Planet Attitude/ecological strategy to follow is a decision that needs to be made early in the game, as your Planet Attitude is influenced by your bases' Planet values all the way back to turn 1. For the Gaians and the Believers, the decision is easy, as they have a factional inclination for being respectively pro-Planet/Hybrid and anti-Planet/Terraformer. But for the other factions, it could go either way.

Therefore I'd like to hear a variety of opinions on this matter, so that a good decision-making process could be coded. There are no doubt plenty of people already who play Planetfall more than me, and thus should have a more relevant opinion on this matter than me.

What makes you decide in the early game if you're going to follow a pro-Planet or anti-Planet strategy (or neither of course)? If you're gonna try and maximize your Planet Attitude, or not care at all how low it drops?

Also, if you're going Hybrid or high Planet Attitude, what priority do you place on building Biology Labs and Empath Guilds? What priority do you place on buildings that provide health and happiness. What strategy and unit composition do you use for native life hunting and capturing?

Any advise you'd have in general for an AI who wants to follow a Hybrid strategy?

 

[Lord Tirian]

What makes you decide in the early game if you're going to follow a pro-Planet or anti-Planet strategy (or neither of course)?

Mainly: Features and resources. If I have nice landmarks (Manifold Nexus comes to mind), pro-Planet is a no-brainer. Artifacts or monoliths embedded in fungus also go into that direction - field labs don't mow down fungus, so it's easy to have a nice start close to fungus, especially if I also get one or two rainy plots into the fat cross with it as well to sustain my bases until I can get the Hybrid going well (after all, I need to "overproduce" food to compensate for the unhealthiness from the fungus).

On the other hand, having great resources that can't be accessed by field labs/fungus preserving improvements makes me go the opposite direction, burn the fungus to get to my precious things! Ditto for resources you get with mines close to the start - getting them early will almost always steer me into a terraformer strategy, because they're too useful to pass up early on.

Lots of good farmland (i.e. rainy) with rivers nudges me a bit towards terraforming, if I'm undecided - good farms always work well. But the points above tend to be more important.

Also, if you're going Hybrid or high Planet Attitude, what priority do you place on building Biology Labs and Empath Guilds?

Biology labs, in my opinion, make hybrid strategy tick in the early game. As population gives you negative planet attitude, having them to compensate is absolutely crucial during the early expansion - until you can plant fungus and have other ways to keep the attitude positive (like Voice of Planet-religion).

Any advise you'd have in general for an AI who wants to follow a Hybrid strategy?

• Make early landgrabs - you need them, because the cities are going to be smaller - and place the early cities farther apart than usual, because the extra influence allows you to do so (plus, later you lose the extra maintenance due to distance anyway) - EDIT: To clarify - after reading Pfeffersack - it's only an early tip to ensure that the territory is yours, later you should fill it up with more bases!
• Try to "sneak" in one or two mines/farms per base: With proper buildings and some fungus around your base, you can get them and still have a positive attitude - the farms are especially important, the mines can go once you can plant forests.
• Remove fungus from rainy plots, the food is too important to pass up - but you can plant fungus on other, less useful plots to compensate.
• Ignore the points above for sea bases and coastal bases - kelp gives you all the food you need, then you can fill up the land with fungus and forest (later hybrid forest).
• Make use of forests. They're good, planet-neutral and you get them relatively early.
• Spread VoP as mad, you want it (obviously, you want to get the White Pines as well) - and spread it to your close neighbours as well to avoid them from going into mindworm-induced coma (unless you dislike them, then prepare for the follow-up and grab the bases taken over by natives).

These things are the things that worked out well for me, so far.

Cheers, LT.

 

[Pfeffersack]

What makes you decide in the early game if you're going to follow a pro-Planet or anti-Planet strategy (or neither of course)?

- My mood... That usually affects faction choice as well. Implication for the AI: throw in enough uncertainty and randomness.

- Factions: I first thought that some leaning could make sense for the other factions as well, but looking closer I found for 4 out of 5 factions arguments why the are "better" at both strategies depedning on which of their strengths you emphasize (Morgan is the only exception - Terraformed just seems to max out his trade bonus more). Zhakarov might be slightly better suited for Hybrid (doesn't get well along with Miri anyway and strong research makes it easy to priorize Green Techs), but here it starts already to get debatable.

- Neighbours: I take in account whether Miriam or Deidre is close, especially if they appear to be strong from the start...

- Terrain/Ressources: Will I go for EB? If yes, it will make a Hybrid Strategy more unlikely - my experience is just that both does only work for the first half of the game. So if bad terrain, rather no planet-loving and if extremly wet territory, no as well (farms are too tempting, also hammers could become a problem as hybrid-follower). Mixed terrain, many ressources or sea-maps are more suited for green play, IMHO.

- Is there a good chance to get access to VoP or even to found it? Hard to quantify, but founding it (or having the sure feeling I will found it) will make my go Hybrid in most cases. A spread in my empire makes Hybrid more interesting as well, but that can be easily overriden by the factors above then.

If you're gonna try and maximize your Planet Attitude, or not care at all how low it drops?

For me there are basically three situations:

1. I go terraform from the beginning. Of course then I don't care a lot about Planet Attitude - however, if I can delay getting in the reds (by aggressive expansion or avoiding going overbord with building excess improvements), I do it, to avoid too early confrontation with native life. However, except of that early tactical delay, I will never try to make a complete switch to Hybrid again (you just have no realistic chance to recover from a 4-digit-negative planet value number)

2. Fungus-hugging from the beginning. I'm not really trying to max out Planet attitude - my golden rule is just to avoid getting in a negative saldo here, because once you allow that you quickly get deeper in (see 3) Also I wan't to have always some space for new native life "recruits".

3. The balanced strategy, often detoriating into a terarformed strategy. Reasons can be bad terrain making EB a must, unclear diplomatic situation requiring flexibility in the future or the inability to suceesfully inititate or maintain a green strategy. I try to keep the Planet Value around 0 then to avoid negative effects. However, this often fails - Civ4's game mechanics are just too much leanded towards "growing", so you easily get sucked into planet-polluting - often then, when you intitially fast expansion ceases or just loses speed relatively to your grown empire (becaue then you can't "pay" the pollution of older bases with new founded ones anymore)

Also, if you're going Hybrid or high Planet Attitude, what priority do you place on building Biology Labs and Empath Guilds?

Strong emphasize (I priorize both tech and construction of the buildings), as I feel it is the only way to be able to run such a strategy. The tech priorization has another reason - it is critical to get the tech soon which allows you to tame native life.

What priority do you place on buildings that provide health and happiness?

As a Hybrid follower? A lot less, because both unhealthiness and unhappiness help to avoid growth; the latter can even add to your production (Gen Factory!)

What strategy and unit composition do you use for native life hunting and capturing?

Initially it doesn't differ a whole lot for both Terraforming and Hybrid - the Flamethrower line is just the best for both hunting and capturing. Bringing enough units is critical to minimize losses - so you can often win fights by sacrifing the first unis, then striking with a second. Here Rovers or Hoover Tanks are useful as well. Getting Empath Song is important for Terraformers, but even more for Hybrid. On land I always to have the initiative, while on sea I often go defending (Hypnotic Trance is earlier available and here you are not on 2:3 disadvantage). If I have my first captured native units around, I rather avoid using them to fight native life and if I use them, then I will always send them in first - because if they lose, a second human unit with ES can compensate the sacrifice then.

Any advise you'd have in general for an AI who wants to follow a Hybrid strategy?

From most to least important (subjetive weighting of course):

Terrain Improvements:
- Since unused improvements (I target mainly mines with that statement of course) contribute to negative PA as much as used ones, don't build unneeded or just unused improvements!!!
- This is especially critical if you capture a city - destroy them (or eventually the entire city) ASAP or they will make your PA suffer a lot
- If you have the choice between two improvements to use a ressource, take of course the fungus-friendly and less polluting one.
- Priorize Windmills over Mines/Farms (bother should be used only in very rare circumstances), stay away from boreholes. Later spam Centauri Preservations.
- of course avoid fungus chopping at all cost

Civics:
- Stay away from EB if possible
- Consider Consensus and Autarky

Expansion:
- Crank out new bases even faster then usually - they contribute a lot of "green hearts" in their early days...important to get a green strategy rolling
- Put bases close - that will prevent too much growth and make the best out of the cost-reduing civics

Base managment:
- priority for everything giving "green hearts" or Transcend slots
- Emphasize Transcend Specialists
- settled them down (unless needed for White Pines or giving access to really critical techs)
- eventually Gene Factories, if you should even get unhappy bases

Tech:
- Strong focus: Biofuel, Centauri Ecology, Centauri Empathy, Cenaturi Meditation, Pholus Mutagen, Pressure Dome, Renewable Energy, Xenobiolgy
- Slight focus: Affinity Gene, Archeology, Psionics, Soil Enrichment (C.Hydrobay - if only to deny it for Terraformers...), Transcendence ("Evolve into Fungal tower" sounds like something positive for Hybriders, though I honestly don't understand what it means...)

Religions:
- go for founding VoP
- if you found it, get White Pines at all costs
- if you cannot found it, but acquire it via passive spread - spread it in your empire aggressively

Diplomacy:
- less interest in Health or Happiness Ressources buying...except Monolith ressource of course...

 

[Lord Tirian]

3. The balanced strategy, often detoriating into a tearrformed strategy...

Interesting to see your take on the Hybrid-style. I just realised that my way of playing Hybrid seems to be a balanced strategy slowly lapsing towards Hybrid - because I tend to have a 1-2ish Planet attitude with it for quite a while that only goes full-force later. Mostly because I try to sneak it eco-damaging things into it as long as they're balanced out or surpassed by my positive planet-attitude.

You seem to go Hybrid all the way, interesting - though I wonder, how do you keep up with production until you get some decent forests/hybrid forests rolling?

Cheers, LT.

 

[Pfeffersack]

Interesting to see your take on the Hybrid-style. I just realised that my way of playing Hybrid seems to be a balanced strategy slowly lapsing towards Hybrid - because I tend to have a 1-2ish Planet attitude with it for quite a while that only goes full-force later. Mostly because I try to sneak it eco-damaging things into it as long as they're balanced out or surpassed by my positive planet-attitude.

You seem to go Hybrid all the way, interesting - though I wonder, how do you keep up with production until you get some decent forests/hybrid forests rolling?

Cheers, LT.

I seldom get beyond +1 or +2 green at all - even under Hybrid my population has a tendency to growth (getting access to ressources, any yield boosting tech), which sooner or later creates trouble for me. I always see this, when playing Yang as ecologist - it is strange imagination to play an industrialist this way, but with his pop-rushing ability it is surprisingly effective. You can compensate low production this way and the low population contributes to a good planet attitude and the result was a always a pretty stable green economy for me.
I must admit though that I haven't tried him anymore after adding that -20%"promotion" for being Hive - that might make his life more difficult in general, but might force him into maxing out production especially.

As you say, production is the most difficult thing... That's why I mainly go to Hybrid, when having abundant ressources. I refer mainly to food ressources (even a plain Jungle field might belong in this category), because their yields allow to work hill regions (improved with Mills) or trenches. Greenhouses are the most common improvements for flat lands (thats why my Hybrid/EB strategies collapse shortly after getting Contained Ecosytems...) - they often allow tiles with 2-1-0 or 1-2-0. This does not create industrial powerhouses, but that is somehow compensated by better research and the free units you get. Also, the replacement of mines with Mills leads to better research speed for me. Later, Ascetic Virtues as a second religion and spaming kelp helps as well.

I can post a save, when I have a working early Green Economy the next time, if you are interested (maybe Maniac is as well)

 

[Maniac]

Hmm, interesting...

What you describe as a Hybrid strategy, I would actually describe as a Balanced one. Or at most a 'medium positive Planet strategy'. Of course it may turn out such an approach is actually the best even if you want to play Hybrid/pro-Planet.

I especially wonder about the merit of using kelp, greenhouses and limited farms.
Is the lower Planet value really worth getting an extra 2-1-0 Greenhouse or 2-0-2 Kelp/Coast plot to work?? I guess the crucial question then becomes how to value one Planet in comparison with one food or one mineral.

Initially it doesn't differ a whole lot for both Terraforming and Hybrid - the Flamethrower line is just the best for both hunting and capturing.

Yeah, it kinda strikes me as silly that a Terraformer is encouraged to research Centauri techs to get to Empath Song. I was thinking I should not allow the flame thrower line to pick the Empath Song special ability. Any thoughts on that?

 

[GeoModder]

Yeah, it kinda strikes me as silly that a Terraformer is encouraged to research Centauri techs to get to Empath Song. I was thinking I should not allow the flame thrower line to pick the Empath Song special ability. Any thoughts on that?

Sounds credible. After all, the unit already has an inherent advantage against native life.
But if you do this, shouldn't you put the concept as well on other units which have an inherent advantage against other types of units?
Sounds the balanced thing to do for me.

 

[Pfeffersack]

Hmm, interesting...

What you describe as a Hybrid strategy, I would actually describe as a Balanced one. Or at most a 'medium positive Planet strategy'. Of course it may turn out such an approach is actually the best even if you want to play Hybrid/pro-Planet.

I especially wonder about the merit of using kelp, greenhouses and limited farms.
Is the lower Planet value really worth getting an extra 2-1-0 Greenhouse or 2-0-2 Kelp/Coast plot to work?? I guess the crucial question then becomes how to value one Planet in comparison with one food or one mineral.

Maybe I'm still not good enough at base spamming...unless you really pack the bases densly, you always have the problem of getting suffient production and it just does not feel that you allow to keep your population really low - you have to accept that it will be lower compared to a Terraformer, but you still try to max it out. Greenhouses are temporary use for tiles you can later eventually turn into Hybrid Forests. On sea tiles there is no option to go for Hybrid Forests, Mining Plattforms are out, Energy generation is usually not a problem anyway...so it is in most cases either Fungus or Kelp. The latter does not damage the planet, gives you the needed food to work land tiles and is save from destruction by native sea life (which can even plague as planet-lover because of it's great mobility and sheer numbers)

And there is the question what additional positive planet attitude does me good - there are some things (more spots for native recruits, combat bonus, more starting EXP for built native units, extra culture come to my mind), but partly does benefits are subject of diminishing returns (culture, spots if you already have enough) or work against each other (building many natives units competes with capturing them, if spots are tight) and have to be weighted against losing industrial capacity.

Yeah, it kinda strikes me as silly that a Terraformer is encouraged to research Centauri techs to get to Empath Song. I was thinking I should not allow the flame thrower line to pick the Empath Song special ability. Any thoughts on that?

Agreed flavourwise, but it will make defending a lot harder until bunkers show up.