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So it's a minimum requirement for civilian designs that they have some broad spectrum research capability in case of emergencies as well as long range scanners for early warning against inbound structural hazards. Doesn't really change much, does it?
Anyway, you're quite right that we're talking about a degree of optimization that the AI currently can't manage but so what? Ship design is one of a number of parameters in the game and I don't see why we shouldn't take advantage just because the AI isn't too good at it. Whether it's ship design or manual scouting to find the super luxuries early or a single weapon research focus or using growth-enhancing tax rates beyond 3 bil population, beating the AI really boils down to finding something it's not too good at and doing that thing better than it does.
Right I just don't see it as an optimization issue, it's not that the AI is doing sub-optimal private designs it's that those designs should be invalid. Neither the AI nor the player should make such designs, as the game doesn't handle them properly.
"Beating the AI boils down to finding something it does poorly and doing it better", the ting is, it's not even making an attempt at it.
Anyway using such designs is like playing on a lower difficulty level. The AI could do with some improvements but it shouldn't be emulating a gamey design, rather that design should be made impossible for the player.
AI improvement should be placed in other areas and for that matter blocking the use of such components in private designs isn't overly important to me as I can just choose not make use of them. Still as the game doesn't handle it at all it might as well be blocked.
I would like to see you provide a justification for saying that some civilian ship and base designs shouldn't be legal. The state has a monopoly on building ships and bases and so it makes damn good sense that the state gets to decide which designs are available. It should be up to the private sector whether they want to upgrade or not (unless the state is paying for the upgrade), but I really don't see why you'd want arbitrary rules concerning what is and isn't allowed on civilian ships.
And just so you know, it's getting old really fast to being called "gamey" by someone who probably uses manual scouting at some point in the game and who probably also beelines through the tech tree for wonders and certain weapons. Heck, you might even "cheat" by nut putting 40 toy guns and 14 reactors on your early game star port. I think, in the interest of not getting seriously mad at each other, that it might be a good idea if we kept that sort of value judgments to ourselves, no?
Edit: But we're straying off topic at any rate, so I'll stop now, before I get entirely into Atuuk-mode. [:)]
I wasn't calling you gamey I'm just pointing out that making designs like that are circumventing game mechanics in a way the AI doesn't do, as such it seems like an unintended possibility that a player can make use of if he chooses. That the player designs private designs seems like more of an abstraction to me, a limitation in how many designs the private sector would make, in my mind they'd be part of the design process if you were RPing it.
As we were talking AI and issues with the game, I was pointing out that I didn't think that particular issue was an AI issue but a GAME issue, as in a bug. Nothing serious as it's avoidable, but a bug/exploit.
FYI I don't put any positive/negative value into the term "gamey", it's just a human line of thinking that I don't want the AI to emulate. I can be gamey in some games, it's just a type of playing closely related to min/maxing which I also often do. It's just NOT an AI issue that it doesn't make use of it, and I see no reason why it should be a possible strategy if it will never ever benefit the AI.
OK, so granted I'm totally new to the forums and have only put about 10 hours into DW, but I really really feel like there's a big issue here that's going unaddressed. That is: while there are obviously flaws (big ones) in the AI, I don't think that overhauling the AI is necessarily the path of least resistance, nor the best way of fixing the problem (read: making for a better end-user experience).
Most of the line of thinking has been that we humans have found optimal ways of playing that the AI doesn't take into account. Therefore, we humans have a huge edge over the AI. Therefore, the AI should be patched to play in those optimal ways. But as noted, that's a huge undertaking, possibly beyond the scope of anything short of a DW2. However, even if we could patch the AI up to at least closer-to-human levels, I still don't think that would fix the bigger problem.
What's the bigger problem? From how I see it, the bigger problem is that these optimal strategies exist in the first place, or at least that they're as powerful as they are. At their core, games are a series of interesting, meaningful choices. If the choices are meaningful but not interesting, the game suffers for it. Most of the strategies players can use to give a huge edge over the AI (focusing on one weapon type only, private sector money exploitation, 0% tax, et al) seem to me to be meaningful, but thoroughly uninteresting. Where's the tradeoff, other than the patience to micro your designs and colonies? Granted, I haven't gotten to that level of play yet, but if these strategies are as powerful as it sounds like, they detract from that element of choice that's critical to a game.
So what if we looked at this not from the perspective of "How can we make the AI abuse the system as well as humans can?" and instead asked "How can we bring some balance to the vastly overpowered min-max strategies?" It seems that would be easier than an AI overhaul, and it could easily do just as much or more to ratchet up AI competence. And while I may be alone in this, I think dialing back the power of min-maxing/munchkining/what-have-you would be good for the player experience.
For example, one thing that's been thwarting Ice this whole time is how hard it is to get the AI to ramrod one type of weapons tech. But couldn't this also be addressed by balancing the strategy of focusing on one tech line only against having access to a broader range of weapons? I'm not saying to shoot for a GalCiv-esque rock-paper-scissors system, but you could conceivably come up with a system that balances the raw power of highly refined weapons tech against having 2 or 3 weapons that aren't quite as well developed.
Granted, since it looks like the AI currently goes with an "all of the above (poorly)" priority set, you'd still need to tweak the AI. And of course to really let the AI capitalize on that system, you'd need to program it to constantly evaluate what sort of weapons and countermeasures it's up against, which would be tough to program and taxing on higher speeds.
Same thing could be said about 0% tax. As it stands, the AI doesn't abuse it, but I think it would be better to balance out 0% tax than to make the AI abuse it as much as players can. As another poster noted, you could implement very realistic penalties for jumping tax more than a few % at a time. That would be a good place to start. I'd also say that the growth rate bonus could be brought down as well. Not so far that 0% is a poor strategy, but far enough that it's not the only strategy if you want to play well. Not even "optimally," just "well."
But like I said, I'm a total DW noob and don't know anything. So feel free to correct/ignore me as you see fit. [:)]
I agree with much of your post. Once you have experience with the game there are some very clear "optimum" strategies. There is certainly a variety in styles but to me there isn't much strategic trade-off. To achieve what you've suggested for weapons would require significant redesign and testing so they probably sit in the DW2 list as a result. Instead I'm focused more on what might constitute realistic changes for a patch.
I applaud Matrix for closing an exploit and plead with them to close other obvious exploits that have been posted about ad-nauseam again and again without any response e.g. pretty much everything in Diplomacy!
I will say though that when Erik first responded to the concerns raised about 0% tax I considered responding strongly to say "whatever you do please don't slow the game down". I didn't post because I thought there was no way they would change the mechanic so much at this stage of the lifecycle particularly given how long it takes for new colonies to have a material impact on gameplay. The additional migration effect seems to have resulted in a massive expansion slowdown (I haven't played it late game yet) so new colonies play even less of a role in the game.
I understand the comments about wanting the mechanics to become even more realistic but this is already in a Space 4X simulation class of it's own. It's doesn't need more realism at this stage in the lifecycle, it needs an AI that isn't so stupid, using fixes that have been posted before, and will be posted again, and again, and again ...
ORIGINAL: Lyoncet
So what if we looked at this not from the perspective of "How can we make the AI abuse the system as well as humans can?" and instead asked "How can we bring some balance to the vastly overpowered min-max strategies?" It seems that would be easier than an AI overhaul, and it could easily do just as much or more to ratchet up AI competence. And while I may be alone in this, I think dialing back the power of min-maxing/munchkining/what-have-you would be good for the player experience.
This pretty much sums up my feelings on the matter.
ORIGINAL: Icemania
I will say though that when Erik first responded to the concerns raised about 0% tax I considered responding strongly to say "whatever you do please don't slow the game down". I didn't post because I thought there was no way they would change the mechanic so much at this stage of the lifecycle particularly given how long it takes for new colonies to have a material impact on gameplay. The additional migration effect seems to have resulted in a massive expansion slowdown (I haven't played it late game yet) so new colonies play even less of a role in the game.
Slowing down the game is a problem but relatively minor changes would remove the unrealistic part. Simply changing the amount of days per minute could make a much lower population growth (realistic) maintain the same perceived speed to the player. I guess it's a rather late date for such a change but for time scale to be moddable would be awesome.
As for new colonies I think highly populated ones are overpowered compared to new colonies, realistically a planet with a billion inhabitants should have unlocked most of that planet's resources, and there's no logical reason a planet with 250 millions couldn't have a significant economic impact.
In the game it feels like a planet with less than 10 billion isn't really worth worrying about. Which is part of the problem as I see it. It's like only population and quality matters, whereas logically the planet itself would have value.
I would not mind slowing the game down in the slightest if it meant that the actions taken by the AI are more coherent and have a more sensible impact on the flow of the game. I can manually take action that will effectively completely curbstomp any but the most runaway AI player. This, to me, is a core problem. I do not expect to be outplayed by the AI, but the fact that the AI spreads its resources so thinly prevents any relevant opposition to a determined player.
For example, I can gather all my ships into one fleet, and fill it with troops and basically stomp any AI planet. This is not good because it forces me to handicap myself, and it really hurts my immersion.
Slowing down the game is a problem but relatively minor changes would remove the unrealistic part. Simply changing the amount of days per minute could make a much lower population growth (realistic) maintain the same perceived speed to the player.
So essentially just make the game move faster? Would you also slow down build speed and research speed and move speed to compensate? Or would you effectively speed those things up to make the growth slower yet at the same pace in terms of growth per minute as before? At this point, I'm not even sure what that would do or why it should be done.
As for new colonies I think highly populated ones are overpowered compared to new colonies, realistically a planet with a billion inhabitants should have unlocked most of that planet's resources, and there's no logical reason a planet with 250 millions couldn't have a significant economic impact.
I'm not sure a billion is necessarily quite enough since planets really are rather big and all. It would be cool if population size relative to planet size mattered. It would make the smaller planets more powerful in the short term only to eventually get overtaken.
But this of course assumes that DW games actually last more than 30 years or so. Because a 30 mil colony with an average growth of 8% per year is only going to reach a population of 300 mil after a full 30 years. And a lot will have to change if a 300 mil colony is going to have much of any impact, particularly after corruption effects.
I too am concerned about the potential negative impact to colony growth by the reduction in growth rate. My personal preference is to see colony worlds grow to become as powerful as a HW by mid game. Your post #168 is the first I have seen which appears to provide data. Elliot increased the effect of migration to compensate for the reduction in growth rate at low tax rate. Unfortunately we weren't provided any information on the mechanic change. What contribution came from migration in your example?
But this of course assumes that DW games actually last more than 30 years or so. Because a 30 mil colony with an average growth of 8% per year is only going to reach a population of 300 mil after a full 30 years. And a lot will have to change if a 300 mil colony is going to have much of any impact, particularly after corruption effects.
@Spidey
All things excepting pop growth would be speeded up proportionally to the altered time scale so as to feel the same. Then a 2% growth could feel much like 20% does now. It'd improve on immersion but the gameplay effect would be pretty limited, though it could be used to speed up the game pace without making things seem strange.
A billion wouldn't be enough for a fully developed economy but let's say our Earth had a billion modern inhabitants, don't you think we'd still be able to access most of our planets resources just fine? I'm not saying 1B should have the same effect as 20B, but the first population should count much more than the last additions.
Something like assuming same planet quality 5B (or even 2B) inhabitants would have 50% the revenue of 20B.
Making the first population count more than the later would make colonies make a difference faster which would improve gameplay. It'd solve most of the concerns about population growth slowing down the game.
We should also consider that one way of going about it would be to bring 0% tax's growth rate down somewhat, and then reduce the growth penalty for taxes to an extent to bridge the rest of the gap.
If what Spidey says is true, and the game would really be that hamstrung by nerfing 0% tax, it seems like it may not be 0% that's the problem but rather growth generally.
I seems a small correction is in order: I thought I had a clue about the growth rates but a decade later I'm totally incapable of explaining the growth rates I'm seeing. Some actual empirical analysis is in order, it seems.
What I'm pretty sure of:
*) Growth has gone down
*) Immigration is way up
*) Planet quality has an effect on growth rates
Aside from this, I'm at a loss currently. The static percentages I was seeing were a growth rate of initially 10% at my homeworld that slowly climbed to about 11.5%, but then I turned taxes on (at 15%) and the growth dropped to 8%. And let's be honest, that's not actually bad for a taxed homeworld, but the really puzzling thing is that it's now climbed to 10.7%, despite 15% taxation.
I have no idea what the heck that means, but it does seem to invalidate my initial fears somewhat. Meanwhile, one of my colonies is somehow having QUameno growth rates of 16.4% with no wonder. I'm guessing there's a whole lot of immigration making that happen, and I'm sure it doesn't help that at tech level 7, my ships go anywhere and do anything. I guess I'll have to test in an empty sandbox to get "clean" numbers.
On another note, the AI scouting does seem a lot more efficient now. You aint seen nothing until you see torrent drive scouts zip around the universe. The test game is 15x15 1400 and a dozen of them cleared 20-25% in a few years. I'm now at an unbearable 22 scouts, with 19 of them fully automated, and the noise from discoveries got so unbearable that I had to turn the messages off. Slower drives will no doubt help a lot but we're probably reaching the point where I'm somewhat comfortable letting the AI do grunt work.
And on yet another note, in the early stage of the test game I saw a mining ship try to mine a worm-infested asteroid belt, run away scared, try to mine the asteroid belt, run away scared one more time, and then, much to my surprise, it went back in the direction it came from and decided to do something else instead. That was a pretty nice thing to see.
I'm pretty sure migration isn't taken into account when showing the pop growth (if it was it should sometimes pass 100%). You don't have a leader/governor buffing it?
Tech level 7? Does that include the colonization techs that boost pop growth rate?
Edit: I ran a pop growth test some time ago to clarify that the colonization techs were working as advertised. The interesting take home points were that colonization techs seem to double you base rate of growth, whereas the wonders percentage seemed to act on your your actual rate (as modified by resource, happiness etc)
This combined with the large development bonus made the wonders far more powerful than working through the colonization tree, which is a shame. My test planet with pop growth of around 60% (< 500 mill. Ikkuro colony IIRC, with advanced medicomplex) only got an extra 10% from researching the appropriate colonization tech.
Might your 16% quameno colony also be experiencing double growth rates from having < 500 million pop?
Double edit: ...I really wish I could find where I wrote the growth figures down. Going to have to test again to be sure[:(]
1. Nerfed the player's ability to exploit tax rates.
2. Partly improved the Explorer AI. Targets are changed when the resource is discovered but targets still don't seem to be well prioritised.
3. Partly improved Research Base building early game although there is still a sizeable gap to utilise full research potential.
A great start but there is plenty more yet to do.
IMO the top outstanding issues are:
1. Modify Ship Design Templates to use Conditional Logic ... at least by Construction Size. A good build early game looks completely different as time goes on. Unfortunately it is probably too hard at this stage and would have to wait for DW2.
2. Modify Ship Design Templates for each race and Weapon Research Orders to focus more heavily on one primary weapon rather than the current smorgasboard. I still can't find a way to make this work. Unless this is changed there is nothing we can do to improve ship designs significantly. Or provide the ability for us to mod the AI research build orders.
3. Further improve AI ability to use full research potential.
4. Improve the Explorer AI prioritisation of targets. Still look like way too much time/explorers focused on Asteroids. When a new Explorers gets to a new system it should focus on ruins and potential colonies.
What is the on the list for everyone else? Again please focus on what will make the most difference.
Is it not possible to have the AI races copy the players ship designs like the pirates do? Seems like this would be a much simpler solution to the problem!
ORIGINAL: Icemania
IMO the top outstanding issues are:
1. Modify Ship Design Templates to use Conditional Logic ... at least by Construction Size. A good build early game looks completely different as time goes on. Unfortunately it is probably too hard at this stage and would have to wait for DW2.
2. Modify Ship Design Templates for each race and Weapon Research Orders to focus more heavily on one primary weapon rather than the current smorgasboard. I still can't find a way to make this work. Unless this is changed there is nothing we can do to improve ship designs significantly. Or provide the ability for us to mod the AI research build orders.
3. Further improve AI ability to use full research potential.
Settings: Ancient Galaxy Theme, Quameno, Prewarp, Normal Difficulty, No Pirates, Very Cheap Research with everything else default.
In both tests the game ran for 4 years and the AI had researched LargeScale Construction (Size 500).
Slightly bumped up homeworld quality in one test to ensure a level playing i.e. so available cashflow was similar in each test
Test 1: Default 1.9.5.2 AI
1. 70-85% of research potential used (research potential varied over the course of the 4 year period)
2. 3 labs on Weapons, 15 Energy, 3 High Tech
3. An Energy research focus is appropriate but for the AI I would recommend more than just 3 labs on Weapons
4. No Mid-Tier Weapons Research was completed by the AI e.g. just Enhanced Beams and Enhanced Torpedoes
