Twilight: Drengin Gambit

Published on March 23, 2008 By Draginol In GalCiv Journals

For updating the computer AI more fully for Twilight of the Arnor, I'm creating tournament maps. This way, I can help balance the different races while at the same time improving the AI plus creating more tournament maps.

Today's example is the Drengin Gambit. I play as the Drengin Empire in a medium map.

Ignore the quality of my screenshots as I'm running in the debugger.

Drengin default tech tree

I start out with a kick ass planet.

AI Improvement #1: Better scouting

The AI is not good enough at scouting out planets. One of the things that I find amazing is when people try to say the AI is "cheating" because it "knows" where the planets are. Not only does it not know, it's not terribly good at scouting planets.

(30 minutes pass)

Okay, the AI has better scouting ability. Before it would go to stars, now it sees if it can tell if it has planets and goes there first. Pretty obvious but this code was written back before players could see planets on the mini map.

Key Drengin technology: Xeno Slavery

One of the things we're pretty proud of is how unique each technology tree is. The changes aren't just cosmetic, they are to the bone of each civilization. Of course, it makes balancing a pain but we should have this nailed down by December of 2007. Cough.

AI Improvement #2: More aggressive at getting galactic resources

BUG:

A lot of techs are missing animations

PERFORMANCE BUG: Every time you click on the map, UpdateTechnologyContext() is called which requires calculating the number of turns it takes to finish your tech.

Not a serious issue, but anything we can do to improve performance is good. This would fall into the piddly but still.

One of the new features that is nice is that the AI can auto design ships. I'm always curious to see if it can do a better job than I do.

BUG: AI designed ship has a goofy name.

Star Fury Template?

AI Bug:

So, Torians. Whatcha doing there?

(20 minutes later)

Okay, let's see if we can improve this...

LOTS of pain:

The improvement code has all kinds of problems. This is going to take awhile to get into. It's just...painful. The original coder of the planetary improvements was a lot smarter in terms of coding. The improvements are done as a database. So getting access to things like pMyColony->HowManyImprovementsLikeThisDoIHave(pImprovement) are very difficult. It's a real sausage factory.

The biggest issue I'm seeing in the improvement code right now besides the problem with it getting obsessed with a particular improvement, is that if planet A is building super project X, there's nothing stopping planet B from trying to build it too. The game rules then abort the attempt since that's cheating but planet B will then, next turn, try to build it resulting in it not building anything.

BUG: Drengin don't get enough upgrades to economic starbases.

Solution: Drengin need some techs that provide starbase upgrades.

Drengin gain a new tech and two new starbase modules.

Going to attempt an ascension victory.

Relations presently:

After taking all the ascension crystals..

AI Bug: Arceans didn't research interstellar contruction.

BUG: Tournaments don't seem to support the Ascension Victory Condition. At the very least, they don't display the progress.

More to come. The sausage factory awaits!

Comments

Evil Muppet

on Mar 23, 2008

Nice to see how things are moving. Funny how little things can slip under the radar. My, that's an awful lot of anomalies in that last screenshot.

DivineWrath

on Mar 23, 2008

BUG: Drengin don't get enough upgrades to economic starbases.

Solution: Drengin need some techs that provide starbase upgrades.

This is a common problem with any civ that recieved new industry techs. The problem is, these modules are linked with techs that provide other things, such as a research capital.

How about you liberate some of the modules you get from the default industry techs? You could create a bunch of new techs for them so we can have the option to research them without having to get the factories that goes with them.

How about you place them after 'Advanced Starbase Construction' along side the starbase fortification, and Terrorstars techs. Lets see, at this time you can expect to find economic and mining modules with the 'Advanced Computing', and 'Xeno Engineering' techs, along with a bunch in the default industry techs.

By the way, could you move the military starbase combat support modules from behind the 'Starbase Fortification' techs, and place them after 'Advanced Starbase Construction'? I don't know of anyone who uses the starbase fortification techs, they're mostly useless. Its a pain to be forced to research them just so you could use those military starbase modules when they are most useful.

Drengin

on Mar 23, 2008

Brad sir,

Playing as a custom race based on the Terrans, i am finding that the AI's have no means of stopping me from slowly taking over them by using influence starbases maxed out. All i need do is build two of them close to one of the AI's worlds and within a few turns the world is mine. i have no military as such and most of the AI's i am doing this to could squash me easily. I just wondered if it would be possible to alter the AI so it wont 'put up' with this sort of action. Give me another three years and i will have the entire map sown-up without ever having to fire a shot or research past laser 2.

Thanks

thehandofzarquon

on Mar 23, 2008

Another option might be to place some in the Space Mining techs. They are Mining Starbases, after all.

By the way, could you move the military starbase combat support modules from behind the 'Starbase Fortification' techs, and place them after 'Advanced Starbase Construction'? I don't know of anyone who uses the starbase fortification techs, they're mostly useless. Its a pain to be forced to research them just so you could use those military starbase modules when they are most useful.

The starbase fortification techs always bothered me... I never truly understood why they are completely separate from the technologies you research for ship weapons/defenses...

Raknor

on Mar 23, 2008

Hungarian notation and CamelCase, odd indentation in CGameScreen::UpdateTechnologyContext. Stack trace looks fine considering the described oddity. Other than that the code looks sober. At least the small amount presented here.

BUG:

A lot of techs are missing animations

A lot of techs for Altarians even miss descriptions

Thanks for sharing this insight, I very much enjoy reading development forum posts, blogs, diaries, journals, changelogs or similar.

Frogboy

on Mar 23, 2008

Brad sir,Playing as a custom race based on the Terrans, i am finding that the AI's have no means of stopping me from slowly taking over them by using influence starbases maxed out. All i need do is build two of them close to one of the AI's worlds and within a few turns the world is mine. i have no military as such and most of the AI's i am doing this to could squash me easily. I just wondered if it would be possible to alter the AI so it wont 'put up' with this sort of action. Give me another three years and i will have the entire map sown-up without ever having to fire a shot or research past laser 2.Thanks

Hmm. They're not supposed to put up with lots of influencer starbases. Will have to think about other means.

Alstein

on Mar 23, 2008

The Drengin aren't the only race missing Starbase Techs- I'm very sure the Yor and Iconians have the same problem, though perhaps the Iconians should keep the problem as a balance issue.

Tanthus

on Mar 24, 2008

Here is a suggestion for a minor AI improvement for star searching. I personally weigh the number of planets and how close the star is before sending out a scout to it. So if there is only one planet around a star I'm apt to go to the 5 planet one thats a little farther away.

Of course you could really go all out and do a lookahead and try to figure out the best route to see the greatest number of planets in the shortest time.

Scintor

on Mar 24, 2008

Thanks for the Blow by blow showing bug found and bug squashed. I don't know about anyone else but this really gives me a sense of the kind of work you do and the kind of progress being made.

Now if only you would only address the wrong influence on reload bug.

Scincerely,

Scintor@aol.com

Seth Gaines

on Mar 25, 2008

I know for a fact that the AI doesn't put up with influence starbases, if they are in their space. They complain about them, and then they declare war on you. I have never had trouble with building them just on my side of the line in mixed systems. Then again, I've never found them to be all that terribly effective, even as the Krynn.

Mac2411

on Mar 25, 2008

Playing as the Terrans I often win the game with influence starbases. In some games I don't even build a military. This is on painful difficulty level and above. I've used this strategy since DL. It got so boring I decided to play other races.

Welcome Guest! Please take the time to register with us.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:

Richer content, access to many features that are disabled for guests like commenting on the forums.
Access to a great community, with a massive database of many, many areas of interest.
Access to contests & subscription offers like exclusive emails.
It's simple, and FREE!