Hi Ail,

I tried out your all-in-one mod during a game. It's good, especially the no hybrid hero mod. But I will removed the ruthless AI. I agree that the AI isn't aggressive enough, but with this mod it makes no sense.



In my game (8 players) I was surrounded by Sophons and Pilgrims. They both offered me a peace treaty that I accepted, then open borders. After a while, the Sophons offered me a fair exchange of strategic resources, then declared war 3 turns after! I then discovered that they were already at war with Amoeba. A few turns later, the Amoeba and the Pilgrims were at war. A this time, I also discovered that the Pilgrims were at war with another Sophons empire. What happened next? The Pilgrims, already at war with 2 factions declared war on me while their were losing on the two other fronts! Before turn 70, everyone was at war with 2 or 3 others... It makes no sense. They basically declare war no matter the situation or the deals they have. After a while, the Amoeba empire who was warm with me due to common enemies just declared war on me without reasons while they were already at war with the Pilgrims and a Horatio player! Yes, the AI should be more aggressive overall but not this way. Here they just declare war randomly no matter the status.



And by the way, it's not related to your mods but the AI still uses a lot of crap ships. When I was fighting the Sophons, they have fleets with x1 kilo 1, x1 kilo 2, x2 kilo 3, x1 kilo 4, x1 kilo 5 and 1 cruiser, something like that, same for the Pilgrims and their ships template. In brief, it does not retrofit its ships. Besides, there were a lot (I mean really a lot) of small fleets of 1 to 3 ships. I only had 2 fleets of 7 destroyers armed with missiles and I crushed them all. Shame they didn't merge their fleets, I was winning against the Sophons and the Pilgrims with only 2 fleets and way less ships than them.



I'll do more games when I have time and give you feedback.

CeltiK wrote:
And by the way, it's not related to your mods but the AI still uses a lot of crap ships. When I was fighting the Sophons, they have fleets with x1 kilo 1, x1 kilo 2, x2 kilo 3, x1 kilo 4, x1 kilo 5 and 1 cruiser, something like that, same for the Pilgrims and their ships template. In brief, it does not retrofit its ships.

One of the huge benefits of the Rise of the Automatons release is that there should never be any crap ships. There is one known bug (fixed in the hot fix) where an AI will go bankrupt; that obviously can cause crap fleets because it's all they could afford. If you see an AI with crap ships and no bankruptcy, please zip and attach a save game so we can see what went wrong.

I agree on the Rutheless-Mod to be overdone. I will change that one and make it like I had realized it before as that was much better. I had not actually tried it out and was thinking there's some other smart layer as to when declare war besides the Approval.



@davea:

The Bankrupcy-Issue is not included in the hotfix, as ThorTillas stated somewhere on the forums. But it won't happen in my Mod anyways, due to my workaround.

However, it just prevents them from raising their Tax-Rate to 100 by forcing them to make Ind=>Dust once their Approval drops too low. This does not mean that they magically have all the money for retrofitting!



I also think that ThorTillas minimum-amount of ships to attack-trick does not apply to attacks on Outposts. When they attack a real colony, than they usually do so with full or almost full fleets, but when it comes to Outposts than they also attack with very little.

Update: All-AIL-Mods-Mod.zip

In this one the Ruthless-Mod was replaced by a less-extreme version. Now the AI will no longer declare war if it has good terms with you. On the other hand some changes to attitude were made:



- Neglecting Tribute and Trade-requests will cause a bigger attitude hit

- Liking someone for being a common-enemy decays over time

- Close-Border-Tension now always is a fixed value of 15 per lane instead of going up and down

Could you explain how close board tension works? I know nothing about how it functions coding wise (before you modded it)

I just want to make a list here of everything that I intend to mod for 1.0.25, so I don't forget it:



1. AI-Bankrupcy-prevention-Mod.

The AI, especially on lower difficulties, can run into a situation where they can go bankrupt. By kinda forcing them to build Ind=>Dust before it is too late this should be resolvable.



Bankrupcy-Prevention-Mod is ready: AI-Bankrupcy-prevention-Mod.zip

Once global approval drops below 60% while still being in the reds, a second Ind=>Dust will become available to build. It does exactly the same as the regular Ind=>Dust but the AI will love to build it more than anything else. Also it uses another icon so the player can also recognize that he might be in financial trouble and should probably do something about it. Will only affect newly started games because it introduces a new building.



2. Semi-Automatic-Automaton-Affinity-Mod.

To make the best use of the Automaton-Affinity you have to save up for a few turns before building something. While the governors do that automatically, there should also be a semi-automatic-way to it by simulating "building nothing" with a building that has the same effect.



Semi-Automatic-Automaton-Affinity-Mod is ready: Semi-Automatic-Automaton-Affinity-Mod.zip

There is a new building-project available if you are playing Automaton. Put it on top of your build queue and then enter whatever you want to build after. It will stack your Production but it will automatically be moved down a position in the queue once one turn more of stacking would cause the stack to overflow. It is not as smart as the governors who will sometimes only stack 1 turn if that is enough to finish something in 1 turn but it's still better than having to handle it manually. Will only affect newly started games because it introduces a new building. "Normal" stacking by building nothing still works. Building-Texts only available in english-translation-file.



3. No-Hybrid-Hero-Mod.

The AI does terrible things to its heros: It skills a colorfull mix of Fleet- and System-Abilities whenever the Hero combines two classes that fit differently. And this is almost every hero that exists! The mod will make them decide for one type and stick to it.



No-Hybrid-Hero-Mod is ready: No-Hybrid-Hero-Mod.zip

The AI now uses all Heros as pure Fleet-Heros. Why that? Well, it currently is not possible to force them to use a hero as this and the other as that. One can only decide to make all of them either fleet or system heros. I decided for fleet because that's what has a bigger impact in the lategame. A fleet with a level 20 hero is almost unbeatable by a fleet without one. So potentially having 8 of them can really make them fearsome.



4. Ruthless-Mod.

The AI only declares war, when it hates someone. But a mean and fierce creature should not have to hate its prey in order to hunt them. There will be a possibility to declare war without having to hate the potential opponent and war-weariness will be reduced when the war is going to be won.



Ruthless Mod is... kinda ready: Ruthless-Mod.zip

Small problem here: I'm really tired but I wanted to finish all of this stuff before going to bed. So I'm skipping the retestes with 1.0.25 and will do them later. So I can't say if it works as intended but it should.



5. No-Retread-Mod.

Since the AI cannot play the retreat-card, there seems no valid reason for the player to be able to. So Retreat-Card will be removed here.



No-Retread-Mod is ready: No-Retreat-Mod.zip

Kinda not that hard to test. ^^



Update: Since 1.0.26 this mod no longer works. I made a fix for it by realizing it in a completely different way. However, this touches files that are also touched by the other mods and that creates more and more incompatibility. Thus I discontinue to support the for the Standalone-Mods, as you can't just combine them without merging their files.



6. All-AIL-Mods-Mod.

While it is nice to freely choose which mods someone likes and which he doesn't, having a nice blend of all of them might be nice too! Will also include Colored-Anomalies+some coloring-stuff I added myself.



All-AIL-Mods-Mod: Here it is: All-AIL-Mods-Mod.zip

Well, at least it should be. Turns out I'm still not able to make a running standalone mod. I select the mod from the menu, click load, game closes and won't come up again. No clue why that is.

So I can only suggest to make a backup from your games public-folder and copy all the contents of this mod into the public-folder after that.

The Localization-Files have to be attached manually, because they won't automatically be loaded when not in a Mod.



Update: All-AIL-Mods-Mod.zip

In this one the Ruthless-Mod was replaced by a less-extreme version. Now the AI will no longer declare war if it has good terms with you. On the other hand some changes to attitude were made:



- Neglecting Tribute and Trade-requests will cause a bigger attitude hit

- Liking someone for being a common-enemy decays over time

- Close-Border-Tension now always is a fixed value of 15 per lane instead of going up and down



Update: All-AIL-Mods-Mod.zip

Again a change to diplomatic behaviour:

The AI will now be more carefull to prevent multi-frontier-wars.

The Relationship-punishment for declining a deal has been reduced to -20 from -50.



Update: All-AIL-Mods-Mod.zip

Retreat-Mod now properly removes the Retreat-Actions from the Starting-Techs and the Tech-Tree instead of removing the Cards. Removing the Cards no longer worked for 1.0.27 and was a "dirty hack" anyways (didn't know any better when I first came up with it. ^^) Note: This will only apply to newly started games. For games started before that, you'll just have to live with the cards. (Ignore or use them, it's your choice!)



Update: All-AIL-Mods-Mod.zip

Compatibility for 1.0.29. Removed the Score-Tension-Attitude-Modifier as a means to improve logics in decision-making when declaring war. Also removed Bankrupcy-prevention-mod since it should hopefully no longer be necessary (and it didn't really help anyways).



Update:

Changed Upkeep to be like in 1.0.19.

Completely redid diplomacy. The concept of attitude is no longer really in charge.

The behaviour shall feel much more human-alike and is connected to goals in the game.



Link removed due to errors with the Attachmeint-ID (it linked to the wron version)



Installation:

1. Extract the contents of the ZIP to "c:\Users\AIL\Documents\Endless Space\Modding" (replace "AIL" with your username of course)

2. Rightclick on Endless-Space in your Steam-Library, then select "Properties"

3. Click Starting Options and then enter "+mod All-AIL-Mods-Mod" into the dialogue-field



The single-change-mod-files are not installable like that. They are meant for other modders (like the community-mod who might disagree with some of my changes) to be used in their own mod-blends or if you already know what to do with it.



AI-Bankrupcy-prevention-Mod.zip

Semi-Automatic-Automaton-Affinity-Mod.zip

No-Hybrid-Hero-Mod.zip

Ruthless-Mod.zip

No-Retreat-Mod.zip (Standalone no longer works and no longer supported)

All-AIL-Mods-Mod.zip (1.0.0)

All-AIL-Mods-Mod.zip (1.0.1)

All-AIL-Mods-Mod.zip (1.0.2)

All-AIL-Mods-Mod.zip (1.0.3)

All-AIL-Mods-Mod.zip (1.1.0)

Thank you Ail, your work is much appreciated. I'm gonna try the new version of your mod right away.

I just read in the other thread, that the thing I want to do with AI-War-Declaration-Behaviour is possible afterall! So I suppose I will make another new version. ^^

I'm playing a game with the 'new' version (Normal difficult, Medium Map, 7 players total). The AI diplomacy seems a bit too volatile. It's near impossible to maintain good relations (granted I have been in the lead for the last 50-75 turns so that might make them dislike me). The only one I was able to maintain anything with was the Sophons and they DoW'ed me shortly after they asked me for a resource and I agreed...



It seems like every time I get back to Neutral with an AI, I get the 'you are ascendance doesnt make them happy' and relations crash. I also get a lot of 'requests' for resources or lopsided trades (in their favor) and if I refuse, I get the 'how rude!' response and a diplo hit.



Overall, it's made the game more challenging in some ways (I constantly have to watch all my borders) but on the other hand, the AI's will often DoW me even if they have no chance of doing anything other than giving me a few more system (ie, my military power/technology outstrips theirs but they DoW anyways and quickly lose the war often resulting in me taking a few of their systems and then them handing me another one or so in the peace treaty).



I feel like you're on the right track though as the stock AIs are far too passive IMO and it's far too easy to carve up your opponents one at a time while the rest of AIs leave you alone to focus on your chose target.

Just played with the new version till turn 70. Everything's fine, it's way better than the previous version ^^

Everyone's watching each other and the situation is tense. Some are in peace, some are not but that makes sense overall, I would have done the same if I was in their position. I play on normal, 8 players, huge galaxy, slow pace.



One thing annoys me though: the attitude hit you receive for declining offers is maybe a bit too high. I mean, I received a lot of ridiculous demands like "offer peace + almost all strategic resources you have". So I always decline and as I receive those kind of deals every 6-7 turns, relations quickly deteriorate. Save game attached.



Anyway, keep up the good work
SHEREDYN - Turn 70.zip

Thank you for testing!



I will heed your feedback for further changes on it.



It's all experimental so let's just try and find the best compromise about how they should behave together.



Edit: @Uncle_Joe: I didn't actually modify the 'you are ascendance doesnt make them happy'-Modifier. This one strikes whenever you are ahead in score. Also attacking you despite being outstripped comes from the regular WarTerms from Amplitude and is because they hate you. I'm actually thinking about removing them... The behaviour they cause is not very healthy. If there's some guy who is stronger, I would rather try to survive until he get's an Eco-Win or something instead of suiciding into him. ^^

Yes, I agree with Celtik...the hit for declining ridiculous 'offers' seems a bit too high.



Also, I noticed that even with the mod, AIs can and do still go bankrupt and apparently early in the game with plenty of planets to expand too. The common thing I see when I take the systems is that the planets all have only 1 pop (possible a result of being bankrupt/starvation?) and they are often industry or science, not dust or food exploitations.

I was thinking about boarder tensions, I agree it is kind of silly to have a high low wave modifier but the idea in itself is good. Tension should change rather than a simple static value but it should have reason. Simplist way would be to add a modifier for number of ships in attached star system. Is that possible with the new count ships code?

Ail wrote:


Edit: @Uncle_Joe: I didn't actually modify the 'you are ascendance doesnt make them happy'-Modifier. This one strikes whenever you are ahead in score. Also attacking you despite being outstripped comes from the regular WarTerms from Amplitude and is because they hate you. I'm actually thinking about removing them... The behaviour they cause is not very healthy. If there's some guy who is stronger, I would rather try to survive until he get's an Eco-Win or something instead of suiciding into him. ^^

Agreed, but at the same time, I dont think it should be removed completely. Sometimes attacking a stronger empire is necessary, especially if they are already at war. Even if they arent at war, if a smaller empire attacks it can allow other empires to hit the most powerful one and succeed.



IMO, I think it would be best to see how things go for a while with the current changes (or maybe with small tweaks). Once that is settled, other behavior can be looked at.



What I wouldnt want to see is that having a larger military is a free pass to not being attacked, even if you're weak on a particular border. Do you know if the AI rates local forces or just global? If it's just global (which is what I suspect) then I think the current behavior needs to stay in some capacity (although preventing COMPLETELY outclassed empires from DoW'ing you might be desirable).



As an example, the AI which was bankrupt and had no military to speak of was the latest to DoW me and that WAS just suicide. But the Amoeba and Sophons also DoW'ed me at some point and even though each was individually weaker than me (and thus it was a Bad Idea to attack me in that regard), between the two of them they were able to put up a good fight for a while (which I think should be encouraged).



The early version of Europa Universalis gave empires a 'bad boy rating' which increased as you grew and stomped out other empires and neutrals. When it got too high (too quicky), other nations would band together and attack (again, even though each individual attacker was far weaker the combination of many such nations could be a significant threat). I would like to see that type of behavior possible amongst unfriendly (Neutral and below) AIs. I wouldnt want long-term friends constantly backstabbing, but for other nations I think some sort of 'gang up' behavior would be good.

The AI still going broke is interesting. The problem is, while I can prevent them from making more buildings, I can't do the same for ships, since the orders to build ships come from another layer, that cannot be affected in the same way.

I think the Cravers are especially susceptible for that because they get their huge fleet-size-boosts so early.

I hope that the patch that is planned for next week will fix that issue by affecting their build globally and preventing a tax that lets the Approval drop that low.

I think that they still have Ind/Science because the planet probably once was full-pop so they switched to the "best the planet-type supports" but when the revolt comes due to too high tax, they can't switch anymore because there is no production left to do it.



@iblise: Unfortunately there are far less options or stuff to access to via modding, when it comes to diplomatic-relations then you have when deciding what to build or what effects a building can have.



Okay, I think I'll leave the "attack anyways" for really much hate like from -200 to -150. The score-Modifier kinda serves the ganging-up purpose. But unfortunately it starts working for every empire that has more score than the own. So increasing the effect of it might not really do what we want here.

New version is up: All-AIL-Mods-Mod.zip



See edited starting-post for details.

Just found out that since 1.0.27 the "No-Retreat-Mod" no longer works for me.

Maybe some other stuff doen't work as well.



I can see, that Auto-Automaton and No-Bankrupcy(or let's call it less bankrupcy) still work, the rest (Hero- and Diplomacy-Stuff obviously needs a longer game to be tested).



Edit: New version uploaded in starting-post. See the description for an explanation why it stopped working and why and und what circumstances it will work again.

Hi Ail, new feedback. I completed 4 games so far with your mod (but I kept the retreat card, only for scouts). Each time it was on a huge galaxy, 8 players (all factions represented, except for the Automatons), normal difficulty for 3 games and one on hard. So far, Auto Automatons and Heroes stuff seem to work fine but I have issues about the rest.



All AIs will struggle with their economy eventually, even with the "less bankruptcy mod", they just stall sooner or later. The reason is simple : they build far too many crap ships. During a game, I had 4 fleets of 7 cruisers each (5k mp per fleet with heroes and around 60 cp) and 2k score. The 2nd, Horatio, had little less than 2k score and... 165 cp! All its fleets were of 1,2-1,5k mp at full capacity! Sure it retrofits but with so many ships, it takes a lot of time and resources. It was even worse for the others: one of them, Amoeba, had 89 cp (for 7,5k mp...) and 369 fids when I had 5k fids at the same time... With the exception of the Horatio, all the others were stalling at around 500 score, doing nothing for 30 turns. All of them had more cp than me, but way less mp and fids! Why do they build so many small and crap ships? They had 100 of them when I started building battleships! Sure they built some cruisers but as they don't scrap their useless small ships, they go bankrupt. I think that is why they were struggling with their economy in 3 games out of 4. It was better on hard, even though they still built crap ships, so it's clearly a problem with the economy. They build a lot of crap ships and will never have the money to retrofit them all. So I ended in some wars, pressing the auto battle button all the time to get rid of their numerous useless fleets, so much for the fun

Is there a way to force the AI to scrap the ships they don't need anymore?



Concerning the diplomacy, well there are issues too. Peace treaty were very rare. I almost never had one because of the penalty due to score but between them there were no peace as well. An interesting fact was that they all declared war on me eventually because everyone hated me, even the Horatio who was the only one to be at peace with me was hostile! Even those who were on the other side of the galaxy and already at war with one or more factions declared war on me. Before that, when we were still at cold war, they all wanted peace because I was much stronger than them. But the penalty due to score was so high that when they offered peace, they also wanted a lot of resources. I remember an offer from the Pilgrims: they offered peace in exchange for 5 titanium, 3 hyperium and 1 antimatter! I had 1,5k score and they were stalling at 400... The problem is that everything is based on the diplomatic value. If I wanted to make peace with them, I had to offer a lot of resources as well to reach the middle of the slide. From the AI point of view it's a fair deal. I don't know if you understand what I mean here. The more negative diplomatic value you have with someone, the more resources (or tech) you need to give to make a deal and I think that's fine. If you need to deal with someone who doesn't like you, you need to give him something valuable in exchange. But the problem is that it's the same thing for the AI. If you are much stronger, from the AI point of view, offering peace by asking all your resources in exchange is fair, while offering peace without asking anything in return is not because it's relative to the diplomatic value. I wanted to make peace with those Pilgrims but I couldn't. They also wanted peace but it wasn't possible because they wanted all my resources in exchange... so I just wiped them out to put them out of their misery! lol



I honestly don't know how to improve the system. A long time ago I used to play Imperium Galactica 2 and the diplomatic system was simple as well. It was based only on military power. If you were stronger, you could ask for anything and sign treaties or alliances. As soon as you were weaker, they declared war! There were almost nothing you could do to prevent that. And when you were stronger, it was actually more advantageous to simply conquer your neighbour than sign treaties... so diplomacy was quite useless. It would have the same results in ES if we base the diplomacy on military power. But imho the current system is flawed as well. I don't know what can be done to improve it. Is it possible to have different diplomatic profiles between the factions?



Edit: I think I have my answer

Ail wrote:
The AI still going broke is interesting. The problem is, while I can prevent them from making more buildings, I can't do the same for ships, since the orders to build ships come from another layer, that cannot be affected in the same way.

Is there something that can be done about that?

About the Rebellion/Bankrupcy issue:



I have basically stopped playing ES for now because of that. If I was aware of any way to prevent it from happening, I would certainly have done it, since this totally ruins the game for me!



I told the Devs in several threads, that I think this issue should be top-priority.



I also suggested algorithms how I would prevent it from happening if I could directly access the code of the "ship-ordering-layer". But unfortunately it's only modable very rudimentarily as in: you can reduce the overall amount of ships the AI will want but you can't introduce exact rules about when to build them and when not.

Meedoc even replied that he already implemented a potential fix and was testing it.

But this is almost two weeks ago and we've yet to see a new patch. There ain't even a VIP-Patch either and much less Dev-presence on the forums in general. :\



About the Diplomacy:



Have I forgotten to upload the version where the AI would try to not get involved into more than one war each (unless they really hate someone)?

I've tried to discuss this issue in the "Secret layer of diplomacy"-Thread. I feel there need to be some more conditions to play with in order to determine more logical circumstances for the AI declaring war.

The "only 1 war" approach seemed quite okay but did not account for the fact that a small (rebelling) empire would eventually declare war on the score-leader and thus "block" him from going to war himself if he could not reach the guy who declared war on him.

So what I requested was a condition to determine if there is a direct border to someone because the AI seems to be reluctant to cross through neutral territory to reach their opponent. (which makes sense, if you consider the risk of backstabbing).