AI and the number of planets they colonize

[tesco samoa]

I did a few different searches on the topic and could not find anything. Just incase this has been talked to death earlier.

Question is

What do you have to mod to make the AI colonize at a quicker rate?

Thank you

[Rollo]

Good question. I am trying this right now, too. The way I try it is building additional Base Space Yards in the Exploration state. I am currently testing it. Any insights from expert AI creators?

Thanks, Rollo

[Alpha Kodiak]

The AI will colonize as fast as you tell it to build colonizers (assuming that it sees worlds to colonize). There are a couple of ways to approach the issue early, each with minor drawbacks. The fastest expansion that I have seen comes from having 3 colonizers at the top of the ship construction file in the exploration phase. This basically forces the AI to completely colonize everything it can before your homeworld starts building anything but colonizers, since it can't build them as fast as they get used up. Once there is nothing to colonize, you will see a couple of colonizers hanging around doing nothing until an attack ship gets built and it finds something to colonize in another system. The drawback is that if a hostile empire shows up early, there are no warships to help defend the home system. It does seem to generally work well, though.

The other approach is to have 2 colonizers at the top of the construction file, followed by a base space yard. This gets more construction going, but since the space yard builds slower, typically you will wind up with a colonizer under construction for an extended period of time (thus slowing down expansion since the construction minister counts that colonizer toward the requirements for colonizers.)

The other thing that I found that improves expansion is to make sure that the planet types file is set up to place a resupply base with a spaceyard in every system you colonize. This makes sure that there is a place for construction as well as resupply everywhere on the perimeter of your empire. The default planet types file does not do this and can handcuff the AI fleets later in the game because they have to return to worlds on the interior to resupply and repair. Of course, the resupply world means one less resource planet, so you run into a trade off again.

Actually, finding the balance between expansion and infrastructure/defense is probably the most difficult part of designing a challenging AI. There are trade offs at all levels.

EDIT: One more thing, make sure that you have entries for colonizers in the construction file in all phases, even attack and defend. Otherwise, your expansion will dramatically slow down as soon as you run into another empire, and that will kill you.

[This message has been edited by Alpha Kodiak (edited 02 August 2001).]

[Atraikius]

I think the fastest expansion I have seen is by setting the contruction of warships too high for the AI to support the maintenance. This forces the AI to build colony ships at an increased rate to attempt to provide the resources it requires - causing a snowball effect in which the increased # planets creates requires a larger number of attack ships, which require more resources. etc...

I think Alpha's second example is about the best though.

[Baron Munchausen]

The number of colonizers you tell the AI to build during the 'Exploration' phase is important. What I've done is have it keep checking if it's got 2 while stepping through the standard defense infrastructure (WPs, sats, attack and defense ships) so it can sort of 'juggle' the two tasks of preparing to defend itself if it meets a nearby enemy and still expand. But, I discovered something else important while tinkering. I was frustrated that the AI seemed not to respond when colonies were destroyed. I would slag a few worlds and bring my ships home and those world were NOT recolonized! Well, I found that if you increase the number of colony ships requested in the "Secure Holdings After Attack, Incursion" phase then it will recolonize worlds that you have bLasted. Being able to respond to attack by rebuilding is also important and this small change has made the AI more challenging. It doesn't take a lot, but there really needs to be a higher level of colonizers than inthe 'attack' and 'defend' phases for it to go back and recolonize destroyed worlds.

[tesco samoa]

Thank you very much with this info. It will def. help. I will let you know how it goes