Rollo and geoschmo, re: Devnullmod.
Hey guys,
First, thanx for carrying his mod into Gold. It really is a good mod and adds a lot of flavor and balance to the game. I've been enjoying it quite a bit since becoming disenchanted with the 'standard' tech set's weapon and research imbalances.
A few things need to be looked at AI-wise if they are to be challenging, however. The mod makes far more use of Organics and Radioactives than the standard tech set, but it appears that the AIs are not set to obtain more of them. A quick look through the AIs empires after say, 60 turns or so shows the majority of them to be starved for those two resources and losing ships to maintenance shortfalls as well being generally paralyzed.
My original mod back in the day also required far more of these resources and all of the AIs had to be changed to compensate. Some adjustments to the AI's colonizing scheme as well as the build orders on the various planets is necessary to correct the issue. I dont recall everything that I did to compensate but I think I added a few Refineries and Farms even to 'Mining' and 'Research' planets to give them some more of each type even if it didnt establish any dedicated colonies for those resources.
At any rate, the AIs as written at the moment are fairly ineffective. The TDM race AIs actually fare quite well in Devnull, but they arent optimized to use the new tech set. I noticed one TDM race with no PD cannons at all (only PD missiles) and that was fatal. The missiles are a good supplement to the cannons, but not a blanket replacement.
I would wager that you could probably use the TDM colonizing and expansion schemes as a base and then tweak them a tad to favor the two extra resources a bit. After that, use the current ships design and production routines from Devnullmod and it should be pretty decent.
Hope it helps. I'd go through and fiddle with it myself, but I just dont have the time at the moment to actually playtest and tweak the AIs.
Thanx,
Talenn
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