Don't let the Ai mess up another game for you when you miss a turn in PBW.

[geoschmo]

One of the most frustrating things about playing Space Empires IV PBW, or any PBEM for that matter, is in the event you miss a turn, or if your turn file gets scrambled somehow, the ai will take your turn for you. As we all know the ai does a particularly awful job of handling things.

We all have horror stories I am sure. I was in a game once where the AI, broke several trade and research treaties, declared war on my closest neighbor, took control of my fleets in that system and wiped out three of his planets, not to mention filling my construction queues with worthless junk, and obsoleting and replacing all of my carefully thought out ship designs.

All his dirty work was done in one turn. But it took me 7 or 8 turns to undo the damage. Particularly because I was close to the limit on maintenance anyway, and loosing all that treaty income meant several ships being abandoned.

There is a setting in empire options "AI should not make changes during simultaneous games." As we all know, that does little or nothing to help the problem. Jimbob and I have come up with a solution. It involves replacing the files that control what the ministers do during your turn. More on how it does it later.

These files, will eliminate the problem as much as is possible. By using these files, the ai will NOT:
1. Obsolete your designs
2. Design new ships or units
3. Put ANYTHING in your construction queue
4. Become angry at other races, for ANY reason
5. Break existing treaties
6. Offer or accept new treaties
7. Declare war
8. Attack colonies of empires you are not at war with

Using these files the AI still WILL:
1. Fill your research queue if empty (I figured this is about the only thing it does decently)
2. Reply to Messages from other empires, but only to refuse any requests. (But I have modified the speech.txt file so that it is clear the refusals are coming from the AI and not the player)
3. Move your ships around somewhat
4. Attack colonies of Empires you are at war with.
5. Attack ships of Empires you are at war with.
6. Send colony ships that do not have previous orders.

Another big thing these files WON'T do is affect the performance of randomly generated AI players that are setup at the beginning of the game as AI players. They don't use the the new ai files, so they aren't affected.

Here's how it works. In the Space Empires IV directory is a folder called Ai, and in that are three folders, Aggressive, Neutral, Defensive, and several files that start with Default.

When you set up an empire, you have an option called "Use Race Minister Style". This option has two choices, "Using selected Style" and "Use style from Race". If it is set to "Use Selected Style" (it is by default) then you have another option you can set, "Minister Style". "Minister Style" can be set to (drum roll please), Aggressive, Defensive, or Neutral. Which one you set it too determines which set of files are used.

Now, here's where it gets interesting. If you add another folder under the Space Empires IV/Ai directory, whatever you call that folder now becomes a new option for "Minister Style". I have put the new files in a folder called "None". This way only empires setup with "Use Selected Style" and MinsterStyle set to "None" will use the new files. All exsisting empires, Ai races, and randomly generated AI's and Neutral Ai's will not be affected..

It's importatnt to remember, so I will repeat it, by default when you add a new empire it is set to Using Selected Style BUT the Minster style is blank. This has to be changed to "None", or the AI will use the scripts in the appropriate pictures/races folder, or the default ai files, instead of the modified ai/none files.

After the game is started you can't change your empire minister style, and only empires that SPECIFICALLY set the minister style to none will use the modified files. I could modify all the ai scripts and make it easier to setup, and it would work for exsisting games, but then all the ai will be useless, and many people like including AI in their PBW and PBEM games.

The other downside I see to this is that if an empire is set to none, then it is very important that if that player leaves the game a human replacement is found. Turning them over to the ai will result in a useless do-nothing empire. This makes it more important that all players have correct passwords loaded in PBW for their empires. We have no way to "crack" your empire password, and if your PBW empire password doesn't match your .emp file password, a replacment player can't take over turns.

Since there is no Ai/None folder in the standard SE IV files set, or in any mod that I am aware of, there is no reason to set this up as a separate mod. I have included the None folder in all the available 1.41 mods on PBW, as well as the standard, non-mod Version. This will allow players to take advantage of this for any game they choose. You really only need the folder on your PC for setting up the empire at the begining of the game. All the actual use of the files happens on the PBW server while the turns are being processed.

That's it. I hope this helps people with a problem that has been a source of great frustration for me. If you have any questions, post them here.

Geoschmo

Go here to download the zip file. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/For...ML/000018.html

Instructions:
Step 1: Unzip "none.zip" file.
Step 2: Move "None" folder into "Space Empires IV\Ai" directory.
Step 3: Add new or edit existing empire.
Step 4: Set "Use Race Minister Style" to "Using Selected Style" (Normally it is this by default)
Step 5: Set "Minister Style" to "None" (Normally it is blank by default.)