AI criteria for setting colony type

Jubala · #1 December 6th, 2000, 11:06 PM

I have noticed that the AI is sometimes extremely stupid in choosing what type of colony a new colony should be. I have seen huge undomed AI planets with mineral contrations of 149% being used as farming colonies when the organics concentration on that planet was 13%. Talk about a waste of resources! I checked what the AI colonies in a couple of my old savegames was doing and to my horror I discover this more the rule than the exception. So I went over the settings file for choosing colony types and to me it seems the AI's only criteria for how to use a planet is some abstract value on how many planets of type x are allowed in one system or in the empire and so on. It seems to me the concentrations of resources on the planet has no bearing whatsoever on the AI's decision in how to use it. Which means the AI ends up with alot of planets being used for something they are clearly unsuited for. Like my example above. IMO the most important criteria for choosing how to use a planet is it's concentration values. And as has been mentioned elsewhere the AI doesn't reevaluate planets or scrap facilities to build computers or robotoid factories.

If there was an option at startup to set all planets to a uniform concentration value (100%) this wouldn't be so big a problem. However, such a game would be rather boring. Alot of variety would dissapear.

Seawolf · #2 December 6th, 2000, 11:24 PM

Jub,

Are you looking at the name of the colony or that actual facilities on the planet. It is my understanding that the colony type has nothing to do with the the facilities that are built on the planet. It a "fluff" item for now. I have sugested to MM that the colony types be a template for facilites to be built. They will look at it in the future.

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Seawolf on the prowl

Warlord Adamus · #3 December 7th, 2000, 12:17 AM

Seawolf- It isn't a fluff item. The colony type is used by the AI to determine how the AI/ministers build on that planet. Infact they already are the 'template'for facilities that get built so I'm not sure at all what you're talking about. It's been like that since the earliest Versions.

DirectorTsaarx · #4 December 7th, 2000, 12:19 AM

Actually, for the AI, the "colony type" does affect the facilities on the planet. Look at the "Default_AI_Construction_Facilities" file...

And Jubala is right, the AI doesn't look at the planet resources, it just looks at % of that type of colony in the system/empire. Modified for "state" of the AI (Infrastructure, War, etc...).

I agree that creating a template build queue for the human player, based on the choice of colony type, would be useful. And should be easy to code, since MM has already created these templates for the AI...

Tomgs · #5 December 7th, 2000, 10:54 AM

I E-mailed a questain about this a couple of weeks ago as part of a bug report asking if the computer uses the numbers on the planet at all because I have noticed the same problem. I didn't get a response on that part of the questain but did get a response about the bug I included in the same E-mail.

Hopefully this gets fixed in a future patch because right now its easy to outproduce the AI races. Another related problem is the scouting of new planets is a bit slow because it seems that the AI dosen't use very many if any supply storage units in its ships. I usually have at least one design with 5 or 6 supply storage units to use as a forward scout so I know where the enemy is and where the good planets are. If the computer would scout out a bit further and use the numbers of resources to pick colony worlds it would be able to put up a much bigger fight.

[This message has been edited by Tomgs (edited 07 December 2000).]

Seawolf · #6 December 7th, 2000, 06:46 PM

Warlord,

I meant a editable template from the game not in the txt files. So I could create a colony type that would build in order 3 research 1 extractor and a space yard. Rather than just giving it a new name as it does now.

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Seawolf on the prowl

HreDaak · #7 December 8th, 2000, 02:42 AM

I think that the AI does some resource comparing when it chooses it's colony type.
The problem is that this comparing is relative. For example: If the amounts are
110,100,100 for minerals, the AI will make
it a mining colony if the mineral percent on
the planet is 1.1 or more times bigger than both organics and radioactives percent. Problem in this is that it could choose to make a mining colony on a planet that has
values 2%,1%,1% or 11%,10%,5%. I hardly ever
make mining colonies on planets that have less than 100% mineral percentage. I have here one example: a MINING colony on a planet
with values 39%,139%,67% (just checked one of my games). This is something i would never do, i would have made this planet a research compund or perhaps an intel compound. How could this have happened?
I'll go through the default_AI_Planet_Types
text file.
1. not a mining colony since there were already 2 mining colonies in the empire.
2. not a reseach colony since there were
already 15% or more reseach colonies in the
empire.
3. Not a military installation since there already was a military colony in this system or there are 10% or more military colnies already.
4. Not a construction yard since there already was a construction yard in this system or there are 10% or more construction yard colonies in the empire.
5. Not a mining colony since its mineral values are all wrong, does not fulfill the demand 130,100,100.
6. not a farming colony because there already was a one in this system or more than 10% of all colonies are farming colonies already.
7. not a refining colony (reasons same as above)
8. not a research colony because there already was 2 in this system or empire has 25% or more of its planets as research colonies.
9. not a intelligence colony because there already was 1 in this system or empire has
10% or more of its planets as intelligence
colonies.
11. So the computer had no other choice but
to make this a mining colony, it always chooses to make the colony a mining colony
if none of the possibilities above (1-10)
are fullfilled.
Hope this helps.. and i hope that i was correct in my analysis

Uh.. and i have also assumed that the AI state was something else than Not Connected.
Which i think it has been since i was playing with all warp points connected option on... (and also there are no warp point manipulation techs available yet, turn 50 or something)

[This message has been edited by HreDaak (edited 07 December 2000).]