AI construction queue problems (ship construction)

[HreDaak]

Has anyone else noticed that the AI's construction queue's tend to be empty, atleast later in the game? Usually if it is constructing something they are facilities or upgrades to existing buildings. I have seen this in EVERY game so far i've played.
Almost in every case AI has enough resource production (sometimes 10x more than upkeep costs) and it still is not building ships or anything else. I've also made sure that there are enough calls to build things in <xxx>_constuction_vehicles.txt but this seems to have no effect (each AI state has ENOUGH calls and the construction file does not contain any errors like empty extra lines).

I have been doing some testing on this subject and noticed that the problem does not exist until AI has made contact to other races.

So now i'm asking if anyone else has noticed this kind of AI behaviour?

[Q]

I noticed exactely the same and my attemps to improve that by modifying the construction.vehicle.txt files were also a failure. But the latter may be due to my insufficient knowledge. I think this is one of the most important weaknesses of the AI in the later game and I mailed it to MM with the hope they fix it sometimes. I have the suspicion it might be in some way connected to the AI state, but again nobody seems to know how this state is determined and could be checked, so it is very hard to verify.

[Daynarr]

There are 2 things you need to know:

1) AI ministers mostly work after you press the end turn button. That means that when you take control of the AI empire you will see only things he didn't finish building in 1 turn. The queue gets filled only after you press the end turn button (same goes for the research). You can see what AI has built Last turn by checking log at the beggining of the next turn.

2) In AI_Vehicle_creation file is specified what the AI will build. If the AI has completed queue it will stop building. Note that the number of things AI will build depends heavily on the number of planets it has - Bigger empire has bigger fleets.

Of course, AI_Vehicle_creation file can be improved significantly by moding, and we did that in our mod pack.

[Tampa_Gamer]

To add to what Daynarr said (we have put oodles of time into this specific file) - you also have to be careful of what AI state the particular race is in at that point. While there may be enough "calls" in certain states (like exploration), other AI states may make calls to tech the player doesn't have yet (various creator and destroying ships) or the AI has met the sufficient xx per planet ratio. I know for a fact that the AI tends to be in "defensive" mod a lot more than the others, so it is important to have a wide-variety of "calls" in this AI State in case the AI flips to this state when it should be building infrastructure and still exploring (thanks to a pointer by Mephisto). I also think there is a limit to how many "calls" the AI will process in a given turn based on what I have seen.

[This message has been edited by Tampa_Gamer (edited 01 February 2001).]

[HreDaak]

quote:

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Originally posted by Daynarr:
There are 2 things you need to know:

1) AI ministers mostly work after you press the end turn button. That means that when you take control of the AI empire you will see only things he didn't finish building in 1 turn. The queue gets filled only after you press the end turn button (same goes for the research). You can see what AI has built Last turn by checking log at the beggining of the next turn.

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Yes, i know this, i've checked it.

quote:

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2) In AI_Vehicle_creation file is specified what the AI will build. If the AI has completed queue it will stop building. Note that the number of things AI will build depends heavily on the number of planets it has - Bigger empire has bigger fleets.

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In my testgames AI will never run out of something to construct, i've made sure of it... (call to build 10000 Attack ships at the end of each states queue). Also i've made sure that it cant run out of resources due to maintenance costs by setting maintenance percentage to 0%. Still its queues are empty. Though they are empty only after AI has made contact to other AI empires, and even then they are not empty 100% of the time...

Of course, AI_Vehicle_creation file can be improved significantly by moding, and we did that in our mod pack.[/b][/quote]

Yes, i've used your mod pack, great job by the way , but it does not fix this problem...

[Q]

Daynarr you are certainly right about these two points but
1.) When you check the log and see that e.g. only five items have been fished construction Last turn and you have 20 empty construction queues, then 15 must have been empty the Last turn.
2.) Your modification sure did make a big improvement but even with your modification pack 1.01 I see many empty construction queues in Earth Alliance, Sergetti and Darlok when they have several 10000 resource points left in all three catogeries, that can't be stored and therefore are wasted. This occurs only later in them game, after about 100 turns.

Tampa-Gamer you might very well be right, that the AI considers only a limited number of lines in the construction list per turn. This would explain, why in the early game the empty construction queues are not so evident than in the later game, where you have much more resources to spend.

[Mephisto]

You need to have some storage facilities. Even if you have plenty of resources left and the ship/unit to build is no problem at all the AI will still stop building anything until you give them some storage facilities.

[This message has been edited by [K126]Mephisto (edited 03 February 2001).]

[Daynarr]

quote:

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Originally posted by [K126]Mephisto:
I can think of 2 possible reasons for this:

1.) You need to have some storage facilities. Even if you have plenty of resources left and the ship/unit to build is no problem at all the AI will still stop building anything until you give them some storage facilities.

2.) You describe the problem as partial using of the queues. The AI will only process 1 line at a time no matter how much resources are left for building the second or later lines. A good example are colonizers:
If you make the AI build a large number of colonizers the Ai is nearly stuck in this build line as colonizers are often destroyed or reach their target. The AI will then try to reach the specified number of colonizers again so it is stuck at this build line. A solution is to build only a few colonizers in the first line (to make sure their are always some colonizers), add a second line for some warships and make a third line for some more colonizers.
This concept is true for warships, too. If you tell the Ai to build 1 ship per planet the AI is virtually stuck at this line as it is very hard to reach that many ships (to many are lost for some reason or another to get this number of ships). Hope this helps.

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You could consider forwarding this to MM, if you haven't done so already.

[Mephisto]

I did.
I think MM will get to this once the have squished all the other nasty little bugs.

[Q]

This is a very useful information Mephisto. It explains the problems I have encountered when trying to modify the construction.vehicle.txt files. Now I will try again!
Thank you very much.