Capital Planet Names

[Foocaux]

I've just finished playing my second game, and I did notice that all the enemy AIs didn't have much of a choice in what to name their capitals, so I decided to add some variety.

As I was doing that I noticed some formatting inconsistency inside default\stringtables\en.txt and tidied it up a bit.

I was also surprised to notice there were other AI levels apart from maniacal!

Anyway, here's a patch, in case it's useful:

Code: Select all

Index: en.txt
===================================================================
--- en.txt	(revision 7328)
+++ en.txt	(working copy)
@@ -10156,19 +10156,31 @@
 Prison World'''
 
 AI_CAPITOL_NAMES_CAUTIOUS
-'''Bastion of the Brave,
+'''Bastion of the Brave
 Stronghold'''
 
 AI_CAPITOL_NAMES_TYPICAL
 '''Haven
 Free Trade Zone'''
+
 AI_CAPITOL_NAMES_AGGRESSIVE
 '''Royal Demesne
 Imperial Court'''
 
 AI_CAPITOL_NAMES_MANIACAL
-'''Throne of Heaven,
-Glorious Revolutionary Planning Center, '''
+'''Throne of Heaven
+Ivory Tower
+Haven
+Unity of Purpose
+Supreme Command
+Geometric Perfection
+Eternal Destiny
+Enemies Will Tremble
+Splendid Effulgence
+Gem of the Cosmos
+Prime Mobile
+Harmony of Intent
+Invincible Strength
+Glorious Revolutionary Planning Center'''
 ### End of Capital Names Lists
 
 #############################################################

PS: Is there a specific reason for the more aggressive AIs to completely ignore the less aggressive AIs names? An aggressive empire could conceivably still see itself as a peace-loving, tree-hugging society that is somehow forced to do dubious things due to major external threats. With that in mind, even a name like 'Fluffy Hugfest' could become a byword for unbelievable horrors and cruelty throughout the whole universe...

[MatGB]

The idea in the notes was so that players would have an indication of the AI type by their capital name. I believe it was intended at some point to have some AIs on different settings within the same game but that's never actually been implemented, hence each AI type should have a unique set of names.

My gripe is that the longer ones (especially Glorious RPC) take up so much space on Sitreps and in the Production queue that they annoy me, I regularly shorten them on my install and then forget to revert it when I'm doing a patch.

I'd rather names were all short and more, well, race specific?

[Geoff the Medio]

I'd rather names were all short...

The UI breaks in several places due to long planet name lengths... They do need to be shortened, in my opinion.

[Vezzra]

I'd rather names were all short...

The UI breaks in several places due to long planet name lengths... They do need to be shortened, in my opinion.

Yep, seconded.

[MatGB]

I'd rather names were all short...

The UI breaks in several places due to long planet name lengths... They do need to be shortened, in my opinion.

Like this?

(added a few shortened names for a few things, loosely based on above)

[Dilvish]

As I was doing that I noticed some formatting inconsistency inside default\stringtables\en.txt and tidied it up a bit...

The comma's at the ends of "Bastion of the Brave," etc., were not accidental, and I don't believe it's something that they all have to have or none.

PS: Is there a specific reason for the more aggressive AIs to completely ignore the less aggressive AIs names?

Yes, absolutely -- the bit of flavor it adds might be compatible with what you suggest, but a very significant part of the purpose of it was so that players could identify the aggression level of a given AI once they saw it's capital system. Roughly 25% of the AIs will be at one aggression level below the 'max aggression' galaxy setup setting (except beginner is 100% beginner), and in order to enable more clear feedback we wanted players to be able to know a given AIs aggression level.

That purpose is probably less important now than it was when the different aggression levels were first introduced, but the distinctions between the different levels do still get worked on some, and for that reason I'm not crazy about a proliferation of capital prefixes at this point in the game.

I'd rather names were all short...

The UI breaks in several places due to long planet name lengths... They do need to be shortened, in my opinion.

There's probably no way to get around eliminating or shortening at least the longest name, "Glorious Revolutionary Planning Center, " but think there's another option other than shortening everything down so much as Matt proposes -- rather than be mere prefixes the longer names could be used as the entire planet name. We've got enough hotlink and autozoom support now that I don't think the planet names necessarily have to be unique -- I don't think it would cause a player any trouble if two different empires named their starting planet "Imperial Court".

[MatGB]

Don't like that idea, sitreps for buildings and other things completed are fairly regularly something you (or at least I) just scan through, sometimes going back later in the turn to check stuff, frequently not. If several planets have similar names, it's frustrating, if some, significant distances apart, have the same name, then I don't know if that Neutronium Forge that just completed was on the Chato homeworld I recently conquered or the Eaxaw homeworld, the latter is a bit more useful info, but I don't want to have to click every planet name for every build complete—and let's face it, homeworlds are regularly centres of production for various thing and in the mid to late game will, when conquered, be in the middle of building a very similar set of buildings.

I hadn't noticed that some AIs are at a lower level, then I never did learn all the prefixes, can see (and agree) that having too many at this stage would be confusing. But, I only added one to "typical", the rest are all Maniacal because that's what I play the most and some variety (without the annoying GRPC) is nice.

Of course, if we could get them names according to species that would be even better.

[Foocaux]

Hmm, in my two games all the AI capitals (36 of them) were either Throne of Heaven or Glorious Revolutionary etc etc, and I just didn't encounter any other capital name. A couple of empires ended up with more than one ToH or GRPC before I conquered them myself.


When conquered, I did end up renaming them StarNameGlory & StarNameThrone, depending on their original name, just to keep track of which one was which.

As I said in the AI thread, I've now tried 3 mini-galaxies, and all the empires there had the max AI.
I might have been particularly unlucky, so I'll have another try to see if I can find the 25% of AIs that are not max AI.


For me, the building queue can be difficult to read with long planet names overlapping the name of what is being built; maybe putting the planet name on a second line, rather than on the same line might just be the ticket?

In any case, I might end up renaming GRPC to 'Glorious Revolution' for my own personal use.

Thanks for a great game anyways!

[MatGB]

I was doing a major stringtable update and forgot to revert the above patch before doing it, so tidied it up based on feedback instead, finished version looks like this:

Code: Select all

### Beginning of AI Aggression Level Capital Name Lists
AI_CAPITOL_NAMES_BEGINNER
'''Ivory Tower
Nunnery
Monastery
Orphanage'''

AI_CAPITOL_NAMES_TURTLE
'''Citadel
Prison'''

AI_CAPITOL_NAMES_CAUTIOUS
'''Bastion
Stronghold'''

AI_CAPITOL_NAMES_TYPICAL
'''Haven
Free Trade Zone
Homeworld'''

AI_CAPITOL_NAMES_AGGRESSIVE
'''Royal
Imperial'''

AI_CAPITOL_NAMES_MANIACAL
'''Glorious
Supreme
Eternal
Invincible
'''
### End of Capital Names Lists

Beginner AI already had 4, so I reduced the number of Maniacal down to 4 to assuage Dilvish's concern, I think it's better with this than it was before but we can do more with it if we want.

[Foocaux]

To appease my own sense of symmetry, I'd personally have 4 empire names per aggressiveness, but it's probably just me.

I wonder though, now that each empire announces how aggressive they are, there's going to be less of a need for keeping the various names separate, at least in 0.4.4+

[MatGB]

They announce it once, at the very start of the game, and you only see it if you look at the chat window, which is by default hidden behind any fleet window you have open. The chat doesn't store messages permanently so it's not there after a few turns, nor when you reload a savegame, plus they don't declare which empire they are, merely which AI they are.

Given that, for example, Maniacal AIs always say no to peace offers whereas you can make peace (and in theory ally) with a Aggressive or below AI, knowing what the AI state is of that newly found AI on turn, say, 60, can sometimes be useful.

It would be nice to have more diplomacy options at some point, currently they're very very limited and the plan is to improve them once more urgent stuff is done, but for now I think it's good to have the distinction (but yeah, 3-4 per AI type, especially if 75% of AIs are of one type, works for me if someoen can come up with distinctive themes for each level).

[Geoff the Medio]

...they don't declare which empire they are, merely which AI they are.

The chat messages are coloured, which matches empire colours in the empires list.

[MatGB]

True (and I'd forgotten which is daft) but that's not necessarily helpful, especially to colourblind &c people—we could improve the message if it's to be kept for more than just debugging. But I'd rather keep the homeworld names as well, I like the flavour (although naming the homeworld after the species, or even species after homeworld, would work better/as well).

[Foocaux]

As per my aggression3.patch, that's what you see in the chat window:

AI_3: Panarchy Empire, Aggression Manic

But yes, by turn 10 I'd forget already!

[em3]

Some of these names are nouns and some adjectives...