Testing Government and Influence

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human2
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Re: Testing Government and Influence

#91 Post by human2 »

Ophiuchus wrote: Mon Apr 05, 2021 10:09 am
human2 wrote: Mon Apr 05, 2021 8:22 am I just noticed the AI has an exobot planet with a stability bonus of +15 for "Species Exobot" but I don't have that.
There is no inherent stability bonus for exobot i am aware of. Probably they like the planetary focus?
I see this on most (but not all) AI exobot planets.
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human2
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Re: Testing Government and Influence

#92 Post by human2 »

Ophiuchus wrote: Mon Apr 05, 2021 10:20 am If pacing is too slow for you, you can decrease industry and research costs in the game start.
human2 wrote: Mon Apr 05, 2021 7:38 am I figure this is affecting AI too
yes, AI does not know anything about influence as well (yet)
I honestly wish I had time and skill to work on this. Maybe I'll try a game with reduced costs.

I keep wishing I could plug run the game through a machine learning and create a true AI. But I haven't done a thing with machine learning and I already don't have time. The fact that the AI is python kind of gives me hope that it's at least possible. Does anyone know?

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Re: Testing Government and Influence

#93 Post by human2 »

Ophiuchus wrote: Mon Apr 05, 2021 10:28 am I played a single-player game with positive influence and it went quite well.
Until experimentors sent their fleet, that is.
I never fought them before and was unprepared for that, not sure i could have won then - and in time of such a galactic crisis i would be ok to drop the positive influence roleplay.
The only way I've been able to win against the experimentors was by using Gateway to the Voids at my empire borders. It's really hard when the galaxy is a big blob of connected systems and especially if there aren't planets in each system. I've had to use the planetary drive to move planets into empty systems to fortify the line. There's obviously some missing logic when using gateway to the void because some things are possible that shouldn't be, like spawning monsters from nests, and I can't remember what else I saw that I thought shouldn't be possible.

When I first encountered the experimentors it was a huge rush because I didn't know about them. I replayed that seed over and over until I beat them. Now all of my games proceed as if the experimentors are present, and I rush production and research so that by turn 200 I have gateway to the void and at least the self-gravitating hull. And the stargate if I'm lucky.

If the experimentors aren't present, often an AI gets powerful enough that it's still a challenge. Often times, the AI is just one step ahead of me in research and has solar hulls before me. Because of this it makes me wonder if I am still not doing things the most efficient way.

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Re: Testing Government and Influence

#94 Post by Oberlus »

I had some trouble with Experimentors until I forced myself to not use organic species pilots (to avoid Psionic Snowflakes from stealling my ships). To that aim, even Exobots are preferable over Eaxaw (but never had the need to use them, there is always at least one regular lithic/robotic/phototropic/self-sustaining non-bad pilots).
By the time Experimentors start popping out monsters, I have several stacks of ships surrounding their outpost waiting for the starlane to appear.

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Testing Government and Influence

#95 Post by Geoff the Medio »

There is no inherent stability bonus for exobot i am aware of. Probably they like the planetary focus?
Protection focus has a +15 stability effect associated with it in species script macros: https://github.com/freeorion/freeorion/ ... macros#L29

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Re: Testing Government and Influence

#96 Post by human2 »

I know Influence isn't done but I actually liked it. It stops the runaway at the end. I liked how it got harder the farther away from the capital. It actually makes some ship parts like zero point fuel tank (or whatever it is called) useful because the supply lines are broken. I think it could use a lot of balancing and polishing, especially figuring out what is influencing what, but I think it adds stages to the game. That is, you have to adjust your strategy as you keep going.

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Re: Testing Government and Influence

#97 Post by Vezzra »

human2 wrote: Tue Apr 06, 2021 2:28 am I know Influence isn't done but I actually liked it. It stops the runaway at the end. I liked how it got harder the farther away from the capital. It actually makes some ship parts like zero point fuel tank (or whatever it is called) useful because the supply lines are broken. I think it could use a lot of balancing and polishing, especially figuring out what is influencing what, but I think it adds stages to the game. That is, you have to adjust your strategy as you keep going.
Which means that the Influence mechanic idea is basically working (well, maybe better, very basically working... ;)). That's good to hear :D

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Re: Testing Government and Influence

#98 Post by human2 »

I haven't been keeping up with the forum. I notice that I only play the game or read the forum when I'm pretty much exhausted with life and don't want to work on the normal things I've got going.

Anyway, I'm just testing the weekly build and I had a bunch of planets rebel. It was pretty awesome really. I saw the ground battles but had no idea what was going on, I thought it must be a bug. When I lost the planets I started looking around and I noticed the rebel troops! Very cool! I have to admit, I had to load a previous saved game because I wasn't prepared for this and didn't want to try to retake all of the planets. It was easier to fix the negative IP.

I just thought of an event that should modify influence: battles. Races that love war should get a boost when a battle is won. I don't know if you guys already thought about this. I haven't read the whole thread.

Edit to add: having rebel troops needs it's own music because it's such an ominous thing. I don't think I'm going to be very productive writing music but every once a blue moon I will probably do something. I'll try to throw something ambient together right now.

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Re: Testing Government and Influence

#99 Post by Geoff the Medio »

human2 wrote: Thu Apr 29, 2021 5:01 amEdit to add: having rebel troops needs it's own music because it's such an ominous thing.
When would you play that? When a system with a planet with rebels on it is shown in the sidepanel?

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Re: Testing Government and Influence

#100 Post by Ophiuchus »

Geoff the Medio wrote: Fri Apr 30, 2021 5:43 pm
human2 wrote: Thu Apr 29, 2021 5:01 amEdit to add: having rebel troops needs it's own music because it's such an ominous thing.
When would you play that? When a system with a planet with rebels on it is shown in the sidepanel?
I think if there is any planet where your troops decrease you need to know about it.
Any code or patches in anything posted here is released under the CC and GPL licences in use for the FO project.

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Re: Testing Government and Influence

#101 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Ophiuchus wrote: Fri Apr 30, 2021 6:38 pmI think if there is any planet where your troops decrease you need to know about it.
That's what a sitrep is for.

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Re: Testing Government and Influence

#102 Post by Oberlus »

Indeed, you need to know about planets rebelling out even with sound set off.

If it isn't, it should be signaled in those handy indicators in the corner of each planet (in the planets' side panel).

This kind of event is a great candidate to be signaled in the map as well as in the sitreps, but we don't have that in FO.

Regarding the music, I would maybe make it the background music as long as there are planets in that state.

Therefore, background music should use some kind of script to choose between standard music (nothing relevant is happening), warlike music (you got sitreps of battles or incoming enemies this turn), and social unrest (planet rebellion sitrep this turn, overrides warlike music). Maybe something more complex than this.

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Re: Testing Government and Influence

#103 Post by Ophiuchus »

Geoff the Medio wrote: Fri Apr 30, 2021 6:42 pm
Ophiuchus wrote: Fri Apr 30, 2021 6:38 pmI think if there is any planet where your troops decrease you need to know about it.
That's what a sitrep is for.
Yes, I imagine you would probably have many sitreps like this if you get into influence deficit (and it might call for implementing aggregation of sitreps). If you prefer to have the music context-dependent - works for me as well.
Any code or patches in anything posted here is released under the CC and GPL licences in use for the FO project.

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Re: Testing Government and Influence

#104 Post by human2 »

Oberlus wrote: Fri Apr 30, 2021 7:05 pm Indeed, you need to know about planets rebelling out even with sound set off.

If it isn't, it should be signaled in those handy indicators in the corner of each planet (in the planets' side panel).

This kind of event is a great candidate to be signaled in the map as well as in the sitreps, but we don't have that in FO.

Regarding the music, I would maybe make it the background music as long as there are planets in that state.

Therefore, background music should use some kind of script to choose between standard music (nothing relevant is happening), warlike music (you got sitreps of battles or incoming enemies this turn), and social unrest (planet rebellion sitrep this turn, overrides warlike music). Maybe something more complex than this.
Regrading music, I think there should be a hierarchical set of priorities that picks the background track. The four events with the highest priority that I can think of is your home world getting attacked, taken over, you are eradicated, or you eradicate everyone else. The lowest priority is that nothing happened. The first time an event happens should also jack an event up in priority. So the first time a planet rebels will have a much higher priority than the next time. And the purpose of this isn't entirely inform the player, it's also to set a mood. That's why the first time matters. Especially because things usually don't happen all at the same time, so it allows for the game mood to change as players progress. I talked about these music ideas I have on this thread. viewtopic.php?p=105262&sid=606e9ab5accb ... e7#p105262

Regrading government and influence. I played a game with this week's build and the rebellion thing forced me to slow down a lot. I think it made the game a lot more realistic but I feel like the actual management was too involved and it took away from some of the fun. I had to spend a lot of time in the Pedia looking at what different races liked and disliked because stability is so important now. It would be nice if there was a way to view everything for all the races at once like a spreadsheet, but I'm not sure that's very fun. I never really got my research or production very high (which is probably the goal). I only built 3 ships with titanic hulls. Before influence I sometimes built 100 of them. And sometimes the AI had solar hulls too. In this game the AI never even got to gravitonic hull. A lot of the AI planets had rebelled against the AI and I just had to go pick them up. Sly is probably the most useful race because it was easy to keep them stable and have them focus on influence (stargates helped a lot). They were the only reason I won the game I just played. I figure if I didn't have them I probably wouldn't have actually won. The game was over 800 turns. There was a lot of waiting because I had to build a lot more buildings then I use to so that planets stayed happy. Fleets sat still a lot while I built the buildings so that I could then build more ships to go attack. I never actually used any of the government policies. I didn't have the hang of keeping influence above zero until later in the game.

The AI needs to be smarter for sure. At this point I doubt it can ever beat me. When it can, the game will be funner. I really wish there was a way to create a machine learning training model by having the AI play against itself. I'd for sure donate CPU cycles to do build these. But I don't know how and don't have time and I really wish I did and but I don't and probably never will, especially if I had to modify the source code. Does anyone even know if it's possible the way the game is written?

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Re: Testing Government and Influence

#105 Post by Ophiuchus »

human2 wrote: Fri Apr 30, 2021 8:50 pmThere was a lot of waiting because I had to build a lot more buildings then I use to so that planets stayed happy.
Yikes. Hadn't thought about that - building likes/dislikes should probably always work on the supply network level. Exceptions could be ok for unique buildings.
human2 wrote: Fri Apr 30, 2021 8:50 pm I never actually used any of the government policies. I didn't have the hang of keeping influence above zero until later in the game.
They help your influence budget. Centralization is a great boost if you have a strong supply network. Balance also helped me a lot. Anyway you need the slots first.

About machine learning based AI:
human2 wrote: Fri Apr 30, 2021 8:50 pmDoes anyone even know if it's possible the way the game is written?
Pretty sure not possible the way it is now. It probably needs a better API. And also probably it would need code optimizations so that machine learning can work effectively (more bang for the buck/per CPU cycle). Note I do not have practical experience with machine learning though.
Any code or patches in anything posted here is released under the CC and GPL licences in use for the FO project.

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