Symbiot AI

[joulupunikki]

(see also General AI meta task #60 )

In EFS1.4 symbiots have no tech, their units have no cost other than build time, and the only structure capable of building symbiot units is the hive. Also, the symbiot prime directives are 1. Violent conquest of all the planets. 2. Never surrender. Also, they are a supporting faction. With these premises, writing a simple but reasonably working Symbiot AI should be among the easiest (least difficult) faction AI writing tasks for Phoenix.

• Symbiot AI should be modular/hierarchical with separated functionality
  1. Conquest of enemy cities
     • Must have effective attacks against defending stacks
  2. Reconnaissance of unknown territories
  3. Transportation of ground units between planets/continents
     • Must evade known PTS and/or concentrate forces to better absorb damage
  4. Patrol of owned territories
  5. Building units
  6. Building cities

[MoeheinS]

Some things to keep in mind; in vanilla they spend most of their time fighting the Stigmata garrisons (even in space). Games would look a LOT different if they immediately just warped PAST the Stigmata garrisons and into the populated galaxy (though they certainly could if they chose to; they just almost never choose to). I believe you can lure them past Stigmata/Fleet garrisons by warping in player owned starships, but it's very hard to reproduce.

Secondly, (from two PBEM games of Escape from Earth, which changes the galaxy but IIRC not the Symbiot AI) from personal experience it appears Symbiots are capable of constructing MORE hives (and populating them with 15+ new units within 0-1 turns of constructing them. Me and my friends tried eradicating all the Symbiots from Holy Terra (where all players+symbiots spawn in Escape from Earth) and over the course of 120+ turns found that new Hives had a tendency to stealthily appear. Again, hard to reproduce, but seeing as how it happened in two seperate games, I think I can vouch for my sanity.

These things probably don't affect your goal of making a working Symbiot AI, but I hope you were amused by the above anecdotes.

[joulupunikki]

@MoeheinS First point: yes ... but do you know that in EFS1.4 the symbiots do not build spaceships so if/when their starting ships are destroyed they are forever trapped on their starting planets. The doctored EFSHYP.EXE from the Hyperion mod remedies this and symbiots can be more of a threat.

Second point: that is an example of the EFS1.4 AI cheating, cheating and cheating. That makes for rather dull single player games, not much use for tactics other than steamrolling over all opponents. General AI design directives will be gathered in #60 (good AI could be considered university level research subject.)