Diversity in AI species

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drkosy
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Re: Diversity in AI species

#16 Post by drkosy »

Maybe the reason is to chase the perfect game: You got an excellent galaxy with great starting conditions some specials nearby, everything goes well, till you meet the AI. Than you realized that you have 2x Trith and 2x Eaxaw as AI players what ruins your game due to xenophobic hassardment of captured colonies. That could really be a reason that let you think of restart the game with different species...

Don't take my post to serious :wink:
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LienRag
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Re: Diversity in AI species

#17 Post by LienRag »

Geoff the Medio wrote: Tue May 11, 2021 10:26 am
Oberlus wrote: Tue May 11, 2021 10:07 amI still fail to see the point of what LienRag was commenting.
As far as I understood, the goal is to randomly vary one aspect of universe generation (which species are present) without changing anything else. This seems like a reasonable request for testing purposes, regardless of whether it's practically doable.
That could be nice but it's not what I wrote about - sorry if I didn't explain myself well enough.

The thing is that right now if I start a random game with a fixed seed, some parts of it will not be random at all (Starting Species will always be the same with the same seed, Galaxy Age too, ...).
And if I play with random seed as Oberlus suggested, then I can't go back to the game after I correct a minor (or a major) bug/stringtable - I have to start entirely anew after each correction, which I find a bit frustrating.

I believe that just salting the seed with all the other parameters would solve this problem ?

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Oberlus
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Re: Diversity in AI species

#18 Post by Oberlus »

LienRag wrote: Wed May 12, 2021 11:16 pm The thing is that right now if I start a random game with a fixed seed
Just to be sure: a random game with a fixed seed is a game with a fixed seed and some/most/all galaxy settings set to random?

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Diversity in AI species

#19 Post by Geoff the Medio »

LienRag wrote: Wed May 12, 2021 11:16 pmAnd if I play with random seed as Oberlus suggested, then I can't go back to the game after I correct a minor (or a major) bug/stringtable - I have to start entirely anew after each correction, which I find a bit frustrating.
Not sure what "go back to the game" means, but for some things you could save the game on the first turn, or just flush the stringtable in the UI.

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LienRag
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Re: Diversity in AI species

#20 Post by LienRag »

Oberlus wrote: Thu May 13, 2021 6:54 am Just to be sure: a random game with a fixed seed is a game with a fixed seed and some/most/all galaxy settings set to random?
Indeed.
Geoff the Medio wrote: Thu May 13, 2021 9:24 am
LienRag wrote: Wed May 12, 2021 11:16 pmAnd if I play with random seed as Oberlus suggested, then I can't go back to the game after I correct a minor (or a major) bug/stringtable - I have to start entirely anew after each correction, which I find a bit frustrating.
Not sure what "go back to the game" means, but for some things you could save the game on the first turn, or just flush the stringtable in the UI.
When I tried to do that the saved-and-reloaded game had the FOCS in the state they were at the time of creation of the game, not the new version. I believe that's the same for stringtables.

But maybe there's a way to have the new stringtables and FOCS that I'm unaware of ?

So as of now I can't go back to the game that I started (I mean, after correcting a FOCS file) but I can go back to the exact same Galaxy by correcting the FOCS file, closing FreeOrion and restarting it, then restarting a new game with the same seed and settings.

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Oberlus
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Re: Diversity in AI species

#21 Post by Oberlus »

LienRag wrote: Thu May 13, 2021 3:50 pm
Geoff the Medio wrote: Thu May 13, 2021 9:24 amfor some things you could save the game on the first turn, or just flush the stringtable in the UI.
When I tried to do that the saved-and-reloaded game had the FOCS in the state they were at the time of creation of the game, not the new version. I believe that's the same for stringtables.
I think you are wrong here, LienRag. I've done many times what Geoff describes and it worked, including mid game. To be specific: change FOCS files (changing values, adding macros, creating new files...), restart FO, load saved game.
Current meter values might be off of what they should be for changed content, but they will start working as intended from that point onwards. And when you do that for a game saved in turn 1, there is hardly any meter off.

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LienRag
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Re: Diversity in AI species

#22 Post by LienRag »

Oh ?

I'll have to try it then, thanks for the tip.

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Re: Diversity in AI species

#23 Post by Ophiuchus »

Note that few stuff depends on the saved state and will not change on reloading. E.g. monster designs (this can lead to a mismatch with changed monster hulls).
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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Vezzra
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Re: Diversity in AI species

#24 Post by Vezzra »

drkosy wrote: Mon May 10, 2021 4:00 pmThan I wonder why it's actually there.
When I wrote that code years ago, the general consensus was that while the species selection algorithm should take care that a game does not end up with a too monotonous selection of species, it also shouldn't be too restrictive (as in completely prevent having a species more than once if that can be avoided).

Which is why I went with having each species twice in the initial selection pool.

As Oberlus pointed out, that can easily be fixed by removing that `* 2` part (which would be my personal preference too, btw. ;)).

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Diversity in AI species

#25 Post by Geoff the Medio »

A rule or galaxy setup option to avoid duplicate species spawns could be added.

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drkosy
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Re: Diversity in AI species

#26 Post by drkosy »

When I wrote that code years ago, the general consensus was that while the species selection algorithm should take care that a game does not end up with a too monotonous selection of species, it also shouldn't be too restrictive (as in completely prevent having a species more than once if that can be avoided).
Ah, that actually makes sens :)
A rule or galaxy setup option to avoid duplicate species spawns could be added.
Don't know if that is necessary. It seems I'm the only one concerning that and with the help of Oberlus I can fix it. So for me it's fine. Somehow to much rules makes it hard to find the important things.
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LienRag
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Re: Diversity in AI species

#27 Post by LienRag »

No, I complained about that too sometimes ago.
A galaxy rule would be interesting, though obviously it's not high priority.

o01eg
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Re: Diversity in AI species

#28 Post by o01eg »

LienRag wrote: Tue May 18, 2021 4:26 pm No, I complained about that too sometimes ago.
A galaxy rule would be interesting, though obviously it's not high priority.
It affects only universe generation so I think it should be option or galaxy setting.
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