Galactic Empires (Wesnoth in Space)

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Sire
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Re: Galactic Empires (Wesnoth in Space)

Post by Sire »

Instead of going to sleep or tinkering with Red Winter Reborn, I decided to get two more matches of Galactic Empires in to do further AI testing. Let's see how stuff went down.

Versions Info
-- Battle for Wesnoth 1.16.2
-- Galactic Empires 4.2.0
-- Galactic Empires AI 0.1.1a

* * * * *

Match 1: Four Player, Alpha Quadrant (Illidari) 28 Turns || Small Empire (1 Planet), Primitive Tech (T0), Thriving Aliens || 150 Gold, 10 Income
-- Into the fray once again to see if changing gold amounts does anything significant to the AI, as well as finishing Round 2 of trying out all the factions.
-- I saw a slight increase in upgrades, mainly seeing Food Processors on more HQs as well as the Armor upgrade on the various Flagships. I did spot one Material Processor on an HQ and a return of the Missile Defense on one of the planets.
-- Aside from that and a slightly more larger battle at the start, the flow of the match remained about the same as previous. I never saw a higher tier ship built which is somewhat dissapointing.
=== On that ship recruitment note, I know they build better ships if their tech tree allows it at the start of the match, but I don't remember if they just fall back to their cheapest unit once the gold reserves are spent. I'll have to change the Tech Level and give even more Income to see if there are any significant changes.

-- As for the Illidari, I think their T1 Soldier unit may be the best one out of all the races, even beating out the Vendeeni Fighter (The Vendeeni Sliverer is a special case, so its not counted here). Sure, the Vendeeni Fighter has the advantage during its proper time of day, but the reliability of the Illidari Trooper makes it superior in my opinion.
=== However, I think their T1 advantage is at the cost of their T2 options, as the other factions T2 units have the edge over their Illidari counterparts in terms of verstility or raw power. The T2 Illidari soldier units are good, its just the other factions are slightly better.
-- As for their ships, I guess their Lookouts and Fighters are meant to be quick and agile spacecraft, which works just fine. Alas, I'm not the type of player who likes to rely on RNG for Dodge Tanking, especially if its at the cost of taking higher damage.
=== Personally, I don't mind the Lookout being as it is, but a part of me would like to see a buff in resistances for the Illidari Fighter. If I were to try and compare this to regular Wesnoth, I think of the Fighter being equivilant to the Elvish Fighter or Elvish Archer, while the Scout can be the Footpad (in terms of resistances/dodge chances). // I know Galactic Empires is likely balanced differently, but that's just my take on it.
-- I will continue to sing the praises of the Illidari Teleporter being one of the best things in the world. Need to play defense and fortify a planet? Done. Need a staging ground to gather ground forces for an invasion? Done. Just want to spread workers to other planets faster? Done.
-- I also tried out the Bio Bomb, with the target being a Terran Homeworld. Poison works wonders and waiting two turns is likely overkill as one turn of damage is likely enough to soften any resistance. // I should realy try this against the Vendeeni, but it may be a while before I return to the Illidari.

Match 2: Four Player, Beta Quadrant (Vendeeni) 16 Turns || Medium Empire (2 Planets), Developed Tech (T1), Thriving Aliens || 150 Gold, 18 Income (Highest Income for Default Wesnoth)
AI Config:
-- Upgrade Gold Fraction = 0.30 (from 0.25)
-- Upgrade Gold Remaining = 20 (from 30)

-- This time I decided to mess around a little with the AI Config as well as bumping up the income all the way to 18. Personally, I think 18 base income is overkill for a level playing field, so further tests may leave the player at an income disadvantage and lean into "Cheating AI" territory.
-- There definitely was an increase in upgrades. I saw more Food Processors and Material Processors. I even saw a lot of Planets with the Missile Defense system, and at endgame I even saw a Laser Defense system installed! As for their ships, I mainly just saw Transports with Turbochargers and Flagships with Armor.
-- One of the things I noticed is that the AI still tended to spam cheaper ships after exausting their starting gold supply. Aside from Transports, I mainly saw Drillers and Rovers (T0 Scouts) from the Dwarftha factions.
-- However, despite the upgrades, the AI was not any more difficult. Perhaps it was slightly easier because it wasn't spamming as much ships as before with its money, so I may move the Upgrade Gold Remaining back to 30 while keeping the fraction at 0.30.

-- As for the Vendeeni, as fun as it is to mess around with the Moth Leader and double dip with Darkspace and the Flagship bonus, it may be best for all involved to remove Moths from being a leader candidate.
-- I didn't get to do much of their ground game this time around. When it was time for me to go on the offensive, the timing was off and I did not have overwhelming numbers like in my previous Vendeeni match.
-- As always, Vendeeni Ships are all about raw firepower, and they do they very well. Their lack of healing may be a problem, but it can be sorted if one gets a forward Space Dock to retreat damaged ships.

-- As for the Beta Quadrant map, I'm not sure if I enjoy how it plays for 4-player matches. While Dwarftha players will have a field day with Terraformers, other factions may have a rougher time due to the more hostile environments.
-- Also, if Aliens are on, good luck having a good matchup against the Cerelum Crawlers to get the Green Giant planets in the middle. I feel like some factions will have an easier time dealing with these enemies than others.

* * * * * EDIT * * * * *
-- Played another match. Why do I keep writing reports of my matches?...

Match 3: Four Player, Epsilon Quadrant (Random - Dwarftha) 24 Turns || Advanced Tech (T2), Barren Universe || 150 Gold, 18 Income (10 for Human)
AI Config:
-- Upgrade Gold Fraction = 0.30 (from 0.25)
-- Upgrade Gold Remaining = 30 (no change from defaults)

-- Today I learned that Epsilon Quadrant doesn't allow for Income changes, so my initial planned run on that map had to be scrapped... // Until I went into the files and removed the income lock. I noticed some of the other maps also have income lock, so if I mess with it further I may unlock them.

-- This is the first time I delved into Advance Tech as I prefer starting with lower tech. With Advanced Tech and the extra income, I saw a Terran Beacon built (granted, this was on a planet after their empire got destroyed, so all they could do is upgrade). I also saw the usual Transports with Turbochargers and Planets with their defense systems. I even saw the Gaia (Planet Healing) and Planetary Shield upgrades!
-- While the gameplay flow was still relatively similar to my other runs, this is probably one of the more enjoyable matches I had. I have a feeling I'll stick to the 150 Starting Gold and 18 Income for AI, while giving myself 10 Income. The AI tends to waste its money on Transport Turbochargers, and by the time it comes for me to destroy planets, their defense systems do not do much when surrounded. // I also learned when capturing planets with a unique faction upgrade attached, the capturing faction can also use that upgrade on that planet, which is pretty neat. Granted, a Terran Beacon is a bit useless for the Dwarftha, unless there's Vendeeni ships attacking it.
=== Regarding Planetary Defenses, any reason why they are "Defend Only?" I think their value would go up slightly if they can also attack nearby enemy units. As it stands, it mostly seems to just serve as a small ward against solo snipes.

-- As for the Dwarftha, round 3, I finally fielded their Steadfast ships. They turned out to be fairly good and were useful as hybrid bombers when their defending duties were done.
-- The Terraformer is obviously map dependent for its usefulness, but a part of me wonders if it is truly worthwhile to invest into in serious matches. It takes time for the Terraformer to do its work, and then that planet also needs the workers to work on the improved tiles. // Then again, this may also be dependent on the starting tech level. Starting at Level 2 allows one to get the Terraformer earlier, which is a better investment. Starting at Tech 1 or 0 means the game has progressed a bit more into the war phase by the time it is researched, so improving planets becomes less of a priority.
-- Back to the ground forces, it feels great when the player is able to fill a transport with an upgraded party. I'm learning the value of farming hits on HQs to get that 1 EXP, then getting the 8 EXP for the units who need it most. // I still haven't had the chance to try the Shock Trooper as there were no Illdari to fry.

* * * * * EDIT 2 * * * * *

Bug Report: Chasm Tile Conflicts with Core Wesnoth
It seems that Galactic Empires has a conflict with core Wesnoth, as it messes up the images for the standard Chasm tile.
-- When I went to resume work on my Red Winter Reborn project, I noticed the Chasm tiles having border issues (they were showing Grass instead of Cave). Uninstalling GE fixed this issue.
-- Just figured I'll report it here.
Attachments
4p - GE Epsilon Quadrant replay 20220515-162129.gz
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4p - GE Alpha Quadrant replay 20220515-010650.gz
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4p - GE Beta Quadrant replay 20220515-023316.gz
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mattsc
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Re: Galactic Empires (Wesnoth in Space)

Post by mattsc »

Hi - sorry, been (and still am) really busy with other things... Just a couple quick replies:
Sire wrote: May 15th, 2022, 7:43 am -- One of the things I noticed is that the AI still tended to spam cheaper ships after exausting their starting gold supply. Aside from Transports, I mainly saw Drillers and Rovers (T0 Scouts) from the Dwarftha factions.
It shouldn't be quite like that. Ships should have equal probability of being selected, except that those of which there are fewer on the map should be preferred. If the AI cannot afford the more expensive ship, it will not recruit anything else this turn. Of course, that does overall prefer the cheaper ships, as it requires that the more expensive ones are selected two turns in a row, but I think that level of preference is ok.

That's how it should work at least, I'll check if there's a bug. Transporters are dealt with separately though, as I said earlier, I'm planning to have a look at that too.

Sire wrote: May 15th, 2022, 7:43 am -- However, despite the upgrades, the AI was not any more difficult. Perhaps it was slightly easier because it wasn't spamming as much ships as before with its money
Yeah, that is consistent with what we observed and the reason why the gold available for upgrades is so restrictive. As you experienced, the AI does buy upgrades if it has enough gold. As discussed, I'll still see if I can come up with an idea how to change things up a bit.

Sire wrote: May 15th, 2022, 7:43 am The AI tends to waste its money on Transport Turbochargers, and by the time it comes for me to destroy planets, their defense systems do not do much when surrounded.
Well, Bob told me that turbochargers are pretty much always a desirable option for transporters (or at least that's what I understood), so they get one of the highest rating bonuses. That could easily be changed if the consensus is that it is a waste of money.
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Sire
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Re: Galactic Empires (Wesnoth in Space)

Post by Sire »

mattsc wrote: May 21st, 2022, 10:03 pm
Sire wrote: May 15th, 2022, 7:43 am The AI tends to waste its money on Transport Turbochargers, and by the time it comes for me to destroy planets, their defense systems do not do much when surrounded.
Well, Bob told me that turbochargers are pretty much always a desirable option for transporters (or at least that's what I understood), so they get one of the highest rating bonuses. That could easily be changed if the consensus is that it is a waste of money.
Turbochargers are indeed a very desirable option for Transporters. The potential issue is that when I play, I tend to have a max of 3 transports at once, while the AI tends to have more than that (especially if rebuilding destroyed Transports). Spending gold on replacements & upgrades adds up over time which could have been used for other things.
-- Also, I didn't really see other ships get upgrades, just Transporters and Flagships.

Granted, it's been a while since I played as I started tinkering with other things, so my memory may not be that accurate.
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Re: Galactic Empires (Wesnoth in Space)

Post by mattsc »

Sire wrote: May 21st, 2022, 11:52 pm Turbochargers are indeed a very desirable option for Transporters. The potential issue is that when I play, I tend to have a max of 3 transports at once, while the AI tends to have more than that (especially if rebuilding destroyed Transports). Spending gold on replacements & upgrades adds up over time which could have been used for other things.
Yeah, that makes sense ... As I said, I'll be looking into upgrades and transporter recruiting anyway, I'll keep that in mind. There is a related issue in that the AI does not try to keep transporters safe at all at the moment. They are just heading straight for their destinations, without taking enemy threats into account. That's a complex issue to consider (which is why I haven't done it yet), because it involves not only where enemy ships currently are, but also where they will or could be later. But maybe I can do something to improve this just a little bit anyway.
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Re: Galactic Empires (Wesnoth in Space)

Post by Bob_The_Mighty »

There's a new update for Galactic Empires on the add-ons server now. Thanks to everyone posting feedback and replays. GE 4.4 addresses almost all of the issues raised above. In summary: Transporters no longer blockade, Vendeeni are nerfed, Terrans have probes and new faction tech, and flagship promotion is back (at a cost). Plus lots of little tweaks and bugfixes.

The full changelog is here...
Spoiler:
Known issues...
Spoiler:
The biggest change needs a little explaining: I have reworked the population growth rate to encourage faster colonisation and more ground battles. In many games it seemed that all the economy happened on the homeworlds while captured planets were mere prizes. Now, fresh HQs have a lower food store limit (12 instead of 15), so citizens are produced more quickly on new colonies, but each unit increases it by 2 (instead of 1) to stop runaway growth. This should mean that it's worth fighting over planets with productive terrain. In addition, the barracks has been redesigned as a new tier #1 tech for all factions. It halves the food required to produce combat units, so it's no longer so costly to launch invasions. Let us know how it works out.
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Re: Galactic Empires (Wesnoth in Space)

Post by supvsetrt »

Hi, mmmax asked me to upload yesterday's saved buggy Temples 4p game with many ooses. unfortunately I found only turn 2 so I hope it will help
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mattsc
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Re: Galactic Empires (Wesnoth in Space)

Post by mattsc »

supvsetrt wrote: May 26th, 2022, 2:16 pm Hi, mmmax asked me to upload yesterday's saved buggy Temples 4p game with many ooses. unfortunately I found only turn 2 so I hope it will help
This is really Bob's domain, but the first question is whether all of you played with the same version of GE. I am pretty sure that some of the changes Bob made in v4.3 will cause OOS errors if somebody has a previous version. [I'm sure you considered this, just asking anyway ...]


In other news, I just released version 0.1.2 of the AI. It is a very minor update to the "inner workings" only. It mostly just resolves a compatibility issue between the AI and the latest GE release (versions 4.3 and 4.4). I'm still working on the promised behavior changes, they aren't ready for release yet.

Galactic Empires AI v0.1.2 Changelog:

Code: Select all

----- 0.1.2, 26 May 2022 -----

- Make AI compatible with Galactic Empires 4.4 (specifically cloner removal)
- Allow AI to be used with GE era only
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Re: Galactic Empires (Wesnoth in Space)

Post by supvsetrt »

mattsc wrote: May 26th, 2022, 3:04 pm
supvsetrt wrote: May 26th, 2022, 2:16 pm Hi, mmmax asked me to upload yesterday's saved buggy Temples 4p game with many ooses. unfortunately I found only turn 2 so I hope it will help
This is really Bob's domain, but the first question is whether all of you played with the same version of GE. I am pretty sure that some of the changes Bob made in v4.3 will cause OOS errors if somebody has a previous version. [I'm sure you considered this, just asking anyway ...]


In other news, I just released version 0.1.2 of the AI. It is a very minor update to the "inner workings" only. It mostly just resolves a compatibility issue between the AI and the latest GE release (versions 4.3 and 4.4). I'm still working on the promised behavior changes, they aren't ready for release yet.

Galactic Empires AI v0.1.2 Changelog:

Code: Select all

----- 0.1.2, 26 May 2022 -----

- Make AI compatible with Galactic Empires 4.4 (specifically cloner removal)
- Allow AI to be used with GE era only
I think we played with same version, because we were updating to the newest before playing. Also, I asked guys and no one ever played that map without the ooses, so it seems not related to AI but seems it was there even in older versions. It seems it has something to do with the wormholes. - "Temples of Gallatron"
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Re: Galactic Empires (Wesnoth in Space)

Post by supvsetrt »

Uploading this replay, interesting game with all it needed, including destroying of planets, using bio-bombs etc.; me vs. mmmax on Alpha .
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dwarftough
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Re: Galactic Empires (Wesnoth in Space)

Post by dwarftough »

Another bug with braineaters :D

If two braineaters are adjacent, you kill one of them and the other adjacent has less than 4 xp, it dies from splatter ability as well, and should cause splatter himself... And here it comes buggy, ending up with C stack overflow, and all units around being killed.

So, that's the initial position
bug1.png
bug1.png (499.25 KiB) Viewed 6179 times
Now after I defeat the left one, I see this error in the chat
bugerror.png
And the result on the planet is (although my guys had tons of hp to stand)
bug2.png
bug2.png (406.61 KiB) Viewed 6179 times
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2p - GE Beta Quadrant replay 20220528-053801BUUUG.gz
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2p - GE Beta Quadrant Turn 15BUUG.gz
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Re: Galactic Empires (Wesnoth in Space)

Post by dwarftough »

> Flagships are unique units and cannot be replaced, but you do not lose if it is destroyed.

Now outdated (in description of flagship)
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Re: Galactic Empires (Wesnoth in Space)

Post by mattsc »

Version 0.2.0 of the Galactic Empires AI is now on the 1.16 add-ons server. It includes two major changes and a few minor fixes and improvements:
Transporter recruiting
Arguably the biggest problem was that the AI was recruiting too many transporters. This resulted not only in, well, there being too many transporters, but due to the gold spent on them (and esp. also on them being replaced all the time since they are so easy to shoot down) there not being much gold left for anything else. So there weren't many combat ships, but it also meant that not much gold was available for upgrades (much of which, to make things worse, was spent on upgrading transporters).

I have made several changes to that. Most notably, recruiting of transporters is now weighed against other recruiting and the number of transporters the AI wants to recruit has been reduced in the first place.
Recruiting advanced ships
There were two issues. The first was a bug in the code. While the AI advanced the research tier counter for ships, it did not actually add those ships to the recruit list. That has been fixed. [ I had tested that up and down but had missed a crucial step in my tests ... :doh: ]

The second problem was caused by, guess what, there being too many transporters. Thus, in general, there was not enough gold left for advanced ships. This is definitely improved now with the changes to transporter recruiting, we'll have to see whether that is sufficient.

For reference, when the AI wants to recruit a ship that it does not have the gold for this turn, it does not recruit anything in order to have more gold next turn. However, it does (intentionally) not remember that choice and does a new random selection the next turn. Thus, an expensive ship in low gold conditions would have to be chosen randomly twice (or even more times) in a row, which is, of course, less likely than recruiting a cheaper ship on either turn. That should be okay though, we wouldn't really want to hold out for multiple turns on the chance that there might be enough gold then. There are multiple ways to change that if the current situation is still insufficient, but at least in AI vs. AI games I see quite a few advanced ships recruited now.
There are a few other changes that will probably not be as noticeable but should still make a minor difference on average. See the complete changelog below.

Finally a word on upgrades: Except for what's mentioned in the changelog, I have not made changes to the upgrades procedure yet. I need to put some more thought into that, but I think the changes above are significant enough that I don't want to delay the release. I should have another update with changes to upgrades soon.

Thanks to Sire for all the feedback!


Galactic Empires AI v0.2.0 Changelog:

Code: Select all

----- 0.2.0, 31 May 2022 -----

- Transport troops CA:
  - Weigh recruiting of transports vs. combat ships
  - Decrease desired number of transports for ground combat purpose
  - Do not require more transports for colonising than there are neutral planets
  - Recruit new transports after all other transport actions, rather than before
- Research CA bug fix: new ships are now correctly added to recruit list
- Upgrades CA: add rating for new barracks upgrade
- Move ground CA: transports do no blockade planet any more as of GE 4.3
- Population control CA: reduce bonus for soldiers when enemies are close
- Misc. minor changes and bug fixes
  - Exclude hexes next to HQs when moving units away from HQs
  - Remove all remaining ratings involving the removed cloner upgrade
  - Misc. changes to debug output
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Re: Galactic Empires (Wesnoth in Space)

Post by dwarftough »

I think I start to understand when wormholes produce OOS. It happens when you move your ship continously through the hole or near the hole and your ship's movement is interrupted by discovered an enemy in the fog. Seems like the other client thinks the movement isn't interrupted, or stuff like that. As I played a game, if you move your ship in the initial destination hex after the interruption, the other side reports several ooses but the following game goes absolutely fine (so the intergrity isn't damaged)
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Re: Galactic Empires (Wesnoth in Space)

Post by mattsc »

dwarftough wrote: June 2nd, 2022, 7:19 pm I think I start to understand when wormholes produce OOS. It happens when you move your ship continously through the hole or near the hole and your ship's movement is interrupted by discovered an enemy in the fog. Seems like the other client thinks the movement isn't interrupted, or stuff like that. As I played a game, if you move your ship in the initial destination hex after the interruption, the other side reports several ooses but the following game goes absolutely fine (so the intergrity isn't damaged)
I can confirm that that is what is happening. I started a local server and two instances of Wesnoth, giving Side 1 to one player and Side 2 to the other (with Side 3 and 4 given to the AI). On the first turn, as soon as you try to move a unit through the wormhole, the OOS error occurs when that unit is stopped by sighting the pirate ship. [You can do the test also with a single instance and playing the replay, but then you need to have the sighted event occur to Side 2, as Side 1 is the one that has vision by default.]

However, this appears to be an engine bug in Wesnoth, rather than a problem with GE. I can create the same problem by adding a tunnel to one of the default 3-player maps. It appears that the "enemy sighted" interruptions are not transmitted correctly when they occur through tunnels. I'll have a look at the Wesnoth source code to see if I can figure out what's going on, but most likely somebody else will have to have a look at this.
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Re: Galactic Empires (Wesnoth in Space)

Post by dwarftough »

mattsc wrote: June 2nd, 2022, 11:44 pm However, this appears to be an engine bug in Wesnoth, rather than a problem with GE. I can create the same problem by adding a tunnel to one of the default 3-player maps. It appears that the "enemy sighted" interruptions are not transmitted correctly when they occur through tunnels. I'll have a look at the Wesnoth source code to see if I can figure out what's going on, but most likely somebody else will have to have a look at this.
Uh (btw I wonder if Silver Mage has this kind of error too), either way we have to report this issue
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