What does AIIntelligenceFactor affect in the AI difficulty XML?

from Elemental Forums

Trying to mod a few things to improve the AI but I am not sure what this means?

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Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

Anyone know? Does this affect research or just the AI smartness?

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

Frogboy has alluded that the value is used to determine how many cycles the AI may perform when choosing between its options and analysing the map. A higher value means it takes longer to think, and acts smarter. Take that with a grain of salt - changing it from 2 to 10 or even 100 isn't going to make it 100 times smarter.

Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

I do not believe that is the case. I turned it up to 50 and the AI had +500% research. 

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting seanw3, reply 3
I do not believe that is the case. I turned it up to 50 and the AI had +500% research. 
End of seanw3's quote

Yikes well I was hoping it would do as Heavenfall said and I was going to crank it to the max but not if it does that!

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting auboy105, reply 5

Quoting seanw3, reply 3I do not believe that is the case. I turned it up to 50 and the AI had +500% research. 

Yikes well I was hoping it would do as Heavenfall said and I was going to crank it to the max but not if it does that!
End of auboy105's quote

Take a challenge :D

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

It may do other things as well, but I'm sure it does something of what I said too.

See: https://forums.elementalgame.com/417515/get;3080869

So my job is to make sure that the normal AI can provide a *challenge* to the 50%tile player.  Which means only win 50% of the time.  In FE, I did cave a bit and create "Challenging" which has some extra CPU umph in there (right now, largely additional resource analysis and tile analysis).
End of quote

Nothing of the Challenging difficulty is hardcoded, I checked against the .exe. And the only difference between Normal and Challenging in values is that <AIIntelligenceFactor> goes from 1.0 to 1.25 on Challenging. So undeniably he was talking about that specific tag.

 

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

Perhaps this is all an elaborate shenanigan designed to trick modders into increasing the AI research levels to ridiculous levels? Well played  :frogboy: .

 

I should probably test it on lower settings than. Turning it up to 50 could have bugged things out. Anyone else care to tweak it?

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

I am quite curious about this myself. Here's a quote from Brad:

So I’m pumping the computer AI to “challenging”. At this level, he’s identical to the human player still except there’s a few more APIs that get used (a little more CPU gets used).  Those APIs largely revolve around recruiting champions more aggressively and more intelligently handling quests. In the XML, these algorithms are based on  <AIIntelligenceFactor>1.5</AIIntelligenceFactor> which is my own voodoo I use to determine what functions I’ll use.  Go over 1.5 and it might include cheats so for future modders, never go over 1.5 if you don’t want the AI to potentially be “Cheating” (where cheating would include an imbalanced map, getting champions placed in slightly closer to AI starting locations, etc.).
End of quote

But it from December 29, 2011, so things might have changed in the meanwhile.

Here's the link: https://forums.stardock.com/414671/page/3

Reply #9 from Elemental Forums Top


Good catch. That explains why my tests with super hight values sent my games to hell.