Water territory values applied to land

[MaugTheInfirm]

I'm playing the 4th scenario of the Uva Mosk in Deadlock II, which is very resource constrained - values cut at least in half for iron and endurium.

I think it would be interesting to see how the AI players react to a complete lack of iron, wood and endurium on the map: all territories have values of zero for those resources. I also realized water territory already has these settings, so its already part of Deadlock II.

The starting allocation of iron and wood would remain, but it would need to be used more carefully, since it can never be refreshed. My guess is the AI players would burn through their resources and money, and then have no idea how to make progress.

I suppose the Skinerneen spoil the difficulty level, so maybe prices there would need to be higher to keep it scarce. The prices could be 10x higher for scarcity, and 1,000x higher to prevent players from using the black market much at all. Same with military units, which can be scrapped for their iron value.

After my current scenario, I'll look at editing a map to have these characteristics and see how far I get.

[StingMaster]

My guess is the AI players would burn through their resources and money, and then have no idea how to make progress.

The current AI is probably programmed along the lines of: if (metal_stockpile < x) { if (tile_metal_value > y) { build mine }}. So yeah it wouldn't know how to deal with a no metal scenario unless it was specifically programmed to deal with it.

But what you described does sound like an interesting scenario I'd enjoy playing either as a no metal or no iron (but endurium available) map. Iron caches spread around the map could serve as a lifeline and you would have to maximize what you have via metallurgy and/or end>tritium conversion. Doubling or tripling the skirineen metal prices should work until about mid to late game when credits are more easily made. You could also build low metal buildings (e.g. University = 25 iron) and sell them after upgrading them if your metal is that constrained.

I doubt you'd be able to program the AI to deal with it though but simply giving them all the metal they want at the start + the right personality (get aggressive after x turns) could make for a fun map.

[MaugTheInfirm]

When I tried creating this map using the Deadlock 2 editor, I could edit the type of each square (painful enough) but not the values. Using the editor, there doesn't seem to be a way to create a map with zero for the iron value. I also hit a problem reloading the map I just saved, but I assume that comes from inexperience with the Deadlock 2 editor.

My goal is to stress test the computer player and see what happens, so for that I would use zero iron, zero endurium and zero wood. Nothing except food and energy. As a human player I can find tricks to increase my store of iron, but a computer player would probably run for awhile and then go idle. Maybe starting with 500 iron and 500 wood could delay that moment a bit.

I seem to recall a list of save file offsets around here somewhere, and a tool that outputs DL1 save files. To save researching it myself, I might need to investigate what others have already discovered. I'm not yet motivated to write the tool myself, and then debug it. This might go on the pile of "when I try and work with an AI coding tool" ideas.