Re: Imperialism Mod
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">SE4 just deducts the totals anyway, so it shouldn't cause a problem..careful, though- subjegated races can't accept treaties, but they can gift them (and accept them as gifts)

Re: Imperialism Mod
 

right. moving threshold to and neg cost both to 50 then. higher incentive for positive, lower for negative. still respectable numbers of points to be gained from zeroing it out.

Re: Imperialism Mod
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">gifting can be disabled easily enough for the AI, at least making them give a gift or tribute to an enemy. they could be made to be willing to give gifts and tributes to a friendly race but not an enemy one, which should extend to any no-treaty races.

I believe that if you gift a subjugation treaty to some one, you will be on the paying end of it. of course, that could possibly break the AIs existing treaty, and allow it to be re-established with someone else. I will have to test.

Re: Imperialism Mod
 

Another idea, maybe get rid of troops? Capturing neutral worlds is much more appealing than blowing them up...

Also makes it trickier to get all those breathers, which further serves to reduce player base income...

Re: Imperialism Mod
 

I'd think that keeping troops in would be good. That way, you've still got the option to capture. A better idea IMO, would be to make it much harder to take a world. Say, increase militia hit points and number of militia per population.

Another idea. Is there a way to make specific Neutrals have something special, like a unique tech that they would be willing to "sell" or trade with an ally that would make it worth while? Perhaps Uber efficient cargo bays that are 5x as good as regular ones? Or even some sort of advanced armor/shield techs? Obviously, being an AI only tech, the trade off would have to be pretty good since once a play had it, they wouldn't be able to do any future upgrades. Just an idea.

Re: Imperialism Mod
 

the bonuses for the nuetrals could be culture bonuses.

Re: Imperialism Mod
 

If you gift a sub treaty you do get on the paying end. But that trick allows a sub race to esablish treaties with other empires- something it couldn't do without it.

Re: Imperialism Mod
 

I had thought about giving the AI culture bonuses or unique tech, but that creates an opportunity for a player to 'cheat' and take that culture or tech for themselves at game setup.

now, this isnt a big problem because its easy to tell if someone is cheating and kick them from the game after first contact. but it creates an opportunity for someone to 'misunderstand' how the game is setup, and the added complexity that Users would be facing just seems like an unclean design.

that said, if i was to use a hook like that, it would probably be in the form of unique technology. The idea would be that neutrals would produce spacestations that generate resources, research, and/or intel (thanks to the handy new patch) and you would purchase those stations as they are produced. You would want to keep in the good graces of the neutral so that they would not declare war or break treaty, and have that spacestation shot down - because its probably going to be orbiting their homeworld.

if the basic premise of the mod works and the above concept is not used, things will be alot simpler. I would rather keep this easy, and not edit technology files and design creation texts. that way, the ImpMod will be streamlined and easy to add in to any other mod that wants to take advantage of it. a couple settings changes, and new neutral AI files. Easy to add to your favorite existing mod.

It seems like the only problem remaining, is preventing subjugated neutrals from accepting a gift from enemies. And this is easily surmounted.

The AI can be made to not accept gifts or tributes above a certain anger level. this can be set so that they will never accept a gift or tribute. furthermore, they can be set to be almost infinitly unlikely to accept a trade from an enemy, and fairly likely to trade with a friend.

actually, in the case of trades, likelyness has nothing to do with it. They can be set to trade at outrageous (500:1 or so) ratios with enemies, and generous (9:10 or so) ratios with friends. that way if someone REALLY wants to spend an arm and a leg to undermine your treaty with a neutral, they can. it also creates an incentive to try and prohibit other empires from establishing contact with your pet neutral - especially if you plan on 'trading' half the planets in your empire to it, to take advantage of its increased output.

Re: Imperialism Mod
 

Version Beta-2 is up on PBW. Download it here:

http://seiv.pbw.cc/Download/filelib/953/Impmod.zip

sorry, i could not figure out how the new shrapnel file area works, so its not uploaded there.

Please check out the mod, and let me know what you think. I would like to run a beta-test game on PBW. Quick game with a small or midsize quadrant and low tech costs. I would like to observe how the AI behaves, so I would prefer not to actually play, and just log on as the various Neutrals each turn to check them out. Ideally, players would take time to send in comments and suggestions for changes.

Let me know if you are interested.

Re: Imperialism Mod
 

A fast game?
Sure, I'm interested.