Conquered races - additional benefit: forced migrations and growing of planets
 

Havent seen this one mentioned before but am interested to know whether it is possible in the full game (waiting for my copy).

In my current game (small map), I havent founmd any planets larger than 10 facilities for me and am surrounded by five other players. I took out the Phong player on turn 33 (using transports equipped with satellites - he he he). Thought I would try and relocate his people to all my colonies which had his atmosphere (carbon dioxide)and move my people elsewhere.
All of my crappy colonies which had only 2, 3 or 4 space suddenly grew to 10,15 or 20. Six planets later, I had gained room for 80 research centres and will now be able to make a bid for no1 position (currently held by the Jraenar who were blessed by having dozens of large compatible planets).
Conquering another race has even more benefits than I thought.
Newbies, take note!!!
God I love this game! Cant wait for my full copy!!

Re: Conquered races - additional benefit: forced migrations and growing of planets
 

Heh, I pointed this out a while back! Its on a couple strategy pages. When HB was up my strategy was there.

Re: Conquered races - additional benefit: forced migrations and growing of planets
 

I don't understand. Your old planets grew?

Re: Conquered races - additional benefit: forced migrations and growing of planets
 

Daynarr's absolutely correct.
I got the idea from a trick I used to pull in MOO2 where I used to export captured Sakkrans around the galaxy (they had a subterranean trait that increased planet capacity. Caught a few of my friends out with it......

Re: Conquered races - additional benefit: forced migrations and growing of planets
 

I just got this game for christmas and so far I have been addicted. In my first game I started out with 1 planet, low tech, being used to strategy games like Masters of Orion I imediately started building tons of colonizers and expanded to every planet in my system, not just the ones my colony can breath. I had emergency build turned on and was building colonizers like crazy. By turn 20 or so I met a race 2 systems away. I took my fleet, a group of frigates, made one transport with small troops and went to his home planet, blew up the defenses and dropped a bunch of troops on his home planet. I then issued a message asking him to surrender and he did. So by turn 30 I had about 20 planets.
I started to build more colonizers from his home planet and thats when I found out the atmosphere/breathing thing for races(mind you I never read the instructions, I just jumped into the game). Its intresting in this first game, after a few hundred turns, I got a message that the sun in my home system was gonna explode... I tried like mad to research stellar manipulation thinking maybe I could do something to stop it. Well it was hopeless, I never got to the tech levels, the sun exploded along with my home planet and everything in the system... by this time I had about 5 systems with every planet in each system colonized. Looking back, had I been higher level in Stellar manipulation I wonder if I could have built a dyson sphere that could have stopped the star from exploding or would have still have gone?
Anyway I started another game, this time 1 planet, medium tech cause I was determined to get high enough in stellar manipulation to find out if I could have done anything to save my planet. I read some of the documentation, and this time I was in the middle of the quadrant, I rapidly pushed all the races back... after 3 or 4 days of no sleep I managed to conquer most of the quadrant. I captured one race of each atmosphere breathing type and have spread them accordingly to all my planets. I did not find any races that lived normally on zero atmosphere so those are the only planets that are small. This definately is a valid strategy for all of the games. It beats waiting to reseach those atmosphere improvers.
Even now, I got them research but whats the point when I can wipe out the rest of the universe with just 3 dreadnaughts?


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Re: Conquered races - additional benefit: forced migrations and growing of planets
 

No, they didn't grew. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif
When you colonize a planet, the atmosphere determines if you will be able to use it to its full capacity or just 1/5 of it. When you start your race has only one breathable atmosphere (e.g. Oxygen). So you should look to colonize oxygen planets to use its max potential.

You can colonize other planets with different atmospheres, but they will be 'domed' (people will not live freely of the surface, but in small domed cities), and they will have only use 1/5 of planets full capacity.

When you conquer (not destroy) colonies of other empires, you will also conquer their population. Now, if that population breathes different atmosphere (e.g. Hydrogen) you can use that population to colonize worlds with Hydrogen atmosphere. After that these Hydrogen worlds will use its full capacity with conquered population just like Oxygen worlds use theirs with your population. This way you can increase the capacity of your colonies.

Of course, the maximum capacity of planet is also determined by its size. That can't be increased.

Re: Conquered races - additional benefit: forced migrations and growing of planets
 

Why wait for enemy submission? In a "quiet" begin game my first three research topics are: Mil Strat, Mil Strat and Ship Capture.

Then I arm all my scouts with cheap boarding parties and capture any unguarded colony ships I see. I often wonder what kind of propaganda my guys sell the hydrogen breathing crystals to make them work for us...

Needless to say my home sector is always diverse. Often I can grab a conlony ship from an AI player on first contact and still make a trade or other alliance right after (all alliaces are, of course, temporary).


[This message has been edited by Yojinbo (edited 05 January 2001).]

[This message has been edited by Yojinbo (edited 05 January 2001).]

Re: Conquered races - additional benefit: forced migrations and growing of planets
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Yojinbo:
I often wonder what kind of propaganda my guys sell the hydrogen breathing crystals to make them work for us... <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

hehe, im willing to bet its not cholcolate bars wrapped in political leaflets. a better question is how your black ops guys infiltrate their crews and populous.

Re: Conquered races - additional benefit: forced migrations and growing of planets
 

Thats easy they just use their portable brain wipe equipment and write them a new personality. Then they see that my empire is a much better place to live. This works much better than those old fashioned re-education facilities.

Re: Conquered races - additional benefit: forced migrations and growing of planets
 

Don't you think conquered populations should retain their own Race abilities? They always switch to MY racial abilities. Are they genetically altered or something? They could change their cultural abilities as the new culture is imposed on them, but race should stay the same. Then it would be beneficial to capture a planet from a very intelligent race and turn it into a Research Compound.

Re: Conquered races - additional benefit: forced migrations and growing of planets
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by warp nine:
Don't you think conquered populations should retain their own Race abilities? <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

think thats annoying eh? how about when you conquer a race with advanced storage, and you are left holding all these funkey planets with 24 of 20 facilities, and the population is doing screwy things because they are over the maximum for the planet. it would be very nice if each planet recieved the bonus for whatever race is in the majority (since its probably far to hard / error prone to do a percentile of racial benefit for split populations)

Re: Conquered races - additional benefit: forced migrations and growing of planets
 

The racial bonus being retained was addressed in a post about a month or two ago. While it would be cool and more realistic, it would greatly throw the balance of the game off. The AI would be nearly impossible to script to take advantage of other atmospheres, the pop. transport minister has problems with it.

You also lose any ability to use special technology from racial traits. I can understand not allowing more research in the field, but to not allow the use of already discovered/used tech is not believable. "No commander we can not create any more shard cannons for the fleet, we forgot how!" You can not even modify a former enemy ship and keep the special comps. (If you wanted to upgrade engines for example).

But it comes back to game balance.

Re: Conquered races - additional benefit: forced migrations and growing of planets
 

That's probably the biggest single thing the AI needs to learn. If it could manage races that breathe different atmospheres properly so it can use planets to maximum advantage it would become much more powerful in the late game. That and planet modification technologies.

[This message has been edited by Baron Munchausen (edited 05 January 2001).]

Re: Conquered races - additional benefit: forced migrations and growing of planets
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by General Hawkwing:
You also lose any ability to use special technology from racial traits. I can understand not allowing more research in the field, but to not allow the use of already discovered/used tech is not believable. "No commander we can not create any more shard cannons for the fleet, we forgot how!" You can not even modify a former enemy ship and keep the special comps. (If you wanted to upgrade engines for example).

But it comes back to game balance. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

yep, while all these things would be really great - they just cant be done. I came up with a evil idea of having ally races with different tech types. one could build a hull with crystal armor and shard cannons, or whatever. then give it to their friend who could upgrade it with engines and shields. this probably should not be done, so the conqured race thing must be omitted as well.

Re: Conquered races - additional benefit: forced migrations and growing of planets
 

I did notice something interesting, the conquered races that I put on my planets were not usually very happy unless you had a large force in the system or made alot of happiness improvers... This is a definate drawback to the strategy.
I had alot of fun with that one game. I then realized I conquered the universe and never even knew there were racial modifiers or points you could spend on your race My people were average in everything with no special skills. I even had a game with hard difficulty and many computer races. The AI is just not smart enough to beat me I guess. I always manage to conquer them too fast.
This Last game I made all of them surrender by warping into their home systems and blowing up their stars. Of course I had time to build 8 dyson spheres first...