Proposed Solution to Mega Evil Empire Problem
 

I have an idea that might fix what I think is a problem with the Mega Evil Empire settings. Why do I think it's currently a problem? Well, here's been my experience with SE4 to date:

Your playing along, well over 100 turns in. You have 2 or 3 partnerships and a bunch of alliances of various types with the other races. You are doing very, very well. The AIs are fairly passive and all is fairly quiet (and kind of boring). Suddenly, within 1 or 2 turns, every race has declared war on you. They have pronounced you as too dangerous to even tolerate your very existence any longer. You have become..."Mega Evil".

Now, I have absolutely no problem with Mega Evil as a concept and as a game mechanism it is a great idea as it balances the end game. The problem is that it seems far too abrupt and artificial a change in the actual game conditions and doesn't take into effect the different traits and characteristics of the various races in the game. In effect, it just appears like a game flag was tripped and bingo the game suddenly changes totally. And this is indeed what does happen programmatically.

A Proposed Solution:

Rather than having all the Mega Evil Empire settings for each race in the game set at a default of "50", create race specific Mega Evil settings for each and every individual race in the game. That way you would have a different default Mega Evil Empire tolerance level set for each race. Some of the more Xenophobic races could be set to declare you "Mega Evil" at a value of 30. Friendlier races like the Phong could be set to 70 or 80. What this would do is smooth the transition to the Mega Evil state into a more gradual continuum or process, rather than having it as an abrupt and jarring change. With this change, as you get stronger and stronger, your allies and treaties would (fairly) gradually dwindle away over 10-20 turns until all races were arrayed against you.

In order to enhance the effectiveness of this approach, it would also be nice, as the races turned against you, if they would all join in partnerships against you, so that they are arrayed as a single force bent on your total destruction.

Since the setting is already there in each race's AI-anger file so it would be very, very easy for MM to implement the new default values. I don't know how hard it would be to get them to all form a partnership after declaring you "Mega Evil" but it shouldn't be too hard.

I'd appreciate any thoughts or comments on this as a solution (pro and con) and what you all think each race's Mega Evil default setting should be.

Re: Proposed Solution to Mega Evil Empire Problem
 

Of course, this might have already been suggested in an earlier topic that I missed? If that's so, then I apologize for dredging it back up.

If that's not it, am I missing something else obvious? Or does everyone just really hate my idea and you are all being polite?

??

Re: Proposed Solution to Mega Evil Empire Problem
 

I agree with you, however I think the AI empires should all form non-agression treaties (or keep any higher, existing treaties), rather than parterships. It seems somewhat unrealistic that two empires that have been at war since the begining of the game would become best buds just because neither of them likes you.

------------------
Assume you have a 1kg squirrel
E=mc^2
E=1kg(3x10^8m/s)^2=9x10^16J
which, if I'm not mistaken, is equivilent to roughly a 50 megaton nuclear bomb.
Fear the squirrel.

Re: Proposed Solution to Mega Evil Empire Problem
 

Hmmm, well how about military alliances then? That would seem to make sense when going against a common enemy.

Re: Proposed Solution to Mega Evil Empire Problem
 

I like your idea ColdSteel. I think it would be an excellent alteration of the game, and one that should be made. Perhaps you could send this idea to Malfador?

Re: Proposed Solution to Mega Evil Empire Problem
 

It's a great idea, I'm having the same poblem with MegaEvil. I foe of 2 puny systems where I share both of them has a partnership with me, because he don't want's to be crushed (One of the times where the AI is smart) His mood had been murderous for atleast 75-100 turns. I kill a fleet of my second best player in the game, his score drops and MegaEvil go in. Now, the little empire losses it's senses and declare waron me. In the same turn my fighter squads single handly whiped out on system, I launch another fighter squad in his home system and whipe out a battlecruiser and a colony. He then surrenders. I would never had declared war on him, since my larg fleets was busy somewhere else, but did it. A smart guy should just lower the treaty, bot go to war just like that.

Re: Proposed Solution to Mega Evil Empire Problem
 

This is a frequent problem with the AI's Blue Lord. They declare war without beeing prepared for it. And unfurtunately I think this will be quite hard to improve. I don't think the proposition of ColdSteel would make here any difference, other than that the small empire would seek military alliance treaties with the all the other empires. What would a human player do? Mine the colonies and warp points like mad, build as much fighters, satellites and weapon platforms as possible, wait till only few enemy ships are in your home system, check if you will still have enough resources without the trade, position your own attack fleet on any enemy colony in your sytem and then cancel the treaty or declare war. Not so easy to program I think.
As for the treaties the smaller empires should make with each other: It might be unrealistic that they form partnerships but it would be the best option, because a military alliance would give them no help against intelligence operations.

Re: Proposed Solution to Mega Evil Empire Problem
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Q:
What would a human player do? .... Not so easy to program I think.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I don't know...the latest edition of Starfire rules has a very extensive modelling of "Non-Player Race" behavior that is in the form of rules and die rolls against various numerical NPR personality traits. It looks like it would be pretty adaptable to SE4. Among many, many other things it covers the NPR deciding to go to war against you and delaying while it prepares, or until it resolves some other war in progress. It also has multiple "levels" of war which the NPR will choose with a die roll modified by its own numerical personality traits, what you have done and the circumstances. Off the top of my head, it sems like there are 4 levels ranging from just squabbling over a system to trying to exterminate you.

Re: Proposed Solution to Mega Evil Empire Problem
 

Bill, the more you talk about Starfire the more I want to play it. I actually went to my local gamestore and asked if they had it but they didn't even know what it was. I'll keep looking.

Re: Proposed Solution to Mega Evil Empire Problem
 

The suggestion I made here would only only fix what I feel is a very abrupt and artificial feeling transition to the Mega Evil Empire AI state. It would smooth that transition out some and better fit it to the race's differing characteristics. Obviously there are still some other AI issues with how the game handles Mega Evil beyond this that the suggestion would not fix. So, here are some more suggestions dealing with those:

One easy (code-wise) way to deal with the issue of the AI not being ready to declare war when the Mega Evil AI state is tripped would be to have a ME threshold AI state in the game. Say if the race's Mega Evil setting is 50 then when it hits 40 the game would trigger a change in the AI state to "Prepare to Attack". Then when they do finally declare Mega Evil on you, at least they'd be prepared to fight.

Another suggestion that might work for the very weak races is not to openly declare Mega Evil on you at all. That is, declare it, but only to themselves as an internal AI state. The game AI state would then attempt to ally with stronger races and use Intelligence, Politics and other means to subvert you but not openly attack you which would be sucicidal. Politically, they could ask existing allies to declare war on you or give resources and ships to allies already at war with you. In this way they could fight you indirectly without being openly at war.

Any thoughts on these additional ideas?

Re: Proposed Solution to Mega Evil Empire Problem
 

Changing the way Mega Evil is calculated so that each AI reacts at a different point would be good. Another thing that would be good is a "warning" threshold prior to the "turn against you" threshold and a special set of Messages where the AI can complain about your aggressive expansionism so you know what's happening. These two feature together would contribute greatly to the realism of the Mega Evil feature. Of course, you'd have to allow for neutrals to remain 'neutral' and not be overly prone to turn against the larger empires. Being only one system, they'd be triggered very early in large games.

[This message has been edited by Baron Munchausen (edited 28 January 2001).]

Re: Proposed Solution to Mega Evil Empire Problem
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Jubala:
Bill, the more you talk about Starfire the more I want to play it. I actually went to my local gamestore and asked if they had it but they didn't even know what it was. I'll keep looking.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

You can't get in in stores right now, as it is no longer marketed by the original publisher but direct market via internet, etc... by the designer. The website is at http://www.starfiredesign.com/starfire

Re: Proposed Solution to Mega Evil Empire Problem
 

Okay, I sent these suggestions to MM so we'll see what happens.

Re: Proposed Solution to Mega Evil Empire Problem
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Barnacle Bill:
You can't get in in stores right now, as it is no longer marketed by the original publisher but direct market via internet, etc... by the designer. The website is at http://www.starfiredesign.com/starfire <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Ok, that explains that. I've been checking out the starfire site and lurking a little in the forum, but I usually don't understand much because of all the ingame abbrevations used. Like discussions on shipdesign. Plain gibberish if you ask me. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif But I do understand enough to know I want to play the game.

Re: Proposed Solution to Mega Evil Empire Problem
 

ColdSteel,

I updated all the ai diplomacy Last week, and so I just wanted to tell you a couple of things.

1. MegaEvil Empire := 50 means that each turn that particular race will add 50 angry points/mood to their total, thus always increasing in anger.

2. I think its in the settings file you can set whether there is an option for Mega Evil Empire and also you can set a score to be reached in order for MME to take effect. There isn't a modifier in each race's files that govern this. (At least I haven't found one yet.)

3. I think your idea would be a good one, but MM is going to have to add some extra lines of code in their Ai_Politics file in order to make your idea race specific.

I hope this helps.

Re: Proposed Solution to Mega Evil Empire Problem
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Jubala:
Ok, that explains that. I've been checking out the starfire site and lurking a little in the forum, but I usually don't understand much because of all the ingame abbrevations used. Like discussions on shipdesign. Plain gibberish if you ask me. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif But I do understand enough to know I want to play the game.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Ship design in Starfire is pretty much like in SE3, but there is an upper case letter code for each system type instead of a graphic icon. For example, S = a shield system, A = armor, L = laser, I = “ion engine”, etc… There are wads & wads of systems, though. Secondary codes, sometimes numbers or sometimes lower case letters, are used to reflect generational improvements in the same system. Again like SE3, damage is normally scored on systems left to right, with each damage point killing one system. Damage from some weapons skip certain types of systems, or can sort of randomly select which system takes the hit. Shield systems are not destroyed but rather go down due to overload, and will be back up at the beginning of the next battle (if you survive this one), while everything else would need to be repaired. Shields & armor go to the left (in that order), but the order on everything else is pretty much up to the designing player. Different hull sizes take different numbers of engines per MP, increasing as the hull size goes up (the smallest get multiple MP per engine). Where multiple engines are required for one MP, the engines for each MP are placed in a drive room represented by (), for example (II) is a drive room with two engines in it. That is an addition since the earliest Version of the game, though. Ships have to include crew quarters & life support like SE4 (a combined system is available for small ships), but that is also a change since the original Version. So, neglecting the later (because I can’t remember the codes) a simple ship might look like like:

SSAA(II)L(II)L(II)(II)

But, you could put all your engines Last so you can run away once you have been “mission killed”, or put all your weapons Last in the hope of killing the other guy even if you have to limp home, or mix them up like above to compromise between those two design philosophies. You had the same sort of decisions to make in SE3, but in SE4 the random allocation of internal damage eliminates that aspect of ship design. Of course, with the huge variety of systems there are infinite ways to design a ship both from the standpoint of what systems to include and what order. This gets into what to research as well, in the strategic game. The designers are constantly tweaking the game balance to try to keep all the system types viable. Thus all the debate on the topic in the Starfire forum.

Re: Proposed Solution to Mega Evil Empire Problem
 

SunDevil, So the Mega Evil setting for each race is really just a racial ME anger setting? That does makes sense otherwise why have them all set exactly the same. Well, that certainly does make my suggestion harder to do. I still think it would smooth out the end game quite a bit so I hope it gets considered at some point by MM. Nothing to do but soldier on.

Re: Proposed Solution to Mega Evil Empire Problem
 

ColdSteel:

I would just send MM your suggestion. From what I've seen, they add a lot of things suggested on this board to their patches. Just ask Tampa_Gamer. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif