Your favorite racial makeup
 

Mine: (today http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif )

Strength and Cunning and Political minimized.
Propulsion Experts (always).
Intelligence @ 120.
Construction @ 120.
Happiness,
Reproduction,
Maintenance,
Mining @ 110 in that order if RP are available.
A few extra points in radioactive and organic extraction if available.
Organics if available (those population increase facilities are reet.)

Violent-Bloodthirsty.

Strategy: Don't trade. Don't ally. Don't do Intel at all. Kill everything but the bad guy's Last world, surrender them then. Mine the crap out of choke points. Build fighters.


What do you people do?
S

Re: Your favorite racial makeup
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Sessile:
Strength and Cunning and Political minimized.
Propulsion Experts (always).
Intelligence @ 120.
Construction @ 120.
Happiness,
Reproduction,
Maintenance,
Mining @ 110 in that order if RP are available.
A few extra points in radioactive and organic extraction if available.
Organics if available (those population increase facilities are reet.)

Violent-Bloodthirsty.

Strategy: Don't trade. Don't ally. Don't do Intel at all. Kill everything but the bad guy's Last world, surrender them then. Mine the crap out of choke points. Build fighters.

What do you people do?
S<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Your setup is so much like mine, it's scary...oooo
But I use a slightly different strategy.
I don't mine choke points, it's too easy to beat AIs this way.
I don't build satellites either.
I build tons and tons of fighters and troops.
I try not to kill bad buys' worlds. I take them with troops.
I do minimum intel to defend others from stealing my techs.
And I too ask them to surrender when they are down to the Last world and blockaded.

Re: Your favorite racial makeup
 

Crystallurgy (I love the Crystalline Armor and Shard Cannons) and Advanced Storage Techniques
80 Strength (I don't care much for troop combat - if the ground battles were more detailed / fun, I would do some)
80 Trade(I don't trade with anyone!)
120 Mining
120 Research
120 Consruction
120 Maintenance
120 Cunning (intel)
and the others I can't remember offhand.

General strategy:
Expand to ALL colonizeable planets. Focus on research and intel early in game. Resource splits are about 65% Minerals / 10% Organics / 25% Rad's (Crystal tech uses a lot more Rad's than others).

Research like crazy - Stellar Harnessing, Stellar Manip, All Crystal Techs, Missles, Intel, Shields, and Point Defense. All other tech's I steal primarily thru crew insurrection. That is an EXTREMELY cheap way of getting propulsion, storage, and especially colonization techs as well as others.

Well, that's pretty much my basics. Now I'll probably get my but kicked in any multi player games.....

[This message has been edited by rdouglass (edited 04 January 2001).]

Re: Your favorite racial makeup
 

Pretty similar, I too drop strength, cunning and politics to 50%. But I raise all others except organics and radioactives to 105, then take research, happiness, and construction to 110, and I pick psychic as my ability. I nearly always play as artisans, but I'll sometimes play as scientists.

I did, once (before the 1.19 patch when emergency movement pods worked on bases), play engineers, with 150% construction and the enhanced shipyards trait and temporal tech. I knocked out a sphereworld in under a year with the bases being built near planets and using the emergency propulsion to move to the star. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif It was kinda fun, but not what I'd normally do. I also make a large variety of races purely for their roleplaying value. Where I pick the traits and all that for personality reasons rather than for raw power. My Favorites are the religious zealots who live only on Gas Giants with no atmosphere, and the eugenics-created (organics-tech) oligarchy that enslaves all other races and keeps a menagerie near its homeworld with one of every race in the galaxy, as well as a mothballed fleet of all thier ships for the nobles to hold feats and parties in from time to time.

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Compete in the Space Empires IV World Championship at www.twingalaxies.com.

Re: Your favorite racial makeup
 

I always use temporal tech, take the "Scientists" trait, and max out research. I'll also use the propulsion bonus trait. I set Strength to 120% in this Last game, just for grins (besides, I LIKE ground combat - taking over my opponent's world is just as much fun as glassing it). I also usually increase construction speed. Really helps when you get those Temporal Space Yards http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif.

I'm still working on a research strategy. I had one nearly disastrous game going where I didn't get PDC's early enough, and the Terrans really put a dent in my empire before I glassed 'em. Silly humans...

Re: Your favorite racial makeup
 

Heh...well, looking at these and using my own intution I feel completely justified in my mod with preventing the lowering of many traits below 100. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif In our games the same things were being seen over and over again...completely reduce Strength and Cunning and crank up the others. IMO, this is a DEFINATE balance problem. There is no way a point of Strength should cost as much as Research or Mining or whatnot.

I've gone ahead and tweaked the hell out of that file and made many of the better items more expensive and the less important ones cheaper. IMO, its made for a much better game and one in which, once again, the AI is more competitive. If you look at the AI files, none of them does the kind of 'mini-maxxing' that players will do. IIRC, not one trait is below 100. So, IMO, I think player's should have to play on the same field.

Talenn

Re: Your favorite racial makeup
 

Not all of the stats are worth the same. If you drop your stats too low you only get 10 points per point of decrease. Reproduction and construction both switch up to costing 100 per point at 110, while intelligence doesn't do that until 120.

These are from memory, so I might be a bit off, but I'm 90% sure this is the case. Still, they need to be much more differentiated. Physical strength is so utterly meaningless. When I capture a planet with 50% strength, I just send extra troops. The problem is that nomatter how you change it, this stat is just free points. It's so utterly meaningless to gameplay that there's no reason to not suck all you can out of it.

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Compete in the Space Empires IV World Championship at www.twingalaxies.com.

Re: Your favorite racial makeup
 

My current pattern

Scientists (+5 research)
120% research
80% trade
80% repair (I rely more on fighters, might shift this to 80% ground combat strength)

Organic Technology
Advanced Storage (Gotta love having +3 or +5 facilities on the starting homeworld).

Out of the box, I try to research Organic Engineering, Organic Weapons, Organic Tech, Construction, and fighters.

The initial strategy (along with expanding like a MoFo) is to build blockaders (Escorts/frigates with missiles/parasites set to a REAL max range strategy), which I immediately send to enemy worlds, blockading them and demanding their surrender.

Once I get fighters, I uprade to Lvl 3 in weapons, and start building small carrier forces to bomb those who refused to surrender.

Then, of course, real tech tree climbing while massively expanding etc etc etc.