Surviving a missing turn in PBEM or PBW game.
 

I thought I would start a thread where players can trade tricks on how to survive missing a turn in a simultaneous games and what things they would like MM to do to make it easier to manage. I start out with a few suggestions of my own:

For Players:
1) Toggle that empire flag that tells the AI to not change your orders. I am not sure if this even does anything, but I hear you are better of if you do toggle it.
2) Put fighters into your fleets to prevent them from going through warp points.

For MM:
1) Allow an empire option that tells the AI to do nothing other than uncompleted research, uncompleted builds, and uncompleted orders carried over from the prior turn. Do not create new designs, do not make my old designs obsolete, do not move or build anything.

Re: Surviving a missing turn in PBEM or PBW game.
 

I forgot to add to MM's item:
2) Do not conduct any diplomacy. I hate it when the AI breaks my 20 turn trade agreement and I have to start over with my mad former ally! You have no idea what insults the AI might be throwing at other players or it might even declar war!

Re: Surviving a missing turn in PBEM or PBW game.
 

Perhaps you should allow the AI to start building or researching things under certain circumstances anyway? For example, if you've got no more research items in the queue, the AI might as well spend the points researching stuff. If you've got resources going to waste (your storage is full and there's still positive cash flow), the AI might as well build stuff with the excess; you can always scrap it later.

Re: Surviving a missing turn in PBEM or PBW game.
 

setting the "AI does nothing toggle" seems to stop the AI doing anything excpt th following:

-making your designs obselete and designing loads of crap ships
-filling empty construction queues with weapons platforms
-give orders to ships with no orders

Therfore, you should
A> makes sure you will have no empty construction queues for as long as you are away- have them repeat build fighters or satellites one at a time.

B>Make sure your ships have orders for as long as you are away, otherwise the AI might send them anywhere, or start moving your population around pointlessly. Station your ships over resupply depots and order them to move away, move back, repeat orders. YOu might want to leave a few warships under AI control to repel attackers (classing your warships as "defence ships" rather than "attack ships" might help this.)

C> There's nothing you can do about the designs. You'll just have to obselete / unobselete everything when you get back.

D> I don't know what the AI does about research but it's probably wise to make sure you have enough research projects to keep you going for the duration of your absence. Switch off "divide points between all projects" and stack 'em up.

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SE4 Code:
L Gd! $ Fr- C- Sd T!+ Sf-- Tcp-- A% M>M+ MpD Pw RV Fq+ Nd- Rp+ G-
/SE4 Code
http://www.sandman43.fsnet.co.uk/se4main.htm

Re: Surviving a missing turn in PBEM or PBW game.
 

Also, if your game is only not using intelligence by the players' mutual agreement, rather than by turning it off or modding it in the game setup, check whether the AI has added anything to the Intel queue when you get back.

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Cap'n Q

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the
human mind to correlate all of its contents. We live on a placid
island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was
not meant that we should go far. -- HP Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"

Re: Surviving a missing turn in PBEM or PBW game.
 

I have posted something that should help you "survive the ai" a lot better. Check it out in this thread...
http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/For...ML/003584.html


Geoschmo


[This message has been edited by geoschmo (edited 30 August 2001).]