quote:
Originally posted by Spoo:
We not just change the AI files for neutrals so that they never surrender. It makes sense that A) a rebellion would not surrender (until all the rebells are killed) B) Neutral races should not go from "we want nothing to do with stuff outside our system" to "okay, we'll join you; take our children and use them as slaves. Your score is just too big".
LoL that isn't such a bad idea. I would balance that by making neutrals have a Positive reaction to MEE, though. That way Neutrals wouldn't be a free populated system for large empires, but they would share the fate of most banana republics, and become "client states" to very powerfull (MEE) superpowers. This would also give a MEE empire something to do politicaly (Do I support the neutrals who are backing my rise to galatic dominiation, or throw them to the wolves? Do I give them powerful technology and extra ships/resourses or am I afraid that their new technology will find its way into the wrong hands? etc.) and give the MEE empire some roleplaying fodder (I imagine people who really enjoy roleplaying or creating unique racial identities get bored when they hit MEE and the game devolves into an extended genocide campain against the known universe). I might also give neutrals an insanely high surrender threshold instead of disabling it entirely. After all, when your species has been reduced to a few clusters of huddled masses hiding from plasma death raining from the heavens, slavery starts to seem like a viable alternative
Of course, the way the scoring system is now, that would leave the neutral empires open to system wide blockades, so maybe it would be best to turn it off entirely...
Anyway, good idea Spoo.