quote:
Originally posted by Bman:
It becomes even more powerful in Simultaneous games (ie games against other people): In a simultaneous game, your ship stops when it enters a unexplored system. With Ancient Race, your ship moves happily along since all systems are explored. 
Actually your ship doesn't have to stop when it enters an unexplored system. If you give your ship the command to warp into the unexplored system, and then give it a move too command, then click on the unexplored system in the galaxy map in the lower right, then click in the sector in the middle of the unexplored system in the system map.
If you do this you will see in your orders queue for the ship "Move to (current system name) (x,y), Warp, Move to (unexplored system name) (6,6)"
It even gives you the name of the system even though you don't actually know it yet.
Now this doesn't work if two things happen.
One is if there is another race in the new system and you still have the box checked to clear orders when encountering enemy ships.
The other is if you click on the wrong unknown system in the galaxy map. Sometimes in a high density quadrant you can't always tell from the position of the systems and warp points which warp point goes to which unexplored system. If you give it orders to go to a sector that you have not explored, and you don't explore it by warping in before it tries to execute the move to order, it will ignore you.
Also, you could find yourself halfway though a system with no other warp points out and have to burn fuel and time getting back, or I guess if you timed it right you could hit a black hole this way, but hey, that's what exploring is all about right?
I agree that ancient race is very valuable in getting a running start in games. For a time I used it in all my multiplayer games. But recently I have have found that I can usually survive past the point where it serves me any purpose, and then I end up wishing I had the 1000 points in maint reduction or something else that is useful for the whole game.
Plus as someone else said, it's more fun to wonder where everybody is. But that's just a personal opinion.
I guess if my life depended on me winning a game of Space Empires IV and I needed to make absolutly sure I did everything I could do to win, I would probably pick Ancient race. But that's mainly because I am better anyway in the early part of the game. I often get bored, or have trouble keeping track of everything in the later part of the game, so I would want to make sure I won as quickly as possible.
But I don't think it's unbalanced. I think that the cost is just right considering the time depreciation of the trait.
Geoschmo
[ 29 January 2002: Message edited by: geoschmo ]