The difference between TDM and Devnull is that TDM isn't really a mod. What TDM
IS is the greatest collection of super-powerfully tweaked AIs available for download.
Devnull goes and changes how the game works (production, components, ships, intel etc), and has relatively little AI changes.
Regarding the economy; that is so very true.
I think that most mods will be including economic tweaks since that issus has been brought to light. It will probably spread faster than my Quasi-newtonian propulsion did
What I did for Pirates&Nomads was write a program to generate new population modifiers.
The P&N settings.txt is 700KB
now, but I have a very nice economic model
P&N Starts all new colonies at 10% of normal building rate. It then adds 1% to that for every 25M people that get added.
So, fresh colonies will take 7 turns to build any of the basic facilities, while homeworlds can build monoliths in one turn.
This 1%/25M hold all the way up to Dyson Spheres, which get upto 25x the normal SE4 build rate! (Fear the SphereWorld)
I have resource production follow a sine wave, where it starts at 2% and rapidly rises to 225% of normal when you have roughly 500M people. It then slowly falls until it levels off at 100% for anything over about 2 billion people.
The extremely slow buildup on colonies means that you need to ship lots of people to your borders. Even with lots of population available, the low population limits on domed worlds means you can't throw together defenses or facilities.
Shipping in units of all kinds is highly reccommended.
One setting (in settings.txt) I really like is "Ground Combat Turns :=2"
I've also bumped up the militia strength.
Unless you're stomping a small outpost, ground combat can take multiple years before it is over.
In one game I'm playing, I dumped Five Thousand (tiny size) troops onto one of the enemy's huge developed planets. So far the fighting has dragged on for 7 months.
I suspect that the AI is building troops on those planets as reinforcements, but since this is a simultaneous turn game, only the defender can see what's going on
.
settings.zip
This file will get you the settings described above for the improved P&N economics and ground combat. Paste it over top of your P&N settings.txt.
[ 23 April 2002: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]