Imperialism Mod

[Puke]

Anouncing and inviting comments on my upcoming Imperialism Mod. This will be designed as a multiplayer only mod, where abusing the AI isnt taboo, its the name of the game.

The premise of the ImpMod is that it should be more profitable to maintain a colonial empire of client states and trading parteners, than it would be to conquer and govern worlds on your own. Hence, the main focus of the mod is to make it profitable to co-exist with Neutral Races.

Not only will various Neutrals be given production bonuses in the form of Characteristic Bonuses (instead of 100% across the board), but a variety of features will be combined to make trade and treaties more profitable than conquest. Assuming a high AI bonus, the following features will enable a savvy player to maximize income from client states:

- lowered cost for political savvy
- higher maximum setting for political savvy
- characteristic optimization for neutrals
- anger.txt tweaks to make neutrals more tolerant
- politics.txt tweaks to make neutrals more accepting of various treaties
- trade from treaties able to rise to 50%
- tarriff income from Protectorate raised to 200%
- tarriff income from Subjugation raised to 400%

Special thanks goes out to everyone on the #se4 IRC channel for their comments and suggestions.

[Fyron]

Is this another vaporware mod, like the Grit Tech Mod, or a real mod, like Junkyard Wars? j/k

[geoschmo]

Eeeeexcellent.

This is exactly what I had in mind the other day when I was lamenting the fact that you can't have more then 20 races. Imagine a game like this with 5-10 players and dozens of little AI races scattered about.

[Puke]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
Is this another vaporware mod, like the Grit Tech Mod, or a real mod, like Junkyard Wars? j/k

I definitly bit off more than I could chew, with GritTech. The complete re-creation of the weapons and propulsion systems, scaled mounts for armor engines and everything, the new tech tree.. It all just got to be too much and died due to its own inirtia.

This mod is extremely simple. Aside from editing the AI files for each neutral (which involves mostly copy-paste operations) there isnt much to do. The settings.txt changes are done. And thats it, unless someone Posts some astounding suggestion that needs to be incorporated. I anticipate that the ImpMod can be functional by the end of the weekend. It would be done now except for the fact that I want different files for each of the 10 neutrals, instead of having lots of identical Boroba States.

Originally posted by geoschmo:
This is exactly what I had in mind the other day when I was lamenting the fact that you can't have more then 20 races. Imagine a game like this with 5-10 players and dozens of little AI races scattered about.

Unfortuneatly, we are still limited to 20 players. 10 humans and 10 neutrals, or 5 humans and 15 neutrals is about the best we can do. That is a cool idea to imagine, though. Maybe in SE5.

[spoon]

Originally posted by Puke:
- tarriff income from Protectorate raised to 200%
- tarriff income from Subjugation raised to 400%

I don't know much about how the ai decides when it will sign either of those treaties -- but if it is based on Player Score or something, then it seems like a pretty hefty bonus will be given to the players in the lead, maybe creating a runaway leader problem?

[Phoenix-D]

Um, don't Protectorate and Subjegation TAKE from your resources? As in 200% would leave them with negative resources?