Can you limit the number of opponents in the retail game to a specific number?

[Elowan]

I'm still awaiting my game CD, therefore I'm banging away at the demo. It seems even if I pick LARGE map - I end up meeting 'bozos' fairly quickly. How large is 'large' supposed to be and is 'huge' available in the retail game?

I've also been choosing 3000 attribute points and allocating them to: 1)ancient race (so I can find 'ruins' planets nearby, 2)natural merchants (traders?) so as to avoid having to build spaceports, and 3)Storage experts to gain the extra facilities per planet colonized.

Any criticism on this choice?

I also tend to construct extra research facilities on all oxygen planets - especially in the same system as the Homeworld.

[capnq]

The number of players represented by "low", "medium", and "high", and the maximum number of systems in a "large" quadrant, can be adjusted in Settings.txt in the Data folder.

In the unmodded game, "high" is 6-10 players, and "large" is at most 100 systems. The highest you can change these to is 19 computer players and 255 systems. IIRC, changing the max systems doesn't affect "small" and "medium" quadrants.

To give yourself more space to grow, you can use a large quadrant with only a medium number of opponents. Even that isn't guaranteed to work, though; I have a solo game where I tried this and still had first contact on turn 3.

[Captain Kwok]

You can also choose exactly what and how many races you want to be involved in the game at the setup screen by adding their empire files manually...

[Gandalph]

And changing max systems to 255 does affect small and medium games, unfortunately. Because of this, I always generate the map during setup until I get a quadrant to my liking in regards to number of systems.

[dogscoff]

I've also been choosing 3000 attribute points and allocating them to: 1)ancient race (so I can find 'ruins' planets nearby, 2)natural merchants (traders?) so as to avoid having to build spaceports, and 3)Storage experts to gain the extra facilities per planet colonized.

Any criticism on this choice?

Nope, it's a perfectly valid strategy. (as is any strategy, if you can make it work.)

The three traits you have chosen all give you a boost in the early game. Later in the game you may find that other emires with different traits have an advantage over you. Try to think of ways to make your traits benefit you in the late game.

For example... The storage and natural merchants both result in increased facility slots for your empire, so consider lowering your research, mining and intel abilities. You can make up the shortfall in points and remain competitive by building extra production facilities, and have lots of extra racial points to spend on combat or construction modifiers.

Alternatively, use the extra facility slots to build cargo facilities, and then play a unit- heavy game. By relying more heavily on drones, fighters and weapons platforms for your defence you can reduce your maintenence costs and divert resources (or even racial points) to your front lines.

Advanced storage also works well with religious tech, which give you lots of new facilities to build.

[DirectorTsaarx]

Originally posted by Captain Kwok:
You can also choose exactly what and how many races you want to be involved in the game at the setup screen by adding their empire files manually...

Just remember, if you're using more than 2000 racial points, to beef up the "chosen" empires; the default empire files only use 2000 points, and I don't think the game corrects for higher racial point setups.