How do I make the game hard?

[Sabre21]

Raynor

I about fell outta my chair when I saw one AI race with over 4000 ships and another with 1000+. With 20 players, or actually 18 since 2 were wiped out by the AI..poor EEE..hehe. Darth Vader bit the big one too...he just doesn't seem to win in any galaxy I have a PII 450 128megs, and the turns take about 10 minutes, maybe a little more or less..I've never really timed them, but I have enough time to get a sandwich, hit the head, and let the dog out Hopefully this will get faster when I upgrade next month.

Dracus...I should be able to get to that set on Saturday...maybe even get to sneak a few in tomorrow.

Sabre21

[Sabre21]

This is what I have found to work very well. I use a large galaxy, 250+ stars with 20 empires..no neutrals. I have modded the set up so that all planets are huge with each system having 2-3 rock oxygen and each planet with a minimum of 100 resource types each. I reduced the probability of black holes to 1% and create AI races with 5000 points, including plus ups in maintenance, research, mineral production, and usually advanced storage techniques. I have also increased the use of organics and radioactives in producing ships and facilities. This forces me to balance out production of the 3 resources and not just concentrate on minerals. As for the game I use hi bonus and hi diff settings. I also use Mephisto's modpack..I really enjoy those Darloks. With this type of setup, the AI has no problem with a lack of resources or room for expansion. Usually by turn 50, I have seen empires with nearly 100 colonies and over 1000 ships..some even had nearly 4000...ugh. Plus with the latest AI upgrade, I actually see the different races beat up each other pretty hard, even eliminatng a few. I have never been able to achieve better than 5th place and am usually around 10th. I also dont do any cheap shots early in the game like placing mines or satelites on enemy homeworlds.

Hope this gives you some ideas

Sabre21

[geoschmo]

Ten minute turns? Ugh!

Can I play a PBEM game against my own computer?

Geo

[Will]

You know what I've actually noticed with the game? It always seemed to run faster BEFORE I upgraded, when I didn't even have the minimum requirements... I had a 80x586 133MHz with 16MB RAM (2MB was borrowed for video)... I recently figured out something about that... there's a conspiracy run by the computer and software companies. They force you to buy faster computers, because they give you a bunch of worthless programs that run all the time I did the CTRL+ALT+DEL thing, and saw around 20 useless programs running... stuff that shipped with the hard drive, stuff that is very difficult to do a search and destroy mission on, and stuff that eats a LOT of processor power...

Just felt like ranting about how much faster my 133MHz 16MB RAM is than my new 550MHZ 128MB RAM in SEIV

Oh, something else I do in games, lots of AIs get weeded out: ClusterWars. In the setup, set Large Cluster galaxy with not all warp points connected. You will get 10-12 "clusters" of systems isolated from each other. The AI will grow as big as it can in their own cluster, then open warp points to the others. I just stay in my own for a while and let a few AIs gain dominance, then I go out and kill 5-7 semi-powerful AIs instead of 15-20 weakling AIs.

[Suicide Junkie]

quote:

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it will be quite impossible to capture anything above a LC (i think) after about year 3, unless you play all your battles in tactical and get a lucky shot on the self destruct unit

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Yes, the battles do get harder, and many of your potential captures will be burning hulks of wreckage by the time they lose the self-destruct. That dosen't matter if you're just scrapping the ships for funds, and you can then retrofit only the somewhat intact hulls.

The challenge of the pirates is in always going up against superior forces, with no funding. You have to nip the solo ships to gather strength, and use all of your human advantages (tactical combat, mines, general sneakyness), just to survive
If you can manage to form a trade alliance, you'll be much better off, but scraping by on remote mining & half-trade, is the norm.

In my game, I get 3000 minerals (all from the Eee in trade), and am at war with the crylonites & Jreanar. I've only got two resupply bases hidden is outlying systems, and one colony ship from the cyslonites forming a base in their territory. I've only got 15 ships (50% escorts), and I've seen the Eee with 15 LCs in one fleet
I researched mines right after that!
That one colony ship that I captured was the first one I attacked. The next 5 couldn't be captured until they were down to a single engine, or were otherwise useless