Mega Evil Empire

General Hawkwing · #1 January 17th, 2001, 05:14 PM

MEE is the point where all the AI go to war with you. Any new AI you encounter will go to war on the turn after the encounter. Somewhat akin to the Western Countries response to the spread of communism after WW2.

Taqwus · #2 January 17th, 2001, 05:19 PM

Well, you know how in many (perhaps most) computer strategy games AIs tend to gang up on the human player and treat him most unfairly? In some games, this occurs basically from the start...

In SE4, they won't... up to a point.

Look in Data/Settings.txt. There are a few relevant settings.

1) There's one labelled, IIRC, AIUsesMegaEvilEmpire. If it's true (default), then there are certain conditions under which all remaining AIs will focus on you (or, on another AI if it becomes MEE).

2) There's a score threshold -- by default, 500k. You may want to increase this if you like large quadrants.

3) There are two relative thresholds -- by default, the one for an AI is higher.

If a player's score exceeds *both* the score threshold (500k default) and a ratio of the second-place score (1.7x for you, 2x for another AI IIRC), and AIUsesMEE is on, then the AIs all turn Murderous and declare war regardless of how well you've treated them or continue to treat them. MEE status will be lost if either necessary condition fails to hold; then the AIs may eventually calm down again.

You'll know if you've achieved MEE when you start getting Messages that your race has exceeded its natural limits and is a threat to all other sentient life (or similar foo)...

Note that even when you're MEE it IS possible, through espionage for instance, to get AIs to declare war on each other... it's that they hate you, not that they all suddenly love each other as well.

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-- The thing that goes bump in the night

DirectorTsaarx · #3 January 17th, 2001, 05:59 PM

I finally figured out why everyone started declaring war on me - first, I accepted a Partnership treaty; when the "partner" was able to see all my worlds, the "% of allied colonies to use as target for anger" (or however it's worded in the settings.txt file) kicked in & the partner got angry about all those colonies. I guess he was hoping to expand throughout my territory...

Anyway, the second problem is that other races started colonizing in systems where I had colonies, and vice versa. Most AI's (at least in 1.19) get upset about sharing systems...

And, finally, I discovered that one of my enemies was using the intel project that fakes Messages, and was inciting others to go to war with me! What a pain!

That's all right, though. I'm having fun glassing enemy planets (except for the good ones, which I invade, hehehehe).