Proportions any good for single player?

[JLS]

Originally posted by PvK:

Of course, as with many aspects of Proportions, players may not realize the implications of all the changes, and may tend to stick to habits formed with the unmodded game, including thinking of the play cycle as the same way. Players who think the goal is to reasearch and colonize everything, might die of old age before they "complete" a game. On the other hand, I think JLS' group has completed several multiplayer games played with a the idea of having a quick war from the beginning.
PvK

I can’t count how many LAN games we all have been played with Proportions… It certainly is over a few Dozen with 3-4 Player games going sometimes simultaneously.

We much prefer Proportions 2.22+ over any MOD today for multiplayer LAN play.
When any Human Player starts (next door) to a Violent or aggressive AI early, all Human Players that can help, usually do help, in that AI War…

How ever with over 18 in the LAN group, there is a very Diverse Way, we each Play Proportions. Actually you could find a style of play that would match every Culture and Demeanor from this group that resembles SE IV. I would put myself in the Aggressive Honorable Merchant type Category of average Play with other Players ranging from over aggressive to excessively conservative in play and we have competed in many wide-ranging games from 100 turns to more then a thousnand turns.
~
With above said, I also want to reiterate how seamless Proportions plays in Solitaire as well; in all turn based games

John

[ March 27, 2003, 17:24: Message edited by: JLS ]

[Fyron]

Fryon, in most PBW games I've seen, players often do wait 100+ turns colonizing and researching everything in sight until they run out of things to develop and improve, before doing much fighting.

Only when you have lots of players on a huge map. Play games with smaller maps in the future.

[gregebowman]

Finally got play Proportions Last night. It's definitely different and as good as everyone is talking about. But I have a question. I usually start a game with homeworld value set as good and have 10 planets. Should I start smaller, say 1 or 3 planets?

[dogscoff]

Proportions is designed for a one-planet, low tech start. Go for 10 homeworlds if you want, but I'm not sure how well it will work. I'd be interested to hear about it though.

[oleg]

Originally posted by gregebowman:
Finally got play Proportions Last night. It's definitely different and as good as everyone is talking about. But I have a question. I usually start a game with homeworld value set as good and have 10 planets. Should I start smaller, say 1 or 3 planets?

Yes, proportions setup implies one homeworld. That's what we have in a real life
Multiple homeworld make research and production way to fast - there is no need to colonize whatsoever, game will be over before you build a first meaninful colony.

[PvK]

Multiple homeworlds will tend to throw things a bit off - it multiplies the rate of reasearch of the whole game, although if you set "high" research costs, the research rate might stay more interesting than the unmodded game. The AI might be at a disadvantage, because I suspect it probably won't be able to scale very well to take advantage of the multiplied resources, but you can help it out by giving it a bonus.

This would be a way to get a Proportions game that seems "as fast" or "faster" than the unmodded games, at least for the time required for humans to develop powerful war fleets. If you wanted to do a PBW game focussing on large-scale combat using the Proportions changes to equipement, fighters, etc, a ten-planet start with high research cost might be a reasonable way to do it.

PvK

[oleg]

I don't think AI works well in 10 homeworld start even with high AI bonus - Construction_vehicles.txt will need major changes, like increasing all "must have" by at least an order of magnitude ! AI will simply underperform with this game setup.