Starting with Colonize All??

[Rollo]

Originally posted by Deathstalker:
...The thing I wanted was to start off everyone with all the colonization techs. This gets rid of the temptation to swindle the AI for its colony tech and lets you expand faster (both you and AI). Just wondered how the AI colonizes, wether it goes just for the 'green dots' or the highest mineral planet in closest range or what...(that and wondered how it decided wether to build a rock/ice or gas colonizer).

well, the colonization minister is still a myth. Not quite sure what the priorities (green dots, richness, size, range) are.

The nice thing about universal colonizers is that the type (rock/gas/ice) doesn't matter and that helps the AI. I have seen 'Rock colonizers' with a universal component colonize ice and gas planets and vice versa. So, there will be no wrong types sitting in orbit.

One oddity about universal colonizers: In the planet view each colony ship counts for 3 in the 'Colony ships ...which are available' display. Seems that the game counts the colonizing abilities instead of the ships. Not sure if the production minister is also influenced by this. If it is and the AI gets universal colonizers from the start, that could slow them down a bit.
Might wanna have a look at this and perhaps increase the numbers of colonizers in construction file, if this is indeed a problem.

[ October 29, 2003, 11:38: Message edited by: Rollo ]

[Fyron]

The thing I wanted was to start off everyone with all the colonization techs. This gets rid of the temptation to swindle the AI for its colony tech and lets you expand faster (both you and AI).

Check out the Colony Tech Mod by Ekolis, which adds 3 "native" racial traits that give access to the appropriate colony modules. It makes it so that it is impossible to trade starting colony techs (which are by no means "technology"...). You can still research others, and you can trade researched colony techs with other races that share your homeworld type (such as rock races trading ice and gas), but not with races from other types of planets. The methodology for a gas race to colonize an ice world would be vastly different than a rock race colonizing an ice world, for example. Very little could be shared between them.