really big games

#1 May 16th, 2001, 04:41 PM

See my posting under basic strategy for a recommended tech sequence.

I took twenty minutes to check the complete planets list for my map. The biggest systems are Sun at 46 planets plus 3 moons followed by Tessana @44 Eskirk @44 and Ixe @43. Invading those systems once they have been colonized would be a real challenge. Imagine twenty shipyards tossing out battleships as you move from world to world. Best to go in with at least a dozen dreadnoughts to visit them all in a turn or two before they can build ships.

On the other hand it occurs to me that the automatic AI empire management has probably never been tested for over 200 worlds. I tried turning on all AI on one of my games I was tired of at 600 worlds and the computer locked up. So it is possible that I have generated a monster that will just crash about turn 100 before I am ready to conquer the map. I hope not....

Let me know if I also need to post the system names file I used. I do not know if it pulls system names out of the file or has them in the map itself. They should be in the map. On second thought I will just attach it. The names I made up are all three letters because I get tired of writing long names on my plans.

If you want to make things interesting generate the game with your race Last rather than first. That way the AI gets to move new ships before you move.... I find it interesting enough being first so I can decide which sitting duck to pursue. My ships experience reaches Legendary +50% quickly....

One thing I forgot to mention is to turn off automatically claiming any system you colonize. This just makes the AI mad especially when it has a colony there. Do not claim them, just colonize them and grin...

Nitram Draw · #2 May 16th, 2001, 05:16 PM

Maybe the crash is related to the Max number of units. IIRC there were some Posts about a month ago concerning a limit on what the game could handle.
I bet you get some monster AI fleets with this set up!

Q · #3 May 16th, 2001, 06:46 PM

LCC I congratulate you to your "monster map" and please don't see my proposition as a critic. I just thought that you might be interested in ways to create such maps in less than seven hours.
The planet value you can change very easyly in the settings file. If you change "planet value low percent" from 0 to 100, you will have no planets with less than 100% value!
A little bit more effort, if you want systems with 40 planets. But if you create in the system type file a stellar system with 40 planets (and you can chose the size of each planet too!) you could easily modify the original to let's say ten different systems each with forty planets. Now you just use mainly these new system types in the quadrant text file and you've got what you want. Just the planet condition can not be pretermined IIRC.
All in all it might take you 3 or 4 hours, but then you can create randomly as many maps as you want in seconds.

[This message has been edited by Q (edited 16 May 2001).]

#4 May 16th, 2001, 07:26 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Q:
Just the planet condition can not be pretermined IIRC.

That is my point 2/2/2/1 distribution for planet climate beats the default all hollow. I want those suckers to GROW so that when I conquer them I have more than 50 population per planet to distribute on new colonies. With a single world starting point of 4 billion times three races multiplied by a MAXIMUM of 2.3 percent per turn compounded 130 turns there is only (at best) a factor of 19 increase to 230 billion to split on 1400 worlds. The ACTUAL increases observed in my games have been a factor of three to five not 19. An increase of just .2 percent jumps that by 67 billion or about 30 percent. And the distribution observed is much better than a .2 percent increase....

This discussion applies only once the planet really gets rolling. I am aware that you get at least an increase of one per turn regardless of the population so long as at least one population is on world.

Besides, the time needed to generate a map is less than a third of the time I estimate will be needed to PLAN the exploitation, which is also less than a third of the time needed to do the FIRST wave of expansion to 390 worlds. And THAT is about a third of what I estimate will be needed to get all the races to surrender. So about four percent of your time in a huge map game will be spent actually generating the map. As I said, my first hack took me twice as long as it should have.

So find me a way to get better climates and I will concede that my procedure is unnecessary. But you still will not get the even distribution of systems from six to 46 plus planets unless you make a huge increase in the system types file. And it seems likely that it will barf if you go beyond thirty planets per system roman numerals.

#5 May 16th, 2001, 09:02 PM

Upon consideration you can get the effect of higher population due to improved climate by a change in settings.txt
Modify the list of Pop Modifier x Population Amount to be lower values and lengthen the list from 12 to about 16. That way you do not need the higher population goal I desired.

On the other hand you STILL would need a huge increase in the System Types.txt file to get the variety of systems my method produces. And that variety is half the reason I did it in the first place. Some systems will be easy as usual but others will be horrendous. If you examine the generated map then you will see that as many as a dozen planets have the same atmosphere type in a single system where a random allocation would give only 9 in a 45 planet system.

I examined the history.txt file to see if there has been any change in population growth lately, but no soap. Apparently it has been cast in concrete. If you want faster growth you have to select it in your racial characteristics. It applies to any race you conquer so that is a bonus. You can also improve your environmental resistance if you have the points available, which should upgrade your apparent climate but I have not checked that out....

Some of the Posts I have been reading mention races available in mod packs. Are they really better than the standard ? If so then why the **** are they not added to the standard game releases ? Is it a case of not invented here or lack of resources to do an official checkout for official release ?

I do not use game handicaps since my goal is to test my strategy against the AI on a *level* playing field. If the wimp AI can not hack it then that is a major indication that some work must be done on the AI strategy. Of course it has been less than a year since the demo came out and MM has been working overtime to fix bugs so AI seems to have fallen by the wayside. Am I on target or speaking from ignorance ?

Nitram Draw · #6 May 16th, 2001, 09:18 PM

The AI could always use work but the races in the Mod Pac are much tougher than the standard races. The AI has been reworked on some of the standard races to provide a generally tougher opponent and a few custom races have been included.
Overall the Mod Pack is a great addition to the game. The creators also only limit improvements to tweaks of the original game items, no new stuff is added.
I would recommend you give it a try with you new maps, you should get an even better game than you do now.

jc173 · #7 May 16th, 2001, 09:28 PM

quote:
Originally posted by LCC:
Some of the Posts I have been reading mention races available in mod packs. Are they really better than the standard ? If so then why the **** are they not added to the standard game releases ? Is it a case of not invented here or lack of resources to do an official checkout for official release ?

In the past Aaron has used some of the suggestions from the AI modders, but the modpack includes a couple of races that cannot be included cause they're based off races in sci-fi serieses/movies. Copyright issues I guess.