Newbie Questions

[LeTharg]

I like emotionless--I'm currently playing an emotionless race in a 2000 point PBEM game and am doing fine. I chose it because I don't like to be nagged but it keeps production up, keeps conquered folk from revolting, keeps my options free on wars and treaties (don't have to worry about upsetting the home folks), and means I don't have to research psych etc. early.

I also use troops extensively (although I am at 80%). Captured facilities can be junked if you don't want them but they can be a real time saver. And captured population can be very useful--especially early in the game.

Also, if you don't have ice colonization yet and there is this nice already colonized ice planet, troops allow you to add it to your collection. If you wiped it clean, you couldn't colonize it.

I admit I didn't use emotionless or troops against the AI--why bother? But against humans I think they are worth consideration.

[This message has been edited by LeTharg (edited 22 May 2001).]

[Suicide Junkie]

quote:

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It's now a major problem for me since my planets have a 20% production penalty because of their low happiness levels. I also have no natural population growth so my homeworld populations are getting lower and lower... I'm going to have to start trading / stealing population from other empires soon.
Unless you have some way of boosting happiness and reproduction artificially, or you plan to continually steal population, I do _not_ recommend setting happines & env resistance to minimum levels.

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I've started a 2000 point game where I took every one of the five, 1500 point racial tech areas . I've had to set everything else to minimum levels, except for ship construction (100%), ship defence (125%) and mineral production (80%).
Currently, I have no planets with pop growth, but I've got 12 colonies in 4 systems, covering the center and top left corner of a medium sized map.

Basically, I've been trading everything. I sell ships for technology, then upgrade the ships I'm selling

I've bought organic, crystalline, temporal, and then created kick *** ships to sell to my AI friends for planets, population, tech etc

[Taqwus]

Hrm. Did they fix Emotionless so that when rioting planets surrender to you, you can actually get them to *stop* rioting?

Yes, for Religious, the Talisman is VERY nice. A heavy beam weapon on a ship normally can have a range of 8, but against an legendary crew with ECM III it might not hit that often -- without a Talisman. And a Starbase with max-mount beam weapons and a Talisman will *always* hit at even the maximum augmented range (something like +5 or so, IIRC). You can then ignore the very-expensive Sensors tech area, getting Hyper-Optics instead. The nature shrine is also good (saves a LOT of facility slots in a decent system), and the time shrine will tide you over until you build the System Robotoid Factories (which give higher bonuses IIRC).

Incidentally, that Talisman probably makes even regular weapons effective against fighter swarms.

In my Last game, I boosted ground combat for role-playing reasons (playing an utterly uber-competitive, selfish, cunning, brutal race without any advanced traits at all -- just bonuses, reducing only trade [arrogance angering off other races]). I never invaded anybody, although at one point I did produce heavily shielded troop transports each carrying ~150 Large Troops (2xShield, 3xGround Cannon, or something like that) just in case I felt the urge.



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-- The thing that goes bump in the night

[Shoujo]

First of all thank you for all the replies

Hitting things hasn't been a problem because I can only play against comps... Which brings me to my first question. How do you people find SEIV opponents??? I looked at the PBEM forum and only saw TWO Posts

Ground troops development is actually one of the lowest priorities on my list. It's a
convenience but not a necessity. Ships with good tech on the other hand are essential for survival.

jc173: Resource problems can also be solved by stealing 'em from whatever race I'm at war with I have never seen a computer PPP me... I get back rebel colonies just by demanding them to surrender...

dogscoff: Actually I play an Organics Race mainly to help deal with the minerals shortage problems I usually have early on. Organic Armor and Replicant Centers are nice too along with Electric Ray IIIs on fighters

I also heard there was an Honor Harrington shipset in development. Any idea where this is? Is there gonna be a Peeps shipset along with it?

I've heard that people play with a high AI bonus, but does anyone play with limited resources? The reason why I'm considering doing this is because I find myself getting very bored late game (30 years). What are people's experiences (if any) with this? Do you think this'll cause the AI any problems?

[Nitram Draw]

I've tried some finite resources games. The AI can have a hard time in long games because you can deplete a planet of resources. Early in the game the way the AI builds colonies actually helps them conserve resources. They don't run the risk of depleting a planet real fast as all of their colonied seem to have a variety of facilities.
It's a lot of fun to play this way against humans. You have to be careful what you build and you must save resources or control your extraction rate until you get a planet improvement facility.

[sunzoner]

The finite resources game are boring. The Ai will not have any ship left by the end game and its just a huge planet-grab by the only human player.

[LeTharg]

Here are a couple of resources for finding human opponents:
This is a very cool looking site that manages games. The only problem is that it won't work with 1.35. The new patch should correct that. http://seiv.admiral.com/index.html

There is a PBEM interest group on Yahoo http://Groups.yahoo.com/group/SE4-PBEM

I think you will find playing humans much more interesting than the AI. For example, humans won't surrender to you--they surrender to their ally or your enemy or do whatever they can to make things hard for you.