Ancient Race too powerful?

[MegaTrain]

A lot of great comments concerning my initial post, so allow me to follow up:

I'll concede that the primary advantage of Ancient Race is strongest at the beginning of the game and decreases over the game years, but I think that the effect of that advantage carries across the entire game.

My point is that knowing the full-galaxy layout at the beginning of the game allows you to establish empire borders that greatly benefit your own empire. Let's say you determine (by looking for ~100% medium planets) that another player has a home system a few systems away, let's say 6 systems in between (ME-1-2-3-4-5-6-Him). With normal exploration and colonization at average rates (in all directions), you would expect each empire to expand equally, meet in the middle, and each claim the 3 systems on the side closest to their home. But the first thing I'm going to do is to send colonizer ships with armed escort straight to system #5 above (I'll leave him the extra system closest to home), and claim an extra 2 systems that would otherwise not be mine. How is he going to know I'm far away from home? He simply encounters an already colonized system and (unless he's looking for a fight) establishes his empire border in system #6.

In all the games I've played so far (Ancient Race or not), the key has been Location, Location, Location. The race who is able to expand into the most systems early, build up the most research planets, mining planets, and construction planets has a HUGE advantage for the entire game. Assuming 2 equally-experienced players, the player with the most research and resources is going to win nearly every time.

Other comments:[*]"Don't get Ancient Race, just become a partner with one." Yeah, you first of all have to FIND another player/AI that is Ancient Race, and then you have to convince them to Partner with you (with much less advantage for them). You're talking turn 30+, probably more like turn 50. By that time, empire borders are already established, you've already explored most of the nearby systems anyway. [*]Someone mentioned that it's not that easy to find enemy homeworlds, because there are too many candidates. Not true. Go to the planets screen, sort first by Mineral %, then sort by size (the planet icon column). Scroll down to the medium planets, and then down to about 110%. They key is that homeworlds have all 3 attributes around 100%. Random planets with ~100 on minerals will usually have 26% on radioactives or 134% on organics, a dead giveaway that it's not a homeworld. If you have several planets in the same system or nearby systems of the same type/atmosphere, then that's stronger evidence of a homeworld system. [*]Balance. I know this game is all about balance, but nobody has put forward a really convincing case that "Tech XX" is a much better spending of 1000 pts. I'm sure you guys have your opinions, why don't you tell me what you'd rather spend your 1000 pts on? Maybe you'll convince me....

[eorg]

i'll spend 500 on maintenance which gives me 40% more ships and is 50% cheaper

[Bman]

I almost always take Ancient Race. It has enormous value early in the game. Its value goes down with time, but if you used it well, then you will have a huge advantage in resource production over time. As we all know, this game is about increasing your resource production, and that production increases as a geometric rate. So if you can get a small lead early on, it blossoms into a huge lead later in the game.

It becomes even more powerful in Simultaneous games (ie games against other people): In a simultaneous game, your ship stops when it enters a unexplored system. With Ancient Race, your ship moves happily along since all systems are explored.

So if you want to goto a planet 2 systems over, lets say it takes 1 turn to get out of your home system, plus 2 more turns to get to cross the next system, plus 1 more turn to colonize the juicy planet 2 systems over. (4 turns) Without ancient race, you spend 1 turn getting out of your home system. You sit there for a turn on the warppoint of the next system and see there is nothing there for you. You spend 2 turns crossing to the 2nd system. You sit on the wap point for a turn. Then you spend one more turn colonizing. That's 6 turns. It's only 2 extra turns, but that is alot at the beginning of the game.

And don't forget the fact that you don't have to explore: you can just churn out colony ships and not bother with exploration vessels. That saves you an initial turn or two at the beginning of the game.

And as others have said, knowing where the other races begin helps you plan your initial exploration to maximize the amount of territory you own at first contact. If you see another homeworld near a system with ruins or some nice Huge breathable planets you can send a bunch of colonizers over before the other empire finds them and takes them.

In the PBW games I have played, I've had better quality planets and alot more of them than anyone else by the time I met them. They always ask me what I did. Usually it is ancient race coupled with propulsion experts. In games when I don't take ancient race I don't expand nearly as quickly.

I played one game in an ancient galaxy so there were not many good systems to colonize. The nearest system to my home-system with a colonizable planet was 3 systems away. Because I had AR, I was able to plan for that and send colony ships straight to it instead of wandering aimlessly through asteroid fields and getting sucked into black holes after hitting their damaging warp-points.

Well, I've rambled enough. Suffice it to say I like Ancient Race

[PvK]

I'd say I sort of agree with most of the points on both sides, and end up thinking it's balanced enough, although I would really like to see better fog of war in the form of only seeing the Last known information, which would probably be taken just before homeworld placement for Ancient Race players.

Personally, I tend not to like to choose AR because to me it's more fun to have to explore than to know where most things are already. Even purely competitively, I'd prefer to buy advantages like speed, combat, and production/maintenance bonuses.

All in all I think it's an interesting advantage and not generally undervalued, although clearly a player can either make a lot of use out of it, or not.

PvK

[tesco samoa]

In a game with mix human and computer players the ancient races always live a long life. Everyone gives them gifts etc... until the alliance.

Perhaps our beef with the ancient race is focusing on the wrong area.

The problem is when you encounter a race and instantly know this race has the ancient ability.

So your not going to attack but be-friend.

And then your get the ancient race ability for free.

So perhaps the option to hide racial traits should be added to the game.

[PvK]

quote:

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Originally posted by tesco samoa:
...So perhaps the option to hide racial traits should be added to the game.

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Yes, and that's not the only reason it'd be good.

PvK

[geoschmo]

quote:

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Originally posted by Bman:
It becomes even more powerful in Simultaneous games (ie games against other people): In a simultaneous game, your ship stops when it enters a unexplored system. With Ancient Race, your ship moves happily along since all systems are explored.

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Actually your ship doesn't have to stop when it enters an unexplored system. If you give your ship the command to warp into the unexplored system, and then give it a move too command, then click on the unexplored system in the galaxy map in the lower right, then click in the sector in the middle of the unexplored system in the system map.

If you do this you will see in your orders queue for the ship "Move to (current system name) (x,y), Warp, Move to (unexplored system name) (6,6)"

It even gives you the name of the system even though you don't actually know it yet.

Now this doesn't work if two things happen.

One is if there is another race in the new system and you still have the box checked to clear orders when encountering enemy ships.

The other is if you click on the wrong unknown system in the galaxy map. Sometimes in a high density quadrant you can't always tell from the position of the systems and warp points which warp point goes to which unexplored system. If you give it orders to go to a sector that you have not explored, and you don't explore it by warping in before it tries to execute the move to order, it will ignore you.

Also, you could find yourself halfway though a system with no other warp points out and have to burn fuel and time getting back, or I guess if you timed it right you could hit a black hole this way, but hey, that's what exploring is all about right?

I agree that ancient race is very valuable in getting a running start in games. For a time I used it in all my multiplayer games. But recently I have have found that I can usually survive past the point where it serves me any purpose, and then I end up wishing I had the 1000 points in maint reduction or something else that is useful for the whole game.

Plus as someone else said, it's more fun to wonder where everybody is. But that's just a personal opinion.

I guess if my life depended on me winning a game of Space Empires IV and I needed to make absolutly sure I did everything I could do to win, I would probably pick Ancient race. But that's mainly because I am better anyway in the early part of the game. I often get bored, or have trouble keeping track of everything in the later part of the game, so I would want to make sure I won as quickly as possible.

But I don't think it's unbalanced. I think that the cost is just right considering the time depreciation of the trait.

Geoschmo

[ 29 January 2002: Message edited by: geoschmo ]