Ancient Race too powerful?

[tesco samoa]

Perhaps this should change.

There should be an option to turn that stuff off.

Or Ancient race and our maps should not update the new info until you have done some intel on that system or visited it again.

That would make sence. ANd would make that intel alit more important.

But right now that is just too unbalanced. Free knowledge without a price

[PvK]

Again, isn't this true of all system knowledge, not just that gained with Ancient Race?

To have each player keep their own Last seen view of each system would require the program to store that for each empire, and I don't think it does that, does it?

PvK

[Andrés]

That's right. All sytem knowledge is the same.
Selecting ancient race is a waste of points.
Most knoledge of far away systems is completely useles, you normally only care about nearby systems, and exploring them isn't difficult.
Identifying homeworlds is not as easy as you describe, espacially in a large quadrant you'll find too many would be homeworlds.
It would only be a nice advantage if you select the option to make contents of all systems visible.
And you can get all advantages of ancient race without exploring the whole quadrant by signing a partership with someone that has it for only 1 turn.

The "As of 2402.5" exploration memory would need some deep hard code changes but it sounds to me like the best solution.
I had suggested it sometime but don't know if I was the first.
You could make it not only remember the planets and racial points, but even alien colonies, and not sure about ships (keeping track of Last know location of every enemy ship would be too much).
I hate not remembering the location of an alien homeworld I had already found but didn't bother to write down.

The more ruins but fewer with useful tech suggestion sounds good. I would avoind the ruin hunting strategy and give it a more random effect. It should be relatively easy to mod.

[Mark Walton]

A few comments:

Races which choose Ancient Race have spent 1000 on something which everyone will get eventually. Ancient races can't go into higher levels of alliance, without giving their advantage away to other races.

The ability to get extra tech from ruins is part of what they are paying for, and having more tech is part of what makes them an "ancient race" in my view.

You could of course mod your system generation to put more ruins "behind" hidden sectors - as I am doing in my mod as the "research" element. (This mod WILL be finished and released one day, soon, )

[Praetor]

I think everybody has made some good points: Having Ancient Race does confer some big initial advantages, for colonization and strategic defense if for nothing else. I don't think its actually useless; but as Andres pointed out, the rest of the players can achieve the same thing eventually, and then its useless. Basically, the advantages it confers initially are offset by the fact that its a one-off thing. You can save money on explorers, know where to send your colony ships, etc., (as well as using your starmaps as diplomatic bargaining chips) but 500 turns down the road so will everyone else, and they'll still have Organic tech or Advanced Storage while you have bumpkus. I think that's pretty balanced.

[tesco samoa]

and the fact you know about every update to the map.

[geoschmo]

Off on a tangent if I may.

This is a perfect example of a point that many people forget during discussions of balance in SEIV. The fact is that most racial traits and techs have strengths and weaknesses that will change in relation to others over the course of a game. Theese advantages can appear unbalancing in a very specific point in the game, but with a long term view, they are not.

I always like to equate SEIV to a giant, highly detailed game of rock, paper, sizzors. I can imagine from the perspective of someone who plays paper, sizzors would seem highly "unbalanced". I mean, no matter how many times I face sizzors, they always cut right through me!

Many people will hit on a particular tech or racial trait and take the view that it is unbalanced and start calling for changes to the game. The fact is in almost every case it turns out they were missing some key point of view that would have allowed them to see the overall balance. Whether it's research cost, or in this case the limited time value of the ancient race attribute.

This is not to say the game is perfect. Of course problems have come up. But the big ones usually get fixed. If they didn't I doubt we would keep playing and caring.

The great modding flexibilty offered by this game allows for almost unlimited tweaking of these "unbalanced" factors. And yet, more often than not when someone decides to take it upon themselves to balance the game through a mod, they find it wasn't as bad as they thought at first, or they even make it worse.

Getting everybody to agree that a particualar acpect is unbalanced is not easy. Getting everybody to agree how it shold be changed to balance it out is almost impossible.

I don't really have a point here, other than this is a better game than even some of us that play it a lot realize.

Geoschmo

[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