The neutral challenge - Page 2

WhiteHojo · #11 January 30th, 2001, 08:53 PM

My worst fear - play 400+ turns and 1st contact is a fleet of 20+ Heavy Carriers from the EA who promptly "annex" my little empire into theirs w/no time to build up my defenses.

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Character is best defined as that which you do when you believe nobody is watching.

E. Albright · #12 January 31st, 2001, 01:44 AM

Well, the <ahem> fun twist to what I was proposing was something more along the lines of you being able to send 1 fleet through 1 warp point every 100 turns. If you only send 3 colony ships and there's 10 inviting planets, tough; it's gonna be another 10 years before the other 7 colony ships get there (or if you're really nasty, 10 + build time + 10...). But then I've always wanted a space game which makes you plan ahead years by making your ships take years to get from point A to B...

E. Albright · #13 January 31st, 2001, 01:47 AM

This may be an unnecessary point, but what if you fully exploit your system, go next door, and find a neutral? I'd be inclined to stay isolated, but that's me.

randal7 · #14 January 31st, 2001, 03:56 AM

I tried something similar a while back. I got bored with the game I was playing because I was too far ahead so I switched to the Last-place neutral. This was around 120 turns into the game. I played for a while and was fortunate enough to discover another neutral nearby. I destroyed their fleet and all of their planets in successive turns but they would not surrender even when reduced to their home planet only. I also could not get ANY other race to agree to ANY type of treaty. I E-mailed Malfador to see if this was a bug or why this happened but never heard back. Have any of the rest of you encountered this problem? Like most of you, I really liked the idea of starting from a significant disadvantage, and was disappointed that I was unfairly handicapped by not being able to make peace with anybody or get a surrender from a defeated foe.

pathfinder · #15 January 31st, 2001, 04:10 AM

I am currently doing a modification, went 150 turns, then sent scout out --- found 1 system with planets and the other empty. So I am in full expansion/exploitation of that syste, plus just got gasss colonization. So I may sit and fully get things up to snuff, then send another scout out.

I did it this way because I honestly just got bored...so I modified the concept a bit ;p

Puke · #16 January 31st, 2001, 04:31 AM

if you are getting to bored waiting for 1000 turns to pass, you can go into your options and turn off the log pop-up and the end turn confirmation. then just put something on top of the end turn button (F11? F12?) and go grab a beer or three.

edit: i know, what if you miss the invasion. save the game, let advance for 15 minutes, check, save again. not hard. when invaded, just repeat the Last 15 minutes while watching.

[This message has been edited by Puke (edited 31 January 2001).]

ColdSteel · #17 January 31st, 2001, 04:46 AM

Okay, so why doesn't someone experiment with setting this "house rules" game type up just right, in a perfect start location, and then save the game every x number of turns as they play. If it turns out to be a really great game, they could take an early savegame (around 50-100 turns) and post it in the mod section here. Then everyone could download and play essentially the same exact scenario using their own style of play from that point on. Then you could compare the differing experiences of the players afterwards.

Of course this wouldn't work with any mods installed but it certainly would after the next patch is released when everyone will be able to run the default data files anytime regardless of the number of mods installed.

WhiteHojo · #18 January 31st, 2001, 04:59 PM

quote:
Originally posted by ealbright:
This may be an unnecessary point, but what if you fully exploit your system, go next door, and find a neutral? I'd be inclined to stay isolated, but that's me.

This is another good reason not to use Nuetrals in the game. Just make sure in the game setup you turn off the Random selection of computer nuetral empires.

Played some more Last nite on my experimental game. It should be noted that my game had tech cost set to Med. By turn 175 I had researched all colony techs and had colonized and converted all the atmospheres to my natural preference. I believe I had 4 GG huge, 1 GG large, 1 Rock Huge, 1 rock large, 1 Ice med & 1 rock tiny in my system.

At this point I decided to do Bills limited exploration idea. sent 1 ship to the S WP - empty but for asteroids. Sent 1 to the NE WP - empy. Sent 1 to the NW WP - BOOM - Mines. Sent another (home never knew what happened to the 1st ship, never transmitted anything I guess) - Boom. repeat - finally ran out of mines and had 1st contact w/Terrans. They had been sitting next door for who knows how long and for some reason mined the WP leading into my system - all w/o ever contacting me - makes me wonder how they knew to mine that point?

Anyway, another observation I found is that with my 11 planets and 7 Cruisers (must keep the population in line) I was in 3rd place out of 13. go figure.

I think I'll try again w/another scenerio. A helpful idea I found - use Gas Giant as your starting race and hope for another colonizable world in your home system - then build nothing but research facilities.

It is definately a fun way to play.

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Character is best defined as that which you do when you believe nobody is watching.

Alpha Kodiak · #19 January 31st, 2001, 06:04 PM

This sounded so cool that I thought I'd try it. I didn't have the "rules" at home, so I just played it by ear. I set up a rock/oxygen race and started the game in a large quadrant with a high density of computer generated races but no neutrals. I was dropped into a system that had precisely one other rock planet and one rock moon in it. Everything else was gas giant or ice. I colonized the available planet and moon, and spent almost all of my initial research on planet utilisation (sp.?) and gas giant colonization, figuring that I'd have plenty of time before first contact to get things going. Lo and behold, turn 26 comes along and I get a visit from a race (one of the ones I downloaded, can't remember which, right now) that turned out to be three systems removed from mine. I hadn't researched any ship or weapon technology to that point. I threw together a basic missile escort design and a missile weapon platform design and did a little bit of emergency build. I was able to get a trade alliance with them, but then they decided to get mad and go to war with me (not sure why). Fortunately, I had found a couple of decent systems in another direction from them, once I had been "activated", and I had some new colonies going to support a little more production. I have had to use the "missile dance" alot, since his ships are quite a bit advanced over mine, but I am starting to get the upper hand now.

All in all, I find this a very interesting way to start a game. It gives you a little sense of desperation when you suddenly find yourself confronted by superior technology. Some of the weaknesses in the AI actually fit into the roleplaying in this case, since you are outwitting the technologically superior aliens to defeat them.

WhiteHojo · #20 January 31st, 2001, 06:15 PM

Alpha nails the joy of this style (for me anyway) - the uncertainty.

You think contact might come at anytime but you can never be sure. My 175 turns were filled w/more tension and a sense of urgency than I could recall feeling in any other game of SE4.

My next recommendation would be to max out the number of Computer Active Empires in a game (I have seen, I believe, 20 total empires at one time) - this would increase the likelyhood of 1st contact at a reasonable time but it does tend to make turns take a rather long amount of time - lots of empires, w/lots of stuff to do.

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Character is best defined as that which you do when you believe nobody is watching.