eXperience: the 5h X

[Phoenix-D]

"Is it possible to have "first place player has XX times more points than second place player" as a trigger for the release of the hordes? Is it possible to set up the hordes so that they only attack the first place player (regardless of who it ends up being?)"

no, and no. The civil war idea is also impossible.

Not without hard-code changes, that is.

Phoenix-D

[jimbob]

It seems to me that when empires get really big, and super powerful, they tend to crumble from within. The citizens get used to being top of the heap, and just start to assume they will be forever (Assyrians, Babalonians, Greeks, Romans, Ottomans, British...). The result is a growing decadence within the citizenry, and the whole system becomes less productive and far more wasteful.

i.e.
As a part of the 5th X, I'd love to see a realistic lazy-factor for the most powerful empire. When my empire hits a score of say 5x more than the 2nd place empire, I'd get a message that the citizenry would rather play game boy than work (productivity and build rate drops 5%, maint. increases 50%). When I hit say 10x more than the 2nd place empire, everyone would rather go to holo-vid theatres than work (prod./build rates drop 10%, maint. increases 100%)plus the citizens on my home world would rather not pay taxes anymore so they rebel, etc.

And _then_ the barbarian hordes/space pirates hit! Oh sure, I've got the ships to kick his one-eyed, peg-legged, parrot lovin' butt across the galaxy... except every time I pull ships away from my planets they revolt! Now it's a challenge

[TacticDragon]

Wow! I didn't expect so many answers so fast, but then again, I'm new to this forum...

I think all ideas sound great. I also have some new ideas, which are similar to some of the ones I have read so far.

But first, a comment about the Civil War. I must admit I am not too fond of the idea anymore. Such an event, or the threat of such an event, would just translate into a lot of micromanagement (build troops, build and move around ships, etc...), into a phase of the game which is already plagued by too much micromanagement. I think what we need is more like "now we have all these high tech toys, let's use them for something productive, besides crushing insects".

I think the Antarean threat could be turned into something nice. And maybe we don't need to introduce them towards the end of the game. (BTW, this is probably a stupid question, but what does "MEE" mean??? As I said, I'm new here..). How about this:

a) create a race with access to a unique and very powerful and essentially militaristic technology tree (superior weapons, fighters, armors, ships, etc.). Let's call it "Antarean Tech." for the moment.

b) give them a NASTY AI.

c) maybe deny them access to colonization technology (I've read about the Pirate&Nomads mod - could we just make them into some very powerful "Pirates"???)

d) find some way to incentivize the Antareans to conquer with troops (to make up for their lack of colonization tech.).

e) create a second branch of technology, "Orion Tech.", which can only be found in ruins, and which is very (only??) effective against "Antarean Tech." This effectively duplicates the Orion/Antarean storyline of MOO2, but we could create our own flavor to it. Ideally, the "Orion Ruins" would only be found on special planets, with the following characteristics: i) massively damages ships, ii) are hidden by storms, iii) anything else? Can we do this? I mean, is it possible to introduce a new type of planet with special characteristics AND that always contains ruins?

f) One problem here would be to create the "right amount of ruins". Ideally there should be only one such ruin-planet per game, and the ruins would give to the new tech tree. Alternatively the ruins could give just one tech, in which case we could allow many ruins instead. I guess the key question here is: can we tweak the probability of a special planet appearing? In that case we could aim for an expected number of such planets of 2. Assuming a bell curve probability distribution, my ball park estimate would be the following probabilities:
- no Orion ruins: close to impossible
- 1 ruin: low chance
- 2 ruins: high chance
- 3 ruins: low chance
- more ruins: close to impossible
The idea is to always have at least one ruin.

g) in writing that Last point, I got another one Why bother with these probabilities? We could just create a certain number of "Orion techs" that are all cery effective against Antareans, but with very different strategies, e.g.:
- one "fighter" tech
- one "planetary defense" tech
- one "troop" tech
- one "planetary attack" tech
- one "ship weapon attack" tech
- one "ship defense" tech
The idea here is to add uncertainty and decrease the possibility the player has to "prepare" against the Antareans. In two different games, the player would have to adapt completely different research strategies, depending on the Orion techs he/she has discovered so far, tryin g to "compensate" with regular techs in weaker areas.

All of this would have to be calibrated so that the Antareans start out by being just a nuisance in the early game, but as they grow stronger, they eventually constitute a Great Enemy in the latter part of the game.

[jimbob]

Quote: "We could just create a certain number of "Orion techs" that are all (v)ery effective against Antareans, but with very different strategies, e.g.:
- one "fighter" tech
- one "planetary defense" tech
- one "troop" tech
- one "planetary attack" tech
- one "ship weapon attack" tech
- one "ship defense" tech
The idea here is to add uncertainty and decrease the possibility the player has to "prepare" against the Antareans. In two different games, the player would have to adapt completely different research strategies, depending on the Orion techs he/she has discovered so far"

(Hey, how does everybody do the quote thing with the lines above and below the quote?)

This would really force people to use novel strategies to take on the "Antereans". Normally I avoid fighters, but if my only useful weapon is the fighters, I'll have to make due.

Would the Ruins techs be tradable? Would you get the techs from Empires that have surrendered to you? Concievably an empire could become massive, then end up confronting the "Antereans", but have no "Orion" weapons.. would they be as good as dead?

[Cyrien]

I remember some old Nintendo game that had something very like some of these suggestions happen.

Genghis Khan game or some thing... to long ago to remember... but I still very clearly remember the game and what happened.

I was playing as the Chinese and had successfully conquered all of the world cept for western Europe and England. I was just about to launch my final crushing blows to take out all the final opponents. Somewhere way back deep in my empire (Korea was first I think) one of my provinces revolts and breaks away. No problem I think. I had planned for revolts like this having had some earlier on (all provinces had more than one borer with another so I just made all of them have equal number of troops thus if one revolts the neighbors all invade and overwhelm the troops that would have been there that had revolted). I prepared to send in troops from the neighboring provinces and I take out the revolters. Next turn another one revolts. I take him down. Then another. Over and over it happens. Eventually my forces in the interior are exhausted and wiped out and poorly trained with fresh recruits. I am forced to send half my European invasion force into the interior to take control. Well the europeans attacked and though they lost they wiped out massive amounts of my troops. I no longer had enough to defend my borders and keep the wanton destruction in the interior from spreading out of control. To make a long story short (to late?) I wound up with India. From all the world of Asia and North Africa and Eastern Europe to India by itself.

Now if I remember correctly the effect that made this possible was that in this game you had a ruler and little peons. You as the ruler never had to worry about revolts in the provinces you ruled over directly. But you had an efficiency rating and the more you ruled directly the less efficient it was and the more you lost. Eventually it wasn't possible to effectively rule everything yourself. You were forced to delelate to the peons. Each one had a loyalty rating and other simple Ratings. You start with the loyals and move down. However eventually your ruler dies! Old age. An heir is there... but young and inexperienced with lower scores and untried. The loyalty of many of your governor peons drops cause it's a new ruler. Eventually revolts break out and it's hard to hold on.

This was a great gaming experience... this was around early 90's and I still quite clearly remember that part of the game. I don't remember the rest of it or the details or the name of the game even. But I remember what happened in that one. It was great going from almost conquering the world to nothing. It also pretty accuratly modeled what happened to real empires in ancient times that got too large.

Now imagine what happens if you take some of these ideas and bring em on over to SE4. For starters revolts. These happen in SE. But not on a large enough scale. Ooo... a planet revolted. Ok fleet wipe it out and build a new colonizer for it. Or alternatly have a troop ship in each system with troops on board waiting for it to happen. What needs to be there is not just planetary revolts. But the chance for system wide revolts and multi system wide revolts as well. With SE4 have it based on happiness or some such in each system. Each percentage down is a chance for revolt. If a single planet in a system passes the chance spread it around and check each planet in the system. If all planets in the system agree switch EVERYTHING in the system to the new empire, ships, mines, satellites, everything. It would all be under local control and could be locally seized. Maybe crew checks for each ship or fleet or something. I would say no just for simplicity at the moment. Now if all in that system say yes... move to all neighboring systems and run checks there. Repeat. Eventually it runs down and ends but by that time you can have anywhere a single planet to a few planets to a single system to a few systems all having revolted.

Now as an add on if the whole system doesn't agree then it doesn't move on to the next system. But those planets in that system that agree still revolt and form their own nation with a percentage of everything in the system equal to the percentage of planets in that system that revolted. Half the planets revolt then half the ships in the system also switch sides. Half the mine fields go over and half the fighters in space go over.

Setup a system of modifiers. For every planet that agrees add a certain percentage for others to agree to go over as well. Once a few go over it starts to snowball. Then have other modifiers kick in. Say 20% of your empire has just revolted. New checks start to apply for each planet that goes over... negative checks now. If done right such a system could have little revolts pop up in unhappy areas with a chance of spreading. If they get a one or two system the bonus modifiers would probably start bowling over and in the end before the negatives add back up you might have lost in a major revoltion 30-40% of your empire. If your really unlucky more!
You didn't choose what you wanted to keep. You might have lost your best fleet even and some of your best planets. That means it is next to impossible to plan for other than keeping people content.

With that in mind I would suggest changing those peace, agressive, neutral mods some. For peace it seems good cept needing a little more strength. Something like the war weariness in CIV3 would be good. For aggressive have peace weariness. The farther a planet is from a battle the less happy they are (there people didn't get to fight in the battle and thus didn't get any glory etc) thus your border areas in conflict stay happy but your central empire starts to get grumpier. For neutrals a mix. They don't like prolonged war but they also don't like anything much above a basic trade treaty. They can't fight big wars but they also don't get the big time peace treaty bonuses of reasearch intel etc unless they risk unhappy citizens revolting.

Perhaps add a new race characteristic. Loyalty or Units or some such. Range from 50% to 150% and have it modify the chances of revolt if happiness roles fail. Thus a hive society with 150% unity will almost never revolt on any planet but berserker societies in anarchy might do it all the time.

This is long enough now... so that is all... for now.

[TacticDragon]

Cyrien, that must have been quite an experience. However, I don't know if this is implementable in SE4, and again, I must say I'm not too fond of the whole civil war thingy. I like the idea of a control system where empire size introduces inefficiency. This was actually done in Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri (SMAC), although it didn't have a big effect. But I'll leave that to other games.

Jimbob, sorry, I don't know how to use quotes either. Anyways, I prefer to refer to past sections by using letters or numbers, like this:

g) In my opinion, the Orion Techs should be freely tradable/stealable/conquerable just like any normal tech. The Antarean Techs would not, however. But this is just my opinion.

As a side note on fighters: Jimbob, I feel sorry for you that you don't use fighters. They can be very, very powerful. Plus, they cost zero in maintenance. They are simply great to guard warp points in the early game. In my opinion, even greater than satellites or mines, because they can move to the warp point by themselves. Another "trick" with fighters is what I call the "instant fuel bug":

Situation: a fleet is out of fuel; if the fleet has carriers with fighters, these can be launched, thus creating a new group of ships with full tanks (!); if these ships are then integrated into the fuel-less fleet, the fuel is likewise tranferred and shared; all that remains to be done now is to dock the fighters on the carriers again (wait until the next turn to do this), and voila: the fuel-less fleet can move normally again. Repeat as necessary...

[Q]

Many of the interesting things proposed here need a hard-code change, but we have quite a few possibilities to keep the game interesting when your empire has reached MEE status and you actually have won the game (many of these ideas have already been mentioned on other threads):

1.) Switch you empire to computer contol and choose a small empire to continue the game: There has been a revolution and you have been exiled!
2.) Make a gift of as many systems/colonies/ships/technologies as you want to a computer empire (you may have to take control for one turn over that empire to make sure that the gift is accepted): This would correspond to the civil war/rebellion.
3.) Switch all computer empires to manual for one turn and make them surrender to one AI empire you think is the most dangerous: All other empires form a strong alliance to combat your empire.
I did this once with my Borg assimilation modification race and was quite in trouble!

Of course nothing of this is random, but you can do it right now without any modification of the game.

[Suicide Junkie]

quote:

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[ 01 December 2001: Message edited by: suicide_junkie ]

[capnq]

quote:

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Can we do this? I mean, is it possible to introduce a new type of planet with special characteristics AND that always contains ruins?

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Yes and no.

In theory, something like this can be done in the Map Editor, but 1.49 has a bug that doesn't recognize ruins on maps that have been saved in the Map Editor. (I've reported this to MM.)

1.49 does recognize ruins on maps generated in 1.49 itself, so there might be a way to implement something similar via the Data files, but I don't know how to do it.

[Baron Munchausen]

The main benefit of the "Antarean" feature of MOO II was that you could not count on being left alone if you accidently started in an isolated location. You had to build some planetary defenses and some warships just in case an Antarean raid would pop up. This was what 'space monsters' were good for, too. So it was much harder to get a "lucky start" and get way ahead of the other players in empire development because you didn't have to spend on military force until later.

Rather than duplicate MOO too literally in this case - much as I'd like some of the weapons technologies to be duplicated literally - I think we ought to devise something in keeping with the character of SE. I've just recently posted to the beta forums about an idea that would cover this. Let me repost it here:

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Why should "ruins" always be technological candy? Maybe they should contain a nasty surprise once in a while. If you ran the risk of activating a new empire when you took a ruins planet, especially one with advanced technology, life could be much more interesting. If the 'ancient race' awakens they should take the planet from your fledgling colony of course, and revive a decent sized population on it very quickly. Since you will usually go for ruins early it's likely that this would occur in an outlying area far from your warships and the new rival would get a reasonable start. Especially, as the 'ruins' theme implies, if they start with higher technology than most of the other races.
It would be cool if MM would create a specific race/shipset for this. We could make a back story for it. This ancient race once ruled the galaxy but they faced some sort of plague that even they could not cure, so they put themselves into hibernation. It's been so long that no one remembers where all their planets were anymore and you never know when you might run across one...

It would be specially interesting if the various planets that got revived would be smart enough to automatically ally with each other rather than be seperate fragmentary empires.

Another way to possibly increase variability in the game is to have some of the 'neutrals' change their political character part way through the game and start expanding like regular empires.

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Anyway, with hidden enemies scattered around that may pop up at any time when you or any other player colonizes their 'hibernating' world we could have a 'threat factor' much like MOO II with the Antareans but in a unique style. I'd still like to see some MOO-style space monsters, though.

[ 01 December 2001: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]