One empire, multiplayer?

[CW]

Since you can't save in simultaneous games even though I have mailed MM about it twice before, I'm finding it increasingly hard to run a large empire properly without taking hours every turn. This idea came to me suddenly: what if you have two or more people running the same empire?

In my current game there are about 160 planets, 30 transport & utility ships and 70 construction bases under my control. When the planets finish constructing buildings I always put them to work building units if they don't have a ship yard. Just getting those 30 transports to move those newly built units back to base without filling up those tiny remote colonies, or moving population around to undome planets, or distributing fresh troops & mines & fighters & supply to the fleets in a timely manner takes long enough. Those ships also do things like laying sats & mines, curing plagues, underway repair and resupply. This job alone justifies hiring a full time manager if this is in real life! Above all these logistic overheads there are also 270 combat ships needing orders every turn.

To work out the where those 30 transports go, filling every one of those 270 combat ships with orders, filling all 160 planets and 70 construction bases worth of build queues, deal with the diplomatic traffic etc generally takes me 1.5+ hours per turn. That's WAY too much if I'm running a turn per day! Especially if I HAVE to do it all in one go! (can't save the game remember!) On the other hand I'm a perfectionist and I can't tolerate executing a turn without everything properly set. I also don't trust the minister unless and until it gets much smarter AND knows how to ask me what I want done.

Now what if MM makes a hard code change to the game so I can split the empire up and let a friend to, say, run all the logistic operations for me?

[geoschmo]

This is kind of interesting. You might be able to do something like this now by having two empires. You could gift all your planets, except a few with some resource storage facilities to him. He would have to gift you resources every turn, to keep your fleets from running short on maintenance. I didn't get from your post whether you just wanted to control the ships, or if you were going to build them as well. Either way you could do it, it just would change the balance point somewhat. If he builds the ships, he would then gift them to you.

To simplify matter you could have a protectorate or subgugation treaty between the two empires. As long as you are the one with all the ships, you would be the stronger empire by score because that is the lion's share of how score is calculated.

This actually could be very interesting to see in action.

Geoschmo

[CW]

Emm.. I don't think you got my point...

If I'm going to "out-source" my empire's logistic system for somebody else to run, he would have to know exactly what's on my planets, what I'm building at each planet or ship yard, and the status and stock level of my fleets. So he really NEEDS to have full access to my empire.

Now the only way to do that is to bring my friend over to my place and play the turn together, but that's not a practical solution.

I don't have a solution to suggest, I only have a problem here...

[ 24 January 2002: Message edited by: CW ]

[geoschmo]

No, I understood perfectly what you want to do. You can't do that, obviously.

What I was suggesting was a way to do the same thing, or very close to the same thing anyway, with the current system.

He wouldn't need to know what was on your planets, if you didn't have any planets. SO you give him all your planets. You keep the ships, and do all the grand admiral poobah stuff like fight the wars, and political communications with the enemy. He has all the planets under his control, so he takes care of moving poulation around to maximize resource production and construction, research, all that boring stuff.

He doesn't have to worry about protecting his planets, cause you are doing that with the war ships under your control. You don't have to worry about keeping up the resources, cause he is gifting you all his excess every turn, and building warships and gifting them to you every turn.

You would only need a few planets, mainly for resources storage, not production, and you would need at least one of course so you could remain in contact with the other races.

It wouldn't be one empire like you wanted, but it would be two interdependant empires in a symbiotic relationship with each other.

Not sure if anyone has tried it on that level before, but it would be fascinating to see if it could be done. I mean I know technically it could be done, but it would take a lot of coordination.

Geoschmo

[Suicide Junkie]

What Geo is trying to do is explain how to do a workaround with the current system.
You need two empires (rebel races would be useful to kick start this, otherwise you must meet, merge & all that.

One player gets gifted all the warships, close support ships, and one single planet (preferably a moon of a planet deep inside the core of the empire)

The other player gets gifted all of the planets, construction bases, and civilian-duty craft (EG: pop transports).

By sharing units, you can get twice the amount in space as any other "empire".
Intel planets will have to be shared between the two empires, and overall, your defense will be have a -40% effectiveness compared to any other race, but your offense will be +40%.

This way, one player "Peace" manages all the planets, gifting the ships built & resources extracted to the other player.
Player two "War", fights battles and gifts crippled ships to the other empire to be sent home for repair & retrofits.

Some big advantages, but some disadvantages too. Watch out for Comm Mimics.
Once you have WarpPoint Manipulation, you can seal off the Starsystem which contains "War"'s planet, and concentrate all the intel on "Peace"'s defense (to block Comm Mimics). (This move restores the intel offense/defense modifier to 100%/100%, Except for the fact that your empire is immune to Crew Insurrection since War controls all the ships, and has no contact with any empire other than Peace.)

Another cool advantage once War's planet is sealed off, is that you can control access to your systems. Any system you wish to restrict access to, place a War-controlled Patrol fleet.
Those systems you allow allies into, but not enemies, use a Peace-controlled fleet.

There you have the advanced "War and Peace" system

[CW]

Okay I got it. Nice explaination. Now my problem is, who wants the boring "peace" job?

[geoschmo]

Yes, exactly SJ. And I hadn't even thought of the intel/contact angle. That's even better. I didn't think about War not having contact with any race. That might not be what CW wanted though if he wants to be the one doing the communicating, but if he doesn't care, that would make him impervious to intell attacks.

If he wants to be the one doing the communicating, then keep Peace isolated from the rest of the races like you said. War would need more planets then, but they would all be intel only worlds. Peace wouldn't need any intel if he was out of contact.

And if you knew ahead of time you were going to do something like this, you could even configure your races to take full advantage of it.

Peace gets nil for ship attack and defense, nill for strentgh. Up the inteligence and resource production.

War on the other hand can minimize the trade, resources, research, population, happiness, tolerance. Just about everything that doesn't directly have to do with combat.

Cunning would depend on which was going to be in contact, but max for one and min for the other.

Peace with there 50% strength makes a bunch of wimpy troops, but once he gifts them to War, *poof* they become lean mean fighting machines instantly.

Geoschmo

[geoschmo]

quote:

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Originally posted by CW:
Okay I got it. Nice explaination. Now my problem is, who wants the boring "peace" job?

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Hehe, exactly.

If you could talk some people into a PBEM "theme game" where you all control two empires, you could be both. You would still have to do it all, but it would allow you to "save" in the middle and not have to it all at once.

Geoschmo

[Suicide Junkie]

One problem with that:
Peace's troops need to defend the planets.

Plus, I am quite sure that Peace needs to have contact with other races. Since peace has all the planets, you'd have to seal off your entire empire and not expand, which other players would not let you do.

The ability to block allies with War's ships is not to be underestimated, when used on uncolonized border systems, and especially with those land-grabbing AIs in the mix .
"We accept your Trade & Research treaty, but be warned that any ship attempting to cross our borders without permission from the emperor himself will be destroyed."

quote:

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Okay I got it. Nice explaination. Now my problem is, who wants the boring "peace" job?

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I would. Having played Sequential turns all the time, I am used to the planet queue running at the end of the turn, but not the ships & fighting.
As Peace, I would be able to get into the action slowly, by controlling the excess units as a civil defense fighter force.

quote:

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And if you knew ahead of time you were going to do something like this, you could even configure your races to take full advantage of it.

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Ok, so for advanced traits:
- Peace takes "Think Big"
- War takes Racial techs
- War takes bonus movement

Characteristics: (All those not mentioned are maximum negative)
- Peace takes max resource production
- Peace takes max construction rate
- Peace takes some reproduction/env.resist
- Peace takes max research
- Peace takes max intel
- Peace takes some troop strength
- War takes max on Offense/Defense
- War takes max on Mainenance reduction.
- War takes some repair.
- War takes high trade

Not sure what that totals to, but the Retrofit/Repair duty is flexible.
NOTE: I gave racial techs to War. A free 20% of the research points generated by Peace goes into racial tech research. War will have to retrofit the hulls constructed by Peace into their final form
This has the added bonus that War does not have to ICQ Peace and tell him to alter the strategies.
Peace can research & repair all the standard techs, like engines and normal armors, and all the internals. Then when the ship is gifted back to War, the Racial tech repairs can be completed rapidly.

NOTE 2: Peace goes maximum negative on ship maintenance, since he can mothball the ships during repairs, and gift them to war as soon as they are built. Peace's civil defense forces consist of Units plus the occasional transport to shuttle equipment & units as required.

[geoschmo]

quote:

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Originally posted by suicide_junkie:
One problem with that:
Peace's troops need to defend the planets.

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True, except when I stated that, Peace was going to be out of contact, and thus not in need of defense. However I will conceed your point that that would be difficult to acheive in a real game situation and still have suffiecent systems to generate the reasouces need to keep War going. Much easier to keep War isolated, but then Peace has to do the talking.

Also, if I needed to defend my planets, troops is not the best way to go about it. Really, the only things troops are good for is attacking other planets (In this case, War's job) ,keeping your population happy (And low strength doesn't affect this), and keeping planets from being captured intact, because generally if the attacking troops fail, you get glassed. Either way you lose the production of the world. It's just a question of how important is it that the enemy not get it.

If you don't have extra racial points, better IMHO to reduce strength for Peace and apply them to areas that will better serve the alliance. War's ships can be tasked to defend the planets more effectively anyway. Personal preferance I guess.

Also, as far as repairing ships. War doesn't really need to gift ships back to peace to get them repaired. A couple of repair ships with each fleet or a few strategically placed repair bases (Peace can build them in orbit and gift them to war) will do nicely. With a Partnership treaty War can refuel at Peaces Resupply depot's, and if there is a repair space station in the same sector would make a nice base of operations without needing a planet belonging to War. Only thing War would need to gift them back for is to get them retrofitted, cause all of War's resources should be going toward mainteance, not retrofitting.

Also, good point about maxing out War's trade. This is better than my idea of a subgugation treaty because War gets resources without taking them from Peace, then when Peace gifts resources, War is double-dipping. Nice. Plus I don't know if subjugation allows refueling at each others depots.

Geoschmo