Can you limit the number of opponents in the retail game to a specific number?

[Elowan]

I'm still awaiting my game CD, therefore I'm banging away at the demo. It seems even if I pick LARGE map - I end up meeting 'bozos' fairly quickly. How large is 'large' supposed to be and is 'huge' available in the retail game?

I've also been choosing 3000 attribute points and allocating them to: 1)ancient race (so I can find 'ruins' planets nearby, 2)natural merchants (traders?) so as to avoid having to build spaceports, and 3)Storage experts to gain the extra facilities per planet colonized.

Any criticism on this choice?

I also tend to construct extra research facilities on all oxygen planets - especially in the same system as the Homeworld.

[capnq]

The number of players represented by "low", "medium", and "high", and the maximum number of systems in a "large" quadrant, can be adjusted in Settings.txt in the Data folder.

In the unmodded game, "high" is 6-10 players, and "large" is at most 100 systems. The highest you can change these to is 19 computer players and 255 systems. IIRC, changing the max systems doesn't affect "small" and "medium" quadrants.

To give yourself more space to grow, you can use a large quadrant with only a medium number of opponents. Even that isn't guaranteed to work, though; I have a solo game where I tried this and still had first contact on turn 3.

[Captain Kwok]

You can also choose exactly what and how many races you want to be involved in the game at the setup screen by adding their empire files manually...

[Gandalph]

And changing max systems to 255 does affect small and medium games, unfortunately. Because of this, I always generate the map during setup until I get a quadrant to my liking in regards to number of systems.

[dogscoff]

I've also been choosing 3000 attribute points and allocating them to: 1)ancient race (so I can find 'ruins' planets nearby, 2)natural merchants (traders?) so as to avoid having to build spaceports, and 3)Storage experts to gain the extra facilities per planet colonized.

Any criticism on this choice?

Nope, it's a perfectly valid strategy. (as is any strategy, if you can make it work.)

The three traits you have chosen all give you a boost in the early game. Later in the game you may find that other emires with different traits have an advantage over you. Try to think of ways to make your traits benefit you in the late game.

For example... The storage and natural merchants both result in increased facility slots for your empire, so consider lowering your research, mining and intel abilities. You can make up the shortfall in points and remain competitive by building extra production facilities, and have lots of extra racial points to spend on combat or construction modifiers.

Alternatively, use the extra facility slots to build cargo facilities, and then play a unit- heavy game. By relying more heavily on drones, fighters and weapons platforms for your defence you can reduce your maintenence costs and divert resources (or even racial points) to your front lines.

Advanced storage also works well with religious tech, which give you lots of new facilities to build.

[DirectorTsaarx]

Originally posted by Captain Kwok:
You can also choose exactly what and how many races you want to be involved in the game at the setup screen by adding their empire files manually...

Just remember, if you're using more than 2000 racial points, to beef up the "chosen" empires; the default empire files only use 2000 points, and I don't think the game corrects for higher racial point setups.

[Tenryu]

If you choose any of the original Gold races and you choose over 2k race points you will need to 'EDIT' them before you start to spend their race points over 2k.

I like to play a 5k game. I use the 5000 Versions of the ModPack Races. I usually choose; 1. Natural Merchants(no space ports, so extra space and no delay in getting stuff home), 2. Proplusion experts, extra movement(it really adds up over time and can save your butt in combat sometimes), 3. Extra storage,more SPACE, really excellent, very powerful colonization multiplier.

Then I take the extra 2000 points and dump them all into reduced maintenance.

Emergency build on your Home world for 10 turns. Build a few colony ships and/or between 3-10 Base ship yards. Set the ship yards to build colony ships and then a scout/attack ship to get some firepower up soon. You wil be popping out 1 colony and a frigate every turn within as little as 7 turns if all goes well.

I start research (take off the even spread default annoying selection) with DUC 2 and proplusion 2, then DUC 3, then Ship Construction 2. After that you decide; Cap Mis, DUC 4, Mil Tech, Physics, are all good choices and will 'color' the way you play.

Getting DUC 3 or 4 early has saved my butt many times. The proplusion tech 2 puts me within striking distance of the extra +1 move for tech 4 when I feel the timing is right. I try and out range and out move my opponents. All things being equal you will usually kick booty.

I focus my early strategy on building a big economic base, lots of planets, lots of production, lots of shipyards. I keep pumping out cols and ships. The low maintenance allows you to have a HUGE fleet.

When all else fails and the battle goes poorly RAM the alien scum, his ships will probobly be more precious to him then yours are to you. Send another one of your mass produced ships to finish him off before he gets his crippled scrap heap home. Revenge is sweet.

Of course, all the above applies only to games against the AI.

[ July 02, 2002, 16:25: Message edited by: Tenryu ]

[Fyron]

If you want X random opponents, you can go into Settings.txt in the Data folder. Find these lines:

Minimum Computer Player Low Setting := 1
Maximum Computer Player Low Setting := 3
Minimum Computer Player Medium Setting := 3
Maximum Computer Player Medium Setting := 7
Minimum Computer Player High Setting := 6
Maximum Computer Player High Setting := 10

For example, change the Minimum High setting to 8 and the Maximum High setting to 8. Then, start a game with a High number of computer players. If you select to generate no Neutrals, you will always get 8 computer players. Even leaving Neutrals could be fine, because they aren't real empires; they never leave their home system, and always have 1 homeworld, regardless of how many you set the game up to use.

[ July 02, 2002, 18:28: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

[jimbob]

Neutrals are a wonderful gift, they make excellent slave labourers, and generally have a good homeworld. If you leave them long enough, they'll usually colonize the entire system, then you can go in and drop troops to take each planet over. This is followed by population movement to optimize the races on each planet by atmosphere type.

However I've never seen the computer successfully i) take over a planet or ii) move populations around to maximize "breath-ability". So the more neutrals, the bigger the advantage for the human...
... this is why my wife invariably napalms neutrals into the nether-world.

[Fyron]

Yeah, neutrals are too much of an advantage to humans.