Imperium 28 - Report and Notes from the Sponsor

[RefSteel]

My report is finally up, in the usual spot! I'll add some sponsor's notes below when I get the chance (hopefully later tonight, depending on how the timing works out). I really enjoyed this one, and I hope everyone else did too!

[Rowain]

A great and funny report

[RefSteel]

Thanks very much, Rowain! It's always nice to hear that my reports are appreciated! (Criticism's nice too; I'm always looking to improve....)

And while I'm here, believe it or not, I'm finally posting my Sponsor's Notes! (I know; I can hardly believe it myself.)

First, notes on the tech tree and opposing races: I've commented on these a bit in other threads, so I won't go into a lot of detail, but this was definitely a challenging set-up independent of the map - particularly due to Impossible difficulty. I wanted this game played at the highest difficulty level in large part to see how an Impossible AI would handle this map design - and overall, I was pretty happy with the results, though sargon's check to make sure the final map would be viable may have helped with that.

Also, to get it out of the way: The scoring system, chosen before I started my game, was pretty much arbitrary; it grew out of the story in my "scenario" description rather than from anything really related to gameplay. In hindsight, penalizing the player for the elimination of other races by other AIs was kind of silly; sorry 'bout that. Fortunately, we don't tend to take scoring terribly seriously around here.

So, let's talk about the mapscript. I suspect that it was a good thing we played the game at Impossible difficulty, because the game's ancient AI is not very good at figuring out how to deal with unusual situations (like being surrounded by asteroid stars on all sides). On Impossible, they end up getting the techs they need in reasonable time anyway, but the player will likely be able to outstrip lower-difficulty AI expansion simply by prioritizing whatever techs are needed to get past the various asteroid fields. (Even so, it might be interesting to try it on a lower difficulty anyway, to test the theory, or when a particularly Gentle Imperium is desired.)

On the whole, I like the way the map played out: The dynamics created simply by spacing races as they would be on a "normal" medium map, but with a number of habitable star systems closer to the number on a small map was pretty neat. I think that on the whole this mapscript tilts things toward the player (especially a skilled and in-practice player) for a number of reasons ... though erratic Bulrathi neighbors and a miserable early tech tree can obviously swing things the other way in any galaxy!

The next Imperium or two at least will be played on a "normal" map, but I did like this enough that I'm tempted to revisit it for future Imperia. If others have input or opinions on it though, I'd certainly appreciate them.

Other thoughts I had on Asteroid mapscripts: I called this one "Widespread Asteroids," but I wonder if it would be possible to set up a script that moves the homeworlds toward the galactic core, and changes the outermost stars to asteroid fields - possibly leaving e.g. artifacts worlds alone to encourage exploration. (In fact, I wonder if it's possible to edit an artifacts world into an artifacts asteroid field that provides a tech but has no habitable planets...) Such a map should play out a lot more like an in-between small/medium galaxy, with a few wrinkles (like delayed or eliminated Council meetings). Alternatively, the reverse - with lots of asteroids at the galactic core, and homeworlds distributed around the rim - might be especially interesting. Either of these might be hard to implement without editing the map by hand however, since the destinations of the AI starting ships would have to be modified along with their homeworlds' locations (I think).

In any case, let me know what you think! Thoughts, questions, conflicting opinions, suggestions, and anything else you may want to say, would be welcome! Finally, thanks very much to sargon (again!) for making this Imperium possible!

[TheArchduke]

Also, to get it out of the way: The scoring system, chosen before I started my game, was pretty much arbitrary; it grew out of the story in my "scenario" description rather than from anything really related to gameplay. In hindsight, penalizing the player for the elimination of other races by other AIs was kind of silly; sorry 'bout that. Fortunately, we don't tend to take scoring terribly seriously around here.

Yeah, the ai elimination on such a tough map was something I did not worry about when my survival was at stake.

So, let's talk about the mapscript. I suspect that it was a good thing we played the game at Impossible difficulty, because the game's ancient AI is not very good at figuring out how to deal with unusual situations (like being surrounded by asteroid stars on all sides). On Impossible, they end up getting the techs they need in reasonable time anyway, but the player will likely be able to outstrip lower-difficulty AI expansion simply by prioritizing whatever techs are needed to get past the various asteroid fields. (Even so, it might be interesting to try it on a lower difficulty anyway, to test the theory, or when a particularly Gentle Imperium is desired.)

Not perhaps the best idea for an Imperium but I would love to try this out on hard difficulty.

Other thoughts I had on Asteroid mapscripts: I called this one "Widespread Asteroids," but I wonder if it would be possible to set up a script that moves the homeworlds toward the galactic core, and changes the outermost stars to asteroid fields - possibly leaving e.g. artifacts worlds alone to encourage exploration. (In fact, I wonder if it's possible to edit an artifacts world into an artifacts asteroid field that provides a tech but has no habitable planets...) Such a map should play out a lot more like an in-between small/medium galaxy, with a few wrinkles (like delayed or eliminated Council meetings). Alternatively, the reverse - with lots of asteroids at the galactic core, and homeworlds distributed around the rim - might be especially interesting. Either of these might be hard to implement without editing the map by hand however, since the destinations of the AI starting ships would have to be modified along with their homeworlds' locations (I think).

Which makes me think. Is Moo modabble enough to make the galaxies bigger then huge? Because then something along those lines would make sense.