Master of Orion 1 unofficial patch

[Cyneheard]

Is there a rough ranking in AI difficulty for the various MOO versions and mods? Kyrubs seems much harder than 1.3, but where do 1oom, 1oom-fork, or RotP slot in?

I haven't played all the forks, and I've never completed a game of RotP (playtested some early builds) but my impression is that RotP probably has the strongest AI (but the difficulty levels may not line up in terms of production bonuses) - probably followed by kyrub's patch, though it's possible some of the 1oom forks do better than others.

I've been thinking off and on about doing a playthrough and write-up of Remnants, but so far haven't found the time and motivation.

RotP has a wide range of settings, so keep that in mind - some of those will not be AI-friendly - but it's pretty clear to me that giving the AI Impossible-level bonuses on a normal map would go very poorly for the player. Their ship design is MUCH improved for sure, and they actually coordinate invasions effectively (i.e., having troops show up at the same time as a deathball fleet).

Really crazy things can happen in the larger games (my machine can handle a 10,000-star map reasonably well, and a 1,000-star map is trivial, although if you play the larger maps, you want the Fusion mod that lets you turn OFF Artifact worlds, the game absolutely breaks if you get hundreds of worlds per player to mine for Artifacts bonuses).

[Bionic Commando]

Thanks Ref and Cyne! Do any of the 1oom settings align with Kyrub's patch? Is it harder than 1.3?

[RefSteel]

(Two weeks later somehow; sorry about that...) I think the closest 1oom comes to Kyrub's patch is with "Classic+ AI" and "UI Extras" and "fixbugs" all enabled, but they still don't play in quite the same way. I haven't played enough to judge whether it's easier or harder than 1.3, especially as I haven't played the latter in years either; there are different bugs, and different AI decision-making, but which is "smarter" or more difficult to defeat is hard to say (and likely to depend on your playstyle).

[Bionic Commando]

(Two weeks later somehow; sorry about that...)  I think the closest 1oom comes to Kyrub's patch is with "Classic+ AI" and "UI Extras" and "fixbugs" all enabled, but they still don't play in quite the same way.  I haven't played enough to judge whether it's easier or harder than 1.3, especially as I haven't played the latter in years either; there are different bugs, and different AI decision-making, but which is "smarter" or more difficult to defeat is hard to say (and likely to depend on your playstyle).

No worries on the delay, thanks for your response!

I ended up playing 1oom a bunch over the holiday and found that the setting you outlined seem a bit harder than 1.3 but easier than kyrub.

I also played a number of RotP games and would second thrawn's point, it's great! The "meta" of the game is really different for a number of reasons:

• The galaxies are usually a bit larger, so the gameplay tends to favor mid and mid-late strategies
  
• Scout squatting isn't a strategy any more as 2 unarmed fleets no longer trigger combat
  
• The retreat redirect bug is removed
  
• Missile base turtling is no longer a viable strategy. I'm not 100% sure, but it seems like RotP has corrected some of the issues with missile bases that Sargon observed. The AI also manages its fleets and combat much better, so its difficult to hide behind missile bases
  
• The research bonus is structured differently. Rather than the compound interest formula, you get +25% RP up to 1/6 investment in a category. So basically you get +25% if you are evenly invested across the 6 categories.
  

I'm not the best MOO player, but I can consistently win with mid-races on 1.3-Impossible. Some of the beta AIs for RotP-fusion are quite challenging even without giving them economic benefits.

[Cyneheard]

(Two weeks later somehow; sorry about that...)  I think the closest 1oom comes to Kyrub's patch is with "Classic+ AI" and "UI Extras" and "fixbugs" all enabled, but they still don't play in quite the same way.  I haven't played enough to judge whether it's easier or harder than 1.3, especially as I haven't played the latter in years either; there are different bugs, and different AI decision-making, but which is "smarter" or more difficult to defeat is hard to say (and likely to depend on your playstyle).

No worries on the delay, thanks for your response!

I ended up playing 1oom a bunch over the holiday and found that the setting you outlined seem a bit harder than 1.3 but easier than kyrub.

I also played a number of RotP games and would second thrawn's point, it's great! The "meta" of the game is really different for a number of reasons:

• The galaxies are usually a bit larger, so the gameplay tends to favor mid and mid-late strategies
  
• Scout squatting isn't a strategy any more as 2 unarmed fleets no longer trigger combat
  
• The retreat redirect bug is removed
  
• Missile base turtling is no longer a viable strategy. I'm not 100% sure, but it seems like RotP has corrected some of the issues with missile bases that Sargon observed. The AI also manages its fleets and combat much better, so its difficult to hide behind missile bases
  
• The research bonus is structured differently. Rather than the compound interest formula, you get +25% RP up to 1/6  investment in a category. So basically you get +25% if you are evenly invested across the 6 categories.
  

I'm not the best MOO player, but I can consistently win with mid-races on 1.3-Impossible. Some of the beta AIs for RotP-fusion are quite challenging even without giving them economic benefits.

Yeah, missile bases are really expensive in ROTP (e.g., size 250/RC VI worlds can only build like 6 bases a turn without reserves) and the AI no longer being incompetent with ship design is a big deal. You should still be able to win at parity, but it doesn't take much of an econ/tech advantage for the AI to really give you trouble. Although I haven't seen the AI make heavy use of HEF even though they've gotten to the point where they could - the tactical flexibility & first shot advantage of having HEF vs them not is substantial.

[SDragon]

Anyways. Thank you 10^100^100.

p.s. I also DLed the other patch for battle scanner display. Question: does the no auto save starmap.exe also patch that when used with the new resources.lbx from the battle scanner patch or does one have to choose which of the 2 to use?

You're very welcome.  Sorry for the late response, you probably were able to figure out that the kyrub autosave change also included the battle scanner reversion to v1.3.  Just rechecked my code changes to confirm.