Imperium 40 Opens Monday!

[RefSteel]

@RefSteel... I'll give it a go but I still expect to get absolutely trounced

We might all get trounced! (It's happened before...) Either way, I'm glad to hear your hat's in the ring!

@ Catwalk
Whoa! That ruleset looks like 100% lose rate. Would be a record in itself for Imperia?

@ RefSteel
Count me in for at least playing (& submitting a report) Imperium 40.

Sweet! I think we've definitely got enough interest to open a game this time next week.

I do have an idea for softening it up, though. I wanted to limit espionage, as you're simply not going to bother with sabotage missions when espionage is available. I couldn't think of a good way to limit it short of a total ban. However, how about letting the player steal max 2 techs from each enemy race? It's not too difficult to keep track of (can even make it 1 tech), and requires you to make some tough decisions about when to use your free steals.

Restrictions on espionage, no matter how light or heavy, will not encourage sabotage. If you want people to use that mechanic more than they do already, (I already use it from time to time for strategic reasons, by the way) you have to encourage it explicitly, through scoring, "must spend X clicks" rules, or forbidding ships from targeting planets on the combat screen (since sabotage then becomes the only way to take out missile bases).

Encouraging it through scoring won't work with this rule set though because Darloks on Impossible who start with Robotic Controls 3 are pretty much a suicide mission. Take espionage away from them too (even just restrict it) and the reports will just become exercises in gallows humor - which might be fun! But do be aware of what's going to happen.

I think you have some terrific ideas, and I'd love to see them in games ... but we don't have to use all of them at once! Why not make an advancing-colship-costs play-for-Orion Bulrathi (or Alkari) game, and a separate "No firing on planets, go to early final war" Darlok game to encourage sabotage? (We could mix in limited-diplo and/or armed-scouts-only on either or both.)

On free techs: I actually don't know a way to give a race free tech in the save file. If you know one, great - but I really, really strongly advise either leaving out RC3 (replace with ECM2 or BC3?) or giving the player at least IIT8. Fortunately, I don't think the free techs are necessary to make your proposed variants fun!

Map: Large, Impossible, 5 opponents, first randomly rolled map accepted

Eh ... I could certainly churn out a lot of Imperia if I did that every time. I'm not sure there'd be a reason to post them for long though, as anyone can (and usually does) play the first map they roll in private games. One of the attractions of the Imperia is that the maps are at least somewhat vetted for fun and playability ... and a map can have a huge impact on the game. To take an extreme example that's come up in Imperia before, if you have a habitable ultra-rich next door, my comment about a "suicide mission" goes right out the window - even RC3 can't stop that train - and that's before even looking at the tech tree.

Again, this is all just my advice; feel free to just send in a game once you find one you like - but I do hope you'll at least play through it a bit yourself so that if you find the variants too crippling or find the map discourages early warfare more than any variant can encourage it, you can revise the plan or at least roll up a different galaxy.

[Catwalk]

Restrictions on espionage, no matter how light or heavy, will not encourage sabotage. If you want people to use that mechanic more than they do already, (I already use it from time to time for strategic reasons, by the way) you have to encourage it explicitly, through scoring, "must spend X clicks" rules, or forbidding ships from targeting planets on the combat screen (since sabotage then becomes the only way to take out missile bases).

Disagree strongly there The availability of a very strong spy mission is a huge deterrent to sabotage missions. I agree that even without espionage and with big spying bonuses, sabotage may still be too weak. But I don't like scoring as a bandaid to patch up that imbalance. I think we should try and see if people are going to use it, it may be possible to get some benefit out of it.

Encouraging it through scoring won't work with this rule set though because Darloks on Impossible who start with Robotic Controls 3 are pretty much a suicide mission. Take espionage away from them too (even just restrict it) and the reports will just become exercises in gallows humor - which might be fun! But do be aware of what's going to happen.

Don't forget the expensive colony ships I say it's time for a sadistic Imperium, the results may well surprise you! And don't forget that you also start out with 20% less waste and 10% cheaper factories, in the early game your production will not be much different from a normal game.

I think you have some terrific ideas, and I'd love to see them in games ... but we don't have to use all of them at once! Why not make an advancing-colship-costs play-for-Orion Bulrathi (or Alkari) game, and a separate "No firing on planets, go to early final war" Darlok game to encourage sabotage? (We could mix in limited-diplo and/or armed-scouts-only on either or both.)

Hey, I already ditched some of them

On free techs: I actually don't know a way to give a race free tech in the save file. If you know one, great - but I really, really strongly advise either leaving out RC3 (replace with ECM2 or BC3?) or giving the player at least IIT8. Fortunately, I don't think the free techs are necessary to make your proposed variants fun!

I actually think the techs are quite crucial, as one of the main purposes is to encourage growth through warfare. Without an early tech boost, I can't imagine this happening. I had an editor at one point that did this, think it's from Jon Sullivan's site. I assume it's still available, but I'll need to check.

Map: Large, Impossible, 5 opponents, first randomly rolled map accepted

Eh ... I could certainly churn out a lot of Imperia if I did that every time. I'm not sure there'd be a reason to post them for long though, as anyone can (and usually does) play the first map they roll in private games. One of the attractions of the Imperia is that the maps are at least somewhat vetted for fun and playability ... and a map can have a huge impact on the game. To take an extreme example that's come up in Imperia before, if you have a habitable ultra-rich next door, my comment about a "suicide mission" goes right out the window - even RC3 can't stop that train - and that's before even looking at the tech tree.

Wanting to roll randomly is not a time issue, I don't mind vetting the map and I agree with your points. Would I be eligible to play, though?

Again, this is all just my advice; feel free to just send in a game once you find one you like - but I do hope you'll at least play through it a bit yourself so that if you find the variants too crippling or find the map discourages early warfare more than any variant can encourage it, you can revise the plan or at least roll up a different galaxy.

That I will certainly do, and the settings are not yet set in stone. I do think there's a huge difference between no espionage and 2 techs per race, for example. You just need to decide when you want to cash them in, rather than milking your spies for research points every turn.

[RefSteel]

Don't forget the expensive colony ships I say it's time for a sadistic Imperium, the results may well surprise you! And don't forget that you also start out with 20% less waste and 10% cheaper factories, in the early game your production will not be much different from a normal game.

Hmm... I missed RW80 and the effect of extra planetology. Factories will still be more expensive, not less, but we may have production enough to make up the difference (or even more).

Hey, I already ditched some of them

Well, but my point is, you don't have to ditch them; just save some for future games!

Wanting to roll randomly is not a time issue, I don't mind vetting the map and I agree with your points. Would I be eligible to play, though?

Sure; you can always play! traditionally, the sponsor's game is a shadow report, but I'm willing to relax that rule to get more people sponsoring games. As long as the way you vet the map is to play it (in as unspoiled manner as possible) up to the point where you know whether to use the game or start over, you don't have any spoiler information anyway except for what you consider an acceptable map.

[Catwalk]

Hmm... I missed RW80 and the effect of extra planetology. Factories will still be more expensive, not less, but we may have production enough to make up the difference (or even more).

They will cost 13.5 BC and produce 0.6 BC after waste. With no tech, they cost 10 BC and produce 0.5 BC after waste. With a bunch of Planetology tech, your first two colony ships ought to be cheaper than usual too, even with the extra hardware required.

Sure; you can always play! traditionally, the sponsor's game is a shadow report, but I'm willing to relax that rule to get more people sponsoring games. As long as the way you vet the map is to play it (in as unspoiled manner as possible) up to the point where you know whether to use the game or start over, you don't have any spoiler information anyway except for what you consider an acceptable map.

That sounds good then, I definitely think I can tweak a map to ensure it will be playable without spoiling myself much at all. I'll simply use an editor to check out the stats of the 2-3 nearest systems and make sure that Orion is somewhere it can be reached. Everything else should not have a major unbalancing effect on the game.

I'll do you one better and improve our chances by switching to Mrrshans (as well as lifting the ban on espionage). Sabotage is super boring anyway, and I have no particular need to bother players with that experiment in this game. Mrrshans will help with early warfare and they will help a lot in making it possible to take down the Guardian. Plus I love the kitties

<= was the closest I could find to a kitty

[Ianus]

I had an editor at one point that did this, think it's from Jon Sullivan's site. I assume it's still available, but I'll need to check.

I tried to use the OREO editor from Jon Sullivan's site when I was running the old variant but it won't run on Windows 7. I think it works in XP so it shouldn't be much of an issue, but just to let you know...

[Catwalk]

Yeah, I'm using Oreo (with Windows Vista). Grabbed all the editors from Sullivan's site, I should be able to do plenty with them. I'm going to keep the game at Impossible and planning on keeping the rest of the settings as mentioned above. If anyone is interested, I can add a lower tier of difficulty which gets extra factories and population to start out with. With compound interests, a small boost early on becomes a huge snowball later.

[Catwalk]

I had a quick run with the above settings, and I think this is quite doable. You can settle 5 systems with your initial colony ship and the first 4 colony techs (Battle Scanner, 2 shields, 1 battler scanner), this is plenty to get up an early production base. The systems I took were average for the most part, smallish planets + one size 115 fertile planet. Early aggression seems very promising, the Silicoids just overextended themselves into my territory. I can easily conquer 3 lightly defended systems without any real losses, and I might be able to push further if I commit to it. The silicoids have 17 systems to my 5, but we're even in production and I'm slightly ahead in population and tech.

Remembering the colonization rule seems easy enough, I just name my ships Colony 1, Colony 2 and so on. I can have another 3 colony techs fairly soon, putting my mid-game empire at 11 planets. I hope you're all up for it, I'm having a blast playing a more aggresively oriented early game.

[RefSteel]

I'm glad to hear it, Catwalk! Once you have a map that you think provides a good level of challenge, please send a copy my way (I'm orionciv at the usual e-mail provider) preferably without posting any spoilers about it in this thread....

[RefSteel]

I'm now definitely planning to open Imperium 40 on Monday. Catwalk, if you send me a save file by say the end of Sunday GMT, I'll probably use that.

WhiteMage has also sent me a scenario, so that's a possiblity, although the ruleset would have to be at least slightly different from the one WhiteMage intended. I guess I'm also a little concerned that this might be a case where different players have wildly different definitions of "a fun game" - which is great, but something to look out for when the player whose definition a given game most closely matches is one who has elected not to participate in the Imperia.

And just in case, I do have a third option up my sleeve, in which case Catwalk's and/or WhiteMage's might be used as other Imperia later on (or very soon)!

Here's hoping we get a good turn-out for this one!

[Catwalk]

Nice way to light a fire under my feet I'll get on it.