timmy, I just tested that Final War doesn't happen in a game with 1 enemy AI. Are you absolutely sure it happens when you get down to 1 AI with more than that present at the start of the game? I don't recall ever seeing it.
(March 19th, 2014, 09:45)Catwalk Wrote: I'd appreciate some more comments before I get into the specifics more Do you play MOO too MaxPower?
Since I was a child this has been one of my favorite games, and for some reason I keep coming back to it at least once a year. For a long time I believed I was the only crazy guy in the world playing such an old game, until I found the Realms Beyond community. Last year I participated in one of the imperiums (37?).
Back on topic, for this challenge I think the galaxy size is the most important issue. If the galaxy is small, the players will finish expanding too early, then it will be all about who gets the max IRC and planet-size tech to score the max pop+fact count. In bigger galaxies, players will at least have to decide whether they invest more heavily in techs or expansion.
That's what I was thinking too, sitting on a full galaxy for a large part of the game might be a little boring. I'm leaning towards Large, micro managing planets in MOO really isn't that much work. This is intended to be about squeezing every last BC out of your expansion phase and the ensuing buildup, and I don't want to cut the expansion phase short. That said, it's definitely something to be tested before hosting it.
(March 19th, 2014, 10:53)Catwalk Wrote: timmy, I just tested that Final War doesn't happen in a game with 1 enemy AI. Are you absolutely sure it happens when you get down to 1 AI with more than that present at the start of the game? I don't recall ever seeing it.
Well I had strong memories of this, and apparently I'm completely wrong - confirmed with a quick test game. (after this save, I went 2 or 3 more turns to bomb out Ursa and genocide the Bulrathi; Psilon relations drop but no Final War.) Caveat is this was Easy, small, 2 rivals for a quick test, and kyrub's; so I haven't tested every single variant but I believe Catwalk now.
EDIT: comment on the revised scoring formula - I might suggest increasing the relative weight of tech a little if going Large. Because of the squared cost tech formula, at a glance it seems a bigger galaxy increases potential pop and factory points linearly with #planets, and potential tech points more like square-root relation.
I might start the game with 2 AIs, the main silicoid rival and one which is stuck in a corner. This would enable the galactic council, and we can add a rule saying to trigger Final War as soon as possible. It won't have much effect in this game other than make sure the AI isn't buddy-buddy with you.
Good thoughts on the scoring formula. Do you want to have a go at making a suggestion for how the entire formula should look? Mine was mostly off the top of my head, numbers aren't tweaked at all.
I was looking through my collection of editors for MOO and I noticed that the Races editor allows the player to set more than one of the same race as opponents (TWO Psilons, for example) and I thought that sounded like fun. Just a thought.
On an unrelated note does anyone know if it is possible to change the set difficulty once a game has begun? None of my editors can do it, but maybe there is a simple Hex edit one could do? I recently rolled a cool map, but on Average and I wanted to play on Impossible to see how I could do.
I'm sorry for postponing this, between other games + work + studies this one fell between the cracks. Or in other words, it got procrastinated I'm still up for whipping out the above mentioned Imperium by the end of next week, and this time it will be with a tailored and tested map.
Do you play MOO too MaxPower?
- confirmed with a quick test game. (after this save, I went 2 or 3 more turns to bomb out Ursa and genocide the Bulrathi; Psilon relations drop but no Final War.) Caveat is this was Easy, small, 2 rivals for a quick test, and kyrub's; so I haven't tested every single variant but I believe Catwalk now.