(September 5th, 2020, 11:17)haphazard1 Wrote: (September 5th, 2020, 06:28)SpaceOWL Wrote: Good to see movement in the Moo forum!!
Seconded!
The difficulty level also affects the development level of your home world at the start of the game. At easier difficulties you start with more population and (I think) more factories. So you have a bit more to work with on easier settings, and can max out your homeworld faster and seed your second world more easily.
I'm not sure if that's "Average or below" or "Simple and Easy only". I'd recommend starting at least one game at Average (below that, the AIs are really anemic), but then going to Hard quickly. Klackons and Psilons are the easiest races to start with, and taking it from there. Humans are also good, partly because they get better diplomacy so you're less likely to die because all the AIs hate you. I would not start with the Silicoids, they're very unique.
Medium galaxies are probably the best to start with. Small galaxies are really high variance - there's only 24 stars, and that includes:
- # of opponents' starting stars (all at least 7 (or is it 8? I always forget) parsecs away from your starting world; 1-5 opponents, but I would not play with less than 4 unless you have a specific reason)
- 1 will be Orion
- 1 will be yours
- At least 1 world within 3 parsecs (your starting range) of your capital that is habitable (occasionally the map miscalculates, and this star is 3.01 parsecs away, which means you can't reach it).
So small galaxies can be great, but they can also be brutal for the player if the rest of the map isn't cooperative.