Imperium 38 - The Merchant-Princes of Sol

[RefSteel]

Following the ancient precedent of Imperium 5(!) this game will not begin in the year 2300, but in the year 2303 - the first year when Human forces arrive in the Vox star system.



The people of the ancient Vox civilization had long since perished, their once-fertile world reduced to a minimal husk - and human scouts soon discovered the reason why.



Random rolls are always going to have an impact in Orion, but an early Artifacts world means that a roll with too great a potential impact is virtually guaranteed. I've therefore rolled the dice in advance on this one for everybody.

There will be no Extreme or Gentle variant for this Imperium - as is, playing as Humans with a highly-advanced planetology tech in hand (not likely to be used directly, but providing production bonuses and cutting the cost of colony ships significantly) this should prove unusually gentle by the standards of Impossible games. The challenge for extreme players is intended to arise in part from competition with other players to maximize your scoring. (That said, this is Master of Orion on Impossible difficulty. Don't take anything for granted!)

[EDIT: This is pretty much standard now, but it's fine to play this Imperium using EITHER the regular 1.3 game OR kyrub's 1.40M patch. They do play somewhat differently, but not enough to make an overwhelming difference - not as much as certain early random events or AI decision die-rolls, for instance....]

[RefSteel]

Imperium 38 - The Merchant-Princes of Sol

Sponsor: RefSteel
Opening Date: Monday, July 1, 2013
Duration: Four Weeks

Race: Humans
Difficulty: Impossible
Galaxy Size: Medium
Opponents: Five
Color: White
Map Generation: Random (A small number of edits as noted below)
Events: On, but the Diplo and Pirate events will never occur




Scenario: By the year 2300, the corporate leadership of Sol 3 (all other forms of leadership having already been relegated to the dustbin of history) were consolidated into a few dozen ruling families, from whom nearly all CEOs, CFOs, C3POs, and EIEIOs were inevitably drawn. These princes of commerce thrived on trade and marketing, selling semi-worthless trinkets to one another's millions of slave-wage subordinates and pocketing all the profits for themselves. Theirs were the greatest salespeople, trade negotiators, and PR departments in the galaxy, and they lived for one thing and one thing alone: Their profit margin.

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Variant: None, except as dictated by scoring.


Scoring: This event has custom scoring. SCORING IS OPTIONAL. You are not required to track your scoring if you prefer not to do so. If you do wish your game to be scored, you will need to record your total trade income in 2425 and (if you manage to win) just before you win the game. Total trade income is the number displayed near the bottom of the Planets screen here:



Your base score is equal to your trade income in 2425 (or the last turn of your game if it ends before then).If you manage to win the game however, you get a scoring bonus equal to your base score OR your total trade income on the last turn before your victory - whichever is LESS. Examples:

(Spoiled for length; they're purely made-up round numbers and not actual spoilers)

If you have 100 BC in trade income in 2425 and win the game in 2800 with 10,000 BC in trade income, your total score will be 100 (base) + 100 (bonus) = 200.

If you have 100 BC in trade income in 2425 but go for extermination and have no trade income at all when you win the game, your total score would be 100 (base) + 0 (bonus) = 100.

If you unexpectedly win (and accept) an early election victory in 2350 and find that your most recent save or autosave shows a trade income of 10 BC, your total score is 10 (base) + 10 (bonus) = 20.

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Notes: The only edit to the map itself was to switch the locations of the stars Vox and Herculis (an exact swap of their coordinates). A few other non-map edits were made as well though:

The Diplomatic and Pirates events were removed in the save file since these could have an uncontrollable and severe, direct impact on scoring. Other events will occur normally however in spite of their potential indirect impact. I also ran a script over the save to ensure there would be no Erratic leaders in the game, for similar reasons. (I also figured it would be a nice change after 60% of our opponants were Erratic in Imperium 37!)

Details of the script, spoiled for length (or in case you don't want to know how it works for some reason) follow:

The script ignored non-erratic leaders and left their personalities as-is. If it encountered an erratic leader however, it randomly changed that leader's personality in accordance with odds inferred from Sirian's descriptions of the relevant races, excluding the chance of being Erratic. Thus, IF the map rolled up any erratic leaders, those leaders' personalities have been changed to one of the following:

Silicoid: Xenophobic (75%) or Honorable (25%)
Darlok: Aggressive (60%) or Ruthless (20%) or Xenophobic (20%)
Bulrathi: Aggressive (75%) or Honorable (25%)
Klackon: Xenophobic (75%) or Aggressive (25%)
Meklar: Ruthless (50%) or Honorable (50%)

Remember however that any of these leaders may actually have entirely different (non-Erratic) personalities from these if kyrub's map generator does not match the descriptions on Sirian's site (and didn't roll an Erratic personality for the leader in question).

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Closing Date: Monday, July 29, 2013. Reports due by the end of Tuesday, July 30, your local time.

[EDIT: Forum attachments are behaving ... oddly. Hopefully this link works: Starting Save ... Otherwise, I'll have to figure out another way to post it....]

[RefSteel]

And lest I forget: For more information on the Imperia, including the rules for how we play, see the following pages:

Intro
Rules

Note that exceptions to the rules can be made for each individual Imperium, as in this case when we're allowing kyrub's 1.40M patch to be used instead of 1.3 by anyone who so wishes.

Also please avoid the tactics banned in our exploits list (a list of ways we've found of taking advantage of bugs or massive and obvious holes in the AI which we've agreed not to use since they're not in keeping with the spirit or fun of the game).

On closing day (and please, please not before!) you can post your report as a new thread in the Reports and Discussion forum. If you finish early and won't be able to post then, however, you can send your report to me by PM or e-mail.

[haphazard1]

Thanks for the imperium, RefSteel! This one looks interesting, and (being on the gentle side) might even be winnable for a player like myself who is far from mastering impossible difficulty. I will give this one a try and see if I can take control of the galactic markets.

[Nad]

Thanks Ref, may the best ape win!

[toddestan]

Oooh, Humans and an artifact world in my core systems. This looks like one I might win .

As a note since I see you went to the trouble to eliminate any erratic leaders, aren't the leader personalities bugged in 1.30? I forget the details and I can't find the old post so maybe it won't matter in this case. But that could make a significant difference between 1.30 and kyrub's patch.

[Cyneheard]

Oooh, Humans and an artifact world in my core systems. This looks like one I might win .

As a note since I see you went to the trouble to eliminate any erratic leaders, aren't the leader personalities bugged in 1.30? I forget the details and I can't find the old post so maybe it won't matter in this case. But that could make a significant difference between 1.30 and kyrub's patch.

IIUC, the bugged leader issue is dependent on which version of MOO runs the map generation - once it's saved, it's saved for both patches.

[sargon0]

As a note since I see you went to the trouble to eliminate any erratic leaders, aren't the leader personalities bugged in 1.30? I forget the details and I can't find the old post so maybe it won't matter in this case. But that could make a significant difference between 1.30 and kyrub's patch.

This post covers bugged personalities in 1.30:
http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthread.php?tid=2744

[RefSteel]

IIUC, the bugged leader issue is dependent on which version of MOO runs the map generation - once it's saved, it's saved for both patches.

This is correct. Once the map has been generated (with or without bugs) both versions of the game interpret the leader personalities in savegames the same way.

This post covers bugged personalities in 1.30:
http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthread.php?tid=2744

Thanks for finding that one again! I think I'll modify my personality-changing script to allow any of three options (personality probabilities per Sirian's site, the original bugged game, or the intended results per the manual) and post it in a separate thread (or necro that one) if anyone's interested.

[Nad]

Game completed and already quite interested in your scores...