Waterd´s Games

[Waterd]

I will start recording, uploading and reporting my games for fun that I will play with the following rules

Combat:
-When combat starts I have to retreat all stacks that are lower than a 5th of the bigger stack of the bigger size, multiplied by 5 for each Size difference.
Example: If my bigger size is huge, and the size is 10. I have to retreat all stacks lower than 2 Huge ships
10 Large ships, 50 Medium ships or 250 small ships.
Bases count as a large ship.

-The only command I can give in combat, is auto and retreat.

Diplomacy:
-I can only threaten a race if they have a ship over a colony of mine or they just stole from me or sabotaged me.

-I can only ask a race to declare war on another race, if they are my allies.

-I can only give a tribute if im at war, and only one per peace request.

Empire managment:
-All ships should carry beams or missiles based on their size (1 Small, 2 Medium, 4 Large, 8 Huge) or colony base.

-Bases numbers in planets is capped to a 10th of their max population rounded down, I have to scrap any extra bases.

-I can´t redirect ships without hyperspace communicators.

-Can´t max industry slide in a planet with full factories.

-Transports can´t be smaller than 10 pop.

-In the tech screen, I can´t reduce the slider of a tech unless I just researched something in that area.

Rules 2.0
Silicoids 1/1
Darloks 0/1

Winrate with these rules with rules 1.0
Psilons 1/1
Klackons 1/1
Mrrshans 1/3
Sakkra 1/1
Darloks 0/1
Bulrathis 1/1
Meklar 1/1
Alkaris 1/1

7/10 70%

[Waterd]

I have played 3 games so far with these rules
I played Psilons and klackons and won, with a lot of effort in narrow games.
Then tried to play the mrrshans. I had no chance I had nearby darlocks, sakkras and Alkaris, and things were nasty....very fast.
I think maybe this set of rules is too much for anything but the top races. At least on medium maps.

[Psillycyber]

Yeah, these rules seem too restrictive for my tastes, personally.

I like your rule about the minimum transport size being 10 (cuts out the temptation to micro-manage), and not re-directing ships without hyperspace communicators I like for the same reason.

The other rules all seem to create more micromanagement and micro-calculation.

I'm all for rules that make a game go faster and cut things down to the most pivotal strategic decisions, but, for example, ship design and ship battles I consider to be full of strategic decisions (or at least, the execution of previous strategic decisions, which is gratifying to play out, such as when I can block a whole thousand-strong stack of death spore bombers with repulsor beams, for example), so I would never consider putting artificial restrictions on myself with those, or automating those. That's taking the fun away, in my book!

[Ray F]

How do you redirect ships without Hyperspace Communications? Are we talking about the ability to revert a retreat?

[Waterd]

Basically when you retreat from a fight., your ship is on a trip to the closest colony, but instead you can choose where to send it, including the planet you retreated from.

[Waterd]

Ok, now i played sakkras and won very comfortable with these rules, sakkras are so good. I dont realize how week bears and cats are until i play back these op races.

[Waterd]

Lol, i just won my fastest game ever on 2381 by first vote, when for some reason the whole galaxy voted for me! (including alkaris)
Mrrshans op.

EDIT: I inmediatly play a darlok game wiht a great start wtih artifact planet, nuclear engines, and ultra rich planet. I lose on the first council vote with everyone voting the only race i had contact with so far, the psilons The dangers of expanding too fast.

[Psillycyber]

Yes, I love that feeling when you go back to playing a strong race or get a really good start, and you're like, "What's the big deal about impossible? Pffft."

Regarding the Darloks, I wonder if it would be a good idea to even intentionally gimp one's own population early on (and just plow those resources into researching computer tech instead) so that one isn't in the running for the vote. Then people can hate you however much they want, and no big deal. Plus, easier to defend fewer planets.

[Waterd]

I won with the bulrathis, in an interesting game, where i attacked alkari on first combat and used bulrathis bonus to conquest 4 planets from the alkaris.

But i think i need to put more restrictions on my game, not because of the winrate, because there is something ive been doing that i feel just makes any game where I semi stabilize, an easy game.

I was in the year 1469, and the most powerfull race, the psilons had a death fleet of dead, they destroyed a planet of mine and were going for the second, then it was 1474, i knew it was a matter of time before psilons went for the rest of my empire. To be honest I could fight back, i could defend most of my planets, they just targeted planets i could not defend, but i just got planetary X and got merculite missiles. But then i decided to do the HUMAN move.
I traded with the psilons (yeah it was silent war, hate when the ai do that) some top technologies. I then went with all other races gave them all my technolgies, forged alliance, click next turn, and everybody votes for me.

Maybe i should cap to a tribute offer possible very 5 years or something, that was the lamest win ever.
Incidentally I used to abuse this with humans and is the reason ive considered the best race of the game forever, but now i realize i can do it with every race as soon as i have 3 or 4 very high level techs and I´m second on pop.

[Psillycyber]

Is it really that easy to improve relations with tribute? Hmmm...I should try that sometime...

To me, that doesn't seem cheap because:
1. It takes good playing to get to that point in the game where you have advanced techs to offer to the other races that they don't have yet.
2. They have to be willing to talk and not already at war with you.
3. You need to be at least 2nd in pop, and thus one of the dominant races already.
4. It is a calculated gamble that the tribute will push them over the edge to voting for you. What if you give them all that tech, and your relations improve, but not enough to get them to vote for you? And then something happens (like the assassination event, or an alliance drawing them into war with you) where it ends up coming back to bite you? You've just supplied your enemies with your most advanced tech.

I'll grant you that the humans are kinda cheap to play as, though. They are a fairly bland and vanilla race that are clearly meant for beginners to play to master the basics while not having to worry too much about AI aggression.