Advanced Save Game Six Empires Huge Map and Minor Races

[UesugiKenshin]

I would get the Terrans and Khaoran wanting you as an ally like a Big Older Brother, then stir up trouble so they weaken each other. Then pick up the pieces and save the Rotharians for dessert!

The Yimidar have cloaking technology, so invade them and take their technology. Then the Omega will have a monsterous advantage.

You can easily mash the Heyoun into the southeast corner.

[UesugiKenshin]

The Khaoran have a defensive pact with the Omega and the Terrans do as well. So both will get very aggressive. It's more fun to let them get strong by eating the crumbs I leave for them.

[UesugiKenshin]

For fun, you could just get immensely strong and not even bother taking new territory after getting 25 more sectors. You could play with the ship designer and let them all weaken each other. They are absolutely no threat to the Omega unless they put aside their differences and orchestrate a campaign against you as one coalition. Fat chance.

[UesugiKenshin]

If only I had a map and campaign editor, I could create two coalitions that are extremely powerful as a two player game. So the Omega and two others could be a force and make all three starship types plus some minor member races' starships too. Then have the Terrans and two others match up against them, but with many more minor alien starships. A full scale galactic war at turn #700 technology. That would be fun to make.

Two buddies could play it through multiplayer say for 100 turns so a weekend as everything is already built and just needs to be organized and redeployed however they want.

Or the human player with a huge number of fleets versus one computer player. No more waiting hundreds of turns to wage a giant battle.

And sabotage would have a very limited but useful role as few intel points would have accrued. SO maybe 3 missions total as risky gambits.

[UesugiKenshin]

Sorry for all the grammer and spelling errors. I am very sleep deprived again as I was rushing as fast as possible to load the saved game. I want new players to see powerful ships. I hope they tell people about the forum so others can see what BotE can do.

[UesugiKenshin]

With modding, you could create a scenario where the Cartare enslaved all, but an en masse rebellion broke out. So the Cartare are very strong, but can only make those starships and a limited number of kinds. But the other player can make all minor races and every major empire but the Cartare. That would be a fun mod like watching the disintegration of the Roman empire and the early barbarian invasions.

[UesugiKenshin]

The Omega have Super Taxes but the problem is there's such a morale penalty plus a resource penalty, and then you only get very little money. So what's the point? It's really a bad idea to penalize with taxes when you can make way more money using my commodity manipulation tactic. What I'm going to do in the Balancer mod is reconfigure it so it makes more sense. I could see early players raising taxes, but taxation is a terrible way to raise revenue. If you have more government workers to collect revenue, then a huge portion is lost in bureaucrats and bureaucracy. So it's a negligible gain.

[UesugiKenshin]

New players will notice that as they accrue points in the mining screen and points in the food production screen that there's a maximum that can be gained. What happens is the manager screen has no selection for percentage allocated for agriculture. However there is a way to adjust in the production screen. The problem is that creates a micromanagement element which ends up wasting a lot of time. What would be ideal is the manager gets updated at some point so the players can make an adjustment on what percentage of workers are spending time on agriculture. Realize that each planet class has different modifiers for the growth of say crops and livestock (even hunting as that is important to various major and minor races) and plus food replication, and this is subject to terraforming. Similarly mines have a cap on production and storage of all the natural resources. So you can adjust your percentages in the manager screen however usually it shifts to the next one and so begins topping that one off. At some point you can scrap extra mining resources or extra food production resources. And again as I've said before, when you get to the maximum research at level 14, you might as well scrap all research facilities as no more research can be done. These are the things I hope to either see dressed or address myself.

[UesugiKenshin]

It would actually be interesting if the research past level 14 was something of a mystery. In other words, your scientists and mathematicians and your engineers and theorists don't really know what can be discovered, but then stumble into discoveries based on what they learned so far. I sort of like that idea. But I think people would complain that it's too nebulous. While scientists proposed that certain technologies will come available, they don't know what will facilitate that, so the idea that there are Tech levels really is a misnomer. They know that if they continue to work on certain technology that they will make discoveries, but they have no idea what that will be. Life isn't that straightforward.

[UesugiKenshin]

Galactic Civilizations 2 had a Constructor Starship and that is what built outposts and starbases in a very complicated way. They were tailored by culture building starbases, and mineing starbases, and military outposts and so forth. The way it is now we use transports in a double duty sort of way and really in a triple duty sort of way as a transport can move natural resources, they can move troops to the front, they can build outposts and starbases. I would rather see more diversity of units like a freighter unit being separate from a constructor unit and being separate from the military transport. However ships having multiple purposes is also a good design. It would be more fair to have many more levels of starbases. As you learn technology then you make different outposts and you make different starbases. Scrapping is a known exploit at the beginning which makes the Omega ideal as a beginner Empire and because their best all-around. Not every Empire begins with a starbase. Maybe it would be more fair that all Empires to begin with one and give the Omega a different benefit.

[UesugiKenshin]

When you want to improve a minor alien races diplomatic standing toward your Empire, and you have already established trade relations, then you send Colony ships to terraform whatever planets have not been. However of course if they're already terraform, there's no point. Instead you send them a gift. In my experience you combine the gift with an improved treaty.

Bribes are very risky affairs as it insults the diplomat you're speaking to you... unless they have high corruptibility. Then they see it just as the normal way of doing diplomatic business to grease the wheels. I think it's a risky thing to do. Bribes may work but lower their assessment of your Empire.

One thing that I like to do is send waves of colonizing ships so that all the planets are terraformed and then I colonize. On very rare occasions, there is a bug where best space docks do not form, and so you have to colonize with a second colony ship. The only time that you would immediately colonize before all the planets are terraformed...is to claim it as there's a issue with who owns the space as a function of the sphere of influence. When there is contested space, that's an ideal place to build a military Outpost or Starbase. Earlier the Katare had push too deep into the surrounding area by using outposts, but they never colonized the area. With a little bit of work, you can push them back and nullify this expansion of their sphere of influence. Maximal terraforming ends up having prebuilts infrastructure. That saves you money. Always try to do that. Otherwise it takes many many turns or a lot of money to get that infrastructure built. Be frugal.

[UesugiKenshin]

Some minor alien races are duplicitous. That is just their nature and they see tricking you as a legitimate diplomatic tactic and will willingly accept all the gifts that you send them and then suddenly declare war like the Karror.They did this twice and now they are first in line to be invaded because even altruistic species have their limits. So don't be hoodwinked. It's all an aspect of beta testing. The Yimandar are similar as they are hardcoded to hate the Omega as there is no way to encounter them that does not end in fighting battles. I think there's about five species that are that way. And the program is hard-coded where one nearest neighbor will not like you no matter what you do as I see you as a dangerous competitor. In the Japanese martial arts called Budo, when an enemy or a potential enemy is close by, that distance is called maai and a student of the martial arts is always cognizant of the proximity of potential conflict. Danger increases with maai.

[UesugiKenshin]

When you pick up a minor alien race through membership, you would think they're in pretty good shape. Wrong wrong wrong. They're typically a mess because the AI was doing the building. You're going to have to rebuild in a smarter way probably scrap some things are not ready for power. They either overbuild or underbuild agriculture. Like the Dougtaek. They can be slow to accept membership when membership is what they exactly need. It's pretty important in the early part of the game to not cross a sector when you don't have a trade agreement. If they don't like your species and your Starships keep crossing their sector, it's just going to make them angry, and it's going to make it more difficult to gain them as members.

Look at the topic I wrote on sectors. A sector may have 80 stars or more in within 20 light years, yet space is mostly empty. Now imagine if there are nine planets in each of those 80 star systems that's 720 celestial objects and not including moons so figure at least 40 moons per star system. Yet space is mostly empty and most people when they imagined space think of a flat plane when it's a four dimensional plane of space-time. So the chances of a alien species even knowing you're in their sector is rather remote. Unless they have sophisticated scanning technology, Starships could float right through and not be detected even if they were not stealth Starships or cloaked Starships. But that would be if the game were realistic.

[UesugiKenshin]

This is why Birth of the Empires badly needs a mapper. A mapper takes into account all of the different celestial objects that would be in that sector, and considers what species lives in that sector, and what technology they would have, and how they would respond based on what scanning technology they have. Some backwards minor alien species is not going to know your Starships went through and they're not going to be upset. They would be oblivious that you were even there. If the game were completely set up instead of a hodgepodge that forms over time, the game would be so much better. 10 to 20 times better because the map would be logical rather than random.

[UesugiKenshin]

Here's where it gets complicated. A minor alien race has the potential to be magnificent but often they start out very underdeveloped and yet some have fleets. They might lack the natural resources to construct such Starships or they lack the economic development to control their sector yet they have fleets. Those are the kind of things that a mapper of takes care of. It really depends on what turn an Empire encounters a minor alien species. Some would be more intelligent and more capable than the empires that are starting and others are very backward where their technology is extremely limited. So you have a whole continuum in which you might encounter a minor alien species.