Advanced Save Game Six Empires Huge Map and Minor Races

[UesugiKenshin]

The Omega were compassionate at Orissa and Urso and took over those poorly managed near-useless sectors. It is too much trouble to replay a whole turn. That is a whole hour of play too. But the way you do that is load the last save, look in the military tab of the empires systems screen, sort by target regions (as some troop transports were sent there to do a ground invasion) then change their orders. The Omega will just live with it.

There is a slim chance those would be the last holdouts for the Rotharians, and then I would have to bombard or invade anyway.

I can probably crush the Khaoran remnants and the Rotharians by turn #505, declare war against the Heyoun and finish by turn #570. 75 hours is a lot of time to finish this as there is no opposition so it is meh instead of feeling like victory. 9 days of annihilation feels like an eternity.

[UesugiKenshin]

I had briefly considered an homage mod to BotE where I would convert a Civ 3 space mod but it's probably not a good idea. It would let me quickly divide up a galaxy into six empires and have locked alliances and control everything so a galactic war could start immediately. It's 500 hours of work and likely a distraction. You can have armies so fleets but the animation would be wrong and look weird. But the cool aspect would be planetary invasions (versus sector invasions) and missiles. Each of 512 regions would be comprised of up to twenty-one planets of many classes (which you would terraform and they would then have defensive values and resources and movement restrictions). You could have partial occupations which is an impossible idea in BotE. You could have wonders and very complex invasion composition too.

It sounds great but it also sounds like it could totally use up all my time too.

[UesugiKenshin]

Civ3 introduced privateers which if they were yours, you commanded and were issued orders, but no one else knew who was attacking them. That is a great class of starship as then you could attack without declaring war. Think of the possibilities.

I bet the Cartare being dishonorable would be totally in favor of that idea as would the Rotharians.

Cartare leader " Harass them with space pirates and blockade them. If we are lucky, they blame the Rotharians."
...
It's a distraction as I want to popularize BotE not get even more to play Civ3.

[UesugiKenshin]

With 68 % of intel points allocated to military sabotage, the Omega are gaining 12 starships a turn that are stolen. All I am doing is taking these Heyoun and then space faring member race starships and repairing them, and when repaired, redeploying them into strong fleets in the area to bolster my already invincible fleets. Prior, I routed them to Lambrecht for training, but it's too much trouble to make sure they get so far away and totally unnecessary.

I could scrap them, but the idea is awful.

The Heyoun being so long in the game and not being sabotaged have developed a sizable military force. It's respectable in size and somewhat so in ability. Obviously these ships would be ineffective against Omega fleets and merely delay the inevitable.

[UesugiKenshin]

Under such conditions where the Heyoun are the last of the threats, upon taking Heyoun sectors, you couldn't trust them on their own, but would let some act in a support capacity. Under no circumstances would I humiliate these Heyoun soldiers plus minor race soldiers by disbanding them. That would be rude.

[UesugiKenshin]

If someone did make a Civ3 space mod like BotE, as missiles are part of Civ3 like Scuds or ICBMs, those have a terrestrial range, not a sector range, so while powerful, you would have to limit how far they can travel, or it wouldn't make any sense. Sectors are 20 light years away in BotE. Civ3 had advanced tech so you could block a nuke with a shield over a city, a city is a matrix that looks like this
ooxxxoo
xxxxxxx
xxxxxxx
xxxxxxx
ooxxxoo
The o equals empty space. With a map editor, then any of the o slots could be a star. So you could have a binary system or a regular star.

The x equals part of that region.
Thus it is an array of matrix of 3,5,5,5,3 spaces equalling 21 spaces in total. This is ideal as then one can have 21 planets In a sector and declare a star nearby and even do stellar phenomena. And in Civ3 you can have 512 of these regions so 512 x 21 planets is 10,752 planets. Likewise but more limiting you can have 255 regions in Civ2 which is why there were several space mods for both.

Civ 2 has an issue with stacking errors so you shouldn't use that for fleets, but Civ3 would work. You gain a lot using Civ3 for modding as it has an editor, but lose many aspects of BotE too.

Civ4 has one of the best space mods, but in some ways while prettier, less helpful for modding tactics, and I think worse in terms of how many regions it can display.

BotE is a far more elegant solution, but totally lacks editing in the BotE for Android version.

Civ3 allows complex tactical battles over every map point so you could depict every aspect of orbital batteries, mines, and shields, ground invasions, and space battles. It would make an homage mod of BotE not only be turn based but have RTS elements. Every starship in that fleet could either act independently or fight as a fleet.

[UesugiKenshin]

All that sounds wonderful for the old Civ3 software, right? Not exactly. It would be great for human multiplayers as the AI has so many options that it is bewildering and why the AI can't handle it. So after all that work, the AI would lose even more versus BotE.

Most modders will never admit that. Really Civ3 is for doing multiplayer and not so great at single player versus the AI.

[UesugiKenshin]

In actual practice, multiplayer only works if everyone is available to play, and how rare is it that six players can sit down and play over a day? Not often so multiplayers ideally are played as scenarios over a long period, in successive turns when all six people can get back together. Good luck with that. See everyone wants to fight a galactic war, but it is a human scheduling issue more than a computer programming issue.

MMOs were sold as "always having a human opponent", but in actual practice a small subset get quite good at a MMO, but 80-90% are new naive players, so they lose as the tiny subset has quite a treasury and ships and controls many territories. This ends up burning through many now frustrated new players as they feel bullied. Rinse repeat. This is how MMOs start off great and lose paying customers within months.

No matter what, this goes full circle to single player games against an AI. Whoever can create a human-like AI then has really accomplished quite a feat.

[UesugiKenshin]

To make BotE multiplayer realistically fun, modders would make one on one or one against 3 or 4 battles. The map is small as it is a battlefield and everything is already built up and those human players are deploying, attacking, and retreating in waves. As the maximum speed in BotE is 4.2 sectors per turn, then they have to all be very close. The entire map must be small so they can evade and reattack within 2 turns. So the map is likely no bigger than 10*10 or 100 sectors, but the action is in 20 sectors in the middle.

It is pretty easy to schedule two people and like herding cats to schedule four people.

Without modding, it would just be blind luck that four players were in proximity and had useful fleet composition for battles, right? You have to have an editor or an extremely clever modder to spend many hours to make that plausible and sustainable.

It is unlikely to fiind many chess players who can think 10 moves ahead, but a clever modder thinks 100 moves ahead. They have to without an editor so they can create a plausible scenario with units in range.

[UesugiKenshin]

Multiplayers act within a 100 sectors and focused on 20 sectors.

Whereas galactic war takes place over 1600 sectors and ever cognizant of a speed limit of 4.2 sectors per turn. That takes immense planning.

[UesugiKenshin]

I don't actually have to fight the Heyoun to defeat them.

They have 130 ships in 3 fleets between St. John and Zurich, and every turn, an increasing amount get stolen. This attrition will only increase as intel points become solely focused on them, and increase in value by another 100,000 intel points to as much as 200,000 points.

Every turn, the Heyoun's sphere of influence declines, and the Omega's grows. Then colony ships blocking colonization by sitting on choice sectors, then flip to contested regions, then the Omega can colonize them, increasing their sphere of influence and number of inhabited sectors.

Eventually their members abandon them severely shrinking their total territory. I could just offer gifts and membership to these turncoats.

I could start blockading them with powerful fleets too. All without space battles and ground invasions.

[UesugiKenshin]

BotE is a thinking person's galactic simulation plus wargame. You have many options when setting the tone as the pre-eminent galactic power player. One could just attack, but why put soldier astronauts at risk unnecessarily?

The other species have not been peers to the Omega since turn#300. The Omega are superior to them. Likely when a clever wargamer is playing, this is the case. Whoever just reacts in chess...will lose. You must make the other species react to you. It sounds cruel, but this intimidation actually saves lives.

War is about intimidation to limit the enemies' logical courses of action. Eventually, the only logical course of action is Iive free, die, or surrender through capitulation. Vulcans would likely be logical and surrender to save hundreds of billions of lives.

By turn #400, the outcome was certain the second the Omega actually engaged in war. It was done slowly and conservatively and focused and methodically. By turn#480 to #495, then overwhelming military force was applied, yet I could have applied 900% more at minimal risk to my citizens, and only if the Heyoun was played by a human player. A human playing as the Heyoun might have seized the day and attacked the Omega. That would be an ultimately pointless gesture, but a valid alternative response.

If all five had attacked by realizing the danger in turn #300, the Omega would have suffered losses, but still triumphed.

[UesugiKenshin]

If I had sent all my powerful starships in orchestrated fleets, the outcome would have been barbarous and caused extinctions. If the AI had the power of the Omega, the AI would not hesitate. Had I made far more transports, I could shorten the length of misery by half or more. That is a lot of order changes and very lengthy turn times though.

This was my flaw as I have plenty of ground forces but I could have used twice as many transports. They are expensive and don't boost the value of raw materials, so it would have meant plausibly cutting the treasury at this point to 14 million versus 28 million.

Is time meaningful in war? Sure as morale flags the longer a war is taking. Technically, the galactic war has only lasted 15*2 weeks so 30 weeks.

[UesugiKenshin]

Why does this matter? Some see victory upon the defeat of the enemy, but that is nonsense to a soldier. Order has to be restored and that cannot happen without a very organized rebuilding campaign...which is expensive. That loss of 14 million might jeopardized this rebuilding in a timely stable manner. Domestic morale might have been significantly lower. The way I play by rushing construction wins hearts and minds reflected by extremely high positive morale domestically and empire wide.

Playing in a financially punitive manner is foolish. These are beaten down enemies and onerous burdens on them solves nothing and risks everything.

[UesugiKenshin]

A more refined surrendering methodology would save countless lives. Soldiers do not relish harming civilians. It messes up their sense of identity. That is barbaric. It is the antithesis of military training.