Fifth Fifth

How I got to number one in metaverse.

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How I got to number one in metaverse.

from Stardock Forums
This is not a post to brag about how good I am because I'm on number on at the moment. Well, perhaps it is a little bit (woot, woot).

But mainly this post is to point out some design-issues that I used to get to that top. I hope someone, somewhere reads it and does something. Sometime.

1/ Make a seperate ranking for players that play the game without any mods. It's unfair that players like me get in the same ranking as players that play the game 100% unmodded. I mean, they don't have a chance against players that use "easy playing mods" (maintance-free buildings that boost the abilities five times more then normal, cheap but very fast ships, only the planet-quality event,... you get the picture)

2/ Close some cheesy money-loops in the game :
a) Make the AI pay less money for tradegoods
b) Do something about the loophole where you attack, demand money for peace, attack again, demand money for peace again. You can do this ten times in one single turn. With every minor and even major when you have much more military.

3/ Stop the armsdealing-thingy, it's waaaaay too easy : my guess is that you can win this game without researching anything, just buy everything with ships.

4/ Put a minimum length on trade-routes : I usually get half my money from trading with some minor who's planet is only two or three sectors away, sectors filled with money-starbases.

5/ Limit the number of starbases a player can have. It's just too easy to make ten starbases in someone's backyard and watch the his planets run to you.

Some other rants :
- I don't know ANY game where you waste so much resources every turn. Don't make a 218-reply post about it, fix the thing !
- The end-game is mind-boggling boring : mass building constructors is only fun for an hour or three, four, after that it becomes boring (I did it anyway because it's the most efficient option there is).
- Fix the terror-star-fleets-with-excalibur-to-get-17-movement-bug.
- Make some sort of "autosell" screen : I spended countless hours selling utterly useless buildings on planets that joined me. Or even on my own planets once I researched everything !
- Make a fleet worth more then one-ship-attacks-one-other-ship.
- Don't just use the attack-value of a ship to determine it's value, also use all other stats.
- Do something about the CPU-usage of this game. It sometimes takes three minutes for him to make one single turn in a gigantic galaxy on my 2 gigahertz PC.
That are 2.000.000 * 120 * 3 = 720.000.000 calculations it makes. 720 million, I mean, what are you guys doing with those, calculating all prime numbers between a zillion and a trillion ???
- Make the races more customable like MOO2 : forget the governements and give everyone thirty points or something.
2,427 views 86 replies
Reply #52 from Stardock Forums Top
And while im trying hard to not be defensive, I would
apperciate it if you wouldnt throw around words like
exploits. Tradegoods are overpowering yes, but by
saying im exploiting leaves a negative impression upon
me.

You will not often find players in your community that
find how to 'legally' break your games and then come
immediatly forward and state exactly how they did it
and why its wrong. I would hope you would take a
kindlier approach to the light you put them in.
Star Control: Origins
Reply #53 from Stardock Forums Top

Well I think the best route is to try to clear your name of fog of doubt, just email me your saved game and then I can vindicate your scores.

 

Reply #54 from Stardock Forums Top
Btw, here are some other 'exploits'

If you attack a race(your not at war with) they will
the first turn pop out the vast majority of their fleet
but not move it.

This tends to leave their planets relatively undefended
and if in that first turn you can capture every
system, the vast fleet they popped out of their
systems will all disappear at the end of the turn(no
support and all that)

The problem. I can pop out a fleet from a planet
and move(so can the drengins) but most of the AI's
will not move until the next turn, leaving them very
vunerable to poking them to remove most of a systems
defenses, and then a massive wipe out.

Reply #55 from Stardock Forums Top
Um, what email?
and any particular saved game or point in the saved game
you looking for?
[Message Edited]
Reply #56 from Stardock Forums Top

[email protected]

The very end of the game would be ideal.

Regardint the exploits, you say that the Drengin move their units right away but the others don't?

Reply #57 from Stardock Forums Top
For my tiny galaxy the autosave I have it saved
at the turn the game ended, the autosave is the turn
before and the previous autosave is 4 turns back, as
I was moving in to capture the last AI.

My last save is right before I attacked the first
minor. I did not manually save between those two
points and as I set my autosave to be frequent(
considering the crashes I experience at higher pops)
I dont have a very robust list of saves.
Reply #58 from Stardock Forums Top
Er, im not willing to swear its the drengins, I pretty
sure it is. But I know at least one of the majors will
move, most of them wont.

This is pretty easy to check, just move a big fleet
next to an majors system, attack it with one ship
and hit turn, see what it does.
Reply #59 from Stardock Forums Top
Staffa, the saved game you mentioned would be ideal.

~SDC~
Reply #61 from Stardock Forums Top
Btw, if the save is confusing, the steps to 'end' the
game are as follow.

Move the dreadnought to the planet(ignoring the
drengin dreadnought) and destroy the defender and
constructor orbiting the planet. Then land the
combat transport on the last drengin system. I used
tidal and of the 5b had 3.2billion left.

Game over.
Reply #62 from Stardock Forums Top
"Game over, man! Game over!" (because GalCiv doesn't have anything like enough references to facehugging alien spawn)
Reply #63 from Stardock Forums Top
Something odd happened to me while playing "tiny,rare,all,intelligent".

I had a bunch of trade goods and tried to use them to get DREAD tech. but no chance.

THEN out of the blue a race contact me and offered DREAD tech. for something WEAK tech.

I have a saved copy of it,if it will help I'll send it.

I'am not sure if this happened to staffa but it happened to me.

BRAD, if you want it let me know.


[Message Edited]
Reply #64 from Stardock Forums Top
Ive seen this happen too, though it didnt happen
this game.

Though this has only happened for me when im actually
researching dreads(or some other super expensive tech)
and im almost finished. I always assumed the AI
was just being tricky, cause I wouldnt actually be
gaining much, but if this wasnt so in your case
then that would seem odd.
Reply #65 from Stardock Forums Top
staffa, It happened to me early I belive I was researching battle tech.
Reply #66 from Stardock Forums Top
MM77: I had the same thing happen to me, except the civ gave me battleships. I was getting pounded by the Drengin at the time and I figure the reason the other civ gave me battleships was to help me out...? Were you at war with some other civ whose military was alot stronger than you?
Reply #67 from Stardock Forums Top
ElMeanYo,

To be honest I don't remember, I was scared. LOL

The DREAD tech. could not have came at a better TIME. LOL
Reply #68 from Stardock Forums Top
ElMeanYo, Everyone was stronger the me. LOL
Reply #69 from Stardock Forums Top
Strange;

How people with good intentions trying to improve somthing, could be so misunderstoud by eachother.

I hope an ALLIANCE can be formed to keep my G.C.FAMILY TOGETHER. :)
[Message Edited]
Reply #70 from Stardock Forums Top
I have seen the AIs make these "unbalanced" trades a few times (rare). Not too sure what induces this though.

This should address the complaint where people were saying that the comp trades unfairly with other comps (eg. trading Overlord for x). They do that with humans as well.
Reply #71 from Stardock Forums Top

The same strategy does seem to be employed.

RayChua, this is your tech tree win from your last game:

120|1|7|127|121|129|63|95|41|128|33|14|19|12|45|107|108|104|134|135|60|38|39|43|24|48|22|36|93|96|110|116|67|15|76|77|117|28|30|44|46|35|78|79|140|80|81|138|84|82|83|85|88|89

The numbers represent the IDs of each tech. (we also have how much they cost but that's not germane here).

And here is Staffa's:

120|1|7|8|106|123|107|129|128|64|14|38|76|60|19|61|132|108|68|62|39|104|110|116|77|117|43|24|47|48|15|22|36|28|30|44|67|46|105|35|113|111|135|23|78|79|80|81|84|82|83|85|86|88|900|146|89|89

 

Both of you are getting dreadnoughts (ID = 14) very fast. So you must be trading for all the techs in between.

So the question is, are you using trade goods too or something else?

Reply #72 from Stardock Forums Top
Most definitely. My usual gambit is to go to diplomacy and rush diplo translators.
Then I will would use that to trade for most of the early tech that I need (save for ship tech).
With other techs acquired through traded, I will rush other trade goods (grav accelators, aphro, frictionless cloth, tri-stro) depending on which have not been acquired by other races and then trade them off for techs again.
In this way, I save on investments in research but could use the money on expanding and social goods.

As mentioned above, sometimes I get lucky and have someone trade me battleship or dreadnought but that is rare.

Dreadnought is a major safety level in this game (AMMs anyone) so it is a priority tech for me.
Reply #73 from Stardock Forums Top
#72 by Avatar Frogboy - 5/26/2003 7:44:04 PM
"Both of you are getting dreadnoughts (ID = 14) very fast. So you must be trading for all the techs in between."

Does your list show technologies that have been purchased? If it's only researched technologies, getting dreads 11 or 12 is not that fast.

I always research Communication, Universal Translator,
Diplomacy myself, but then the next tech I usually research is Battleships (sometimes I have to research Interstellar Tactics, but occasionally I was buying Battleships). After that I research Dreads, so it's 4 to 6 tech I research. Everything in between is easy to buy. I mostly play small/tiny maps, so I can't afford buying trade goods, so I actually have to built them, and I can't get more than 2. Most of the trade I do is tech for tech and ships for tech. Basically in the beginning I trade goods for few good techs that many races still don't have, then trade with everybody else, getting basic techs. Sometimes I will try to build second trade good, but important point is to get to battle axes and if possible battle cruisers. Then I concentrate on infrastructure and build ships and trade them for tech. Pretty much everything non-military up to dreads can be purchased for 1-2 battle cruisers.

I don't think that the problem is in the trade goods. AI values them reasonably. +10% morale worths those tech they're willing to give. Basically the problem is in AI's inability to invade. I'm always sitting with lower population and I'm getting dreads later than AI. If AI would concentrate on building military right after getting dreads and taking me out early, there would be few chances for human player vs incredible AI, given its bonuses. Typically I would dreads 10-15 turns after AI, if they put 100% military they could have produced half-dozen of dreads and few combat transport and conquer me. Of course, I'm trying to be nice to them though :)
Reply #74 from Stardock Forums Top
Few more thoughts:
- I believe value of trade goods is quite reasonable, what isn't good is the ability to buy. In big galaxies it's always to buy the good right after one gets the tech, because lease payments are negligible while the benefits are big (from the good itself plus its trade value). Having to actually build will sort of dampen effect of the technology leadership, making one to slow down research to build the trade good, thus allowing others to have a run for another good.
- one of the tech trading problem that AI doesn't apparently take into account if others have tech or not when estimating its value. It results that one often can swap trade good for tech A and B with race 1, then swap A and B for C with race 2, and for D with race 2,then swap A, C and D for E and F with race 4 finally ending up with every non-military technology known at the cost of one license to trade good. Further the same strategy works with ships instead of goods. I suggest to make AI to value tech more if nobody (or few) has it yet.
- Teach AI to fight. It doesn't look that they make plans for war. Currently, AI starting a war vs you is more of nuissance than a real danger. Another problem is that AI doesn't prepare itself to defend. Typically, AI will build 2-3 dreads (on tiny map) and start their rush toward the Final Frontier. This is a lengthy undertaking on tiny and they aren't anywhere near half-way when I come with dozen of dreads to take their
planets (of course swapping all my outdated ships for their techs with them, actually swapping few dreads in somewhat remote sector also makes sense). I guess AI should try to maintain military parity. Those AI who fell behind have to rely on the diplomacy to stay alive, but the leaders should be taking care of themselves.
Reply #75 from Stardock Forums Top
I like and agree with all your points Alexti :)

Though I think on the first point, your agreeing with
me :)