Question: how to get a balanced, long lasting game?

from Stardock Forums
Hi all,

I have got a bit of a silly question: my games tend to end (in my advantage, unless I give up beforehand in disgust with my incompentence) in the Battleship/Dread stage.

Usually because I get reluctantly involved in war with the strongest AI and end up winning the war - which is quite fun if I am behind in tech/income.
And then it is cruising to alliance/cultural or mil win.

Anyway, the question: how can I get a game which is balanced enough through to the latter stages to have the opponents and myself get to the higher techs?

I would love to *have* to use Overlords/ Avatars.

My ususal settings:
- AI on intelligent (Yor one step up from that)
- medium galaxy
- occasional planets
- populist
- picks: speed, diplo, econ

Any suggestions very welcome.

von Schmidt
413 views 11 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
After Dreadnoughts and Rangers it's pretty much over. If you sweep up all the weapons resources, your Rangers can take on any Avatars they throw your way. And your excaliburs are pretty much invincible.
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
Well I had to play on at least Large and AI at least Bright to have a longer lasting game. Having said that, I have never had a game last so long that I was able to build Excaliburs. Overlords I have built but never used.

Star Control: Origins
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
I find that my most interesting games on tiny/rare/intelligent occur when:

- One of the AIs gets the PQ boosting event (either for 1 planet, or for an entire sector).

- I get the "trade incident/assasination causes war" event, and all the other AI players have an alliance.
I've noticed 3 PQ-raising events:

#1 - a single inhabited planet gets a huge PQ boost

#2 - all planets around one star get a medium PQ boost (both inhabited and uninhabited)
#3 - all uninhabited planets in 2 sector radius get a huge PQ boost; (some of the planets getting the boost were in the 1-5 range, so they don't really matter, but the 10-14s are now very nice planets) I noticed that the planets that actually get the boost don't seem to match the event description.
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
The only way I've ever been able to push to higher level tech (please be aware that I'm new) and keep things interesting is to trade tech for cash and basically leave the other AIs alone. This way they stay fairly close in technology and they will produce the higher end ships.

Only problem is I have to sustain my empire and theirs to really make things interesting.
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
Play on harder levels--the AI will tech faster.

In my last two games I *had* to build overlords.
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Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
And play abundant. More productive planets = faster teching.
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
Thanks for the reactions.

I'll try medium/abundant or large/common next - and try to survivive the micromanagement hell...

It might be nice (for the expansion pack?) to have a choice for an 'advanced' start: everybody starts off with dreadnought and some other advanced techs; Altarians have the trade techs, Drengin mil techs etc..

I think MOO2 had a choice like that.

von Schmidt
Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top
Advanced start has been suggested in the past and almost everyone agrees it would be nice to have. I think it's one of those things that Stardock will add if they have time.
Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top
I heard a rumour that advanced start is going to be in the Xpack. Well, we will find out in a couple of days.
Reply #10 from Stardock Forums Top
http://www.galciv.com/forum.asp?BID=GF&id=50487#50735

#2 by Senator CariElf - 4/28/2003 11:49:12 AM

I think that we decided that it was a good idea to try out, but we'll have to do extensive testing on it to make sure that it's not imbalanced. We're already capable of just assigning planets to all the major races--we do it for testing purposes--but we just need the time to test it as more than just a debugging aid.
End of quote

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Reply #11 from Stardock Forums Top
Umh, making the game last a bit longer?

I find the AI tend to drag themselves down by building everything everywhere. There are a great many buildings that are rarely, if ever worth building. The AI thus builds a huge economic millstone around its' own neck.

I tried reducing the operating cost of every building so that it would be worth building. The results seem gratifying. Later in the game the AI races have more vigour as they have not "built themselves into the ground". I also like because now I can actually develop a colony instead just building a few things then leaving it to rot, AND I don't have to bother with regularly loading population onto transports (and just parking the transports somewhere safe for ages) to manage morale. :)

Another benefit of reducing all these costs is that the AI can keep do a better job of researching because it is not wasting all of its money on buildings that are worse than useless.

Try it, I think you will like the results. I did. :)