Regarding that 1 IP "Bug"

I just gave the Yor a TG and relations improved from Neutral to Warm. In fact, I gave an attack contract to the Arcs and it went from Neutral to Friendly!

Of course, I had max Diplo with Diplo Trans.

~SDC~

Hmmm okay, maybe this game is just hopeless with the extreme advantage the Torians have. It's quite scary.

I had relied on my ability to keep a positive cash flow to gift money when relations started to sour. I started a game last night and bumped into the Yor early ( within the first 10 turns) on a Huge map. My observations:

1) AI's will automatically send you trade in the early game - no longer a given. The Yor simply refused to send me any trade.
2) 1 IP "bug" is fixed, however I would echo Jordan's observation that it seems to be nearly impossible to improve relations - I believe I had maxed diplo also.
3) The AI (yor in this case) once they smell blood, will not let up. The Yor demanded tribute early on, which I happily paid to avoid more hostile relations, and then they proceeded to demand tribute every 5-10 turns until I was so far in debt I had no hope of getting out. Thankfully they finally decided to put me out of my misery.
4) In regards to keeping your approval rating up, it appears that losing control of the senate is more possible at a higher approval rating. I had lost control of the senate well in advance of any time before.

My game play on maso, has been to build economy and research early on, largely ignoring military buildup. Doing this, I could usually give significant amounts of money to keep the AI happy. In 1.12, I couldn't even begin to develop an economy the way I had in the past.

It would seem that a more balanced approach early on might be required. No rushing certain techs deep in the tree, etc. Although I believe diplo trans are imperative to surviving.

Those are my observations after playing and getting my butt kicked in one game. Could have been some random bad luck involved too. No question, though, the game has been made more difficult at maso.


~SDC~

More difficult though shouldn't equal impossible.

That's really weird. I'm guessing here but it could be that relation improvements are now tied to relative power so it could be tough to get into the good books of a powerful AI.

~SDC~

So unless you're powerful, you can't improve relations? But when you are powerful, you don't need to improve relations? (at least in my experience) Once I get my military built up and trade going, the AIs generally love me.... But now I can't get to that point... Well, you know how far behind the human player is at the start of any maso game.

Seems like the high Maso scores will now be very well deserved

To get the Drengins close to ally with me in my last game I gave them 3 techs and 3000 BC... It worked and together with them and the Torians the Evil Yor and Altarians were no problem anymore! (I play with random Alignments, the Drengins were Saintly)


Why not? I think Maso was never thought to be winnable in most of the games! You are good if you can win on Maso in one out of a bunch of games!

Great update!

Won my first Maso since updating, was only a tiny having given up on 4 other games of various settings.

Noticed it was the most challenging and one of the best games yet. Maso now looks to be getting closer to what it should always have been. This game also ended earlier in the tech tree for me and had a really great long running ship war.

Diplomacy requires money and in this case in the 1000's to improve relations. Trade and typical diplomatic games of helping your 'friendly' neighbour against another player were helpful too.

~SDC~

I think I am going to have to try a tiny and - go back to the drawing board.

Glad to hear it is still beatable tho! I see Cotal/Amidala/Ginata posted a Huge win for abt 52k.

~SDC~

The only change on diplomatic relations handling was the 1 ip bug fix.

This was caused because a variable was not initialized which meant that the perceived value was 0xffffffff which always raised relations when it shouldn't.

In other words, improving relations was not made more difficult other than the exploit removed.

The other major AI bug fixed was that the function IsPlanetAdequatelyDefended always returned true which meant the AI never fortified its own star systems. This should be fixed too but since the underlying function hasn't ever worked, it means that a lot of the tweaking between 1.0 and 1.11 to try to fix this was for naught and it may need to be retweaked in the future to get the right balance.

Hopefully the AI is, at least somewhat, focusing on having more than a stray colony ship in orbit later in the game.

 

I often give tech, and in the half game I played last night my tech still boosted relations.

I also seem to recall getting a relations boost with a 300 BC gift.

Well, something must have gone really wrong in what I did last night. Based on Brad's comments above, my gameplay shouldn't have been affected that drastically.


~SDC~

I think the money fix factors into diplomacy as well, where before I could pay 500 for 1 turn to improve relations and only spend 500. I now spend 1000 over 2 turns which is doubling money spent, hope I make sense, very early going to bed .

I'm happy with the results Brad, though I too must have had a few unusual games tonight.



~SDC~

[Message Edited]

I have to agree with AIL.ST here. Maso should mean maso, as in very, very hard to even impossible, and not a cheap ticket to an extreme amount of points. That is what maso degraded into with versions 1.10 and 1.11 in my observation of the Meta. Maybe the level should be full of bribe, bribe, bribe, fight, fight, fight and not being able to buy comfort very easily with 1 IP cheese or cozying up into arranging unbreakable alliances and then screwing everybody later.

I never said maso was a cheap ticket... I just thought it was odd I was having such trouble with the game I started. Maso's always been challenging to me in the beginning game, but once I can get trade and a military going, I usually do okay. I still lose the occasional game, but this one was just strange. I mean the Torians pretty much hated me from turn 1, so what could I do? (incidentally, the other AIs were fine with me)

I'm sorry, but crippling was waaaaay too easy for me. So now I'm stuck with either playing boring games that are super easy or nigh impossible games? I think there should probably be some better gradation between the levels maybe.

Though really, I'm hoping that my problem with the game I started might just be the blindingly excellent starting position that the Torians got. I think I'll start a new game and see what happens. Like Kasual, I might start back with Tiny/Rare and move back up...

I'm halfway through a Gig/maso on new version and not much difference, although it does seem that the Independant League will part with the ship techs for relatively fewer techs than major civs.. I only had to give them 3 techs for dreadnoughts.

Alexians will but tech from you... but will not buy more until they have finished paying for the first lot.. so go for as much as you can up to about say 20 months.. then when thats done sell some more.

giving tech to the Major civs improves rrelationships as does TG (already mentioned I know).. I gave Ultra Spices to everybody and 2 went from neutral to warm and 3 from neutral to friendly..

Still easy enough to bribe them into war against each other.. I try and make sure theres at least 4civs involved so they only trade with me..

And then I got the fundie event which I must admit now seems a bit skewed, it wiped out 2 civs and has left teh other 3 with about 8 systems between them, whilst the fundies picked up about 15 systems.. only 3 from me thankfully.

I did have a good starting position.. hope some of this helps.

I'm wondering if the lifting of the tech buying nerf from minors at Maso is intentional.

That really makes the Maso game easier.

~SDC~

Maybe Ray, although it does only seem to be the Alexians... The others won't do anything and you have to be lucky enough to find the Alexians before it gets swallowed up by the major Civs..

Jordan: play a few games before you throw it away! I plan to upgrade tonight, but even on 1.11 there were some maso games that I just couldn't get going. We talk about using Cntl-N to get a reasonable starting position, but the same applies to the AIs too. Most of the maso games I've had to throw away were really because an AI happened to get four planets in their starting sector (all high PQ) or two rich sectors adjacent to each other. In that situation, they came for me no matter what I offered: game over.

Jaws,

I sold to the Caris and Scotts as well in my current 1.12 game (or could be just one of them). I had no luck with Kwailisians. It was erratic though, sometimes they bite, sometimes they don't.

~SDC~

Never say that to Jaws...it gives him ideas..... LOL

As mentioned before, it seems easy to buy ships from the AIs using tech. In my current game, I managed to buy all the Altarian warships and transports off them simply by trading them Interstellar Tactics. Needless to say, they didn't last for long.

I wonder if it is better to restrict ship sales to races that have Friendly or Close relations.

And of course, there should be some severe penalty for attacking friendly or allied races.
How about this? U get kick out of the UP for committing such a dastardly act.

~SDC~

How about you suffer a five year -20% to diplomacy because other races don't trust you.