really big games

If you want a really challenging game, try a rich quadrant. Most of the AI problems stem from a lack of resources. There are several things to be done.
1) In data directory modify SystemNames.txt to have at least 255 system names. Be sure to start each name with a capital letter.
2) In data directory modify QuadrantTypes.txt under name Mid-Life to be chance 1 for all types except standard 3 52 (1 star) Binary 3 21 (2 star) and Trinary 1 13 (3 star). This adds up to 100 86+14x1. You could remove all the variety but it makes the map more interesting if there are systems which need improvement.
3) In data directory modify Settings.txt increase AI values by a factor of ten :
a) Maximum Number of Systems to 255. More will crash.
b) c) d) Minimum Empire Minerals (Organics Radioactives) Generation to 2000.
e) Minimum Empire Point storage to 500000.
f) AI Mega Evil Empire Threshold Score Thousands to 5000.
g) Default Number Of Units Per Player to 10000.
h) Default Number of Ships Per Player to 2000.
4) Create an Ancient Race which sees all the quadrant and include it as the first race in each iteration of the procedure below. Select Game Settings Players Can Save The Map During The Game on every iteration. Generate games until you get a midlife quadrant with about 255 systems and a few waste (black hole nebulae asteroid) systems. It should have about 2000 planets. This is your start point - save the map.
5) Make up a list of races which uses all possible planet combinations (rock,gas,ice) times (None, Oxygen, Carbon Dioxide, Methane, Hydrogen) except Gas-None makes 14.
6) On each iteration add all 14 races and select Player Settings - Home Planet Value as Good and Number of Starting Planets as 10. Load the Lastest Version of the map. Select Generate Random Computer Controlled Empires and deselect Neutral Empires. Select Number of Computer Players High. This adds six of the unselected races to the creation making 20 times ten good planet hits per iteration. Generate a new game, save the map and exit to New Game and repeat. My experience was planets 2158-2325-2456-2560-2647-2728-2787-2843-2896-2954-3012-3032-3059-3113-3175-3212-3247-3293-3323-3327-3351-3383-3412-3443-3468-3506. At that point I had half of the planets I wanted and was tired of the slow progress.
7) On each iteration select the Ancient race and one of the other 13 repeated 19 times. This generates the same planet type 10 times for each of 19 start locations. Save the map and move on to the next race. After the first pass I had 4734 planets. After the 2nd pass 5505. After the 3rd pass 6085.
8) My target was about 7000 planets but I also wanted them evenly distributed amoung the 14 types. So on the fourth pass I modified the race characteristics of the first of each set of 19 to be an ancient race and repeated the race until it had over 450 planets to be settled of the proper type and atmosphere. The end result ranged from a low of 465 to a high of 619 for rock none due to moons. The total was 6839 planets of which at least 4681 were large with about 120 minerals organics radioactives and a good climate.
9) The game changes planet numbering from roman numerals to 31 32 33 etc when it gets too many planets in a system but seems to have no upper limit. I checked the map editor and it barfs when one of my planets is selected, but who needs the editor anyway ? So if you want to revise the map warp points or something with the map editor, do it BEFORE you follow the procedure.
10) You thought the AI was too easy ? Well just try invading a sytem with 10 proper atmosphere planets to blockade/invade of 35 total in the same system. Instead of one dreadnought per system you need a fleet ! You had better expand VERY quickly because the AI will be all over the map with its resource problems solved. My answer is to research more than the AI.
11) You can make the AI emphasize research by changing directory Ai file Default AI Settings item Maximum Research Point Generation from 100000 to 500000 or more.
12) While in that file, you also need to change item Get Angry Over Allied Colonizable Planets from True to False. Otherwise you can not settle more than about 39 planets before they declare war on you, which is about one half of one percent of the planets available rather than five percent in a standard 100 system quadrant. You might also change by a factor of ten the AI anger over planets to keep it in scale by modifying Percentage of Planets to consider as Attack Locations For Anger from 10 to 1 and from 5 to 1.
13) The procedure took about seven hours at 2-3 minutes per iteration. You can test the results by trying it yourself. After a dozen big games with a blitz strategy that Lasted from turn 120 to 150 I got tired of the AI not being able to put up a good fight....

[Q]

I believe you could get the same result (many good planets for the AI) by modifying the quadrant and system files in less time. And once you did this you can create unlimited new maps with your parameter.

The attached is the map I created. It was renamed as a .txt automatically, but I assume the file contents are unaffected. Modifying the system generation files would not really do what I wanted since I wanted good productivity in all three resource types AND a good climate on 2/3 of the worlds. Also I wanted a random number of planets per system from the starting half dozen in trinary systems to about forty in the biggest systems, which would not happen if I just added new system types. I also wanted random placement of worlds within systems. It also seems likely that I am exploiting a bug in the multiple starting point placement routine which does not seem to have an upper limit on worlds per system. But the change from roman numerals indicates that some provision HAS been made for super systems. It may be a little boring with 2/3 of the planets large rather than evenly distributed but that too looks nice upon consideration. So the result varies from near standard systems to near impossible ones requiring huge fleets to subdue. On the other hand the 100 mines limit on warp points makes the initial entry into system relatively cheaper. Since this was my first attempt and I kept checking things it also took about twice as long as it should.

My philosophy is to have as much variety as possible, so I have not tried making everything colonize the same. To me that would be boring because it eliminates the challenge of getting the right race to the right atmosphere.


THIS ATTACHMENT WILL NOT WORK. SEE LATER POSTS FOR EXPLANATION.

[This message has been edited by LCC (edited 16 May 2001).]

[Nitram Draw]

Thanks for the map. i'll give it a try, if I can load it I'm computer challanged you know
The reason I asked about a single type map is that if all races need the same planet types there is greater competition for the planets. It adds a small twist to the game.

You are welcome. I just rechecked seven systems and the stats on climate are 2/7 unpleasant 2/7 mild 2/7 good and 1/7 optimal. That sure beats over half unpleasant and optimal rare indeed in a typical map.

The climate can probably be fixed by tweaking a file but I still want over 100 in all three resource types because the stupid AI persits in mining farm worlds and farming mine worlds. I have seen mines on 2% minerals 110 % farms. So this way he can not miss whatever his tiny brain decides he needs will be good. And he can even waste dozens of them on tech/intelligence out of his 450 and still come out ahead.

See my posting under basic strategy for a recommended tech sequence.

I took twenty minutes to check the complete planets list for my map. The biggest systems are Sun at 46 planets plus 3 moons followed by Tessana @44 Eskirk @44 and Ixe @43. Invading those systems once they have been colonized would be a real challenge. Imagine twenty shipyards tossing out battleships as you move from world to world. Best to go in with at least a dozen dreadnoughts to visit them all in a turn or two before they can build ships.

On the other hand it occurs to me that the automatic AI empire management has probably never been tested for over 200 worlds. I tried turning on all AI on one of my games I was tired of at 600 worlds and the computer locked up. So it is possible that I have generated a monster that will just crash about turn 100 before I am ready to conquer the map. I hope not....

Let me know if I also need to post the system names file I used. I do not know if it pulls system names out of the file or has them in the map itself. They should be in the map. On second thought I will just attach it. The names I made up are all three letters because I get tired of writing long names on my plans.

If you want to make things interesting generate the game with your race Last rather than first. That way the AI gets to move new ships before you move.... I find it interesting enough being first so I can decide which sitting duck to pursue. My ships experience reaches Legendary +50% quickly....

One thing I forgot to mention is to turn off automatically claiming any system you colonize. This just makes the AI mad especially when it has a colony there. Do not claim them, just colonize them and grin...

[Nitram Draw]

Maybe the crash is related to the Max number of units. IIRC there were some Posts about a month ago concerning a limit on what the game could handle.
I bet you get some monster AI fleets with this set up!

[Q]

LCC I congratulate you to your "monster map" and please don't see my proposition as a critic. I just thought that you might be interested in ways to create such maps in less than seven hours.
The planet value you can change very easyly in the settings file. If you change "planet value low percent" from 0 to 100, you will have no planets with less than 100% value!
A little bit more effort, if you want systems with 40 planets. But if you create in the system type file a stellar system with 40 planets (and you can chose the size of each planet too!) you could easily modify the original to let's say ten different systems each with forty planets. Now you just use mainly these new system types in the quadrant text file and you've got what you want. Just the planet condition can not be pretermined IIRC.
All in all it might take you 3 or 4 hours, but then you can create randomly as many maps as you want in seconds.


[This message has been edited by Q (edited 16 May 2001).]

quote:

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Originally posted by Q:
Just the planet condition can not be pretermined IIRC.

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That is my point 2/2/2/1 distribution for planet climate beats the default all hollow. I want those suckers to GROW so that when I conquer them I have more than 50 population per planet to distribute on new colonies. With a single world starting point of 4 billion times three races multiplied by a MAXIMUM of 2.3 percent per turn compounded 130 turns there is only (at best) a factor of 19 increase to 230 billion to split on 1400 worlds. The ACTUAL increases observed in my games have been a factor of three to five not 19. An increase of just .2 percent jumps that by 67 billion or about 30 percent. And the distribution observed is much better than a .2 percent increase....

This discussion applies only once the planet really gets rolling. I am aware that you get at least an increase of one per turn regardless of the population so long as at least one population is on world.

Besides, the time needed to generate a map is less than a third of the time I estimate will be needed to PLAN the exploitation, which is also less than a third of the time needed to do the FIRST wave of expansion to 390 worlds. And THAT is about a third of what I estimate will be needed to get all the races to surrender. So about four percent of your time in a huge map game will be spent actually generating the map. As I said, my first hack took me twice as long as it should have.

So find me a way to get better climates and I will concede that my procedure is unnecessary. But you still will not get the even distribution of systems from six to 46 plus planets unless you make a huge increase in the system types file. And it seems likely that it will barf if you go beyond thirty planets per system roman numerals.

Upon consideration you can get the effect of higher population due to improved climate by a change in settings.txt
Modify the list of Pop Modifier x Population Amount to be lower values and lengthen the list from 12 to about 16. That way you do not need the higher population goal I desired.

On the other hand you STILL would need a huge increase in the System Types.txt file to get the variety of systems my method produces. And that variety is half the reason I did it in the first place. Some systems will be easy as usual but others will be horrendous. If you examine the generated map then you will see that as many as a dozen planets have the same atmosphere type in a single system where a random allocation would give only 9 in a 45 planet system.

I examined the history.txt file to see if there has been any change in population growth lately, but no soap. Apparently it has been cast in concrete. If you want faster growth you have to select it in your racial characteristics. It applies to any race you conquer so that is a bonus. You can also improve your environmental resistance if you have the points available, which should upgrade your apparent climate but I have not checked that out....

Some of the Posts I have been reading mention races available in mod packs. Are they really better than the standard ? If so then why the **** are they not added to the standard game releases ? Is it a case of not invented here or lack of resources to do an official checkout for official release ?

I do not use game handicaps since my goal is to test my strategy against the AI on a *level* playing field. If the wimp AI can not hack it then that is a major indication that some work must be done on the AI strategy. Of course it has been less than a year since the demo came out and MM has been working overtime to fix bugs so AI seems to have fallen by the wayside. Am I on target or speaking from ignorance ?