really big games

#1 May 16th, 2001, 07:26 PM

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

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.

#2 May 16th, 2001, 09:02 PM

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 ?

Nitram Draw · #3 May 16th, 2001, 09:18 PM

The AI could always use work but the races in the Mod Pac are much tougher than the standard races. The AI has been reworked on some of the standard races to provide a generally tougher opponent and a few custom races have been included.
Overall the Mod Pack is a great addition to the game. The creators also only limit improvements to tweaks of the original game items, no new stuff is added.
I would recommend you give it a try with you new maps, you should get an even better game than you do now.

jc173 · #4 May 16th, 2001, 09:28 PM

quote:
Originally posted by LCC:
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 ?

In the past Aaron has used some of the suggestions from the AI modders, but the modpack includes a couple of races that cannot be included cause they're based off races in sci-fi serieses/movies. Copyright issues I guess.

jc173 · #5 May 16th, 2001, 09:34 PM

Seems to be an error with the link to the map file. I'm getting some kind of internal server error, anyone else having this problem?

#6 May 16th, 2001, 10:22 PM

The txt file comes out ok so I changed the name to map3.txt and will try that. It worked but now the computer thinks this is a text document rather than a MAP File so SE IV will not recognize it. See post above for fix.

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

Suicide Junkie · #7 May 16th, 2001, 10:23 PM

Its definitely only YOUR file that is not working.

Try using the "View/Delete files" link... you may have gone over your max MB limit, or # of files limit.

If the map is really as big as it sounds, it may be too big to upload.