Ring and Sphereworlds

[dmm]

quote:

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Originally posted by Kagetora:
The limits in the game now are arbitrary but necessary for playability. If you can build alot in one place it benefits you more to have a few good planets than alot and makes expansion less necessary.

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I hear what you're saying, but my suggested scheme wouldn't allow you to build a lot in one place unless you also had a ton of population. The way things are now, an airless moon is almost as "powerful" as a homeworld, in terms of building fleets. That takes away a lot of the strategic importance of homeworlds, and of population-building techs. Also, the way things are now, two airless moons with 10M pop are better for rapid expansion/conquest than a single huge planet with breathable atmosphere and 8B pop. At this point, expansion isn't just important, it is the ONLY important thing, and there's not much strategy to it. One planet's as good as another, if you're only after a forward construction base. But that's bogus. Life on an airless, poorly-populated moon should be HARD, and progress should be SLOW. Planets capable of supporting large pops should be jewels worth going to war over.

[Nyx]

Dmm, Perhaps adding production penalties for colonies with populations below 100M, and more severely limiting the populations of domed colonies would solve the problem? If a domed colony could only hold 1/10 of an outdoor colony, instead of 1/5, a tiny world could only support 10M people. Any reasonable scheme of penalties would be harsh at a pop level of 10M if it took 100M to be 100%. Also, adding a conditions level of Deadly, that only occurs on worlds without your native atmosphere type should help some.

The 1/10 probably isn't balanced right, but the idea itself should be sound.

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Compete in the Space Empires IV World Championship at www.twingalaxies.com.

[This message has been edited by Nyx (edited 03 January 2001).]

[Kagetora]

Lintman, Yes I have had some experience with such things I played Heroes of might and magic 3 Online for a short time but there was an exploit that you could obtain hordes of low level creatures rather cheaply and thusly everybody wanted to only play that type character which ruined things and some people considered it a viable strategy because it was in the game even tho any idiot could easily realize it wasn't fair or otherwise they wouldn't have been doing it in the first place. I played a few games and everytime somebody showed up with a horde of gremlins I would just disconnect. However, this was a big waste of time and very unsatisfying. Anyway whether the exploit is good to know about or not depends alot on what the exploit is. It matters alot whether you are the type to make use of it yourself. I would use an exploit if I felt it was within the game design but just obscure knowledge. I would not if I felt it was totally contrary to the intent of the game. This is mostly something that bypasses an obvious limit in the game. It also might be a exploit in which I might not want to use it but feel obliged to in order to compete too. However, an exploit such as was posted here is none of those. I would not and could not base an attack on the faster production speed with a backup in case the person is playing properly. I would have to play and assume that the ringworld was being built properly and would just get burned if it wasn't whether I know about it or not.

[Kagetora]

dmm, I understand what you are saying and this game is quite different from most others in that regard. All games I have played before of this type have very few good planets and the same planets are good for everybody usually too. So you fight over them early and often. In this game not only can a planet that is great for your neighbor be worthless for you but you can with time make nearly any planet good. However, I have always felt that games of this type put too much emphasis on population. How many people on the earth would actually board a spaceship and go to another planet and face the dangers and start civilization from scratch with next to nothing. Not many, certainly not millions. If you have a shipyard and newport news has maybe 40,000 workers. Bath iron works has maybe 30,000. This isn't even granting the increase in automation and with this small number of population you can build as many ships as you want. It doesn't take alot. The way this game is setup for production is rather unusual. But I used to play games and if there wasn't a good planet in the direction of the enemy that basically caved that front in. At least here you can always put up a fight regardless of the map.

[JeffG]

As an aside, the Heroes of Might and Magic III exploit was eventually eliminated by the developers.

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Cheers!
Jeff George

[Harkonis]

As far as only being able to come up with a strategy if everything is constant.. that's what adaptation is for. This technique is abusive, definitely, but it is also so prohibitive that it shouldn't happen often at all (which gives you at least some sort of idea on the possibility if you were debating attacking). And if you did attack, and all of a sudden the planet was completed? Well, this is the type of surprise decoy military strategists have been fighting for decades.

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Harkonis HellRazor