Kwok's next Mod

narf poit chez BOOM · #1 June 21st, 2007, 12:50 AM

Well, expansion is sort of the point of the game.

Atrocities · #2 June 21st, 2007, 01:23 AM

Any idea of how long it will take before you have a playable version of this mod CK?

Captain Kwok · #3 June 21st, 2007, 08:41 AM

Quote:

Atrocities said:
Any idea of how long it will take before you have a playable version of this mod CK?

Not sure exactly. I've started editing the data files and making the revised tech tree, but it's going to take a bit of work to implement an AI-sensitive version of the leaky armor.

aegisx · #4 June 21st, 2007, 07:53 AM

Quote:

narf poit chez BOOM said:
Well, expansion is sort of the point of the game.

I agree, but I think establishing a new colony should be a decision, not a necessity. Grend posted an expansion guide on se.com, and I've seen him do it in several games. It is very effective and there is nothing to hold back the massive expansion. I just think there should be more expense to establishing a new colony.

Fyron · #5 June 21st, 2007, 11:41 AM

aegisx said:
"I agree, but I think establishing a new colony should be a decision, not a necessity."

It's not entirely clear to me why nerfing one of the Xs of a 4X game is a good thing. Civ4 did it, and it sucked; probably the worst part of the game. Establishing new colonies should always be beneficial, and thus not much of a decision.

aegisx · #6 June 21st, 2007, 12:18 PM

I should qualify this as more as a PBW/MP change.

It becomes a mad colony rush,. Check out http://www.spaceempires5.com/en-US/node/2782. This old guide outlines how to pump out 17 colonizers by turn 11. So all these ships will likely find planets to colonize, no real thought on having to support them resource wise.

How do you counter that type of expansion other then being forced to follow the same path?

Captain Kwok · #7 June 21st, 2007, 12:23 PM

There's two items I would modified to tone down expansion a bit:
- Slightly more expensive colony modules
- Reduced population modifiers below 100M

Regardless in any competitive PBW environment, you're going to have to expand as possible anyway.

aegisx · #8 June 21st, 2007, 12:30 PM

I agree expansion is necessary, but I would like to see some drawback to the rush strategy.

Captain Kwok · #9 June 21st, 2007, 12:33 PM

The main drawback is that most of the colonies are poorly defended and have minimal facilities, the player is running on the edge for resources, and is stuck with slow builds for most of their inner SYs. They are very vulnerable to an early attack.

aegisx · #10 June 21st, 2007, 12:41 PM

Early attacks are difficult to pull off. All he has to do is build a few WP's on a planet (1 turn) and it can defend pretty well against early ships. Also, If he already has a 2- 3 times colony advantage, the loss of a planet or 2 is insignificant as he can out-produce you.

As it should be, the empire with the most planets will tend to win the game. There are exceptions of course. Your changes should slow it some though.

How about this... Production level on planets are partly based on population right? Maybe this formula needs to be changed. Right now a newly colonized planet (10M people) can produce 2k I believe. This seems a bit high of a start, perhaps it should be more like 500. If a planet has 1000M, I could see it being closer to 2000.