Normal research rate without techstag isway too fast for me. I never got to use anything for more than a few turns before it was obsolete, so now I play with techstag on and the research rate in alphax.txt set at 50%. That makes for 20-60 turns per tech depending on the faction's settings in its txt, social engineering, and progression of the game. And plenty of time to play with all the neat toys Sid and Brian gave us.
Normal research rate without techstag isway too fast for me. I never got to use anything for more than a few turns before it was obsolete, so now I play with techstag on and the research rate in alphax.txt set at 50%. That makes for 20-60 turns per tech depending on the faction's settings in its txt, social engineering, and progression of the game. And plenty of time to play with all the neat toys Sid and Brian gave us.
I've been modding/playing the following:
-Transcend, Normal sized map
-Mix of HvH and vs AI
-An SE set that is overall more penalizing, but encourages researching SE techs earlier
-Slower terraforming for forest & fungus remove (12T), faster on farm/solar/echelon
-Higher support cost (divisor 4)
-Drone fixes in (mode 31)
-Ecodamage fixes in (generally lenient but 0 CMs)
-Base 7 SMAC factions unmodified
-Cheaper colony pods/formers (20 for inf, 30 for rover), but higher facility costs from -2 IND start
-IndAuto for M-cap lift, Gene for N-cap/Condensor, OptComp for E-cap/Echelon
The amount of overall aggression/war has much more impact than all of these tweaks cumulative. When you're pressured at war you might not get to put anything at all into labs, else you get wiped out. In peace you can run peace SEs, plus pacts, plus with global trade pact the economy increase gets rather crazy. It would seem that these things alone can influence your tech rate by a factor of 10x or more (when considering base maintenance/drone control...labs can be viewed like discretionary income). I feel in the early game tech may be a bit too slow, since there isn't a good source of land energy before boreholes. By mid-game the tech rate is somewhat too fast, and probably way too fast after satellites. Again these depend on the state of war also. I think you want a fairly fast tech rate though considering Transcend is only 400 turns by default.
Do you have the curve formula for tech research? I assumed it was based on # of techs you had and the map size only, but I may be off.
I'm in the minority here, but I speed up tech rate by 2x-5x in my transcend games unless I'm playing on a custom supermassive map. If I don't the game is over (in a "i am dominant and it's just a matter of clearing up at my own pace" way) before I get to much the fun tech.It's dull to have loads of cool options only when you entirely don't them need to win.
Also, even if the tech per turn rate is really fast late game, the tech per hour spent on AC is often quite a lot lower because lategame turns take MUCH longer if you're being at all aggressive, and even if not it still slows you a whole lot.
Still not too clear. Are you asking what influences the quickening tech rate (in terms of turns per tech) as the game goes on? I would say it's mostly the things that give more raw energy:
- lifting energy cap + boreholes (which typically require condensor/TF to support)
- tree farm/hybrid to control eco, and grow bases to hab dome limit of 14
- satellites
- late-game specialists (not that influential until hab dome)
Mostly the last two are what fuels the very late game tech speed. Of course labs improvements are key...Network Node, Research Hosp, Fusion Lab being more important than the later ones (since each is only 50% labs on the base, and the later ones cost more).
Far as real life time per turn increasing, I mostly fault formers as they occupy 50%-75% of actions on most turns. Since all land is unimproved, essentially every tile within your empire has to be manually improved to play well (aside from spreading forests). Clean modifier is a big contributor here. Early game you might have 10 formers, mid 50+, late 300+. Even taking away Clean doesnt really solve it...then you just end up doing +3 SUP SEs. Armies can also take up a lot of time per turn...larger bases support bigger armies. The bases themselves of course taking most of the rest. Facilities can be queued up so this isn't quite as bad late. (aside from diplomacy/tech trade/evaluation). Quicker ways to rush/see mineral count might help some there.
At my end, wartime unit shuffling takes up most of the turn time, followed by terraforming/yield tasks. Then it's 'abandon base checking' if I play a relocation game
with workshop tinkering coming next (especially annoying is to have to retire/obselete the same proposed design for the nth time).
At my end, wartime unit shuffling takes up most of the turn time, followed by terraforming/yield tasks. Then it's 'abandon base checking' if I play a relocation game
How does a relocation game work?
Gotcha. I'd say its like ~12 turns/tech on average early, ~6 mid, ~3 late (maybe less even). So something like a factor of 2 in each era? It does depend a lot on how much tech is traded also because you could have mid-game tech but only early-game infrastructure (i.e. population, facilities, improved terrain). This is what is happening in my pacifism game. Everyone has a lot of E but not much M.
Personally I think rushing is fine as it is one of the more strategic portions of the game (should I rush a big base's multiplier, or save up to rush an SP, or grow horizontally).
Yes SP rushing with energy might feel cheesy but there has to be significant incentives to get a tech first (and some disincentive to trade immediately, this adds some strategy also), or everyone will just mindlessly steal tech and run full ECON build.
Anyways, 3:1 might be a better ratio (for all 3 of units, facilities, SPs).
These would be good variables to be able to set (if possible within alphax.txt.). I never liked the 10 mineral rule or the unit rush formula how it is because having to manually calculate rush costs adds a lot of real life time and it's not that fun really. I've been playing with the 10 mineral rule eliminated and it helps some. I am finding that having the production mineral rollover option on saves a lot of unnecessary micromanagement.
The goal is usually to fully improve a base square every turn for pop boom, so whatever former time that takes.
Late game a large base can make a new base every turn. Though it isn't always preferable to base spam due to B-drones, and your existing bases are usually better to rush due to higher base E, and less E loss due to EFFIC. This is why I think a reduced EFFIC SE set is somewhat beneficial. Anyways, there are incentives to expand late also mainly satellites.
Fast combat resolution option also helps a lot with the time it takes to fight later wars. The default makes combat with higher reactors much slower.
Rushing (sea)colony pods in conquered bases and abandonning them in the end.
IOW, very movement intensive.
And you do it in order to avoid the conquered base penalty?
And you do it in order to avoid the conquered base penalty?
Partly, yes. Other parts are to lift certain home bases over the pop cap
and faction 'philopsophy'.
I would guess around a factor of 4 - not evenly decreasing per se. I think the biggest jumps are at borehole and satellites. Keep in mind a lot of what we saw before with mid and late being very fast is because the game is effectively won against the AI.
It's mostly units that I have more an issue with how the rush cost works - because it's non-linear that adds a lot of micromanagement.
Although due to the higher cost I feel only facilities are usually worth rushing. A better player may be able to comment - if this is best or if going full labs is superior play.
The key is keeping the incentive to tech, usually this was for SPs more than facilities due to the denial aspect. Before you would pre-build crawlers, but if that's out then it's just energy rushing.
I'm still playing through a trial game. Right now the factions are all 5-15 turns for discoveries in the early-mid game. Amplified a lot by pacts, but infrastructure is relatively poor. It will take some time and granted I'm not an expert player. One curious thing about SMAC is just how much strategy there is in the game. I'm starting to feel that perhaps very high tech steal costs won't be ideal. The steal cost should scale with the lab cost that it would take to research. Early game a probe team costs a lot, later game it doesn't. That is, early on even the mineral cost makes it questionable to steal. Trading of course is always ideal but if you fall behind, there needs to be a catchup mechanism (which is pacts and stealing). Governor only helps the #2 player catch the #1 player.
Satellite caps which get raised by late-game techs might work better, though that does encourage more smaller bases.
I tried some games without booming, thinking it would be more interesting also, but it kind of wasn't. It just ended up slowing down the game too much, everyone's bases stagnated around size 6-7. Takes a lot of former time to make condensers to grow fast past that - and then you're better off just making more and more bases with PS. Booming is what makes building vertically more worth it than horizontally. Now you could eliminate booming but it would require a more gradual N cost curve. Each worker costs more N, which means more and more former time. I do agree this could reduce micromanagement some if done right since I know really good players will go through every base just to make sure it's +2N.
If you haven't improved the terrain then the boom actually isn't going to help you much. With Forests at 4 former-turns that means you need 4 formers per base to improve a tile per turn (2 if Super). Much more than this however to do advanced terraforming. Granted once bases hit their pop cap, then yes that means the formers can go elsewhere. 50/300 may have been a bit of an exaggeration but I find it's not too far off. Reducing former time on everything may help with the massive number of formers required. But at the same time, it may speed the game up too much - because advanced terraforming is so powerful. May be worth trying the game with Condensor, Borehole, and TF/HF slightly weakened. They have to be good enough to pursue though, so it's tricky.
Wait, you can use colony pods to exceed the hab facility caps? That seems to me like a sort of exploit...
and faction 'philopsophy'.
I'll keep playing and let you know. Transcendi I found didn't give a huge jump since you need Hab Domes. But there's probably ways to play that exploit them better (more numerous smaller bases I assume, other than SSCs).
Right now the factions are at turn 94, about 40-50 pop average, 12 bases, and 15-20 formers. Still early game infrastructure I'd say...heading into mid game tech soon (Tree Farms & advanced terraforming just coming out). I feel like I underbuilt formers though since most factions haven't gotten boreholes yet. Then again, this might have been ok strategy since few went for Green. Pacifist game means those not in FM tending to fall behind.
Playing around with probe team odds might be another way to go. It then follows that stealing costs M rather than E.
I think tech difference would be a good factor. Absolute tech would also be considered. I feel like there should be more protection from probe techsteal (and other actions) based on PROBE SE, than necessarily having probes in cities.
Maybe making probe elite harder would help.
Personally I'm not a huge fan of the pod shoot down mechanic. It's like war, only with no risk (build an ODS and damage the #1).
I think the growth thing could maybe work with nutrient rollover fixed. One thing is that you have to look at how a base will grow in practice. The curve would have to come down to +1 nutrient row per every several population rather than every 1 population.
Right now bases mostly grow not because of many surplus nutrients. Usually a base will only have +2-4 nutrients at best, a lot of which is from the base square. Let's use size 6 as an example (70N to grow). GROW+6 implies 40% of this or 28N. Let's say it's well improved, +3N from the base square and rest is 2N (farm+solar).
That's 9 turns to go to size 7 which is awfully slow considering it was 'boom' before. Even if +10N (all 3N production), it would be 3 turns. And 3N/square isn't obtainable till mid-game really (TF+HF on Forest). Mass condensor isn't an option early due to ecodmg and poor E production.
More or less, I'm trying to say that you want to avoid encouraging tons of small bases in PS with this which is what will be best (because the base square produces 3N, and resource bonuses mostly).A small base in comparison will grow with 8N, or in 1-2 turns with Tanks+Condensor. You'd see silly things like using size 2 bases to pod into big bases, just because the absolute nutrient cost is so much less.[/quote]
It might just be easier to rework the automatic worker AI, so that it 'tries' harder to get you to +2N. Unless you feel that booming is too powerful...I'm not really convinced that it is. In some ways yes. Probably would have worked better if GROWTH had modified nutrient production rather than requirements (same problem with INDUSTRY). But that would be massive rework and probably not even possible.
Condenser+Solar on the same square would change things a lot. I think it's an okay idea but it might be hard to tell graphically if both are there. In that case probably condensers should produce 1 N themselves (or possibly even 0, if it's a huge radius).
- reducing the production power of advanced terraforming
- significantly reducing the former time of all terraforming and especially advanced terraforming
no pop boom (maybe. I think you'll have similar balance issues regarding what factions can hit 7/8/9. it will be even more extreme as grow will get even more powerful the more you get. imagine trying to balance INDUSTRY beyond +5, for example)
Perhaps a hybrid solution is better, GA as a requirement to pop boom on top of a +4 GROWTH SE. The bigger issue is usually the non-GA boom (+4 GROWTH and Creche for +6). I think pop booming is fine really it's just that often no PSYCH has to be dumped in lieu of nutrients in order to do it. In Civ you needed a GA to boom - I think it was a mistake for them to just require GROWTH and no GA. On Transcend at least, it takes a lot of Psych in the early game to get a GA - it's usually not possible before HoloT+TF (and sometimes even HF/Research Hospital).
Now at 98 turns of 400 I'm still only about 1/4 through the tech tree, so the tech rate must speed up a lot at some point - and not just in vs AI games that are 'won'. Unfortunately came into a game ruining bug. That or I'm doing something wrong (as far as teching, not the bug) - borehole/Green might be superior to planting all these expensive forests in FM.
The main reason is that it requires so many formers per base. When terraforming gets to ~40FT/square for a buffed raised solar/farm setup, that necessitates many, many formers to make it happen. Even if a base is growing every 4 turns, that's 10 FT to keep pace (10 formers per base, 5 per base with Super). With 10-20 bases being a standard strategy, that's 50-200 formers.
I'd rather see the game get away from massive armies of formers and military as it really bogs down the speed of the game after 100 turns or so. Early game turns take only a small fraction of late game turns, and that's a shame really because I think a lot of the late-game options are very interesting. It just takes so long to get there - I haven't yet gotten to Future SEs is any of my test games for example. The tech rate (turns/tech) speeds up a lot in the mid to lategame which kind of masks the problem. The turns/tech rate should be more linear throughout the game I'd say, along with the real life time per turn. The latter may be more difficult but ideally it would be linear increases rather than exponential. One thing to keep in mind is that the incremental fixes (ecodmg, drones, fm exploits) have cumulatively slowed down the game a lot already.
So to get the amount of formers down, I'd suggest not over 10FT to fully improve any tile. The ultimate raised farm/solar could be slightly over this amount. At this rate one super former or two normal formers can more or less keep pace with growth. Faster growing bases might need a little more but I think that's okay. To balance against this, the cost of a former would have to increase. This is the trickier part. I'm thinking around 40M and Clean not being an option.
As far as booming tweaking ideally I suppose max growth, growth to boom, and GA required would all be variables. Then one could play around with custom SE sets (such as modding Eud to +3 grow, or my own modified SE set).
Yea, early game it could be somewhat punishing. But this is balanced out some by SUP costs which are more relevant early, especially for formers since they don't change in cost all that much. Each less former you have to make is +1 mineral/turn. Which early on can be like +1 IND since you won't get more than 10M/base before higher terraforming.
Overall I think the tech speed is a bit too slow early. There's a few approaches. One is to decrease early facility M costs. Another is to reduce the L per tech. It's about getting the right feel since lower L/tech can mean outpacing infrastructure. And low M costs means that L ends up being the bottleneck. There's some give of course due to the E/L slider.
Perhaps rather than a GA toggle to require booming, the amount of +GROWTH from GA could be modded. That might be more intuitive. Then I could give GA +5 GROWTH for example if I wanted early booms to hit +9, with your proposed GROWTH changes.
I start my games with the research rate in alphax.txt set at 50%, then start the game with tech stagnation on. I try to adjust the Economy and Psych allowances up to push Research to 20-30 turns, but the last 10-15 techs still come too fast. At 100% Economy, dealing with drones because of the 0% Psych, and 0% Research, and they still come less than 15 or even 10 turns. I've even played around with an even slower tech rate (as low as 30%). Those last few techs just won't slow down.Thanks...what difficulty level is this at?
Each faction could also start with 1 former. Takes some of the RNG out of early game, for example monolith discovery is a huge boon vs not getting early monolith. This might be a more balanced starting setup (1 pod, 1 former). Gaians could get a Rover or 2 formers. Also, formers at 40 is no more expensive than a recycling tanks which gives 1/1/1. A former can do as much improving in just a few more turns.
The other issue with Super is that it can't be combined with Clean till later (unless you take out Clean for Formers, which can be done by flags).
I think the benefit would have to outweigh the cost, as the only savings would be maintenance in that case.
Also consider 3x former speed isn't always 3x the improvements, there's movement time wasted in practice for a former to get around.
And with bigger divisors (3/4) more FT get wasted on things like roads that don't take much time.
Cost 4 would probably be more appropriate (double). A lot hinges on the chassis and cost mode of course...all customizable so not a big deal. On the downside, boosting Super makes already very strong techs (EnvEco/EcoEng2) even more mandatory to beeline. I might place it elsewhere but that would be a tough thing for me to comment on where else might be appropriate.
Thanks for the feedback Mart...I would have guessed a factor of 4:1 but 10-20:1 on the rate is not much of an exaggeration at all. Since I was curious on this, and I couldn't find a graph or any previous discussion on how the tech cost curve looked, I decided to plot it out. The attached graph is for a Normal sized map on Transcend (the curve is not as steep on lower difficulties it would seem). Really simple graph but X-axis is # of techs accumulated and the Y-axis is tech cost (in labs points). I have the data points but more or less the tech cost curve is linear, with some curvilinear increases in the early game. This would explain why tech gets so fast late. L rate as the game goes on is non-linear, whereas L costs are not.
Yea, either way with FTs it's something to consider - try to make most improvements divisible by 2x/3x/4x (or all, if multiple former power levels). The main goal is to just get the ridiculous number of formers down, modders can do what they like for the forest vs farm/solar debate :)
I think that formula may slightly off what the game gives in practice - seems to overestimate.
By what others are saying and my own experiences, I would say L production ends up being somewhere around (X^2.5)/16 per turn, where X is the # of techs you have.
@Yitzi: I always play my games at Librarian because I just don't like the upper levels. I get too frustrated too quickly and go play something else entirely. In the past week, though, I've been watching how things work out with your patch, and think observations at Librarian are warranted.
Actually I think the L production curve starts a bit lower, and is a bit steeper
Using L=0.02*TECH^2.7+TECH
TECH ~LABS
1 1
5 7
10 20
20 85
30 225
40 463
50 823
60 1,325
70 1,988
80 2,830
90 3,870
100 5,124
This is probably a decent estimate for a normal sized map. Assumes fairly average infrastructure for the tech at hand, and perhaps a few pacts. I'll have to play some games to test all this out - it may help to have others post their typical labs at various points in the game.
Yea, satellites might not even need a major nerf. At least if you put Sky Hydro further up the tree.
What I'm more interested in seeing is how a faster early game tech rate will influence the game. As evidenced in my pacifism game, I am only 1/4 through the tech tree after 100 turns in an ideal situation of no war and pacting everyone. This means the early techs are currently very slow (which you would expect since the curve is linear-ish). The early techs will have to come a lot faster if the later ones take longer, is what I'm getting at.
This may end up requiring lower M costs on early facilities, although that could cause even faster teching. Something to think about - it's not as though the curve is perfectly balanced vs M costs of facilities and SPs as it is. Ascent probably being the worst since it's at the end.
What, actually, is the actual unedited research cost formula? I have the Prima guide, and it has what they say is the formula, and it's pretty complicated. In particular, they talk about WORLDSIZE. I'd love to know exactly how it's calculated. I'd like to know for sure, as I'm a bit OCD about research, and so I might be able to contribute to this discussion.
Ok, I looked at the code and got the actual formula (there are a handful of missing pieces, though.) So here's the formula; notable changes from the given formula are in bold:
TECHS: Techs you've discovered already (including trading/pods/artifacts, but not the ones you started with). However, there's one variable that is added, and another that's subtracted; I'm not sure what they are, as I haven't found where they happen, but I think they're just discovered techs that are counted differently by the program (I think the one that's added is techs previously discovered this turn). Minimum of 1, maximum of 4999.
MOSTTECHS: Highest number of techs discovered by anyone. The same variable as before is added, but the one that was subtracted isn't here.
DIFF: This is 1 on citizen difficulty, 2 on specialist, 3 on talent or librarian, 4 on thinker, 5 on transcend.
The formula is then:
1. Find (DIFF*4)+8. AIs instead use 29-(DIFF*3). Apply to this a minimum of 12-TECHS, and a maximum of 12+TECHS.
2. Take TECHS, and subtract TURNS/8 (or TURNS/12 with tech stagnation), to a minimum of 0 and a maximum equal to the result of step 1 (or 1.5 times the result of step 1 with tech stagnation).
3. Add the result of step 2 to the result of step 1.
4. Take MOSTTECHS-TECHS and divide by 5, rounding up. Subtract this from the result of step 3, but no more than 30% the result of step 3 (rounding normally) plus 1. AIs instead divide by a number dependent on difficulty, ranging from 3 on Transcend to 8 on Citizen, and the maximum percentage ranges from 0% plus 1 on citizen to 50% plus 1 on transcend.
5. Take TECHS, and add 1 for factions with a natural penalty to research, or subtract 1 for factions with a natural bonus to research. Apply a minimum of 1. Multiply this by the result of step 4.
6. Modify by WORLDSIZE and faction and alpha(x).txt tech cost modifiers, and add 50% with tech stagnation.
Yitzi have you confirmed the formula to the in-game results? For example I had tech 20 at 828 cost, if year 2101 and in the tech lead. Transcend game.
1) 5*4+8 = 28, add 12+20 = 32, sum is 60
2) 0 turns so = 0
3) 60 + 0 = 60
4) mosttechs - techs = 0, so nothing subtracted, so = 60 - 0 = 60
5) techs = 20+1 = 21 * 60 = 1260
6) worldsize = 1, cost modifier 1, no tech stag 1, so 1260*1*1*1 = 1260
If anything that formula would seem to imply quadratic, since techs is later multiplied by techs. But when I graphed out the points in a game where I gave myself the techs 1 at a time, it was linear. I do agree that techs of opponents and/or mission year are factors, this was just taking them out to simplify.
Now with regard to the actually formula it looks like intervening in Step #4 would be the way to go, before TECHS is multiplied by the result of step 4 you can take TECHS and raise by a power, or possibly just multiply it by itself to introduce a quadratic progression. The Step 4 result looks to be introducing a bonus for lagging factions and this looks to be a good thing, we may want to look at expanding the room for this effect.
Your observation that the cost curve moves from quadratic to linear is quite interesting, I wonder if the designers intended this to follow a similar change in the players growth curve. When the player is expanding vertically and horizontally they will be seeing quadratic growth, but once empty territory is exhausted the player will only be expanding vertically and growth will slow down to linear. Unfortunately the formula as written ignores World-size when placing this quadratic/linear 'knee' in the progression, it should come later the larger the world size, and I think most people play on maps bigger then the intended size for the formula.
What are your plans for modification at this point?, and if your interested in more testers for this I would like to volunteer.
as I too would like to see more games go into higher tech before being decided (without the game ending abruptly after completing half the tech tree).
This should make it somewhat easier to defend bases or defend against high-mobility units as weapons start to get stronger in comparison to armor.
This should make it somewhat easier to defend bases or defend against high-mobility units as weapons start to get stronger in comparison to armor.
You could also simply set a value in the rule for mobile versus rough in the alphax file. This makes units get a defense bonus against mobile units while in base, forest, rocky, or fungus squares.
I found that increasing ECM/AAA wasn't really the best. There's a big window (Impact to Missile + Rovers) before these defensives come into play
and in the late-game Wave breaks ECM/AAA.
The more I play, the more I'm favoring keeping the 2:1 A/D ratio.
The attacker needs to win battles - defense should not really be in excess unless multiple modifiers going on (i.e. not an AAA unit by itself in the open).
Air chassis should cost more than infantry to begin with
and there's the risk of AS air countering your jet. In other words, air needs to be good otherwise you'll see all infantry armies.
For example I tried triple cost on air and it was rarely worth it.
But that's all just military tweaking, I don't think it would do all that much for the L cost curve.
I suppose it should be no surprise that SMAC is like all its predecessors - a game of diplomacy above all else. Perhaps we should be focusing more on that aspect than the strategic.
The game mostly gets over soon because the AI doesn't keep up in growth rate. Early on, its powerful cheating bonuses allow it to far surpass a human player's growth rate. But by early-mid game, it overspends on military that it doesn't use all that well. Compounding this the AI doesn't terraform that well in SMAX causing its growth rate to fall behind around the same time.
As far as diplomacy I'm not sure what I'd add. I would really have to think on that. The diplomacy options in game are quite good right now I agree.
A few things I can think of for now..
- asking AI for their map (can do this in MP but not vs AI)
- asking players for EC/turn agreement (AI can do this to you but not in SP or MP)
- demanding tech (for MP)
declare vendetta via diplomacy. This is probably more important than the others, since you can use the declare withdrawal to keep enemies from declaring vendetta in MP. There is renounce pact but not renounce treaty in other words. Later game you can force war by air or sea, but it's an exploit just the same.
It's that you can't get the sneak attack off - whether in truce or treaty. You can just hit the 'demand withdrawal' every turn on every human opponent to push their troops away, no downside to this.
Similarly the council works different in MP - the AI votes immediately but in MP the votes come in turn-by-turn (and you can see others votes, meaning last vote has more sway). I wonder if in MP, all the votes should be secret until revealed.
Thing is there's also hybrid games - MP with AI also.
MP games tend to be over fast? I'm not so sure that's true. You mean because of the tech rate late? There's quite a few catchup mechanisms - governor, war, tech steal. Should usually be a close game amongst equal skilled players.
But still it would be nice to be able to ask/demand for specific techs somehow, I feel.
MP team games or MP FFA? The former I could see ending sooner. The latter I see as less likely.
Yea, the human can't refuse to withdraw. You can use it whether they agree out-of-game or not to withdraw.
I think instead it should prompt on the following turn if they wish to withdraw or to declare vendetta.
That or if easier just be able to renounce truce/treaty. There's already renounce pact in game, it would be similar.
Increasing the endgame tech required by 5-10x wouldn't be a stretch really.
I think that it's satellites in combination with Hab Domes and Transcend which really skyrocket the labs. I'm not as convinced satellites really need a nerf if quadratic tech cost scaling is put in. For example, Satellites only accounted for about 1/3 the bases total production and that was post-boomed to maximum size.
Keep in mind satellites do have a very real cost - most very fast speedruns on tiny maps just build a few N satellites and that's all. And there's always the option to just mod their construction cost.
I checked and Manifold with Fungus is definitely superior, especially for Gaia. For anyone else it's slightly less N/E production, but a massive gain to minerals. Overall it's worth it it more in practice (i.e. before the game is over, rather than point scoring) just for the minerals. Minerals matter even late I say...you can always put it into military to take down the leader in a last ditch hope.
I allways mod my .ini files for a tech rate of 20% or below. That way I can enjoy every single game phase a bit longer :)
Yeah, although that doesn't let you adjust the ratio between the phases, which is what I'm really interested in.Hmm, you are right, Yitzi. What's about a rework of the tech costs on a logarithmic scale?
QuoteYeah, although that doesn't let you adjust the ratio between the phases, which is what I'm really interested in.Hmm, you are right, Yitzi. What's about a rework of the tech costs on a logarithmic scale?
Dear Yitzi,
that sounds interesting. Would you mind sending me the .ini file when you are done?
- Corak
I play with blind research and tech stagnation typically and depending on my mood may switch techs on conquest on or off. Depending on faction and trade, it always seems to be around at least a 10-20 turn mark before new technologies happen, depending on how powerful research industry is.
Typically, yes. The rate of discovery doesn't change too much, if at all- unless of course my research capabilities go up, which they do.What play style is that?
But it generally, due to my play style stays around the same rate. Unless I am playing a research oriented faction my rate stays the same and I typically am slightly behind in the tech race, but production and military wise I am pretty formidable. I play on Thinker difficulty, if that helps.
My playstyle is emulated fairly well in my AAR-
I typically go with expanding my infrastructure across the board, expanding outward and then making sure each city is as much a productive hub as it can be, my emphasis being production/minerals for the most part while having a large population to boast it and create more colonies and cities. With a large amount of cities that have strong industrial output and supportive infrastructure, with a large mass produced military I often then provoke an AI without becoming the aggressor to start a war with me, fighting a defencive conflict while preserving my faction's reputation, inducing massive attrition on their army, exhausting them and then charging forward to "liberate" all their cities from them. I also commence trade with other friendly factions with my massive sum of energy credits I don't really need too heavily due to my high production levels, that way I can trade for tech I might be missing out on.
When I play with my CC custom faction its very well tailored to this style of gameplay. An industrial strongman that fights defencive conflict while trying to have noble relations with everyone, so trading conditions stay healthy.