ethicsgradient

Join Date 03/2006

avoiding the rush

might be a doublepost

firstly, I *thought* I posted this aleady, but it never appeared on the post list. If it does so now, I apologize for the messy forum etiquette.

I have seen quite a few posts in which players are complaining about the colonial rush that characterizes the first part of many games. So I am putting up this thread for people to post their various workarounds and strategies (either in game options/sandbox game setup or in-ganme strategy).
My original reasons for this particular setup was to try and emulate a more realistic space expansion. The incredibly vast distances involved, and the incredible inhospitability of the majority of planets in it. The no-rush factor was a happy accident, but remains the main reason I use this setup.

here are the sandbox settings I use for minimalised rush games:
number of AI opponents: 3
map size: gigantic
star density: tight clusters
number of stars: rare
number of planets: common
number of habitable planets: rare
number of anomalies: abundant

For the most part this map leads to a game where colonisation happens at a very reduced rate. Initial ship movements are alot more scouting intensive, and past the third or fourth turn you can entirely forget about the constant pumping out of colony ships, instead switching to a much more amenable arrangement of producing colony ships when you find a destination to send them. The number of anomalies setting is primarily to let you produce fire-and-forget survey ship scouts, as micro managing your scouts on a gigantic map is sort of overwhelming.

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How many years,on average, does it take to complete a gigantic map with those settings on, say, Intelligent AI difficulty vs. 9 opponents?

I've been hesitant to try gigantic, as... well... I prefer 5 years games -- which takes me about 3 hours to win on Suicidal (just about right for me). But I would try gigantic if I could complete it in 6-9 hours (split it up accross two days of playing).

Am I wrong in assuming gigantic games takes a gigantic amount of time to complete?

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I just submitted my last game to metaverse. It was a gigantic universe, everything common, normal research rate. All AI were set to gifted. It took about 8 years to finish, but I stalled immensely, and I could have won it in 5 years had I wanted to. So the common dogma that gigantic takes longer to finish just isn't true.

Mind you though, despite the relatively low number of years, it takes a lot more real time to finish, because to do it right you have so much more planets you have to micromanage and tend to, or redirect your scouts, etc... I'd say it takes double the physical time compared to small/medium maps.

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Well, if you make a point of expanding torwards the AI(s) initially, thus limiting their expansion from the get-go, you can wipe them up in less than a year if you have good production centers and have researched your engine techs. So given three years of initial expansion and consolodation, and a year or two for each opponent, you would be looking at 6 or 7 years depending on your style of play. Of course this is affected greatly by your starting position. Which can put you anywhere from an isolated cluster in the corner, to the middle of the board, to sandwiched between two opponents. Also, of course, an influence victory would take alot longer.

I tend to drag it out a bit, so I am probably the wrong person to ask. Personally I blame my tendency to reinforce areas I have taken. Well.. that and after I have put myself on the top of the pile, I like to take some time to enjoy being there. Atavistic, I know, but what the hey.

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*Bump*

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I've played (and won

) on gigantic map (masochistic level) in 800 turns

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The best way that *I* have found to stop the rush, is to mod the game and increase the cost of either the ships themselves or the colony module. Simply put, if it is very expensive, it will take a long time to build, and can't be bought as quickly or as many. If you set the anomalies to rare, there will be less chance of those cash events as well, which makes building your homeworld up pretty much essential. With this method, the game can be played on any size maps from tiny to gigantic, with few to abundant planets.

Of course, I'm kind of a modding freak (the reason I don't metaverse), so you might not feel the same.

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That's a good idea.

The problem is that it isn't a simulator and everyone is trying to win, especially the player. You can't really take your time and you must expand your empire to gain any sort of power at all hence there will always be a colony rush. By taking those settings you are really just dragging out the 'colony rush' stage longer.

Hostile races are very quick to destroy if you have any kind of weakness (hence why minor races will never survive). But the opposite isn't true, friendly (even allied) races will never come to your aid if a hostile race declares war on you.

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I think I already posted this in another thread here, but I can't seem to locate it on this abysmal forum software.
Anyway, here goes again:

My main method for stopping (or rather slowing down) the colony rush was to give colony modules a negative range.
This leads to the starting colony ships having less than one sector range, which really hampers expansion.
As sometimes, the AI will just brige their way through the universe using starbases, I made similar changes to the constructor module.

On top, I do what Kalin said and make both types of modules much more expensive.
_____
rezaf

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I have to say I don't think colony rushing is as important as people seem to think.

In my last game I deliberately set out not to colonize any worlds, apart from the PQ4 one in my home solar system. I played a custom race with big research and diplomacy bonuses, and lurked in the corner doing research and playing the other races off against each other. By using a few economy bases around your homeworld you can make it very productive (I had 4 maxed out around mine). Eventually I emerged and gradually built up my empire by conquest. I also bought mining starbases off other races to give me big bonuses to research and economy, which was pretty helpful.

This was on a large map, on crippling, which is the hardest level I've yet played, and it didn't seem much more difficult than my previous game where I went for the normal colony rush.

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My main method for stopping (or rather slowing down) the colony rush was to give colony modules a negative range.

I like this idea! But do you put a range modifier on the troop/adv troop module as well, since if you upgrade a transport to a colony ship those troops change to colonists, or do you leave it as is?

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I played a custom race with big research and diplomacy bonuses, and lurked in the corner doing research and playing the other races off against each other.

Heh, that's exactly my playestyle

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^^^ Same style here. My strategy (below) makes me no match for the computer for the first year.

Colonize, Colonize, Colonize. Thats pretty much it. Buy 3 colony ships off the line set spending at 100percent and taxes at 50% (still usually have negative outflow for the first few months). Set mil spending to zero while you bulk up on improvements and civics techs (farming, industry, research and trade). Hand over money and techs every once in a while if the computer gets uppity and tailor your behavior based on whose around you (if you got Altarians nearby try and stay good till you permanently choose your alignment, then its all about being neutral) so you don't get whomp stomped. Usually by the end of the first year (give or take a few months)you'll have a big enough economy that you can pump out a bunch of mass driver and laser equipped heavy fighters and start cleaning up the nearby miscreants and from that point you can use whatever strat suits you (research, influence or my favorite, extermination).

I almost always play on painful (I rather play a good AI, not cheaters) on a gigatnic map and I'll agree with the previous posts stating that it doesn't take much more game time to win on a gigantic map but will eat up more real life time.

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I like this idea! But do you put a range modifier on the troop/adv troop module as well, since if you upgrade a transport to a colony ship those troops change to colonists, or do you leave it as is?

By the time troopships become a common sight, the galaxy has usually been seized anyay - even with my slowdown methods - so I didn't bother to adjust troop modules.
I also never upgraded a transport to a colony ship. Shouldn't doing so turn the troop module into a colony module, thus reactivating the negative modifier?

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I really like the first post in this thread! My main gripe about the game is the unrealistice "rush".It would be like our space program pumping out shuttles to populate all the planets in out solar system because we "know" there are a given number of alien races doing the same even before we discovered that they existed! With the tips in the post, I may be able to pretend doing a realistic exploration, and have rational research goals that apply to my current needs and not those required to "win the game".

My main line of reasoning is:

First we research, then explore. Maybe then expand and colonize. Then, we discover we have serious competition. We develop only to exploit the next discovered step, like trade if they are friendly, or war if they are mean to us. We do not know the end of our "tech tree", we go discovery by discovery.

Man usually spends resources for specific goals and not a lot on "winning the game". This viewpoint makes it funner for me anyway. Like chess, you dont always make the perfect move, you usually make the best next move and win by total accumulated advantages.

MHO

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