Game change: New seeding

i dont have a problem with this. We are after the best, most challenging and fun game possible. If the AI is tuned best to achieve this in this way then fine.

The most dramatic and memorable events are based on circumstances. You are just creating them.

s

besides gives each race a better footing.. (hate when one race gets a really good advantage cause they have one of the other races backed into a corner)

It's a good idea, I think it XenoArch is right.

Out of interest, is this just for testing - to see them develop fully to test their strategies and then once refined put back to random or a permenant feature?

There is a value in having a random seeding AI option (once optimised) as well as a balanced seeding as we will then be faced with infinate variety of challenges.

With random seeding we might end up with some interesting situations, such one or more neighbouring aggressive race on the doorstep or perhaps very friendly neighbours and an evil powerhouse on the other side of the gallaxy etc etc. Random seeding would not always work of course and we may end up with a few poor games (as you indicate) but some of them would be fascinating I suspect.

Just a few meanderings...s

Sounds like another job for "Options Man".

What is that up in the sky?
Is it a bird? Is it a plane ?

No it's a check box for Planet Seeding;

[] Random Groups
[] Groups Spreadout Evenly

Elrikk

Maybe this would be better if it was tied to difficulty somehow. Such as: On the lowest difficulty level, make the seeding meet a minimum spread (not "evenly" like in Elrikk's post). On the most difficult level, let the seeding happen totally at random. And give the intervening difficulty levels graduant seeding spreads between the two. Then have a secret switch that forces it to use a fully spread seeding for testing purposes.

I think my suggestion pushes this into the 1.x realm.

jack

It may push it to '1.x realm' but its a good idea and if its to be better than MOO3 then it needs to be in 1.0

out.

Lucky Jack;

I agree, sounds great.

The main thrust of my post was just that I prefer options on as many parts of a game as possible; not on the particular options I used in the example.

Elrikk

I don't think he's talking about the way the whole Galaxy is "seeded" with stars and such, just how spread out the Major Races are from each other. And I'm all for this. I hate it when I finally meet one of the Majors and they have 3 stars to my 20. And I think it makes complete sense to spread them out evenly... you can still get shafted in a spot with no stars, you just know that there won't be another Major race in the next sector...

I love random.

Currently it isn't random. Not for the player anyways. The player is always 1 sector away from anyone else, it's just the AIs that can get clumped together. The game I'm playing right now had this happen and the AIs that were clumped really couldn't do too much.

Random is indeed good for gameplay, IMO. It gives a unique character to each game. There's no kind of fun like starting out with a bad hand and coming out on top and then surveying the road you had to take. Perhaps this would be a good thing to add to the game setup options?

Wrenn said "it's just the AIs that can get clumped together."

What size galaxies are you playing? I play large, huge, and gigantic on 4Z and so far have not seen clumping like you described. Perhaps what we are both seeing is just "luck of the draw".

I think it's best to include it as an option. For example, in SMAC, you could customize quite a few of the rules at the beginning of the game. It was easy to abuse the system, but what's the fun in that?

Oh yes, the other races do get clumped, even on gigantic galaxies (my preference).

2 games ago where I finished and entered it into metaverse, I was in the right side of the galaxy with a nice selection of stars to choose from.

By the time I had at least 20 and could see the other races, they each had maybe 5 or 6 stars.

With lack of stars, they couldn't advance enough to even come and get me...

Wyrenn-

you said -

I don't think he's talking about the way the whole Galaxy is "seeded" with stars and such, just how spread out the Major Races are from each other.

Yes and thats what Jacks comments relate too.

I Always play on the largest maps available and dont get any clumping at all. This is because the current seeding of races keeps them a part to a minimum extent

With my current game on a gigantic galaxy I am beginning to see the usefulness of this change in the seeding algorithm, but I wonder if 3 or 4 sector separation will be enough for a gigantic galaxy.

Jack has a valid point!

3 or 4 is the minimum.

In my latest gigantic game the yor where close 2 the arceans (which where set on smart hehehe)

If the alien races are a bit further away they won't be able to colonize alot planets near or even in your sector for the 1st couple of months and also vica versa.

So, thumbs up