Is it "cheating" if...

Hi!

IMO you should ask game's AIs. If they complain, then it is cheating.

BR,  Iztok

Yes, it's cheating. You are stacking the deck for your home system.

You could start with out with a PQ85 home planet and a PQ78 secondary (or, whatever).

Just with that, since virtually all tiles would be available on both planets, you would be able to build all the construction and econ buildings needed to complete 2 ships per turn. You would also be able to build research buildings that would let you jump far ahead of any competition (two techs per turn - assuming only two home planets), so you would have better weapons and defenses - and everything else - in short order. You also have room for farms and morale buildings, so you can quickly build up the population while keeping them happy. That also helps if an enemy invades, since your population is too high to overcome without many troop ships - and too happy to defect.

But you could not stop there if you wanted to win a game. In order to win a game you have to take other planets (unless you simply go for a tech victory). And every planet taken means another tech produced per turn (up to a certain point), so a tech victory is all too easy. (I always turn that option off)

If you're smart, you'll research the research techs first - because they allow you to build the research buildings that produce the most. Once you can produce enough research to gain the advantage in weapons and defenses (no matter the odds), you have won the game.

You say... 'mod the game in certain ways' to give you higher PQ home planets. How, exactly, are you doing it? Is it a custom map (a real pain in the butt), or another way?

I don't mess with custom maps, because they are such a pain to create. But, I do mess with it the only other way (that I know of).

As you can't play mods on the metaverse, all that matters is that you have fun. If you neeed an unfair advantage over the AI to do it, so be it, just don't wear yourself out of the game as such things can do.

I vote with Iztok!

Modding is not cheating. Whom would "cheat" in a sandbox game anyway? Yourself.

But I think what you ment is to somehow alter the way the game is played usually to give it another face. That's a pretty good idea.

I think mostly interesting will this be when you un-check techtrade, and play out an ethical alignement. Like, when choosing "good" you are only allowed to have 1ATT vessels (but lots of defense therefore) and you're not allowed to declare war on anyone either. Evil won't be allowed to have trade-routes or defense, and no allies etc. Neutral hmmmm I donno, maybe always helping the weak to balance the game???

Or try this one, that's pretty good: You're only allowed to built tiny 1/1 fighters (aside from the obvious non-military vessels). What can you do to win the game?

I also think this might be more interesting with TA, and having Techtrade off.

The game is pretty flexible with what you can change.  I've done that myself with a ton of stuff.  I have fun playing it.  Since you can't play Metaverse with mods enabled and the game is single player, the idea that certain mods would be cheating is not all that applicable.  You can, however, change things to the extreme that the AI can't make use of them.  In that case, you would be giving yourself an advantage that would only be cheating yourself out of a challenging game. 

The changes I play are useable for the AI as well.  That way, if it makes the game easier for me, it makes it easier for them too.  I've even made some changes specifically to improve the performace of the AI without providing any real benefit to myself.  The races can behave quite a bit differently in TA depending on how they are configured and what their tech tree looks like.  Some of the races that were always slow to get moving in the stock games move out much faster in my modded games.

Moosetek13 - I should have clarified this from the start, but in the example I gave I was also thinking of a rule other than not colonizing anything not in your home system - no invasions of foreign systems at all.  This is a huge disadvantage in a large enough galaxy, even if you have 5 Q25 planets-- can that compete against hundreds of random quality planets, even with the head start and other factors?

How am I doing the Q changes?  Just a small custom mod.  I don't play 'metaverse' (whatever it is.. like a ladder/point competition thing?).  BTW you can't actually go that high in Q, right?  I thought the max was 25. Also I think if a planet gets too populated you have too many morale issues so it's not incredibly useful, unless I'm mistaken.

I suppose this can be a little like roleplaying a race.  One of my favorite ways to "mod" the game is to do something like I described above, and set out to "protect" all other races, minor or major, from being wiped out.  In other words I'd consider the game "won" once I've determined that the universe is pretty much my own personal alien zoo.     Yeah, it's tough keeping the animals from wiping each other out, but someone has to do it!  he he he

Actually the max is 72. That had even be done in a non-mod game, but then the Arcean 'Weather Control' and Altarian 'Biosphere Modulator' had been changed to be undeletable.

Greetings:

I don't consider it cheating as I find it makes the game more interesting. I have a planetary improvement based on "weather control" which adds 5 to the planets quality while increasing influence and morale. In reference to Q value if that's the same as planet class I have a class 247 planet right now in one of my games with still some free tiles left. I do know the max. population is 100 however.

Sincerely

Michael Lacey

The Planet Quality (PQ) refers to the number of useable tiles. As the grid for each planet is 6 tiles vertical * 12 tiles horizonal = 72 tiles.

I wouldn't know how ~250 tiles would fit on my screen

The max is 72 tiles for any planet, it won't go over that regardless of any planet quality change.  If it's possible to create a planet with more than that, it would be pretty strange looking since it shouldn't be graphically possible.

One thing I found discouraging with projects like the Weather Control Zenith and Biosphere Modulator is that planet quality change is buggy.  When using a +3 quality change value, I had strange results.  I would get planets that upgraded tiles, but not the class.  Or I'd get planets that upgraded the class and not the tiles.  I finally gave up on the idea and removed those projects from my modded games.  It wasn't worth the trouble for me since I rely on the class number to determine how I want to build a planet.  When you get a planet that indicates class 19 but only has 15 open tiles, it's annoying.  There's no way I'm going to count every tile on every planet when I already find building planets the most tedious part of the game..  Already, the planet interface is not designed with any consideration for the repetition involved.  I really enjoy the game for the most part, but when I do get bored, it's usually when I get to the point where I need to start building projects on all my planets.

Your words to the devs ears! There HAS to be some self-customizable logical routines for the planetary queue in GalCiv3 or I´ll just go crazy!

I do agree about setting up the build queue.  I was going to say it would be nice if it could be automated via AI somehow, but if you're going to do that much work you might as well redesign the entire "social production" concept.  I always thought it was strange the way planets are divided up by tiles, so you end up with buildings on water or other weird looking end results.  I'd rather see the whole "building tile" concept dropped entirely and replaced with something a little more realistic feeling.  But this is probably something more for Galciv 3.

Responses to my last post prompted me to post in the "What would you like to see in GalCiv3" thread.  Totally agree with what you stated above.  The whole idea of how planets are build should be scrapped for something better in GC3.