Why I modded the game.

This turns a 4x into a turn-based military strategy. You've made diplomacy worthless, an economy superfluous, a manufacturing base a given. You could easily get away with not building any economic buildings with this. Just farms, factories, and research.

I have never once ever needed for money in over 1000 hours of play. What difficulty are you playing on? I play on Gifted. What size maps are you playing on? In fact in the all the games I play I rarely build more than say 6 7 ship battle fleets. That's it. I leave the majority of my planets 'undefended' as I like the thought of them tempting the ai and him DoWing me for them. I just stroll on over and explain it to him. 

I don't think my mod turn the game to a military only game. I actually test the gameplay and like with the standard settings, I have to mostly specialize my planets with economic improvements and build economic starbases.

 

About diplomacy, I also had to research diplomacy to avoid wars because my military was late compared to the AI's ones. I did this mod in order to resist to a war with one other race, with standard game setting I was unable to securize my planets. I think researching diplomacy and making diplomacy improvements is a too easy way to avoid wars and should be the strategy when player's military is weak compared to the AI ones. Or a strategy to perform a diplomatic victory.

 

About economy, I'am arround turn 300, 50 planets, 30 starbases, 20 shipyards, I have a net income of only 255 credits, and I didn't finished to securize all my planets/starbases/shipyards. My medium ships costs 1.4 credits of maintenance. So I can only have 100 more ships until my economy will be improved, may be I will have to build small ships instead of medium.

 

 

I play in difficulty beginner, on excessive map. Before I did this mod, I also had to let my planets undefended, and this was a problem for me.

You are probably doing something wrong with your strategy.

Here are some stats from my last game:

Turn: 161
Homeworld Manufacturing: 1456.3
Homeworld Research: 1097.8
Homeworld Population: 134.5

Total Worlds: 9
Total Population: 816.4
Total Manufacturing: 5239
Total Research: 5514
Total Income (Savings/Trade/Tourism): 1609 (1042/414/152)
Total Maintenance: 850
Balance: 758

I wasn't playing very income focus, i.e. I easily could have had twice the trade income at the time. As you can see, you neither need 300 turns nor 55 worlds to generate 1700 income.

My best guess is that you have too low population at your planets. Otimized economy is something like: 50-70% of planetary improvements are food and approval and every planet has 5+ economic starbses covering it.

Since you seem to have too many constructors, are you building all weapons upgrades on starbases? If yes then reduce those in favor of fleets.

Also one more tip, don't try to have a stationary fleet at every planet. Identify key positions, at these you station large highly mobile fleets and establish good sensor range. That way you can intercept enemy fleets. Key positions for me usually are, very outward starbases then shipyards and then planets or starbases. Experience and practice will make you better at identifying these.

You play differently than I do.  Therefore you get a different experience.  There are people trying to tell you that you are doing it wrong.  That is not entirely correct.  You are not playing it efficiently according to any standards I play by, but so what?  By turn 300 I would have had a technical victory 100 turns ago.  So, I never see the situations you describe.  I don't do defending ships per planet across my 100 planet empires.  That would break even my excessively productive economies.  I have killer fleets with sensor boats and I chase down invaders before they can do any damage.  It's a lot cheaper and feels more satisfyingly aggressive to me.  There are other major differences we have.  Again, if you don't care, I don't care.  

Instead of bowing to our considered opinions of how to play within the rules as is, you have decided to change the rules.  As far as I can tell, that is exactly what the devs intended.  That is what modding is for. Whatever version of the game you come up with, I am convinced you will come up with challenges, experiences, and stories that satisfy you.  That's what counts.  Enjoy!

Regardless of your play style, the way the game is right now, garrisoning planets with ships is unnecessary.

The Ai can't send more than 1 transport per fleet with 2.5 troops, so any reasonable amount of planetary defense and resistance will successfully defend every time.  If you play with lots of resources, put an elerium shield everywhere and you're done.  Or research some of the Militarization techs.  Frees up your ships to do more fun things with.  By turn 300 in your example game, both those options are viable.

The Ai also badly prioritizes engine research and installation on ships, so while you have a speed of 10+, it's still running around at 3 or 4.  All those garrison fleets can be made into attack fleets to pick them off on the way, as others suggested.  

Those are my suggestions for how to deal with some of the issues you mentioned.  But modding works too, and that's what it's for.  Have fun!

 

 

Well I wouldn't be playing your mod, and this is why you are doing fine according to the op. The only problem you had is constructors it is time to try a harder difficulty. You are doing fine under the current rules there was no reason for an easier game. Why would you not want a challenging game. In your mod you should rewrite the strat files so the AI can take advantage of an easier game to keep it challenging.

Thanks for the tip, I will try. Arround turn 300 my homeworld have a population of 25, with a cap at 29.

 

Yes, it is a great thing that they made a moddable game.

 

I don't know if the game is easier with my mod, but it is easier to produce and maintain a strong army. In the game I'am testing, the problem the AI seems to have is the low number of colonized planets. At turn 300, I have colonized two times more planets.

 

I will try with a harder difficulty.

 

About AI modding, I quickly looked at the AI files, it seems to be harder to mod, but I will have a closer look. I also wonder if the AI can use the starbase military factory module I have created.

They could use the module if you make the ship for each faction, and drop it into the blueprints. Also change the tech goal for that tech, so they will research it.

Dude no wonder you found it hard and decided to mod it to suit you better, you simply do not understand the mechanics. GC3 is all about RP and the single biggest booster to RP is....Population. Your homeworld should have 80+ pop at least. (I aim for 150)

Take a look or use if you so wish, my AI Tweaks Mod. Yes the AI can use custom starbase modules, but, you have to add it to the AIStarbaseGovernor.xml.

I can understand his problems with the game, but some good advice in this thread.

 

What i will also add is that yes, it does get hard to maintain the fleets you want. I will always get to a point in my games where i have no choice but to sell a whole bunch of older ships to the AI so i can afford my newer fleets coming off the production line.

 

Another strategy i use is to build 'blank' hulled ships that i send to remote locations that are less likely to be attacked, but in an emergency can be upgraded. But two things you need along with it is a huge fighting fund and plenty of resources..... because 'prototype' vessels are far cheaper. So i will upgrade them  using prototype equipment in the emergency, defeat the enemy, then when safe i have several options depending on the situation.... i might leave them as is to continue the defense, or if another attack in that location is unlikely then i might send them off to somewhere else or upgrade them back to a very weak ship. But one thing i will not do is leave powerful ships defending where the AI is unlikely to attack.

 

The best defense is having plenty of sensor ships with a few powerful fleets with good speed to run down incoming enemy. You don't actually need any garrison forces at all!..... and slow ships are just useless, honestly, the AI simply skirts around your slow fleets and starts destroying your star bases behind you! Slow ships are good for defending forward starbases but be prepared that the AI will simply fly right past it and attack somewhere deep inside your territory. So one way or the other you have to have fast fleets available for defense.

Today, I have programmed a software that compute approximatly the best number of food/approval improvement to build in function of the available tiles on a planet, and in function of the number of economic starbases arround the planet. The program says I'am doing good for economical and research planets that have no economic starbases, but I'am doing wrong for the production planets, like the homeworld. Another point is that I'am late on population enhancement, I usually build these improvements in the mid-game. I think I'am also wrong on this point.

 

Thanks, but i have a problem with the line:

Should I write:

Or without the "DontRequestConstructor" line ?

You just add it at the end of the Military Starbase entry in AIStarbaseGovernorDefs.xml:-

        <StarbaseModule>
            <ModuleName>YourModuleNameHere</ModuleName>
        </StarbaseModule>

Like so:-

  <AIStarbaseGovernor>
    <UniqueID>Military</UniqueID>
        <StarbaseModule>
            <ModuleName>DefenseNetworkModule</ModuleName>      
        </StarbaseModule>
        <StarbaseModule>
            <ModuleName>SectorDefenseGridModule</ModuleName>
        </StarbaseModule>

    <!-- Rest of the default modules here I cut them out for the example -->

        <StarbaseModule>
            <ModuleName>YourModuleNameHere</ModuleName>
        </StarbaseModule>

    </AIStarbaseGovernor>

Huh?
Is that because you build your research worlds differently from your manufacturing worlds? I would be astounded you got different results for research and manufacturing worlds, since the basic improvement has the same stats for both.

My philosophie in population is:
More then everything else, time is the limiting ressource on population, therefore I increase the growth rate of my empire as much as possible without hitting the food cap too hard. You can catch up in approval or lacking manufacturing pretty quickly, but lacking population hurts in the long run.

I was doing the same on the planet, but I'am using starbases only for manufacturing worlds, up to 6 or 7 starbases, and this make the difference.

 

For example, for a class 17 world with a tile for a quantum power plant and a "tower of approval" of the malevolent ideology, it remains 15 tiles.

- On research world with no starbases, the program says I have to build: 4 food improvements, 3 approval, and 8 research.

- On a manufacturing world with 4 starbases, the program says I have to build: 7 food improvements, 5 approval, and only 3 industrial sectors.

 

It also depends of special improvements that have high bonuses like manufacturing capital and singularity power plant. The program is very basic but I can tell it to not compute approval because each starbase can produce 5 points of approval. I will modify it to compute with these 5 points.

 

This is an approximation, because it can't compute precisely the adjacent tiles bonuses, nor other game's bonuses.

 

EDIT: I modified the computation algorithm, now it is a little more exigeant about approval, and the results changed for the manufacturing planet: 5 food, 4 approval, and 6 industrial sectors.

 

Planets that have economic starbases needs more food than the others, but starbases are weak, maybe it is better to build improvements like if there weren't starbases, in the case the ennemy destroy them.

 

I think my strategy wasn't so far from the best, except for too late poplutation improvement, for homeworld population, and for high quality planets. I usually improved the population with only 4 food improvements, even on high quality planets, and I didn't do any food improvement on my homeworld.

 

My program results for a 31 class manufacturing planet with 4 starbases that increase also approval: 11 food, 5 approval, and 11 industrial sector.

The same without starbase approval increase: 9 food, 7 approval, and 11 industrial sectors. But 20% less production.

The same for research with no starbases: 7 food, 5 approval, 15 research.

 

 

Hmm, what I did was a approximative calculation (on the example of research):

Total Research = Rt = Production*Research-modificator
with
Production = P = P0 + n1*PB
and
Research-modificator = R = R0 + n2*PB

n1 and n2 are the number of boni (PB and RB respectively) of the type which raise production (food improvements) and research (research improvements)

now you have a limited number of boni you can take per planet n, such that n = n1 + n2.
At this point I have also made the approximation of no adjacency boni.

Now I can determine the maximum of Rt(n1), which turns out to be:

n1_optimal = n/2 + R0/2RB - P0/2PB

ok, so for R0/RB = P0/PB the optimal balance is 50% production improvements and 50% research improvements.
If we now assume for example, that we don't need approval improvements and that one bonus corresponds to one maximum tier improvement, we get:

P0 = 8 = 3 (colony capital production) + 5 (colony capital food)
PB = 5 (Lossless Farm)

R0 = 100%
RB = 60% (Discovery sphere)

and therefore:

n1_optimal = 1/2 * ( n + 1.67 - 1.6 ) = n/2 + 0.035

Thus approximately half of all improvements should be food improvements.

So what would a starbase do?

A starbase will add 50% to R0, since it does not cost you an improvement tile, so with 4 research starbases you get:

R0 = 300% = 100% (base value planet) + 4x50% (4 starbases with best starbase module)
RB = 60% ...
R0/RB = 5
and
n1_optimal = n/2 + 1.67

The balance is shifted in favor of food improvements!

We can do the same for capitals:

We add the difference of the gains of the capital and a normal improvement to the Base value:

R0 = 140% = 100% (base value planet) + 100% (Tech capital) - 60% (1 discovery sphere)
RB = 60%
R0/RB = 2.33

n1_optimal = n/2 + 0.33

Again, the balance is shifted towards food improvements

The same applies for manufacturing capitals, power plants, etc.

Further Considerations:

Vice versa, somthing that increases your food like the +1 food tech (or an asteroid mine) will increase the P0 value and therefore shift the balance in favor of research buildings.

Approval will decrease the Bonus effect of food improvements, since you need 1 approval building per farm for example and therefore PB is cut in half. Thus starbase approval modules can increase the number of food improvements by a lot, since for a while you don't need to build approval improvements.

Starbases in general are a big deal and all you can do on them allows you to have more food improvements. This also has the side effect that you don't need to specialize your worlds so much anymore! A world with high food, 4 starbases with manufacturing modules and a power plant is a decent manufacturing world and manufacturing worlds will contribute a lot more to research. And both will contribute a lot more to economics if you build the appropriate starbase modules.

So, this is where I get my 50-70% figure from. For normal improvements without adjacencies it is clos to 50% and starbases, player and galactic achievements, passive boni from tech etc. contribute a lot more to shift it towards having more food improvements. Plus all worlds are more versatile.

So, the take home message is: get starbases for all worlds! You can get up to 6 for a single world and the manufacturing cost for maxing a starbase is lower then the cost of getting highest tier planetary improvements for the same amount of boni (hubs and uniques not withstanding). It is even more efficient if a starbase covers 2+ planets.

 

edit: I should probably also clarify why I assum I can neglect approval; my approval without improvemnts usually is:

3 (colony capital) + 2 (content 2 faction trait) + 8 (passive from approval tech tree) + 20-30 (starbases)
multiplied by
100% (base value) + 20% (government tech tree) + 25% (virtual world)
=
47.85 - 62.35

if I am malevolent with intimidation center:

64.35 - 83.85

The gap can usually be compensated by 1 or two additional approval buildings, so I tend to neglect it.

 

edit2: I would also like to point out, that there are range extension modules for starbases. You can have 9 starbases affecting a planet with the first range extension and 14 with the second one. These require a special shape of th first 5 however (you can only have 5 without range extension in that shape).

I also found a formation that allows 4 starbases without and 10 with the first range extension, but only 11 total with the second range extension.