Maniacal And Modded Herculism

[Googlie]

SMAX Game, 4 human players and 3 AI

Transcend level

Players (in turn order) are:

Morgan - AndiD
Peacekeepers - Maniac
Drones - Hercules
Cult - GeoModder

AI - Gaians, University and Consciousness

Large map (at 44 x 90 is marginally larger than Standard at 40 x 80, and frankly, with so much work invested in it to get it where it was there was no easy way to redo it by just reducing the mapsize)

Average everything, 50 to 79% water. modded (ie I added some land in places for better balance)

The AI has been modded to provide a stiffer challenge (given starting bases whereas y'all start with 3 colony pods and assorted units, some basic infrastructure, some lurkers, etc - oh, and some satellites to follow the latest in CMN thinking on how to make them more builder-competitive)

I playtested out to 2150, and went back in and gave a few more advantages to the human players (rivers, a monolith in places, etc) as the AI was somewhat stronger (relatively) that I'd bargained for)

2101 has been sent to AndiD, with passwords to everyone

Sorry it took so long - and thanks to Ouro for great suggestions along the way

Enjoy

[Googlie]

Sorry guys - abort this one

(I played on a handful more turns, and one of my "poison pills" exploded

I gave the AI a 1-tile island base where their SP was housed, and a mark3 Ogre to defend it - well, the enterprising consciousness built a trannie, picked up the Ogre (which was set to "lurk" until a unit tried to enter the tile - and usually that's interpreted by the game engine as a human player's unit) and set off (as only the AI can) uneringly for the nearest human base and demanded hush money

I'll have to redo the start and take out what we all thought was a neat way to stop that from happening

G. (with apologies)

[GeoModder]

Ow, edit in order here. Well, hopefully you find a solution quickly.

[Googlie]

Ah - solution was easy (and it will add further intrigue to your game)

restart sent to AndiD

[GeoModder]

[Hercules]

Love the name of the game.

[Maniac]

I can't wait to get the turn.

Hercules, what's your e-mail?

[Hercules]

Same as before:

xxxcathal.mullaghanxxxatxxxntlworldxxxx.com

[Googlie]

Originally posted by Maniac
Hercules, what's your e-mail?

Didn't I send it you with your password?

[Maniac]

Originally posted by Googlie
Didn't I send it you with your password?

Mental note to myself: CHECK E-MAIL!

And I see AndiD has already sent the turn to me. I'll play it soon.

And before I forget, thanks Googlie and Ouro for setting up this game.

[Maniac]

MY 2101 to Hercules

[Googlie]

One little bug that I couldn't get rid of was the different costs for SE changes.

(Even setting the "Force Current Diff level" flag didn't do anything, although I may have needed to then reset factions to make it take hold - and that would have entailed a lot of repeating of tedious orders for the AI base governors)

So the bad newss is that 1 faction has a 40 ec change cost, while the other six are 24 ec's

The good news is that it's the AI Gaians that pay 40 - everyone else pays 24

So no harm, no foul, as they say

All 4 of you are paying the same - and it is on Transcend level, so you will have the usual drone problems, research costs, etc associated with transcend level

[GeoModder]

Eh? How is this possible?

Is this a MP problem on the AI factions, or is this just because you tinkered with the setup?

[Googlie]

No - it's an old problem with CMN'd games that use the "Create Scenario" to set the game up, then "Multiplayer / Play Scenario" to launch it.

In the Scenario Rules there's a box to flag called "Force current difficulty level", and if, for example, Transcend has been selected , then checking this flag sets all players to transcend difficulty.

But this flag has to be set before doing anything with the factions (such as establishing bases, giving governor orders, etc) or else there is anothere option called "reset all factions" that clears all builds, orders, etc. and sets the flag as well.

I did notice after opening the turn to set passwords that I had forgotten to set the flag then, so I set it at that time (and at that time I was not aware that pre-established bases, orders, etc weren't overridden by that)

But - here's the kicker - it's only the first faction in turn rder that's at the 40 credits level - everyone else is at 24. And usually in PBEM's it's a human player thqt's first, but fortuitously, for this game, I had the Gaians (an AI faction) in the lead (as I had saved the scenario as "Lady Deirdre ...."

Intuitively it would seem that the gaians play at Transcend, and everyone else at Librarian, but in playtesting it appears that the only effect is on SE change costs - all other variable seem to be at the transcend defaults (food, minerals, drones, research, etc etc) - I did trest by giving each faction a prerequisiyte tech and then seeing how much it costs to change

So rather than redesign it, given that you've waited long enough to get started, it seemed the logical thing to do was just to let the game run rather than recall and correct it (which I would have done if it were a human player burdened with the extra costs)

I can still do that, of course, if that's what the group wants

G.

[GeoModder]

Ok, thanks for the explananation.

Turn to AndiD since several hours ago.