Using the option of running...

[ChristopherC]

automatically the first 100-150 turns in a new game? Which, I understand, is one of the opening options for starting a new game. I have question about this which I outline below. Responses, please?

I would like to say here however that, as people who regularly read these threads know, I am a regular contributor to them who is soooo frustrated with this game, comparing it as it is with what it could be.

Anyway, actually I have two questions. But the first one is about Diplomacy. I have played the game with and without two Diplo MODs which are available on the MODs site but with or without the Diplo MODs a race with which I have made a full defensive alliance keeps making secret armistices with my mortal enemy behind my back! Is this just to be expected with this game? Have you just gotta expecting backstabbing even when you think you have made a strong alliance, which you yourself faithfully keep? I have a feeling that with most games in this genre you have similarly fickle allies though Alpha Centauri/Alien Crossfire gave you this marvellous scenario editor whereby, amongst other things, you could fix your alliances and enemies beforehand.

Some one has thoughtfully tried with a MOD to give a scenario editor for saved MOO3 games with which you can tinker but the read-me seems to make it rather finickiy and fragile - for instance, there seems to be one particular requirement that every star system is connected at some point to every other by a series of starlanes! I dont see how that requirement can be possibly fulfilled! Has anyone ever successfully or unsuccessfully used the MOO3 scenario editor with a saved game. I would be verrry, verrry interested to learn of their experiences.

The human race is definitely disadvantaged in comparison with other alien races, as I have noted elsewhere, but there is a program in the MOO3 MODs by which you can act extra points to the race of your choice, in this case, it would for me be the humans, being humano-centric!

So, my second and all important question is this: I have a 2200 MHZ processor with 512 Meg ram. If I allowed the game to run automatically, does anyone have any idea how long it would take to reach 100 or 150 turns. Has anyone ever tried it? I am sorely tempted, you see, to give the humans the additional points and see what would happen after letting the game run for some such number of turns. Now I wouldnt mind running my computer for several hours or even overnight if necessary but would it take that long or would it take even longer? It certainly takes long enough to make a turn even on my relatively powerful computer when I have reached seveal hundred turns into the game. If it would take days to run the game automatically obviously it wouldnt be worth trying.

Thanks in advance for any advice and observations, fellow star emperorrs, and, as always, I wish you the standard Vulcan saying of 'Live long and prosper.'

[Stormhound]

To autorun 100-150 turns will take several hours, at least. It depends in part upon how the game itself plays, because if the empires get into lots of wars it'll slow things down.

The bit about starlanes is that every star system (excluding black holes and neutron stars) must be *reachable* from every other such system by a chain of one *or more* star lanes. So two jumps or twenty is fine, just so long as you can get there. The computer can't deal with disconnected systems.

Your opponents are, by and large, a bunch of selfish, backstabbing jerks. And it only gets worse if they're computer players.

[ChristopherC]

Good to hear from you Stormhound! Hope you are doing okay?

I am now 720 plus turns into my latest game and not every star has a star lane to every other star, by however many jumpsm, so I dont see how you can use this scenario editor, at all!

Any decent game has or should have a scenario editor (like SMACX had, including for diplomacy) though and this is one thing which really pappas me off about MOO3, even though I am still playing it! But I am getting closer and closer to giving up on it and trying out another of the space strategy games gathering dust on my shelf such as Haegemonia, Imperium Galactica II or Conquest: Frontier Wars! There is a limit to even my enthuisiasm to try and make MOO3 play well.

Yes, most AI players in most games of this genre are backstabbing jerks but I seem to remember one, was it called 'Ascendency', where the program notes made a point of saying that in this game allies stay allies if you dont stab them in the back! It had serious faults in other directions - you couldnt build fleets - but I gave it full marks for that feature!

Several hours autorun is fine by me. Many thanks for the information, Stormhound. Most useful to know. I might try that. I could run it over night. But if I try a new game I will make use of the MOD which will hopefully allow me to award a few more points to the humans. They sorely need them! I am fed up as a humanoid of playing second fiddle to these alien races no matter how careful I am in my strategy!

Maybe the MODs will give me a bit more balance but at the moment, having added several MODs, over the course of the the game, I am facing that usual predicament of having to defend a star system with 300 carefully conserved ships against an invasion of 1000! This really pappas me off! I have enough stress in my life at the moment without having to suddenly face this! It seems to me more thought ought to have gone into play balance in this game which at least one of the MODs says it addresses! We shall see.

Anyway, good to hear from you and thank you for taking the time and trouble to reply, Stormhound.

Live long and prosper.

[Stormhound]

I'm okay...and my new career as a mail carrier is off to a decent start.

I don't know anything about the scenario editor you mention; I agree it would've been nice to have one in the game, but I expect it was one of those "we don't have time for this" type of things.

And about the invasion...hey, ships happen.

[ChristopherC]

'Shi*s happen!' Indeed they do!

Mail carrier? I dunno. I think you deserve better, Stormhound, and I shall pray to the Lord you find it. You have been unavailingly helpful to me over MOO3. God bless you.

I will fight with pistols at ten paces anyone who disagrees that SMACX wasnt the perfect template for a game. It had the patches and then the expansion pack with scenario editor in which it was easy to change any detail you liked, including keeping your allies your allies! A feature notably lacking in MOO3! Perfect template for a space strategy game to which I hope to return one day.

Some player once said that 'the suits had taken over the genre'. Is that true? Well, if there are any 'suits' out there let me tell them there is money to be made in a commitment to a game over a year or two with patches and an archive of MODs (fortunately, lovers of the game have provided that out of their own efforts and I have used them to significantly enhance the game) and, say, an equivalent to the the SMACX expansion pack. All this SMACX had which made it one of the all time space classics. And it made money! MOO3 could do the same and, I feel, also make money. Go research it. I just cant believe that the 4X space strategy genre could ever be saturated if another good game came long or a present one was continually refined! It is an article of faith with me.

As it is, Stormhound, I am still convalescing from a heart attack I had at Christmas. Do you think there is some one I can sue some one for endangering my health in playing this game - I mean I build up a fleet very carefully and methodically of 200 Terran ships for a vital frontier system and find the perfidious aliens can just show up with a 3,000 anytime they like! And my allies then default on me! This is causing me unnecessary stress in my presently delicate state of health! Why isnt there a warning on the packet that such things can happen?

Have a great year, Stormhound, and thanks again for all your sterling advice. I think when I have been trounced in my present game, as surely I must, facing massive enemy fleets and unreliable allies, I will try the auto-run for 150 turns, overnight, though I will make sure the Terrans, with one of the MODs giving them hopefully some more points, have a bit more chance of winning!

I dont mind a fair battle, Stormhound, but when 3,000 enemy shi*s happen, to use your phrase, and I have only a few hundred, Terran ships painstakingly built with with to confront them and which will obviously go down in certain defeat. I get more than a bit frustrated and that isnt at all good for my heart in its present condition!

Live long and prosper.

[bakalov]

Hehe :-) I'll allow myself to give you an advice :-) Always be ready and expect anything. This way you won't be surprised.

Indeed these are the bad news about the 3000 enemies. The good news is that all of them cannot attack you simultaneously. Each attack is limitedto certain amount of task forces and each of them has limited amount of ships (18 max). I think that at most 180 attacking ships can torment you each turn. Then you have one turn to prepare for the next 180 ships, and so on ....

[ChristopherC]

Hey, always nice to hear from you, Bakalov, as it is from Stormhound.

Thanks for the attempt to console me but do you know of the Russian saying that 'quantity has a quality all of its own.' In a few recent moves, I have lost two fleets of over 400 plus carefully conserved ships through these massive alien attacks. The game just isnt a level playing surface for the human race but I may try this MOD which gives you extra points to dole out to your favoured side.

MOO3 is soooooo frustrating. I actually think most of the interfaces, with MOD enhancements, are quite good and well thought out. I love the sociologicaly and engineering sophistication of the colony building, the endless improvements you can make. I am more of a builder than a warlord!

But the obvious lack of balance in the game, when you play Terran, is (pardon my French) soooo bloody frustrating that it just spoils it. It becomes an exercise in masochism and gradual failure if you choose to play human, though, at the same time, it can be construed as an interesting challenge, as some one on these threads has observed.

I was never one to condemn MOO3 out of hand. If only they had worked on smartening up the interfaces, thankfully the MODs have helped, and getting the game balance right, maybe making the battle scenes a bit more exciting and giving you a scenario editor including for diplomacy as they did in SMACX, this could have been an absolute classic, just like its predecessor! Why couldnt they go those extra few miles? They would still have made their profits! Yes, a computer games company has to make profits but they should, within reason, let their designers design the games with care and love and attention. That will bring its due rewards.

This genre should really be maturing, as home computers become more powerful, and I do firmly believe, it will remain a popular one, but neither game makers or the marketers are investing enough in it, why? For instance, why did the developers of 'Galaxy Andromeda' pull out when it was so near completion? That was so frustrating for many of us! Why didnt they take what I would have regarded as a justified risk? Isnt that what marketing is all about?

Basically, I was born about fifty years too early. Fifty years from now, assuming, there is still a flourishing Western civilisation, (a big If, of course) I could imagine I could simply utter voice commands to my highly AI computer to tailor the perfect space strategy game for me, ab initio (from the beginning). Though I guess the perfect space strategy game is like the Holy Grail. Probably unobtainable but you can stop searching for it!

Live long and prosper.

[bakalov]

Hehe I never played with humans, but it may be interesting to try ... I wonder if I customize a race based on them, what it would look like? I'll give it a try and then I'll post the results here.

[bakalov]

And of course, you are right about MOO3 and the 4X Space strategy genre. I hope we'll live long enough to see something really good ;-)

[ChristopherC]

I am 49, Bakalov, and have recently had a heart attack, so I do not expect either to see humans beings walk upon Mars, in this incarnation at least, or to experience the nearly perfect Space Strategy game. (Unless they decide to revamp Alpha Centauri 3D with all those lovely features such as a comprehensive scenario editor.) If you are under 25 you may live that long, Bakalov. Long life to to you!

As for the human race, they are terribly disadvantaged under the present dispensation under MOO3, no doubt about it! There is a MOD on the MOO3 Mods site which gives you an extra 550 points to dispense to the race you are going to play. I think one will need every point if one chooses the Humans. I may try it out.

My present idea, unless I succumb to death (which God forbid!I havent played enough space strategy gaming yet!) or turn to Haegemonia or Conquest: Frontier Wars. which are gathering dust on my shelf, is to fight my present game of MOO3 until I must inevitably abdicate as emperor in the hopelessness of a massive invasion of my home system and then try the recommendation of Stormhound, to run the game overnight for 150 turns - he says such an autorun could take several hours - having giving the Terrans the extra points they so badly need, if they are to have the remotest of chances of coming out on top. Will that make a difference to the game, I dont know? But to me MOO3 is presently like the Mona Lisa, half-finished! But if it hadnt been for underlying, sophisticated conception of this game of colonisation and conquest and the MOD-ers, God bless them, I would have given up on this game ages age.

Live long and prospser.

[bakalov]

Sure. I wish you luck with the new games. And be careful about your health - less emotions, more thinking. I'll pray for you too ...

[ChristopherC]

Many thanks for your prayers, Bakalov. I will reciprocate. I am doing okay now after a long haul, thank the Lord, and hope to go back to work in the not too distant future. In the meantime, with all the various MODs for MOO3 I have been hypnotised into working out whether a medley of them would really make this a classicalgame. Looking for the Grail, I suppose?

Amazingly, though, I guess I have been really lucky, but most of the MODs seem to mesh with each other, thank the patron saint of computers and computer games, Ste. Claire.

I use a lot of thought in this game, indeed it helps to keep me intellectually alert, but the Bood Pressure raising emotions only come into play when strategy seems of no avail when playing the humans!

Forget about winning playing the humans, Bakalov, unless you are the Einstein of playing this genre! This game is loaded against them except, as I said, there is a MOD at MoO3 MODs com which gives you extra points to add to the race of your choice. I may try that out. You need every one of them, if you choose to be hu-man!

This game is, IMHO, not very well balanced. That is a piece of English understatement, btw.

Look at my thread on Jazkal's OptimistMod - alpha v.5. Very interesting MOD which promises to gave you more time to build up an empire before you face the baddies! There is no read-me, though! So when I added, the text docs to the spreadsheets directory I got an DirectX error! I just had to pull the plug literally and hope that MS would forgive me! A real BP raising event! Almost tantamount as to when I spilled a cup of coffee near my machine! Fortunately, a moderater at the MoO3 MODs site has given me an address to which to write.

What is it with this DirectX error? I keep hearing about it but fortunately have only ever suffered it a couple of times?

I keep staying hooked on this game, Bakalov,
because there are so many features which are soooo sophisticated, notably the economic, sociological te technological development of the colonies development of colonies! If only the designers and marketers had gone that extra mile, or two, we wouldnt have to rely on MOD-ers to make this game a classic.

Live long and prosper, my friend.

[bakalov]

10x Cristopher :-)
As I promised I made a custom setup for humans and here it is:

Bioharvesting - Poor
Mining - Superior
Manufacturing - Superior
Research - Average
Trade - Poor
Environmental - Good
Accuracy - Poor
Reflexes - Poor
Toughness - Poor
Government - Absolutist (Despotism)
Member - Random
Citizenship - Liberty
Minreal Richness - Poor
Biodiversity - Similar
Cunning - Slow
Creativity - Normal
Natural Engineers: no
Tolerant: yes
Empatic: no
Antaran background: no

If I had more points I would boost Research and Creativity.
BTW the perfect race for this playstyle can be made from the Eoladi - I think that Creativity will go to Original, Environmental to Superior and Research to Good, Government to Hive. Mining will go down to good.

Anyway I think that humans will do fine with this setup, if they use specialized planets - Rich and Very rich for mining and may be research on the plains, Diverse for bioharvesting and the Moderate gravity for Manufacturing.

Never put an industry dea on a mining planet - just mining and research - this way it will have great output from the start. Mining and research deas require only small amount of pop to operate.

Build a single govt dea on the production planets. Mines on the mountains at the beginning, you can change them for more industry later.

You should have one military and one recreation in each system, may be even 2 military, but preferably on an unimportant planets.

In the beginning just colonize - the more the better, get all of the good planets around, including those with magnate races and forced labour source (I use setting of 3 on the forced labour scale).

At a certain point of the game use the planets with the largest income to overflow their banks by spending only 1% for a particular need. When their banks go high enough they will start to give to the treasury - very nice feature. This way you can set your imperial and system tax to 0. All planet taxes can be raised quite high this way and you wont have any collapsing planets.
I try to play with 0% system and 1 or 2 % imperial tax from the beginning in spite of the warnings I am receiving. 30+ % planet taxes at the same time.

[ChristopherC]

Many thanks for the suggestion, Bakalov.

But how do I apply this?

I am thinking of using a fan MOD which gives me 550 points for a race of my choice - my own human race, of course!

There is another MOD by Jazkal whom I just cant get send me a read-me file on his MOD, or get anyone else give me an idea how to use it, which advertises that it lets your empire grow stronger before you have to engage in conflict and competititon.

Oh, btw, I have just added another thread, 'the case of the disappearing starmap'. Maybe it is a question of too many MODs I have applied or the game has just got too big for my reasonably powerful computer but on several turns now I have got a blank starmap! Admittedly, I have pushed my luck with all the MODs I have added, most of which have thankfully meshed until now.

Anyway, thanks for all the effort you have put into your reply to me, Bakalov, of which I will take note.

I keep saying I will leave this game for Haegemonia but I keep playing it though I know I am on a losing streak because my main opponent, a machine culture, is just too powerful and there is no hope of a balanced rivalry anymore, but then with the way this game seems so unbalanded I doubt if ever there was!

But, there is a still a great game in MOO3 waiting to get out, if you just find the right MODs to apply. Seems to me like a lifetime's work, though!

Like I said, forty or fifty years from now I could just give a voice command to my home computer, or AI, as it will they will be then, and it would tailor me a great space strategy game.

Pity I will be dead. But maybe we come back? Or maybe the perfect space strategy game can only be played, to paraphrase the philosopher Plato, 'not here, not here, but in another world.'

Live long and prosper.

[ChristopherC]

PS - Gotta admit, Bakalov...

re-reading your detailed suggestions, and once again I appreciate the thoughfulness which has gone into them, I let the AI governors do their work on the planets I find to colonise. I like doing a fair bit of micro-management on the production lines but even I have my limits!

I dont know why I try to be a space emperor. I really am not very good at it. The only game I ever consistently won at was Alpha-Centauri/Alien Crossfire and that was because it had a scenario editor which would allow me start with more colonies than anyone else!

And I NEVER, NEVER, NEVER could fight as an alien species. (Though you have definite advantages in playing the aliens in MOO3, it seems to me. They always seem to outpace human expansion and production. I just dont think this game was play-tested enough to be properly balanced, even at the easiest level!) It seems like an act of species betrayal! Though in another space strategy game I rather liked, for all its faults, Pax Imperia: Eminent Domain, one fellow player confessed he liked destroying 'human scum'!

I have always as a human space emperor preferred to live and let live or, if necessary, teach those pesky aliens a lesson! Trying not to enjoy that too much when I did!

Ciao, pal.