Custom Race- Best Stats?

[originalbork]

Are you crazy, in andvanced tech you get everything you need with a creative. Whatever the other guy starts with you go to posi's and cl3 and anyone else non-creative is dead. Uni Crea Sub in ave or min rich and many possible in org. You start by destroying all but 1 or 2 of your marine bases for money. You have far more command points than anyone else, full planetary defence cabability, both H armor and R Hull. In prewarp the 8 points kills your start but in Adv tech it is a requirement.

[vmxa1]

You did not say anything I did not already know. How so ever, it can be very hard for a creative race to expand as far as some other race. The adv tech lets others get things that they can better use than you can. A uni-crea type will not be as bad off, but lessor creative race could and do have trouble. I did not mean to imply they will get clobbered all the time, only that they are not a lock to win a 100% of time as many claim.

[booklord]

The half food/half industry aspect of cybernetic is indeed near worthless. It's getting auto-repair right out of the gate that I find to be most advantageous. Given my ship designs I'd say its the most powerful combat oriented race pick out there. ( Great for defense too. Gives your star bases a real edge. ) I normally try to time my first cruiser one turn after I discover heavy armor.

( Of course to be fair, the computer must be given credit for 1) choosing some fairly poor ship designs 2) engaging in some lousy tactics during ship combat )

[originalbork]

VXMA,

What the heck is your point in one post you say that creatives are a better pick in prewarp than advanced and in the next you tell me that everything I said you knew when I disagreed with you.

In an advanced game the simple truth is any noncreative race is essentially uncreative to 650 tech and 1 900 or 1150 tech and uncreative is a huge negative.

Even a bad creative race(why take one) won't be shorted by not getting to chose all of the early key techs.

In a prewarp game the 8 points for creative will slow your growth in planets and research through the required techs so there it is a huge disadvantage in growth.

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by originalbork

"What the heck is your point in one post you say that creatives are a better pick in prewarp than advanced and in the next you tell me that everything I said you knew when I disagreed with you."

It is not that hard to understand, I think you are wrong. It is correct for some creative races. The problem is that you do not accept that some people will play a "weaker" race to see how it fares. I am not going to be playing only the best possible race every game. If I did that I would soon be bored.
Anyway I could be wrong about that point, it is only the impression I have from the games I have played with creative. It is not a scienific test and may be invalid.

"In an advanced game the simple truth is any noncreative race is essentially uncreative to 650 tech and 1 900 or 1150 tech and uncreative is a huge negative."

Like I said this is not a revalation. It does not matter to the AI as it is not clear that they will make proper choices or that this will slow them down. They will steal or trade for techs that they do not have.
Consider that now they hve maybe four sysem to get production and research from, instead of one. Given that they have a edge research they is a bigger boost for them than you. If a race like Klacs or Sakka are close by they will soon be making you life hard. Blockades and attacks. They now have battleships that can be used to blockade you and the junk that comes with yours will notbe able to defeat those ships until you can refi them.

"Even a bad creative race(why take one) won't be shorted by not getting to chose all of the early key techs."
I think you have admitted that you can lose regardless of the race. Many factors can put you in a spot that you will lose. Ok, maybe not you I forgot, even though you remind us all the time that you are the greatest. But us mere mortals are capabile of losing a game here and there.

"In a prewarp game the 8 points for creative will slow your growth in planets and research through the required techs so there it is a huge disadvantage in growth. "
I am sure I have made this point before.

The only thing I am trying to say is that from my perspective Creative is not an automatic win at impossible as many people claim.

[booklord]

I would argue that there is no 100% victory race pick selection. There's always a chance that the game will put you in a location that makes victory impossible.

( Advanced tech may be different. but I almost always take the standard start unless I'm playing a race with powerful research bonuses then I start in pre-warp )

If you play for a peaceful start, you can find yourself completely hemmed in by an aggressive enemy which prevents you from creating colonies outside your own star system.

If you take a wartime start, you can be flummoxed by finding yourself alone. By the time you find anyone else the tech levels have raised to the point where your racial picks have become insignificant.

Much rarer, but I've seen it happen. Occassionally a computer race on the other side of the galaxy will gain early dominance and expand at an ungodly rate. In one game I finally secured my corner of a huge map, finally met the klackons and saw 2/3rds of the map turn red. It all went downhill from there.

[vmxa1]

That is a factor that is not mentioned much, the chance that a race that is being beaten (by you or the AI) will surrender to another race. A game that was moving along in decent shape sees two fairly quick surrenders to your largest foe and now the game is a big stuggle. I see single surrenders often, doubles are rare.

[bakalov]

I have NEVER lost to the AI with the following race, no matter the starting conditions, tech or galaxy ....

Dictatorship
Crative
Artifacts
Large HW
+1 Research
Aquatic

Low Gravity
- Espionage
- Ship defense (or ship attack, does not matter)

You can beat them with ONLY ONE planet, no farm colonies, nothing ..... Even if your only planet freezes for some time in anomaly :-) The AI i sooooo pathetic and "willing to do as you want". vmxa1, do you remember the saves that I posted once ago?
The starting point absolutely does not matter ...

If you lose to the AI with this race even a single game, this means that this game is not for you :-) Just concentrate on research in the following sequence
Res Labs -> AF -> Soil/Cloning -> Supercomputer -> Robo miners. Then Tritanium (and may be pollution proc), Class III, Battle Scanner, Space Academy. You can do this by turn 100 in prewarp for sure. The AI will never attack you till then. Actually it once attacked me at turn 90 but the attack was just a joke and not a treat :-)

If you leave a good creative race alone till turn 90 you are probably dead meat :-) And the AI seems to do so ...

[bakalov]

Hey, wake up .... They may surrender, have size and anything ... But you will have TECH. One of ship of yours is worth 20 of theirs ... They never have a good ship design ...

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by bakalov
Hey, wake up .... They may surrender, have size and anything ... But you will have TECH. One of ship of yours is worth 20 of theirs ... They never have a good ship design ...

I did not say you would lose, only that it is a sruggle.

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by bakalov
IYou can beat them with ONLY ONE planet, no farm colonies, nothing ..... Even if your only planet freezes for some time in anomaly :-) The AI i sooooo pathetic and "willing to do as you want". vmxa1, do you remember the saves that I posted once ago?
The starting point absolutely does not matter ...

Yes I played it out and won.

[bakalov]

Originally posted by vmxa1
I did not say you would lose, only that it is a sruggle.

Ok, I agree that with non-creative races it may be a struggle. For a good player it may be not ...

For the creative races the struggle is the early survival. That late you can just ignore the surrender event and continue as if nothing has happened.
And the early survival is not really a struggle in SP because the AI can not realize this and at turn 90 it is already too late :-)

For the advanced game you are completely wrong. I think that the creative is simply a must for the advanced tech, SP or MP. If non-creative you can get screwed just because you are missing key techs because the "smart" AI picked other ones for you :-)

The AI sucks in this game ...

For more competent AI I would suggest:
1) Race picks should not be random but instead they should tend to the top 10 races from the MP statistics.
2) build-in strategies again taken from the MP along with the optimal usage of the events and the current state.
3) optimal tech picks for the strategies.
4) standard ship designs that are proved to be useful.
5) exploiting the player weaknesses (and a bit unfair, but, peeking into what the player posess!).

This means that no one can make competent AI until he has played a lot of MP against different styles. This is impossible at the time of the release of the game, but it can be added later by a patch (I have in mind some of the patches from Blizzard for the Starcraft, that added the "insane" scripts for the AI). The AI should be pluggable, and even better, the game developers can give some tools for changing the AI scripts. I know lots of developers that like to play various games (in fact, I am a living example :-) that could be interested in improving the AI.

[booklord]

An example of a game I played about a year ago where there was no chance. ( Impossible difficulty , forget universe size )

I started as creative and democratic ( my other picks elude me ) in the bottom left corner of the screen. The only inhabitable star near me was the Alkari homeworld. ( Seriously I had a black hole above me and a planet free world to the right. They were cybernetic, hefty ship combat bonuses, and on an artifacts world. Worse he was an aggressive militarist.

Then came the spies. Stealing left and right. Realizing combat was out of the question because of the Alkari's racial picks, I tried for an alliance. He wouldn't do it. Eventually the Alkari realized its military could squash me like a bug and that ended that.

I tried again. ( I had saved the starting point of the game ) Same result. The Alkari would not make an alliance no matter how much tech or money I gave him. In the end same result.

I gave up.
I'm not sure if I know a race that could achieve victory given THAT starting point

[booklord]

For more competent AI I would suggest:
1) Race picks should not be random but instead they should tend to the top 10 races from the MP statistics.
2) build-in strategies again taken from the MP along with the optimal usage of the events and the current state.
3) optimal tech picks for the strategies.
4) standard ship designs that are proved to be useful.
5) exploiting the player weaknesses (and a bit unfair, but, peeking into what the player posess!).
********************************************

1) Actually I'd say the game should not give give extra race picks to computer players on impossible. I'd often see games where the silicoids have massive production capabilties, that when you conquer them ( and you'd be a fool not too ) it increases the strength of you empire ten-fold.

2) I'm not sure what they could program for ship combat. However I've occassionally seen computer players stop expanding their empires even though they have plenty of room. ( I guess because their personality isn't expansionist ) Something could have been done about that.

3) Agree with this one. Some techs are just near worthless.

4) Better ship designs would be good. In particular the AI needed to be programmed to know that missiles should be fired as quickly as possible. ( 2- rack only ) Fighters have massive disadvantages. and ships that specialize in one attack type missile, beam, torpedo, capture are superior.

5) I've sometimes seen the computer at war, do things that makes me believe it already does. It just doesn't use the information well.

Now a couple of I'd add.......

6) The computer must learn to REFIT. I've seen BCs with heavy lasers and nuclear missiles flying next to BCs with graviton beams.

7) Leaders must be put on the bigger more powerful ships. How many times have we seen a large fleet attack and see the leaders huddled up on a scout vessels at the far ends?

8) The computer needs a better algorithm to determine whether to engage a planet's defenses or fight a battle. I've seen a number of computer fleets splashed in battles it couldn't win.

9) The computer needs to coordinate sabotage activities with fleet attacks. Does the AI even know how to sabotage?

[vmxa1]

Bakalov, you did not say in what universe you tend to use that creative race. If a small or med one and you like to try for an early end, I can understand the AHW, but if you would play out a longer game and or on a huge map, it seems the 3 picks for AHW would return more added to the +1 R and make it +2. Now all your planets are in effect AHW.