"Very Difficult Choice" Mod, irc channel: irc.quakenet.org/vdc

Information, How-to's, and discussion about mod'ing Master of Orion II.
zitro
Posts:19
Joined:Wed Dec 24, 2008 11:20 am

Postby zitro » Fri May 22, 2009 11:29 am

Well, in VDC, you have missile advantages, plus missile base can't be researched in the beginning like before (for creative races)

I imagine constructing two large ships full of nuclear missiles (2 ammo) with fast missile rack tech can wreck serious havoc, especially if they don't research ECM jammer.


Suggestions:
_Lithovore: 9 picks instead of 10
Last edited by zitro on Fri May 22, 2009 6:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.

zitro
Posts:19
Joined:Wed Dec 24, 2008 11:20 am

Postby zitro » Fri May 22, 2009 3:26 pm

Actually, I'm gonna drop the criticism of weapons damaging too much. I overlooked the effectiveness of techs like inertial stabilizer, damp field, Wide Area jammer.

I finished 'Impossible", When building my first Doomstars, I realized he concentrated a quite big fleet: something like 100 battleships and 5 doomstars (we were friends at the time). I bought doomstars focused on phasors and attacked, and he had almost 15 doomstars! Tho his technology wasn't that great in those ships (graviton beams, blackholes, and plasma torpedoes were the worst he got) He then got death rays (he beat the guardian).

What was interesting was the Antares. The ships seems more durable now and the star fortress had 20,000HP (and I felt like I damaged 20% of what I did against normal ships)! The star fortress when it attacked tended to destroy over 6 titans. This was quite an improvement, as Antares was not a difficult way to win before.

User avatar
Overlord2
Posts:661
Joined:Wed Jun 13, 2007 5:25 pm

Postby Overlord2 » Sat May 23, 2009 5:38 am

Well, in VDC, you have missile advantages, plus missile base can't be researched in the beginning like before (for creative races)

I imagine constructing two large ships full of nuclear missiles (2 ammo) with fast missile rack tech can wreck serious havoc, especially if they don't research ECM jammer.
Standard arms of such ships is fully upgraded laser beams and bombs. Counting purely on missiles doesn't justify.
Suggestions:
_Lithovore: 9 picks instead of 10
With Lith at 10 you can construct several strongest races. But decreasing cost of lithovore further can allow overpowered races. E.g. Sub lith +50 pop Large arti. The difference between arti and large arti was proved to be great, though it doesn't seems so on the surface. Or imagine the Sub lith +50 pop rich hw and +20 attack or defense race. Too great.

zitro
Posts:19
Joined:Wed Dec 24, 2008 11:20 am

Postby zitro » Sat May 23, 2009 1:30 pm

mm, I guess I should realize that this mod was specifically designed for multiplayer. I gotta admit that even if that was the intention, the mod works very well for single-player, better than original Moo2 and a couple of mods I tried.

In single-player, missile-based early ships, missile planetary defense is the way to go, against antares, against non-shield planets, and early opponent ships. -20 attack pick is sort of an attractive negative pick in single-player, so I end up with missiles at first. I'll let you know when next time I pick +50 attack instead.

_I decided to use tolerant/+50%pop/Unification/-0.5bc/-ship defense. It was way too easy, maybe the opponents were easy, and yes: you were right about the usefulness of the original laser weapon. Battleships with battlescanner/3X armor/structure, and heavily modded lasers were very powerful early in the game, pretty much like a weak 'phasor'

Here's a list of things (off my head) that I specially love that I wouldn't want significantly changed:
_Heavy Armor not being with Automated factories.
_Being able to research things like Blackhole/particle beam/deathray/xentronium, etc
_The huge improvement on star bases/battlestations/fortresses and planetary shields.
_Bombs being useful.
_Making it very difficult to choose techs rather than follow similar patterns all the time. Making 'Creative' a more useful pick for that purpose.
_more population in planets (is it just me?)
_More freedom on choosing picks. They make sense now!
_scout labs!! They were useful when I played with -1 research.
_Drastically improving most of those weak 'special' weapons like pulsars, interceptors, gyro stabilizer, etc.
_Early lasers being more useful. Incentive to use them more rather than wait until phasor (i always found phasor and disrupter to be my favorite weapons).
_Warp Dissipator change.
_Antares being much deadlier.

User avatar
rewster1
Posts:61
Joined:Mon Oct 01, 2007 7:29 am
Contact:

Postby rewster1 » Tue May 26, 2009 4:19 pm

http://rapidshare.com/files/237576094/SAVE5.GAM.html
Irakly, here's the save we discussed in chat.

User avatar
rewster1
Posts:61
Joined:Mon Oct 01, 2007 7:29 am
Contact:

Postby rewster1 » Thu May 28, 2009 10:23 am

Has anyone played a multiplayer game and tried out that "cash cropping" with android farmers idea? (In the above posted save, I have a pop of 284 on turn 100, though more than half is android farmers producing cash with fan. traders).
I'm still trying it in single player (when I get a free minute, since I can't seem to get online long enough for a multiplayer game), but I don't even get much time to do that, so I'm still doing a run-through trying to get supercomps first before the droids. Surely someone here must have vast expanses of free time, like I used to, and can give it a shot. If it doesn't turn out to be unbalanced (Irakly already pointed out some pretty glaring flaws in my execution), it might be a nice way to boost uni (or possibly even feudal) races.

User avatar
Ai_Mania
Posts:17
Joined:Sun May 31, 2009 5:47 am

Postby Ai_Mania » Sun May 31, 2009 6:37 am

This is my first post. I've been here a few times and I have the community to thank for the game and patch. :)

I love what you have done with your mod. This is the first time I ever used a mod for MOO2, though I haven't seen a lot of them. I have played the game for days at a time, sporadically, in the past 2 or so years.

This mod breathes life into race configuration and the AI (it at least seems the AI is behaving more realistically and plays better). The tech tree is much better and you managed to change or add existing techs, it now feels a lot bigger, also much more balanced. The game is considerably more consistent and fun to play. Maybe one day I'll join multiplayer, though I'd be really weak and extremely slow to complete turns, next to the experts. For now, I have exams ahead.

There are a few things which don't make sense, example: neural scanner gives +10 spy ( is at a low level for 150) while cybernetic link got worse to +5 ( is at cost 1500 where it used to be)

There is the description for tolerant, which bugged me for a long time and hasn't been edited. I see you can edit these. Tolerant doesn't make planets act as terran, even if you ignore the growing food part. It increases maximum population (for terran included) and removes pollution penalties. It would be awesome if it costed 15 points and made all planets terran, but I don't see you editing that. Gaia would provide no bonus over terran in this case (as a logical fact and a resulting downside)

Adequately removing certain techs for the right picks would be nice, but again I don't see how you would link them. Ex: cutting Gaia for aquatic. I also don't see how you would collapse eventual empty research boxes (in rare cases I have to research an empty box, but it collapses if there was a single tech in it that got acquired somehow; if there is more than one, the box stays).

There is the description for reflection field - I can't make out how it calculates reflection from that. It just doesn't make sense.

You added a tech called something like "phase teleportation" that is meant to be an improvement to the existing ship teleport. I can't make out what the description says about it.


Now to other matters :D

I have wanted to make a borg, protoss or other such races for a long time. Picks don't let me do that in vanilla and neither do they now. If you could somehow increase the maximum negatives, I'd stash a lot of negatives just so I can put unification with cybernetic, tolerant, telepathic and warlord (for borg). I could throw -50 growth, bad funds (- 8 ), for example (according to your point system).

I would love the opportunity to mix the strong picks together, at the cost of big negative picks. Tolerant + uni or demo + creative pretty much max the space, I wanted more. It doesn't have to be 30 / -10 (I've read that is how it used to be in DC), it can be 20 / -20, can't it?

Other than that, I think your system reflects the usefullness / handicap of picks more accurately, but not always. For example:

- cloning makes the -50 pop not such a great disaster, although it prevents non creative races from taking soil enrichment

- tolerant is a formidable pick, but maybe someone should evaluate it to see if it is worth less or maybe is worth more (unlikely more)

- lithovore is maybe woth only 8 points, even if lithovore / tolerant is strong, soon enough food becomes less and less of an issue; it even prevents you from making money on food ! It is basically an early boost pick (half of tolerant might be seen as that too, though it cuts tech choices as well). Lithovore initially doubles available population, but for small sacrifices in tech (for non-creative) it becomes less and less. Compare it to artifacts world.

- you can't be serious about unification 8 / democracy 5 : with early morale bonuses democracy climbs up to unification's production bonus while getting extra money and further increasing research

- low g is obviously very bad only for the fast expanders - unifications;

- creative is less useful the more immunities your race has: unification and tolerant each subract fom the need to choose

It is difficult to edit a cost compensation ( not even desirable in view of intelligent race design ) but you might want to take the two extreme scenarios and then take the mean of evaluated extreme costs.

- warlord is much stonger than 3 points compared to the attack / defense bonuses

- the -6 from bad attack is funny because the opponent can always chose +2 attack and you're in the same position for 4 points less ; defense used to cost a lot for a reason: with adequate preparations you can get very hard to hit if the opponent doesn't care for his attack

- cybernetic is much stronger than 2 points worth; I think it is cummulative with automatic damage control ? ; someone who can see the code could tell us about all things cummulative and which are not, that were not very clear in vanilla or now

- when the mod starts to have its technology "set in stone" it would be good to have the tech tree displayed on a page somewhere; congratulations on making it so consistent !

Overall, despite a few neglidgeable issus, this modded version of the game is awesome !! :D


A long time into the future, maybe someone will assemble "Remake Studios" , where Moo 2 along with all its mods will be used as a base, decent graphics / sound used to represent, a few extra innovations for flavor and enhancement that don't dull any of the existing gameplay. I think manual, indivitual star system control has to stay, maybe aided by imitative AI control that learns your preferences. Battles could be strongly improved but have to stay at least as manually controlled, and detailed. Massive ammount of detail that takes from the core simplicty of the game has to be avoided. Relevant details such as boarding need to stay, with correct and simple representation.
"Humanity is revealed in the games you play and how you play."

User avatar
Overlord2
Posts:661
Joined:Wed Jun 13, 2007 5:25 pm

Postby Overlord2 » Sun May 31, 2009 10:27 am

Hi,
Thank you for high appreciation of the mod.

You have asked a lot of questions on the mod :)
I’ll try to answer them briefly.
There are a few things which don't make sense, example: neural scanner gives +10 spy ( is at a low level for 150) while cybernetic link got worse to +5 ( is at cost 1500 where it used to be)
Because its is very painful to miss cybersecurity link if it is 10. The other choices were neglected because of that. The problem compared to original moo is that in original everybody were uni. For uni it wasn’t painful to miss cybersecurity link…
There is the description for tolerant, which bugged me for a long time and hasn't been edited. I see you can edit these. Tolerant doesn't make planets act as terran, even if you ignore the growing food part. It increases maximum population (for terran included) and removes pollution penalties. It would be awesome if it costed 15 points and made all planets terran, but I don't see you editing that.
Never occurred to me, since I haven’t met a moo2 player who doesn’t know about tolerant’s features :P

BTW, in moo2 manual it’s described better, what actually gives tolerant.
For more information you may like to check this article: http://masteroforion2.blogspot.com/2005 ... ation.html
Adequately removing certain techs for the right picks would be nice, but again I don't see how you would link them. Ex: cutting Gaia for aquatic.
What’s the point of doing this?
I also don't see how you would collapse eventual empty research boxes (in rare cases I have to research an empty box, but it collapses if there was a single tech in it that got acquired somehow; if there is more than one, the box stays).
Don’t understand what you mean here by empty boxes, could you describe it better?
There is the description for reflection field - I can't make out how it calculates reflection from that. It just doesn't make sense.
The formula is the following: chance to reflect = 10/(10 + beam damage)
You added a tech called something like "phase teleportation" that is meant to be an improvement to the existing ship teleport. I can't make out what the description says about it.
I added it to the tech tree. This tech was hidden in original moo.
It gives the ship 2x move points in battle, its not teleport in fact.
Now to other matters

I have wanted to make a borg, protoss or other such races for a long time. Picks don't let me do that in vanilla and neither do they now. If you could somehow increase the maximum negatives, I'd stash a lot of negatives just so I can put unification with cybernetic, tolerant, telepathic and warlord (for borg). I could throw -50 growth, bad funds (- 8 ), for example (according to your point system).

I would love the opportunity to mix the strong picks together, at the cost of big negative picks. Tolerant + uni or demo + creative pretty much max the space, I wanted more. It doesn't have to be 30 / -10 (I've read that is how it used to be in DC), it can be 20 / -20, can't it?
You could use moo workshop to create your own custom stock races. You can find link for moo workshop program set in respective topic.
Other than that, I think your system reflects the usefullness / handicap of picks more accurately, but not always. For example:

- cloning makes the -50 pop not such a great disaster, although it prevents non creative races from taking soil enrichment

- tolerant is a formidable pick, but maybe someone should evaluate it to see if it is worth less or maybe is worth more (unlikely more)

- lithovore is maybe woth only 8 points, even if lithovore / tolerant is strong, soon enough food becomes less and less of an issue; it even prevents you from making money on food ! It is basically an early boost pick (half of tolerant might be seen as that too, though it cuts tech choices as well). Lithovore initially doubles available population, but for small sacrifices in tech (for non-creative) it becomes less and less. Compare it to artifacts world.

- you can't be serious about unification 8 / democracy 5 : with early morale bonuses democracy climbs up to unification's production bonus while getting extra money and further increasing research

- low g is obviously very bad only for the fast expanders - unifications;

- creative is less useful the more immunities your race has: unification and tolerant each subract fom the need to choose

It is difficult to edit a cost compensation ( not even desirable in view of intelligent race design ) but you might want to take the two extreme scenarios and then take the mean of evaluated extreme costs.

- warlord is much stonger than 3 points compared to the attack / defense bonuses

- the -6 from bad attack is funny because the opponent can always chose +2 attack and you're in the same position for 4 points less ; defense used to cost a lot for a reason: with adequate preparations you can get very hard to hit if the opponent doesn't care for his attack

- cybernetic is much stronger than 2 points worth;
I have already written about picks costs above. What I can say: you’re welcome to alter them at your own view and play the way you like.

I think it is cummulative with automatic damage control ? ; someone who can see the code could tell us about all things cummulative and which are not, that were not very clear in vanilla or now.
Cybernetic repair feature works cumulative with Auto Repair Unit. Advanced Damage Control just repairs the damage after battle. No self repair during the battle.
- when the mod starts to have its technology "set in stone" it would be good to have the tech tree displayed on a page somewhere; congratulations on making it so consistent!
There is an .xls description file, where you an find the full tech tree details.
Overall, despite a few neglidgeable issus, this modded version of the game is awesome !!
Thanks!
Last edited by Overlord2 on Mon Jun 01, 2009 7:35 am, edited 4 times in total.

User avatar
Ai_Mania
Posts:17
Joined:Sun May 31, 2009 5:47 am

Postby Ai_Mania » Sun May 31, 2009 11:26 am

Because its is very painful to miss cybersecurity link if it is 10. The other choices were neglected because of that. The problem compared to original moo is that in original everybody were uni. For uni it wasn’t painful to miss cybersecurity link…
It doesn't make sense for a mid-level technology to have 1/2 the effectiveness of a level 2 tech. The only remaining way to view it would be to say "I'll take this to max my spying potential, even if it's seriously ineffective". As a balance option, I think you can do better than that.
Never occurred to me, since I haven’t met a moo2 player who doesn’t know about tolerant’s features Razz
You edited some other stuff, why not make this description adequate?
Adequately removing certain techs for the right picks would be nice, but again I don't see how you would link them. Ex: cutting Gaia for aquatic.

What’s the point of doing this?
Skipping them : gaia with aquatic and eventual tech levels for SOME possible tech trees you may configure in the future. Also, if pollution control is never researched by tolerant or food techs by lithovore, it means the devs never got to refining aquatic or cybernetic (advanced damage control for cybs). It is again a matter of showing off with perfect refinement 8)
Don’t understand what you mean here by empty boxes, could you describe it better?
I meant tech levels. For example, "the revolutionary" brought me federation and when I looked in the tech tree I saw that the level had been passed, without having spent any research. On the other hand, by spying or exchanging techs on levels with multiple techs, you can get empty tech levels (empty boxes) that have to researched in order to pass to the next level. I'm not sure if this isn't a bug, in the first place.

I have already written about picks costs above. What I can say: you’re welcome to alter them at your own view and play the way you like.
There's two things I still find important:

- -6 to negative attack is wrong because the opponent can pick plus two thereby gaining the same edge for 2 points instead of your six; the cost for minus attack should be the same as for the bonus and twice for the double bonus

- why limit my freedom of making any race as long as it is balanced around zero? I want it ! please please



If you want to spend EVEN MORE time, you could choose to do what I suggested about pick costs: imagine the best and the worst combinations, then average the extreme costs for that pick (ex: creative with democracy + research bonus versus creative with unification or with tolerant ) (ex2: unification +repulsive with telepathic versus telepathic in other combinations ; note that, yet, telepathic loses diplomacy bonus to repulsive in sinle player).

As is, it seems you rebalanced the picks according to how much players wanted some in favor of the others, which IS yet quite relevant, showing you what the devs didn't see about those picks. However, in case of the "minus attack" penalty..


Costs that are much more adequate: the income penalty (horrible penalty, -8 is much more adequate), the production penalty is between that minus ten and the previous minus three (you're judging it for the unification again; it's truly worth probably around -7 ), the combat bonuses are very cheap as they should be (as they were not crucial), high G world is clearly worth 3 instead of 6 (maybe worth 2, actually). I shouldn't go into further detail :)
"Humanity is revealed in the games you play and how you play."

User avatar
Overlord2
Posts:661
Joined:Wed Jun 13, 2007 5:25 pm

Postby Overlord2 » Sun May 31, 2009 5:53 pm

It doesn't make sense for a mid-level technology to have 1/2 the effectiveness of a level 2 tech. The only remaining way to view it would be to say "I'll take this to max my spying potential, even if it's seriously ineffective". As a balance option, I think you can do better than that.
Any spying techs are effective. When it was 10 it was too effective. Whoever chose other techs (emg or ranged master unit) was in big trouble. The other techs in the same tech field aren't that important to sacrifice cybersecurity link with 10 spying bonus. Of course I could move the whole tech field lower, but I just don't want to do so, because Autolabs will become easier to access...

PS. If you consider your logic, it isn't perfect as well. In original moo neural scanner with +10 spying bonus comes earlier than telpathic training with +5 spying bonus. :roll:
You edited some other stuff, why not make this description adequate?
Ok, I'll look closer to it. I'm not sure if I can correct it at all, but I'll see what I can do there.
Skipping them : gaia with aquatic and eventual tech levels for SOME possible tech trees you may configure in the future. Also, if pollution control is never researched by tolerant or food techs by lithovore, it means the devs never got to refining aquatic or cybernetic (advanced damage control for cybs). It is again a matter of showing off with perfect refinement
I get your point now. Well, it's a minor bug, which doesn't effect the game so much. Unfortunately I can't fix it.
I meant tech levels. For example, "the revolutionary" brought me federation and when I looked in the tech tree I saw that the level had been passed, without having spent any research. On the other hand, by spying or exchanging techs on levels with multiple techs, you can get empty tech levels (empty boxes) that have to researched in order to pass to the next level. I'm not sure if this isn't a bug, in the first place.
It's feature of the game. If you get all techs from one tech level by other ways than researching them, you don't need to research that tech level.
There's two things I still find important:

- -6 to negative attack is wrong because the opponent can pick plus two thereby gaining the same edge for 2 points instead of your six; the cost for minus attack should be the same as for the bonus and twice for the double bonus
"the opponent can pick plus two"? What do you mean?
The -attack and + attack picks are MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE. The only way you could try to compensate it (only partially) is to get warlord. But it won't prevent your oponent enjoy taking full +50 Beam attack bonus, thereby getting edge over you...

PS. I guess I understand what you want to ask - why +20 BA costs 2 points and -20BA 6 points... Answer: the attack bonus is vital because of its connection with initiative. Being worse in beam attack means losing initiative, which means a lot in MP games. Thus -attack minus is serious handicap, which can decide outcome of the games. And why exactly -6? Could be -4 as it was once, but the difference isn't significant. If it was -2 then no one in clear mind would ever take it, heh.
- why limit my freedom of making any race as long as it is balanced around zero? I want it ! please please
Give more details here, what exactly you want. :P
Addition: if its creating custom races with picks exceeding max allowed then see the answer above :!:


By the way, did you see my post above - about right aproach to assigning pick values?
I mentioned there while considering picks one should base on the races he can construct. If you find some overpowered races with current picks layout, you're welcome to announce such. And if it proves to be overpowered indeed, the appropriate measures will be taken without any doubt :wink:

Astax
Posts:82
Joined:Sat Mar 22, 2008 8:19 pm

Postby Astax » Mon Jun 01, 2009 5:48 pm

well it could be -10 for all we care, no one will take it as long as repulsive exists :(

User avatar
Ai_Mania
Posts:17
Joined:Sun May 31, 2009 5:47 am

Postby Ai_Mania » Mon Jun 01, 2009 10:27 pm

Skipping them : gaia with aquatic and eventual tech levels for SOME possible tech trees you may configure in the future. Also, if pollution control is never researched by tolerant or food techs by lithovore, it means the devs never got to refining aquatic or cybernetic (advanced damage control for cybs). It is again a matter of showing off with perfect refinement
I get your point now. Well, it's a minor bug, which doesn't effect the game so much. Unfortunately I can't fix it.
I meant tech levels. For example, "the revolutionary" brought me federation and when I looked in the tech tree I saw that the level had been passed, without having spent any research. On the other hand, by spying or exchanging techs on levels with multiple techs, you can get empty tech levels (empty boxes) that have to researched in order to pass to the next level. I'm not sure if this isn't a bug, in the first place.
It's feature of the game. If you get all techs from one tech level by other ways than researching them, you don't need to research that tech level.
What I was saying : when you get the single tech existing on a level, you pass that level for free but when you sequentially get the 2 or three on the level, I think, from what I recall, that you end up being forced to research an empty box (empty level).
There's two things I still find important:

- -6 to negative attack is wrong because the opponent can pick plus two thereby gaining the same edge for 2 points instead of your six; the cost for minus attack should be the same as for the bonus and twice for the double bonus
"the opponent can pick plus two"? What do you mean?
The -attack and + attack picks are MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE. The only way you could try to compensate it (only partially) is to get warlord. But it won't prevent your oponent enjoy taking full +50 Beam attack bonus, thereby getting edge over you...

PS. I guess I understand what you want to ask - why +20 BA costs 2 points and -20BA 6 points... Answer: the attack bonus is vital because of its connection with initiative. Being worse in beam attack means losing initiative, which means a lot in MP games. Thus -attack minus is serious handicap, which can decide outcome of the games. And why exactly -6? Could be -4 as it was once, but the difference isn't significant. If it was -2 then no one in clear mind would ever take it, heh.
You still didn't "get it":

Example 1: guy takes -6 attack, other no bonus; the other has a +20 advantage ; there is a 6 point difference in investment

Example 2: guy takes no bonus or penalty, the other takes the +20 for 2 points; the "other" get the same +20 advantage; there is a 2 point difference in investment

Example 3: guy takes +20, other +40 ; first pays 2, other pays 4; same thing

Notice by comparing ex1 with 2 and 3 that something is very wrong with this value (point) scale. You could argue that if you take the minus and the other takes +40 there is no way to catch up, but I still think that for each +20 advantage there has to be the roughly same pay in regard to the other, perhaps with a little more cost for the extremes. I suggest:

-3 for -20
0 for none (obvious)
-> the not pickable average is here, at 1 point for +10
+2 for +20
+5 for +40

That way I tried to keep the basic positive pick cost and build the extremes with extra cost as they might overwhelm (as in the guy behind might not catch up). (the average is actually between not picking and taking the +20, is a one point difference from zero, that confirms four points to the extremes from the average)
- why limit my freedom of making any race as long as it is balanced around zero? I want it ! please please
Give more details here, what exactly you want. :P
Addition: if its creating custom races with picks exceeding max allowed then see the answer above :!:
I simply ask to raise the maximum negative to -20 so I can stash more positives, if you can. If you don't think that is right, maybe at least -15. Or go for more positives, though you said you didn't believe in that.
By the way, did you see my post above - about right aproach to assigning pick values?
I mentioned there while considering picks one should base on the races he can construct. If you find some overpowered races with current picks layout, you're welcome to announce such. And if it proves to be overpowered indeed, the appropriate measures will be taken without any doubt :wink:
Yes, I told you, that is how you said that you had gradually assigned values (points).

well it could be -10 for all we care, no one will take it as long as repulsive exists Sad
My opinion: charismatic can still be great at bringing good leaders. For multiplayer (trashing the diplomacy part) you might think of not taking either as zero cost (obvious), then consider the benefits and problems of both (they influence leader choice and assimilation ; then there is telepathy - consider its presence or absence as extreme cases, negating assimilation need).

Obviously, repulsive should cost roughly as much as charismatic in difference from zero, otherwise the issue of repulsive / charismatic simply serves to rasise the actual points of those who take either repulsive (ridiculously "expensive") or the ridiculously cheap charismatic (my view: gaining 1 or 2 as charismatic, gaining 3 as repulsive).

I wish there could be a different cost of repulsvive / charismatic for single player than multiplayer (that is: keeping the existing costs, which are relevant for single player, maybe with charismatic costing 2 points for fairness). For multiplayer, these costs do not reflect their value.

In future games, for fun, the bonus diplomacy could be made useful in multiplayer, where the computer evaluates a rection bar for each player and when there is a diplomatic initiative, the player receiving it has to state his preferrence but then that preference is stashed with the reaction bar and the diplomacy bonuses to determine if you can accept or deny a diplomatic initiative. Although this wouldn't work if players are at all-out war.
"Humanity is revealed in the games you play and how you play."

Astax
Posts:82
Joined:Sat Mar 22, 2008 8:19 pm

Postby Astax » Mon Jun 01, 2009 10:38 pm

Hmmm is it possible to give charismatic a negative cost? Lets say Charismatic was -2 :shock:

User avatar
Ai_Mania
Posts:17
Joined:Sun May 31, 2009 5:47 am

Postby Ai_Mania » Mon Jun 01, 2009 11:05 pm

Hmmm is it possible to give charismatic a negative cost? Lets say Charismatic was -2 :shock:
I don't get it. Read again, evaluate, then speak clearly, that I might undestand :D

"costs" are in modules. Negative or positive have the same absolute "value".

Why would you say something like "give charismatic -2" ??

My opinion:
singleplayer: repulsive: -6 charismatic: 2 (leaders + diplomacy +assimilation)
multiplayer: repulsive: -3 or -2 (leaders AND assimilation are affected) charismatic 1 (no more diplomacy)
"Humanity is revealed in the games you play and how you play."

Astax
Posts:82
Joined:Sat Mar 22, 2008 8:19 pm

Postby Astax » Tue Jun 02, 2009 12:20 am

It is beyond clear. Negative means the opposite, so cost of -2 would result in net gain of 2 picks. It's not hard to understand...

This would be pretty good for MP. People would have great incentive for picking Charismatic. It would not kill current repulse based races. And it would give people something to think about. They could try to get it and go for full 20 picks, but coming up with the remaining 4 picks would lead to some interesting choices...

Though in SP you would have to exercise your own etiquette when it comes to this pick.


Return to “Game Modifications”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 5 guests