Final Frontier Impressions

Hamarabi, THANK YOU. :thanx:

I only have the demo and will be getting the game from Amazon this week.

This will help me make sense of this and to enjoy playing it.

You are so good to do this. Please have them put it in the War Academy or Reference or somewhere that all of us can find it.

Thanks,
stwils:) :love:
 
Good work Hamarabi :goodjob:


It's not quite true, they have different traits even if it's not so sophisticated (no UU, UB), like in Civ4.
I look forward reading the follow ups.

Thanks for the feedback, negyvenketto! I fixed the text in my guide, right away! Of course, I should have looked in the civilpedia and I would have noticed that they are indeed different. I should spend some time talking about the advantages and disadvantages of each leader, but I think I will hold off on that, until I have finished the first game.


Hamarabi, THANK YOU. :thanx:

I only have the demo and will be getting the game from Amazon this week.

This will help me make sense of this and to enjoy playing it.

You are so good to do this. Please have them put it in the War Academy or Reference or somewhere that all of us can find it.

Thanks,
stwils:) :love:

You are welcome, stwils! I am glad I could help. I am not aware of the procedure required in order to have this document included in the "War Academy" or "Reference" area of this site. Maybe, I should wait until I have completed the document, first.

Cheers!

Hamarabi
 
They should have put Final Frontier into the epic game. The space map would have been our Solar System which would slowly open up to you with the discovery of satellites. Then there will be a new race of exploration, colonization and mining in the solar system before the actual Alpha Centauri spaceship is launched. A wasted opportunity...
I think that this would be silly. Because the planet that you play on in civ has tons of cities, units, terrain, improvements, etc.
But in FF planets are (rightly) abstracted down to 3 numbers. So what would be the point of all the previous effort you put into Civ? It would be just a prelogue with no effect! So really, you get the same thing by, once you launch a spaceship, go and start a game of FF! voila!

I agree that FF is great, but I really missed events. It be great to add some specific events via a mod or patch. And I agree about the pacing, techs come fast but buildings less so, so that you don't have a chance to get a really developed star system. But maybe I could just lower the speed, but I think then buildings would be built slow too, and it would have the same feel.
 
Yeah I tried to slow down the speed, but the effect is the same sense the speed just scales the cost of techs and buildings.
 
What are the specs of your system?

I have an AMD X2 3600+ Brisbane, 2GB RAM, and a 256MB Geforce 7600GT video card and the turns take about 10 seconds or so on my system with larger maps. I think that's excruciatingly slow, to be honest, but I am not going to upgrade my computer for a few seconds. hehe

I have an AMD 3500+ Venice, I believe, 2GB ram and a 256 MB X850XT and my machine takes about 30 seconds between turns anything above 150 turns. I was playing on a huge map with everything sparce.

EDIT: I find this strange indeed BUT playing again on different settings (very dense everything, large map, 7 AI) at 100 turns it is right at 10 seconds.
 
When I first started playing, I was really intrigued by the story and though that pieces of it would develop as random events or through the descriptions on the techs. However, this just turns into a bloodbath from the get go. Here's my suggestions:
- Faster scout units: what's the point of a scout that moves 1 square?
- Make resources more critical. They speed production of certain units, but I never found production to be slow in the first place
- Better defensive units mid-game: When the battleship comes out, the delta planetary defense ships don't stand a chance. Coupled with bomber squadrons, delta cruisers, delta destroyers, the best way to defend a city is with offensive units.
- Allow colonization of Starbases
- Require Starbases to be defended
- Start the game with existing alliances, roles: The civs should be aware of each other at the start of the game and have existing relationships.
- More wonders

What I really love about this scenario are the details of the graphics. The planets have atmospheres, moons, cities as they get populated. The backround stars are about four layers deep. It's really fascinating.
 
This is an excellent mod! I just got BtS and the epic game is nothing special, but this makes getting the entire expansion worthwhile. I'm glad FF isn't part of the epic game because I wouldn't want to deal with 6000 years of epic gameplay just to take civ into space.

They way land is transitioned into space is great and makes strategy in what to colonize even more important than before while meaning you'll always have some space you can't see between cities. Fighters/bombers/missiles being in the game early give great flexibility in putting together fleets. The units are simple, but each has a role to play, which I think is better than having lots of units that don't do anything special. Having multiple planets with the same buildings on them is great because it lets you make very powerful systems. There's more, but that's just what I can think of now off the top of my head.

A couple of issues with it though.
1. Stealth ships are incredibly overpowered. Catching a defense/attack ship in space or any unarmed ship is instant death and the AI is too stupid to go after them. Also I can easily pillage AI resources with stealth ships with no consequence to me.
2. AI can't attack or defend. I suppose FF can't fix the underlying AI problem, but it would be good to have it build something other than basic attack, defense, and destroyers.
 
I would say one of the better firaxis scenarios. Jon Shafer seems to have the most talent at firaxis in creating scenarios. :)
 
I think this mod is great but lacking in UU's, UB's, # of civs, leaders, wonders, and a substantial tech tree. other than that, it is a good mod with enormeous potential
 
I feel that the module is too short and that there is a little bit of a mismatch with pace of technology and improvements. There needs to be a lot more techs between building a shipyard and your first battleship, because it is the most powerful unit in the game. Not to mention the fact that once you reach this juncture, there isn't anywhere else to go other than a more powerful battleship.
The problem here is entirely related to the research pace. If you slow down (increase beaker costs) research by as little as 20% and remove 90% of them from the wreckage (goody huts) the pace is very different. Much more to my liking anyway and all-in-all a pretty easy tweak to make in the XML file.

Another feature that I feel is lacking, is the ability to determine which star system would be more advantageous to colonize.
It's actually pretty easy to spot a good system if you follow two simple rules; More planets is better and bigger planets are better. The way the game mechanics work you will always have a better system if it can support larger populations, especially larger populations on individual planets since that basically multiplies the production value of the planet by the population. For example a planet with a pop cap of 1 that produces 3 food will produce a maximum of 4 food per pop (with a farm) and have a max size of 2 (with a habitat or green civic) or 3 with both a habitat and the green civic. So, that planet will produce at most 12 food. Now a larger planet that produces 2 food can produce 2 per pop, if the base pop cap is 2 it will equal the improved size 1 planet without needing any improvements or special civics. So selecting sites for early colonies is very easy, bigger is always better since you will get a quicker return without needing any investment into infrastructure.

The value system just doesn't work the way it is supposed to.
It works ok out-of-the-box. The strain on relationships makes it difficult to get every value in your systems. Since each value grants the ability to create a specialized building only being able to create a single one of them works well for balancing. If you can easily get wealth, knowledge and power than you can easily have big bonuses to income, research and free promotions for new units so not having them easily intermingled is a good thing.

The trading game needs to be more than just swapping technologies with rival civilizations.
That it does.
 
The problem here is entirely related to the research pace. If you slow down (increase beaker costs) research by as little as 20% and remove 90% of them from the wreckage (goody huts) the pace is very different. Much more to my liking anyway and all-in-all a pretty easy tweak to make in the XML file.


It's actually pretty easy to spot a good system if you follow two simple rules; More planets is better and bigger planets are better. The way the game mechanics work you will always have a better system if it can support larger populations, especially larger populations on individual planets since that basically multiplies the production value of the planet by the population. For example a planet with a pop cap of 1 that produces 3 food will produce a maximum of 4 food per pop (with a farm) and have a max size of 2 (with a habitat or green civic) or 3 with both a habitat and the green civic. So, that planet will produce at most 12 food. Now a larger planet that produces 2 food can produce 2 per pop, if the base pop cap is 2 it will equal the improved size 1 planet without needing any improvements or special civics. So selecting sites for early colonies is very easy, bigger is always better since you will get a quicker return without needing any investment into infrastructure.


It works ok out-of-the-box. The strain on relationships makes it difficult to get every value in your systems. Since each value grants the ability to create a specialized building only being able to create a single one of them works well for balancing. If you can easily get wealth, knowledge and power than you can easily have big bonuses to income, research and free promotions for new units so not having them easily intermingled is a good thing.


That it does.

Some of this is true, but the game still has flaws. But it still has great potential!!!
 
I think that the slavery state must be at the begining of tech tree, because u have many nonworked tiles and little happies. Thats why u prefer the slavery state. But in ff when u reach this tech , it have a little sence. Good graphic!
 
actually the position of the planet matter too since you only have access to the closest planet in the start.
 
actually the position of the planet matter too since you only have access to the closest planet in the start.


Very true, but again bigger is better. Suppose you have the choice between two systems, one with 5 planets and one with 7. The 7 planet system has small and medium planets and only two will be workable at the start, while the 5 planet system has medium and large planets and 3 workable from the start. The 7 planet system will possibly be better in the long run but the 5 planet system will be better at colonization so you have to consider everything.

Someone elsewhere talked about the Civs and only the Red Syndicate being worthy of use. I disagree, I think all of them have there strengths and if you colonize systems with your particular civ in mind any of them can prevail.
 
More fun in MP than SP. I prefer Luka.

Settings:
Deity difficulty (does not matter for MP)
Quick speed
Tiny size
4-6 players/AI
Stars normal, Features (resources) very dense , Hostile Features normal
No technology trading
Aggressive AI
Random Personalities
Raging barbarians

Settings for MP:
No barbarians
No tribal villages

Even with very dense resources, I almost never build a starbase (only happy or copper are worth it).
 
Say wha????

Well gee yeah with a tiny map and quick speed only war units are worth building. Anything else you get slaughtered because the opponents are building nothing but troops. That doesn't interest me at all. When I want to war I play something else.
 
Even in MP, you build things other than troops. MP is mostly war. Your point?

Regarding mapsize:
Small map is just too big for MP. Diety, raging, and a crowded map help to alleviate the tiny (ok, sometimes small) mapsize when playing SP.

When I can win on diety and raging, I'll toggle tech trading on :) Although, at Diety level, you get great tech trades anyway.

Regarding quick speed:
You play something else in this mod? Weird. It is a handicap for military strats and MP games need to be over in 2 hours. Then again, I play quick speed in the epic game as well. Maybe if I was playing a peaceful game and I wanted to give my opponents an edge, I would play Normal. I like the game to get into the industrial age in one sitting. Just personal taste I suppose.

Say wha????
 
Personal taste is exactly it. No I prefer to play at slower speed and to be able to enjoy whatever tech advantage I may earn or have to fight whatever tech advantage my opponent may earn. And we generally play three or more several hour sittings.
 
Top Bottom