RBTS9 - Final Frontier

Welcome all! Realms Beyond continues a trip through some of the official mods in BTS, with a visit to Space. The Final Frontier.

RBTS9: Final Frontier
Civ/Leader: TBD
Difficulty: TBD

Roster, arranged to space out (har!) those with prior FF experience:
T-hawk
sooooo
Cyneheard (Mojoqmeyvam)
Timmy827
Olodune

I'd like to go with short intervals even for starting, so we can all see the early game. 15-15-10-10-10 for the first round then 10 turns each after that. Usual SG rule of 24 hours to claim and 48 from the claim to play and post, but just ask for a time extension if you need.

So, up for discussion is our leader choice, map settings, and if we have any particular goal.

Leader: I'd prefer not New Earth, which I played in a solo game, or the Red Syndicate, widely agreed as overpowered. Any other looks decent though I'd prefer one of the builders. Cyneheard suggested Paradise, which sounds good to me. Creative culture means a lot more in FF. In the standard game, 10 culture gives a city full border extension. An FF star system needs 50 for one expansion and 500 culture to reach its farthest planets.

Map: Standard everything? Dense and very dense star options are popular, but I don't mind standard spacing. Space is supposed to be BIG, and it does give a very different feel to standard Civ. Also, should we turn off goody huts? It's easy to outscout the AIs and pop 5+ techs from wreckage.

Difficulty: I think we can do Emperor. In a Monarch solo game, I got and stayed ahead, although not by a whole lot. The AIs seem to be okay at building and researching, but terrible at putting together any offensive threat.

Goals: Any suggestions, or just win? Should we turn off Influence victory? (Same as culture, except you only need 5000 x 3 cities.)

Yeah, I think we should turn off goody huts. Standard everything else should work. 8 players total, instead of 7?

If we're Paradise, we really should turn Influence off. We'd be able to win on turn 150 with running culture for the last 30 turns or so, and it's not like the AIs are suddenly going to take our core worlds from us.

I lean towards Domination; population's likely to be our stumbling block, not land, which will be somewhat different.

Also, can we agree not to use Stealth ships? The AI is not able to defend against them, nor blame us for our actions. They're cloaked privateers.

-- Cyneheard/Mojoqmeyvam

Signing in.

I agree that Influence victory should be turned off. Just doesn't look very interesting without the options you get in normal civ (wonders, specialists, GP).

Paradise looks fine, though the 2 per turn actually seems less useful here than in other games (250 turns to reach the farthest planets, longer than your test game lasted!)

Should have some time tonight to look over the mod and comment more.

First Second lurker signing in ... comm links open

No, Ruff, you were right the first time, you're the first posted lurker. I just (foolishly) have different handles here and at RB.

Here's a short writeup of Final Frontier mechanics, from my experience:

Rather than cities, the basic unit of civilization is a star system. These can only be founded on a star tile.

Citizens don't work tiles. Each citizen is assigned to a planet. Planets produce food, hammers, and commerce each turn. Each planet has a population limit, from 1 to 3, and can be increased by 1 by building a Habitation Facility on that planet.

Each star system can have up to 7 planets. Only up to 3 planets can be within the system's first ring of influence. To access the second ring of influence and any planets in "medium" orbits requires 50 Influence (culture). To access the third ring and any planets in "far" orbits requires 500 Influence.

Buildings are built per planet. A star system can stack up many copies of most buildings, so it could have 5 banks or 7 factories or whatever. Buildings escalate in cost for each copy; one bank is 50 hammers, the second is 100 hammers, then 150 and so on. A few buildings (factories and barracks) escalate more quickly, at 1x-3x-5x-7x-etc of base cost. A few buildings are limited to one per star system.

Religions are replaced by "Values". Like standard Civ, each value is founded by the first civ to research a particular tech. They spread automatically or by missionary. Values have the same effects as religions: +1 culture, and +1 happy if a city has your State Value. Additionally, each Value enables a particular building with a unique effect. Each Value-specific building also provides +3 Influence. There is no shrine, so there is no value in spreading a value to foreign empires except for diplomatic reasons.

Most resources are beyond influence reach of any star system. To claim these resources, you build a Starbase. This requires a sum of cash and 8 turns by a Construction Ship (worker), and consumes the ship. Once built, a Starbase claims a 5 x 5 square worth of territory, and now a resource extractor can be built. Starbases are immobile, but are very strong combat units with 30 strength and a ranged attack. It's said that the AI never successfully defeats a starbase.

Every tile in FF is a land tile. Warp Lanes are roads. Jump Lanes function identically to railroads except at 8 movement instead of 10. These are very important for mobility (space is BIG), and for trade route connections in the absence of river and coast connections of standard Civ.

Mojoqmeyvam said:

Yeah, I think we should turn off goody huts. Standard everything else should work. 8 players total, instead of 7?

If we're Paradise, we really should turn Influence off. We'd be able to win on turn 150 with running culture for the last 30 turns or so, and it's not like the AIs are suddenly going to take our core worlds from us.

I lean towards Domination; population's likely to be our stumbling block, not land, which will be somewhat different.

Also, can we agree not to use Stealth ships? The AI is not able to defend against them, nor blame us for our actions. They're cloaked privateers.

Click to expand...

8 players sounds good to get all the leaders in play. I wouldn't mind a Large map to get a few more star systems in play. My standard map game resulted in only 5-6 stars per civilization.

I lean away from domination victory. My solo game easily achieved the population after conquering two civs and one vassal. But that was less than half of the land area, and the (somewhat silly) answer was to spam starbases everywhere in the middle of nowhere. Also I'd like to go all the way through the tech tree, even if the Astral Gate victory is simple to execute. But I do want to do some conquering along the way.

No Stealth ships, definitely. Interesting for multiplayer but the AI cannot answer at all.

What if we went for Ascension, but we have a set number of civs we must conquer + vassalize, like must conquer 1 or 2 civs, and conquer or vassalize another? We wouldn't get the last few military techs, but Omega Carriers are crap, although Omega Battleships are fun, if expensive, and often unnecessary.

Oh, for terrain, one thing that's different is the nebula tiles, which are like peaks, only they're large expanses, 10x10 or larger nebulae are fairly common. I had one game on a huge map where I spawned alone inside a giant nebula, with no way out. So much for that game.

Starbases: If the AI used fighters and bombers effectively, they could drop starbases. The AI doesn't know how to use carriers, but will use air units on defense, and Destroyers for interceptions. I can't remember seeing a SB of mine attacked by Delta or Omega B-ships, the only other units that could pull it off.

Checking in.

Huts off. Standard density and large galaxy size sound about right. Too bad the Red Syndicate is overpowered, since their traits look fun. I'm fine with Paradise. Halis Planned State or Forge could be fun too. If the AI can't handle Stealth Ships I propose we restrict their use to a scouting role -- no offensive combat or pillaging allowed.

I like the idea of aiming for Ascension while adding a constraint that would force us into some military action. One option is something along the lines of "Must win by Ascension while >150% of the largest AIs score".

Edit: I'm leaning towards Emperor difficulty as well.

The early game is interesting with fighter/bombers so easily accessible in the tech tree. Since they can re-base to any System or Starbase in the Empire, it seems to be easier to go with a paper military during the early game.

I'll second a "Stealth Ships can only scout" rule, although frankly a recon mission with a fighter or bomber is typically stronger: they can see 3 or 4 squares from the "recon" point, so 8-10 squares from their launch point. And, yes, they can scout in Closed Border zones, without any Cold War-esque incidents.

Fighters and bombers are great, but they can't kill stacks of units very well, just soften them up for the rest of your guns. Bombers and Starbases are the only collateral-dealers in the game (I'm not sure about Starbases, but they act like they should). A paper defense early is probably the way to go, but some fighters or bombers doing recon missions gives us plenty of warning, and PDS are cheap. Fighters have 1 more range, but bombers are much better at ship-killing.

Standard everything/large size/no huts: OK. I wish they had events, those could be a ton of fun.

T-hawk said:

Religions are replaced by "Values". Like standard Civ, each value is founded by the first civ to research a particular tech. They spread automatically or by missionary. Values have the same effects as religions: +1 culture, and +1 happy if a city has your State Value. Additionally, each Value enables a particular building with a unique effect. Each Value-specific building also provides +3 Influence. There is no shrine, so there is no value in spreading a value to foreign empires except for diplomatic reasons.

Click to expand...

Do you remember if you can build the unique building if the value is present, but is not your state value system? If so this would give weight to founding values, even if we didn't want to adopt them for diplomatic reasons.

Signing in and looking forward to learning this mod with you guys. I had a play around a few nights ago but I'm pretty much a newbie here. Large map is fine by me but I'll leave the rest of the settings to you. The no-anarchy "civ" sounds fun though.

Olodune said:

Do you remember if you can build the unique building if the value is present, but is not your state value system? If so this would give weight to founding values, even if we didn't want to adopt them for diplomatic reasons.

Click to expand...

Lurker's comment :
Yes and at every planet.
Although I haven't played this mod for more than a year or maybe two years,
the civics implementation is awful, those special buildings were great for a victory.
Btw, nothing beats a 4 movement battleship (Brotherhood), .

Olodune said:

Do you remember if you can build the unique building if the value is present, but is not your state value system? If so this would give weight to founding values, even if we didn't want to adopt them for diplomatic reasons.

Click to expand...

Yes, same as temples/etc in regular Civ. And yes, founding a value to gain access to the building can be worthwhile. Just because founding a value is often the only way to get access to it. Long-range spread is quite rare since trade connections come so late and advocates (missionaries) take forever if the AI even builds any at all.

I think we have all our game settings:
Difficulty: Emperor
Civ: Leonard Pritchard of Paradise (Free Mag-Lev network on every planet, -1 happy, +2 influence)
Map size: Large
Opponents: 7 (one fewer than standard for large, but FF only has 8 civs)
Speed: Normal
Star system quantity: Normal
Feature density: Normal
Hostile features: Normal

Victory: All enabled except Influence. I like Olodune's goal: ascendance victory with at least 1.5x score of the top AI civ, so we'll do some conquering.

One snag: No Tribal Villages doesn't work for this map script. Space wreckage spawns anyway. Options to deal with this would be 1) just play with it, 2) have a lurker delete them in worldbuilder (though WB can cause other problems with FF), or 3) edit the FF map script to remove them. Any suggestions?

Edit: I got the map script edit approach to work.

def addGoodies():
return None

Spreading more than 2 values around might be too much of a hammer investment, systems are not very specialized, it's mostly "this system is better than that one, because it's older and/or has more and bigger planets"

The UBs for the values are, more-or-less in order of how good I think they are:
Power: 35H, +3, +2XP/unit (scales at 1x, 2x, 3x, unlike Training Compound's 1x, 3x, 5x. Training compound costs 40, gives no Culture). 10XP units are far superior to 2XP or 6XP ones, that third promotion allows +1 speed on ships.
Knowledge: 50H, +3, +15% (University is 60H, 1, +25%)
Wealth: 35H, +3, +20% (Banking System is 40H, +25%)
Religion: 35H, +3, +1, +1 per 20% (Sports Arena is 40H, probably less culture, I think same happy bonuses)
Survival: 35H, +3, +1 (Recycling Center is 40H, +1. Once your pop gets to 2-3, food surplus is usually plenty to pay 2/citizen instead of 1, so health cap isn't nearly as critical as happiness or planet size)

I agree with Tatran: The civics are not terribly well-balanced. We'll talk about which ones best fit our civ later; I'd be surprised if we don't do Monarchy for the early-game (Bureaucracy). Others, depends. Pacifism has potential, but depends on how light we're going on military. And we only have 100 to finance deficit research, since there's no hut cash.

The other option for wreckage is to set a limit on how many techs we can get from wreckage (say, 2). Once we've gotten that many techs, we may not pop any wrecks that don't come from border expansions. Nor are we likely to be able to get any wrecks from border expansions, unless it's within the first border expansion.

Edit: Nice, so we don't have to worry about huts at all. Now, if only events existed in this game, they could be fun.

deleted irrelevant post

Edit: I got the map script edit approach to work.

Click to expand...

I will lurk with interest.

So here we go! I've rolled our start, and here it is in excruciating detail so all the lurkers and looky-loos can follow along. Let's take any discussion for now and I'll play the 15 turns tomorrow night.



Here's our star.



Wow, space is big. OK, let's take a more useful look at the system.



This set of planets will be slow to start, but has good potential. Every start (I think) gets one Earth-like planet, at 3 food, 1 hammer, and 2 commerce, plus a nutrient and mining facility. With our free Mag-Lev Network for being Paradise, that takes the planet to 4-2-3 total. Of course our first citizen wants to live here. It's a paradise! Unfortunately, planet Paradise is small and can only hold 1 population!

So our best planet will be the next one:



Gamma Aten is a size 3 (biggest possible) planet. It's from the dark yellow category, at 2-2-1 base production plus the mag-lev network. This is a very good starter planet, high on food and hammers. We'll want nutrient and mining facilities here ASAP.

Here's our other four planets:



Planet #4, Pisces Zeta, is another winner. Light yellow planets are great, at 1-1-6 base production, with food to self-sustain (each pop consumes only 1 food) and a monster 6 commerce. That's basically riverside gems in regular Civ terms - and 3 of them since it's a big planet! We can't reach it until our system has 50 influence, but that's okay, as the food and hammers from Gamma Aten are more important in the short run.

Hestia Rho, the next planet, is a miss. 2-0-3 white planets are fairly uninteresting, roughly akin to coastal tiles in regular Civ. Nu Leo is also a miss. 0-2-5 blue planets aren't very good, roughly akin to a plains cottage. Both of these planets can only hold 1 population, so they're not worth building the booster improvements. (The city screen doesn't actually show the population sizes for planets you can't reach, but the visual size of the planet indicates it.) Finally, Gamma Apollo is another 2-2-1 like Gamma Aten and will be worthwhile once we accumulate 500 influence to reach it.

Our only build choices are a Colony Ship (settler) or Planetary Defense Ship (roughly an archer, can also scout) and the latter is obvious for now.

Finally, what tech do we want to research? Here's the tech chart. I've circled the Values. From top to bottom, the four available techs will take 11, 11, 15, and 25 turns.