[MoO] ICEMOD: mod design, race design, strategies

[Rocco.40]

ICE 15 has some cool new changes and is now part of the new 1.50.8 pack

- Toxic planets can be converted to Barren with a Weather Controller that introduces
Fungi into the toxic climate, cleaning up the pollutants. Weather Controller can
now be built on Toxic and Barren planets, but not on Radiated ones.

- AI is now able to research hyper advanced fields! it will do up to 2 levels of
power, chemistry and computers; 3 levels of physics and fields. AI will not tech
advanced levels of construction, sociology and biology. Since AI can now enjoy
miniaturization for the high technologies, the 25% space cheat for AI Titans and
Doom Stars has been removed.

- Federation government now enjoys a 10% moral bonus.

- To create equal base for torpedoes, the missile ammo base for space calculations
has been set to 10 for both satellite and missile base. Star Base space has been
reduced to 460 (500), Battlestation and Star Fortress accordingly. Satellite space
allocs for weaponry have been updated to 33 17 16 34 (30 15 15 40). Missile Base
space has been increased to 475 (355) and will have L0-L2 9,8,10 instead of 9,8,9
missiles.

- Enabled 'simplified_beam_formula' that fixes classic formula irregularities:
- Accuracy on ranges 6+ becomes lower.
- Large beam BA - BD delta won't cause range penalty to be ignored.
(Range 6+ is 7+ squares for Pd, 16+ for normal and 34+ for Hv.)

- Limited Defensive Fire to range 1 and 2, with static chances to fire 100% and 50%
per square.

- Energy Absorber and Proton Torpedo swapped places in the tech tree.

- Absorber back to 25% (30) damage absorption.

- Rangemaster Unit moves to Advanced Optronics (900 RP) and Emissions Guidance takes
its place in Positronics (2000 RP).

- Anti-Matter Torpedo speed reduced from 24 to 22.

- Proton Torpedo no longer is instant hit with 24 sq range, instead has speed of 24.

- Plasma Torpedo speed increased from 25 to 26.

- Graviton Bomb damage is 10-40 instead of 12-48. (Classic was 5-40.)

- Leader costs:
- Famous leader cost 3 6 instead of 2 4.
- Navigator* cost 3 instead of 4.
- Spy Master cost 2 4 instead of 3 6.

- Random events adjusted once more.

 

[Blacklanner]

Rocco I love your mod!

I discovered it recently and I've been playing obsessively. I find ice-x extremely challenging but I can usually win if I avoid an early war. Ai ships seem to have extreme bonuses to beam attack and defense, even for races with no bonus(doubly so for races with bonuses to one or both). This makes early war suicide. I havent been able to blitz the ai successfully with any race so far.

I haven't tried demo much but my impression so far from lots of games with the other governments is that feudal is now the strongest option. I always combine with lg art hw to help early research. As long as my closest neighbors aren't repulsive I can win with any non repulsive feudal race. I typically lose about -15% total science compared to dict in the early and mid game, less if I get a good science leader early. In exchange I get +33% effective production for ships with no polluton increase which is a huge help for expansion and getting a large enough fleet to not be an ai target. For ship production it's probably better than uni's +50 for non tolerant races early game although I haven't done the math on that. Late game with advanced government it's still about -15% effective science vs dict because dict has a 20%morale adv, but you have +100% effective ship production. with morale stacking multiplicativly on top of that. you build and research better than uni and get oodles of extra race points. I'll have to load up classic to check but I feel like feudal used to be a penalty to total science from researchers(so muplicative -50% on everything but buildings,scout labs and the researcher ability. In ice x it is defiantly only -30%base, which means a world with a good science or even spiritual leader produces more science than a non feudal world without a science leader. Non repulsive can usually get such a leader early, stick then on the large art hw and tech away.

I think feud/tol/cyber/lg/art/war/+spy/-growth is my best combo. Cyber helps a little in combat and is a small Econ boost from less freighters. More importantly it makes it easier to feed everyone without farming on your research hw. Tol gives some pop cap boost, clears tech conflicts with pollution reducers and prevents cyber+pollution from crippling you early game. Warlord lets you support all those cheap ships feudal lets you build and gives some bonus attack and defense so you have a chance vs ai bonuses. +spy makes it possible to steal most key techs you cant research.

my easiest win was a Cha and cre variant where I got matrix and mentox both fairly early, had treaties with everyone, and was out researching icex psilons with a feudal race. I think that race was feud/Aqua/lg/art/Cha/cre/+prod/-pop Lots of luck in my favor that game and a very easy diplo win because everyone loved me.

 

[StormyFacade]

I'm curious, is there supposed to be no ability to build a weather controller as a Lithovore on ICE M-15? I can't terraform toxic planets in this version, which is kinda annoying tbh. :/

 

[Rocco.40]

[...] my easiest win was a Cha and cre variant where I got matrix and mentox both fairly early, had treaties with everyone, and was out researching icex psilons with a feudal race. I think that race was feud/Aqua/lg/art/Cha/cre/+prod/-pop Lots of luck in my favor that game and a very easy diplo win because everyone loved me.

Glad you'r liking the mod!
Yeah, with a crea-charisma race you can fully abuse the moo2 diplomacy system and smooth your way to victory. It has been discussed in this thread before, can't remember on which page tho...

I'm curious, is there supposed to be no ability to build a weather controller as a Lithovore on ICE M-15? I can't terraform toxic planets in this version, which is kinda annoying tbh. :/

Since Lithovores do not get Biomorphic Fungi in their techtree, they are not able to build the weather controller on toxic, radiated or barren worlds and thus cannot terraform toxics.
It's indeed a drawback of this implementation. You can change the building needed to terraform toxic planets, by adjusting parameter "toxic_can_become_barren = weather_controller;" to a building of your choice.

 

[Rocco.40]

[...]So, with that said.. what the heck negatives do people take with this mod? I no longer feel like I can actually take any of them, except -10 ground combat. They're all actually BAD, and the AI isn't so bad/slow that I can rely on tech to fix them. I'm also considering Feudal just because it at least has some benefits attached to it. This game was -10 ground combat, -10 spying, uncreative.

Take some time to read to this thread and also https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/icemod-strategy-and-walkthroughs.551679/, hopefully you can find some guicedance / ideas there.

 

[Nelphine]

oh, thank you! i was looking for that thread after reading this full thread

 

[Rocco.40]

oh, thank you! i was looking for that thread after reading this full thread

Also, just this week an ice player posted a video of a moo2 ice-x game.
It's without music and commentary, but still an interesting watch if you are looking for new ideas:

 

[Rocco.40]

ICE 17 has some cool new changes; highlights:

• 
  - Enabled keep_research_on_breakthrough:
  • Accumulated research points exceeding doubled research cost of tech being researched will carry over.
  - Planet defenses base hit points is now 120 instead of 100!
  - Civilian structures marginally increase with armor tech now; hit points are:
  • 100/120/140/160/180/200 instead of always 100.
  - Missile Base space reduced by 60 = 2 missiles less.
  - Fighter Garrison now has 2x2 flights for all fighter types.
  - Misc. weapons, weapon mods and special systems balancing.
  - Updated AI ship designs.
  - Galis, the Financial Leader, now has the improved (*) Financial Leader skill instead of the regular one.

 

[Rocco.40]

ICE 18 makes use of scripting to achieve the following:

1. Choosing High-G World will make you homeworld Huge.
2. The AI Gnolam race now starts on a small Gaia planet instead of a medium Terran one.

 

[Rocco.40]

Neilkaz, answering your question here since it's about ICE:
"[...] I don't recall that Damper Fields were supposed to affect planets. Perhaps somehow I missed this over the years? Please elaborate as once you have Dampers there's no reason to tech any planetary shields (assuming you researched basic Radiation Shields so you could terraform."
In ICE, planetary defensive buildings are equipped with damper field instead of regular shields if the player possess that technology.
So Damper replaces ship shields, not planet shields. Planetary shield is applied prior damper's reduction.

 

[Rocco.40]

I'm curious, is there supposed to be no ability to build a weather controller as a Lithovore on ICE M-15? I can't terraform toxic planets in this version, which is kinda annoying tbh. :/

New ICE 19 uses patch version 12 ability to place Fungi in the techtree for Lithovore races, solving this issue.

 

[OgnevodAS]

Rocco I'm curious to know what was the thought process when you removed autofire from Lasers: from my point of view the ICE as well as original tech tree (and to some degree emphasis on prod focused races) pigeon holes player to rely mostly on Nuclear missiles till pretty late into the game when captured or much later tech allows some diversity, but at that point game essentially finished.

Of course Creative research races may opt for beams designs: there is no need to pick obvious winners in research fields (Pollution Proc is a must, so no Merculite; I-cells or in some cases Atmo, so still on Nuckes; Zort over Zeon Miss; Ion Drive over Ion Cannon; Tac Com over Battle Scanner for prod races is a must; Supercomp over Optronic and Rangemaster etc.). But Crea races was always on the weak side - way to fragile and slow.

Combine that with the 4 HP Nuckes and no autofire on (pd) lasers at seems for me there is only one effective way to play the ICE/Original game in current state.

I'm not an expert player so maybe I'm missing something?

 

[Rocco.40]

Rocco I'm curious to know what was the thought process when you removed autofire from Lasers: [...]

autofire is still avail for Laser.
it was armor piercing that was removed not auto fire;
from 'story' perspective i think AP fits better on mass driver / gauss.
also i found the AP mod a bit too much (against AI) for the ultimate entry level beam:
since with prod race you can do tech path laser/fusion/battle scanner, and then basically build laser-CA's only for attacking star bases.
such beams do internal systems damage from round1, immediately crippling star base offenses.

i showcased this in below 5 minute video.
it's played in classic, so in ice you would need at least two of those ships instead of one:

 

[civvver]

I still have just been playing the base game but can confirm, production race beats the crap out of creative. By far the best build is, going the standard repulsive, -ground d, -ship d for 20 total trait points:

Unification (6)
Tolerant (10)
+1 prod (3)
large home world (1)
This race gives you half the value of subterranean with tolerant, as until you reach terran planet size they get a big boost in capacity on planets. Late game your population per planet isn't nearly as important as you should be far ahead anyway with tons of planets. Then being non creative, tolerant also simplifies probably the most excruciatingly different tech tree to pick from in chemistry. It has really vital missile, fuel cell, pollution control and armor techs. With tolerant you eliminate one of those factors and juggling the rest becomes much easier due to where they lie in the tree. Then of course you leverage it with unification and +1 prod to produce tons of colony ships and expand fast. Build housing to boost your population to insane levels early game. The increased farming from unification helps you a lot with this expansion too. You'll just be so far ahead of the creative races it won't matter they have more tech. I win impossible on every size with any number of AI opponents before they have 4 planets all the time with this race.

Second best I've found, but it's a distant second:
Tolerant (10)
Creative (8)
Rich home world (2)
Tolerant kind of wastes a lot creative has going for it in getting all the techs in chemistry, but it gives you population capacity and production right off the bat so it's good. Rich home world as least gives you a solid base to expand out of, and creative leverages being able to get all the morale buildings. Late game this race will out produce a unified race by a lot as I think morale bonuses get you up to 250% increased production (on tech too!) while unification advanced is only 100% bump. The down side is expansion is drastically slower since you need to build marine barracks at every colony, and you will be hurting for food early.

Third one I like, it's a turtle strat:
Creative (8)
Subterranean (6)
Unified (6)
This trades the advantages of the above race- no pollution, rich home world- for similar advantages with +50 production and food early and not needing barracks so the rate of early expansion is similar. Then you can tech up a ton with your subterranean trait, play D until you get like achilles and megafluxers + high energy focus and one shot enemy ships. Overall it's a little bit harder to get a fleet out with this one compared to a tolerant rich home world, but easier to support expansion with no marine barracks required plus more food coming in.

I kind of hate all lithovore and democracy races. I find democracy the AI just steals all my tech. Lithovore + tolerant is ok, but you can usually just rush to enriched soil and feed all your people just fine with a production race.

 

[Nelphine]

In ice 21 is it intended that multiple different antaran attacks will occur so quickly in succession that they will be able to attack the same planet, on the same turn, ending up with 12 antaran ships to fight?

Also, more generally to Moo2, does killing ships of an antaran attack have any effect on frequency or amount of ships in future antaran attacks?

Ice x 21, only hard, huge 8 opponents, I'm feudal creative +1 industry, lithovore. Had a 45 year or so hyper flux, and antarans took out 4 or 5 of my newest systems that I simply couldn't protect.

Turn after the flux ended, 2 antaran attacks back to back aimed at the same planet, timed to arrive together.
So I sent all 9 of my battleships to fight: 5 frigates, 5 destroyers, 1 cruiser, and 1 battleship.
I lost 8 battleships and destroyed all except the antaran battleship before I fled, but does that do anything, or is it a complete waste to cause attrition damage to antarans?

Edit: I have my answer. There wasn't a single antaran attack after that before I won the game (council vote). So I must assume attrition works against them.

I just have to say, it seems winning by council vote happens too fast. Sure I was creative, but I was also feudal, and I never went to war with anyone, but I still won by council vote before I had a single ship that could hurt the guardian at orion (which matches discussions on fastest fleets that could kill orion, as that discussion puts ice orion kills around 220-230, and I wasn't going for a fastest ever kill.)

 

[Rocco.40]

[...] I just have to say, it seems winning by council vote happens too fast. Sure I was creative, but I was also feudal, and I never went to war with anyone, but I still won by council vote before I had a single ship that could hurt the guardian at orion (which matches discussions on fastest fleets that could kill orion, as that discussion puts ice orion kills around 220-230, and I wasn't going for a fastest ever kill.)

If you manage to get a 2/3 council majority soon, then: well played and a deserved win imo.

 

[Nelphine]

Ok, good to hear. My concern was that the technologies required for very high population (terraforming plus high industry, say, robo miners and at least one pollution control) seem lower than those required to defeat orion or Antares. And in turn, in the mod, defeating those seems to have been at least somewhat based on reasonable times to be at war with the ai players, but still keep the techs you gain from orion relevant.

So if you aren't gaining techs from orion until 230-250, then aren't you inherently going to have an extreme population based on the techs for increasing population by that time?

Maybe it depends on the size of the galaxy, since the ai seem bad at growing population. (Not colonizing bad planets, not terraforming, not investing enough in economy in general). So on huge, there's enough space for the human to just take over, but on lower ones that space just doesn't exist even if the AI has problems using it?

 

[Rocco.40]

[...] , since the ai seem bad at growing population. (Not colonizing bad planets, not terraforming, not investing enough in economy in general).

What difficulty are you playing on nowadays? Seems you can up it a notch if the ai doesn't give you sufficient pressure.. )

 

[Nelphine]

Heh only hard. But it was a completely runaway win where the AI could only have threatened me prior to turn 100, so I figured even if I got super lucky (I did), that better players than I could probably replicate it, which is why got me thinking about population techs .

I'll do it a few more times on hard before I claim I'm ready for impossible.

 

[zitro]

Edited to add hull/command point feedback

I have played two games so far with MOO1.50 + ICE and really enjoying the gameplay enhancements while maintaining the original feel and core concepts of the game (for example, it does not dramatically increase stats on all categories just because).

Some of my observations:

Race Selection:
*High G is finally a very good trait thanks to staring with a huge HW. Shouldn't it be mutually exclusive with large HW?
*I don't see anything very glaring here but I do find Rich HW and Charismatic quite expensive. A few traits seem slightly cheaper than expected (generally population related ones, see Sakkra), but nothing game-breaking

Command points: given the flexibility of modding would it be appropriate to have higher halls cost more and smaller cost less to make them more relevant? Modern moo does this
1-1-2-4-7-10?

something that for me is a random wish:
Frigates with their 1 command point cost are almost useless. Part of me wishes frigates are a variation of size 2 that is faster but has less space or structure.

Technology Construction:
*I continue neglecting anti-missile rockets unless their space cost is 10 or less.
*A bit of a concern grouping heavy armor with automated factories, but fits the theme of 'manufacturing' so I'm unsure how to separate automated factories that wouldn't involve moving heavy armor much later and requiring many tech shifts.
*Should megafluxers have a lower space percentage bonus or require a higher cost like battlepods? Should star fortresses grant more (+4) command points? Megafluxers are an obvious choice.


Technology Chemistry:
*I can see more interesting choices if the unlimited fuel tech replaces uridium (it does not deserve 15000rp) and move a +2 version of microlite construction to the 15000rp spot

Technology Sociology:
*Astro University is underwhelming and chosen alone. It would be great if the bonuses were +2 to all as opposed to +1 to all. At the very least (if +1), its cost should be halved.

Technology Biology:
*Bioterminator and death spores - can they kill ground troops as opposed to population? I find these useless the way they are (as your ships can bomb a planet in one turn)

Physics:
*The ground combat bonus from fusion rifle is underwhelming. Maybe laser could be +0 to make it more worthwhile.
*Still not sure what the bombs are for, other than bomber bays. With fairly underwhelming late-stage planet shields, torpedoes/missiles take care of planets from a distance.
*PD usually seems not worth it at 50% space or because of the higher range penalties.
*Beam 'angle' mod is quite expensive and rarely, if ever worth it. I'd suggest +30% for the 360 degree version.