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

[Muton]

OK, played ICEMODX.EXE /nowh
very easy win at 331 turn
Well, I have... sort of cheated

Since you scared me, and I hate losing, I played safe
standard play: huge/prewarp/impossible/8players/all on
Race was creative/sub/charismatic

Play nice with everyone, give away lots of techs,
Nobody never make war with me.
I got 6 systems (11 planets total, only 1 UR)
at about t250 the birds take Orion.
at about t280 the 2 repulsive players (trills and coids) get exterminated
at about t300 total war... the 5 remaining AI start global extermination
with each others, they leave me alone.
at t331 I was a little bored of being ignored and I used the portal.
Game Over. I win.

lolling myself I give a second try, as production race:
made contact with klackon on turn 21
Klackon destroy Sol on turn 31
Klackon destroy my 2nd and last colony on turn 42

after pick up my jaw from the floor I take try nr3:
charisma/subt/artifact
made contact with psilon, sakkra and coids
they stole my tech as fast as I discovered it
contact with darlock and klackon
start trading everything just after discover
Got the imperium leader and the assassin black razor
they stop the spying, but I still have only the homeword plus
a poor colony base
I managed to make 2 colony ship, but no planet in range,
Darloks took all of them
framed for spying the Klackons, I still have only the homeword.
blockaded.
managed to resist until ~120, then klackon destroy my only 2 planets

well... no words nr4:
H-G/subt/large/arti/repu/+spy
great research blitz RoboFactory, SuperComp, StockEx
t128 contact with cats.
t132 they conquest my undefended homeworld.

OK then, I will retry the creative charisma guy for nr 5:
Start research. Friendly Trilly and friendly Birds
but the trilly make a colony in my second planet (second of two)
in homeworld. Ok, stay friendly. Play nice generous guy,
I will take revenge later...
Cats and Coids, then Psilon. I play nice and i got 3 poor systems
all surrounded by Trilly. Still OK. Got leader omniscent.
Contact with Ferengis. Bears too far away.
t242 the Birds took Orion.
No more sistems left. Global war.
Bird kill Coids. Trills kill Cats.
I stay out of war, now is plenty of vacant systems.
I grow stronger. No more Bears. No more Psilon.
At ~t300 Ferengis are left with 3 systems, I have 12.
I never had to combat a single battle.
Goodby Ferengis. Birds and Fish are killing each other
like mad. I stick with my 12 systems plus Orion, since is
now free of birds.
~t360 Birds are gone and Trills are left with 6 systems on
the SE corner. I conquest the poor Fishes with a fleet of
DoomStars with distruptors, a brutal win at t371. No strtategy
involved, just a click on auto.

Will these count as 2 victories over 5 games? Or I have just
exploited the AI?
Sorry Rocco, this is too much for me, I will start playing at
a lower level for now.
The only feedback I can give you is that AI vs AI, the repulsive
races are always the first ones to fall (in my modest 5games
experience).
But by no means DO NOT lower the difficulty. This is the
Impossible level, and should be impossible! Is no fun if you
already know you will win 90% of the times (like in vanilla MOO2).

 

[Rocco.40]

From your feedback my belief gets strenghtened that I have valued Charismatic too low (edit: but will not change until more experience is gathered). When moved to 20pt system already upped it from 4 to 5 pts, but perhaps the original 6pts was good in the first place. And yes, as have written before Repulsive is one of the worst qualities for an a.i. to have, it cannot swap techs with its a.i. buddies and as you describe, everybody starts to hate them pretty soon. For a human player, repulsive is -9 points but for a a.i. player I have valued Repulsive at -12. Charismatic and Repulsive are very strong modifiers in single player games.

Maybe I could lure you into trying one more ICEx, playing as Creative, without the Charisma ability? You could still bribe the a.i. with useless tech presents but without the extra charm.
Reason for asking is with the 20pt system I actually lowered Creative value from 16 to 15, which I think is fair. But perhaps with your playing style you might reach some new insight and get a 3rd win?

 

[neilkaz]

Neilkaz, does below text also apply for gog version the game, is there an 'options.bat' or does it work differently?

I think things may be a bit different for DOSBox. I am not a programmer so I don't understand this as well as you do. I definitely have to specify ICEMODx to play IceX as just using ICEMOD launches the easier version.

I have something similar to what you specify here, but slightly different. When I get home in a few hours I'll post the .config files I changed.

Edit: In my MOO2 directory I have to change dosboxMOO2_client, dosboxMOO2_server, dosboxMOO2_single

 

[Muton]

OK, I'm a masochist!
2 creative no charisma plays, lose both.

game nr6
+1 research
dictator
low-G
Subterranean
Large HW
Arti HW
Creative
(No charisma, and I will refrain from diplo leaders)
darlock, bears and ferengi near me.
Not willing to enter trade until some gift.
Got xenopsichology.
Now they are big friends. They spy like mad but I do not
complain at all.
Everytime a tech is stolen, I give this tech to
everyone other.
got 2 so-so systems.
Elerians and Meklon join. Make them friends.
Also the birds. Best friend.
Got commander with lore. Psilon too far away.
Researched psionics. No more spies.
Start giving away all the offensive techs (but never
the defensive one, unless already spoiled).
Got robo-miner. If I can reach DeepCore I can terra
easily and get up with population.
No defense, no fleet, everyone love me.
Around t200 antarans attack. Lost a colony.
few turn later they attack again. lost another colony.
At about t220 Antarans attack for the 3rd time in a row.
Lost a system. I have no colony ship and Darlock quickly
grab the system.
No more free systems and wars start to pop between AIs.
Darlock ask Irra, one of my systems (I have only 2!)
I refuse. They cancelled the treaty and few turn later
I was framed. Gnolam and Elerian cancelled treaties.
Elerian declare war. Darlock attack and destroy my
Homeworld at t232.
Too much suffering... I surrender to the birds.
If the Antarans have not attacked 3 times on a row, I
think I may have won this. Anyway, I lost.

game nr7
same race but switch +1 research for trader (1 picks left)
Good start
t80 find friendly meklar
t90 not so friendly klackon (I hate them)
t110 ready for my 3rd system, but klackon took the planet first
I Manage to bribe the Ants and make them friend.
Colonizing the other direction... Coids!
I get framed for spying the Klackon.
I try to bribe them. Non Aggro Pact but cost me a lot.
next turn klackon declare war despite the NAP.
My Starbase repel first wave of Klackon cruisers but...
Sorry, I give away at t137
I'm surronded by xenophobic Klackons and repulsive Coids,
no way I can win this if also Ants are hostile.

Apparently Charisma will give me the extra bit needed to win.
I'm hopeless without.
But just to remember you about the repulsive<->charisma
dimension of the game: for me, a big part of the charisma thing
are the leaders you get. Better leaders, better bonuses and
some good free tech. You can balance the repu<->charisma
not only with picks but also manipulating the leaders
abilities. Nerfing leaders will help the repulsives who do not
get them. So, IMO, leaders are the way to go for balancing,
I do not really care about 3 or 4 more or less picks (I can get
-Ground combat or even -growth rate if creative, I don't care).

On the other side:
The joy of this game is the random element. You can get lucky
with a leader or get screw by an amoeba attacking your HW early on.
I already seen many vanilla MOO2 players who make the game like a
to-do list: Select Uni/Tol or Demo/Lit and follow the list for
maximum profit, disabling Antarans and random since they can
distrupt your project. So, please Rocco, don't flatten leaders
too much.
And if you can create a super-race, who care. Since ICEMod is aimed
for single-players, after a while, like in vanilla MOO2, you get
bored of playing Uni/Tol and start playing with races with some
more "personality". (just say this cause I really like your work)

And now I will go for some Icemod play. Icemod, without the X,
so I can enjoy the game and not suffer pain and stress...

 

[Muton]

@ Neilkaz
an easy but less than elegant solution for your DosBox problems:
Install the game
make a copy of the orion 2 folder (in case you want to play vanilla)
install ICEMod
rename ORION2.EXE as ORION2.EXE-copy (or similar)
rename ICEMODX.EXE as ORION2.EXE
profit...

Please Neilkaz, don't take it as an insult since is so obvious and probably
you already know, but if you are not familiar with DOS,
maybe you do not know about the various switches of the game.
(I usually play with no wormholes)
Valid for v1.4x and ICE too
http://lordbrazen.blogspot.it/2005/01/moo2v140-patch-faq.html
Just try to help...

 

[Rocco.40]

will put the switches also in the ICE excel as they got burried in my readme.txt after so many versions

 

[Rocco.40]

Edit: In my MOO2 directory I have to change dosboxMOO2_client, dosboxMOO2_server, dosboxMOO2_single

Ok, looks like MOO2 from gog.com works differently from when you have seperately installed DOSBox and the old MOO2 cd.

- Does this mean you have a "DOXBox.exe" in the MOO2 directory?
- These 3 configs, you can edit them with notepad or something?

 

[neilkaz]

Ok, looks like MOO2 from gog.com works differently from when you have seperately installed DOSBox and the old MOO2 cd.

- Does this mean you have a "DOXBox.exe" in the MOO2 directory?
- These 3 configs, you can edit them with notepad or something?

These configs are in the MOO2 directory and I can edit them directly just by changing them.

I also recall doing something a while back that I found on gog forum to make the game take up my entire 24" monitor. Planets are a tad oval shaped but so what!

 

[neilkaz]

My game with my super race UniProd+2Food+1ArtiLRHWGC+10 with negs LG and Rep is going superbly. I am very dominant at T258pw. I expect to win this IceX game.

EDIT: Here's a basic game summary of my IceX win (PreWarp as always). I spawned along the center of the left edge and sold the SB as usual with a power production race to accelerate my start. I decided to expand towards the upper corner as there seemed to be more systems along the edge (not wanting early contact). After a while I found a system guarded by a dragon with a huge LG rich planet. I just had to have that planet so I sped thru Chem techs to MIRV nukes and then sent 13 FF's to kill it. This seemed to be a couple more than needed.

Hmm..I meet the Darloks in the left corner and they are Subt with +100 growth but have only 3 systems being shut in by me and an empty system preventing them from expanding along the upper edge. Quickly I use stored PP to make 3 spies but my techs still get stolen. Darloks must be killed and I want those Subt beings on all my planets to increase their pop max. I attack with remaining FF and follow up with a couple of BB. Lack of ground troops and GC techs slowed me as did a couple of revolts but on T156pw the last Darlok planet was mine. I also met the Coids and Gnols to my right and their systems were quite intertwined but they rarely warred.

I simply expanded and built up concentrating on pop and tech and heading thru Physics so I could kill the Guardian on T240 with Maulers. Gnols decided to send their fleet thru a nebula to try to colonize a planet in one of my systems. This was the perfect opportunity to pin their troll-like ears back and having good GC now having passed on Robos for Powered Armor (Bears in the game to my upper right) I made ships to capture Gnol ships. Scrapping them gave me a nice infusion of cash along with some techs.

The last Gnol planet became mine on T269. A few turns prior the Cats (Lower right of galaxy) decided to send their fleet to cheery pick a Gnol planet. I took that planet first and waited there to jump the Cats destroying and capturing a good portion of their 20 warship fleet. All the while I expanded aggressively with artificial planets, cloners and Advanced City Planning with the idea of being big enough to win the next election.

Finally on T281 the election came and I barely won with 120 of my own votes vs 179 total! The last Cat planet was going to fall next turn.

This game I captured 9 Antaren ships and 6 blew up.

I tested a few races to see how strong they can be. DemoLith can add Res+1 and Arti now and start with 72 rp/t. I saved a DemoLith start for later.

I feel that I am a considerably better player with super production races than super tech races so next game started in UniTolFoodRHW which can generate 45 pp/t from the HW or 18 rp/t. I spawned in the middle but will gamble selling the SB in hopes that my race is strong enough to not get blitzed by a couple AI's.

Again, to those reading here who haven't tried Ice or IceX using these races vs 1.31 is basically Sandbox difficulty compared to IceX where I fully expect that I can lose games sometimes even with these races.

 

[Rocco.40]

Sounds like a good game!

- Good Timing to capture Orion at T240 (PW). On my Avg games, a.i. typically starts to try to capture Orion after T250, not sure how that translates to PW. In fact, I should start my own PW game soon and will write about it here.

- Concerning research, in the latest ICE edition R+1 has been made slightly cheaper at 5 picks, but we need to build some experience to see if that discount is sufficient to balance production and research races.

 

[neilkaz]

Thx Rocco, my usual style of killing a race if it is in the way to get room to expand greatly and work on pop max and tech and then killing other races, always taking planets rather than destroying them so as to add to pop.

Re: Research+1 I'd not go below +5.

Re: Race picks. Could you please add the 45/21 race picks for IceX to this
http://moo2mod.com/MOO2_racepick_compare.jpg

Thx, neilkaz ..

 

[Rocco.40]

Check!

 

[Rocco.40]

ICE MOD version 10h Changes - May 7, 2015
=============================

Base Psilon race loses its GC-10 penalty.
Base Meklar race gains GC+10 bonus - it's the suits!
> Stock races with 23 picks: Gnolam, Klackon, Silicoid.
Stock races with 25 picks: Elerians, Humans, Meklars.
Stock races with 24 picks: the rest.

Increased a.i. ECO value of growth to 3.75 for +50% and 7.5 for +100% (was 3.5 / 7).
Increased a.i. ECO value of production from 3 to 3.25 and from 6 to 6.5 for P+1 and P+2.
Other changed ECO values:
Low-G -6.5 (-7)
High-G 2 (1)
Repulsive -7 (-6)
Spy +30 3.25 (3.75)

Set ECO value target for regular IMP at 19 (20) and IMPx at 22.5 (22.25) so as to increase the difference between the two.

> Leading to some tweaks in race variants on Hard, IMP and IMPx. (Gnolam & Trilarian lose spying bonuses)
> Regular IMP and IMPx difference is mainly absence of growth boni in regular IMP.

Re-introduced a Darlok and Sakkra Repulsive IMP variant, one each.
> ICEx IMP now has 4 possible Repulsive races:
1 Bulrathi, 1 Darlok, 1 Sakkra, 1 Trilarian.
> ICE IMP has 5 possible Repulsive races:
1 Bulrathi, 1 Darlok, 1 Meklar, 1 Sakkra, 1 Trilarian.

Corrected ECO calc. formula error for 2 Elerian IMPx variants that led to too many abilities.
> Reduced abilities.

Leader Cassandra no longer brings Xeno Psychology.
Space Port and Xeno Psychology swap places in the tech tree.

Battle Scanner apparently always gave +50 bonus still. Corrected description to +50.

New pages in ICEMOD.xls with leader abilities and Monster stats.

**
This will be the last ICE update for a while (unless we find serious bugs or I am able to change Feudal in the way I like). I think with the 10h finetuning of the races, a nice balance has been achieved between them and there is sufficient delta between the ICE regular and X mods. I have released 10 versions over the last two months, which is a relentless pace and each version has had many hours of work. Now it is time for me to just enjoy playing some ICE games without thinking about potential improvements all the time.

ENJOY MOO2 ICE

R

 

[humbe]

Never knew anyone was modding Moo2 before a week ago.. Guess I'll have to test out your mod.. Creds for effort ..

I'm a bit sceptic to changes though. Don't want to need to relearn how stuff works

 

[Rocco.40]

well, what can I say, as creator of ICE I am biased as to which version I like better
for you there is only one way to find out...

edit: BTW, ICE is not the only mod in town.
There is also the VDC mod, which is heavily optimized for Multi Player games. Antarans in VDC are brutal - at least more than double strength than ICE, if that is your cup of tea

 

[neilkaz]

10xg is plenty hard enough. It looks like 10xh made GC a bit better for Mecks and Psilons and hopefully this is the end of any AI strength increases .

I won my Unitolfood ICEMODx v10g game but it was quite a struggle until I really got going.

I spawned almost in the center near Orion and having 3 new good systems nearby I figured that vs super races I needed to make some ships if I wanted to expand beyond that and I could end up with a total of 13 planets in 4 closely spaced systems and that seemed OK.

Sure enough Bears attack me around T100pw from below me but can't do any damage. As Tolerant, the path thru chem for me is Trit Armor, Merc Missiles, and then I-cells and then I could MIRV nukes but have ships that can stand up in early battle and fire their 2nd salvo of Nukes.

Of course I had fits fighting vs the Bear's GC advantages and often needed 12 transports (ouch the cost). I had to go for powered armor and that helped lots although robo-miners were missed out on. Bears had spread out some by attacking the birds towards the lower left corner. I finally finished them on T169 just as the Lizards from my right attacked and overpowered a small defensive fleet and toke one planet.

I had a few HG UR planets and Grav. Gen helped me make the most of them and with several BB's I was able to push the Sakkra back. Much tech was stolen again from invasions and my spies scored rarely but got a couple useful techs as well.

I decided to go the Mauler route to kill the Guardian and did so on T229pw but the techs obtained weren't awesome. Ants now attacked me from above and took a planet but I was able to hold them off while cleaning up Sakkra systems. After a while, all that remained of Sakkra were a couple of distant planets far out of the way. I let them live as by now, the Birds had attacked.

Many ships were captured in these wars with assault shuttles. However, the Antarans never attacked me, preferring others. I kept expanding by artificial planets, taking systems, and building colonies in captured systems. Terraforming and clones helped, but, of course I had to field a huge fleet and sometimes was slightly CP negative in spite of mutating into Warlord and Hyper Space Comms.

I was nicely dominant and won in the GC with 107 out of 148 votes for myself.

The research ability of these super races can be astounding! On T248pw not only had the Ants researched Stellar Converter, they had one built on a planet in a system I invaded.

Usual crashes in biggish battles when you've captured AI ships meant that this game took me several hours longer than normal to play. I hope you and others can fix these crashes!!

Had one or worse yet two AI's jumped on me earlier I think I'd have lost this. Fortunately, some AI's aren't always keen to attack when you haven't a good sized fleet and economy.

 

[Rocco.40]

Good Game! Cool to read that opponents all took their shot at attacking you Makes the game interesting I believe.

I do remember my surprise the first game when I suddenly had a.i.'s using Stellars around T250. Was not really prepared then.

A.I. can be really strong in armor and weapons now, but sometimes still lacking in the shield department...

10h is balancing out / tweaking, rather than making all races stronger outright.
To clarify some race changes g-h:
- Gnolam all 3 variants lose Spy +10
- Humans all 3 variants lose GC+10.
-Meklar IMPx lost their Arti HW, but via the base race all 3 variants now have GC+10 (used to be only 1 variant)
- Psilons now all 3 have GC0 instead of two variants, two variants lose spy +10 and 1 variant gains LHW.
- Silicoid: democratic variant now is the non-repulsive type (makes more sense) but is pop -50 instead of pop +0 and Silicoid IMP3 now is again Repulsive but has Pop+50 instead of Pop +0
- Trilarians all 3 variants gain GC0 (they were all GC-10 in 10g)

Given my current ratio of wins/losses I was not planning on much stronger races
But if you really wish Neilkaz, we could always create an ICExx

 

[neilkaz]

No stronger races. ICEx super races are just fine.

OK time to play Feudal which is certainly viable now.

My Feudal super race is Lith/P+1/R+1/LRAHW with my negs being Feudal/LG. HW after pollution nets 28 pp/t and 31 rp/t.

I spawned in the lower left corner and would seem to have plenty of expansion room and note that I can build 3 CS for the cost of two for other gov't's.

Two planets to colonize and nearby systems so I sell SB with plans to rebuild it once pollution is under control.

Ouch for now, but nice soon. Dragon kills my 1st scout.

OK onward to T105 (always) pw for me. Gnols too close above me but Garron's diplo bonus helped me get treaties and this billionaire troll leader loves me. Bears too close to my right but they seem to like me also and agreed to stop spying. I made 3 spies as Feudal can be weak vs spies.

Just about to colonize my 7th system and my 2nd previously guarded monster system.

I lead in pop and lead in fleet by a bit as well as buildings. Tech is very close but lead will become mine as I just finished supercomp tech.

Nor more systems to grab it seems but I may decide to share some with my "friends".

 

[Rocco.40]

lets see how loyal your 'friends' will be in the long run
who are your other opponents?

I have just started a new game on - believe it or not - AVG difficulty setting. Haven't played that in ages (except for doing checks). A.I. and Antarans will not be a threat on the AVG level but I'd like to see how the ICE stock races are doing in a full game.

Am starting in a Large galaxy, with 6 players and all AVG. According to the ECO comparison, the Elerian are the weakest stock race @ 7 points, so I will chose to be Elerian. My race is Uni/High-G/GC+20 and Uncreative to bring an unstable element to an average game. Playing Uncreative in ICE, you have protection in the form of guaranteed A.Fact, RLabs, and Cl. III Shield, but you cannot be sure to get Grav. Gen, and that's why I am High-G. My race has 10 picks left, which I will leave as is.

My tech tree has only Tritanium Armor and Heavy Armor, no R. Hull. Only Fusion Drives. There are plenty of guns, including Graviton Beam, and computers so good opportunities to build decent ships, that will be slow and minimal armored. The only polution processing i have is Nano's and Core Waste Dumps...

Lets see how the stock races do! .. This means I will not play aggresively but rather just quietly build economy, defensive forces and see how the a.i.'s will develop. Only when real wars start, I will jump in.

T50- Humans and Trilarians are in the game but I haven't met them yet, so can't say how they are doing. I started in lower left hand corner and around me is much emptyness. Gass Giants, Asteroids and 1 Poor-Huge Tundra, which I settled on. Planets further out are nothing special either. Best planet is Abundant-Medium Barren.

T72- Meet the Humans in upper left corner - via wormhole - they have 4 systems, which is pretty good. The system that i can see has 4 cool planets, ahhh the jealousy.

T75- Have met the Meklars to the right of me. I also traded my Soils to get Deuteriums and it seems all the good systems are 10-14 parsecs away from me.

T100- Of the 3 known a.i.'s the fish and the Human are developing fairly equally, while the Meklars are lagging. They do have 4 systems but their -50 pop growth sets them back in everything but the # ships. Lets see if their Tol pick is any good later in the game.

T105- The Darloks are in the game, but no contact yet. I have met the Mrrshan, who are in the middle right.

T131- First Antaran frigate arrives. According to the graphs, Human development is on par with me. I am leading in Tech and Pop. Humans lead in Buildings and Fleet. Trilarian are not too far behind. Meklar are clearly lagging now in tech. They did have some difficult start compared to other a.i. due to an in the way wormhole.

T161- Darloks steal my Supercomputer despite my many defensive spies. I will now trade the tech with other a.i. for any tech they are willing to offer.

T172- The Mrrshan have almost conquered the Meklar. Meklar have only two systems left. I will take one that will fit nicely in my realm.

T202- Meklar fall due to relentless bashing of the Mrsshan, who are techwise not that strong, but keep pumping out ships. Trilarian are also getting the same treatment. Human are clearly in the lead statistics-wise and Darlok are happily stealing everyones tech, and even on this AVG difficulty game they are quite persistent.

T214- Trilarians fall. Curious to see if Mrrshan will now pick their next neighbour, the Darloks for target practising.

T229- Nope, they pick the Humans, the strongest opponent!

T273- I bail out of this game at via a GC win (could have won it twice earlier). Of the a.i. the Humans stayed economic leader throughout the game and the Mrrshan boosted their reputation as very warlike cats. They were tech wise weakest, but conquered most worlds while Humans played a quite passive game. Antarans are present between T200-T300 with a few destroyers only, as per design.

 

[neilkaz]

OK T132pw in my Feudal game where I started far into the lower left corner.

I have IMP2 Gnols above me, IMP2 Bears to the right of the Gnols and I, and the great IMP3 Ants above us all. Things are crowded here in the left.

I have 7 systems and am developing fine. Bears love me, Ants like me, and maybe twenty turns ago the Gnols broke treaties with me as I was framed and they no longer like me. They're boxed in along the left edge and seem to be held to 4 systems. I have Z-armor now and they don't and I expect my attack on them to commence around T140

Early in the game, Gnols wanted Pol Proc tech from me so I traded for Fighter Garrisons and as usual tech trading increases the AI's relations with you. I traded Pol Proc to the other AI's since they will end up getting it somehow from the Gnols if I don't.