No staggered start.

[Psycedilla]

As many of you others, i find apollo not intresting. Im emperor/immortal player from civ 5. I find emperor no challenge, and immortal to unfair for the player.

Ive played Some apollo games and the ai dont do to good, however i staryed an apollo game with no staggered start, and firstly, lot less resoursepods and expiditions for Me, and secondly, the ai was alot bigger player overall.

So i get 2 conclusions from this.
1. The staggering of starts gives an umfair advantage to the player. My first build is always 2x explorers.
2. The bonuses the ai should get for arriving later is either underwhelming, or not properly adjusted for difficulity level.

How shouldwe fix this? Mayne look at the numbers firstly boost Some of the ai bonuses, but mostly, make the intervall for ai arrival shorter, so you cant steal all pods.

For now, ill play with no staggering.

 

[m15a]

I like the surprise of not knowing when the AI will show up, so I wouldn't want the interval decreased so much that it's predictable.

I'd rather that bonuses are scaled way up depending on level and lateness of arrival. On Apollo level, the latest arrival should be able to declare war on you instantaneously and take over one of your cities if you focused only on exploration or REX to that point. You should be able to think, "Uh oh. ARC (or the SF) didn't land yet and there's empty space on my continent. Maybe I should start building some defense."

 

[ggmoyang]

AI bonus for later start indeed does not have difficulty adjustment, and it should be scaled.
I think if AI started significantly later, it should receive a free colonist or two. And free pops/tiles to capital too.

 

[Ryoga]

Really? Checking the game stats at the end reveals that staggered factions receive from the beginning a lot of free techs and virtues, usually way more than you can get with your headstart even by clearing the whole map from any pods.

 

[joncnunn]

I belief this is become the staggered start bonuses are completely independent over the difficulty level bonuses.

It might actually be easier for them to code having the delay in staggered start dependent upon difficulty level.
(reduce each landing by 1 turn each for each level the human is above Gemini.)
Gemini: 5, 10, 15, ...
Gem +1: 4, 8, 12, ...
Gem +2: 3, 6, 9

In addition, a level above Apollo might be needed. What's the name of the Chinese program that wants to go to the moon?

 

[joncnunn]

Moderator Action: Moved to Ideas & Suggestions

 

[Ryoga]

Chang'e it seems.

 

[Haggbart]

Yes please, an additional difficulty level would've been awesome!