[MoO] Whats the most unbalanced custom race you've ever made (MOO2)?

[neilkaz]

It may just be coincidence about changing the number of spies but I've noted the same thing.

http://www.spheriumnorth.com/orion-forum/nfphpbb/viewtopic.php?t=1762

This link will show you some interesting equations and discuss how spies are "supposed" to work.

.. neilkaz ..

 

[scratchthepitch]

That was an interesting discussion. I think there may be other factors involved than just straight number crunching and rolling the chances. Almost always when I make my 2nd spy in a game, I get the "defending spy killed" message. It seems likely spying has some "if-then" programing where the numbers are overridden by another bit of programing. The chances of being attacked by Antarans is done in this way. The AI vs AI are not calculated, but settled with a simple win-lose roll (you can see this when the AI conquers a whole system of 3 planets in 1 turn, try that as a player ).

I think spying is a 2 stage program. The normal turn to turn rolls, plus the "if-then" overriding these. The "if-then" stage only applies to AI spying on the player, the player gets only the 2nd stage, the regular turn to turn checks. The AI may also get adjustments in the percentages linked to play level.

In the normal rolling, I think numbers of spies probably do matter. I know having 0 agents defending results is many AI tech steals, since I often neglect building any spies till after encountering the AI, and get techs stolen rapidly until I get a few agents built. After agents are in place, then it usually stops for a while. There is probably a modifier to the roll when no agent is present that greatly increases the chance of success. Maybe the defender gets no modifiers to the roll due to the bonuses or something like that?

There also seems to be a threshold where if the defender is a certain amount higher in bonuses over the attacker, the spy roll fails automatically, for the player, at least. I've encountered that when the AI agent bonus is well above my spy bonus. Either a cheat in the rolling puts the chances beyond occurring, or it is prevented altogether. In my current game, I've been experiencing that. My spy successes have gradually been diminishing as the AI gets better spy tech beyond what I have. Piling on the spies has brought 0 results for a long time now and a check shows these AI have several spy techs I don't.

Conclusion. Different rules apply to the player and AI. Offensive spying works for the player when you have the bonus advantage. Without that advantage, the chances are really poor increasing to nil. Having defensive spies does thwart the AI, and lessens their chance of success, but due to the "if-then" override, is not something 100% sure. If the AI has a large bonus advantage, it's probably better to just conquer them to get the techs, using the resources on ships instead.

 

[neilkaz]

Re: Spies.....I agree that my experiences also indicate that there's more going on than what's in that thread. Sometimes I am not stealing something when I have what would seem to be a huge advantage according to the formula and once I had a tech stolen with 2 agents to defend and 8 enemy spies when my advantage over him was +55 so that if I rolled a 1 and he rolled a 100, he still not be above 60 to steal. But then again, it was only once out of many times.

I make an agent (at least 1, usually working towards 3) immediately upon initial contact and if about to finish Deut Feul Cells (or Irridium playing Huge if I haven't met anyone else yet, will switch over production to a couple spies). Always at this stage of the game I have some project going on somewhere and can switch production to a spy(s) and get one+ quickly.

There's also interesting stuff in that thread about beam weapons, missiles, and ground combat.

.. neilkaz ..

 

[scratchthepitch]

I think part of the problem with the formulas not seeming to match game play is that there is a random chance in there in some of these, and that random chance is programed to lean a little towards the AI. How much is probably a factor of the game level, with max at impossible. With beams, there is no random roll, but there probably is some adjustment made to the outcome that is biased towards the AI. In the last game, fought against an AI's fleet that were all equipped with 75% computers and no hitting specials. They hit everything they shot at. In previous games when I tried beams with only that amount of bonus, the results were much worse. In ground combat, the result is partly random, you wont usually get the same numbers of losses on a retry. Here, number of hit points the troops have plays a big role. That's where the heavy gravity world race pick really helps out.

You were right about using uncreative with repulsive spy races (for a player only, AI Darloks do well, usually). My 2nd attempt did well at first, but the others got ahead in spy tech and advantages. Once that happened, the spy success quickly petered out to nil. Without being able to spy, I was left with a large, but very backward empire using a poorly equipped race. Didn't even get deut fc till turn 219, and that was from a leader, not spying. About the only thing I could do was spam ships full of interceptors and beat the AI down with overwhelming numbers. That quickly got boring.

The AI played rather well, for their part. Even if I had not been so hamstrung with poor tech, they would have still given a few headaches. They also outfitted their ships well with a good balance of weapons and defensive specials. I needed huge hordes of fighters to get through their regular beams to reach their ships (missiles were hopelessly ineffective this time around, they always got shreaded).

The game put all 4 uni government races in that game, where I would meet them first. I wonder if that was a coincidence. In one game playing race tweaked for trading and money (Gnolam like), the game put me by 3 repulsive races I couldn't trade with.

 

[neilkaz]

Just for fun, I started a game playing as DemoAquaCash (DemoAqua+1BC) so I could just watch the money roll in from +1BC enhanced by Democracy. This isn't a bad race but not as overwhelming as a great production oriented race. All the cash meant it was no trouble to quickly have a maintain nice spying networks and since one of my negs was Repulsive, I could basically get away with some grand thefts.

Poor Sakkra in this game...they've got some nice added traits (Impossible pre-warp as always) but being Feudal they get no agent bonus and they have -10 spying as usual and this time they've been dealt uncreative and seemingly no spy techs. I have 3 spies (+35 now) on them constantly and steal techs as soon as they research them. Last one was A-armor..very nice since my Guardian kill didn't net my X-armor.

I stole Autolabs early and bought them everywhere when half or nearly half built. Humans, as usual were vulnerable to spying and I even stole a couple things from Darlok who were very weak this game. Presumably Sakkra got Autolabs from Mentox to have them that early. This meant that when I got to autolab computer tech level I could reseach the deadly structural analyser and switch over to beams.

In just under 250 turns, no AI is left except for a seemingly friendly weak AI and Sakkras whom I am gearing up to attack with many ships and transports in several systems at once. I'll switch spies over to sabatoge once I start the great war as my ground troops will steal anything else they may manage to research.

Currently I am making more than 2000BC/turn and don't tell my wife that this is more money than even she can spend .

.. neilkaz ..

 

[scratchthepitch]

I'll switch spies over to sabatoge once I start the great war as my ground troops will steal anything else they may manage to research.

It's been a long time since I used sabotage. Can you pick what you're going to sabotage, or does the game select this at random?

 

[neilkaz]

It's been a long time since I used sabotage. Can you pick what you're going to sabotage, or does the game select this at random?

Game selects at random. In general sabatoge isn't very terribly effective, but a long time ago, I recall one game where I didn't have enough firepower to destroy an enemy home planet's starbase early on and lucked out with sabatoge and destroyed it and then simply landed my troops and took the planet. It is probably more effective early on, where it takes the enemy a while to rebuild and where their planets have fewer buildings so you're more likely to destroy something major like a star base.

 

[scratchthepitch]

Thanks.

 

[xThomas]

The Irakla, Alkari race pic. They are a militaristic warlord offshoot of the Alkari..
I added transdimensional and uncreative, warlord. Due to their transdimensionality and ruthless attitude, they've become rather repulsive in speaking. Their uncreativeness stems from their reliance on the artifacts and their dimensional abilities.
The AI just can't hit you if you have strong defense bonuses. The natural +50 with warlord and transdimensional and a space academy will start you out with a veteran anything. It's honestly kind of sad.. Missiles would work if the AI could learn to make missile ships. The uncreative penalty doesn't make up for this.

And attacking with transdimensional before you have nuclear drive crashes the game. At least on OS9.

 

[scratchthepitch]

And attacking with transdimensional before you have nuclear drive crashes the game. At least on OS9.

I thought you need nuclear drive before you can build a ship because ships don't appear on the right side of the build screen until I've researched nuclear drive. I think you also need standard fuel cells too.

By a coincidence, the game I've been playing has been with a custom race using the Alkari graphics. This is in a modified game. They are unification, creative, telepathic, +1 research, warlord, low gravity, -50% pop growth and -10% ground combat. When the chance to pick additional traits with the extra 4 points came up, I went with trans dimensional and removed the -10% ground combat. I wanted td to get that little extra movement and to hopefully still get initiative in battles. It turned out my first opponent was Darlok, so picking omni might have been a better idea, since they had unlimited range and were showing up all over the place, and always where my ships weren't. Lost a couple of colonies to that. But, on the other hand, td did give that little edge in initiative so I could at least strike first in battles, even though the Darlok had a ship computer advantage. If they had had the initiative on my ships, it would have been very grim.

 

[xThomas]

Strange that you can't build ships till you get nuclear drive. I can build ships with the Extended fuel cells and titanium armor researcg area. (I think its the armor. can't refit unless I research colony ship, but hey, I get 4 movement, 4 out of 4 structure and 4 out of 60 armor when I check the stats in fleet! Not sure what would happen if my ship was attacked by an enemy before I got nuclear drive, but attacking definitely crashed the game. Definitely a bug (although it makes sense that you could make ships before nuclear since hey, thats what transdimensional is supposed to advertise, right?
I wonder if the armor would repair if I picked cyber lol
Also, I'm not sure, but I think leader bonuses for ships only count if your race doesn't start with a better one.
edit: what were you thinking, giving the alkari -10% ground combat? Dragons clearly are only killable by knights. But srsly, TD + tele means you should capture starbases and use them against the enemy! Why would you pick the -combat in that case

hmm, an update to the arakla front. Playing a game, haven't researched a single tech, probably going to make spies and refit my entire fleet. Anyway, in the SW corner Fighting Klackons who put more than 20 pulsons in a BB, they nuked my base to the ground.. I have regular fuel cells, they have irridium. I can no longer reach them, but they can reach me! due north, we have Elerians who also have irridium (or at least deuts) while I can't reach them. They're much nastier: Positron computers, neutron blasters, was that assault shuttles, and +50 atk totally neutralizes my built in defenses! They also use missiles, but strangely theirs are frankly way harder to hit with lasers. It's their dang 5 parsecs drive (but they might be fast too, didnt check). Oh, and they have Class III shields, while I rely on intertial stabilizers and Augmented engines. shaping up to be an interesting game, but I havent played it for a while.

 

[scratchthepitch]

edit: what were you thinking, giving the alkari -10% ground combat? Dragons clearly are only killable by knights. But srsly, TD + tele means you should capture starbases and use them against the enemy! Why would you pick the -combat in that case

I usually reduce the marines to 0 or just a few before boarding, since the AI often has security stations. This requires neutron blasters, but I usually have them pretty quick, and before that rely upon fighters and missiles, since I wait to get decent computers and targeting specials before building beam ships. You also make up for the ground combat minus with better armor, weapons and other techs, so by mid game that minus doesn't matter any more.

 

[xThomas]

I've a new race, and it's the nastiest production race I ever devised. Take unification, Production +2, Rich Home World, Aquatic, and Large home world for the positive picks. For negatives, it won't matter too much if you stick to the usuals. Repulsive, -combat, -def, - spy.
To play this race, start with all non food workers on production. Queue up a CB. Now sell your sb turn 1, barracks turn 2, and you can buy the CB on turn 3. You can do the same on turn 8 or 9, but it'll take some juggling with the taxes. The extreme benefits of this race allow it to flourish in most enviornments: Even an Ultra Poor High G toxic yields 3 production! A tundra will yield 3 food, and the homeworld 4.5 food. My first game rolled had a ultra poor 6pop barren, and a poor 4pop desert. It was mostly poor planets from here, but lots of tundras which under aqautic give more food and I think higher pop limit
I find it prefer it to unitol.. I never really liked tol, it reminds me of elerians for some reason, pollution is part of the game, and I get practically the same amount of prod and pop, but more food my way - not to mention its pretty useless on 1 pop housing planets. I tried with subterranean once, but I found that I could have free up one more worker at the start in aquatic, and it allowed me to take large hw at the same time: That cleaned up a little bit of the pollution from so many workers, and I had bit more freedom with that last guy. Aqautic proved to be very convienent in a Organic rich galaxy, helped feed my other planets, increased pop limit.. Very good pick.

Edit: oops! it's been invented AND mentioned in this topic already.

Here's my personal spying race, usually for advanced games
Tele +20spy -Repulsive -uncreative Demo Lg

 

[neilkaz]

I just played a quick fun spy master game using my favorite spy race, UniTeleSpy+20 RHW and for my negatives, repulsive, -10 GC, -20 attack. I don't at all mind - attack since I will be blitzing with MIRV missile cruisers anyhow.

Easy win in the GC on turn 233 from Huge, Impossible and would've been faster without a long hyperspace flux.

I don't like to be uncreative with a spy race since I might not have spy techs and often getting that next +10 spying opens up a floodgate of stolen techs. In my game I stole anything and everything and then my sabateurs did some real damage, often framing another.

Fun game, but teleblitzing is too easy for a human player.

 

[xThomas]

Uni is a cheap pick. The only negatives are 15 turns to assimilate, and missing out on morale - Considering the bonuses of 15% better agents, 50% to food/prod, and not suffering from morale penalties, it's too cheap. But we still love it
Also funny you should mention that race, since I asked if you could use one with the same positives in a sabotage ->mind control blitz on multiplayer if you started in advanced, just yesterday! (Spy 1 is finished on turn 2 or 4. Instant sabotage)

I find I hate -gc: If I take uncreative in advanced start, and am the only guy with powered armor, I will use empty 20pp assault frigates.
Sometimes in prewarp games (I don't take uncreative in these) I get powered armor just to do that, though I realize it's not optimal without warlord. When it works, it works good. When it fails, I've lost 100 pp and try again in a few turns.

I've been getting a hyperspace flux.. practically every game. they're annoying. The beast too. I'm not sure how this game generates random events, but this seems unusual (and remniscient of a random number bug in a different game)

 

[El_Machinae]

Telepathy changes Unification something fierce, too. No need for ground troops, nearly ever, so you're saving a ton of cash and production. I don't like losing out on the morale benefits for unification, though.

 

[neilkaz]

Telepathy changes Unification something fierce, too. No need for ground troops, nearly ever, so you're saving a ton of cash and production. I don't like losing out on the morale benefits for unification, though.

Just play UniTele and take almost anything for the other positive picks and you should be able to roll up even a huge impossible galaxy before moral matters . Or at the very least establish a totally dominant position before moral gains could overshadow the gains you can get from Adv Gov't as Uni.

 

[scratchthepitch]

Not having to use transports really speeds things up. In command points, for every 3-4 transports you no longer need, that's a cruiser or battleship you can now afford.

 

[El_Machinae]

Plus, I like mix-n-matching my colonies based on race.

 

[neilkaz]

To show how strong UniTele is I started an Imp/8/PW/Huge game taking only UniTele and forgoing the 8 other positives, but taking 10 negatives.

Things are going OK as while I started in the extreme upper right cornor and had only a lousy planet in my system to colonize, I found a couple of acceptable systems and didn't meet anyone 'til almost 140 turns in when I killed a space dragon, and colonized a wonderful system with a pop 20 UR artifacts gaia. This will soon become my main shipyard. The bonus tech for finding the artifacts world was Pulson missiles which is great since I went for pollution processor hoping to give my ships yards a quick boost from less pollution.

The Trilarians have me nearly boxed in, but before I can attack them I need to have better capabilities and at least Ion drives since their ships move quickly and will counterattack my systems. I have plenty of research capability and no need to panic and start a war too soon.

In contrast to my usual UniTeleSpy race I am lacking +20 spying and won't be sending out teams of spies and lacking RHW which only cost me a few turns at the start and doesn't matter much now since I am farming and teching with my HW anyhow.

We'll see how this game goes over the next couple evenings.

Update: My UniTele (nothing else) game is going well. It is turn 198 and in two turns the last Trilarian planet will be mine. I have a big lead in population and fleet and am catching up in tech. Most of my fleet consists of several BB's with 36 MIRV Nukes, Rein. Hull and Z-armor. These are too much for the Trilarian to handle.

Collassa, my big UR planet is a huge help for making these. I am suffering a BIG CP deficite but winning the war and then game is what matters. I'm not sure what I'll do once these Trilarians are gone but should have autolabs going in soon. Capturing fully assimulated aquatic farmers which are enhanced by my unification gov't is certainly solving any food issues.

Update: Turn 242 now and the Birds and Coids have been conquered and a few turns back I nearly had the 2/3 votes myself needed to win in the GC. I just took Orion and have a huge fleet and no CP issues thx to Subspace Comms and StarBases and BattleStations all over my empire which covers the entire half of the galaxy. This game won't last much longer.

The End: Turn 262 and I was about 5 turns from finishing off the last two races and had taken Orion as well and when the GC came up I had about 90% of the votes. UniTele anything is OP.

.. neilkaz ..