You want the whole galaxy to be colonized by turn 18. Riiiiiiiight. I think you're advocating removing at least 2 of the 4 X's with that. Also, this borders on the 'settings other than my preferred ones don't need to be balanced properly' fallacy.

 

You're almost right. But LEP has no relevance to the RATE of expansion - only the limit. None. Not a sausage. I get the same LEP from 80 planets whether I got them by turn 12 or turn 1200. If anything, it encourages me to get them as early as possible, because why the hell not? I'm gonna hit that LEP cap sooner or later, and if I can hit it first then I will remain ahead of the other empire indefinitely as they cannot breach the LEP cap either. It is a soft cap on total planets. It does not relate to the rate at which they are colonized. This is a small distinction, but the difference in gameplay terms is huge.

The present system encourages colonizing as much stuff as possible, as fast as possible. This is regardless of whether you've carefully min/maxed your race for rapid expansion or not - Marigoldran has taken this to the extreme by optimizing his race as much as possible for expanding, but the strategy he's following (expand really, really fast) is the correct one to use regardless of your race picks.

LEP should be abolished, because it's a red herring - it doesn't address the real problem, and yet people will initially assume it somehow does and point to it with the same flawed logic you've used here. Unless we have a rate control rather than a cap control, colony spam will always beat any other strategy in the early game.

Well, first up doing the same thing via happiness is actually more complicated, since you're dragging the morale system in for no real reason. Secondly, it doesn't actually work that way, for the reasons outlined above (cap on total vs cap on rate). Oh, and thirdly, I don't think it really does incentivize not spending your starting cash - investing it in cash generating infrastructure is smarter than just burning it down as a runway. It encourages 'tall' empires over 'wide' empires, which is a good thing. Currently, Marigoldran's game is going quite swimmingly despite the fact he's only developed 1 tile per world.

Why should there be a cap on how many worlds you can have?

That's not a dumb question - if we have a game where some maps have only 2 or 3 planets per player, while others have 100 per player, then on the vast majority of maps there won't be a cap at all. There simply won't be enough planets in the galaxy for a cap to come into play. The huge scalability of the galaxy actually requires that we DON'T cap the number of planets that can be colonized.

Currently, the maximum number of planets the AI can support before LEP kills it is about 80. This won't even come into play in medium maps and below. Why should those of us playing on bigger maps be gimped by it, then? Who, exactly, is LEP meant to be balanced for? In fact, what is LEP for? The player can just ignore it. The AI won't ignore it, and so is therefore gimped. It doesn't really have that much impact until you have 30+ planets, which the majority of players will apparently never have. So get rid of it. It's useless. It's only affecting players on maps where it shouldn't be set so low anyway. Replace it entirely with something that is actually fit for purpose and which scales automatically - so something which actually slows the rate of growth, rather than doing nothing to rate and just impacting maximum size.

Quoting Seilore,

reply 27

What I'm seeing here he may get 30-40 colonies by turn 40, even in patch 1.01 I still have a hard time believing he would have had 100 colonies by turn 40.  Yes they were closer together and less of a chance of another race getting them before you but, I don't see it. In which even using the base colony ships on a map similar to that set-up I can get 12-18 colonies by turn 20.  A lot of the game is luck as the OP used as an excuse but, I'm not seeing a major flaw being exposed here.  Maybe that's just me.   I'll be happy to be proved wrong though keep it up .

Tbh, if he can hit 60 then he's managed to get the same % of the total galaxy as 100 was pre-1.02. I'd give him a victory on that.

My opinion isnt exactly worth much, but all I am seeing here is that you set up a race and game type to specifically be able to do what you are doing. I was under the impression that pirate bases are the main counter to extreme expansion in the early game, but taking "fast" may be a counter to the counter.

So if you setup the game/AI to "fail" why are you shocked that it fails? Something like what you are doing likely isnt possible on a smaller map, or a map that is more crowded.

I am not even sure how you could balance this without it having a negative effect on smaller maps or maps that are more crowded. 

In the end though, it really just looks like you are creating a specific set of circumstances and rules to be able to do this, then complain that you can do what you are doing. To me it would be similar to setting my stats/level to maxium on Morrowind and then complaining that the AI doesnt provide me a challenge.

I think some other issues are more pressing, like a non yor synthetic tech tree, or at least one that doesn't reference the name "yor" for a custom synthetic race and getting the AI to be smarter about building improvements on a planet.

That said, without people like you who intentionally set out to bust the game it would not not improve nearly as fast. 

Pretty much but it does highlight how expansion is _always_ the best course of action when it probably shouldn't be that clear cut; good 4X games are underpinned by risk vs reward decisions, not the removal of choice (as expansion currently is in GC3). 

New colonies should be a significant drain on Imperial resources until they can reach a defined point of self-sufficiency.  Sword of the Stars -- still one of if not the best space 4X mechanically speaking -- did this correctly and such costs form an automatic brake on expansion, unless you choose to take a big risk by over-reaching what you can comfortably afford.  You know, that risk vs reward thing. 

Yeah I agree there could be a little more cost involved on new colonies to prevent quick expansion, (maybe tied in with game pace) slower game would be higher cost very fast game would be no cost...)

I disagree, just fill the map with players

Quoting Seilore,

reply 34

I disagree, just fill the map with players

That would help a bit but I am afraid the challenge will still be gone after you conquered a few AI. But whatever your cup-of-tea, I have never been the kind of player who would play marathon games.

I always liked it GalCiv prevented the early rushes by making planetary invasions an expensive tech. It seems it is a lot earlier available now. That and getting a reasonable amount of planets / per player should make a challenging game. But I would hate it if people can longer choose to build huge empires just because some player is abusing the setting to show himself off.

Again, the thing he's illustrating is not the maximum size of the empire. It's the rate at which he reaches the maximum size. We actually already are punished for building a huge empire, by the present LEP mechanics; we're not punished for reaching that size as rapidly as possible. This is the wrong way round - you should be able to build up as many planets as you like, but shouldn't be able to do it by colonizing a dozen planets per turn without some kind of penalty.

It doesn't matter what size the map is. Even on the very smallest settings, colony spam is the correct strategy. No matter whether you're on abundant planets or few, colony spam is the correct strategy. It doesn't matter what difficulty the AI is - colony spam is the correct strategy. This means that, ultimately, "don't play these settings if you want a challenge" means "don't play the game if you want a challenge".

It does not matter what size the map is, because it is the RATE at which he can expand which is the point, and that rate is not determined by map size. Sure, he'll run into other civs sooner or later, and might even have to fight a war. But he'll have more colonies, more shipyards, more production and (if he needs to set planets to it) more research when he bumps into them. He can build up the colonies to parity with his opponents later on, without having to worry about it because the sheer mass of his colonies will provide enough production to match a smaller, better-developed empire. And then once he has built them up, he's got more high-level colonies than they do, and so maintains his advantage.

That's the problem here. It's not setting-dependent, because it's a flaw in the mechanics and so applies to all settings. The only thing which can turn the game is blind, dumb luck - if he starts in a relatively empty area, for example. Knowing that randomly-determined starting position is basically the determinant of the game will prevent competitive MP (as will the fact that everyone is following an identical strategy).

OK, I see your point naselus. Colony spam being the only right strategy makes the game boring, as a good strategy game should offers choices, or at least a disputable break-even point. Having said that, my point stands that if the colony-spam phase is short and gambling on too many colony ships can get you behind on development, you can still have a good game.

Oh,BTW, I am a fervent single-player-TBS player, so arguments on MP will not land with me . As an example, I really like the adjacency bonus system, where a MP player will see that as unneccessary micro-management. As I implied before, I really like my cup of tea my way (brewed to 5% alcohol actually).

I really don't like the civ 5 solution. I have some suggestions:

- Exponential colony ship cost, you need a developed empire to get the next ship out. Not very realistic but who cares in a game.

- Make LEP hit a bit harder by making Approval rate hit harder on everything. Later provide techs and/or buildings to ease this. This would sooth naselus's timing worries.

- Make it unpossible to turn off pirates, and make pirates stronger when further away from a capital, and get stronger during the game. Or only the latter two and ban people from the forum who turn off pirates and then complain the game is too easy.

Stardock should really send a spy to the Endless Legends guys, apart from the great racial flavor they basicly explore all three options, allthough even there city-spam is always best. In most 4X it is.

Right now, all races basically fight over the same resource: planets.

Suggestion to spice it up: make a variety of planet types which would appeal to or exclude different races.

For example: If there were a gas-giant race that could only inhabit gas giants, that gives them an interesting niche. If there was a hardy race that preferred high-G planets, that's their niche. Different races would explore their niche before developing tech to cross over.

Each planet could be at an intersection of a Temperature / Atmosphere plot:

And the further away the planet is from the race's "ideal", the more difficult it is to settle and manage.

In a smaller map size, he already owns half the planets by turn 40 - each of which have shipyards. He can reset his planets to a less colony rush-oriented configuration any time he's threatened, and whip up a military really rather quickly if needed; somewhat quicker than your unarmed, 2-move-per-turn transports are getting built and landing on his worlds. His flexible production will be greater (vastly greater, in fact) than any rival; and it's production that wins wars on that scale, not quick strikes. You're not gonna be able to get 40+ transports built before he's able to counter. You're not even gonna have enough time to wipe out his shipyards before he reacts. Sure, you might grab a few worlds, but you're not gonna knock him out the game  - and he's probably still colonizing while you're throwing everything at him.

He's not accepting low early-game power for high end-game power. He has both, because having lots of small colonies is not detrimental. Moving to other settings simply changes the duration of the colony-spam phase. The problem is that the colony-spam phase is a thing at all imo, and no in-game settings change can eliminate it (aside from 1-world-each, and other settings that outright eliminate the colonization side of the game).

Plus, he's still got his 50-turn peace wildcard for pragmatic. Which is probably a little OP for a rank-1 ideology bonus, really, but it's a bit beside the core mechanical point.

On turn 40? Yes, I do. The pirates just single-mindedly churn out military ships from half a dozen shipyards that completely surround my empire. They have me encircled, they never waste time building a colony ship or a constructor, and they produce a new warship every few turns. They are a threat very early, and not a threat later on. Players, even militarily-specialized ones, are a threat later on but not this early. Among other things, you may find that both of your turn 40 hyper-bastard 3 damage output tiny attack ships have some issues getting past the 5-strong fleets of pirates themselves.

Now, if you were basically pursuing exactly the same strategy initially, and just switched to military production slightly earlier than him (i.e., ending your own colony spam effort a couple of turns early), then you might be able to beat him. But that just means that you did exactly the same thing he did for the opening 25-odd turns of the game, and so really are accepting the necessity of the colony-spam phase under the current game mechanics. By ending early, you're gambling that you're going to meet someone soon - and may cost yourself valuable expansion opportunities in the process. But you're really just moving into your mid-game strategy early; your early-game strategy is still stuck with the one choice - build as many colony ships as possible, as quickly as possible. 

It's a shame he's cheesed the race so much for the strategy, tbh, since it'd work well without. That'd be a more worthwhile experiment really; it'd show the strength of the strategy on it's own terms, rather than showing that a cheesily-designed race is good with it. I don't think he'll actually beat the Godlike AI; the bonuses that the computer players have at that level are too great and he probably won't be able to beat them in tactical combat. On a level playing field, however, I'm fairly willing to bet that this is how all the serious MP games are going to be played in 3 months; the colony-spam phase first, and only once we enter the mid-game will people start actually adopting strategies.

I have posted another screenshot showing my population vs the Godlike AI.

As you can clearly see, I have the lead in this all-important category.  The reason is because the MORE COLONIES YOU HAVE, THE FASTER YOUR POPULATION GROWS.  My production is only slightly behind.  That is about to change once I get the Gaia Vortex building, which will grant +4 production on ALL OF MY COLONIES.  Currently I have 46 colonies. So 46 * 4 = 196 MORE PRODUCTION.  If I get more colonies, that single Gaia Vortex building (I only need to build it once) BECOMES EVEN STRONGER.  

For non-synthetic races, population grows at the rate of 0.2/turn.  So if you have 46 colonies, your population grows at the rate of 46 * 0.2 PER TURN.  If you have 100 colonies, your population grows at the rate of 100 * 0.2 PER TURN.  

Do you understand why it's a good idea to get as many colonies as possible? 

The thing is that it's MUCH EASIER AND FASTER to increase production and population by colonizing new planets than to build up your worlds.  Fertility clinics cost a colony ship's worth of production to build.  It can only give you a 0.1 boost.  On the other by COLONIZING ANOTHER PLANET, you can get a 0.2 boost in population growth per turn.

Even more importantly: YOU DON'T NEED TO RESEARCH ANYTHING TO GET COLONY SHIPS. You can start building them from turn 1, unlike Fertility clinics which need to be researched (and pretty costly research too).