Slitherine

quote:

ORIGINAL: Yarasala
Additionally change the priority of defense forces so, that troop transports are always attacked first.

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ORIGINAL: Yarasala
About tech trading: I don't find techs too expensive and generally am content with the current system with the exception that foreign empires give away their techs too easily. But apart from that in my games the other empires don't have enough money to pay for techs most of the time, tech trading is mostly exchanging techs.

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ORIGINAL: Shark7
One suggestion I might make is that the only way you can trade techs, bases, planets, etc is if you have an MDP with the empire you are wanting to trade with. This I think would curb a lot of the problems. Trading your technology should be something you do with only the most trusted of allies.

In fact, here is exactly how I would do it:

Tech trading criteria:

* must have MDP agreement
* for techs 2 levels or lower than current, relations at +75 or higher
* for techs 1 level less than current, relations at +90 or higher
* for equal level or advanced techs, relations at +100 or higher
* for special techs, relations at +125 or higher

quote:

ORIGINAL: Yarasala
About home world troop strength: I agree that it should not be possible to invade a planet (not only home world) with a single troop transport. But instead of increasing defending troop strenght (that costs a lot of maintenance) force troop transports (and other ships that have troop compartments) to lower their shields for a significant time before ejecting troop pods so it would be very risky to attack defended (by ships or star bases) planets in this way.

quote:

ORIGINAL: jomarmont
About tech trading: maybe the problem is that we get single offers and the economy should be more dynamic. As far as I see it when any given empire offers tech for sale (or any other commodity as a matter of fact) it should get low prices as offers if any at all (there should be a "system" controlling interest in any given tech by any given race). When any given empire wants to buy tech it should get expensive offers as the transaction happened as an initiative of the buyer. It is as simple as that: if I shout out loud that I am buying others should try to get as much money from me as possible and if I shout out loud that I am selling then others try to pay as little as possible.

quote:

ORIGINAL: jomarmont
About troop transports: maybe it could be a selectable option whether planetary defence forces in space(fleets and spaceports) should target troop transports first (you know...as a stance). Then of course you may establish an exploit where you start an attack with empty troop transports as bait to keep local defence busy...that is why it should be selectable.

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ORIGINAL: Plant
Isn't the problem is that you are just technologically advanced in the early part of the game due to a combination of only having high tech labs and expensive research? Expensive research increases the time difference to warp technology. I remember you commenting in you AAR that the first homeworld you conquered haven't even have hypersapce technology. Also is excerbated by trying having tax rates as low as possible for greatest future potential on an excellent homeworld, which actually gives you an economic start which is about 20 years ahead of normal. So the best fix would be to change how technology research is conducted, perhaps to that the technology cap for each technology type to be independent of the other.

In the end the problem is that the AI isn't developed to follow human attempts to win; they are totally constrained by attempting to provide an interesting backdrop.
Also some wierd game mechanics such as diplomacy and technology.

I suppose it is failry wierd though that the AI doesn't seem to bother spending money. It seems obvious that if an AI have money, they should spend it automatically on anything they would think militarily useful, be it more ships, or troop upkeep.

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ORIGINAL: Fenrisfil
In my opinion the trouble with tech selling is that there are no restrictions on your ability to do this except those you impose yourself. Nothings to stop you selling tech for 0 credits to your worst enemy, not that you would do that, but it shows the problem.

The design seems to be based entirely on the point of view that tech trading is supposed to be used for purchasing technology and not selling it. As a result it is expensive so you can't just leap up the tech trees without investment and you have to be on good terms with a race for them to offer you their tech. What needs to change is that your ability to sell tech needs to be restricted as if you were an AI race, this would be controlled by your factions general opinion of the faction you wish to trade with.

That change would be so much better than the current on/off setting which only offers a solution to exploitation by forcing a nerf on diplomatic playstyles.

A second if more difficult to implement change would be to make factions less likely to accept a trade for technology that they have little/no interest in. For example at moment I can sell generic engines to one of the races that have access to unique engine modules, they won't be researching them so they make an easy target for abuse. Perhaps the game could just check what the next 5 items to be researched are likely to be in each sub-section for a faction and only purchase those technologies along with any unique tech offered.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Fenrisfil
As for the homeworld invasion, well to be honest launching attacks at close neighbours in the early game is always going to be a valid tactic, especially in a (galactic) pre-warp start scenario. With troops being more expensive to maintain these days perhaps the strength added by populations should be increased and the zero troop=instant win rule should be removed. That would go some way to balancing things, but it won't eliminate the problem.

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ORIGINAL: VorteeX

eXtra bonus to defend homeworlds, like 100%, other worlds after 10 year = +10% so after 100 years of colony present will be 100% same as homeworld. Becose population have more desire to defend own land and after evry another generation settlers fell more devoted to planet where they live.

Or even bigger bonus, this also in later games force players to make serious planet bombardment before invasion.

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ORIGINAL: Icemania

Some interesting ideas here Fenrisfil. What if selling technology was limited as per Shark's suggestion for trading?

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ORIGINAL: Icemania

Yes I agree it should be a valid tactic but at the moment it's way too easy and should cost a great deal more to pull off. Adding more strength by population is a great idea Fenrisfil so long as it's significant, and the idea makes sense ... given the history of warfare just imagine how many troops you would need to conquer 28B and keep them in line!

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ORIGINAL: Anthropoid
ADDIT: sorry man, your first post is a bit hard to follow. Are you basically saying that "Extreme difficulty" is not hard enough? and moreover that: (a) it shouldn't be so easy to invade homeoworlds early in the game; and (b) sell Techs, because it makes the game too easy?

quote:

ORIGINAL: Anthropoid
I have to add here though that, part of this is how a player approaches a game. Some players like to approach games they play with a "How do I beat this" attitude, and there is nothing at all wrong with that. This playstyle lends itself to playing at higher difficulties, and making clever use of game dynamics to achieve rapid non-linear effects, like exponential tech growth or crushing military victories. After I spent many hundreds of hours playing Civilization, I slowly evolved into this style of gameplay. In fact, some of my most warmly remembered moments of gaming were times when I executed this style of gameplay in play-by-email games. There is nothing quite so satisfying as taking your human opponent _completely_ by surprise and crushing him in the span of two or three turns and bringing a long multi-month PBEM run to a decisive end! Sadly though, what this style of gameplay reflects is that, the player has truly and fully "mastered" the game. The ecology of the game is so fully intuitive that it is mundane to achieve victories that might have felt like major challenges when you first started.

Another style of gameplay that I _highly_ recommend if it is not something familiar, is the 'laid back' 'getting my monies worth' style. Whenever I buy a new game, I always tend to play it this way for as long as possible, for a couple of simple reasons: I enjoy it (which if you don't you shouldn't force yourself to play this style), it maximizes my utility of each game I own.

I've noticed that this style of play seems to be a bit foreign to some younger gamers or else gamers who did not start out from a strategy gaming background, though that may just be anecdotal. The real key to this style of game play is to strike a balance between three factors: (i) staying 'in-character' relative to the tone, style and content of the game in question; (ii) learning the games ecology, including developing an intuition for all the quantitative interactions in the game (e.g., in DW that would be ship parts, ship design, colony economies, technology growth rate, fleet ops, etc.); (iii) trying to 'win'

quote:

ORIGINAL: Icemania

quote:

ORIGINAL: Anthropoid
ADDIT: sorry man, your first post is a bit hard to follow. Are you basically saying that "Extreme difficulty" is not hard enough? and moreover that: (a) it shouldn't be so easy to invade homeoworlds early in the game; and (b) sell Techs, because it makes the game too easy?

Yes. I normally stop myself from doing early game homeworld invasions and selling because it is so imbalanced. I believe a better solution is to continuously improve game balance particularly when they are easy to implement. Every now and again I'll play a game with these allowed for some fun and a laugh (like my current game).

quote:

ORIGINAL: Anthropoid
I have to add here though that, part of this is how a player approaches a game. Some players like to approach games they play with a "How do I beat this" attitude, and there is nothing at all wrong with that. This playstyle lends itself to playing at higher difficulties, and making clever use of game dynamics to achieve rapid non-linear effects, like exponential tech growth or crushing military victories. After I spent many hundreds of hours playing Civilization, I slowly evolved into this style of gameplay. In fact, some of my most warmly remembered moments of gaming were times when I executed this style of gameplay in play-by-email games. There is nothing quite so satisfying as taking your human opponent _completely_ by surprise and crushing him in the span of two or three turns and bringing a long multi-month PBEM run to a decisive end! Sadly though, what this style of gameplay reflects is that, the player has truly and fully "mastered" the game. The ecology of the game is so fully intuitive that it is mundane to achieve victories that might have felt like major challenges when you first started.

Another style of gameplay that I _highly_ recommend if it is not something familiar, is the 'laid back' 'getting my monies worth' style. Whenever I buy a new game, I always tend to play it this way for as long as possible, for a couple of simple reasons: I enjoy it (which if you don't you shouldn't force yourself to play this style), it maximizes my utility of each game I own.

I've noticed that this style of play seems to be a bit foreign to some younger gamers or else gamers who did not start out from a strategy gaming background, though that may just be anecdotal. The real key to this style of game play is to strike a balance between three factors: (i) staying 'in-character' relative to the tone, style and content of the game in question; (ii) learning the games ecology, including developing an intuition for all the quantitative interactions in the game (e.g., in DW that would be ship parts, ship design, colony economies, technology growth rate, fleet ops, etc.); (iii) trying to 'win'

I play games in various ways depending on what else is happening in life. At the moment I consider Extreme a "laid back" game. When in "How do I beat this" mode I go back to Strategy games that I played well before Distant Worlds and for far longer. I'd like to include Distant Worlds in this category hence this thread.

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ORIGINAL: Anthropoid

Ah okay! I gotcha

Totally reasonable to argue for better balance at the high end of the difficulty scale, if that is what your experience has led you to observe.

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ORIGINAL: Anthropoid
So I'm curious, are these two 'exploity' things (Bum Rush on the Homeworlds; Tech Mongering) a problem in normal difficulty?