Any way to make the game play by itself?

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Any way to make the game play by itself? - 6/20/2014 4:05:01 PM

MikeSF

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Joined: 6/1/2014
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I know this might sound extremely silly, but having noticed that you can fully automate just about everything in the game I got the thought of having basically a "digital galactic empire fish bowl" type of thing going on, basically set it up watch it for a bit go to work come back and see what my "fish" have done in my absence.

Only issues that I can immediately see are the choices (explore/leave) when your explorers find things, ruins etc, that is not something that as far as I can tell you can automate, or can you? Why is there a choice in the first place? While yes some ships explode or are trapped but is there really a reason to not explore what you found? Also when the Mechanoids ask if you want to hear their sob story you need input it seems.

Anyways just a thought.

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RE: Any way to make the game play by itself? - 6/20/2014 4:06:13 PM

Osito

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Yes, you can, if you automate EVERYTHING and switch off all pop up screens.

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RE: Any way to make the game play by itself? - 6/20/2014 4:45:44 PM

MikeSF

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Interesting, didn't know that would happen. So presumably by switching off popups will make all choices for ruins be "explore" by default? Will this also make the story aspects go away too since you need to click close on those, or would you have to do a custom game without any story line elements?

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RE: Any way to make the game play by itself? - 6/20/2014 4:48:34 PM

Bingeling

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You can play with stories on, but they will not pop up. You should be able to see them in the log, though.

Go to the options screen, use the pre-select to automate all, then enter empire options from the same screen and check the choice to suppress all popups.

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RE: Any way to make the game play by itself? - 6/20/2014 4:50:36 PM

Osito

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I have been able to get the game to play by itself with the default storyline options. I was testing something, so I let it run for over 100 years without any player input. Incidentally, it's important in empire settings to tick the box for suppress all pop up screens. You may also have to tick the box to automate all newly built ships - not sure about that, but it can't hurt.

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RE: Any way to make the game play by itself? - 6/20/2014 4:53:15 PM

MikeSF

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Joined: 6/1/2014
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Neat, yeah just opened up a game looked at the options (before even getting in the game) and it gives options for investigating ruins and not even displaying the results. So that's awesome, otherwise would be very slow going as a pre-warp race if your race never gives that precursor warp technology :) So awesome, fish bowl during the weekdays, weekends I can play my own game :D

Thanks a ton.

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RE: Any way to make the game play by itself? - 6/20/2014 4:56:07 PM

Cauldyth

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Hmm, this sounds like it could be fun...

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RE: Any way to make the game play by itself? - 6/20/2014 4:56:39 PM

Tormodino

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I love the fish bowl analogy :D I do this a lot when I read or do other things. Just watching the AI do its thing over longer periods of time really gave me a whole new perspective on the game. And a lot of grief! It does some seriously crazy stuff XD

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RE: Any way to make the game play by itself? - 6/20/2014 5:31:26 PM

MikeSF

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Joined: 6/1/2014
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It definitely is interesting watching the computer do it's own thing, more so I can do 4x speed without worrying about having too slow reactions to some pirate attacker or something.

Some early observations

I see how I get a jump on all other AI races, because the computer only creates 2 explorer ships, and I'm guessing the direction they go is somewhat randomized where as I will always go for the two planets with ruins so I can get warp field precursor technology, so I can get speed pronto which translates to money faster, etc.

Haphazardly retrofitting, already retrofitting the 2 construction ships but there's shortages of helium, granted there's only one planet with 25% helium in the starting system but that's a priority to get those resources regardless of how little they may be, so those construction ships are forever stuck at the planet unless the AI allowed smuggling missions or some random trader brings helium.

Holy protected homeworld Batman! Started with Large Space Port, ok not unreasonable, then a research station at the same time, ok that's fine, then built a defense base, which I don't agree with when you have the full protection of a LSP around a planet, but it didn't stop there they built another and another and finally a 4th defense base around the first planet. All this by about the time the warp field precursors were researched, and then they eventually scrapped the research base because presumably they couldn't afford all the bases :D

Should be fun to see what it does in the coming hours though.

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RE: Any way to make the game play by itself? - 6/20/2014 6:22:54 PM

fezzick

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I've been toying with this too, it's kinda fun to watch (then go away for a while and come back and see what's happened).

The only thing I can't seem to automate is accepting monetary gifts! That would be useful, since it automates giving them...

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RE: Any way to make the game play by itself? - 6/20/2014 6:33:57 PM

WaflHead

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MikeSF I enjoyed reading your summary of the automated game, keep 'em coming.

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RE: Any way to make the game play by itself? - 6/20/2014 10:27:44 PM

MikeSF

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Well a little background on the game, picked human republic as the race/government, irregular cluster is the galaxy type that I find most appealing, did a relatively small galaxy 250 stars 6x6 sectors. I did pick an Easy game, very few pirates, which might explain the dominance the Humans are doing.

Unfortunately my wife thought I left for work in such a hurry that I left my game on and would be disappointed when I got home and I was dead... so she paused it ... bleh. Either way a little over 50 years in and the Human's are colonzing the bagezzus out of everything, 51 colonies in 38 systems, most in the cluster they started in, but they did spread out all over the map at the farthest reaches, some of which apparently keeps flagging "get your ships out of my system" just when they move back and forth.

Quameno are the next largest race with 11 colonies, presumably due to the tech speed but they're no match for the Human onslaught of procreate and spread :)

The game has gone longer than I've ever played, since none of the messages pop up I don't get "spoiled" by any of the story lines, although I do see a couple interesting races, one is Erutkah Refugies and judging by their picture bad news is written all over them, however looking at the colonies the humans have 9 colonies where they are the dominant life form. Not sure if they conquered them or if this is more bad news coming :) Also Sulanos Pillagers, the flag isn't like other pirate flags, it's a straight skull and crossbones. Not sure if this is a pirate faction that became an empire, or if there's some other story line here. Either way, it's neat that everyone is annoyed or angry (one at war) with the Humans. Ancient Guardians even sent a message that I need to stop attacking, not sure what though I didn't see them attack any guardians but we'll see.

Other observations, the computer does not explorer "hints", I still see flashing blue dotted circles from the beginning of the game. They also have a metric ton of cash, almost +1 million cashflow, with over 9 million in money. I'm not sure if the AI stockpiles like this, or if there's some fundamental "you should be playing the game yourself" aspect that's not happening because I'm taking a hands off approach. Also odd they never explored ship building past about level 500 yet, they have about 25 capital ships, but they're exactly 2 larger than Cruisers (50 of them).

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RE: Any way to make the game play by itself? - 6/21/2014 1:27:12 AM

MikeSF

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Ok, so while I could let it just go, I clicked on a message from the Guardians and it basically gave me a choice to join up with the alliance or no, so I did. This of course set in motion certain events.

So somethings that I saw was that the Shakturi world destroy took out one of my planet, but very shortly after the Human's massive fleet + Guardian's fleet turned him to ash. No one was able to take the Shakturi homeworld because they quite frankly didn't bring enough troops, and the Shakturi will just rehire more troops to replace any they lost. However the Shakturi did basically become a non-issue because as soon as they started building a space port Guardian and Human fleets fly in to wipe it out.

Another fun thing, having nothing to do with the auto-play, was the Ancient Guardians actually expanded to 3 colonies because they took out a couple Shakturi penal colonies, where the main population was Shakturi :D

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RE: Any way to make the game play by itself? - 6/21/2014 1:53:17 PM

MikeSF

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Well all good things come to an end. 140 game years later.

Human faction is maybe half of what it was, not sure what caused them to split off into separate factions maybe war weariness? Spies causing revolts?
Their reputation is Evil so I'm guessing they did some not so nice things while I was gone and not paying attention :)
They do have about 5 million space bucks, but their cash flow is negative 1.5 million. I'm sure it's only a matter of time before they completely collapse, lots of maintenance money from ships and bases bogging down that once great economy they still have enough Private money flowing in that the computer could adjust tax rates to deal with it, but I'm guessing they're simply going to start disbanding ships later.
Everything is researched except Super Heavy Armor, and of course race specific tech, and that's about half way over. Strangely they only have 1 research station, but it's for energy, not sure why they haven't taken that apart or heck remodel the Space Ports to remove the research modules, granted they're not that expensive but still.

Of the original races there were the Humans and 6 other races plus Guardians and then Shakuri later on, now there are only Humans, and 4 other races, but there are 13 other new factions that popped up. The pirate faction eventually got wiped out it seems.

The original Atuuk (flat faced rats) and Quameno empires are no more. However there are two Quameno empires that split off, and one Atuuk empire which is named "Mechanoid Alliance" I'm not sure why it's called that, did the Mechanoids cause the revolt? They're not aligned with the Mechanoids though.

Some other notable empires that popped up.
Mechanoid Nation- capital Utopia, some how the Ancient Guardians split up into a separate faction, maybe 2? perhaps the Mechanoid Alliance was them as well just the Atuuk were the dominant race, curious how all that happened. Between the two Mechanoid empires they have 7 colonies total, presumably the new one still has the "do not expand" flag, so it got all of it's empire from capturing other colonies, the original has a diabolical reputation, so who knows what bad things it did.

There are two additional Shakuri empires as well, these I can pretty much bet were human colonies that revolted that just happened to have Shakuri on as the dominant species since one of them has a government of Corporate Nationalism.

Final thoughts
Seems playing by itself is a neat little view into what the AI will do for you, there's probably not a single player who hasn't been frustrated in what the AI does with fleets or individual ships, but this was interesting to see where it went. While the Humans did "win" via victory conditions (I set to have 66% of economy, population and colonies) they didn't beat the Shakuri threat, Utopia still stands, however the Shakuri homeworld never got destroyed or taken over. Some of which is just dumb AI, they had more than enough troops throughout their colonies such that they could fill up transport after transport and just dump like 5 million troops on the planet to crush the Shakuri, but whenever there was invasions (which I only saw Mechanoids do) they were always overwhelmed by a factor of 10 although strangely enough they got the +25% bonus for overwhelming odds. Another interesting thing is they didn't use any sort of orbital bombardment, which again they had more than enough ships to turn the planet's surface into glass. Not sure if this is a flag I can set in the empire options though. They never did find any super weapons either, and as far as I can tell never found ancient battle remains so no planet killer.

So while you can have the AI play for you and do like 99% of the game, there still is a bit of human interaction that is necessary if you want to see them actually beat the Shakuri, heck in order to even have the events unfold to make the Shukuri empire at that, I believe you can ignore the Ancient Guardian's messages and that event will never trigger. However if you do make it trigger your empire will be forever at war, so the war weariness will catch up with you.

< Message edited by MikeSF -- 6/21/2014 2:58:48 PM >

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RE: Any way to make the game play by itself? - 6/22/2014 10:33:19 AM

Banquet

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Sorry, if I've missed something, but if you let the game play itself, what about fog of war? Can you set it so that you can see what the AI is doing with other races, or is it all from the perspective of whatever race you've chosen?

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RE: Any way to make the game play by itself? - 6/22/2014 10:42:02 AM

Bingeling

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No, you only see your own empire. As always you can open the editor and see it all, though, but that pauses the game.

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