Cauldyth
Posts: 752
Joined: 6/27/2010 Status: offline
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Well, after many games, here are the settings that make the game I enjoy the most: - Galaxy size of Huge with a Huge number of stars, and 19 races: I love epic games that take me ages to play, and where there are still unknown (to me) parts of the universe well into the game.
- Elliptical Galaxy: I just like the 'geography' of these maps - crowded center, arms separated by empty expanses, then the outer rim.
- Pre-Warp tech with Expensive Research: I find the pre-warp portion of the game to be very zen and peaceful, and I have a lot of time to contemplate what (and who) might be out there. And with expensive research, getting warp drives feels like a truly monumental event for your race. Additionally, the combination of pre-warp and expensive research results in a broader separation of the races due to circumstance. Some AI races will get a legitimate headstart on me due to circumstances, while other races will lag behind and become de-facto minor races.
- Normal Creatures and No Pirates: I know many people will cringe at that, but pirates don't interest me much. As noted above, I like the peaceful zen of the pre-warp era, and I want the universe to be a vast unpopulated expanse into which all the empires are launching themselves.
- Occasional Colonies, Rare Independents, 1.5 Sector Colonization Limit: I like colonies to be relatively rare and independent life to be a valuable discovery. In a Huge/Huge/Elliptical galaxy, I find the 1.5 sector limit to be about right for keeping compact empires while still not hamstringing the AI's expansion (1.0 resulted i too many crippled empires).
I've been using these settings almost exclusively for quite a while now.
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