Imperialism Mod

[Puke]

Anouncing and inviting comments on my upcoming Imperialism Mod. This will be designed as a multiplayer only mod, where abusing the AI isnt taboo, its the name of the game.

The premise of the ImpMod is that it should be more profitable to maintain a colonial empire of client states and trading parteners, than it would be to conquer and govern worlds on your own. Hence, the main focus of the mod is to make it profitable to co-exist with Neutral Races.

Not only will various Neutrals be given production bonuses in the form of Characteristic Bonuses (instead of 100% across the board), but a variety of features will be combined to make trade and treaties more profitable than conquest. Assuming a high AI bonus, the following features will enable a savvy player to maximize income from client states:

- lowered cost for political savvy
- higher maximum setting for political savvy
- characteristic optimization for neutrals
- anger.txt tweaks to make neutrals more tolerant
- politics.txt tweaks to make neutrals more accepting of various treaties
- trade from treaties able to rise to 50%
- tarriff income from Protectorate raised to 200%
- tarriff income from Subjugation raised to 400%

Special thanks goes out to everyone on the #se4 IRC channel for their comments and suggestions.

[Fyron]

Is this another vaporware mod, like the Grit Tech Mod, or a real mod, like Junkyard Wars? j/k

[geoschmo]

Eeeeexcellent.

This is exactly what I had in mind the other day when I was lamenting the fact that you can't have more then 20 races. Imagine a game like this with 5-10 players and dozens of little AI races scattered about.

[Puke]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
Is this another vaporware mod, like the Grit Tech Mod, or a real mod, like Junkyard Wars? j/k

I definitly bit off more than I could chew, with GritTech. The complete re-creation of the weapons and propulsion systems, scaled mounts for armor engines and everything, the new tech tree.. It all just got to be too much and died due to its own inirtia.

This mod is extremely simple. Aside from editing the AI files for each neutral (which involves mostly copy-paste operations) there isnt much to do. The settings.txt changes are done. And thats it, unless someone Posts some astounding suggestion that needs to be incorporated. I anticipate that the ImpMod can be functional by the end of the weekend. It would be done now except for the fact that I want different files for each of the 10 neutrals, instead of having lots of identical Boroba States.

Originally posted by geoschmo:
This is exactly what I had in mind the other day when I was lamenting the fact that you can't have more then 20 races. Imagine a game like this with 5-10 players and dozens of little AI races scattered about.

Unfortuneatly, we are still limited to 20 players. 10 humans and 10 neutrals, or 5 humans and 15 neutrals is about the best we can do. That is a cool idea to imagine, though. Maybe in SE5.

[spoon]

Originally posted by Puke:
- tarriff income from Protectorate raised to 200%
- tarriff income from Subjugation raised to 400%

I don't know much about how the ai decides when it will sign either of those treaties -- but if it is based on Player Score or something, then it seems like a pretty hefty bonus will be given to the players in the lead, maybe creating a runaway leader problem?

[Phoenix-D]

Um, don't Protectorate and Subjegation TAKE from your resources? As in 200% would leave them with negative resources?

[spoon]

Originally posted by Puke:
- lowered cost for political savvy
- higher maximum setting for political savvy
- characteristic optimization for neutrals

Maybe also greatly increase the cost of mining, farming, and refining aptitudes so they are out of the question for the player to raise them.

For political savvy, maybe reduce the cost up until the threshold, but then at the threshold, make the cost still somewhat reasonable (like 25 or 50pts). What this will do is (almost) guarantee that people will buy up to the threshold (making trade more attractive, like you stated), and then it will be a interesting decision to make if people want to go still higher.

[Puke]

200% would leave a normal empire with a deficit. But as an AI with a high bonus, they make 5x normal. What they give in trade and tariff reflects their pre-bonus output rather than their actual totals.

as for the runaway leader problem, the Neutrals will be made amicable enough that the first person to get to them should have a high chance of obtaining the treaty. I will run some tests to see how willing they are to switch over if someone else demands a similar exclusive treaty of them. that could be problematic, but even if protectorates were removed as a primary factor in the mod, it will still be more profitable to establish trade relationships than to conquer.

[Puke]

Spoon, that is what I have done. The computer with the tweaked file is not Online for me to copy and paste from, but I will paraphrase:

PS Max %: 200
min %: 0
% cost: 10
Threshold: 25
threshold cost (positive): 50
threshold cost (negative): 100

hence it is entirly possible to buy it down to nothing, and play the warmonger race.

edit: i am hesitant to make it prohibative to increase resource production rates, as I planned on using those to give the AI higher production values.

edit again: i am also contiplating changing the threshold to 50..

[ March 12, 2004, 21:19: Message edited by: Puke ]

[spoon]

Originally posted by Puke:
PS Max %: 200
min %: 0
% cost: 10
Threshold: 25
threshold cost (positive): 50
threshold cost (negative): 100

hence it is entirly possible to buy it down to nothing, and play the warmonger race.

I think the negative threshold cost is too high... you could get like 8000 pts by dropping to zero -- a bit too much of incentive to go war-monger...

Neutrals should be able to garner enough points to purchase inflated aptitude costs by dropping their combat-related skills to the min. If that doesn't do it, maybe increase the negative cost of something that the player absolutely needs (like Combat Defense) and let all the neutrals drop it to zero.

And come to think of it, really only Mineral Aptitude cost should be inflated, since orgs and rads are usually ok to drop...