Rules Question - contest

Nyx · #1 January 25th, 2001, 08:04 PM

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I wonder if a new rules change is coming, or if they're finally fixed with what we have. If you really want to keep abuses to a minimum, I'd ban all diplomacy with the AI at all to prevent the domino surrender effect, which can get out of hand.

You wouldn't get an objection from me on that one. It would certainly take longer if you had to mop up every single planet with troops and didn't receive all the tech/free planets that you do when they surrender. It wouldn't stop there eventual demise, but it would take longer.

I had thought about those, but decided that someone who could force the AI to surrender swiftly deserved that advantage. It left in the rivalry between economists and warmongers. Maybe you could enslave them with troops faster than I could build up my score, maybe you couldn't. But I am open to suggestions, after all, it is a contest for your benefit, we're just the hosts.

Another one I contemplated but didn't go with was the team option, all AIs vs all humans.

Geo in particular, how would you feel about those being ammended? It is getting late in the contest.

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(Don't tell Nyx though, I have a good game going and I don't want to start over again.)

Sorry, I'm evil and darn near omnipresent.

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Compete in the Space Empires IV World Championship at www.twingalaxies.com.

geoschmo · #2 January 25th, 2001, 08:23 PM

Personnally I am happy with it the way it is now. (Of course at Last count I was still in first so I am not sure its fair to ask me. laf)

I am very concerned about the no maintenance "trick" that Drake found. I think that is a serious flaw that could have destabalizing effects. I tested it out myself and it was too easy to get.

You start with a Merchant race which is free and gets you +5% off of maint. Then with your 2000 points you can get you your maint apptitude up to 117% which gives you 22%. Then it's simply a matter of knocking 5 points or so off of 3 other categories and you can get to 25% off maint without any noticble deficencies.

Because of the strange way its calculated, +25% off maint (which is base of 25%) give you Zero Maint cost for your ships. It should reduce your maint to 18.75% (75% of 25%) but t doesn't. IMHO that is a pretty serious flaw.

Of course if everybody does it then it isn't really unfair. But some may not know how to do it, and if you know how but don't do it it puts you a serious disadvantage, which eliminates some of the variety of available race characteristics that I like so much about SEIV.

You would end up with all pretty much identical races in your contest. Kind of a IROC challange for SEIV. If that is what you want, and I don't think you do, then post a preprogrammed race on your website and require people to use it.

Otherwise you should at the very least inform people how to do it on your website, for those that don't read the forums, or put a limit on how much maint reduction is allowed in the race that is used for the contest.

Perhaps a third option would be to allow people to use one of the 8 stock races that are in the retail game with no modifications. I don't relly like that idea though, especially since that would disqualify my entry that I have already posted.

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"Today is a good day to die" --- Cherokee Indian saying (What, you mean you thought Worf thought that one up?)

Talenn · #3 January 25th, 2001, 09:07 PM

Yes, the 'cost' to purchase maintenance reduction is ridiculously low given the current effect. I cranked it up to 200 RPs/point of Maint and that number seems to be working fairly well.

Anything lower and it becomes a 'no brainer'. Ship maintenance is easily the largest expense you have and painlessly reducing it to nil is far too attractive an option at the 'default' price.

Talenn

Emperor Zodd · #4 January 25th, 2001, 09:13 PM

Make sure you e-mail Aaron about this so it gets fixed in this coming patch.

Zanthis · #5 January 25th, 2001, 10:02 PM

geoschmo wrote:

quote:
Because of the strange way its calculated, +25% off maint (which is base of 25%) give you Zero Maint cost for your ships. It should reduce your maint to 18.75% (75% of 25%) but t doesn't. IMHO that is a pretty serious flaw.

As I mentioned under another topic, this is intentional (just don't ask me why it is intended). It used to work they way you thought, geoschmo, but got changed in 1.08 (which means patch 1.19 for us non-beta people). Reproduction got the same change. Very annoying if you ask me. I hope they unfix this soon.

geoschmo · #6 January 25th, 2001, 10:16 PM

Yes, I saw your post Zanthis, but I could not remember what thread or who said it before. But I remeber it helped me understand what was going on. Thanks.

Drake · #7 January 25th, 2001, 10:17 PM

I'd suggest for the time being that the merchant and perhaps engineering cultures be disallowed due to the maintenance balance problem. Either that or just say everyone must be neutral (more extreme, obviously). The cultures weren't rebalanced for the change in maintenance in the latest patch, and I think that disallowing the problematic ones will be the least painful remedy to fix people getting ridiculously low maintenace costs.

quote:
I had thought about those, but decided that someone who could force the AI to surrender swiftly deserved that advantage. It left in the rivalry between economists and warmongers. Maybe you could enslave them with troops faster than I could build up my score, maybe you couldn't.

The problem is that the AI surrenders based on score, which is mainly the number of ships and bases you have, not your economy. Since you can blockade the AI homeworlds early with an escort, generally reducing their score to 4k, you only need to build a few colony ships and a repair base or two and you'll have a 40k score and the AI will give in.

It's simply not possible for someone to beat this using troops, since you need to research construction, troops, build transports, etc. Thus, if you even try to play as a warmonger, you'll be at a severe disadvantage, especially if you keep any points in strength or ship combat, as I can set these to their minimum, and not have it affect me even a little.

I'd be all for keeping it if I thought there was even a remote chance that some other tactic would be competitive. I had been using the troop method and ship capturing until I came across this, and they just aren't anywhere near as effective...

-Drake

Nyx · #8 January 25th, 2001, 10:48 PM

Ok so here's a proposal:

No merchants, no engineers.
Maintenance reduction not to go higher than 104% (IE nothing above the Average Category).
Trade off
Tech gifts/trades/tributes off

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Now, to my knowledge there's no way to ban diplomacy with the AI. You can ban trades, and tech trades, but nothing more than that. We can't rightly propose that people mod their AI files to turn of AI surrenders, and that's really what it would require.

Anyone know how the Team Play Mode works? What if we implemented that?

And if we alter the rules, we'll see about what happens with already submitted scores then. I think that the odds are the final scores will be well over 2.3 million so it won't really matter either way.

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Compete in the Space Empires IV World Championship at www.twingalaxies.com.

geoschmo · #9 January 25th, 2001, 10:55 PM

No objection here. And I am sure you are right about 2.3 mil not holding up. I'll be beating it myself if noone else does.

On a side note, I think it's really cool that Nyx/Twingalaxies give a flying flip about how we think the contest should be run. Seems to me that is probably a little remarkable as far as Online contests go.

Drake · #10 January 25th, 2001, 11:20 PM

Sounds fair to me.

I don't know if teamplay mode stops the AI from surrendering to you. I know it makes them declare war on you immediately, but I haven't tested their response to threats and such yet.

If you wanted to disallow surrenders, you might have to just tell players not to do it, like you currently are doing with the rule where you ban trade offers.

-Drake