Hi!
Currently I'm playing in a "primitive" Stars! game Dark Ages III. Basically the rules make game badly slowed down (for complete rules check thread Dark Ages III in New Games). Nett result of those rules is most races have below 1k econ at 2450 . Races not allowed are CA, IT, AR, JoaT with NAS.

I understand why CA is banned (free terraforming with such a small econ gives them really HUGE advantage), with stargates disallowed also an IT, and JoaT with NAS is just too strong. ARs are another case. They don't need to build factories and mines, so they should be nerfed another way.

I did some testbeds to find out settings that could allow an AR to enter such a game. I limited their resource production with energy tech set to expensive, pop efficiency divisor set to 1/20 or worse, and taking OBRM.
With such settings tech levels and resource output were comparable to races with factories, but costs of remote miners were prohibitive. Even at tech level con-12/elec-11 (achieved around turn 80) one mine costed 8 iron and 19 resources. At that time other races had about 3 times more minerals on hand, and were mining about 4 times more of them per turn. OTOH ARs in my testbeds NEVER had problems with minerals for colony drive. With so low growth even those 30-60 pop-mines had produced enough minerals for it, and for building Ultras later.

When (in another testbed) I started building remote miners (super robot only) they get BIG boost in mineral supply, because the mine cost was 1.6 iron and 4.6 resources. That was IMO too big boost, especially because ARs don't need to to build freighters to move minerals from remote mining sites, as other races have to do. As a workaround I tried con tech normal, and it looked it was sufficient.

So in the next "primitive" game we could let in also ARs, but with following limitations:
- energy tech mandatory expensive,
- construction tech not cheap and
- resource divisor 1/20 or worse.
Comments?
BR, Iztok

[Updated on: Mon, 24 May 2004 06:00]

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Its just my personal opinion but worse efficiency than 15 makes AR quite teethless. About 14-15 its still playable more or less. I hate to testbed these 25 eff + growth 19 AR-s ... its like extreme hauling of empty wind that takes ungodly territories to get somewhere. Energy expensive is quite similar to factory cost 15 + no ARM raise the miner cost. Construction cant be seriously considered normal? whats left then? Propulsion and electronics?

Common knowledge is that AR is good at terraforming. Its needed too because it raise planetary production. When raising efficiency above 15 that strength vanishes, so instead of 50,000 pop AR need to drop 100,000 to get that 50 res at energy 8 and keep up with factory races. With 19% growth its maybe no biggie but combine it with 7-8% of growth in primitive games...

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Hi!

Kotk wrote on Thu, 27 May 2004 17:07

Its just my personal opinion but ... ...snip...

I agree with you on all points but here:

Quote:

Construction cant be seriously considered normal? whats left then? Propulsion and electronics?

Prop can't be cheap. So what's left is elec and bio .

I reloaded a testbed with "energy expensive 1/20 divisor con normal AR" and continued from turn 80 for next 60 turns. It soon became clear what I haven't noticed earlier: the resource growth was from about turn 65 linear. Both tech that effected terra were expensive. All +f races that I tested kept better then linear res growth for quite longer then 100 turns, and also ended with much higher output.

Energy expensive doesn't mean just 125% more investment for resources, it also means much slower terraforming. Just it alone looks like too strong "brake". I'm going to test energy normal and change other parameters: resource divisor, lower growth (like for HE), con tech cost, mandatory points left.
Will report what I find out.
BR, Iztok

[Updated on: Thu, 27 May 2004 14:37]

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iztok wrote on Thu, 27 May 2004 08:43

There are NO gates allowed....

Just a point, but gates are only not allowed in DA3. In the previous Dark Ages gates were allowed. There is nothing in JCs primitive stars rules that says gates should or should not be banned. I don't quite understand why gates are banned in DA3 anyway (would not have been my choice), but that's me

re: the resource divider setting, you must remember that in normal games at least, AR shouldn't even try to compete resource wise with +f races. No -f race (AR or otherwise) should be trying to max out a planet for resources. They should be going for territory and spreading their people out between the planets they have, which is why I think the 1 in 3 hab maximum is potentially more damaging than any resource divider setting. However, I don't play AR much so these comments can only be taken at face value.

another 2 cents

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Downsider wrote on Mon, 31 May 2004 20:38

re: the resource divider setting, you must remember that in normal games at least, AR shouldn't even try to compete resource wise with +f races.

I have once been resource leader with AR at 2450, all the 12 non-ARs there were HG or even HP races.
Anyone who wants to win a stars! game should be and stay competive resource wise. I mean that if other guy has 35K resources then 25K (1.4 times less) is still quite competive while 12K (almost 3 times less) is not. Anyone who play AR or -f should keep such things in mind and avoid taking these race styles into games where he cannot play competive.

Quote:

No -f race (AR or otherwise) should be trying to max out a planet for resources. They should be going for territory and spreading their people out between the planets they have, which is why I think the 1 in 3 hab maximum is potentially more damaging than any resource divider setting. However, I don't play AR much so these comments can only be taken at face value.

All what you say is not AR specific or anything. Once there is no place to spread or no planets to overtake what you do? What you do with that pop that grows everywhere anyways? I see there are 3 phases of peaceful empire development... growth because of expanding, growth because of improving what you got and finally growth because you are filling most of the places up to max. After that the growth stops, but no economy model profits from ignoreing one or other phase there.

What i was complaining about that resource divisor there was that if other people drop 2 privateers of pop onto yellow planet and gain 50 resources for it (without building any factories) such crippled AR should drop 4 privateers to get same. So such resource divisor turns AR into extremely stupid sort of -f whose pop does not work.

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