21-04-2004 20:33									#1
	Restrictive Play Styles? Remove this text

Since having become pretty proficient with my favourite factions at Transcend, I’ve been looking around for other ways to make the game more interesting and challenging. Random maps are often hopelessly designed, tech paths are usually obvious and preset, and the AI can be disappointingly predictable at times. So, in order the make the game a bit more fun, and a more significant challenge, I’ve been looking for some ‘restrictions’ I can apply to my play style.

There are a few I’ve seen mentioned that are generally based on sacrificing a particular game aspect so as to shift your play style – the clearest example being ‘single-city’ play (i.e. allowing your faction one, and only one, city throughout the entire game). These certainly spike the challenge, but not so much the fun

One thing I have tried, that I found worked well, was to aggressively role-play. For example, I set up an edited ‘Perfect Builder’s Map’ (my favourite map) with all the continents interlinked by thin strips of land. Then I jumped in as the PKs and tried to set up cities on every choke-point between factions, to act as a demilaterized zone. My ultimate aim was to try to bring every faction to a decently developed and, ultimately, peaceable state, and to intercede should any faction be threatened with extinction. I also restricted my Vendetta options – I stipulated that I couldn’t declare vendetta, nor could I directly manipulate the AI into doing so (though I didn’t have to cede to any of there demands, of course). Basically, I tried to RP as a benign, planet-wide peacemaker – seemed to fit

Another example – playing as the Cult (or a tweaked version of same) and declaring at the start that I wouldn’t use any ‘advanced’ terraforming options – namely Boreholes and Echelon Mirrors, and would generally avoid terraforming at all whenever possible. This was an interesting game, but a little too restrictive (I really like building complex borehole and mirror clusters – I’m a builder to the core)

Anyway, I’ve run out of ideas, and was wondering if anyone else has any suggestions for future play-style possibilities.

	21-04-2004 23:00									#2
	Re: Restrictive Play Styles? Support Apolyton

quote: Originally posted by TheProvost (i.e. allowing your faction one, and only one, city throughout the entire game). These certainly spike the challenge, but not so much the fun

No fun?? One city games are a kick in the pants. Great for those that don't like to micro-manage or that don't have a lot of time.

Other than that, guess you could reverse you peacekeeper game and play a game on a permenant war footing. Take the spartans or fundys go into vendetta status with everyone and never accept a truce. Go for the fastest conquest posible.

Or maybe a probe team only faction. Make Armored Trance Probe teams to defend citys and only capture enemy cities with probes.

Just a couple suggestions

	21-04-2004 23:03									#3
	Re: Restrictive Play Styles? Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations

quote: Originally posted by TheProvost Anyway, I’ve run out of ideas, and was wondering if anyone else has any suggestions for future play-style possibilities.

What I do is design various "Challenges" for myself by building various maps with the AI in mind, then "sweetening" their starting positions as well as giving them certain orders such as "Betray human players mercilessly" or "Build lots of Probes". The best of these I then share with others over at CGN.
Just as you were saying previously, why this is a much better approach than playing on a randomly generated map with the computer placing AI's haphazardly.

Regardless, welcome aboard, look over in the AC Creation area for other inventive ways to expand your playing capabilities and enjoyment.


D

	22-04-2004 01:02									#4
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Play with the faction editor. Something I've been meaning to try is "The Manifold OCC".

Planetdeath has ravaged your mind, and you awaken once again to find your technologies forgotten, your thoughts lethargic, and your planet-wide army of symbionts scattered and in chaos. You are tired, but it is the tired of the waxing awareness, the hopeful kind of tired that heralds awakening.

Your role as the neural node of the Manifold Nexus is to at last reach pangeaic sentience -- before any of those pesky "humans" beat you to it.

You begin with "Secrets of the Manifolds" (you ARE the Manifold, after all) and "Centauri Ecology" (without it you'd starve) but you may only harvest from fungus --whether worker or crawler -- via satellite, and by SP (BMT is the only one I can think of).

You've captured a few humans and made them symbionts via the traditional "implanting spores in brain" method, and these will be your loyal footsoldiers and spies, but of course your preference will be for your own "children": worms, spore launchers, IoD's, and locusts.

You should probably pick the Usurper faction profile to start with, then modify from there. The Manifold gets added energy from infrastructure, not from the poorly-understood concept of "trade". Also, the Caretakers would be your sworn enemies, as they're onto your little scheme and have vowed to stop it.

Your faction benefits and penalties would be:

Free Punshment Sphere: your "citizens" are almost parts of yourself; lack of intellectual diversity hampers research, but "unrest" isn't a concept you're even familiar with.

-2 Support: Industrial infrastructure isn't your forte

-2 Econ: Economy? What's that?

+2 Planet: You ARE Planet

+2 Energy from Fungus: Fungus utilizes its own energy efficiently, without the waste of conversion

Ideology Green, Aversion Free Market

You must begin the game with a land base with access to Planet's largest ocean and Manifold Nexus within its radius. You may use the map editor to move your starting colony pod.

During the course of the game you may build a colony in the center of "The Ruins". This is the only other colony you are allowed to build.

You may also keep captured bases which have built any of the following SP's: Weather Paradigm, XenoDome, Pholus Mutagen, VoP. All other bases must be razed the turn they are taken. (If you can eliminate the base in 1 turn by building a colony pod that's acceptable.)

Your game settings must include "Sparse Native Life" and "Transcend" as the only victory condition. Destruction, or possession by any other faction but yours, of The Manifold Harmonics or Manifold Nexus constitutes defeat.

For eons you've tried and failed, yet each taste of your fully-realized sentience has only encouraged you. Somehow, you think this time you're going all the way.

(Any suggestions for improving "The Manifold OCC" would be appreciated)

	22-04-2004 02:22									#5
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Its not a playstyle but I find the switching factions challenge to often be tough. In this challenge you must bring your faction to first place in the overall standings and then take over the WORST faction in the standings. In my attempts I have switched twice and still managed victory. I plan to attempt a triple switch sometime but that can get tricky-- ever try to defeat your own empires with some believer 2 base empire with 10 colony pods LOL??

	22-04-2004 02:59									#6
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punity for Planned, Wealth and democratic.

That way you're not tempted to make choices that are harmfull to you as Planet (+ growth, + industry, + support and + economy)

	23-04-2004 03:01									#7
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quote: Originally posted by Santiago_Clause Play with the faction editor. Something I've been meaning to try is "The Manifold OCC". ... (Any suggestions for improving "The Manifold OCC" would be appreciated)

Woah, weird – I have indeed experimented with a faction very similar to this. My plan was to have a faction with whatever tech gives you the SP that grants massive fungus bonuses (is that Secrets of the Manifolds?) and restrict the player to no terraforming, in any way, ever – they had to respect Planet totally, and live only off of fungus. There would also be significant emphasis on use of native-life units over ‘human’ alternatives (though my faction was still ultimately human – essentially a really extreme Planet Cult). If I recall, my plotline ran something like: Cha Dawn wakes up in the fungus and finds he is not only closely tied to Planet, but is also aware of some amazing revelation (i.e. the relevant tech) that he will use to bring humanity and Planet into total harmony.

I abandoned it after a few problems arose – the opening game was pretty dull, the SP in question took forever to build (I really wanted to be able to set it as built in the first city, but my scenario editing skills are horrific so I never got it to work right) and the alternative – faction specific fungus bonuses – meant that, once the SP was built, fungus was insanely productive. I also got annoyed with the damn AI constantly trying to trade me some awful tier one tech for my highly advanced faction tech.

Ultimately, it was just too unbalanced and easy to manipulate.

From the suggestions you guys have made (some of which are very cool, thanks!), it seems the best way to get some new themes and challenges is to become more proficient with the scenario editor (which has always seemed to be horrifically unintuitive to me ).

	23-04-2004 05:04									#8
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quote: Originally posted by TheProvost From the suggestions you guys have made (some of which are very cool, thanks!), it seems the best way to get some new themes and challenges is to become more proficient with the scenario editor (which has always seemed to be horrifically unintuitive to me ).

Heah TheProvost,

Googlie has written an article on How to use the Scenario Editor . It was very helpful to me when I was first experimenting with mod'ing the game. FYI in case this helps you. And the best advice I can give you when using the Scenario Editor is Save, Save, Save!


D

	23-04-2004 07:20									#9
	Increase Your PM Length

That Manifold OCC is cool idea, I will have to give it a try someday.

	23-04-2004 10:53									#10
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I've occasionally played as Miriam with the ground rules being basically that I was only allowed to build Probe units (other stuff could be probe-captured and the probes themselves could be armored). As this can be a bit boring at first, I've sometimes loosened the rules slightly to allow myself to build a former or 2 (i.e. 1 land & 1 sea) and maybe another Colony or SeaColony (but try it a couple of times in the purest form, you can always capture the CP's and Formers with your probes, albeit with some risk of alienating your neighbors).

I had a starting position I used a lot where M started out on a medium sized continent with Yang and Santi as neighbors (and a seemingly hostile Zak just offshore with a propensity for settling that continent too. I often got eliminated pretty early, but if I survived long enough to get some probes and some money together, the game got pretty interesting. Careful diplomacy was pretty important, as my military was usually kind of second rate and/or obsolete.

The description of the Manifold OOC sounds really good.

	23-04-2004 16:43									#11
	Got spare money?

Other day I just played something similar with that Manifold OCC. I edited the Alphax.txt and deleted all the terraform options from formers. The only thing left was "plant and remove fungus". I also gave to all formers the ability to to that, from the beginning (without needing to research the specific technology). Then I increased the fungus bonus for some techs (basically I edited three techs for +1nutr/+1min/+1energ respectively). Since planting fungus is the ONLY option available, all factions MUST learn to live and build their empires from this initial conditions.
An interesting game, I really enjoyed it (since the energy imput is slow in the early stages of the game, the tech advance was slow so the game ended more interesting).

	23-04-2004 16:46									#12
	Lose 30 kilos (of popups)

quote: Originally posted by Cosmic Other day I just played something similar with that Manifold OCC. I edited the Alphax.txt and deleted all the terraform options from formers. The only thing left was "plant and remove fungus". I also gave to all formers the ability to to that, from the beginning (without needing to research the specific technology). Then I increased the fungus bonus for some techs (basically I edited three techs for +1nutr/+1min/+1energ respectively). Since planting fungus is the ONLY option available, all factions MUST learn to live and build their empires from this initial conditions. An interesting game, I really enjoyed it (since the energy imput is slow in the early stages of the game, the tech advance was slow so the game ended more interesting).

Did the AI factions plant fungus properly, or was it a multiplayer game?

	24-04-2004 07:14									#13
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Try playing with Blind Research, Random Personalities, and tech stagnation, accelerated start on Transcend with Miriam.

Modify the .txt where you get -4 Research. That should be interesting.

	24-04-2004 07:29									#14
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If I remember well, the computer let all the fungus already in the planet (didnt remove then), but didnt plant new ones (I was playing the huge map of planet).

Now I´m trying to edit the game so factions start already with clean reactors but they dont produce minerals (that include all terraforming and no terraforming possibilities (like boreholes, forests, fungus, nessus mining stations). In other words, faction will have to produce a LOT of ec´s to buy everything, I said EVERYTHING . But I´m having problems doing this one.