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Capt Dizle · December 23, 2003, 02:26

What combination of racial traits and galaxy configuration would provide the hardest game to win?

Iasius · December 23, 2003, 05:50

I'd guess prewarp/small/8 players with feudal, -1 food, -1 industry and maybe cybernetic thrown in would be kinda hard.

I think we had a thread where we talked about this a while back. I think then we proved you can win with only -10 picks (no positives) on huge/prewarp/8 players/impossible.

Whoha · December 23, 2003, 10:59

no, -1/2 food, -1 industry, -1 research, poor homeworld, cybernetic.

-1 industry alone isn't painful enough :P

But its still possible to win with that setup.

vmxa1 · December 23, 2003, 12:02

Most any combo of 10 negative picks, but using Feudal means pooor research as well. Add in hits for industry and food it would get ugly. You increased crews and cheap ships will be of little use with no research or industry or growth.

Edit wrong trait used.

Capt Dizle · December 27, 2003, 23:07

Quote:

Originally posted by Iasius
I'd guess prewarp/small/8 players with feudal, -1 food, -1 industry and maybe cybernetic thrown in would be kinda hard.

I think we had a thread where we talked about this a while back. I think then we proved you can win with only -10 picks (no positives) on huge/prewarp/8 players/impossible.

I tried this trice and got my butt handed to me each time.

da_hal · December 31, 2003, 21:40

yeah cybernetic with -food is pretty brutal. i think this is the lowest initial production you can get.

i've won games with warlord/uncreative. all you have to do is throw all your research into one tree (i usually use chemistry) and then trade for everything you need.

i guess if you stack several related minuses, that would be more difficult than several smaller minuses, such as:

-food, -growth
uncreative, -science
feudal, -money
etc.

Whoha · December 31, 2003, 22:25

i've won a tol/lith/uncreative :P

matthead · January 4, 2004, 09:30

Quote:

Originally posted by vmxa1 using Warlord means pooor research as well.

I thought Warlord only affected ship experience and command points. What does it do to research?

Iasius · January 4, 2004, 10:52

Quote:

Originally posted by matthead

I thought Warlord only affected ship experience and command points. What does it do to research?

It doesn't affect research, that would be feudal (although I nearly always pick warlord when I'm feudal for the CP).

vmxa1 · January 4, 2004, 13:44

Yes I had another melt down and meant Feudal, edited, sorry.

matthead · January 4, 2004, 19:57

Oh, I see. I guess if I had realized you were talking about negative picks, while Warlord is a positive trait, I would have figured it out. Thanks.

Brutalisk · January 5, 2004, 18:38

The best way for this is to have someone pick the race and picks for you and then for you to go out and play it.... rather than you picking them for yourself.

I can pick some very nasty picks for you. The hardest setting does not lie in the negatives but the positives

I got some really useless positives I can hand to you and even though it would sitll be possible to finish it, you might find yourself sweating in order to do it...

Genie

bakalov · January 6, 2004, 04:52

Brutalisk, cybernetic was mentioned above, and no other positive can harm you. Read carefully before making mysterious statements that are out of place ...

Brutalisk · January 6, 2004, 15:41

I didn't say harm Bakalov. I did read everything that was said above.

A combination of picks can lead to a horrid race though, don't you agree?

In addition, isn't it mroe challenging to ahve someone else choose the picks for you and then force yourself to win the game with those and then come back ehre and state the turn and difficulty (no, NOT the difficulty setting but the difficulty you felt) by which you beat the AI ?

Brutalisk

Whoha · January 6, 2004, 22:38

so list some out, I'm interested.

bakalov · January 7, 2004, 03:50

Anyway if you give me positives other than cyb, you will only help me in one or another way. So if the hardest challenge includes any positive trait, this can only be cyb. That's what I'm trying to say.

Garth Vader · January 7, 2004, 11:40

I must be crazy because one of my favorite races has the -food and cyber.

vmxa1 · January 7, 2004, 11:53

Lots of people like to use Cyber, but it is not a good thing to eat your production, especially at the start where your repair function is not doing anything.

Whoha · January 7, 2004, 14:01

cybernetic is a good thing guys, yes you eat production, but you produce more production then food, on a normal hw cybernetic gets 2 surplus industry right off the bat. then when you get autofactories, you can move over even more people to research, because the factory will feed them,etc.

Brutalisk · January 7, 2004, 14:02

Well, it's all about different player strategies

I see that in general most of the players in this forum focus on production-strategies - no, PK that doesn't mean you ignore everything else.

Hence why anything ... counter-productive is found on your worst-off lists

Garth: what were your other race picks then?

Garth Vader · January 7, 2004, 15:33

I would take lowg, -1/2 food, -10 GC, Sub, Tele, Cyber, +10 spy( or any of the +3 picks), LargeHW.

Not a great race, but fun.

Whoha · January 7, 2004, 17:12

cmon, pick some positives, give us an example

da_hal · January 7, 2004, 22:43

cyber: eats 1/2 food, 1/2 prod per turn. if you have only 1 person on a planet, no freighters, that 1 person cannot feed themselves (since they need both food and prod per turn.)

on a larger say arid planet, you must have 2 farmers and 2 workers to feed 8 population, leaving 4 pop for production/science. so, if you take the minus food, you need 4 farmers for the same population, leaving you 2 for production/science, while on a non-cybernetic race, you would still have 4 free workers.

in other words, taking cybernetic costs you whole population units, rather than parts of population.

it is generally negated though by unification, which makes it a good dual pick, which is one way of playing with -food/cyber.

Brutalisk · January 8, 2004, 00:08

Whoha: there's a lot of bad combinations, but those players who are good enough can eventually win

"Freak-strategies" though, will be particularly difficult to those used to certain ways of playing...

I'll try to think of a couple of strategies for people to try...

Garth: I occasionally used Cyber myself, but I find the best strategy is usually using "multipliers" (eg unification) and large-population picks (best of them all, subterranean).

Brutalisk · January 8, 2004, 02:09

Whoha: play the following:

- Pre-warp
- tactical combat on
- large galaxy
- average age
- antarans and random events on
- 5 players
- Difficulty: Impossible

Select your racial icon to be the Gnolams.

Try both of the following choices:

Feudal (-4), Charismatic(+3), Fantastic Traders(+4), Lucky(+3), Uncreative,(-4) Poor Homeworld(-1), +50 population growth(+3), +2 research(+6)

Dictatorship(0), Fantastic Traders(+4), Lucky(+3), Uncreative(-4), Low G(-5), Charismatic(+3), +1.0 BC money(+8), +20 ship attack

Try these two out and be fair with yourself and us. Others are invited to try them out as well and give feedback

Whoha · January 8, 2004, 10:37

ah! i forgot about lucky, thats the pick that makes the antarans harder to capture

Whoha · January 8, 2004, 11:07

blah

Garth Vader · January 8, 2004, 11:28

Both of those races suck, if I have time I'll have to try one of them

I never used unification much, but I agree it's good. With hydro farms you can ease your food issues playing cyber. With those and either natives or a good food planet and some freighters the -food pick doesn't hurt that much.

Whoha · January 8, 2004, 11:56

first attempt:
turn 116, founded first colony outside of my system, met the Sarka, got both treaties with them.

Turn 123, met psilons, got both treaties and a nap.

turn 126, got nap with sarka.

turn 132, founded second colony, met the klackons, xenophobic ecologists. got both treaties with them.

turn 147, got nap with Klackons.

turn 160, founded 4th or so colony, outright bought next colony ship.

turn 167, got ion pulse cannons and class 1 shields out of a wreck, discovered security stations.

turn 204, fuel link to orion found.

turn 213, purchased first battleship.

turn 221, Sarkas win a council victory.

Everything was real easy till the Psilon,human, and Sarka vote was 2/3rds of the galaxy.

Whoha · January 8, 2004, 12:37

Second attempt:
turn 120, traded microbiotics with humans for research labs, and bought 3.

turn 156, traded for heavy armor with the trilarians, got all 3 treaties.

turn 197, my impetuous actions have lead to war with the humans.

turn 201, won first space combat against the humans.

turn 203, won second space combat.

turn 205, im at war with the trilarians.

this game was more difficult, since the ai actually declared war on me.