Attempting an experiment

12 "major" races in a game

from GalCiv2 Forums

As mentioned in another thread (link: https://forums.galciv2.com/394402) I was able to mod the minor races to colonize. In that thread there is a link to another discussing the same topic, in which some of the posters debated turning the minors into quasi-major races to, in effect, have more then 10 major races in a game. There were two main objections raised to this:

  1. Minors are immune to influence
  2. Minors do no count for victory conditions, so you could win by destroying or allying with all major civs regardless of what was going on with the major-minors

While there is nothing that can be done about #2, it occurred that #1 would actually fit the backstory of two races: the Yor and Thalan. Both are so alien compared to the other races that it makes sense for them to be immune to culture-flipping (their bonus to loyalty just doesn't cut it, in my opinion), and as a side note, both are isolationist and probably wouldn't take part in the United Planets either.

What I'm going to do is replace two of the minor races with copies of the Yor and Thalan, then play a game with the other 10 majors. I'll set minor races to 8 to gurantee the Yor and Thalan make it in, but leave the other minors unmodded in any way, avoiding the problem of 8 influence-immune super minors. If this works (as in, creates a fun and interesting game), I might post an AAR about it here. If not, well, it wouldn't be my first modding failure.

aars
13,611 views 6 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

Interesting idea.  I'm 3 years into a game with major-minors and things seem to be going well.  Other than the minors, the game itself is pretty unremarkable, making it hard to do a write-up.  I do have some experiences and observations that might help you, though.

1) Minors can, in fact, become pretty powerful.

I gave all my minors some bonuses to make them competitive and reflect their descriptions.  Of course, I also changed their descriptions from the drivel they came with to something respectable.  While trying to be balanced, I decided to try making a monster just to see if I could, giving the Dark Yor some pretty hefty bonuses to economy, morale, pop. growth, and production.  It worked.  While the other minors have from 2 to 7 colonies, The DY are keeping up with the majors and have 32.  Actually, I declared a preemptive war against them to slow their expansion.  If I hadn't been destroying literally dozens of their colony ships over the past 2 years, they would probably own half the galaxy.

So far, I can't say anything about their military. For whatever reason, the AI hasn't switched from colony-rush to war, even though I've been pillaging both DY and Torian space for years.  I can just say that with the right bonuses they'll do just fine and with balanced bonuses they'll remain pretty minor powers.

 

2)  Minors start with only 1b population, so your Yor and Thalans will have an inherent disadvantage.  Their economy and expansion will be slowed compared to the majors.  It's possible to compensate with economy or pop. growth bonuses, but those will carry on past the initial stages.

 

3) I'm not sure if you can change the starting system/planet for minors.  Sure, you may be able to input the custom system for the Yor and Thalans, but you may just end up with the system name and typical PQ15 planets for minors.  Would like to know how it works out.

 

4)  Minors are not only immune to influence, they also project no influence.  Anything relying on that won't work. e.g. the weapon and defense techs that give bonus in your influence, and the Super Isolationist speed restriction.

 

That's it right off the cuff.  Let us know how it turns out, even if you don't do a full AAR.

Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

Sadly all plans have been temporarily derailed by the accidential deletion of almost all my saved games. While my ongoing "Galactic Wars" AAR will not be affected by this as the game it was based on had long since finished, my experiment here has been lost.

Offworld Trading Company
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

In fact, examining the recycle bin revealed that they hadn't been deleted, only moved (extremely long story).

Disregard previous post.

Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

I've started the game, but haven't encountered either of the "major race" minors yet. I wound up disabling Super Abilities altogether as I was playing as Terrans and I've found that Super Diplomat leads to somewhat boring games; since this was on TOA there were more then enough differences between the races.

Interestingly it's also the first TOA game I've had where the Drengin aren't affected by the "evil race colonization" bug. The Yor and the Korath never were affected by it.

I've had a couple of messages regarding the minor-Thalan, who seem to be progressing well enough. I haven't heard anything at all from the minor-Yor. I probably won't run into either of them for a while, as I've tried to set up a very long game by modding a range penalty on an Immense galaxy with tight clusters. I won't be doing much exploring anytime soon anyway, thanks to the mega event that flooded my planets with spies and the constant warlike noises from the Drengin and Iconians.

Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

So, in the end, this didn't turn out too well: the minor Yor failed to colonize and spent half the game besieged by the Torians until finally being conquered, and after nearly eight game years I still have not met the minor Thalan. Granted, it took almost as long to make contact with the Arceans, but they at least made plenty of noise beforehand (thugging minors for cash, sending messages about their techs, and going to war with the Drengin) whereas the Thalan have been completely quiet. The game itself is one of several I have ongoing, and the current situation is still quite interesting, but as an attempt to create major - minors it was a failure.

 

There is the fact that this was done before I began modding the tech trees, though, so I decided to give it another shot with the new and improved AIs. So far in the new game, things have been quiet. I've only met the Arceans, Torians, and Altarians out of all the major and minor races, so we'll see how this goes. For the curious, here's the galaxy at present (2229):

(I am the Terrans. The pale orange guys in the corner are the Krynn.)