Advanced Save Game Six Empires Huge Map and Minor Races

[UesugiKenshin]

IF bribery and diplomatic sabotage worked, that would be wonderful. That could expand and have you funding local sector domestic guerilla fighters who then throw off the shackles and liberate themselves.

Your money then is helping them maintain self-determination and autonomy, but this meddling is how communism then drew down an Iron Curtain in Asia! Never think the enemy of my enemy is my friend, as they are not.

That meddling is what facilitated the zaibatsu in Japan being properly jailed, then in the power vacuum created by American meddling, communism nearly took over Japan. True story. This is why MacArthur had to release the zaibatsu, and they schemed and formed joint kaisha cooperatives that then re-took over Japan through economic warfare and nearly threatened all American banking and real estate before the bubble popped in the early nineties.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_MacArthur

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaibats ... aibatsu%20(%E8%B2%A1%E9%96%A5%2C%20%22financial%20clique,end%20of%20World%20War%20II.

There are severe ramifications to meddling as a conservative Great Britain fell to extreme socialism and Russian subversion immediately after WW2.

[UesugiKenshin]

In history, it is almost always better to be selfish and isolationist and so not meddling, but entirely improving the life of your own citizens.

And the galaxy is vast and the distance imposed by slow warp travel then limits war. It cannot eliminate it entirely, and no one wants that. But realistically no sci-fi fan is cheering the evil Emperor controlling the Empire in Star Wars either.

BotE needs more options so sometimes due to extreme profit, an empire does humanitarian missions. But primarily some empires would improve themselves, as the Omega have done, if it were possible, they would genetically engineer themselves so symbiosis is no longer necessary.

The easiest way is to label that an extreme research victory where 20+ levels of research exist. Then they likely are so powerful and invulnerable and impervious to sabotage and espionage that they are godlike.

Likely they would gain monumental morale values to offset minor negative ones. Hundreds of positive points. They then still might conquer or just stop playing. I sort of like the sandbox notion that more missions as DLC could always be loaded through modding.

Newer generations of Omega's Vi aristocracy would slowly wake up and realize their entire empire is based on corruption and suppressing free will at the expense of other species. Eventually there would be a sea change as ideologically the younger generations would refuse to comply and support this corruption militarily.

They are also vain enough to feel superior. That shows up as a theme in Marvel comic mythos as Magneto creates an evil mutant brotherhood he labels superior beings. Charles Xavier realized through Cerebro enhancement that a large subset of humans have latent mutant powers.

The generation following this ideologically change might then see without conquest, the young became purposeless and self-indulgent, and might conquer anyway by re-embracing what their ancestors admired. There would be no symbiosis, but an oligarchy of powerful Vi aristocracy supporting an Emperor.

[UesugiKenshin]

In Rome 1 Total War and Medieval 2 Total War, the people want to be appeased and so they gain pleasure houses that then confer extreme corruption which negates profitability. And without military discipline and a unifying purpose, with such immense power, some would want to use and abuse that power for conquest again. It is inevitable.

Self-indulgent aristocrats could not be bothered to fight as citizen-soldiers for the glory of the empire, thus they hired people who would act as professional soldiers and mercenaries. That always leads to doom and the fall of empires as a new despot rises and then is crowned as the king or emperor.

[UesugiKenshin]

The Terran Coalition are idealized globalists writ large on a galaxy, but in history such empires like the Romans, the Spanish, the Ottomans, the USSR, etc always falter as there is no unifying purpose ultimately as all people due to ethnic differences and no matter what, end up demonizing all others. That is human nature.

Even the indigenous of North America who were largely and closely ethnically similar fought each other. Not only that, such similarity stiffled technological development. That precisely happened in Japan too.

Even Christianity and Islam cannot unify, but those adherents end up battling each other. Communists and capitalists end up fighting each other due to ideological differences, and then communists purge communists. It is implausible that some ideology unifies an empire. Some want to lord over "inferiors" which is how the slave trade began in Africa as some ethnic people enslaved war captives.

[UesugiKenshin]

One could load the advanced turn#480, and not invade other empires, but liberate all minor races and simultaneously disarm all the major races! That is amusing. You would make the other major races strictly control their own colonized inhabited sectors, and slowly inquire if minors wanted to join as members.

You are empowered to do ANYTHING as the Omega. Think outside the box. You could just keep colonizing and eroding the other major empires' sphere of influence by starbases. There are LOTS
of perfectly terraformed sectors devoid of people. Seize them. Yeah, they are claimed by other major races, but nobody is actually on the surface.

The other major races cannot conquer without troops and starships, right?

When so godlike as the Omega, you can play however you want.

You could be like Earth First and Greenpeace and just plant a small fleet in orbit and not allow any major race to colonize. You are like scientist eco-soldiers!
"This entire sector is claimed by Nature!"

Such a sector would be a vast Eden and totally unsullied by the effects of sentient beings arriving to exploit it and pollute it. Perhaps in actual astronomy, 80 solar systems with hundreds of worlds and no garbage at all, no poverty, no crime, no sentient influences.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sid_Mei ... a_Centauri
Your empire would be akin to Deirdre Sky who labeled her followers Gaia's Stepdaughters.

Note: the real goddess Gaea was totally malevolent and ate children and gave birth to monsters, yet today goofballs label her a benevolent Mother Nature.
https://www.theoi.com/Protogenos/Gaia.html

[UesugiKenshin]

In an idealized galaxy where war is suppressed, if one could still make colony ships, then you have a perpetual peace and expansion where anyone who is sick and tired of living in a sector, just joins up as pioneers and settles in a new unpopulated region and starts over afresh.

There is a total freedom in that to just live and educate yourself and have a homestead in a vast galaxy. That is a utopia. That is the noble savage concept in philosophy.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_savage

Kahn Noonien Singh and his band of genetically enhance eugenecists retreated and tried just that on Ceti Alpha V.
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Khan_Noonien_Singh

The immortal human Flint who left Earth to colonize a planet is precisely like that.
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Flint

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=R-oRPQVlMJc
Flint and Rayna are doing just fine until Capt. Kirk meddles like a besotted schoolboy.

[UesugiKenshin]

The Cartare and several of their member minor races have fallen. After a space dock and some time for the morale to rise and normalize, then access to minor ships becomes available in the ship designer (under the research screen). I'm anticipating this does not happen for the Cartare or any major race.

However, there is nothing stopping me from creating mix and match chassis from all the major and minor races in the ship editor, and then configuring some magnificent starships after achieving extremely high research. That way the very best would show up. That might not happen until as early as turn#400 by spending enormous amounts of cash, or likely around turn#600.

The best way would be to recolor the graphics, but to do that, the file exchange would have to work again, and while working, I get no response for them. You need those to edit all the layers of the images so they look differently. Also, if there was say a "good Omega" or "benevolent Cartare", they should use the same ships, but recolored so they are a separate faction. Their faction flag icon would also change. A malevolent Terran empire that had magnificent diplomacy but could bombard at will with no morale penalty would be fearsome.

In the wiki, it clearly states that very fast fighters with phenomenal manueverability can beat large plodding dreadnoughts. I plan on building some amazing ones and even some technology that makes dreadnoughts extremely manueverable.

It makes no sense to create a fleet where some ships are not cloaked, right? Imagine an entirely cloaked fleet at the advanced levels.
...
When I play and especially during combat where so much death happening even in the billions, that BotE is a game of enormous gravitas and pathos. You would have to be quite warped to cheer hundreds of billions dead.

I use VLC player and run Incompetech royalty free horror soundtracks. It sets a mood of suspense, fear, dread, and battle. It doesn't seem to slow down BotE's performance either. Similarly Pandora streams well.
https://incompetech.com/music/royalty-f ... rch=Search

I can rotate 2.5 hours of music and that is better.

[UesugiKenshin]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=12HXnYNA6 ... rt_radio=1
Jeff van Dyck is the main composer of Total War's multiple soundtracks.

If you directly run the youtube app, then it will multitask unlike running youtube through chrome or opera. The downside, and there probably is a workaround, is the youtube app overlays on the BotE screen and so is annoying, whereas neither Pandora or VLC player are so cumbersome.

In Pandora, you can listen to practically any artist, but they will break in with commercials.

Bear McCreary has 678 songs from many famous tv shows.

[UesugiKenshin]

I was doing some BotE wiki reading today, and I realized that I am incorrectly using flagships. Every empire has one and only one flagship like the Enterprise in STTNG which is a weak excuse why Riker "Re Kirk" never gets truly promoted.

You have "command ships" like the Vi dreadnought and that leads a fleet and confers battle advantages, but if you ever lose one, you pay a terrible penalty. My redesigned Omega Vi dreadnoughts are extremely unlikely to lose and even less likely to lose when 9 ships are working as one in a fleet. Still, you should only designate one.

http://birth-of-the-empires.de/wiki/ind ... laggschiff
Flagship

http://birth-of-the-empires.de/wiki/ind ... fsaufgaben
See command ship.

[UesugiKenshin]

The Tarokhoe might actually offer some resistance by the time I get to them as they have at least the capacity to make low level Havri destroyers and Havron cruisers.
http://birth-of-the-empires.de/wiki/ind ... r#Tarokohe
http://birth-of-the-empires.de/wiki/ind ... Z#Tarokohe

I captured Chewark ships this turn but just Chaw battleships, not the better Cheraw battleships.
http://birth-of-the-empires.de/wiki/ind ... -E#Chewark
http://birth-of-the-empires.de/wiki/ind ... er#Chewark

Intel points have climbed past 1.36 million and the Cartare are eliminated, thus I can raise the Terran and Heyoun sabotage points to 15%. The Heyoun are not technically at a state of war with the Omega.

I'm conquering in a orchestrated methodical manner as there is no rush and doing so carefully with zero Omega soldier casualties. But I am expanding around the Baflid region which is a touch aggressive as there might a handful of Terran ships, likely member minor races' ships.

I could attack the minor race inhabited sectors first, which would be marginally more cautious as if I eliminate their patron, they might be able to muster a ship or two. I doubt it. The AI does a terrible job building infrastructure, thus their accumulated ships do little to no protection, but only exploit the minor races. This is why it genuinely makes no sense why they would enter into a membership with an empire.

This is why a configured modded BotE would be better all around, but be far more difficult in diplomacy and waging war as major races. I would configure the minor races to be far less inclined to accept membership, and have very protected inhabited minor sectors. You won't be able to push them around.

[UesugiKenshin]

Imagine some species admires the Federation. The whole point is mutual protection by many species starships at first, then standardization as the incident with the Vulcans demonstrated vulnerability versus coordinated diverse at the very least bridge crews. Besides then sharing research and a joint economy.

Technically it is quite different as a species had to demonstrate warp drive just to begin inquiring about membership, whether actual in starships or not. If BotE were doing that, then all minor races would be space faring.

Some species have specialized ground defenses to illustrate their race can be lethal by themselves, but I would like specialized minor race troops.

The galaxy is huge in this save game and by being so far away, it's a joke to the AI that they have a responsibility to their member races' defenses. Some like the Ba'a are actually starving. That is so irresponsible. All my colonies, major or minor, get the very best infrastructure...in every way possible.

Some wargamers steamroll and so consolidate their forces which then means they might be attacked from any direction and certainly flanked. They make videos which are laughable as they are not defending whatsoever as they only are attacking the AI. Human wargamers cannot play that way. It would ruin their empires.

With a far better AI that defends and or multiplayer with human friends, BotE would really shine, as long as they all began with large treasuries and large military forces. Throwing everything against the AI won't work with human beings. You would get crushed doing that.

[UesugiKenshin]

On a 40*40 galactic map, it is very important that practically all inhabited sectors can make some ships in a timely manner as otherwise your standing military MUST deploy and protect those regions. The USA gets heavily criticized, but we simply could not defend the free world without having various types of infantry, mechanized armor, artillery, ships, fighter jets, bombers, missile defense, ICBMs, even space based weapons like rods from god. You just can't wage postmodern war without having troops in hotspots. It takes too long to get them in place otherwise. They have to be able to respond immediately and hold out for reinforcements. There is not one battle front. There are dozens.

That means they all need raw material caches and they need an improved deritium system and the domestic morale has to be high enough to sustain domestic troops at-the-ready. With maxed out infrastructure of at least 10.0 billion inhabited sectors...all the way to 90 billion, those sectors have a morale of 200 even though they have 20 level 6 Da'unor Special units there.

The other logjam is training of starships. Now it is centralized, but really you need some done in hubs, so there should be secondary training. For a galactic scale wargame, investing everything in a single sector is unwise.

Given the delay in warp speed across the galaxy, you likely need a hub every 7 to 10 sectors so more rapid deployment can occur. Some cloaked Rotharian fleet could do a lot of damage otherwise.

[UesugiKenshin]

Ultimate General is supposed to have a superb AI. Otherwise, rather than an AI, most wargames have AI benefits where they gain research or have more industry points or better combat modifiers. So the AI cheats as it is not wise. Chess is easy to program versus BotE where literally anything might happen.

What Civ2 had was various AI tendencies that were sometimes better regarding expansion. A methodical AI is better at defense as it is not spread too thin. Some AI attributes meant it aggressively build infrastructure, thus it was highly defensible.

In BotE you don't want to colonize a planet, but colonize a sector at once, as that automatically populates infrastructure. The former way is more expensive, but you have a little weak control.

[UesugiKenshin]

Turn #488

The latest sabotage capture has some Terran, Vorgon, and Heyoun ships that were recently made with duranium hulls (looking at the build number shows you when it was made). So those details are not in the BotE ship wiki, but if like the Omega, then titanium hulls are standard, plausibly indicating the AI is trying to make stronger starships.

One of the rationales for using generations of vessels by class is to facilitate better or easier plausible upgrades based on presumed technological gain by advanced turns. This way more appropriate vessels meet the realistic requirements of a dynamic evolving battlefield in space.

Putting double hulls on a fighter makes it less manueverable, so one should be judicious about that trade off.

Some new player may be reticent to create upgrades as that adds to the expense. What good does it do when all your ships face sabotage by the godlike Omega with 1.4 million intel points? Not much as they actually hold 10% points in reserve and have gotten a significant internal security upgrade through a minor race's special buildings. The Terrans have less than 10 inhabited systems and might be the next to go. Meaning even a larger percentage can be applied from the current 15% allocated to the Terrans for sabotage.

Sabotage as bad as it is regarding balance, then gets horrendously skewed as empires are eliminated.

[UesugiKenshin]

Since wargame AI most often are weak, then a ship database might be configured to make certain classes be obsolete by newer ship classes. The problem with that is the Saijin assault ship starship which has low yield torpedoes by comparison to the Samech I and Samech II classes. I intend to have possibly no torpedoes on an assault ship so it only has beam weapons so it gets the assault ship escort bonus for ground invasions without actually doing infrastructure damage on purpose.

You don't send in troops and ships guns ablazing from many light-years away, right? You make judgement calls outside the enemies' inhabited sector or in space based on your current espionage assessment and the most recent scanning. You send the appropriate team in or have high casualties and that is not always wisdom.

This is also why sabotage is wrong as the Omega are crushing what little opposition there is. Only once have they faced planetary shields in numerous engagements. 99% of the time, they only face naked civilians weakly opposing ground troops with zero bombardment.