Advanced Save Game Six Empires Huge Map and Minor Races

[UesugiKenshin]

Right now, for testing purposes only, I'm conquering purely to see what the maximum minor races ended up being in a maximum map that turned on all minor races, but also allowed 1% stellar anomalies, and then determine the maximum number of inhabited sectors. It is kind of like a benchmark determination or a theoretical maximum. With stellar anomalies included, it may be that the maximum minor races cannot show up, even in a 40*40 galactic map or 1600 sectors.

Then for modding purposes, set up a fair balanced system where each major species has 1/6 of the galaxy. Or determine the maximum number of minor races that can appear, and then subtract that from 1600, and count up all the potential inhabitable sectors and divide that up into six pieces of cherry strudel.

[UesugiKenshin]

I think it's in Civ 2 that you can designate a region as a priority for the AI to conquer, thus the AI tries to take those out as quickly as possible ie key settlements. And in BotE, once established as an empire, if the number of settlements falls below a threshold, then maybe you effectively decapitate the power structure of the government. Then it changes the designation of what that former empire now is in terms of status.

Conquering a nation is not controlling every little village, but such concepts as key settlements, which today is largely about urban population centers. This is a bizarre concept as none of them have any "carrying capacity". Thus guerillas, partisans, and irregulars can actually surround urban centers and deny them resources ie blockade them (in BotE this is a feature), and so perhaps this is more humane?

And in the USA and likely the entire world, 70% live in a very limited 2.5% of the land mass. They can't feed themselves.

There is a phenomena called Just-In-Time manufacturing and inventory controls. It costs a LOT of money to store surplus inventory and that is tying up a manufacturing site's cashflow and a city's budget. So inventory managers call suppliers and they do the inventory and promise to deliver critical goods like coal for boilers for power generation and water purification like chlorine analogues.

So in terms of military operations, one could paralyze urban centers as they have on hand 14 days of chlorine analogues. US cities have to continuously have shipments of food delivered.

This became a major issue with supply chain disruptions due to Covid-19 as many come from China.

Now it goes full circle. War can be the denial of resources and thus cause anarchy in as little as 14 days in 2.5% of the land mass. This is military strategy.

[UesugiKenshin]

You presume that you win a war by taking out all populated sectors, but this is not actually true as many lack critical raw materials and have to use resource routes. Mine don't because that would be a very slipshod way to manage in times of war.

Carrying capacity is a term used in ecology and also is a function of Malthusian forces. Humans are apex predators who have no capacity to hunt, trap, fish as they have become too civilized. It's remarkable that hunting regions show up in some major and minor races as they have not sacrificed this.
https://www.nationalgeographic.org/topi ... 20rebounds.
Carrying Capacity

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthus ... 0die%20off.
Malthusianism

Human beings began as hunter-gathers who then discovered fire and digging wells and making pottery and then transitioned into agrarians who raised herds and grew crops. But urban centers have no room for any of that, thus are extremely vulnerable in times of war.

We have the majority of urbanites in urban centers who cannot make campfires. So how would they draw water and purify it in times of war? Civilization is far more fragile than most suppose. The average American has 7-11 days of food on hand, yet in history, grocery stores began for the wealthy.

See how easily wars are won?

[UesugiKenshin]

In war, whoever controls the logistics of critical resources can collapse the densely populated urban zones by preventing them entering these regions by attacking convoys. The preponderance are on railroads, barges, and trucking to warehouses. Rail brings the most but trucks do final delivery. Some travel through air freight. Globalism has made merchant cargo shipping by sea to be critically important. You are importing what formerly was domestically produced.

Military commanders don't have to attack soldiers to win.

The best inhabited sectors are making as much domestic production as possible and plausible.

[UesugiKenshin]

Look at what led to WW2 as the USA attacked Japan by doing two things.
1. Embargo trade so a nation that has no domestic capacity shuts down
2. Fund an illegal undeclared war by helping opposition groups in China.

That happened years before the Pearl Harbor attack.

In BotE, you could blockade and do sabotage missions.

[UesugiKenshin]

Military strategy bolsters the defenses of your own inhabited sectors and can act indirectly to all potential enemies to all but declare war through other means. Get creative with it.

One could do things like ensure a massive raw material cache domestically and then sell down to zero every turn to wage economic war. The AI would have no profitability and so would slowly go bankrupt.

[UesugiKenshin]

What happens in BotE is civilians end up defending.

Okay, how long can citizens or even soldiers fight without water? 72 hours. Starvation reduces blood glucose levels and so the brain induces fainting. A large portion of the citizens, including the aging power structure, take routine medicines. What if no medicines are available? What happens is most have some in their blood and by two weeks, that is all filtered out by their livers and kidneys and so all their medical conditions return full force.

War can be waged in this manner when the resistance has no large weapons.

[UesugiKenshin]

War begins by economic means, asymmetric attacks on convoys, attacking transportation, denial of utilities like electricity, natural gas, and water distribution, suppress communications, and other sabotage. In BotE, this most often happens by attacking space docks and military shipyards.

Then the sabotage is blamed on a 3rd party to cause false flags, and goad the enemy into attacking another who likely has poor diplomatic relations. You maintain good diplomatic relations through subterfuge.

[UesugiKenshin]

Sabotage could change in future patches where starship theft rarely occurs, but other types listed above might happen and be very realistic and within historical plausibility.

And six major race empires could get very creative in ways to harm their competitors. See too much is focused on military sabotage and not enough is working on diplomatic sabotage. Economic sabotage would be highly likely. These are largely functions of practical security. Theft of one single starship of a small size might happen, but a large capitol ship like a destroyer? No way. This is not a commercial airline hijacking.

[UesugiKenshin]

How would it even be plausible that when the left invite one gun control initiative after another, then might by billions rise up and take up arms against alien invading ground forces?

Inquiring minds want to know.
...
Every major and minor race has attributes regard martial ability and sneakiness. Thus the intensity of how that is expressed then certainly might be a factor on the intensity of civilian resistance. It logically follows.

Some species might be totally inept and have no basic practical skills to even start a campfire, so how could they fight hand-to-hand?

I think that BotE has a lot of useful data in various files, plus the programmers were quite visionary yet pragmatic about the game, thus there is a lot of untapped potential even now.

[UesugiKenshin]

What really would happening you tried to sabotage a starship?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gJ41JRSy0lY

Then this!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gl_y5wTeJtk
That soundtrack was perfect.

[UesugiKenshin]

At most, you probably have a 5 % chance of stealing a capital ship and so, it's too much of an investment, you would lose many cells to make it work, and then only heighten security so you couldn't pull off subsequent ones. You do it when there is an absolute reason, as they did in TOS when they stole a cloaking device.

[UesugiKenshin]

Some minor races modify military sabotage, so those odds get rather large, so that has to influence AI decision making. There were times I elected not to do any sabotage that had a high chance of success, and that was when intel point were at 1.3 million. No matter how puny the odds of success, when you have that many, it is going to work way out of proportion as planned. Maybe no one ever gained so MANY points before?

[UesugiKenshin]

In my signature is the minor races' database. Look through the benefits confered to the major race which is their patron after membership or subjugation. These have additive effects which is why fairly early on the Omega not only had 1.3 million points, but the chance of military sabotage effectiveness went up to 1400+%. See? It is unbalanced.

You can understand why this works. I get the logic as some minor races are not only sneaky but some are shape shifters. Interestingly some others have internal security modifiers as they have special equipment or abilities to detect such shape shifters.

It is not just a matter of impersonating a captain of a starship. But retinal and voiceprint scans. They would have to know passcodes and protocols and the first such successful sabotage then would create a huge backlash.

Years ago I was talking to an early computer security official and I suggested musical tones as these could be infinite as well as color shades. It would be an unbreakable system. Japanese kanji has 150,000 symbols that are known to educated people. That would exceed any known alphanumeric symbology plus standard characters.

[UesugiKenshin]

Human beings beginning with the dark ages and on to monarchies and feudalism adopted this urbanization paradigm that first allowed kings to have capitals, but then sers and barons began to have mini versions. So much so that Italy (ancient Rome on forward) had city-states as did Greece.

But there is nothing that indicated that paradigm is a galactic model. Frankly it is inefficient and foolish and created a social hierarchy of urbanites versus country bumpkins. And it perpetuated aristocracy and robbed trained specialists to go to cities. This did however lead to the middle class.

Some hive insectoid race or aquatic race or subterranean race may live in tightly regulated completely self-sufficient suburban models. That means not only do they have less pollution, less fires, less crime, less disease, less powerful bureaucracy, but in wartime, less casualties. The dispersal then lessens bombardment damage and resists ground invasions.

See such factors may offer seriously strong defenses.