Other observations on beta changes:

Like someone noted earlier, the AI always build Death Knights instead of Battleships.

Seems to me like minors perish quicker. The Carinoids and Scottingas were both destroyed in mid-game. Most games I play, they survive all the way if I don't take them out.

Tech researching does seem to be slightly quicker, due to the reduction in the tech research premium from 3% to 2%. But not overly so, I still only to complete all my research in about 20 years.

The new military techs after Corvette doesn't seem attractive to me. The last one or two are rather expensive (equivalent to mid-late tech)and the benefits are basically +10 weapons IIRC. I certainly wouldn't go down that route early.

Playing on a gigantic map, I somehow didn't find rally points to be useful. There are just too many planets and I don't want to be constantly changing the rally point assignments for each system. I would still much prefer a system where I can tell a SB to attract a x number of constructors towards it.

Can someone who use rally points effectively tell me how they use them?
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Comments about cheats:

CTRL A - Increases Attack and Defense by 5, Movement by 2. Doesn't increase HP as mentioned above.

CTRL G/E - Increases/decreases morality by 10 pts

CTRL P - +10 PQ to all planets in selected system

CTRL L - Very nice. I believe it is allocated one system at a time so I had one system that was rather far away because the Alts were allocated a nearer system.

CTRL S - The instructions on getting all techs except FF is not clear. The Cheat Key for that is SHIFT S, not CTRL SHIFT S.

Terror star with more than 1 movement bug fixed in beta build.

Scores do seem to be lower in current build. I finished a game yesterday and didn't bother connecting to the internet to submit. I connected today, downloaded the update, reloaded my last turn saved game, finished as before and submitted. Score (on crippling) was about 10% lower than yesterday. Will need to play many more games before I can be sure though.

Paul.

~SDC~

Looking at 1.091 scores submitted by EBZ, Technician, Code Monkey, yourself and myself across various difficulties, it would seem that scores are generally about 20% lower than 1.05.

The score algorithm in 1.09B is the same as 1.05 except that the difficulty level of each AI is now to the power of 1.3 rather than 1.0.  I'll double check it though but this was the only change made.

Hadn't thought about the lower scores, but I looked, and, yep, the last time I had a score lower than the one I submitted yesterday was the 1.04 era. Hmmm...

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Is anyone else observing the Yor doing much better in the 1.09x series? They've been in the forefront in the 3 games I've played which is unprecedented.

Code Monkey:

Yeah, I've also noticed the Yor are putting up more of a fight. They're not disappearing midgame now as far as I can see. Last few games for me they are dominating with the Drengin and Arceans.
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The Yor was the strongest power in my game too until I dragged it into wars. Coincidence?

It definitely looks like something went wonky with the intended bonus to score for playing on a higher difficulty level.

My latest game (Crippling, Small) scored 14520 with beta 2. I updated to beta 3 and then loaded the EndGameSave. Now my game scores 12980, roughly 10% less.

Unless the bonus is that Maso stays the same and you now get progressively fewer points for each level below Maso.

~SDC~

Not likely to be the case, H50, judging by Frogboy's post above.

Oh, I know. I was just offering an alternative interpretation of the facts before us. If it is a bug, I've saved that EndGameSave so I can compare all 3 cases once the bug is fixed.

~SDC~

Negative PQ event choice not having effect bug fixed. Those worms knocked a PQ16 planet to PQ12 in a rare universe.

Funny thing is that when I disbanded the colony, it reverted to PQ16. When I sent a colony ship to recolonise it again, it went back to PQ12, ie event effects remain on planet after disband.

Oh yes, they fixed this in Beta 1.

No more taking the negative PQ choice safe in the knowledge that you won't suffer any actual deleterious effects. PQ affecting events are the only ones I'll not go 'Good' on.



Makes sense that if positive events stack, negative events would stack as well.

~SDC~

I was lucky to have the new alignment change event twice in my first 1.09 game. Both AIs changed from demonic to good.

Just submitted a Maso Gigantic under 1.09B3.

2203 Military Victory, all Incredible AIs pure evil me saintly, all techs, all wonder/TGs except 5.

Score 26k. This score is rather similar to the one I got recently under 1.05.

Installed 1.05 in another of my PC and checked if I could load my endsave to see score. The save wouldn't load.

Ray, if you want to see the scoring changes, I suggest you retrieve a 1.05 save and try to laod it in 1.09. This is more likely to work than the opposite (though still rather unlikely).

I do have some old saves, LDiCesare, but I don't remember which of my posted score they relate to.

Anyway, HawaiiFive-O has already shown that loading his endgame under 1.09b3 gives a lower score than loading it under 1.09b2, which used the old scoring system.

Ray the Wanderer wrote:


I came to the same conclusion. The battlefield (even in peactime) is too fluid to keep rallypoints in one location for long.

I think an easy(?) fix would be to allow a fast way to redirect all ships from one rally point to another. For instance, when you delete a rally point, have a dialog box ask you if you'd like to redirect everything to another existing rally point. Crude, but effective.

nevermind.
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Encountered a new Xpack event - Tasty eggs.

The evil option that gives soldering bonus came just in the nick of time. I was about to invade the Tors.

Found a problem with alignment change event. The Torians changed from evil to good. That's fine except that they are already dead.

Wow! Late in the game I actually stole tech from another race without invading a planet. Is this something new with the expansion?

Qui-Gon:

Yes, I think this is a new addition. I didn't notice it prior. I don't know if this a bug or not, but in one of my recent games, I had an alliance with the Drengin. It was late-game, and at the same time I had raised the espionage bar to its max. Every turn I was stealing one to two techs until I surpassed the Drengin's tech level. The Drengins said nothing; in other games when I successfully stole techs and had no alliance, they instantly declared war on me.

Stealing techs was supposed to be already in the game but like Cirrhosis, I've not managed to steal any techs in earlier versions. So this ability could have just be activated in the betas.

Must try it myself. I've not been putting any money into espionage for a number of games already.