Assuming I leave everything on default settings, how many major civilizations are 'normal' per map size? Not too crowded, not too empty.
Really up to the tastes of the player, I'd say. Personally I like an uncrowded map.
Yes this is really a matter of taste. I too like fairly small numbers of opponents because I like a bit off room to grow before I meet anyone.
Another way to ask this question, that may get a better answer: What Galaxy Size is the narrative played in with all Major Races?
Well, Gigantic with Tight Clusters will give you plenty of room for 7 races plus abundant minor races without stepping on each other's toes until mid-game. I'm about 800 turns into this map and it looks like it will take another 800-1000.
I had an impression that you can't play over 999 turns, even if you have not checked "Turns" - victory condition.
I really hope that my impression is false...
A 64-bit game with a turn limit that doesn't even approach 16-bit? If that's true Paul and Brad should turn in their white hats.
So, is it true? How many turns I can play if I don't check "Turns" - victory on?
I haven't heard anything of this, don't know why there would be a limit in a game that can take months to play or 100's of game time hours. I would not believe everything you see on the Internet I'm sure there is no turn limit of 999. (Although I've not gotten past turn 295 myself yet)
My last game in 1.0.2 hit a bug, so died at ~833 turns. Started a new one and I'm up to turn 572, we'll see if I can get past turn 999.
Did you submit a bug report so hopefully they can address the issue?
Yes, bug report filed - it's not actually hung, it just takes 5+ minutes to get past the "Wait" state. So I can continue that game this weekend.
Have we not seen SOAKs past a thousand turns yet or does Paul crash it before that can happen?
Yes, I've also seen long turn times (in previous versions prior to v.1.02, however, because most of my games take 10-20 hours to start seeing a "real" slowdown (more than 2 minutes) I haven't updated my ticket with a game started in v.1.02. Getting close and should have a new update to my ticket on long turn times by tomorrow. I hope that isn't why the planets were reduced as it hasn't seem to effect turn times
I like playing slow, that's why this interest me. My current (third) game is medium map and I have got allready about 400 turns.
May be that I can answer my question by my self
Currently on the largest map, with abundant pirates and anomalies. Rare planets with scattered systems.
No tech trading on conquest setting. Nearing 3000 turns and getting severe slow down. 1-2 minutes per turn.
No contact till turn 800. 7 races and no minor ones. I like a slow paced game. Gave me time to make improvements and discover new tech.
Personally I wouldn't play anything bigger than Huge with only the default races, but as others have said, it really depends on the settings you choose and your own personal preference for how big an empire you want to be able to grab in the early stages of the game.
As I read this post, it makes me think. I've created all the original "Master Of Orion II" races, as well as the missing "GalCiv2" races. Including the custom race I'm playing as, I have 26 factions. I'm not using minors. I'm having trouble finding a game that grips me. Its definitely because of the "over crowding" issue. I want some room to develop before interacting with other races to a large degree. What settings would some of you recommend for a long-term commitment on my part? I've been messing around with rare and uncommon stars, common planets, uncommon habitability, and switching between loose and tight clusters. Thanks in advance.
I am playing immense scattered, Uncommon hab/ rare extreme. Occasional on everything else. I have 15 factions and full minors. I am about turn 340 with finally meeting all factions. I am 2/3rd thru the tech tree. All ai were set to normal with the Drengin getting Gifted. I made two custom evil factions and one custom 'trader' faction and one custom 'good' faction to go with the Altarians and Iconians. The Drengin power is 980, Mine is 1160 with all others at 340 or so. Oddly the custom factions are doing rather well but the bonuses given to the Drengin are silly.
Keep in mind the AI on Gifted or Higher KNOWS the location of Habitable planets. He will bee-line right to them (provided he can reach them). So he has fleets with mass drivers showing 160+ dmg! Oh the war! I easily went 160 turns with not meeting major but only had about 30 Planets. On a map like that you NEED to specialize your planets.
Cheers!
Some things that might help, if you know how many opponents you liked playing against on GCII maps:
GCII total tiles on map:
- Tiny: 2025 tiles
- Small: 3600 tiles
- Medium: 5625 tiles
- Large: 14400 tiles
- Huge: 32400 tiles
- Gigantic: 72900 tiles
- Immense: 108900 tiles
GCIII total tiles on map:
- Tiny: 2791 tiles
- Small: 4921 tiles
- Medium: 10981 tiles
- Large: 15769 tiles
- Huge: 27361 tiles
- Gigantic: 97741 tiles
- Immense: 173521 tiles
- Excessive: 253171 tiles
- Insane: 434341 tiles
GCII corner-to-corner distances (both edge and diagonal):
- Tiny: 45 tiles
- Small: 60 tiles
- Medium: 75 tiles
- Large: 120 tiles
- Huge: 180 tiles
- Gigantic: 270 tiles
- Immense: 330 tiles
GCIII diagonal dimensions:
- Tiny: 61 tiles
- Small: 81 tiles
- Medium: 121 tiles
- Large: 145 tiles
- Huge: 191 tiles
- Gigantic: 361 tiles
- Immense: 481 tiles
- Excessive: 581 tiles
- Insane: 761 tiles
GCIII map edge dimension:
- Tiny: 31 tiles
- Small: 41 tiles
- Medium: 61 tiles
- Large: 73 tiles
- Huge: 96 tiles
- Gigantic: 181 tiles
- Immense: 241 tiles
- Excessive: 291 tiles
- Insane: 381 tiles
Thus, if you felt that 9 opponents felt about right on GCII Immense maps, you might try ~16 opponents on GCIII Immense maps, ~23 opponents on GCIII Excessive maps, or ~40 opponents on GCIII Insane maps as a starting point for those map sizes; each of these numbers of opponents results in ~11000 tiles per empire, much like the GCII 10 empire Immense map games had. Be warned, however, that GCIII maps feel to me as though they contain more empty space (particularly on the larger maps), and also that it feels to me like the average ship speed has increased from GCII to GCIII (possibly in part because ship components in GCIII do not scale up in size when you use larger hulls, whereas GCII ship components generally did). Exploration in GCIII may also be faster due to the lack of a sensor range limit other than the number of sensors you can fit into the ship.
Note that I'm not certain that the tile counts for GCIII map sizes are correct; I assume that the maps are centered on a single tile and that the hex sector size defined in MapSizeDefs is the number of rings around the central tile, which gives 3R^2 + 3R + 1 tiles on the map, an edge dimension of R + 1 tiles, a diagonal dimension of 2R + 1 tiles, and a perimeter of 6R tiles on a map with R rings around a central tile. If the maps are centered on an intersection of three tiles or on the intersection of two tiles, then the sizes will change somewhat and the map edge dimensions will not all be the same.
Aaaah! Thanks for that information, now I know (when I'll get there) that game doesn't end too soon, if just get research slowed down early enough.
Larsenex and joeball, thank you both for the advice.
A few more questions, if you don't mind:
1) Larsenex, 15 factions plus full minors is around 25, correct? If so, that would match my 26 factions nicely.
2) joeball, I always maxed opponents in GalCiv2. 9 factions and full minors was around 20? My memory fails me. Anyway, you ask if 9 felt right, try 16. Are you including the minors in your count? By your advice, I'm thinking my 26 would fit on excessive nicely.
3) Either one of you: Do you see scattered vs. loose clusters vs. tight clusters factoring in?
Lmao, I'll put my cards on the table. I'm a high school history teacher. I'm on summer vacation at noon today. I plan on submerging in a LONG game as soon as this afternoon. Any advice will be greatly appreciated.
I'd like to close with a point. THIS is what I value and appreciate most about our community. Its awesome to have people with similar "interests," and a LOT more experience, willing to help the rest. Thanks again!
I usually play with 56 races (this is currently all the races I have in the game but will add more) plus maxed out minor races on a Immense map (I don't play on map sizes smaller than Immense unless I'm playing MP and that is only because that is the largest size we are currently allowed to play is Huge. It is really too small) and it plays great. At least until the 500 to 800 turns when the game seems to crap out but it does this no matter how many opponents are in the game.
Another thought just occurred to me. Perhaps this question will better convey my quandary. If I want to play a truly epic, long slow game all summer...am I going about it the wrong way? Now, I don't necessarily want 1000 planets resulting in 40 or 50 planets per faction. No, I really want the biggest to have around 20, with 10 being average. I have 26 factions. The problem I'm running into is meeting other factions much too quickly. I'd love to wait till turn 100 or so. That's the feel I want. I'm setting stars to rare, and planets to occasional, etc. in an effort to space things out. Correct me if I'm wrong. By limiting the amount of available systems, I'm actually bringing the possibility of contact up, rather than down, since there are limited systems for the computer to start them on? If my hypothesis is accurate, what star setting, and planet setting will give me sufficient distance from other races, while still keeping total planets around 300?
Not asking for much, lmao. Just a miracle formula. Thanks, as always guys.
I did not count minors; they only occupy a single planet in GCII and as such don't really occupy any significant fraction of the map.
Remember, though, that I'm not sure how much stuff is on a GCIII map relative to a GCII map; my impression is that the density of stuff on the maps (particularly the larger maps) is lower in GCIII than it was in GCII, and that will tend to reduce the number of factions you'd want to have.
I think that tight clusters has less stuff than loose clusters and scattered has more stuff than either, so yes, I suspect that the cluster setting matters. Loose and especially tight clusters are also more likely to give you open expanses of space between empires, which should tend to keep things more peaceful, whereas scattered should tend to have colonies of various empires in fairly close proximity to one another.
Your best shot at correcting this is to either play a larger map with the same number of factions, or reduce the number of factions. There are also a couple of variables in GalCiv3MapDefs.XML which look like they should affect how close empires spawn to one another (PlayerStartSpacingNarrowMod and PlayerStartSpacingWideMod) but I don't know how those work.
Scattered should theoretically try to uniformly distribute the stars over the map; therefore, on a scattered map, reducing the number of stars should increase the average distance between stars and therefore the average distance between the homeworlds of empires. However, it may tend to cause empires to find one another more rapidly as they have to expand to more distant locations sooner, causing the empires to stretch out and cover more of the map faster, which extends their range and visible area faster.
With clusters, I'm not sure of the behavior. If the game tries to produce a set number of clusters, then reducing the number of stars should reduce the cluster sizes and increase the space between clusters, which will increase the distance between empires which spawn in separate clusters and reduce the distance between empires which spawn in the same cluster. If the target number of clusters is a function of how many stars are on the map, then reducing the number of stars should tend to increase the likelihood that you will start in close proximity to another empire.
What are your system specs? RAM/CPU/SSD or HDD?
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