Your favorite game settings for an "epic" game?

[Mesthione]

Hey guys, I just got this game and it looks like everything I've been looking for as a 4x-in-space fan. I don't know how I went through GalCiv2, Endless Space, SOASE, and some other newer ones without ever giving this one a second glance!

So, to the point. I played a "sandbox solo" session to get a feel for the game, and now I'm ready to start my first major game. I'm thinking on the settings, and I want an "epic" game. Unfortunately, my experience in some other games is that the wrong settings can set you up for a steamroll, tedium, or just late game crashing!

SO, I was thinking along the lines of a larger galaxy, story mode ON (I have not experienced this yet), all other victory conditions "off", research "very expensive" and that's about as far as I've gotten.
What settings make for the best epic game experience? Which shapes and sizes of galaxies? How big is too big, and what settings are "must haves" and which should I avoid to keep the game entertaining? Any advice would be appreciated....I'm eager to start my game tonight!

If any idea of what I'm a fan of helps, I like playing Civ 5 on "marathon" speed to get a feeling of "epochs" and tech differentials. I'm planning on doing some light "role play" as a "nice" civilization, kind of as if I was actually controlling an empire myself. I am still very new to this game but am now familiar with some of the mechanics, any tips (good race, ship designing automation?, etc) are also appreciated!
Thanks for whatever help you can give!

[Numdydar]

Try the below from this thread tm.asp?m=2968435

ORIGINAL: Jeeves

I just finished LCC9 at 50 days of play, my ninth game, and have some insights to present for new players. Nedrear, I'm a micro-managing nitpicking powergamer for sure, because I am unemployed semi-retired and have 12-16 hours per day on my hands to waste. People who only have 10-20 hours per week to play can't play the way I do, looking into every single game event and spending an hour or two planning strategy every 19 day trading cycle...
1) Galaxy creation : I use irregular galaxies but have played a couple of times with spirals, but in all cases I set myself at the core of the map. The furthest I ever played off center map was about 1.5 sectors away, and it was not an outstanding game. Basically you want to be able to send ships from your homeworld to the furthest edge of the galaxy in minimum time and fuel. I play 10x10 1400 system galaxies, tried 15x15 once and did not like it.
2) I set space creatures to none because they just are nuisances which contribute little to the game. The silvermist was the deciding factor for me when they were added, threatening to derail games focused upon expansion and conquest into shooting matches. They also handicap the AI, distracting their warships.
3) I set pirates to normal, used to set them higher but found that just increased the number of ships they get rather than how many pirate bases there are. Pirates are the source of reputation points, giving two per base destroyed, so you need to destroy two bases per conquered independent. That takes a lot of pirates!
4) Expansion starting, difficulty normal, aggression normal, research very cheap 30k, unless I am playing Quameno then cheap 60k. My goal is to learn all technologies by the time I finish the game, in 12 to 15 game years.
5) Colony prevalence abundant, independent alien life teeming, colony influence range 100%. No range restrictions on colonization, because that just hurts the AI expansion.
6) I've tried different races, but the easiest is Ikkuro due to construction speed +25% and s2f7 repair bots. They get a 10% economy boost and a 10% ship maintenance discount too. Those repair bots reduce inflicted damage and repair components quickly. Your ship never again needs to limp into port for repairs!
7) Home system excellent, size starting, tech level starting and give that to every added AI empire. Government Republic, because I'm a republican not a democrat LOL. I add one of every AI race at average distance, which usually places them in a circle around me, more or less due to clumping. Their governments are default unless the default is random in which case they are republics too. Independents are not allowed to form new empires.
8) An easy win is with economy 30%, population 40%, and territory 50% at 75% victory threshold. For that you only need about one war, and maybe not even that. For more challenge set it at 60% economy, 75% population, and 80% territory with threshold of 80%. I disable standard racial victory conditions, because they just handicap the AI.
9) Victory conditions apply after 10 years, enable original game and Shakturi story lines, disable disasters, enable racial events.
10) I generate a couple hundred galaxies for every game I play. It takes a day or two compared to seven weeks to play a game. Basically I want a game where I can develop the galaxy into a star empire to be proud of. I do not save a potential start unless it meets my criteria, which are :
11) If your homeworld is a moon orbiting a gas giant, start another galaxy, because you don't want your freighters chasing the docks all game. Click on the home system. If there are not at least a full line plus a second line of six or more resources, generate another galaxy. If there are fewer than ten total planets plus moons, same. That takes about five seconds to judge. If there is more than one gas cloud with a storm within a sector, start another.
12) Count the number of systems within a sector of your home system, ignoring gas clouds. If there are fewer than 25, start anther game. That takes about 30 seconds.
13) Selecting sector view and plus zooming out three times, look at your position within the galaxy. Does it look like a prosperous neighborhood, with more star systems than gas clouds and few storms? Okay then count the home system strategic resources, and if fewer than 15 of them, start another galaxy, takes another 30 seconds.
14) Open up the expansion planner and check your empire resource locations. If there is no caslon fuel, or less than two steel then discard. Look at the galaxy priority list. If there are less than six total of steel, including all of your steel mines, discard. If there is no fibre, discard. If there is an independent in the potential colonies list, that is a plus!
15) Okay then save and make a note of the file's name and your observations about that potential start. When you have a dozen or two, then go back and look at each judging the total list of potential starts. The process takes 20-30 hours for me, unless I get really lucky and find an outstanding start early.
16) Open up the expansion planner and notice what resources are already mined. How many missing ones can be developed with three constructor projects to start off the game? You need lots of steel and other resources to develop mines. If you design your own as I do, then they may require different resources depending upon your technology. Use the designs screen selecting the mines to notice what they require. Highest priority for mines are those resources required to build mines! Chances are that you will disagree with the three projects already scheduled by your constructors, so change orders appropriately.
17) Your explorers do not need to completely explore systems at game start. Your objective is to find high quality planets and independents within two sectors of your home system, then to contact AI empires so you can start tech trading. Change explorer's orders to move to rather than explore unknown stars and manage them to check out potential colony planets in the systems, then move onwards to the next system.
18) Technology research depends upon your play style, but here is a list of techs researched from LCC9 : Enhanced Construction, Star Fighters, Enhanced Resource Exploration, Missile Weapons, Accelerated Construction (buy Bakuras Shipyards at 50k cash), Proximity Sensors, Ion Weapons, Long Range Scanners (design explorers to look for supply zones and buy three), Component Prefabrication, Countermeasures, Point Defense Weapons, Enhanced Engines, Target Tracking, Rail Gun Weapons, ending first year of research. Now to do that I had to redesign my homeworld spaceport to add lots of labs so that I researched at my full potential and buy an upgrade as my first project...
19) second year : area weapons, enhanced hyperdrives, enhanced transport, light interceptors, high speed hyperdrives, missile bombers, nuclear supercharging, enhanced research (when Bakuras done buy Rusan Technology facility), light torpedo bombers, fast jump hyperdrives from scrapping, quantum exploitation from scrapping (needed for civilian ships), and on 55/08/28 started trading technologies with AI empires so that makes all further research dependent upon game trading.
20) I design my own civilians unarmed and fast so that they can escape from pirates without weapons. The Guardians are offended by armed civilians...
21) Rather than build warships to fight pirates, I pay off the pirates in the first two years of game play. Instead of buying warships, I buy explorers as fast as my money and resources permit. Usually the first bought warships are from supply zones in the second year. At supply zones I buy two sets of six explorers then six destroyers armed to fight pirate bases. For that you need three each of missiles and ion weapons, plus a couple of fighter bays and your best torpedo or beam weapon depending upon technology learned. At supply zones I scrap all of the warships found there as soon as the one day build of the first set of explorers. Hint : the supply zone will immediately build the first set of ships if you refuse to open it at first sighting. Set speed to 1/4 and wait until the date has just changed then open the base and hit pause. Buy the six explorers before going off pause.

Well that is no means everything I could tell but this post is getting long, so maybe I'll add more advice in response to questions later.


Lonnie Courtney Clay

[Plant]

That doesn't answer his question at all. Just a block of text of how somebody else plays.

One thing you have to be careful about is that you need at least 60 stars per race if you want to have a good guarantee that each race have the ability to mine the rarer resources (carbon fibre, polymer, chromium, silicon) to build ships, in order not to be handicapped. Also be aware that the larger the number of stars, the more information there is to take in. Even with 700, you might be overwhelmed by micromanagement, if it the first time playing, whilst being unfamiliar with the UI. There really isn't any mode for a steam roll, unless you deliberately set the ai distance from you all at medium or far, in which case, they will be bunched up close together in a bid to maintain the right distance from you. I guess if you like marathon, you should play on 1400 stars, with espensive tech speed with as many races as possible. The rest is pretty much up to your tastes. I guess, with 1400 stars, it would be nice to play in a spiral galaxy as opposed to any other galaxy type.

[hfl13]

Copied from Das123 in the Video Sticky. tm.asp?m=2950287

"Lets Play Distant Worlds RotS - Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFrMC_gZ ... e=youtu.be
This first video really just covers the options and settings before a game is even generated. Some settings make games easier and some settings make games more difficult - the trouble is knowing which one does what! Skip this video if you are comfortable with your setup."

Helped me a lot.

[Bingeling]

Be aware that if you set research very slow, the ROTS story is not that likely to happen within any reasonable time frame.

Also, lots and lots of stars require a decent computer and 64 bit OS. Increasing the colony count (prospects) only add to this. Save files become massive, and saving and loading takes a lot of time.

I am no newbie to this game (I just act as one). I love very slow research. And I have never fought the Shakturi [;)]

It does not help that I usually disable the stories.

One of my more fun Legends games was in a 400 star 6x6 if I recall correctly. Or maybe it was even less stars? 250?

[Mesthione]

Thanks for the feedback, guys!

Plant: You are right, I had already also seen that block of text. It has good tips, but I decided to just try the largest map with the most civilizations and slowest research.

So far, it's been fantastic! The game really starts slowing down on this map size despite the power of my computer, but I think it's something I can deal with.

I don't have any victory conditions besides the ROTS ones, so the galaxy is just "existing"! It got really hairy recently, I tried to be friends with everyone but then all of my Protectorates started warring each other and the whole galaxy just started falling to pieces! I think we are "post-Galactic War I" so I'm furiously trying to retrofit my fleets before the next round of conflicts breaks out! It's hard being the largest civilization....I'm too spread out and the Legendary pirates are eating me up!

I've been looking for this game for a while!

[Bingeling]

It is nice to see that you are having fun

I never play with victory conditions, but always enable them. If you change the requirements to 99% of everything and 100% compliance, it is not something you reach without conquering the galaxy. But the victory point view can have some interesting stats, in particular in the racial sections.

[Plant]

ORIGINAL: Bingeling

And I have never fought the Shakturi [;)]

Whaaaaat?

As for victory conditions, I sometimes disable the racial victory condition depending on whether I feel like playing a more simulated universe, or one where the AI is a little bit better in trying to grow.
I set it to 50% with 100% compliance, since I view that if you have half of everything, you can probabaly take on the rest of the galaxy combined, and you start to sweep across the map very quickly.