Primitives became insanely powerful?

[Chuddly]

I started a game with 7 premade empires and two new ones I didn't make ran into me near me a few hours after start, one is weak but the other is 'overwhelming' in terms of tech even though I have massive fleets and advanced technology, they're not even materialists... Did a primitive really develop FTL and build a massive empire and become more powerful than me all on its own? Seems a bit silly that you'd go from pre-FTL to massive empire in a few decades.

I limited the starting AI to 7, and made 7 premade empires forced to be in the game. Also I'm a fanatic materialist technocracy.

[Geoff]

Originally posted by Mr. CanEHdian:

I started a game with 7 premade empires and two new ones I didn't make ran into me near me a few hours after start, one is weak but the other is 'overwhelming' in terms of tech even though I have massive fleets and advanced technology, they're not even materialists... Did a primitive really develop FTL and build a massive empire and become more powerful than me all on its own? Seems a bit silly that you'd go from pre-FTL to massive empire in a few decades.

I limited the starting AI to 7, and made 7 premade empires forced to be in the game. Also I'm a fanatic materialist technocracy.

3.7/First Contact hyper-accelerated the pre-FTLs. Barely any will last past a century unless they bomb themselves back into the stone age. If you turn off all the AIs, you'll still have a pretty normal looking map within a few decades, with just a big head start for the player.

Someone observed they seem to have ramped the likelihood of events occurring up by an entire order of magnitude between 3.6 and 3.7 and that seems to be consistent with my observations. Since I've rolled back to the earlier version of the game, pre-FTL civilizations advance much more slowly, and the odds of terrible things happening to them along the way are much much smaller.

[Chuddly]

Originally posted by Geoff:

Originally posted by Mr. CanEHdian:

I started a game with 7 premade empires and two new ones I didn't make ran into me near me a few hours after start, one is weak but the other is 'overwhelming' in terms of tech even though I have massive fleets and advanced technology, they're not even materialists... Did a primitive really develop FTL and build a massive empire and become more powerful than me all on its own? Seems a bit silly that you'd go from pre-FTL to massive empire in a few decades.

I limited the starting AI to 7, and made 7 premade empires forced to be in the game. Also I'm a fanatic materialist technocracy.

3.7/First Contact hyper-accelerated the pre-FTLs. Barely any will last past a century unless they bomb themselves back into the stone age. If you turn off all the AIs, you'll still have a pretty normal looking map within a few decades, with just a big head start for the player.

Someone observed they seem to have ramped the likelihood of events occurring up by an entire order of magnitude between 3.6 and 3.7 and that seems to be consistent with my observations. Since I've rolled back to the earlier version of the game, pre-FTL civilizations advance much more slowly, and the odds of terrible things happening to them along the way are much much smaller.

That's extremely lame tbh. I mean I'm glad they can be galactic empires... But go from primitive to a galactic contender is pretty silly. I was hoping to be a sort of galactic police and roleplay protecting weaker empires but they're catching up lol.

[Geoff]

Originally posted by Mr. CanEHdian:

Originally posted by Geoff:

3.7/First Contact hyper-accelerated the pre-FTLs. Barely any will last past a century unless they bomb themselves back into the stone age. If you turn off all the AIs, you'll still have a pretty normal looking map within a few decades, with just a big head start for the player.

Someone observed they seem to have ramped the likelihood of events occurring up by an entire order of magnitude between 3.6 and 3.7 and that seems to be consistent with my observations. Since I've rolled back to the earlier version of the game, pre-FTL civilizations advance much more slowly, and the odds of terrible things happening to them along the way are much much smaller.

That's extremely lame tbh. I mean I'm glad they can be galactic empires... But go from primitive to a galactic contender is pretty silly. I was hoping to be a sort of galactic police and roleplay protecting weaker empires but they're catching up lol.

It's really not ideal. You might want to look into mods, maybe there's something that can help you with that. First Contact introduced a lot of fun dynamics, but at the expense of stability and balance, especially on larger maps and longer games.

[Chuddly]

Originally posted by Geoff:

Originally posted by Mr. CanEHdian:

That's extremely lame tbh. I mean I'm glad they can be galactic empires... But go from primitive to a galactic contender is pretty silly. I was hoping to be a sort of galactic police and roleplay protecting weaker empires but they're catching up lol.

It's really not ideal. You might want to look into mods, maybe there's something that can help you with that. First Contact introduced a lot of fun dynamics, but at the expense of stability and balance, especially on larger maps and longer games.

Omg long games are brutal, the late game stutter becomes unbearable. Yeah, mods might be the solution, thanks!

[VinceP1974]

You start the game as just emerging from being Pre-FTL. Why shouldn't new ones develop just as fast as you did.

[Unimportant]

You sure they aren't fallen empire?

[Geoff]

Originally posted by VinceP1974:

You start the game as just emerging from being Pre-FTL. Why shouldn't new ones develop just as fast as you did.

Because non-spacefaring societies are staple elements of science fiction. The idea that every civilization spontaneously evolves spaceflight in the exact same century is implausible beyond reason or enjoyment. It's an immersion-breaker.

[❤ Sly Succubus ❤]

Originally posted by Geoff:

Originally posted by VinceP1974:

You start the game as just emerging from being Pre-FTL. Why shouldn't new ones develop just as fast as you did.

Because non-spacefaring societies are staple elements of science fiction. The idea that every civilization spontaneously evolves spaceflight in the exact same century is implausible beyond reason or enjoyment. It's an immersion-breaker.

Not fully true, a race of machines could 100% be prepared for space as they lack the need to fear death, if their starship fails then the crew just uploads themselves to the planet as the ship falls back to the ground.

Or, in another case, a race created by older races, after all there is the whole idea that the 10 stages of civilization and the final stage IS CALLED the Creator Civilization, or a race so advance that their only things left to do is create new races and set them on their way, but these are all theories and like all theories they should be taken with more salt then there is in the Dead Sea.

The issue here comes down to the fact that while we deem it implausaible, its not impossible, after all there are theories suggesting alien races have helped humanity advance time and time again but in terms of this game they also allow any race to do the same by diplomatic means, which in all words would be a spontaneous step toward space travel but in all rights, it would not be a direct step to understanding and having space travel, after all humanity as it stands has indeed harnessed the technology for spaceflight, but not space travel, at best we can send maybe a few people to Mars but to have full fledged Space Travel we'd have to start colonizing other worlds, as it stands if we even just stayed on earth for the rest of our species life, we would never evolve beyond a type 1 civilization at best, because type 2 already requires that we have obtained the means to travel to other worlds (and other stars if people want)

[Chuddly]

Originally posted by Unimportant:

You sure they aren't fallen empire?

Yes lol.

[Chuddly]

Originally posted by VinceP1974:

You start the game as just emerging from being Pre-FTL. Why shouldn't new ones develop just as fast as you did.

Are you sure that's how we start? I always figured we'd been slowly ramping up for decades.

[VinceP1974]

Originally posted by Geoff:

It's an immersion-breaker.

So are planets with a total population of 60 people.

[VinceP1974]

Originally posted by Mr. CanEHdian:

Originally posted by VinceP1974:

You start the game as just emerging from being Pre-FTL. Why shouldn't new ones develop just as fast as you did.

Are you sure that's how we start? I always figured we'd been slowly ramping up for decades.

You start the game with FTL-capable ships, but none of the neighboring systems have been explored or surveyed. So you are literally doing the very first travel FTL to find out what's out there.

[❤ Sly Succubus ❤]

Originally posted by VinceP1974:

Originally posted by Geoff:

It's an immersion-breaker.

So are planets with a total population of 60 people.

As far as I got, 1 pop is equal to about a billion/million PEOPLE which even in the long term still does not make much sense unless said world is a planet-spanning city or a massive star base because even as we speak, earth has 8 billion on it and were running out of free space as is (well free as in usuable actual space)

[Chuddly]

Originally posted by VinceP1974:

Originally posted by Geoff:

It's an immersion-breaker.

So are planets with a total population of 60 people.

60 is an easier number to read and understand rapidly, much more so than 60 billion but I always viewed each pop as one billion or so.

[Chuddly]

Originally posted by VinceP1974:

Originally posted by Mr. CanEHdian:

Are you sure that's how we start? I always figured we'd been slowly ramping up for decades.

You start the game with FTL-capable ships, but none of the neighboring systems have been explored or surveyed. So you are literally doing the very first travel FTL to find out what's out there.

I suppose. I just wish the AI primitives didn't jump entire 'eras' in like a decade. Like, it makes sense that pre-FTL space faring primitives and maybe information age ones might get to FTL eventually but they do it absurdly fast.