The dark forest scenario concept

[Lakehope]

hello, I've heard a lot of dark forest theory, and I'd love to recreate it in this game. as we know, this theory says that each civilization, out of fear of being destroyed, destroys others, because creating weapons that destroy planets may not be that difficult. I came up with a few rules that would have to apply for this purpose:

-first contact procedure is much faster, in order to make any interactions between empires faster
-every AI (and player) is max aggresive towards others
-every empire don't want to send any ships or fleets too far - to avoid being noticed (which might be hard to do with AI)
-every empire starts war with everyone ASAP
- because in real life, there is "first strike advantage", I think it would be great to add bonusses for attacker - to show this "advantage"

because its impossible in default(without dlc) game to destroy planets, its better to focus mainly on normal war I think. but few of this "rules" needs mods to work, but - what do you think about this idea? would someone see this in-game? or its worst possible idea?

[Geoff]

One way you can do it is to create a custom empire set that instantiates your vision. My last several playthroughs, I've been the only civilization that starts with xenophilia and more than half of my custom empires start out as barbaric despoilers. If I wanted to tweak it to play out a "dark forest" scenario, then I'd probably turn them all into fanatic purifiers.

Building a large set of custom empires is a bit of a wonky process in this game, but if you don't know how to do it I can walk you through that. But all fanatic purifiers with advanced starts would get you a large prat of the way there without requiring a mod at all. I'd also recommend turning off Fallen Empires but not marauders.

You're right that the changes to the game mechanics would require modding and I can't really guide you to the best mods for that. You might want to try serarching the workshop to see if there are preexisting dark forest mods out there already.

[1200V2]

Do understand that in this scenario and because you can not be the first to get to the top of the universe. And you do not know if the proces of the dark forest scenario not already has happened five or ten or an endless itteration of the same wack the mole dark forest situation.

So the most logical scenario in a dark forest universe that is old. Is that most livable planets would have a nuke in orbit that is used when a planet gets a civilization. Or is nuked just to be sure that there will be no competion that can nuke the first old civilization that sends the nukes. In the dark forest scenario where you only can survive by hiding or nuke all to just to be sure.

You will get civilizations that learn how not to be seen. Or they make sure to nuke all planets just to be safe. So why would a stagnant acendency not send a nuke to a stone age civilization in a dark forest scenario?

The sad situation in a real dark forest situation would be that in the whole galaxy there would be no starting civilizations and only one old civilization that would send a nuke to all possible early starting civilizations they detect to just make sure that there would be no competition. Most civilizations would not get to the point of space travel because they would already be gone before they could reach that stage.

It is almost impossible in this situation to survive as a starting civilization because you don't know that you live in an dark forest galaxy. And when you learn as a civilization that this is the case it is already to late.

[Geoff]

Originally posted by 1200V2:

It is almost impossible in this situation to survive as a starting civilization because you don't know that you live in an dark forest galaxy. And when you learn as a civilization that this is the case it is already to late.

You could probably set the AI opponents to 0, set the pre-FTL rate up, create 1 fallen empire then swap over into them with the console as soon as the game begins. If for some reason you wanted to play it out as a mismatch.

[Lakehope]

Originally posted by 1200V2:

Do understand that in this scenario and because you can not be the first to get to the top of the universe. And you do not know if the proces of the dark forest scenario not already has happened five or ten or an endless itteration of the same wack the mole dark forest situation.

So the most logical scenario in a dark forest universe that is old. Is that most livable planets would have a nuke in orbit that is used when a planet gets a civilization. Or is nuked just to be sure that there will be no competion that can nuke the first old civilization that sends the nukes. In the dark forest scenario where you only can survive by hiding or nuke all to just to be sure.

You will get civilizations that learn how not to be seen. Or they make sure to nuke all planets just to be safe. So why would a stagnant acendency not send a nuke to a stone age civilization in a dark forest scenario?

The sad situation in a real dark forest situation would be that in the whole galaxy there would be no starting civilizations and only one old civilization that would send a nuke to all possible early starting civilizations they detect to just make sure that there would be no competition. Most civilizations would not get to the point of space travel because they would already be gone before they could reach that stage.

It is almost impossible in this situation to survive as a starting civilization because you don't know that you live in an dark forest galaxy. And when you learn as a civilization that this is the case it is already to late.

Yeah, but you told about irl situation. But ingame, with mods and Modifying some files (like custom map) its possible to recreate this scenario. Probably the most brutal scenario for this game