Wouldn't that be nice to have as a DEFAULT option during a game setup phase?

Lemme explain;

-- It's all funny and all to witness incapacitated Minor Races just waiting to be invaded in their exclusive system but, the planet alone may be of interest to some major.
-- They take up valuable assets for nothing else but a few transports and high-tech invasion forces.

What if;

-- In YOUR very own system you'd have a Minor planet to handle or to exploit by Alliance.
-- Somewhere out there, a system or two holds ALL minor races in the game. Four to Five planets ready to crush into.
-- Playing only against Minor(s) which can (by modifying their abilities) and most probably will colonize the available nearby planets (say, within a 8+/- parsecs radius or even just with the planets present around the local star).

The basic reasoning for the above suggestion is quite simple; Challenging new conditions and competitivity "rationale". The default wasted elements are obvious, the factors integrated already ENFORCES the gap between a fully developped Major against a very weak Minor, the diplomatic issues are limited, and so on.

Don't get me wrong, the game is strongly balanced as it is. Although, i think it would be interesting to have a middle tier concept as well with a special group of races (another!) right inbetween Majors & Minors. Making such things, optional, of course.

That simple 'bug' you mentioned opened up a line of thoughts in my imagination, i guess.

- Zyxpsilon.

Perhaps, but their AIs are extremely limited at best.... they'd need an upgrade to be anywhere near as believable as current major race AIs, let alone competent opponents.

maybe one of the major races gave/traded them a colony ship

Sure it hadn't been traded to them?

I've actually seen a minor race become more powerful than a major.

HAHA, yeah, I saw something similar to that. I think that it is very funny when a minor dares to war with a major. Usually they are stupid and try to pick on the strongest civs, usually the Drengin in my games. Right now the minor race in my game is about to be destroyed, but they are actually keeping pace with the level of technology of the other races.

GalenEvil

Yeah, that has happened before. In my current game it hasn't happened...I think it is because i was very aggressive very early.

How did you go from worst to first for navy in 5 turns?

I first saw a minor colonize a second world not long after DA came out. I've seen it maybe a total of four or five times since then. Never actually witnessed the colonization, but the low pop. of the second planet usually told me it was freshly colonized when I came across them. Maybe the game accidently gives them a colony ship every now and then(or maybe it's no accident ) .

I'm not sure if minors actually colonize planets. I think they might just start with multiple. Whatever is happening, I've seen them own several worlds many times. I like this. Anything that makes them a bit more interesting is good for me.

In a recent "keep all the civs from being conquered" scenario suggested on the forums, the Carinoids declared war on a major and I was like "plz make peace, not war" and they were like playing innocent with "don't ask us, ask them, they don't want to stop fighting" and I was like "well, duh." heh.


I have too. That routinely happens with the "Jagged" event.

I had the Snathi colonize a planet in my current game (DA 1. I think). I could see it before they got to it, so it was known unoccupied when they colonized. And it was only 15 turns or so into the game, so no one else's colony ship could possibly have gotten there by then, even if they had sold it to the Snathi. I didn't actually see their colony ship, but I can't think of any other way they could have possibly gotten this planet without legitimately colonizing it.

I saw the Dark Yor do this once..

Sure it hadn't been traded to them?
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Could have been. Regardless, that doesn't happen often either.