Unlocking Minor races inablility to colonize?

forums not posting - odd

Try something as simple as giving them hyperdrive and see what happens. I know they will leave their world when they can and I have seen them build starbases, but not colonize (there were no empty planets by then).

That would be interesting I suppose. I'm trying to work out how to mod the minor races at the moment to remove the ones I don't and replace them with my own. Imagine a planet of muppets...

PS What the hell??? It says I can't post for the next 58 seconds, but this is my first post since I got here!!!

Minor races don't colonize, period. They will go after resources, build star bases, take a planet by force or even (this i've heard but not seen) influence. It was how they were set up I was told when I asked the same question.

I have seen a minor race become the dominant race in a galaxy. They had four or five planets besides their own (and there were not that many habitable planets in the galaxy, the largest galaxy size, with habitable, planets and stars all set to 'rare'), and seriously kicked the other race's asses. Luckily I was friends with them. Until I built a huge invasion force and invaded all their planets in one swoop. (This was in 1.0X, before the AI got alarmed by dreadnaught fleets and 12000 troops right next to each one of their planets...)

If the minors could colonise, they'd basically just be another major. Only not in the UP, and you can't influence them.

Maybe they can only build 1 colony ship every 5x turns where x is the average number of turns it takes every major race to build a colony ship. That way they would be able to colonize but at a much slower pace. And I've never seen them take a planet by force. Only by Influence.

If the minors could colonise, they'd basically just be another major. Only not in the UP, and you can't influence them.

I disagree. If you have minors that can colonize then you have more opportunities for trade. I find that late in the game it's very difficult to keep decent cashflow when I'm breaking all of my trade routes because of war. The point of the game is to defeat the major races, so having trade routes that you depend on with them is a bad strategy. Fortunately, minor races are great sources of income via trade routes, but their planets are really limited.

So having more planets is a great potential source of income.

The game should allow you to trade with your own planets, tho. Perhaps they shouldn't be quite a profitable, but it's unrealistic that you can get no trade revenue between planets you control.

You disagree with what exactly?

With colony ships, the minors would be exactly the same as the majors (apart from the exceptions I stated) because they follow exactly the same rules, and use the same AI. In what way is that statement inaccurate precisely? The devs have explicitly stated that before they nerfed the minor's ability to build colony ships, they would stand a good chance of taking the galaxy.

why not give them some of your planets? kill off a neighbor for a fresh supply of planets, and give them to your buddy

I created a custom scenario and flipped MinorColonize=0 and MinorInvade=0 to "1" and never saw anything much happen. I have seen them invade other planets before, but I've never seen them colonize. In fact, I once watched the Dark Yor conquer about 6 Fundamentalist planets.

I give planets to the minors sometimes. I like to protect them because they get beat on so much.

, and use the same AI

No they don't. Majors have individual AIs. Fundamentalists and all revolutionaries use the "core" major AI, which all the others are derivatives of. Minors have a weaker AI. They still would be less intelligent than majors.

(this i've heard but not seen) influence

Impossible, they generate 0 influence. You would have to have a negative influence score.

They do build massive amounts of influence buildings.

Keeping minors minor while still allowing them to colonize and have some sway in the universe is the trick. I would say the easiest thing would be to have the minor AI's intelligence parse with your difficulty setting. Playing 1 or 2 intelligence lvls below the major's. Just a toss of the hat for you to consider.

They do build massive amounts of influence buildings.

But make no influence. I like the idea of major's being more intelligent than you. It would be interesting to destroy them then, because you would know that they're insulting you as you invade.

finally back from work, what i did see in the race.cfg files were a few lines that the major races do not have, but dont know what they do.

.........political party 0
and the interesting one
Tech Root Tech

as for the comment about them being able to colonize = being major races, sure.. but think of it more like the United Nations.. there is the "security council" and everyone else... technically everyone else gets a vote but the major nations for the most part create and enforce policy.

what adding the ability to colonize to minor races would do is add a larger assortment of possible friends and enemies to the larger maps, and force the ai and yourself to deal with them. Yes, they would probably need some tweaking in some cases in abilities to make them viable opponants (100 to econ on a few of them might create too much of an advantage even with a dummied down AI) but the possibility of a gigantic map with not just the standard 9 but 15ish races, some of them bent purely on self preservation (no alliances) would be fun.

Didnt realize when i was thinking of this about the lack of influence.. but then again i cannot think of a single case of a minor race ever being culturally dominated by myself or an AI either.

edit - the two lines from .cfg are not liked well by the forum gods

@mikeswi
I've also noticed the tags and created a scenario called "Rise of the minors", at the moment, the title is a bit misleading, I admit
Since setting MinorInvade=1 nothing happens, I just removed the "root" tag. I think, this tag is indicating to using core/standard AI which simply don't colonize. I'll see if it's true
Concerning the political parties tag, I think removing(/setting to >0) the tag "upgrades" a minor to a major race (combined with the above)

polparty= 0 could very well mean the feds (federalists) since its the first one.

dont suppose anyone has a saved beta copy of the game from when the minors did colonize?(seem to remember someone from Stardock mentioning they had to tone the minor's down at some point) if not, going to continue to blunder on -

btw, where are these minorinvade/minor colonize tags at out of idle curiosity? looking and not finding.

where are these minorinvade/minor colonize tags at out of idle curiosity?

This part of a scenario file.

[RULES]
AITech=0
MinorColonize=1
MinorInvade=1
DisableMinor=0
DisableRange=0
StartingFunds=5000
CulturalVictory=1
ResearchVictory=1
AllianceVictory=1

BTW, anyone know what these tags do? I'm thinking the first might be to disable tech trading.......
AITech=0
DisableRange=0

Thanks much, didnt think to look there - holler if anything comes of it

boo, no other ideas on how to work this?

I think that it would be cool if each new race had to be voted into the UP after the initial 2 races setup a UP this includes the minor races as well. Plus the council should be called for the ability to vote out a race.

And I have seen that the Snathi have on occassion more than 1 planet so they are going out and colonizing..

[RULES] AITech=0 MinorColonize=1 MinorInvade=1 DisableMinor=0 DisableRange=0 StartingFunds=5000 CulturalVictory=1 ResearchVictory=1 AllianceVictory=1'

From Looking at that I would have to say that 1 = off and 0 = on
This makes sence since thay can't win any type of victorys and can't invade or colonize. Try setting them to 0 instead of 1 and see if they can colonize then.

0 is off, 1 is on. That's from a file where I'd already flipped the values.