Yes, well, given Iztok's comments, and the fact that the round is over, I should probably talk about how I finally, finally managed that one year win (and then the two followup fast one year wins).
I had many of the same problems with balancing a need for money and military while smashing out research. I was finally able to get it down to a science with the Korx, by using traders early to keep people off of my back so that I could conquer two empires unmolested, plus the Korx start off evil, with two good planets and with ion drives which made my survey ships/troop transports faster.
My problem? While, if you check, I played close to 10 games with the Korx (avg about 45 minutes real time for me to complete a game) they were all 2 year wins. But, what you don't know is that they were all in January/February of year 2, I really just needed to shave 2-6 turns off of my time to get that one year win. But I was already trying everything I knew. I kept hoping maybe I could get lucky with +25% research anomolies, or maybe with a slightly better starting position, or maybe this or maybe that. But between mega events destroying some of my best games and just no luck when I needed it, all I did was perfect the 106 turn win. But I NEEDED a 104 turn win.
Then I had an idea (and this is what took me the 60 hours) and I'm not sure if it should be legal, although the pain and boredom of playing through this game was probably punishment in and of itself. The only thing I could think of to shave time off of my research was to put the 1 point into creativity to start the game. Now I played one game with creativity straight, and wasn't able to improve my time.
And then I just cheesed the system. For my next game I set my auto save to 1 turn, and then re-loaded every turn until I got creativity to proc. Let me talk about the disadvantages first. This was mind-numbingly boring and I did a lot of other things while "playing". I probably spent 39 out of every 40 minutes of "play" time watching the load screen. Creativity seems to proc about 1-2% of the time, because it was taking me on AVERAGE 60 reloads PER TURN to get a research result I was happy with. It almost killed my will to keep going several times because I was just too impatient to keep sitting there, but I gritted my teeth and just kept on with the reload grind.
The advantages were pretty significant as well, however. I got Creativity to proc 86 times straight, knocking 20 turns off of my best time. Because I was getting all of the techs a turn or two faster (and the effect snowballed) I also saw a score increase. Also, mega events no longer de-railed my game, because if one popped up I just re-loaded. ALSO, I never got the economy boost event, but if it had popped up I could have kept it up indefinitely.
All in all I finally managed my 1 year win, and I did it with a method which was all through the normal interface, but it felt... wrong. THAT is why I said I wanted to bring up my method and ask on a future rule/decision from others on whether this SHOULD be legal. Still, I doubt I would do it another time. It increased the time it took me to play a single game by 9,000%. Who has that kind of time?
But then I was introduced to ARC, lovely lovely game-breaking ARC. With ARC I can whip out a 1 year victory on these settings in my sleep. First off, setting one of the better races (Krynn, Altarians in DA) to evil saved me many turns and cash. When I would research Xeno Ethics with a non-evil race to get to MCC, my treasury would be zeroed out. Given the level I lease to, this could lead into a debt spiral that would add 10-20 turns to my game. On average, going evil lost me about 5200 credits (which was why I eventually just went with the Korx - it had to be an evil race). BUT by being able to just MAKE myself evil I was able to save all of that cash, never had my economy crashed, and seamlessly cruised to the MCC. Ah, but that power wasn't even close to the ability to change super abilities. By being able to combine Altarian research bonuses with Spore, I was able to get my first spore ship by the third turn (one +25% research anomaly on the 2nd turn), and rather than wiping two enemies it was child's play to knock out THREE enemies by the 25th turn. Not only could I ambush the AIs faster with my SUPER research PLUS Spore, but I then never had to waste a single turn the whole game on the military tree or soldiering techs.
Using the Altarians (with Evil, Spore, and the Oxor starting worlds) I was actually able to finish on these settings in AUGUST of the first year, and the game only took my usual ~40 minutes. The sheer power of combining these things was overwhelming, and is kind of what caused my reaction to ARC generally. If I can use ARC, I'm gonna be unstoppable. IF I had combined ARC with Creativity and reloading I could have blown away both time and score for what my official submission was.
The Krynn ARC game I played was similar, although used less finesse and was just plain disgusting. I didn't get my first spore ship till the 5th turn, but I was still able to knock everyone out in the first 35 turns. I was lagging considerably at this point in research vs. mysef with the ARC altarians... but. I had such huge pop growth, morale and econ bonuses I was raking in nearly twice the money. I ended up fully building 3 seperate tech worlds, never even dropped my treasury below 1000 bc the entire game, and ended just a few turns slower than the Altarian game (Sept. of year 1)
Given any sort of longer game I think I could outscore almost any other setting with ARC Krynn if I actually took the time to score grind because combining spore with their economy advantages can get me unreal amounts of money early. The setup is just so forgiving and powerful I honestly don't know what the AI could do to stop me. Maybe if I could team-lock 20 good AIs to go against me I MIGHT be able to be stopped with ARC Krynn, but it would have to be a pretty big map to give some of the AIs a chance to get out of the gate. The base morale bonuses the Krynn can bring (+80%!) to spore just buries what the Korath can manage. Add that to the Krynn economy bonuses, diplomacy bonuses, military bonuses, etc. etc. and you just have one of those sweet spot perfect storm combinations.
So there is a little behind the scenes on how I finally got my first one year victory, why the two ARC 1 year victories were so laughably easy, why BECAUSE they were so easy I had such a strong reaction to whether ARC is legal in the future, and my overall question of whether constant re-loads should be legal.
On the question of constant reloading... I don't want us to get overly bogged down in rules, it can only be policed by the honor code, and really playing that way is its own punishment. Personally this game was quite the opposite of my norm, as I usually turn auto-saving off completely so that I am never tempted to reload EVER and force myself to play out of whatever position I get myself into, mistakes and all. I think not re-loading helped to make me a better player (and is part of why I tend to smaller maps, if you never save, beating a larger map in one sitting becomes daunting) - but should it be illegal? I think this may be a huge can of worms, perhaps that is best just left closed.
Thoughts?
~ Wyndstar
