Setting up a customized new game Part one-Larger Population

[Trueknight (OP)]

Hi everybody!

I stopped playing aurora for a while, because of university, and when i came back i found out that 2 new versions have been released! I'm going to start a new game, since the previous one wasn't very succesfull (thanks 40.000 km/s fast Precursor!!!!) and moreover i had to click ok on every given 5-day update, because of a nasty bug.

I'd like to learn from my previous mistakes, so i'm going to ask a few things...i now know HOW to change the initial parameters of the new game, waht i'd really like to know is WHICH ONE change and HOW MUCH, to obtain the most realistc as possible set up, based on what i've in mind for my fiction.

A premise, i want to do a "conventional empire" game.

I'd now start with the first one, about population.
I'd like to play with a more realistic amount of pop; 500,000,000 looks too little to me, considering the most recent study say we're about 6,799,700,000 and increasing.

One has to imagine a really nasty cataclism to accept a so much drastic decrease, one that probably will not leave many chances for a space conquest later on.

Anyway, in the last game I set population to 3,000 m, and doing so i found myself with a huge industrial capacity. When i started mining, i depleted Earth in a few years of most of minerals, because of this, and so i ended up with a lot of industrial capcity unused, and without minerals to build ships, mine or research labs...

I suppose that increasing the population THAT much i've unbalanced the game, so I'd like to know what can be done to avoid this.
I've seen a "Wealth creation rate" and "Idustrial Percentage", i suppose i'll have to play with this, until i get a starting point with an adequate amount of Conventional Industrial Capacity. How large that amount should be to not unbalance the game?
Should I keep the 100 points as a benchmark? Or can i increase it? What do you think about that?

[Father Tim]

Assuming you want everyone on your world to 'count' as population (For example, many people starting on Earth with 500m pop justify it as the industrialized world pop, and ignore the other roughly 6 billion people as 'not contributing to the space race / offworld development.) then simply divide 500m by the actual starting pop to get the Industrial and Wealth modifiers for an 'equivalent'* start.  So for three billion you'd setWealth Creation Rate and  Industrial Percentage to 16.667.

*You'll still have more available workers, but otherwise be pretty close.

[Trueknight (OP)]

Thanks for your answer.

I was thinking about that myself, and probably that's what I'll do.
Anyway, i wanted to know by some of you veterans if there are more problems in using a larger starting population; actually i think i should consider the population in the game just as the "working" population...as you said most of actual human population wouldn't contribute to the space race, still i think that 500m it's a bit too little, but it's just a personal impression...

I've not really decided how i'll set up the game, but one of the ideas was to put "enlarged version" of  NATO, Russia And Chinese Commonwelth in a renewed space race.

In this case how large do you think should be the actual "Working" population, starting the game in 2030, let say, and without any major nuclear war to wipe out population?

I've seen a similiar set-up in one of the great Steve's fiction, I'm curious to know what he thinks about this.

[Trueknight (OP)]

Actually, Steve described pretty well the starting set-up he used both on the campaign i was thinking of (trans-newtonian), both on a new one, he started writing yesterday (GREAT CONCEPT!!!!). I think i'll just copycat everything he did. Nobody knows the game better than him.

Anyway, other opinions are more then welcome.

[Father Tim]

IMPORTANT NOTE:  Due to the way the AI is currently programmed, if you make any of the starting factions on Earth a computer-controlled NPR it will grow to hate* the other empires, declare war, and nuke the planet.  So be prepared to play all of the factions yourself (or enlist a friend, roommate or relative to do it on your computer).


*Because it will detect "aliens" within 'danger range' of one of its colonies.

[sloanjh]

I usually start with 1billion population (conventional).  The last two games I've started with 10billion (conventional), and gave my self 20x (first time) to 50x (this time) starting minerals.

In my opionion, scaling everything up by 10x knocks the game away from where it's tuned to be - research happens too fast, and there's too much industrial capacity compared to the length of time it takes to build shipping.  And as you've already observed, if you don't bump minerals up you burn through them almost immediately.

It seems like you've solved your problem (by copying Steve) for a multi-player start.  For a single-player start, if I were you I would run through the start code with 1 billion population and economic rate set to either 1.0 (if you don't care that you're going to have tons of money) or 0.15 or so (I'm making it a little higher than 0.1 because I think the econ efficiency also effects trade, so you'll have more trouble gaining the benefits of trade).  After your race has been generated, you can go into SM mode, open the F2 screen, then hit the "SM mods" button to change the population of Earth to 10billion (don't forget to hit save).  That will give you as start that's pretty much the same as for 1billion, but the population of Earth will show as 10billion.  The reason I'm recommending this is that I'm not sure of all the side effects of setting Industrial Percentage to a small number - if it only affects startup, then what I just described should be the same as going through setup with 10billion and an Industrial Percentage of 10.0

John

John