Posted by: sloanjh
« on: January 31, 2010, 11:43:36 AM »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
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