For latest game I started two levels below all the other races in my attempt to find a game competitive till turn 200.

Details:
Major Race: Federation
Minor Races: Many
Difficutly: Impossible
Random Events: On
Galaxy Shape: Irregular
Galaxy Size: Large.
Starting Level: Feds: 1, all other Empires: 3
Mod: Dafedz's Ultimate Mod 2.0.0 patch 1
Other: Ferengi have had their their ship cost and maintainence doubled.

In The Beginning ...
There were several false starts to begin. Basically, if I ran into an empire before turn 30 I was toast. I finally found a game where I was able to hide in one corner until about turn 40.

Starting at Level one is harder with the Ultimate Mod than it is without. This is due to the total population increase. After building a transport I then have to build nothing but food for the next 8 turns or so. This effectively put me about 30 turns behind everyone else (not counting the two tech levels I was already behind).

http://quealy.net/newtest.htm The map contains relevant screen shots from turn 83 and turn 162.

First Contact
You can see that on the Turn 83 map that I ran into the Cardassians about turn 40 at Deneb. After a short while he brought a dozen capital ships and I had to back off (I only had four destroyers at the time). Deneb cried out for assistance and for some reason the Cardassians backed off. I eventually moved my fleet of 4 destroyers, 4 Connies, and 2 Tamarians to battle his now 14 capital ships. My four destroyers were quickly destroyed but the Cardies were no match for my Connies.

After this smacking the Cardies backed off and Deneb was mine. As you can see, but turn 83 the Cardies were a match for me. I was quite pleased. Shortly there after the Cardies asked for an alliance and we had a strong union for quite a while.

With War on the Horizon
On turn 162 the Cardies terminated their alliance with me. It seems that over night they went from worshiping me to being neutral. Until just recently the other empires had been warring with each other. Now, though, all empires are at relative peace with each other This definately the most peaceful moment in the galaxy's history.

The Future
I've found my competitive game. That stats show that by turn 183 no one had a stranglehold on the galaxy. I'm having to quickly build up my intel as I'm losing a building or two every 5 turns or so and I know this will only get worse. I've got my Galaxy II's and Star Bases to protect my borders. They are more than a match for any one empire. Just can't let them all gang up on me.

May I should have made one empire start at Level 4. We'll see. This might be competitive enough.

You're good! I would have never attempted anything like that, nice 1
Starting the others at level 4 and keeping your self at level 1 will be a lot more difficult. I once tried something like that and was destroyed within 30 turns. Watch out if you attempt it 8O

The key is to find a nice quiet spot in the galaxy with some elbow room to grow without interference for the first 30-40 turns. You'll catch up with the other powers after awhile. I'd bet starting the other empires at level 4 might not be that much of a difference.

The problem is when the you're placed right next to a major race! Hopefully BOTF 2 will eliminate that and place you where you should be in the galaxy.

Your race placement will be random, just as it is in BOTF 1 . At least thats the way I read about it in a couple other older posts.

Random will actually mean every major will have one fifth of the galaxy to expand - ideally. The semi-canon placement will place the dominion far apart from the other four by placing their home system differently on a random map.

On the canon map variant finally everything will be exactly as you would expect and it was show in trek.

Right ftranschel,


But in regular botf, ramdom also set races right against each other, Or in my case having contact at turn 3. lol (damn that murphy guy anyway lol)

Murphy Guy?

Here's my current problem. Starting two level below all the other empires slows me down and prevents me from grabbing as much territory as I would if we started at the same level. It only causes the beginning of the game to be slower for me (Feds). The problem is that I eventually catch up and pass them.

Take this current game for example. I'm about even with the Cardies and share a large, common border. They have about 40 capital ships in two 20 ship formations. Challenging? Not really. The best they have are crusiers. A ton of cursiers. Problem one is they divide their forces. Problem two is they don't build any higher level ships. My group of 7 Galaxy II's will destroy much of the 20 ship crusier fleet while the rest flee.

It's as if the AI simply stops advancing at one point. The ships they use are no match for the upper level Fed fleets. How do you get the AI to build these ships? I've seen the suggestion to reduce the cost for their upper level ships. I'll have to give that a shot and see if it makes a difference.

Maybe a cheat or changing the amount of credits like you said. Sometimes you can alter things in the files in the game folder 8O

the ai stops building ships because it is fixated on upgradeing structures, lower the cost of structures and watch those fleets come at you.

So the AI wasn't all rubbish

So how much do you reduce the cost of structures? 20%? 50%?

Also, will doing this simply mean more Cardie crusiers or well they actually build the upper level ships? Should I also reduce the cost of their top ships?

You should basically *only* reduce the cost of their top ships IMO. Also, one thing I never understood was why the fed-AI never built sovs and defiants. Is the AI just so silly to not power up utopia planitia???

Ok, I've drastically reduced the cost of the top ships for each empire other than the Feds, including Star Bases. How much?

Here's roughly what I did:

Star Base 1 - 9000 instead of about 12000
Star Base 2 - 12000 instead of 28000

If a ship regularly cost about 9000 I'd reduce it to 6000. If it cost 10000-18000 I reduced it to 9000. If it was more than 20000 I'd drop it down to about 12000.

Maybe this will help, maybe not. If jiggly is right and the empires concentrate on buildings I may also need to reduce their costs. Could it be that the AI won't build top ships until they reach level 9 on their buildings? We'll see what happens.

With my luck I'll find the perfect settings and then BOTF II will come out.

Nice Idea! Those could be a but ob the large size. Why not the feds?

Because I'm playing the feds. I don't want to make it easy on myself, just easy on the other empires

u may have more luck trying to tweak the siplist by forcing the ai to build better ships, rather than carpeting cetain changes. making certian ships liek the ferengi light raider far more expensive would force the ai to build full raiders, ect.

No, it does not. I tried to have the light raider at 255 cost and the raider at 5 - no result. They biult small amounts of light raiders again and again ^^

I found that epic mod gave quite a challenge. The epic mod reduces ships ranges. Most have short, some medium and only high tech scouts long range. Also speeds are made 1 mostly and some 2. This kinda extends the map, which is good, but I liked also how AI performed in this setting.
Building outposts and starbases is then vital for expansion, since most of your ships have short range. But be careful, when AI gets some of your systems in range there may be accumulation of their forces.

I played a few games where I stopped attacking.. allowed my systems to fully grow. as well as build ships to defend borders. I waited like 300 turns for the other races to "catch up.. But I did not have a mod to wrok with nor did I know how to adjust the ship ect building ratio.

Can I make those type of changes without being modded? also when playing as the feds, how do you all get so many systems so quickly? I cannot do it..

Remeber, I am unmodded here.

what about the initial cost of the light raider have u tried raising that as well?