Anacreon Era III Discussion Thread

General discussion for the game Anacreon
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--Imperator--
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To expand on this...
Protecting even marginally productive jumpship yards from gunship attack is going be extremely important
In fact, any undefended world within sector capital range of a potential enemy is a liability. It can quickly be redesignated as a jumpbeacon after being conquered.

Hence, be wary of players establishing jumpbeacons or capitals near the edge of your territory. There should be no reason to do so unless they're planning to attack. If another empire (of similar size) happens to spawn right next to you, it would be best to either eliminate them quickly or attempt to forge an alliance. Keep in mind alliances, non-aggression pacts and whatnot are all informal and easily broken with no penalty, except maybe at the cost of how trustworthy you appear to other players in future.

Nebula pockets, like the one my capital Terra spawned in, are extremely strategically valuable. They provide immunity to starship attacks, and building starships within that pocket itself to defend key worlds all but eliminates any jumpship threat, unless the enemy is willing to take massive casualties they won't assault capitals and hubs in that region.
Starfrigates (Defiance-class, at least) feel fairly impotent for their cost
I'd use them mainly for defense, supported by hypersonics.
Mesophon purchases present an interesting option for projecting force remotely
*ahem* Personally, I would forcibly remove Mesophon worlds one by one from my territory. They're a liability and potential security threat. They also provide very little benefit, unless one is willing to contract arthritis buying ships in multiples of 1000 I don't think you could assemble a credible military force this way, unless your goal is harassment rather than conquest.
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--Imperator-- wrote:
Thu Apr 20, 2017 12:41 am
To expand on this...
Protecting even marginally productive jumpship yards from gunship attack is going be extremely important
In fact, any undefended world within sector capital range of a potential enemy is a liability. It can quickly be redesignated as a jumpbeacon after being conquered.
True, but yards are especially important when the enemy does not have a sector capital in range because they retain their designation, letting an enemy get jumpship access to an area without waiting a day for the sector capital administration to get established.
--Imperator--
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updated
josh19967
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Location: Vacationing at ModWorld... :D

I abdicated.

Just FYI: I take my treaties/alliances VERY seriously, so breaking one with me is a very quick way to make me hate you. Just saying.
I really don't care if I get my hair cut... *snip* NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!
TheBugKing
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--Imperator-- wrote:
Sat Apr 22, 2017 7:47 am
updated
I

You had a treaty with your neighbor and then killed him? You might be able to build a fast empire, but that isn't a very good way to play the game.

Backstabbing aside: An in-game note, I believe the updated game really needs an updated battle simulator. The battles are far too complex for the A.I. to handle in my opinion. This caused me to lose a battle that I should have decisively won. The battle interface should be worked on to enhance the usability of the fleets. I don't being told I have control, but in reality I have none; that isn't nice George. Either take away commands complete completely or make those commands usable.
Fire, Fire, Fire;
Streaks of golden light,
Rays of cosmic waves crashing through still dead night.

Gifts of diamond rays,
Strewn pearls of days not measured,
Treasured gleaming quests fade through the absolute oblivion of infinite time, no matter the direction.

And war died the day it noticed itself,
Peace, yet still dead, peace in the void of voids.
--Imperator--
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TheBugKing wrote:
Sat Apr 22, 2017 4:01 pm
--Imperator-- wrote:
Sat Apr 22, 2017 7:47 am
updated
You had a treaty with your neighbor and then killed him? You might be able to build a fast empire, but that isn't a very good way to play the game.
"The promise given was a necessity of the past: the word broken is a necessity of the present."
-- Niccolo Machiavelli

Yes, the computer is notoriously bad at micromanaging battles. I've had all jumpcruisers target jumpships which is a bit pointless when they could be attacking gunships instead.

EDIT: For anyone who thinks I'm too treacherous... go and play this and report back. My methods are too kind in comparison to what you'll see there. :lol:
Last edited by --Imperator-- on Sun Apr 23, 2017 9:59 am, edited 1 time in total.
starxplor
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Since it should be obvious to everyone, I might as well make it official:
I am Ferengi (Ferenginar is the capital)
TheBugKing
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I've always been a huge fan of those spread sheets, Watch TV and various others, that were made for tracking sizes and whatnot. Is there any way to implement this into the game, say on the main window? Stats for all involved players beside the "play" button. I remember playing various Age of Empire games which all had those graphs in game, so to see that here would be fantastic. Especially since it seems we all enjoy having them but don't seem to have the time to create them always.
Fire, Fire, Fire;
Streaks of golden light,
Rays of cosmic waves crashing through still dead night.

Gifts of diamond rays,
Strewn pearls of days not measured,
Treasured gleaming quests fade through the absolute oblivion of infinite time, no matter the direction.

And war died the day it noticed itself,
Peace, yet still dead, peace in the void of voids.
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This has been requested in the past. Personally I think that built in game statistics and maybe a very basic leaderboard/achievement system might increase player engagement a lot, although they could also potentially distort gameplay into a rush for artificial achievements (note that Transcendence doesn't follow the modern trend of bombarding the player with achievements).

I think that it might be possible for players to generate such lists automatically by writing a script that interacts with the API and gathers JSON data from the game client. In the game as it is right now, it would have to have be associated with an actual empire that is playing the game to gather most of the information. A lot of the stuff that I included in the spreadsheets is not available continuously to all players- you only see it if you have scout fleets orbiting other empires' capitals for more than a watch or two. So it does not seem to be intended that all players to have continuous information about total empire strengths, etc.- although in practice it's very difficult to stop empires from sending scout fleets to gather this information.
--Imperator--
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Didn't starxplor do something similar on his website? It would be really cool if player stat tracking could be automated.

Anacreon would benefit from having some sort of victory condition, right now it can feel a bit pointless after a while with no set objectives to complete. In Neptune's Pride you had to control 50% of all stars in the galaxy to win, in other 4X games like Civ 5 there are numerous victory conditions like military, scientific, cultural, diplomatic etc etc. I think if it was possible to "win" in Anacreon, either by eliminating all other empires, or simply having the largest empire by the time the game resets, would make it much more enjoyable.

Oh yeah, and Trans does have some "achievements" per se, like honoring permadeath and no backtracking. Although to be fair I haven't bothered with trying a permadeath run yet, heh!
starxplor
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--Imperator-- wrote:
Mon Apr 24, 2017 5:43 am
Didn't starxplor do something similar on his website? It would be really cool if player stat tracking could be automated.
This was still player-based, specifically my empire's view of the galaxy. I never made it auto-update, in case of error i didn't want it slamming the server when I was not around to stop it, so I had to manually run the script to generate the data.

The benefit of how I did it though, is it showed trends. You could see a planet's history of ownership/designation and importantly, fleet positions.
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Now I am not sure that AoE is working after all. Behemoth-class starcruisers attacking armored satellites didn't seem to be doing splash damage (unless defenses are immune to AoE since they don't have unitsPerCell?)
Oddball
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How is the start up position on the map calculated? I know the map is much larger than where I am being located.

So far I have tried starting about a dozen times and every time I have been next to one of the larger players. I have been put adjacent to Imperium Aeterna at least 60% of the time, once between Imperium Aeterna and brides of the sun, two or three times next to Kingdomofbugs and the balance next to crystillane federation. All of these empires are so large as a neighbor I feel their is very little chance of survival.
--Imperator--
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Larger empires can't attack smaller ones first without incurring massive penalties. Unless, of course, you go all space mongol and start attacking their undefended worlds willy nilly... in which case expect a visit from an Eldritch fleet or two. There are still several large regions of the map left unclaimed, mostly in the west. KingdomofBugz is gobbling up the south and the north is mostly taken up by myself (Imperium), Brides and Crystalline. Also I noticed you managed to spawn dead center of my empire's 4 clusters, so yeah, maybe the spawn position system should be reworked.
--Imperator--
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Here is an updated map with the major powers' borders outlined very professionally in Microsoft Paint. Also updated in first post.
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