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[a1s]

I don't know about cheap, but making them quick, but palace-only seems like a good idea. Do you have any ideas about making hospitals more useful?

[mainiac]

I think hospitals are actually pretty handy as is.

[Kebooo]

In EFS 1.4/Nova 2.3, I'm fairly certain the church cannot create new inquisitors. So the inquisition ends when they either run out of transport ships or inquisitors.

[mainiac]

Well as the GM I can take up the mantle of the inquisition.  I could even delete the church inquisition entirely so I have control of it.  I won't give anybody any sudden shocks though.  You'd get several turns of warning before the inquisition comes a knocking like in the game.  But don't expect the inquisition to quickly die out, they'll lie in wait and then hit you with a decent invasion if you beat them back initially.

[EuchreJack]

Well as the GM I can take up the mantle of the inquisition.  I could even delete the church inquisition entirely so I have control of it.  I won't give anybody any sudden shocks though.  You'd get several turns of warning before the inquisition comes a knocking like in the game.  But don't expect the inquisition to quickly die out, they'll lie in wait and then hit you with a decent invasion if you beat them back initially.

Hm, that sounds like a definite improvement.  For one thing, a GM would be willing to cancel the inquisition if a player agreed to delete any proscribed techs.  Currently, the player has to finish researching the proscribed tech, then delete it, before the inquisition is over.  By which time, some players are bound to be minus a lab.  Plus, it would give you as GM something fun to do.  You would also bypass the shortcomings of the inquisition that Kebooo mentioned.  Finally, and this might be a bit harder, but you could revert the method of proscribing techs from Nova's workaround to the way it was meant to be played:  Most techs aren't proscribed at game start, but semi-random techs are declared proscribed as the game advances.  The only reason that Nova implemented the workaround of having a large number of techs proscribed at the start is because saving and reloading deletes the list of proscribed techs created during the game.

I like the idea of quick, palace-only pioneers.

[Kebooo]

It's unclear to me how exactly the GM'd inquisition would work. Would it just be "you must raze this lab"? With the current inquisition, most people capitulate early due to not wanting to go to war with the church until they are able to fight them off. So there's this nice little hazy line between not being able to stand up to the church and finally being able to show them who's boss. Then you get to keep your proscribed technologies.

[mainiac]

As the GM I'd give myself some production buildings on Terra and crank out inquisitors and escorts for them.  If you research proscribed techs I'll send inquisitors after you and give you a warning before they arrive and attack.  Keep your research and I'll first send two inquisitors after you.  I'll react to what your defenses look like after that.  If you have a strong defense in place, I'll slowly build up a super stack of inquisitors to whack you with.  If your labs are lightly defended, I'll go after them right away.  If you stop your research, I'll relent.  If you attack the inquisition's space fleet, I'll send a bigger space fleet with more inquisitors because the church as angry at your defiance.

I could do the same thing with the symbiots too.  Instead of having them be all haphazard in the hands of the AI, I'd control them and give you guys warning about major invasions before they happen.

[EuchreJack]

I could do the same thing with the symbiots too.  Instead of having them be all haphazard in the hands of the AI, I'd control them and give you guys warning about major invasions before they happen.

For what it's worth, the Symbiot AI is the best in the game.  While it would certainly be more fun if they were in your hands, it would effectively mean that you would have the work of two players.

[a1s]

For what it's worth, the Symbiot AI is the best in the game.  While it would certainly be more fun if they were in your hands, it would effectively mean that you would have the work of two players.

Wait.. can one actually control the NPC players? I haven't heard of that. Mainiac, can you also make dealings with the league meaningful? In vanilla/nova they effectively have no diplomacy outside of declaring a third republic, where as the screen itself suggests they should engage in vote selling, and embargoes (and with actual human control they could do that much more).

[mainiac]

I can't take control of the Symbiot NPC but I can give myself Symbiot units and invade you guys with them.

For votes I could let you guys bribe "virtual" scepters of the league/church and then only cast votes if you bribe enough to sway the outcome.  For instance:

Scenario 1:
Player A gets 15 votes from Players A, B, C and bribes 0 votes.
Player B bribes 2 votes from the league and casts them for player A.
Player D gets 5 votes from himself and bribes 11 votes from the league/church.
I publish the vote total in thread, 17 for Player A, 16 for player D.  Because there aren't enough votes to sway the outcome, I don't cast any votes.

Scenario 2:
Player A gets 10 votes from players A and B and bribes 0 votes.
Player C gets 5 votes from herself and bribes 7 votes from the league/church.
Player D gets 5 votes from himself and bribes 6 votes from the league/church.
I publish the vote total in thread, 10 for A, 12 for C, 11 for D.  Because the bribes changed the outcome I cast votes for C, giving her the victory.

Would you guys want a system like this?

[EuchreJack]

Hm, how would you be able to cast votes as GM?

[mainiac]

We've got an empty player slot so I'd take it and use it to GM.  I'd have tons of resources but wouldn't be playing to win.

Of course if we get 5 players this becomes different, then I'd just set things up at the start and move the turns along.

edit: if I can't get my system to recognize wing32.dll this may all be moot.  Anybody have any advice on how to get the map editor to run?

[Kebooo]

I've run it on XP 32 bit, Vista 64 and Windows 7 64 before. I'm pretty sure I downloaded wing32.dll and put it in my Windows folder, possibly my Windows32 folder (or both).

[Zrk2]

I've never played before. How hard is this to pick up?

[mainiac]

I've never played before. How hard is this to pick up?

If you've played other 4X games it's pretty similar to them.  You should read the Nova notes of play for some useful tips.  Remember that diplomacy is very useful because of those lovely imperial ministries.  The return on investment for engineers is very high so try to be always building them.