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[E. Albright]

So as per prior discussion, there was some interest in another go at SE PBEM.

First off, let's be clear that this is a terrible idea and we'll all come to regret it.

Having said that, Il Palazzo and I are dumb enough to do this, and we can accommodate up to two more fools players, as the limit appears to be 4 humans. I'm inclined to give first crack to Salmeuk, Karlito, and EuchreJack, as they all expressed some degree of interest. Once we get our players, we'll need to decide on rules; IP and I have some ideas, but we'll need to get full buy-in from all participants.

E. Albright
Il Palazzo
Salmeuk
Karlito

[Il Palazzo]

Awww. The game permits 4 players only? 5 would be ideal for diplomacy. Alas.
On the plus side, such lean and mean team might just about allow the game to finish before the solstice is upon us.

[EuchreJack]

I absolutely do not have the time right now, sorry.

[Karlito]

Well, I can hardly say no. Been brushing up on my single-player SE recently too (which I'm sure is a terrible teacher for such things).

[fatcat__25]

I'm interested, but probably don't have enough experience or time to keep up with you guys. I think I'll sit out this time, and practice more myself, while observing your chaos.

[Salmeuk]

for better or worse, sign me up. I can commit to playing. watching this thread for further updates.

any takeaways from your last game? I didn't read the full thread but it seems you encountered some interesting and perhaps unbalanced situations

[Karlito]

It looks like Vic actually pushed an update to fix some stuff like water getting overvalued.

[E. Albright]

We switched to the 1.11.09 beta mid-game and it didn't stop water being overvalued - it just made it so you had to manually sell it instead of it autoselling. I.e., he didn't fix the underlying "merchants want water too much" issue.

Oh, and for your amusement, here's something nasty I saw when rolling up planets to test how 4 human players look on a map. I hope it's not an omen.

[E. Albright]

Based on the last game we played and some subsequent conversations I think I can say IP and I agree on these preferences:

Complete FOW
Cults/Corp/No Syndicate
Tech 4 + Air Forces
Slower developmentt
4 Councils
Extreme + More AI time
(We were also leaning towards allowing saving during turns b/c towards the end that'd've been VERY nice)

Severe Violence
Alien Life
Spread Out

What we're less settled on are the following:

Robinson Crusoe and no Survival Stress  -VS- No RC with SS -VS- RC and SS

2-3 Zones + 1-2 Armies

Planet size, geography stuff and planet population

I'm kinda leaning towards no RC + SS, and 2Z + 2A on a big but sparsely populated world. This would give us 7 AI majors and a lot of minors, but the minors should generally be smaller so capturing each of them should have a reduced impact on snowballing. No SS and no RC means there would be 2 AI majors, which would be potentially awful for balance. I prefer 2Z over 3 even though it's less normalized b/c it'll be easier for the game to spread us out - this is also why I'm leaning towards someplace bigger. I'm tempted to suggest RC because of this as well, TBH - while Spread Out helps, the engine can often use all the help it can get to get a decently spread-out setup...

Thoughts?

[Karlito]

That seems reasonable. I definitely agree that there should be a decent number of AI majors as beefy as we can make them (or alternatively no AI majors, which is a little less fun).

I admit I often turn the corp off, since even at low presence it seems to convert all your leaders into loving the commerce profile which makes playing something other than that difficult. Any tips on managing it?

[EuchreJack]

I'm so happy to see this going forward! 

[E. Albright]

I'd assume anti-trust ops and corporate taxes would balance out corp love. Basically treat the corp like you do the syndicate. Okay, maybe not quite that harshly.

[King Zultan]

Posting to watch the chaos unfold.

[Il Palazzo]

I admit I often turn the corp off, since even at low presence it seems to convert all your leaders into loving the commerce profile which makes playing something other than that difficult. Any tips on managing it?

Last game I slapped a bit of a tax at them, got one board member (or two?), and generally wouldn't help them when they asked. I did not see any mass-conversions to capitalism and without much sweat I managed to keep the profile government focused at first, then balanced. The leaders were all super happy throughout the game.
That is to say, you can kinda ignore them if you want to.

[Knave]

Yes, I too am going to watch with a bowl of popcorn. I don't think I'll ever be good at this game, but it's definitely fun to watch