Not sure if this is a bug or by design but the current map I am playing (medium sized spiral) has two halves that are unconnected by any links and I am the only player that spawned in one half. This has made the game extremely easy as I have had free reign to expand with no need to worry about my military.



There is tech that allows you to travel without using links but so far I have yet to see the AI use it and so I am currently sitting at 86% completion of a expansion victory and haven't seen a single AI ship except for pirates in the whole game. This is on the second hardest difficulty (superior?) so I expected the AI would easily have the tech to travel to my systems by now I just dont think they are bothering.

Even if the AI did use non-link travel I still think the early game would be way too easy if you get spawned with half a galaxy to yourself.

Yea, it's VERY easy if you get placed alone in an sizable area with a single chokepoint - my last two games (small maps) I've had about 10-12 systems where the only connection was a single wormhole. That means I can seize one end of the wormhole, then rapidly colonize my entire sector.



The AI does learn the non-lane tech at a reasonable pace, but the kicker is you have to be able to at least see the destination, and you can only go there if you have open borders, are at war, or its still unclaimed or a colony. So the rapid expansion of the whole sector can block the AI from visiting your area for a long time, if you refuse open borders (although somehow sometimes they still seem to be able to run through my area. bleh)

Yeah in my first game I had a single choke point wormwhole linking the two halves of the galaxy which made defending easier and i actually liked that setup, but this time there wasn't even that one link which just kinda made things ridiculous. I literally have 0 military ships atm and noone is even looking at my empire while I have with over half the systems in the galaxy under my control sitting completely defenceless.

I'm sure the devs will work on that, especially the AI using the non-link travel system.

Remscar wrote:
I'm sure the devs will work on that, especially the AI using the non-link travel system.

I'm sure they will, it is only alpha after all.



My main concern is whether having unlinked galaxies is going to unbalance the game, purely because the AI doesn't pick up/use warp drives early enough.



So if I'm in an unlinked hunk of galaxy and know that warp drives aren't going to be used untill after turn 100, then I know I can freely expand and upgrade all the systems in that area without any need to worry about military. This gives a big advantage in how fast I can expand because I don't need to waste production/maintenance on any fleets and by the time the AI shows up i'll have fully developed my area of the galaxy and have every system churning out combat ships.



However if warp drives are available from say turn 50ish then I would have to play in a more normal manner and mix expanding with defence because theres a chance the AI could show up while i'm still in my development stages. So although its a bit harder to travel to my area I can't rely on the fact that I won't get attacked untill I am easily ready to deal with it.

FluffyBunny wrote:
I'm sure they will, it is only alpha after all.



My main concern is whether having unlinked galaxies is going to unbalance the game, purely because the AI doesn't pick up/use warp drives early enough.



So if I'm in an unlinked hunk of galaxy and know that warp drives aren't going to be used untill after turn 100, then I know I can freely expand and upgrade all the systems in that area without any need to worry about military. This gives a big advantage in how fast I can expand because I don't need to waste production/maintenance on any fleets and by the time the AI shows up i'll have fully developed my area of the galaxy and have every system churning out combat ships.



However if warp drives are available from say turn 50ish then I would have to play in a more normal manner and mix expanding with defence because theres a chance the AI could show up while i'm still in my development stages. So although its a bit harder to travel to my area I can't rely on the fact that I won't get attacked untill I am easily ready to deal with it.

Well you also have to think about how that could be a strategic advantage. Some empires are going to start with an advantage over others, its all just chance. Isolation however can also be a negative, an external enemy could have more territory and subsequently more power. Personally i think all regions should be connected somehow via wormholes.

This also makes me worry about the Galaxy Density Mod i did, a region that is not very dense could end up being inadvertently isolated from more dense regions.

Personally, I'm not too surprised. Alpha aside, travel flaws seem to happen in almost any randomly-generated setting. I remember one "Heroes of Might and Magic 3" game I played once where I never encountered my AI opponent... as he spawned in the upper right corner and was literally boxed in my mountains, and neither of us could reach each other due to lacking the magic to pass said mountains.

FluffyBunny wrote:
I'm sure they will, it is only alpha after all.



My main concern is whether having unlinked galaxies is going to unbalance the game, purely because the AI doesn't pick up/use warp drives early enough.



So if I'm in an unlinked hunk of galaxy and know that warp drives aren't going to be used untill after turn 100, then I know I can freely expand and upgrade all the systems in that area without any need to worry about military. This gives a big advantage in how fast I can expand because I don't need to waste production/maintenance on any fleets and by the time the AI shows up i'll have fully developed my area of the galaxy and have every system churning out combat ships.



However if warp drives are available from say turn 50ish then I would have to play in a more normal manner and mix expanding with defence because theres a chance the AI could show up while i'm still in my development stages. So although its a bit harder to travel to my area I can't rely on the fact that I won't get attacked untill I am easily ready to deal with it.

Actually, I've seen some AI taking the wormhole very early in the game (to scout my territory or colonize the first system), shortly before round 50. So I do not think it's real issue and I would say it works fine, it's quite dynamic in fact. Multiple experiences confirm this.

madgiraf wrote:
Actually, I've seen some AI taking the wormhole very early in the game (to scout my territory or colonize the first system), shortly before round 50. So I do not think it's real issue and I would say it works fine, it's quite dynamic in fact. Multiple experiences confirm this.

Yup the AI seems to use wormwholes just fine and quite early in the game but some galaxies seem to spawn with sections that don't even have a wormwhole between them and require warpdrives to reach. These seem to give you way to much 'safe' time to build up, possibly because the AI is buggy or possibly because the tech is a bit too far along the tech tree.



Personally i would like to see at least one wormwhole between each chunk of galaxy - the early/mid game would then be about finding and defending that chokepoint to stop the AI invading your territory. And then in mid/late game when warpdrives become available this would give a means to break the chokepoint by either bypassing it with a big fleet or causing distractions elsewhere with a few smaller fleets to drag defenders from the choke and then break through it with your main fleet.

I think I have a similar problem as well. I got the "explored half the galaxy" award thing but no one else is here and I haven't seen any AI come visit. There's one star in the middle with two "wings/branches" of stars of each side. It's pre-turn 100 but I have first level casimir effect (the wormhole one) and first level warp drives. I have no idea how to use them though. I haven't seen anything that looks like a fuzzy wormhole link to travel through and my ships always take the strings between stars for travel. I'm going to boot my game back up in a bit to see if I can find anything (I didn't know anything about the wormhole links before coming to check the forum) but I'm beginning to think it was just generated that way.

my first game was similar but I had one wormhole, and got boxed in and eventually overwhelmed by enemies as I was unable to expand and they all outteched me and outgunned me.



In my current game my home spiral had 7 systems, and I colonized another 21. I just conquered about twelve systems from two enemy AI's and was about to attack a homeworld. I thought I had the game beat. Apparently my success, and massive empire attracted some envy.





Two more AI declared war on me and cut my empire in half in less than 5 turns. I'm slowly losing ground now on three fronts, with 5 systems completely cut off (but being ignored) and 15 systems being attacked every turn, with another 15 already conquered. Leaving me with 5 worlds to try and build up my military might to throw them back.



As you can imagine, it's not going well. In fact I'm starting to think of just using my main empire as a delaying action while I advance tech, and build up in my mini-5 systems that have only one wormhole leading to them (and other planets to explore.. so actually there could be more wormholes, but they 'appear' to be safe.)

Happened the same thing to me FluffyBunny last time i played a game.

Ran a spiral-4 with 4 factions, and the two constellations were isolated, as there were no wormholes anywhere in the galaxy.

My guess is that the galaxy generation algorythm needs a little modification/fix/adjustment

The AI is fairly bad at using non-link travel otherwise its an interesting design.

Orion wrote:
I think I have a similar problem as well. I got the "explored half the galaxy" award thing but no one else is here and I haven't seen any AI come visit. There's one star in the middle with two "wings/branches" of stars of each side. It's pre-turn 100 but I have first level casimir effect (the wormhole one) and first level warp drives. I have no idea how to use them though. I haven't seen anything that looks like a fuzzy wormhole link to travel through and my ships always take the strings between stars for travel. I'm going to boot my game back up in a bit to see if I can find anything (I didn't know anything about the wormhole links before coming to check the forum) but I'm beginning to think it was just generated that way.

The wormholes can easily be mistaken for normal strings/links connecting stars if you are zoomed out far enough. You don't have to do anything to use them either, you just research it and away you go.