Correct, it is not currently available.

Huge Spiral 4 with 4 players is my favorite. The early game involves a race to colonize the border chokepoints joined by wormholes. Mid-game requires invasion of the border chokepoints which are almost always connected to 3 systems (making for fun and interesting invasion pushes and defenses against invasion (invader can rapidly spread out if it has sufficient ships/power, defender can pincer onto and retake the border chokepoints readily).

Tigga wrote:
I agree about disk 4. Certainly meant for 2 or 4 players.



What I really really want is Disk-N and Spiral-N, where N is the number of players in the game. My group usually plays in games of 4-6 players, and we find that there's just no good map setting for 5 players... and not really a great one for 6 (we usually do Disk, but this never works amazingly). Disk-4 works wonderfully for four players though.

IMO for 5 players, spiral-6 is the best as theres 1 free arm for someone to grabby and fight over

Yeah I am fairly fond of twin elliptical map type, usually gives a decent home area, and encourages war over large neighbouring constellations for expansions.

liquid: what I meant was what Fusil said.



For Cravers, the extra 30 turns is a doubled in power ability.

Same with Hissho once it activates (furthermore, because things are half priced, Hissho can go to war that much faster, and thus start benefitting from that bonus).

I agree about disk 4. Certainly meant for 2 or 4 players.



What I really really want is Disk-N and Spiral-N, where N is the number of players in the game. My group usually plays in games of 4-6 players, and we find that there's just no good map setting for 5 players... and not really a great one for 6 (we usually do Disk, but this never works amazingly). Disk-4 works wonderfully for four players though.

Don't forget that those bonus only lasts for the first 30 rounds. You wont really profit that much from those systems anyway.



I consider Bushido to be way stronger, but it may be difficult to engage on players and take over the first system, since they can pump out fleets also faster.



Besides that:



We tried out disk-4 and it was really bad to play.



We were 4 players and 4 AI on a large disk-4 galaxy with default settings, and we got two players in two constellations. The other two constellations were filled up with the 4AI.



At first look this could have been good, if we tried to play against AI. - But on the other hand it was totally crap.



Here is why: The disk-4 map tends to generate "unfair" constellations. I spawned in a location with 3 systems around it and gigantic travelroutes to the rest of the constellation. My mate who spawned in the same constellation and had like 10 systems around him. The same thing happened to the other two mates. One got 2-3 systems to start off with and the other had the rest.



Disk-4 is for maximum of 4 players - else its realy unbalanced map.

you're right, liquidGG, but it is only as insane as on normal. cravers affinity on the other hand is about doubled in power.

Efyian wrote:
Just on a side note, but doesn't "fast" setting give the cravers and hissho affinity a huge boost?

Effectively, craver affinity would be twice as effective, and hissho affinity is better because it's easier to go to war and win territory.

Try out Sophons, their research speed is insane.



Everybody has its benefits from that.

Just on a side note, but doesn't "fast" setting give the cravers and hissho affinity a huge boost?

Effectively, craver affinity would be twice as effective, and hissho affinity is better because it's easier to go to war and win territory.

Mortiferus_Rosa wrote:
What is your thought about an escalating turn timer? So that the time increases as the game progresses (more time since you probably have more things to order around)

That should be a no-brainer in a turn based strategy game :l

Hi everyone,



I love to play 4X games in multiplayer mode. Every 4X I played so far will at some point be "figured out" if you play only against AI and going against other players often results in the most intense and enjoyable games.



The big problem for turn-based 4X games in multiplayer is of course game length. Especially early in the life-cycle of a game you just seldom have strong enough bonds with other community members to play a 20 hour marathon game spread over multiple days. So what I want to discuss here are the best settings to still get enjoyable games but with a short average length. I think a good target time would be about 2h for an average game, this should allow the game to be concluded in one "session", even allowing people to finish a full mp game on a normal weekday after work.



Here some "bullet points" of what I figured out so far:



* Using Amoeba race (affinity) allows you to see the result of the galaxy generator right away.



* Game speed on "fast" is imho a no-brainer as it reduces cost for most things by about 50%, requiring less rounds to build improvements/ships or research tech.



* I would prefer to keep the turn-timer as high as possible. While playing with "speed" settings where you only have a few seconds to finish your turn can be fun, I doubt it would be the preferred way for most players.



* If possible I would like that multiple victory conditions remain viable.





After some initial testing, maybe as a start for our discussion here is a first idea that I think is playable and could be fun in multiplayer:



Shape: Disk - 4

Empires: 4

Size: Small

Age: Normal

Advanced: I haven't really examinded those very closely. I think high density, maybe even with galaxy size tiny could work, also a high star connectivity could be good to reduce travel time



Game Speed: Fast

Advanced: No Pirates (I think they are too random, and short distances between players should be enough to build early ships), all available victory conditions (might have to remove some that are unbalanced).

Turn Times: Would love to work with the "Last player" setting, but players would have to know each other pretty well for it to work. I guess 1-2 minutes should work. Might get a little tight in the later rounds.





I think the biggest impact (besides the game speed of course) will have the combination of 4 settings: Galaxy Shape, Galaxy Size, Galaxy density and Star connectivity.



Just some final thoughts of how I would prefer the games to play out. Average game length of about 120-150 rounds. With an average round time of about 1minute this would result in 2h - 2h30m games. I hope you can still get far in the tech trees and not just rush ships and go for a military only campaign. Because of this I think it is still important to have a "home constellation" that is "protected" by wormholes. I don't know how realistic this is but maybe some of you guys are also interested in some good and balanced settings for some faster games.

Chuggy wrote:
A "Young" Galaxy makes for fewer tough planets, wouldn't that speed up expansion?

Yes I like that idea.

Mortiferus_Rosa wrote:
What is your thought about an escalating turn timer? So that the time increases as the game progresses (more time since you probably have more things to order around)

I think this would be a very interesting option, but unless I am mistaken it is not something that is available right now, correct? Maybe this could be a potential improvement for the future.

For reference, here's the wiki page on galaxy settings: http://endlessspace.wikia.com/wiki/Galaxy_settings



IMO Disk-4 is the best. It's symmetric for all eight players, unlike Twin Elliptical, Spiral-2, Spiral-4, or Ovoid. It has the interesting core region, like Spiral-8 and unlike Disk, but doesn't constrain you to king-of-the-hill gameplay like Spiral-8.

What is your thought about an escalating turn timer? So that the time increases as the game progresses (more time since you probably have more things to order around)

A "Young" Galaxy makes for fewer tough planets, wouldn't that speed up expansion?

Tigga wrote:
We tried playing a large twin-elliptical with 5 players. One got completely boxed in, one didn't have much space, one had plenty of space but awful systems, and the two nearest to the middle of the map both got good amounts of space with good systems. Because there were only 5 of us there was an empty constellation which was also convenient for the guys in the middle. Was pretty tough for the outer guys.

With twin elliptical try 'many' constellations and 'few' wormholes, that seems to provide good results for me providing good starting constellations and a second constellation for each player to fight over.

nosavynada wrote:
What are your experiances with twin eliptical. I have found that it generally is a fair start for everyone - with the occasional person getting only 2 systems before being boxed in.

We tried playing a large twin-elliptical with 5 players. One got completely boxed in, one didn't have much space, one had plenty of space but awful systems, and the two nearest to the middle of the map both got good amounts of space with good systems. Because there were only 5 of us there was an empty constellation which was also convenient for the guys in the middle. Was pretty tough for the outer guys.

What are your experiances with twin eliptical. I have found that it generally is a fair start for everyone - with the occasional person getting only 2 systems before being boxed in.

Playing in my small group we've found that a lot of the map types can give seriously unbalanced gameplay, especially for an odd number of players.



For an even number of players we've found that the disk maps work well. Disk-4 is great for four players, and the regular disk map can work well with an arbitrary even number of players, though often you end up with a few players rammed up against the galaxy edge.

Good subject first of all.

I do not prefer fast setting games, not because I do not want a short game but because there is less likelyhood you will fight with the various technology steps but again it is a preference.

However in the spirit of your example:

I would ask is an average turn length of 1 minute long enough in particular with fast settings where you will have to be redesigning your ships to update them.

The rest of your suggestions seem to be good for the scenario you are aiming for.