Another one? The rng has decided as follows:

Red team
JR4
Thrawn
Azoth
Dark Savant

Blue team:
Commodore
Sunrise089
Pindicator
DaveV

I just finished a game with this. It's something different and pretty fun. There are few variations you could do, but here's how I did it:

-Feudal
-Repulsive
+Telepathic
+Spying +2
+Omniscient 
+Production +1
+Rich Home World

Granted this makes for a very bad research start, but basically you just don't worry about it and work on making Outposts, Scouts and Colony Ships to make contact with as many races as possible. Find Worm Holes and put Outposts on the other side to quickly get access to all the races and then build tons of spies and basically forget about research. The main things to research early are just the +Spying techs. Make Cruisers and take over worlds.

There are some other possible way to do this, like with Warlord or actually taking Farming +1 and Large Home World could be good too. 


Another way to do this without Feudal would be:

-Ground Combat
-Repulsive
+Telepathic
+Spying +2
+Unification

This gives a little better economy and you can do some of your own research this way, but it loses some of the flavor. Anyway, I'm sure there are other similar combos, but this was pretty fun. I did hardly any of my own research, just relying on Spying and picking up a few Spy techs and early critical ones here and there. The beginning was a bit difficult with food production the way I did it. I did start by researching Hydroponic Farms. Once I got Planetary Super Computers my own research started to be okay, and with Auto Labs of course I was ale to finally direct my own research reasonably well. I got a little lucky in that Psilons were in the game, who I never attacked and just kept taking their research. I also got Draxxx pretty early as my second Leader, which was a nice surprise.

I know this has been beat to death for *decades* now, but it's been about 15 years since i played MOO2 and it seems quite different than what I remember.

It seems to me there are fairly optimized Pick configurations:

1) Creative
-Repulsive
-Population Growth
+Creative
+Subterranean
+Unification

2) Non-Creative
Silicoids

At least this is what I do best with. I really like the Silicoids. A big advantage of Silicoids is that by doing away with Food and Waste, you eliminate the need for many techs, so not being Creative isn't much of a sacrifice.

As for the Creative configuration, it seems to me that -Population growth isn't a big factor, because you can quickly get Cloning Centers anyway, and just build those. Combined with building Housing, you can grow plenty fast enough, even with Subterranean. Subterranean is superior to almost any other economic bonus because more population is more valuable than added status to population. It is a little slower start than if you take +Industry or Rich/Artifact Home world, but not terribly so, and it hits like a truck by the mid-game. I'd always pick Subterranean over +Industry/Food/Science. More pop = better all around.

I will be on vacation October 12-19. Would someone be able to cover turns for those dates? I will leave instructions is thread, and will be available on the forum to respond to anything that comes up while I'm away.

ATs laptop broke so if someone would like to play a few turns in Pb52 and pb55 it would be much appreciated. Details in his threads, password is

This is a project several years in the making. The idea is simple: the outcome of AI Survivor games is often influenced by the map and by diplomacy. What if we took these factors out of the equation? Could we run a competition where AIs faced each other in 1-on-1 games on mirrored maps? And if we did, who would come out on top?

The biggest challenge is how big such a contest would be. If I were to simply throw all leaders in a single elimination bracket, it would take 51 games to decide a winner, but it would be a competition heavily affected by bracket luck and fluke AI decisions. Once I start looking at structures which reduce randomness (double elimination, best-of-3 matches), the number of needed games quickly goes past 100 - and of course, it's not just a matter of playing out 100+ games, but also reporting them. That's what Sulla pointed out when I talked to him about this idea a few years ago, and that's why I ended up putting it off

Well, seeing how interest in Civ4 isn't declining, and Civ4 AI Survivor is going strong as ever, I think now is a good time to come back to this idea. I had plenty of time to think about how much effort it would take, and am certain I will be able to play out this contest without abandoning it

With this in mind, there are two questions I'd like to ask:

The big one - Do you guys find this interesting? If I were to go ahead with this project, would you follow?

The less big one - I would like a QoL mod/script to make running the games easier. I have a detailed tech spec in mind, but the biggest change I would need is to automatically end player turns, so that pressing Enter every turn is not necessary. I would need to be able to look around the map during AI turns, and have certain triggers to stop autoplay. I'm completely unfamiliar with Civ4 modding, so would someone be willing to help me with this?

I played a game where I got isolated start but good 2nd planet and OK 3d planet, everything being 7 parsecs away. Unfortunately final war was triggered just as I got fusion beams and propulsion to start expanding.

I think it's interesting game, so I'm attaching a save - unfortunately I don't have final save. There are transports heading to silicoid planet next turn which you can most likely take if you bomb before landing.

Problem is holding planet and expanding. Is there an ace who can win this here?

Attached Files

  SAVE7.GAM.zip (Size: 5.23 KB / Downloads: 2)

Holy Arms seems a bit underpowered for a very rare. 

It's just +1 to hit on normal units, but not those with chaos channels and I don't think undead units (not sure on that though).

It also replaces rather than combines with Holy Weapon that will almost certainly be available to wizards with Holy Arms, so it doesn't improve your best units.
Also it can be dispelled in battle I think. 

Compare to Survival instinct which although it doesn't work on normal units, it works on units with chaos channels and undead and the bonus is so much better +1 to hit, +2 resistance and +1 defence and stacks with everything else and cannot be dispelled.
It's also just a rare spell as well compared to a very rare for Holy Arms.

I would suggest changing Holy Arms to work on all units not just normal ones as a +1 to hit and be able to stack with Holy Weapon if you have it. Perhaps the name would need to be changed though.

I've never been able to come up with a good Democracy build for MOO2. I just don't get it. I can't figure out why Its got 7 points either.

It seems to me that if you take Democracy it also forces you to need Creative in order to cover the spying deficiency. But getting Democracy and Creative is not easy without taking Repulsive. But taking repulsive seems to undercut a major aspect of Democracy, which is trade. 

I like the concept, of a build that's high on research and income so that you rely on buying a lot of your production instead of working for it, but its just doesn't seem to work out well.

The best I've come up with is: 
- Defense (-2)
- Attack (-2)
- Combat (-2)
Democracy (7)
Creative (8)
Large Home World (1)

The thought being that Creative will make up for the other weaknesses. I've played it a couple of times, but both were bad games in general, bad setups, etc. 

Anyone else have success with Democracy?

This is going to be a boatload of fun, I am sure of it.