Troop Unit Size

[UesugiKenshin]

With low intel points as you have delayed intel security buildings, then for the longest time, you have to do low level espionage and your empire might be defeated or be totally "in the shit" as battles are raging everywhere. Think of galactic war 1000 times the armament of WW2. Every penny will be invested in defenses and mustering and training military forces.
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define. ... the%20shit

You can't even think about large scale sabotage as you are in the heat of battles with klaxons shrieking as well as bloody soldiers dying from mortal wounds and smoking ruined hulks of charred wrecks of starships after thousands of torpedoes from an enemy cloaked Rotharian fleet that ambushed you.

[UesugiKenshin]

That is exciting in a wargame versus sabotage. The Omega can develop 36 million in the treasury and still have 2000 starships and innumerable troops by turn#489 and they have totally wrecked every empire but the Heyoun and have captured 300 starships. They can seize through ground invasions 10 inhabited enemy sectors every turn.

But that is anticlimactic. Why? The Omega have 1.4 million intel points and have eradicated the Cartare and the Terrans are down to 2 inhabited sectors and have lost their minor race members. The Omega are godlike now. They finished all research by turn #300.

[UesugiKenshin]

Now if I configure every empire to be equally powerful at turns #300 and #400, you can wage galactic war or wait until turn#480 and it will be intense. It will be white knuckles gripping the bridge controls and that is more fun than sabotage.

But clever late game players got both war and sabotage going on probably by turn#600. Stardocks and military level #2 shipyards get blown up. That is reasonable. Some members are lost to diplomatic sabotage. Research is ruined. Profit is lost.

That is a superior game.

[UesugiKenshin]

The Khaoran even the Heyoun have a shot at winning by intense focused attacks to eliminate the Cartare first, then Rotharians, then Omega.

Now they have zero chance unless just blind luck and early elimination takes out these by boneheaded AI risky gambits.

The Khaoran, Terrans, and Heyoun are rushing security buildings. The sabotage wave is coming so they got to pull off many miracles in a row.

I think that is way more balanced late in the campaign.

[UesugiKenshin]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TzzC5ASyXBI
This is better than sabotage and stealing starships.

[UesugiKenshin]

If I could take the beta multiplayer and play as all six empires and do what I have repeatedly done over the last 10 months with the Omega, and of course mod the security buildings so they happen at the very last, then save each as advanced save games, plus build up the military forces especially troops, then each player could load a preset empire against balanced worthy adversaries.

That would take 3 full months playing every single day to get to turn #300 but likely 6 months to get to turn #400.

With an editor, I maybe could do a turn#400 in 1-2 months with testing.

I think experienced BotE players would enjoy that. I don't know if you can actually run this so it ends up a "hotseat" save game. You can do this in Medieval 2 Total War Kingdoms. I used to do this in the Third Age mod so it would be realistically difficult like the trilogy.

Hotseat allows a player to play as all, but not attack, just build up gradually, then turn over empires to AI control, so the player elects to play one from that point.

[UesugiKenshin]

Alternatively, and I don't know if this will work, I could set the difficulty to maximum, and play as I do, but mod the security buildings and add in subclasses of starships. This way, the AI could make versions of classes like generations, thus have optional ability to make extremely powerful starships.

Most likely the AI goes on a wild rampage and enters combat by turn #300 and some empires are eliminated.

What I also could do is set the difficulty halfway. What I wish is I could set the treasuries to create some balance. I doubt if I give the AI 20 starbases if they scrap them for cash, though they should.

An editor or even a working mechanism for editing save game files would work too. I do not understand what format the save games are in.

I have read every word in the BotE wiki and tested lots of it for thousands of hours. Yesterday, I read a cryptic reference that seems to indicate that save games are excel files? Is that plausible? If so, then one should be able to edit them quickly ie change who owns what systems as if they are terraformed and how much treasury and how many troops and starships and what energy and infrastructure has been built.

See in Civ3 you could do all that pretty fast in a weekend. You could set everything like the demeanor between empires and research levels.

This would be the best way and maybe even change the map! I badly want to do that.

[UesugiKenshin]

What the AI and players should do on a 40*40 galactic map is colonize like crazy and do research and create a stable economy, then from turn#300 to 400 build military forces and train them. Then from turns #401-480 deploy these in hubs as they are trained. Then empires would be properly staffed with excellent mining caches and have done all the research by turn #400.

Large distance and slow expansion limits scouting and maximum minors mean extensive terraforming to create stable separate territories. The gap is large enough that major to major conflict should be low IF I am in the lead so applying diplomatic force through treaties.

Maximal minor race neighbors means you have to work to expand as great sectors are already taken.

Ideally anomalous aliens would also be turned on at minimal numbers, but random events are off (as they can be too strong on population changes) and stellar anomalies are no more than 2%.

Each would be absolutely ready to start deploying by turn #400 with the first and second waves, and be training third and forth waves as reinforcements.

Now it so random and nonsensical. It needs some modding to create scenarios.

If I can do this, I also can create border clashes with 2 or 3 empires on maybe a 75% 30*30 galactic map.

I tried to make a Omega versus Terran and Heyoun and Khaoran game as then I controlled sabotage and could just elect to use all intel points for internal security on a 40*40 map with many minor races.

Sabotage is the main issue to overcome.

I feel confident I can create vast wealth routinely now. I suspect random AI plus large wealth and no human modding equals chaos. If you give the AI all the tools with massive wealth versus balanced empires with mammoth military forces in place, that should work. Expecting that to just happen randomly is absurd.

[UesugiKenshin]

In thousands of hours of testing, the Khaoran and Rotharians and Cartare build poorly and haphazardly. The Terrans built well and the Heyoun built islands of power ie clusters. I controlled the Omega..every time but one in a Khaoran sandbox game.

The AI has no chance against a superior experienced wargamer who has done modding so understands the mechanics and strategy and tactics of war including not just the military aspects but research and diplomacy and the economy.

The AI probably will be fine if most things are complete and they focus on waging war or at least defending 255 colonized sectors each. The latter would be okay.

Few players have a month just to design an empire as that is about 240 hours to complete in an organized logical defensible manner.

[UesugiKenshin]

The maximum map plus maximal minor races and minimal stellar anomalies can handle 200+ colonies per 6 empires so 1200 out of 1600 unique map coordinate sectors. Expanding more begins conflict based on close proximity.

A mapper would place or design the stellar anomalies to have to be overcome and that this protects empires. Another empire can't expand as navigation through a region has bottlenecks or choke points.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choke_point

[UesugiKenshin]

If you want to see effective blockades and specialized starship attributes in battle engagements then sabotage has to be delayed as it is interfering with actual war in unnatural ways. You want to see patrols and corsairs and dogfighters engaging. All of the wonderful wargame elements in BotE that are so exemplary are buried by sabotage happening entirely too early when full blown sabotage like wanton starship theft should not happen until turn #1000.

How can Rotharians properly ambush with their cloaked ships when sabotage eliminates starships by theft? That is no fun.

[UesugiKenshin]

http://birth-of-the-empires.de/wiki/ind ... re_Dateien
It pays to obsessively read the BotE wiki every single day.

.Files whose content is contained in the savegames
BotE saves some files in the saved game states (savegames) such as Shiplist.data. The files only contain the basic values ​​(shields, etc. or, in the case of troops, experience values ​​change in the game).


In order for changes (edits) in these files to take effect in the game , a new game (i.e. from round 1) must be started!

Shiplist.data

Handling different versions of files
Using Notepad ++ (upload both data files and then ALT + D keys) you can also compare, but my Notepad ++ had problems with large files (Buildings.data). You can also use the following method (narrowing to x only shows the changes) to get a little more overview.

Compare single column data files
For "single column" data files (e.g. Shiplist.data, Buildings.data) I found the following way to compare them:

Eg load Dev-Shiplist.data into Excel (also by drag & drop) => one Excel line per line
Load comparison Shiplist0.81.data also in Excel
Copy one to the other, so column A is Dev-Shiplist, column B is Shiplist0.81.data
Column C or C1: = if (a1 = b1; "identical"; "x")
Copy the formula, i.e. c1 .... and jump to the end (CTRL + END), CTRL + V for paste
Copy column C from bottom to top, because from top to bottom - there were then 1 million lines in the buildings from 117,000 lines: - (..... so copy the last C cell, CTRL + HOME, go over to C, Paste the formula into all C cells.
voila, differences are shown with an x
but goes further, now or in advance:
for Buildings I have a BuildingsFields837.txt - you want to know what the whole numbers mean
the loaded in Excel results in a column again (preferably before column A)
however, if new buildings have been added, this must then be compensated manually
theoretically you can only copy fragments out of data or txt files and compare them (e.g. only Terran food farm 1)

Note with Excel that e.g. Excel97 can only manage 65,000 lines - too few for the whole building, but Excel 2007 can do 1 million lines

[UesugiKenshin]

This might imply that at least in BotE Alpha, save games could be edited. Vague old posts from years ago seem to imply map data could be hex edited.

Modding by the brute force method makes no sense versus something like that.

I can't even read the save games in a hex editor. Is this encrypted? Why?

[UesugiKenshin]

Save games are not .rar nor .zip nor .xls nor .xlsx
I don't know what this is?

p��{�8�o��N�-��[a5o�`}_'�b�v�b7��k/�����^���gW�����^� ܸ?o{���������nێC�v�^��:v��ۑ��|�����׳[���o����Fn��8v�w�0�ګ�ձ��i��]'8���문������ܭ�c�k;p�=��È�ڃ�[q��Ko�w�m�"w>l����E"����ߏ

If we can interpret what this data is, and I presume it's specialized encrypted hex, then theoretically save games could be editted

[UesugiKenshin]

The old school way was using a txt editor to make changes but it was recognizable. NOPE that does not work.

If you open up a sav file in the hex editor, on the far right is usually readable text to indicate certain file values so you can make changes. NOPE that does not work.

If you do a search for sav game editor, there are websites that you upload one to and they try all known editors to discern if one will work. Like this.
https://www.saveeditonline.com/
NOPE that does not work.

BotE must have a proprietary encryption.