Wow, MOO2 on highest, wufff. Since I found out how MOO2 cheats on highest there is no point for me anymore to suffer cheat magic and no fun at all. So I mostly play the second hardest. I won Colonization on highest once, thats enough!
The problem with shields is, that the AI uses them hardcoded, it has zero, one, or sometimes, I think, two onboard, and their AI usage is dubious. My target is that human player uses these wisely, just at some spearhead occasions. I dont want them to be invulnerable for the human player - but that happens if you give them more defense and less energy - the human player builds three of them and AI FK OFF.
No no no! Less defense and more energy, they might rescue some of your ships sending them back to dockyard highly damaged. I use the most specials like shields - they shall be a slight edge, no magic to fool the AI.
I suggest, if you have an interest to work that out, to make an account CivFanatics and write a PM - or same here, but Abandonia is a bit slow often.
Yes. The first encounter might be a pushover. Right. But I just am not capable to rescue ALL the Ascendancies stupidities, that would be a thing for programmer Hercules, some kind of greek mythological hero.
Playing MOO2 on highest you usually get a solar system gap so that you miss one early tec to reach out early to delay the human player under a booming AI steamroller. Right, the first encounter is a pushover, BUT, I played testgames Middle Galaxy size, the next encounter could be a challenge, and the huger the galaxy the more.
To be honest I dont think like a Legend player to calculate all to the last point. I want, that if you get a great building, that it is well deserved, I dont want all buildings to be cheap and easy and so, just a micro management spam, puke.
IF you want to change stuff use Notepad++ to change the Ascend00.cob to your satisfaction. Around line 7500 the planetary buildings are - I made sure you have space to change values, just dont change the endpoint, that 255, do not include more stuff over the available space or it crashes!