Guide: how to create a fair, balanced multiplayer game

[Voker57]

Normally, when you start a PBEM game in SE, it goes like this: one player spawns in the middle of huge desert, right next to him another player, and the third one far away surrounded by farmers. Then, one of them finds a +200 energy turbine while others eke out an existence in a hope that one day they will discover solars to get any power. Finally, one of the players obtains micronukes from a basement AI, proceeds to set up an impenetrable wall of RPGs with extra kill percentage and an extra Applied Science enhancement, then researches ICBMs and wins the game by launching an unavoidable 99 range bomb straight to enemy SHQ.

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Fig. 1: how Spread Out actually works

This is an amusing, but hardly fair way to play a game, so to make the starts equal and ensure no surprise out of depth techs, you have to take certain steps, which are described in this guide.

Step 0: Game

Use latest open beta. It's usually stable and fixes stay there for a long time before a stable release. Unfortunately it means GOG players cannot play multiplayer easily.

Step 1: Mods and DLC

Install mods to improve the game balance. This needs to be only done by one creating the game, then mods are embedded into save file itself.

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Fig.2: enabling the mods

VAdjust: improves logistics by reducing turn build costs and increasing caps to ensure you hardly ever need to do tricks like logistic injection, and modifies unbalanced features like free tech events.
Pymous' Units Rebalance: modifies many units' parameters to make them all useful and not overpowered



Step 2: Planet type

Seth will most likely give you a fair start, but since now war step can be rerolled, any type you like can do. Cerberus presents impassable terrain while not making water worthless, and Alien Life option can be used to ensure forests are sill present.

Planets with "oases" or big water percentage will be hard to roll fair, and water can destroy starting deposits which means restarting the planet from scratch, so pick a waterless planet to be safe or be prepared to spend a lot of time rerolling.

Pick normal size for 2 players, large for 3-4. Smaller size will be difficult to roll balanced and spaced.

Step 3: History class

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Fig.3: History class options

• Severe Violence ensures minors are not farmers who will join the first one who asks, you have to work for your diploannex
• Survival Stress generates more minors to help more even distribution
• Robinson Crusoe because AI majors perform really poorly and behave irrationally
• Spread Out: not sure if it works at all (see fig.1), but why not.
• Alien life: recommended to enable if you chose waterless planet to ensure diverse terrain

Step 4: Generation Settings

Fig.3: Generation settings

• Detailed planet generation: to be able to reroll all steps
• Oceania is not recommended to use in multiplayer due to interisland logistic and other issues.
• Fog of war: Know map, otherwise complete, to be able to see the borders before starting
• Number of human players: your one, check "disallow saving" and "passwords and PBEM options" to discourage players from cheating a bit.
• Number of initial zones: Some like to pick more, but there is no real reason, and nice to develop more from scratch
• Number of initial armies: Militia only, you want to choose your army type and time to buy it
• Story modules: these feature questionable and obscure mechanics, so best to leave them off
• Development and technology level: Tech 4, to ensure everybody has RPGs, solars and other important tech, and also Tech 4 ensures everybody has a metal and rare metal deposit. Air forces enabled.
• Development speed: Default speed is good.
• Organizational level: For flexibility, only Supreme.
• Difficulty level: Regular, otherwise minors are too difficult to annex and get unnatural boni. More time to think doesn't hurt, unless the last player's CPU is very weak

Step 5: Planetology, Geology, Biosphere
Mostly up to your taste. If you want normal air to be viable, ensure gravity * 1000 < air density (e.g. for air density of 1000 ppm gravity needs to be lower than 1.0 g)

Step 6: Colonization
Generally aim for 200-400 mil for small/600-800 mil for normal. Avoid Landing being a huge spot of ruins, that is quite a boon for somebody.


Fig. 4: You don't want this on your planet

Step 7: Dissolution War
On the final stage, regimes are determined. You have to manually look through the map, and mark all the minors and majors (majors can be determined by thick white dashed border), then ensure majors are evenly distributed and have equal amounts of minors around. Map like this posted to players for approval is useful.


Fig. 5: handcrafted regime map

Step 8: House rules

ICBMs are currently still unbalanced in Pymous' unit mod. They can demolish any city/unit in range, with little that can be done to counter that. Basically, player who has ICBMs and starts the war, wins. Thus, I recommend for now to make it a house rule to not use ICBMs.

No Hostile Air Bridges: deploying troops via air bridge to block off a supply route is a frustrating and hard to counter mechanic. Interception is never guaranteed, and setting up your road networks to be resistant enough is a chore. Therefore, I recommend to limit air bridges to supplying own troops.

Final step: Post-start issues

Sometimes, non-land overwrites player's metal deposit. In that case player suffers a huge disadvantage and map should be restarted.

Bonus: synchronization

Usually games are played over discord by tossing the save manually around. If players are fast, you might benefit from using a folder synchronization tool, like syncthing to distribute saves automatically, and sewatcher (linux only) to automatically notify players. Alternatively, you can try PBEM helper.

[Voker57]

post for additional illustrations which forum did not let me add

[Pymous]

Thank you so much, it's very helpful!!!

[nukkxx5058]

Excellent ! Thank you !

[nukkxx5058]

I have 2 questions:

1) How do you check that ?

ensure gravity * 1000 < air density

Can't find air density ... probably need stronger glasses ?

2) I don't understand step 7 and the painting of the mini map. What are the pink, green etc colors ?
I thought we play without majors ... Can someone clarify this step ?

Thank you.

[Voker57]

I have 2 questions:

1) How do you check that ?

ensure gravity * 1000 < air density

Can't find air density ... probably need stronger glasses ?

2) I don't understand step 7 and the painting of the mini map. What are the pink, green etc colors ?
I thought we play without majors ... Can someone clarify this step ?

Thank you.

Air density is stated in PPM on the biosphere stage. If, say, gravity is 0.9 and atmosphere is 1100 ppm, you're good for air forces.

Green means major (every one is controlled by a player, no AI majors), pink is for minor.

[nukkxx5058]

1) Regarding air density I didn't undertsand it was for aircrafts. Makes sense.
However, I can see the trace elements Ammonia 33 ppm, Methane 22 ppm, neon 13 ppm etc. And Air pressure in mbar. Isn't it rather the air pressure in mbar that you mean ? For aircrafts it would make sense.

2) Oh so the two greens are the two players ! I didn't know how to differentiate them but, OK, I just noticed that the majors have a fat border, but it has to be zoomed-in to see it. Good !

Thank you for you help !

[nukkxx5058]

Just realizing that sending the mini map will reveal the position of each major faction to the other players. On the other hand, not sending it it gives an unfair advantage to the game creator ... So yes, better send it.

[Pymous]

This should be Pinned!
Thanks again for this guide Voker

[Elver]

Number of initial zones: Some like to pick more, but there is no real reason, and nice to develop more from scratch

The reason for more initial zones is simple: it ensures better starting balance. If you have 1 zone,and one player who starts next to a minor who they can easily conquer by turn 10, but another starts next to none or ones that they'll struggle to beat before turn 20 or 30, the first player will have 2x the zones of the second player for 10-20 formative turns. If you had 3 starting zones, the first player would have 1.33x as many zones. An increased number of starting resources reduces the impact of not-necessarily-obvious imbalances in starting conditions between players, and overall helps normalize the starting setup. More armies than just militias also helps normalize this. There's A LOT of randomness in starting setups that cannot be known before the game actually starts (e.g., wonderful/terrible design roles for your starting models), and the more resources each player is guaranteed at the start, the less risk that randomness will decide the game before player decisions can have an impact on its outcome.

[Voker57]

Number of initial zones: Some like to pick more, but there is no real reason, and nice to develop more from scratch

The reason for more initial zones is simple: it ensures better starting balance. If you have 1 zone,and one player who starts next to a minor who they can easily conquer by turn 10, but another starts next to none or ones that they'll struggle to beat before turn 20 or 30, the first player will have 2x the zones of the second player for 10-20 formative turns. If you had 3 starting zones, the first player would have 1.33x as many zones. An increased number of starting resources reduces the impact of not-necessarily-obvious imbalances in starting conditions between players, and overall helps normalize the starting setup. More armies than just militias also helps normalize this. There's A LOT of randomness in starting setups that cannot be known before the game actually starts (e.g., wonderful/terrible design roles for your starting models), and the more resources each player is guaranteed at the start, the less risk that randomness will decide the game before player decisions can have an impact on its outcome.

Since zone size is highly varied that ultimately changes nothing, and minors are still very significant. Better approach to this is to ensure minors are equally distributed on dissolution stage, which is a part of the guide. Armies tend to be stupid like siege infantry and result in a waste of resources for some players.

[Elver]

Since zone size is highly varied that ultimately changes nothing, and minors are still very significant. Better approach to this is to ensure minors are equally distributed on dissolution stage, which is a part of the guide.

...you DO realize this logic undermines itself, right? You can't tell if you're actually balancing things by putting a player next to the same number of minors until the game starts and you see how big (and how well-armed) each minor is.

To say nothing of the fact that for many city-based assets size of zones don't matter as much as just having more zones.

Re: armies, if a player gets OOB armies they don't like, they can downgrade them to simple infantry and scrap any non-infantry elements they started with. That will cost them fewer PP and resources than recruiting leaders and raising the formations from scratch. It doesn't waste resources - if anything, it gives them more starting resources to work with, which again reduces the severity of imbalance that arises from randomness.

The more resources players are guaranteed, the less disparity disproportional resource access from the RNG creates. Is balancing number of neighbors during setup good for balance? Sure. But that doesn't mean that it's not better to do that AND ALSO give players more guaranteed resources at the start. If you want to argue that it's more agreeable to have as blank a slate as possible b/c that's your preferred playstyle, that's fine, and you are ofc free to make that argument... but it isn't better balanced.

[Thrake]

Since zone size is highly varied that ultimately changes nothing, and minors are still very significant. Better approach to this is to ensure minors are equally distributed on dissolution stage, which is a part of the guide.

...you DO realize this logic undermines itself, right? You can't tell if you're actually balancing things by putting a player next to the same number of minors until the game starts and you see how big (and how well-armed) each minor is.

Any minor is a pushover with the suggested setting. Only natives could be an issue but since there is no city involved they don't lock access to more population.

[Voker57]

Since zone size is highly varied that ultimately changes nothing, and minors are still very significant. Better approach to this is to ensure minors are equally distributed on dissolution stage, which is a part of the guide.

...you DO realize this logic undermines itself, right? You can't tell if you're actually balancing things by putting a player next to the same number of minors until the game starts and you see how big (and how well-armed) each minor is.

All minors are pushovers, as noted above. That does not even depend on settings. If you ensure many minors are present, in average it will be okay, annexing minors takes time and resources.

To say nothing of the fact that for many city-based assets size of zones don't matter as much as just having more zones.

And what does that imply? You can create zones yourself at will.

Re: armies, if a player gets OOB armies they don't like, they can downgrade them to simple infantry and scrap any non-infantry elements they started with. That will cost them fewer PP and resources than recruiting leaders and raising the formations from scratch. It doesn't waste resources - if anything, it gives them more starting resources to work with, which again reduces the severity of imbalance that arises from randomness.

Scrapping wastes resources and players who ended up with more expensive and/or useful armies will benefit.

The more resources players are guaranteed, the less disparity disproportional resource access from the RNG creates. Is balancing number of neighbors during setup good for balance? Sure. But that doesn't mean that it's not better to do that AND ALSO give players more guaranteed resources at the start. If you want to argue that it's more agreeable to have as blank a slate as possible b/c that's your preferred playstyle, that's fine, and you are ofc free to make that argument... but it isn't better balanced.

Perhaps, but unlike minors starting zones are given with good buildings and no cost at all, and big zones like this can be very powerful, while their number is limited to 3, so you cannot make it so many zones make it less random.

[Elver]

It really isn't true that minors are always pushovers, let alone that settings are irrelevant in that respect. It's quite telling that you're playing on Regular and then saying minors are always pushovers regardless of settings - they're more difficult on higher settings for starters - but on tech 3 minors are much more significant than on tech 4 or 5. Breathable atmosphere also makes a rather large difference - the disparity b/tw your starting forces and theirs tends to be higher when they have envirosuits. Relatedly, whether or not you randomly get garbage unit design rolls plays makes quite a difference as to whether or not minors are pushovers - and if you have envirosuits, design rolls matter a lot more b/c the difference b/tw 60 Armor Design and 100 is quite meaningful in terms of Gen1 infantry viability at starting tech levels, but it's also entirely determined by three interconnected random rolls before your first turn.

It's also worth noting that you can "create zones at will" only if you've diverted large chunks of your existing population to colonists, and have the PP (and stratagems) to found them and hire governors - while your other recommended settings ensure that you'll be PP-and-stratagem-poor for a good early chunk of the game.

Most troubling of all, you've not even once mentioned what happens if one player starts next to a zone or three full of hostile wildlife and thus can't devote the same amount of resources to the "pushover" (which again may or may not actually be a pushover) minors. Ofc, wildlife will be far less threatening on Regular than on higher difficulty settings, but even on low settings there can be unpleasant species rolled, and they're never evenly distributed. I've had more than one planet where I could play to turn-100+ completion on my second attempt, but the first time I tried the generated planet I was killed off by turn 20 by a rather small number of stacks of particular critters that weren't in my vicinity the second time.

Re: starting armies: scrapping doesn't waste resources in a meaningful sense when we're talking about starting armies. If I have a Siege Infantry army but don't want that, scrapping the cannons will still net me free metal and ammo after the cost of converting them to light or MG infantry is factored in.

You also don't address what happens if one player starts with their one city and militia in a rad zone where all their starting militia has noticeable casualties on turn 1, and their city suffers from degradation unless they invest in anti-radiation infrastructure - or if the neighbors they can conquer glow. More cities/armies allows that randomness to be mitigated as well.

Overall, starting with fewer guaranteed resources leaves more to chance. Yes, it lets you "shape your regime" more, but it does NOT ensure better balance. If you really hate the political parts of the game, I can see why you want to remove as much of them as possible so you can ensure an "optimal" setup w/o having to go to the trouble of engaging in politics... but that's optimizing for apolitical micromanaging, not balance.

[Thrake]

If you follow the settings then it's tech 4. With tech 3 minors can be an issue.

[Elver]

With bad design rolls and/or strong xenos/sentinels/arachnids/slavers/etc. that prevent you from focusing on them, minors can be an issue. Moreso if you're playing on something harder than Regular. I'm aware that the settings call for you to be playing on Regular, but that impacts more features than just the major/minor difficulty.

Admittedly, I haven't played on Regular in probably at least a year, but given that the AI has improved over that time period, I can't imagine that minors are easier now than they were then.

Overall, though, this again sidesteps the fact that you're still rolling the dice on how big your neighbors will be, while rejecting more starting zones to normalize setups by deriding them as random-sized. The only strong argument I actually see against multiple zones is player regimes can occasionally spawn with fewer than the assigned number of zones. Aside from that infrequent bug (which the other settings recommended would avoid b/c you're not going to start w/o seeing the map), it's all upsides as far as balanced starts are concerned.

[Voker57]

It really isn't true that minors are always pushovers, let alone that settings are irrelevant in that respect. It's quite telling that you're playing on Regular and then saying minors are always pushovers regardless of settings - they're more difficult on higher settings for starters - but on tech 3 minors are much more significant than on tech 4 or 5.

Maybe they are less pushovers on tech 3, but this is irrelevant, guide requires tech 4. Regarding difficulty, maybe a bit, but I doubt that, poor strategy of AI trumps all the bonuses. Difficulty cannot be increased because it also raises unification difficulty to unattainable state.

Breathable atmosphere also makes a rather large difference - the disparity b/tw your starting forces and theirs tends to be higher when they have envirosuits. Relatedly, whether or not you randomly get garbage unit design rolls plays makes quite a difference as to whether or not minors are pushovers - and if you have envirosuits, design rolls matter a lot more b/c the difference b/tw 60 Armor Design and 100 is quite meaningful in terms of Gen1 infantry viability at starting tech levels, but it's also entirely determined by three interconnected random rolls before your first turn.

This is really insignificant, at least on Tech 4. Minors cannot field a simplest armored buggy and have nothing to show.

It's also worth noting that you can "create zones at will" only if you've diverted large chunks of your existing population to colonists, and have the PP (and stratagems) to found them and hire governors - while your other recommended settings ensure that you'll be PP-and-stratagem-poor for a good early chunk of the game.

All things required are cheap and in the early game PP is actually plentiful, since you don't have councils and 50 PP fate card drops quite often.

Most troubling of all, you've not even once mentioned what happens if one player starts next to a zone or three full of hostile wildlife and thus can't devote the same amount of resources to the "pushover" (which again may or may not actually be a pushover) minors. Ofc, wildlife will be far less threatening on Regular than on higher difficulty settings, but even on low settings there can be unpleasant species rolled, and they're never evenly distributed. I've had more than one planet where I could play to turn-100+ completion on my second attempt, but the first time I tried the generated planet I was killed off by turn 20 by a rather small number of stacks of particular critters that weren't in my vicinity the second time.

In all my PBEM experience I never had wildlife that is a more than a minor annoyance. Perhaps if you specifically roll for it or use a higher difficulty.

Re: starting armies: scrapping doesn't waste resources in a meaningful sense when we're talking about starting armies. If I have a Siege Infantry army but don't want that, scrapping the cannons will still net me free metal and ammo after the cost of converting them to light or MG infantry is factored in.

It does waste them in a meaningful sense. While you lose all the IP and metals, another player can play useful units right away. This is very important early on.

You also don't address what happens if one player starts with their one city and militia in a rad zone where all their starting militia has noticeable casualties on turn 1, and their city suffers from degradation unless they invest in anti-radiation infrastructure - or if the neighbors they can conquer glow. More cities/armies allows that randomness to be mitigated as well.

This is extremely rare. Not significant either, rad treatment center is not expensive.

Overall, starting with fewer guaranteed resources leaves more to chance. Yes, it lets you "shape your regime" more, but it does NOT ensure better balance. If you really hate the political parts of the game, I can see why you want to remove as much of them as possible so you can ensure an "optimal" setup w/o having to go to the trouble of engaging in politics... but that's optimizing for apolitical micromanaging, not balance.

I don't see how this is related to political parts at all. You mostly mentioned random things that are significant only if you do not follow the guide. You suggest adding more various random modifiers so it can make the game less random. That does not make sense. This could make sense if there could be so many parts that in average it'd be the same, but that is not an option. Three armies will not be of the same value most of the time. Same with the zones.

[ShadowEmpireHost]

Thank you for this guide, it helped me a lot.