Lots of Questions Questions Questions

[Aklyon]

Draco, as far as I can tell MP will always drop below 100%, regardless of how your settings or performance profile is. The only difference you get is how long it takes to do so and how far away it gets from 100%. The first win i had in MP was in normal caps, and we 4 or so literally threw everything at the homeworlds because there was so little gamespeed left we could barely see what exploded.

More recently, we've got a low-caps 50-planets game running fairly well with 3 people at ~80-90% gamespeed, one step below average.

[Draco18s]

What I'm saying is:

Ultra-low caps only help when the number of homeworlds is <= 2

As soon as a 3rd homeworld is involved (which means more total units) ultra-low is not sufficient.

[Vinraith]

2 HWs is relatively balanced.  3 is so-so.  4+ is pretty much just straight advantage. 8+ is a very different game, and I don't really even try to balance it.  It's still challenging (generally), but different.

Multiplayer is more balanced, but even there 3 players cooperating efficiently can stomp challenges that a single player might have trouble winning at all.  But in MP people are generally more interested in having fun together than they are in fine balance.  The difference in coordination often dwarfs the mechanical differences (sometimes in the favor of the players, sometimes not).

Thanks Keith, it's actually good to hear a statement on that from someone in-the-know.