Review-in-Progress (Open Thread)

[yin26]

Originally posted by EternalSpark Actually, thieves can get the updates just fine - they use someone's key to get them. I'm not advocating this, nor am I saying it was me. A friend let it slip that he and a couple others didn't buy the game, they downloaded it and used another guy's key.

True. And if that serial gets posted on the Net, there you go. I wonder if Stardock has something in place against that?

[Sirian]

Originally posted by yin26
You've hinted at how you'd approach the game here and there. Would you mind providing the Sirian Blueprint (tm) so we could get a sense of how you'd see the game playing?

A. It's not my game.
B. It's not my place.
C. It's not my ambition.

I've offered some opinions, but I'm not going to lobby. If Brad finds something useful in my feedback so far, then great. If not, that's OK too.

I bought the game. I've enjoyed playing it. I've learned some things from analyzing it which WILL be useful to me -- and I hope are useful to Brad and to GC2 fans by extension. I've recommended the game to others on the strength of many things I think it has done well, and on its overall moving in a positive direction.

That's about it for me, for now. Anything else I might add would only be restating and reinforcing things I've already posted.


- Sirian

[yin26]

Well, it's your place as a fan. You might not have been given a special invitation, but I know you see the value of fan input. It's also your game...because you bought it.

However, the lack of ambition closes the argument. Fair enough. Please come back to the thread when / if you have something new to share. I think it will be weeks and weeks before I get the level of experience/hours you've already put in.

[drank]

Can I just say this has been a fascinating thread? Sirian, Yin and Solver have to be the most insightful commentators on 4x games anywhere on the net. You guys should team up and offer your consulting services to game designers everywhere!


Personally, I'm finding that GC2 suffers both from the "blunt instrument" problem that Sirian identifies above and also from a lack of real strategic options. The game mechanics pretty much force you to get lots of planet tiles and population, so the only viable strategy becomes one of expansion. I've enjoyed it thus far, but I think I'm pretty much done until the 1.1 patch is out - and then we'll see what kind of progress Stardock has made.

[yin26]

Drank: Wow. Fine praise indeed. For my part, I kind of feel like I just set the table and two VIPS strolled in. But hey, I threw the party, so I'll take any credit you give me!

I'm disappointed to hear that you, too, see expansion as the only path to victory. Have you tried a culture bomb approach? I'd love to hear about your successes or failures trying it.

By the way, to follow up on my game, I pulled the plug on it once the Drengin took out his entire half of the map. I missed my critical moment to strike back...left him too much air. Also, I would get these "You really should do something about the Drengin" contacts but didn't seem to form any coalitions to take them on en masse. Also, another civ piled on me when they saw me stalling against the Drengin and losing my edge.

Yes, I'm still playing a rather sloppy and lazy approach, so I'm very happy GalCiv2 can at least punish that kind of play on Tough. I'll need more experience, though, seeing if this was just a particular map I ran up against or what...but, lazy players rejoice! GalCiv2 just might be your beer and pretzel game of choice.

[drank]

I haven't really tried pure cultural expansion, but I've won cultural victories after conquering a couple of AIs first.

I just find that winning comes down to money and research. You need cash to pay for your production. To get it you need population plain and simple. 1 Billion people = 10BC/turn * Taxes, before your bonuses. You also need research to get a tech edge on the AI. To get it, you need planetary tiles to build labs upon.

So that means that one way or another (war or culture), you've got to get more planets and people than the AI has. I haven't really found any strategy similar to OCC in Civ IV, where a small but well-managed empire can beat everyone else.

That's just my two cents. If you've had different experiences with alternative strategies or all-culture victories, please share them!

[yin26]

Right, cultural expansion is still expansion -- I guess I'm really wondering if there's an effective way to take over planets without going to war? My experience echoes yours that you need at least to take out an AI or two first, then the cultural void can get filled rather quickly, along with a win. And if it's simply a hard and fast rule that more population should always win, then there's an issue, of course.

Perhaps GalCiv is at its best when civs are settled with more or less equal populations, nobody got an easy feed on a minor, and Good vs. Evil blocs keep the galaxy in a meaningful and shared fight to the death. I absolutely believe GalCiv _can_ play out that way, but we need startup options to achieve it. The random map settings are too fickle, and in a game where you can't simply found a city anywhere on the map, luck of the planet draw along with the other factors leads to too much of the GalCiv potential getting washed. So maybe I'm coming to some 'game review' conclusion there. Does that sound close to your thoughts? If given all the right startup options, do you think you could set the stage properly for an engaging game?

[Gufnork]

I can say that the feel that more population always wins is pretty close to my feelings. Warfare for me isn't about comparing ships, it's about comparing populations. Whenever I halt my military progress it's due to a lack of population, I cannot send any more invasion fleets without losing too much of my tax base. Considering the worthless population growth formula (ie, a fixed number modified by approval rate only) it means that more planets is necessary. One planet grows by 150 people per turn, two planets grow by 300.

I don't have any problems with the randomness caused by the map generator, minor races and random events. They're not really that big an issue, atleast not on larger maps. If you're good at colonizing you will still come out on top even if your starting position is subpar. The big problem in this is that the game is structured in such clear phases. First, the colonization phase where every races to put their flag down on the most planets. Then the research phase, where the player avoids wars while researching first infrastructure, then weapons. And finally the war phase, where the game is decided.

Throughout Civilizations lifetime there has been a problem with one specific strategy. ICS. That game has gotten better and better safeguards against it and it's quite good now in Civ IV. It's not really the same in GalCiv 2 since as you said, you can't build a city just anywhere. But there's still a limited amount of territory and the one best strategy is to plop down a city anywhere you can as fast as you can, or in this case colonize a planet. GalCiv 2 has nothing, not a single thing to prevent this, making planet spam the one true strategy.

More is better. This is something that can be encountered everywhere in GalCiv 2, actually. Higher techlevel simply means more bonuses, more weapons. There's never a tradeoff. There's never a choice. The only choice is what you want to improve next, which isn't enough for me. This game needs choices and in order to have choices, there has to be penalties. All good things must have a downside.

[yin26]

Great post, Gufnork. An idea just hit me reading that: We have logistics levels that limit fleet sizes...should there be a logistics that limits how many planets you can control? I mean, if handling one more ship somehow pushes you over the top, think about one more planet?!

There have been flavors of that approach done in Civ and other games (huge econ penalties for cities past X number, etc.), but I think a "You cannot claim this planet because your government isn't equiped to deal with it yet" could be an interesting starting point. Heck, if you still decide to colonize the planet just to keep if from the enemy, it should become an independent civ that might or might not be an ally and that might or might not be taken over by you or another civ. The "found it and take it over" abuse would be evident there, but early in the game, this might be harder than it sounds...maybe?

[Sirian]

Originally posted by yin26
Well, it's your place as a fan.

If by fan you mean a player who disagrees with design elements and would lobby to have them changed, then I'm not a fan. The fan in me expired five years ago, killed in action in a faraway land called Blizzard North.


- Sirian

[Gufnork]

A starting point, possibly. But there's still no choice in there. You can either colonize another planet, or you can't. Come to think of it there is the choice of which planet to colonize, so it is an improvement. But the main flaw of your idea is that it only inserts another phase into the game. The "research logistics" phase, intertwined with the colonization phase. It would be better to base it on overall tech rate, or economy rating or something similar so that you can achieve these goals by just playing the way you wish to.

[yin26]

Sirian:

I wouldn't say lobby, just discuss for the pure fun of it. You have all the makings of a game designer, so even if Brad never takes a bit of what you say, airing your ideas out with potential future buyers of your potential future work could be useful all by itself.

...wondering if that hook worked at all...

[yin26]

Gufnork:

Well, it took Civ forever to figure it out. Maybe GalCiv should just copy the answer: Make upkeep absolutely crippling until your econ can handle more planets.

[Sirian]

Originally posted by yin26
airing your ideas out with potential future buyers of your potential future work could be useful all by itself.

...wondering if that hook worked at all...

No, not really.


So, back on topic...

Let me show you the anatomy of a takedown.

The Altarians had fourteen planets one turn, down to four the next.
It went something like this...



The six planets marked with pink arrows I hit simultaneosly, in a mini-alpha-strike.
(A full alpha strike is hitting ALL the planets on the same turn.)

I also burned three quarters of their total fleet in combat.

I inflicted so much damage on them that the same turn as I declared war, they were ready to make peace. Any AI in GC (one or two) will never give away more than half its remaining empire in any single peace deal. So... They gave me half of their remaining eight planets, marked with green arrows (I took the ones that would be hardest to reach).

I then took a couple of turns to get more transports in to position, re-declared, wiped out almost all their remaining space navies, offered them peace, got them to give me two more planets free (half of their remaining four), then immediately re-declared, invading the last two and wiping them out.


Now I'm not the kind of player who thrives on this. I find it to be rather silly. However, I did not pull this stunt in my first two wars, vs the Torians and the Thalans. I fought those wars straight up, in the non-exploitive way, and still cleaned their clocks.

EVERYTHING FROM THAT POINT ON WAS TEDIOUS MOP UP, so I was quite grateful for anything that shortened the trip.

The AIs surrendering up front mattered. The Torians giving their last two worlds to the Arceans deprived me of those worlds for simply ages, and worked as intended. However, from there on, it made no difference. I simply immediately declared on whoever got the gift planets, attacked them and took them anyway, then turned my full attention to eradicating that civ next or at least putting my boot to its throat and pinning it to the floor.


All empire games should have an option for full conquest. If the combat is good, the fighting may be fun (if you're in the mood for the tactics) almost to the end.

Two things about GC2 military end game are problems for me:
1. The Metaverse.
2. The need to invade every single planet (and endure a lot of micro to achieve it). No "wipe them out from orbit" options for rapid elimination of badly outmatched foes.

Item #2 is problematic due to other gameplay concerns, though, while Item #1 is a ship that sailed long ago.

Worse, the "surrender" mechanism encourages the kind of move I described above, where you hit them in multiple places with sucker punches all on one turn, then immediately turn around and make peace, pulling half their remaining worlds for free. You can even then go another round of attacks if you're in position. They can't surrender away from you if you get it all done in one turn.

I'm not a fan of Soren's Civ3/Civ4 "AIs won't make peace for X turns" solution either, though. Sure, that stops same-turn exploits and ensures that players will have to expose themselves to some counterstrikes from the AI, some duration of war, but it precludes a truly limited kind of warfare where you (or an AI) attacks a single disputed planet/city and takes that, then offers peace. As in, "Hey, this was our territory anyway, and we've just staked our claim. If you agree, that's the end of our dispute."

The Civ AI protects itself from exploits but can only engage total wars. The GalCiv AI is much more of a broker, but it's also more of a pinata: beat on it with a stick and goodies just fall out all over the ground. You will note that the Civ4 AI does do some limited wars, of the fashion where their goal is to pillage (and slow you down) not obtain territory. It's better insulated vs exploitation, too, compared to the Civ3 AI, but I believe there is a lot of room left within war diplomacy for some enterprising games in future to bring to market.


- Sirian

[DaviddesJ]

Originally posted by yin26

1) My "real life" answer to most of the moral questions that pop up in the game tends to be grey/neutral, so I'm role-playing anyway.

Choosing what you yourself would choose IRL is not role-playing, in my view. Role-playing is, "In this game, I'm the super-evil Human Menace, so I'm always going to make the evil decision." In a different game, you might role-play a good race. Role-playing absolutely does not mean that you have to play yourself.

[DaviddesJ]

Originally posted by Sirian

I'm not a fan of Soren's Civ3/Civ4 "AIs won't make peace for X turns" solution either, though. Sure, that stops same-turn exploits and ensures that players will have to expose themselves to some counterstrikes from the AI, some duration of war, but it precludes a truly limited kind of warfare where you (or an AI) attacks a single disputed planet/city and takes that, then offers peace. As in, "Hey, this was our territory anyway, and we've just staked our claim. If you agree, that's the end of our dispute."

It doesn't really preclude limited war, because you can just take the one city and then decline to prosecute the war further, until eventually they make peace. If declining to prosecute the war further means that it's hard for you to defend yourself, well, then it probably wasn't such a good idea for the opponent to make immediate peace.

Obviously (?) a more important rule is to prevent people from accepting concessions for peace and then immediately redeclaring war. There are various reasonable ways to do that.

[Sirian]

Originally posted by DaviddesJ

It doesn't really preclude limited war, because you can just take the one city and then decline to prosecute the war further, until eventually they make peace.

You're right. The human can behave that way. The AI doesn't have the concept infused, though, so you don't see that from their end. Nor do they have a practical streak that (in effect) simulates the notion of, "They took that away because I overreached. It would be in my interests not to hold a grudge over it." Nor can they simulate a blood hatred, where re-obtaining the lost territory becomes the top strategic priority. I think both options would be hard to design but make for worthy goals.

If declining to prosecute the war further means that it's hard for you to defend yourself, well, then it probably wasn't such a good idea for the opponent to make immediate peace.

I agree here, too. In the context of a game whose outcome is still being decided, it's important for the AI not to give too much away. On the other hand, a game that is strategically won should end as soon as possible.

Obviously (?) a more important rule is to prevent people from accepting concessions for peace and then immediately redeclaring war. There are various reasonable ways to do that.

Should there even be concessions for peace? There aren't many in Civ4. Civ3, and GC, have mechanisms where the more pain you inflict on an AI, the more concessions it offers to end the war. I found this to be too simplistic. The concept itself invites exploitation of multiple kinds, the less obvious ones being the more unbalanced. Wars should end when both sides find it no longer in their interests to continue fighting. AIs chained to the strict math of "more pain = more concessions" are actually adding to the other side's incentives to keep going, or to pause only briefly and then continue. AIs who won't give up concessions can't bribe peace, but really, they can't bribe peace under ANY circumstances from a player who is playing for military conquest. It's only a question of attempting appeasement of a foe who has no interest whatsoever in living in harmony with you.

You don't have to prevent exploitation of concessions if you take out the concessions. What are those concessions in there for, anyway? "Realism"? "Fun"? If it's really fun for AIs to dance at your command, then you've left the realm of also wanting a strategic challenge. Players cannot have all things in the same game. Designers have to make choices, preferably clear ones.


- Sirian

[drank]

But there's still a limited amount of territory and the one best strategy is to plop down a city anywhere you can as fast as you can, or in this case colonize a planet. GalCiv 2 has nothing, not a single thing to prevent this, making planet spam the one true strategy.

I agree. The only time I've really seen it play out differently is on crowded Tiny galaxies, where everybody pretty much gets just a single system. There, you can actually take quite a while to tech up and build your trade income before taking territory, because nobody is much bigger than you are.

But on larger galaxies, someone always wins the colony ship rush. And if it's not you, then you need to rapidly make plans to take some colonies from someone else.

[yin26]

Originally posted by DaviddesJ Choosing what you yourself would choose IRL is not role-playing, in my view. Role-playing is, "In this game, I'm the super-evil Human Menace, so I'm always going to make the evil decision." In a different game, you might role-play a good race. Role-playing absolutely does not mean that you have to play yourself.

I guess we differ on this one. For me, the fact that I'm ruling the human race and colonizing planets IS the role play.

[yin26]

I should add, too, that I will sometimes pick the "good" or "evil" choice if a) circumstances are really lax or really pressing --like I don't really need full production on yet one more planet or I could use a solidering bonus badly at that moment and b) the method isn't overly good or evil, like making my own people forego a decent life so an insect can call the shots or bashing baby seals on the head.

This is NOT to say that I see role-playing as _needing_ to be yourself in games. But, for me anyway, it's simply more interesting for me to try to make decisions in games the way I would in real life and see the results. As Solver has said, of course, in games like GalCiv this will often mean I'll miss opportunities to gain numerous bonuses. That's fine with me. I actually enjoy those moments in GalCiv when I say: "Wow, that evil bonus is HUGE! Man, I want to take it...but that's not the decision I would make if I were really the leader of the human race...then again, if we were on the ropes and about to lose in a close war..."

[yin26]

You don't have to prevent exploitation of concessions if you take out the concessions. What are those concessions in there for, anyway? "Realism"? "Fun"? If it's really fun for AIs to dance at your command, then you've left the realm of also wanting a strategic challenge. Players cannot have all things in the same game. Designers have to make choices, preferably clear ones.

Of course, concessions can play a helpful role in a quicker end game once the game is decided, as you say. If a lack of concessions just means more tedious mop up, that's not really progress. Of course, not giving concessions when you are losing a war badly doesn't by itself make a more challenging game for the human player unless that civ on the ropes is forming alliances and can, at the very least, make the human player chew up turns while fresh civs join the attack against you.

For me, the interplay between civs is so crucial yet seemingly so hard to program well. This is why, even though it makes only moderate sense, the fact that defeated civs often give their techs to a civ other than the one attacking them has appeal. Of course, if the civ chosen to receive the spoils is picked randomly rather than on the basis of "What civ is most likely to prosecute a successful war against this bastard human?" well, then, it's just the lottery.

By the way, Sirian, what do you think of using the very successful Civ approach to limiting expansion too quickly?

[Solver]

Drank: thanks a ton!

That's it, I guess I'm getting GalCiv2 ASAP. I am sure that I will at least somewhat enjoy it - I always enjoy a Civ-style game - and I am very eager to continue this debate with some actual insight on the game, not just abstract or Civ4 related comments.

Regarding concessions at peace... Yin, you have no idea how much I hated it first in Civ4. I would beat the crap out of an AI civ (happened a fair bit in the versions where the AI took the wrong defense approach) and wouldn't be able to get much for peace. I'd get some gold, but that's it. Then I whined about for it a while, but then it really started to make sense, thanks to comments from other people.

If you've beaten the tar out of an AI, huge concessions make no sense. You've already beaten that Civ, it's already weak as hell, and has no chance. It has "lost" the game - or, since there are no losers in Civ technically, you could say that it lost the chance of winning a game. Whatever, view it as you want. The point is that the damage is huge... why should they now pay you so much?

On the other hand, concessions make sense in a different scenario. If you're fighting an equal in power, manage to gain the upper hand and take a city, then concessions make sense. Because that civ is losing the war and is going to lose more cities if the war continues, however, you haven't still damaged it enough to kill its victory chances. Therefore, giving you a tech or a good sum of gold to stop the war is a good strategic decision.

Mop-up is sort of an inherent problem in Civ games. One attempt to reduce it is having a Domination victory as in Civ3/4, but I would say that it doesn't reduce the mop-up too significantly. It saves you the need to conquer the last city of the last civ, but you will still want to wipe your first, second, third and fourth enemy out completely. Because if you don't, you're just signing peace, that civ remains there with 1-3 cities, being useless to you. Yet, finishing that off is somewhat tedious and possibly damaging to your economy.

The solution (or a partial solution) to mop-up, I believe, lies in a surrender mechanism / vassal mode. SMAC did it pretty nicely. Once you've kicked the ass of some civ completely, they offer you a surrender. They give up all their gold and any techs you don't have, and they become allied to you for the rest of the game. I like it because, in SMAC, I would often happily let them surrender - it didn't put me farther away from victory, it put me closer. That civ would give me any subsequent techs it might discover, more importantly, I gained the ability to stack my troops with theirs and move into their cities. And allies counted for a Conquest victory - that is, if you wiped out everyone but your allies, you won Conquest. It worked like a charm.

Diplomacy, as Sirian puts it, is the overarching issue of single-player. And it's a very, very fragile mechanism. A diplomacy system, on a very basic level, should not be inherently unfair to everyone, should provide a means to change the flow of the game, and so on. Implementing those things is hard. Civ4 had a lot of success in the area, yet there's clearly a lot that could be improved further still.

[MikeH]

Originally posted by Kinjiru
Cancel your order Mike. DL directly from Stardock. You'll be playing in a couple hours!

I know this post was a long time ago but I haven't been back...

Stardock download is $44.99 which is £25.73

But I got the special edition tin box one from Amazon.co.uk for £17.99 inc. delivery ($31) and that gets me the cds, manual and tech tree poster.

Still haven't played it yet though. Going to give it a real go at the weekend when I have some time.

[yin26]

Solver:

Do you feel that GalCiv should adopt that model, even if it prolongs the end game "needlessly"? In Civ, do those lack of concessions make for a more meaningful strategy experience, or does it just stretch out the slog? As you noted, diplomacy here seems key. What do you think of GalCiv's approach of having the beaten civ giving concessions to the OTHER guy? That, to me, is a huge difference that can play well.

[yin26]

MikeH: Excellent! Looking forward to your feedback on the game.

[MikeH]

Well, finally finished reading the rest of the thread. Great stuff even though I have absolutely no idea what most of it means.

My comments are likely to be along the lines of - like/don't like/too hard but I'll try.

[Solver]

Originally posted by yin26
Solver:

Do you feel that GalCiv should adopt that model, even if it prolongs the end game "needlessly"? In Civ, do those lack of concessions make for a more meaningful strategy experience, or does it just stretch out the slog? As you noted, diplomacy here seems key. What do you think of GalCiv's approach of having the beaten civ giving concessions to the OTHER guy? That, to me, is a huge difference that can play well.

I can't intelligently comment on GalCiv without having played it. Out of context, giving concessions to another guy doesn't make too much sense, but I need to see it ingame.

In Civ4, I think lack of concessions does make for a more meaningful game, yes, but in a way of actually prohibiting a strategy - the strategy of beating someone up a bit to get techs. One of the core elements of Civ4 (and that sets it apart from previous games) is that war has quite severe economic drawbacks. In previous games, it was easy to gain tech through war - take 2 cities, get tech for peace, repeat. But ideally, there should be a surrender mechanism.

Generally, at which point in GalCiv2 do you feel the civs are willing to pay? Is it when they are already beaten beyond possible recovery, or is it when they are just starting to lose?

[yin26]

Some interesting comparisons: I don't really think much about the economic repurcussions of war in GalCiv2 *unless* I'm losing my trade routes or losing population (tax base). If you are doing well in GalCiv, you're doing REALLY well. That's my experience so far. Maybe there needs to be a higher cost to waging war in GalCiv? There is the logistics limits for individual fleets but not for the entire fleet, for example. Hmm, I need more experience with the game to say.

I'd say civs give concessions only when they are clearly about to lose. In fact, I've gotten concessions from a civ that would have lost to me...were I not being triple teamed! That is a weakness I pointed out earlier.

[DaviddesJ]

Originally posted by Sirian

Should there even be concessions for peace? There aren't many in Civ4. Civ3, and GC, have mechanisms where the more pain you inflict on an AI, the more concessions it offers to end the war.

It seems reasonable to me for the AI to be willing to give up some things, like technologies, in exchange for an (enforceable, not just fake) end to fighting. I could see them agreeing to pay you tribute of x gpt; this is less abusable because if you redeclare on them, you lose the tribute. Etc. I agree that giving up worlds for peace seems wrong (both from a simulation and a game point of view).

Of course, if everything can be traded for everything, as you say Brad prefers, then such distinctions probably won't appeal to him.

[DaviddesJ]

Originally posted by yin26

I guess we differ on this one. For me, the fact that I'm ruling the human race and colonizing planets IS the role play.

You're using the wrong words, then. "Role playing" means something else. E.g., from Wikipedia:

"In role-playing, participants adopt characters, or parts, that have personalities, motivations, and backgrounds different from their own. Role-playing is like being in an improvisational drama or free-form theatre, in which the participants are the actors who are playing parts."