Review-in-Progress (Open Thread)

[Darsnan]

Originally posted by yin26
(+) Another nice thing about the music is that it's responsive to your situation in sometimes subtle ways. For example, if you are at war with somebody, you get tension filled music (nothing too bombastic, mind you).

After a really tough battle for a solar sysetm where the planets changed hands several times before I finally conquered it, I got a pop-up that said something to the effect:

"They told me I couldn't build a castle in the swamp, but I did anyways, and it sank. So I built another one, and it sank, too. I built a third, and it sank, too. Then I built a fourth, and, yup, it sank as well. But when I built the fifth, it stayed up!"

I don't know if the game is congratulating me for a hard fought victory, or subtly making fun of my pigheadedness over conquering that specific solar system! Regardless, nice touch!

D

[WolfEyes]

That's the blurb from Soil Enhancement. I got a big laugh from it the first time I saw it. Monty Python

[Gufnork]

Not quite:

When I first came here, this was all swamp. Everyone said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built in all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up.

They either weren't allowed to use it for copyright reasons or used it from memory. Either way, they missed the funniest part ("That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp.").

[yin26]

(-) I think the verbose relationship status you get in Civ4 ["-4, You refused to give us aid.", etc.] is done better than what you get in GalCiv2. However, GalCiv2 should be able to accomplish this as well, and generally at least it's much easier at a glance in GalCiv2 to judge your relative relationship with all civs at once.

(-) I have seen plenty of unprotected transports (invasion ships) and/or the AI not bringing enough of them to actually take the planet. This is rather critical. The computer does, however, throw enough of them at you so you occasionally lose a planet (but can seemingly get it right back with a little effort).

(+) Espionage actually does something in GalCiv2! Well, it does something in Civ4, too, but the mechanic there (roll the dice to get rather weak info that sometimes is helpful at critical points in the game) compare to GalCiv2 (pay your money for some guaranteed info that you will find helpful...though it takes time and continued spending to get to the higher levels of info you really want).

(+) Although some people complain about the cost to upgrade ships, I think it's great to see a few generations of ship designs in play all at once ["Wow, this one goes back to when I was using lasers only...and that enemy ship is the one that finally got shields...so let's bring in the new design with missiles...cool, that enemy ship has ecms on it...design me some mass drivers!"]

[Mart]

Just a quick note.
Playing only a bit and my first impresion is that I like the game.
I can see a lot of improvement that can be made to interface and gameplay. It's just my specific view on things, often not in the majority.

About graphics, I have seen it was rated average by some, but for me a game like this really do not need much more. The rotating planets look great. Notice, they are textured by actual planetary maps. Not Earth and other planets of our solar system, but planets in other systems are like that. Small detail but looks nice and gives the game better feel.

[Solver]

Yin:

Some very good stuff. I wasn't really considering getting GalCiv2, but you're making it interesting. I really respect the gaming opinions of some people posting here in the forum, yourself included, and it's certainly interesting .

I'm positively thrilled to see you and Sirian debate here, having the two of you exchange arguments is probably the best review/vivisection of a game I could hope for.

[yin26]

Solver:

Well, I know you have a lot of great work left to do for Civ4 (so does Sirian), so here's my plea:

Sirian - put GalCiv down. Solver - don't buy it yet. The two of you work hard on polishing the Civ4 X-pack. Then report for GalCiv duty! Of course, anything the two of you could share with Brad on your ideas for GalCiv could only help the game immeasurably.

[Sirian]

Brad's got his own journey with the fans. There are some unique advantages to holding his dialogue out in the open. There are also some unique disadvantages.

There are disadvantages to it from the fan side, as well. The math of the interactions is lopsided. More fans can get involved, but only a wafer slice here or there.

That's part of his vision, though, and vision is important. Brad has gotten himself in to a great position. He can do more things his way than most have the power to do because they have less control over the corporate end of things. I'm glad it seems to be working for him. There are inevitable rough spots to any early process moving in to uncharted territory, but Brad will learn from these events and adversities and then have the drop on all the competition who might want to follow that path later.


As for me, I'm on a break at the moment. At some point it will be back to work, but now is a good time to look around and see what others are doing.

I played some Doom3 and enjoyed it for the first hour. Then we come to the combat portion and that whole "flashlight" thing, and I have to wonder what they were smoking at id when they put that in there. Did someone really sit around and think, "Hey, I know! Let's TURN OFF THE LIGHTS so the player can't see anything and has to shoot blindly in the dark (or play the scenario a few times so they go in to it with spoiler information) and this will be SO FUN and so cool we'll sell a jillion copies!"

Doom3 did a number of things right, but that gameplay device was so lame and so nonsensical (to me, at least) that I haven't played more since. (I -really- didn't think it was at all clever to make things too bloody dark. I mean, in real life, the first thing I'd be doing is finding some duct tape and TAPING THE FLASHLIGHT TO MY SHOTGUN for god's sake. It's the future, and yet nobody has a combat helmet with a headlamp. How can they make a game that scary and not have watched the movie Aliens? Or else forgotten all the superior combat gear those marines were packing?)

GalCiv2 doesn't have any problems like that, where an item is so painfully obvious you wonder how an entire team could miss it. Many of GC2's issues are rooted deep down in the gut where multiple gameplay vectors overlap in complicated ways, which only a GC1 vet could find quickly. Others are interface glitches that turn big because they are attached to actions players do over and over. GC2 does a lot of things right. In fact, other than Civ4, it has actually held my attention longer than any game did last year. I ran through a bunch of them in pretty short order, some that I gave up on within a few hours. Maybe I'm getting pickier, or maybe the average game is getting lousier. Probably both!

I got a great ride out of HL2, though, and also Morrowind and most of its first expansion. I'm really looking forward to ES4:Oblivion. Just two more weeks!

I may set GC2 aside for a bit, but with the intent to revisit it later. However, if I do, it won't have anything to with Civ. A lot of the advice I put in to Civ4 included lots of lessons learned (things done well, and problems figured out) from GC1 -- as well as Civ3, Civ2, Civ1, MOO, and even games from outside the genre.


- Sirian

[EternalSpark]

Hey, I know! Let's TURN OFF THE LIGHTS so the player can't see anything

The power is out, you have a flashlight, and almost everything has some sort of bioilluminessence.

Bind the flashlight to a mouse button. works great.

[Solver]

Just like Sirian, Oblivion is my next game. My only concern is that someone might have to phone both Sirian and me to get us back out of the game .

The HL2 expansion is of course another thing to look forward to so much.

I can definitely say that I view Brad's vision for fan contact as a positive thing. As Sirian says, vision is good. And I believe that there are more advantages than disadvantages to open contact, although it can definitely be a hard thing to do sometimes.

[yin26]

Yep. I'm anticipating Oblivion as well! For my money, Brad is in my elite "buy one of his games on sight" categories. This is, as you can imagine, the highest praise a gamer can give a developer. I haven't purchased any of his business software...and I thought the Political Machine was a disaster...but I can't imagine I'll ever stop supporting him if he keeps on this GalCiv track.

O.K. A few more observations:

(-) I signed a peace treaty, but the guy left all his transports parked right in my orbits. I mean left them seemingly forever. The "problem" here is that when I got around to attacking him later, I had 4 or 5 of his transports sitting right there for easy destruction. This seems odd. The AI should reclaim those troops ASAP at peace.

(+) A minor civ in the corner of the map is proving to be a surprising challenge. I left him there thinking I'd use him as a backfill trade partner (probably should have stuck with that plan!). Instead, I arrogantly decided to "pick him off" much later in the game. The problem is apparently even minor civs will amass fleets and decent tech if left alone too long. I'm now finding dealing with this minor civ more challenging than taking out the Torian, whom I attacked early.

Sirian has noted that these minor civs are there for human consumption, and I suspect this is true if you go after them hard and early. However, just be aware that, left alone and undisturbed in the corner, these minors can grow in to a not too small pain.

[bonscott]

Oblivion will be my drug of choice by the end of next week no doubt. I honestly haven't looked forward to a game so much in...well...never.

[Solver]

I'm glad that I am not too hyped for Oblivion right now, it's good to be calm .

(-) I signed a peace treaty, but the guy left all his transports parked right in my orbits. I mean left them seemingly forever. The "problem" here is that when I got around to attacking him later, I had 4 or 5 of his transports sitting right there for easy destruction. This seems odd. The AI should reclaim those troops ASAP at peace.

Not good behaviour, but on the other hand, sounds reasonably easy to fix. Civ4 got this part of troop deployment right, though. Then again, you never know, maybe the transports were supposed to attack you at a surprise moment...

[Sirian]

Originally posted by Solver
maybe the transports were supposed to attack you at a surprise moment...

If only the AI were that clever, but no. That's a high form of strategic ineptitude. When a war ends, the AI simply FREEZES. It does not issue new orders to ships, does not move anything, at all, ever, until the next war starts. Nor does it move anything leading up to a war. War is simply an on/off switch.

Originally posted by EternalSpark
The power is out, you have a flashlight, and almost everything has some sort of bioilluminessence.

Riiiiiiight. Except you can't have light and weaponry up at the same time, so the "gameplay" is one of having to fiddle constantly with that silly flashlight. "Just bind it to a mouse button"? Heh. Not only does it suck, they intentionally made it to suck and expect players to like it that way. Not a positive innovation at all.

Like I said, smoking something. They won't be using my cash to help buy it next time out, though, because I'm not buying from id again. I hadn't bought anything from them since Quake1 (that's TEN years ago) and it may be another ten years before I go back for another try -- and that's only if the word of mouth is positively glowing.

Problems in games these days cost direct sales only by word of mouth, since you can't return opened games any more. They cost indirect sales in an even bigger way, because a lot of customers simply don't come back to you again if you let them down the last time out.

The money train currently involves lots of expansions (one or two per game) but fans won't buy those if they had a problem with the core game. There always were good and bad games, and more of the latter; the games are still relatively cheap, and there is more info around about them than ever before; word of mouth is a really big influence on my purchasing choices, although the opinions of friends mean a lot more to me than general buzz.

I waited five or six months before buying GalCiv1. That had nothing to do with Brad or Stardock -- it took me some time to give up on MOO3, and then that summer I had my last big fling with Civ3, then I was ready. Yet I wonder if that delay wasn't for the best. When I did finally touch GC1, it had five months of post-release updates attached to it. I now suspect it made a grand positive impression on me in large part because I didn't get it sooner.

The up side of Brad's intense commitment to "regular updates" is that the games keep getting better, but I wonder if there isn't an inherent danger somewhere in there tied to the inevitability that the games won't be as good at launch as they will several months later. Gamers often accuse developers of releasing unfinished products and subjecting customers to a large public beta. I think that's wrong, and I don't believe that is Stardock's intent, but the way this process affects fans ends up looking very much like that in the end. ... It's a great opportunity for fans who want to get in on the polishing phase of the game, to work (for free) at reporting their problems and trying to get fixes. A lot of gamers are so hard up for a great gaming experience that they want this kind of opportunity (anything it takes to get the kind of games they want) but I'm not among them; haven't been for half a decade now. I want it to work great out of the box. For customers like me, I wonder if there isn't a disincentive to this process. Why buy up front? Wait for a few months and let others labor at polishing it, then buy the polished game and skip a lot of the headaches.


GC2 has a lot of fun it, but when I pause to examine what I spent my gaming time doing as the player, I find a lot of interface tedium:

* The interface for handling fleets has major issues. I often combine transports in to fleets for protection purposes and to reduce the number of fleets I have to move, but then I also need to uncouple those fleets, or in many cases, divide my fleets or rearrange which ships are in which fleets. A lot of torture could be avoided if this interface worked smoothly.

* The automated Goto function truncates the end of a turn for units moving long distances. This is not a big deal in the early game, but later on, when units have ten or fifteen or twenty movement points, and player is moving dozens of ships/fleets per turn, having units arrive a turn (or more) later than they would if moved manually or babysat from turn to turn with limited-range Goto's, is strategically intolerable. This more or less renders the Goto function itself as "untrustworthy automation", not unlike the Civ3 city governors. If the automation screws up my results, I won't use it, won't trust it, and then what good is it doing me? Not much. I have to micro everything to avoid frustration -- tedium or frustration, take your pick. It's Hobson's choice.

* The pathfinding isn't true. It's shortcut, and it often burns movement points going around obstacles in inefficient ways. This is yet another reason why I can't trust the automation. Hobson's choice again.

* Ships don't autolaunch.
* The game screws up on larger maps if you produce too many things on the same turn.
* The AIs gather their fleets at rally points, but they don't always combine the ships right away, leaving sometimes large stacks of single ships I have to plow through one at a time.
* Strategically, it pays to have Transports of different troop sizes so that you don't spend 4bil or 5bil on a planet you could have captured with 1bil or 2bil. I went with three sizes: 1bil (cheap, no Adv Troop modules), 2.5 bil, and 4bil. This saves game time but uses more player time -- and there are lots and lots of levers in the game like this, where it almost backfires to give the player too much control over things.

The 90/10 rule seems to apply. I won 90% of the game with 10% of the effort, then had to mop up the last, boring 10% of the game with 90% of the effort.

The more reward put on the table for micromanaging the minutiae, the more gap there will be between expert players who make the effort to gather in all these bits of gains and casual players who play the game "as intended". ... But wait a second! If the game is not INTENDED TO BE MICROMANAGEMENT HELL, then why even have the micromanagement possibilities in there.


Brad posted a snippet of a review that pronounced Master of Orion dead, Long Live GalCiv. ... I don't think so. GalCiv is good, but MOO (MOO1, that is) had a sleek ending with the shortest mop-up phase of any entry in the genre ever. You could win by the vote starting early and checked periodically, and you could win by either gathering the needed votes yourself (via conquest) or by making good friends to vote for you. By contrast, GalCiv (both one and two) have the longest mop-up phase of any entrants in this genre, and this despite the existance of some positive gameplay innovations aimed at shortening the end game.

MOO1's combat is fleet-based. The automated rally points will gather newly created ships in ONE TURN if you have stargate tech, or a couple of turns if you do not. For your ships to be effective, they must be gathered in to one huge stack or in to a couple of big stacks, and so you can't even launch them until you have gathered enough to accomplish a given objective.

GalCiv's ships fight tactically, one to one. A single uber fleet for the player can fight weaker fleets of the AI one after the next and beat them all, just like in your cheesiest kung fu movie where the villains come at the hero in sequence, one at a time! I mean, seriously. The AI's got DOZENS of ships stacked in one tile, and yet for lack of logistics, these units remain divided, letting player pick them off a few here and a few there. That is nothing like MOO!

GC2's fleets are just "combo units". You can gather a handful of ships and then you've maxed out their fleet logistics. Really it's only a variation of the SMAC "unit workshop", and not at all a real fleet/group combat system. The moment you introduce a fleet size cap, you've left the realm of group combat and entered the realm of tactical unit-to-unit combat.

You have to micro which ships go in to a "fleet". (The AI's wasteful rally points are not a prime path to strategic success for humans who can manage such things more efficiently). Combine the superior player-designed ships in to superior fleets that then gain experience and obtain more hit points over time, and wow. Snowball!

GalCiv bogs down in to a ton of late game micro, while MOO1 will literally let you overrun the galaxy in a few turns if your tech/production have crossed the tipping point from "winning" to "crushing". You can obliterate entire populations from orbit with warships and not even need to invade to conquer! I need an hour to wrap up a huge MOO1 game that has reached this point. I needed a WEEK to wrap up a GalCiv2 game from the same point!

MOO1 has no enemies who surrender their last few planets to somebody else to extend the tedium. There are no requirements to invade a planet. GC REQUIRES you to babysit transports one after another through a long slog to military victory, or to babysit starbases and large module counts one after the next to pull in the Cultural win.

MOO1 is still far and away the reigning king of space empire gameplay. I will readily admit that GC1 and GC2 are each light years ahead of the micromanagement hells of MOO2 and MOO3, though. GC is a darned fine game up to the point at which the game is truly over, and then it's a long slog to the finish line if you want Metaverse credit for your victory. The Metaverse is a really nasty thing that players can opt out of, and yet it is also the glue that held the online GC1 community together. That's a pickle I'm glad I don't have to tackle personally, from a design perspective.

All I really need to do to enjoy GalCiv2 is to STOP PLAYING when I know I've reached a winning position. I need to forget the Metaverse, decline to slog through the ending, and just go start a new game. Yet a large part of the appeal of GalCiv is the community, and Brad has designed the community around the Metaverse! Arrgh.


- Sirian

[yin26]

Indeed, I hope those interface elements get some serious attention. My jury is still out on longistics, but it's safe to say that perhaps the AI needs to focus more on it and amass larger fleets.

By the way, I really miss the Orion planet thing. It was so great when you'd happen upon Orion and get that brief glimpse of some nasty ship that obliterates you before you know what's happening. Then you work a kind of mini tech game to clear away the Guardian and get that uber planet. Man I miss that.

[Solver]

Hm. Do we have any word on a possible demo? I'd certainly download that.

[Sirian]

A demo for what? Oblivion? Doom3? Or GC2?

Go ahead and get GC2. You'll get your money's worth out of it (and more so if you stop reading my posts -- the internet itself has some serious downsides, you know, like dweebs who spill too many of the beans!)


- Sirian

[Solver]

A GalCiv2 demo .

But see, the problem is that you're one of the people whose opinions I respect a great deal, so I'd rather continue to read what you think about the game .

[yin26]

Solver: From what you've written before about Civ4, you don't intentionally seek to "abuse" the system. You enjoy the spirit of the game as it was intended. Assuming your stance on that hasn't changed, GalCiv2 would make a awesome addition to your library. However, guys like Sirian are out in front identifying what somebody can do to the system when pressure is applied carefully enough. My guess is that Brad can and will respond with his proven record of updates.

[Solver]

You're right, I do not intentionally abuse the system. However, there's a line between abuse of the system and an overpowered strategy - when something in the game is so powerful that doing it becomes the one right choice, as was the case with some aspects of Civ3. Not having GalCiv2, I can of course not say which of these is the case with it.

Another consideration is that, for me, the AI is a key concept of the SP game. If it features a strong AI, I am willing to overlook many things. I enjoy Civ4 largely because of an overall competent AI. So I'm watching AI comments with a particular interest.

By the way, how big is the learning curve in GalCiv2? I'm obviously a seasoned Civ player, but haven't played the original GalCiv either. I assume, though, that the basics should still seem familiar?

[yin26]

I played GalCiv1, so a lot of it came back to me. That said, within 2 to 3 hours you should be already working on some of the finer points and ready to up the difficulty levels. What's so nice to me about GalCiv2 is that while there are actually a limited number of things to tinker with, each thing --and each combination of things-- adds up to a lot of options and strategic depth. Sure, you only have a) beam weapons b) mass driver (bullet) weapons and c) missile weapons ... but how many you place of each kind, and how developed each piece is, radically changes your battles against an AI that generally seems to learn and counter. The same goes for your defense against a) b) and c). These are very simple concepts that, in gameplay terms, can spin in tons of directions.

As for one strategy dominating others, I've won a cultural victory already. I can see the military victory looming (large "mop up" as Sirian says, but you get that in Civ, too). The tech victory doesn't seem crazy, nor does diplomatic (particularly useful once your alliances are all in place, though you might need to kill off a hold out or two). Of course, any good human player can optimize his start, attack hard with good tech early, expand his holdings, and win by volume/attrition if nothing else. This is when you up the AI bonuses, just like in civ.

Anyway, you've changed my mind: Buy GalCiv, put down Civ for a while, and report back soldier!

[Solver]

The problem of one right strategy is, in fact, not really pertinent to victory conditions. It's pertinent to how you achieve victory. In Civ3, ICS+Massive conquest was the Right Thing, etc. If GalCiv2 doesn't force me into warmongering, that's already a plus.

With the combat system, though... I think I get it. For example, you have beams, which the AI counters with shields. That's fine. But what if I have a tech lead and my beams are a couple of levels above the AI's armor. Does that mean I'm going to run him over? Civ4 balances that out by having a line of strong defensive units that aren't too easy to overcome, meaning the attacker needs a large enough force unless he's two ages ahead in tech.

Anyway, you've changed my mind: Buy GalCiv, put down Civ for a while, and report back soldier!

Love your decisionmaking

[Sirian]

If you lean Evil in GC2, you can eventually get to "evil only superweapons" which then overwhelm any defense on the field. If you lean Good, you can get to "good only superdefenses" which can stop any weaponry and render you invulnerable.

Since the AI as yet has shown ZERO inclination to research this branch of the tree, you are in SMAC Land if you refrain from trading it to them. (That's not good!)

The AI is missing out on a whole chunk of the tech tree that it doesn't bother to emphasize. This was also true in GC1, where the winning strategy was to divert AWAY from what the AIs as a pack would research/trade and pick up a bunch of monopoly items (techs and wonders) they would ignore, then trade these judiciously. That is still the uberstrat in GC2.

Brad would have to rework tech trading from the ground up to change this positively, and I don't expect that to happen. Small steps taken to try to nudge it seem likely (in my opinion) to make things worse, not better. (The small steps taken in Civ3 expansions to make things better simply didn't work, for example. They generally had more negative effects than positive. For example, making government techs highly valued by the AI unleashed the Nationalism Slingshot Uberstrat, while the pricier monopoly techs cemented "rich get richer" dynamics.)


I would recommend to have the AIs take some interest in Xeno Ethics, though. Too much of the diplomatic system is crippled because the AIs are all stuck on Unaligned.


- Sirian

[Solver]

What's Good/Evil in GC2 terms? Something like the ultimate techs along certain parts of the tech tree?

[yin26]

By the way, Sirian raises an important point that highlights the way I choose to play: Most of my alignment decisions run neutral (at points in the game you are presented with moral decisions to make, like "There is a primitive race on this new planet, do you a) leave them be (= lose some production) b) move them to a concentrated area (= lose a lot less production) or c) exterminate them (= gain production)?"), so I never get nor seek uber evil weapons or uber good weapons (as you said, techs only open to you if you are evil or good). Some players call this "hadicapping" yourself, but I see two things here:

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.

2) Understanding that getting uber weapons will cripple the AI means I choose not to get them. The game then stays on my shelf longer.

It's like in Civ: I choose land maps with enough civs to form blocs. Sure, the naval game in Civ isn't completely dead, but I prefer to give the AI a good shot at getting me. You can approach GalCiv the same way on some of these larger issues Sirian is presenting.

[Solver]

See, that's a negative for me. I don't exploit games - I don't make use of bugs or specifically make a point of exploiting in another way. But, when the game presents me with a strategic choice, I make the choice which I believe to be the best. In your example, I find it hard to imagine what could be the reason not to choose c, strategically. If I am choosing between losing production or gaining it, of course I want to gain it!

[yin26]

It's a matter of role-play vs. earn a bonus you know the AI will struggle to handle. I role play. This is one of the reasons I found some of the wonky tech attributes so off-putting in Civ (communism = more food, etc.). I agree, though, if you plan always to take the biggest advantage on those answers, then you'll always become Evil and always have the ability to beeline to over-powered weapons. But I don't take that path because the result is pretty much foretold, then there's no game.

Of course, you'd still have to contend with the Good civs (and there are in the game), and you'd still have an epic fight of Good vs. Evil if you get a good map setting. Map setting in Civ is important, too, for similar reasons. I just enjoy the fact that my neutrality means I need to beat Good and Evil with a more carefully balanced approach. That's the puzzle for me...and the fun.

[Solver]

Ahh... I guess I would indeed end up making the Evil choices in GalCiv2. My roleplaying in Civ games is limited to (usually) not backstabbing those who have been good friends for a long time.

Also, for me, any names are just labels on sets of numbers/bonuses. So I don't care if communism giving more food in Civ4 is not realistic - in the game, communism to me is just a label for a food bonus.

BTW, Yin, you promised me a Civ4 MP game. Now you do have the game, so...

[yin26]

For you, then, I'd set the civs' alignments so that you get Good blocs going against Evil blocs. This could be a fun approach for you! As for a Civ4 MP game, you'd kill me. You'd be bored. You'd have more fun, let's saying, becoming an Evil SOB trying to kill all the Goodness out of the galaxy...

[Solver]

I'm not a good Civ4 player by any means! I'm not a ladder-style player, either, and do not attack early. I will generally only attack if I feel I'm about to be invaded anyway or if I have nothing left to do. Besides, winning doesn't matter, it would be an honor to play a game with you .


So I assume the Good vs. Evil thing in GalCiv2 can work sort of like religious blocs in Civ4?