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[yin26]

I've now re-read the threads in question and see, with Civ4 at least, this has to do with "AI behavior" and not knowing where resources are, etc. Basically what Solver said.

[Solver]

*sigh*

Common sense dictates that some of these discussion should be happening at the official GalCiv2 forums. Much as Apolyton is our home, the participating audience here isn't exactly huge...

[yin26]

LOL! Well, I can't stand the GC forums (the setup and some of the discussions) -- also, this is 'home,' as you say. Besides, Brad comes by here, and I'm sure he is printing out your review as we speak. In fact, I hope he gives your review front page coverage as it beats all the other reviews put together in terms of content.

On another note, sometimes you gotta love bugs! I'm in the campaign and am supposed to escort somebody off the map so we can escape a war. Well, the ship I had the precious cargo on got caught by a Dread Lord and was blown up...only to lead to VICTORY! Heh, that's cool. I was *hating* the idea of starting this one over -- I generally try not to have several saves to go back to as I find this encourages me to reload and not stick things out.

[Solver]

Maybe you should go drag some other people by hair into this forum . I mostly stay out of the official forums myself. I crossposted one of my vanilla comment threads there, got no constructive posts from the locals (though Brad himself replied), but got some flaming for being negative and failing to understand the game.

That's a pretty crazy bug you caught there, though. Funny, tough quite severe.

[Hydro]

Then again, there's another colonization trick the AI doesn't really use. If I colonize a planet and there are other non-taken habitables in the system, I'll colonize them ASAP. Which means, if there's not another free Colony Ship in the immediate vicinity (there's probably not), the first thing I do is rush-buy a Starport + Colony Ship on my new planet, and proceed to colonize the other planet at once. I found that waiting for a Colony to arive from elsewhere will usually just cause the AI to grab the planet instead.

Yikes! Rush buying a starport and col ship is expensive (~500bc+1000bc?), especially in the early game. That must be one darned important planet. But you're correct that there isn't likely to be another colony ship by soon. I tend to do a targeted radial pattern of colony ships (no scouts – waste of time and resources) that is biased toward my neighbors so I can get the territory before they do. Pokey spd 2 or 3 colony ships make for long transit times.

As to AI colonization, I’ll have to look again. Regardless, the AI is systematic and does a decent job overall. There are exceptions. In DA I’ve noticed that races that used to aggressively colonize (Arceans, Torians) now are more quiescent. The Korath and Drath did a poor job colonization in my last game, which is the only one they appeared in (random AI). Perhaps that is part of how the AI’s are designed? I seem to recall that at lower levels the AIs are designed to make bad decisions now and then, or that they don’t have access to high-level algorithms.

I’ve found you can’t beat the Apolyton forums. Folks are civil and thoughtful, but it does get quite sometimes.

I’ll have to play the Thalians. The only problem might be depopulating your homeworld if colony pod production is too high. The alternative of small pops on colony ships is OK, but they will take forever to grow. Still, that is better than letting some other empire get its greedy hands/claws/retractors/tentacles on it.

Hydro

[yin26]

Well, I've done what I can to promote Solver's excellent review over on the official forums. http://forums.galciv2.com/index.aspx?AID=144599 Of course, if it remains just the three of us, I'll be sure to take notes and thank you for the insight.

[Solver]

Actually, starports were dirt-cheap to rush. Colonies weren't, at around 1100 bc, but hey, it's the colony rush! You start with some money, and I usually do spend it on rushing colony ships where appropriate, if that gives me a planet for sure. I won't bother with it for a class-3 planet, but any okay or better planets are a must.

The AIs are designed to behave foolishly on lower levels, yeah. On "Challenging", they'll generally act smart, but not using all their tricks. On "Tough" they finally use all they got. On the other end, on "Normal" they are sort-of okay, but without really being smart either, and on any lower difficulties, they'll actually make many stupid decisions on purpose.

I see the logic behind that design, though I myself do not think it's a good idea. I'm fine with some extra-smart behaviour being reserved for the higher levels, along with increased aggression or such, but I don't like the thought of intentional stupidity. Playing GalCiv2 for the very first time, I was very disappointed by the AI precisely because I played on "Normal" (which was worse then than it's now) - thankfully, I was immediately told that there's some intentional stupid behaviour.

Speaking of high-level algorithms, I find that, with maximum CPU usage enabled, the AI ability to predict your actions improves by a fair bit. That's good .

I’ve found you can’t beat the Apolyton forums. Folks are civil and thoughtful

Tell that to the off-topic guys .

I’ll have to play the Thalians. The only problem might be depopulating your homeworld if colony pod production is too high.

You won't depopulate your homeworld. Though, of course, you should also start producing colonies on another planet as you grab one. With their Super Ability, you can set up a working industry really fast on a newly colonized planet.

[Solver]

Originally posted by yin26
Well, I've done what I can to promote Solver's excellent review over on the official forums. http://forums.galciv2.com/index.aspx?AID=144599 Of course, if it remains just the three of us, I'll be sure to take notes and thank you for the insight.

Bastard . Hmm, I guess I should make a post linking here at CFC - their GalCiv2 forum is getting more visitors than ours (sigh).

[LordTheRon]

I'll join in the fray here! Although I'm not really a strategical mastermind, so I won't add much value to the discussion here I'm afraid.

[yin26]

Hey, neither am I. Let's leave that stuff to the professionals. Any impressions so far?

[Solver]

I can only imagine Vel playing GalCiv2, would probably result in an 80-page strategy guide two weeks later .

[yin26]

80-page introduction, more like. Does anybody know if he's playing GC2? If he's not, Poly should send him a copy in exchange for his creating an "exclusive" Poly guide. We could raise money for it.

[Solver]

He's not. Vel's got plenty on his plate, and in what little time he does have for playing games, he plays Civ4. Should also come up with a complete guide for that .

[LordTheRon]

Originally posted by yin26
Hey, neither am I. Let's leave that stuff to the professionals. Any impressions so far?

First impressions are that I can't play it on my laptop which sadly came with Vista.

According to the official forums it's an nVidia driver problem. Game hangs after a couple of turns. My reward for being one of Uncle Bill's betatesters. Oh well, back to the desktop that luckily runs XP.

And now back to the game!
First impressions are quite positive. I must say that I didn't play that much GalCiv 2 altogether. I wanted to, but the game never absorbed me like GalCiv 1 did. Probably because I had a lot of other things going on when the game came out.

Played my first full game yesterday with the AI on intelligent (I could handle them in GalCiv 1). That was bit... let's call it optimistic. I got completely run over during the beginning. Started colonizing too late and never really recovered. Being neighbours of the Korath didn't help either.

But I love losing my TBS games! Shows that the AI is at least capable of beating mediocre players like me. I'm sure I'll get better and find weakspots like the ones Solver already pointed out, but it's always a good sign to see that you can actually lose. I've played too many TBS games where you really had to try hard to lose.

I really dig the extreme planets. Adds a whole deal of new strategy to the game and makes the colony rush much more interesting and not a rush perse anymore. Once again Solver hit the nail on the head as it would be even better if you could customize the amount of extreme planets in relationship to normal planets.

One thing I noticed is that you cannot easily research future techs, without selecting every single tech manually. In Civ IV this is possible and I use it a lot. It would be nice to have the possibility to select a future tech and see the game research all techs inbetween automatically. This saves a bit of micromanagement. If I want to go from weapon theory straight to railguns, I'd like to be able to just select the railguns tech and see the game research all techs in between automatically.

I completely agree with Solver about the 'this is my maximum amount of money for that tech' button for the diplomacy screen.

Those are my first impressions. I have an evening session up for tonight so more impressions to follow after that.

[yin26]

Freekin' Vista. Amazing. How many billion went into that? Anyway...

I agree with you about the fun in losing. In fact, that's one of my measures of a game, too: Granted, if I play well, I expect to do well...but if I play poorly, I should get crushed. Few games manage the second part of that equation well.

In that spirit, I am putting the campaign on hold to play a Tough game on a small galaxy, 5 random opponents, no tech trading, 2 minor civs only (I forget the rest). I might make kind of a visual aar (after action report) of it since I'm at home today. By the way, the campaign is still rough around the edges. It's just no fun to have a Dread Lord ship come in an rip apart your trade lanes and star bases before you're even rolling. Sure, you can slog it out, but the episodes don't so much cresendo as seemingly follow this pattern:

1. Out colonize/trade/build the enemy because he doesn't seem to spread (unless he takes one of your planets, which he's scripted to try). Even when he does get a planet, he doesn't seem to develop it much. So you can eventually win the war of attrition way down the line.

2. Use spies to cripple the few awesome starting resources he has. This reduces his ship output to a trickle.

3. Tech up and assault when ready.

There certainly are some nice things about the campaign in terms of getting you to think outside the box a bit (how do I keep the enemy who is many times stronger than I am from taking one of my planets? One answer: Spread many 1 attack point tiny ships like mines in the ocean to pick off his transports, which are usually unguarded). But mostly I'm now seeing too much predictability, uneven difficulty, and niche strategizing. Factor on top of this that some of the instruction text is woefully vague, and there is NO in-game help to keep you focused on the mission/story line other than the mission parameters themselves, i.e., "Don't get killed," and I'd have to rate the campaign through about mission 5 as mediocre to not worth trying for more than a mission or two.

[Solver]

Looking forward to that, Yin .

[LordTheRon]

Great, I love AAR's! Looking forward to it too.

I'm thinking of starting a game on a small map too (medium at the largest). Games on small maps play nice and fast and you're on a more even footing with the AI than on a giant map.

[yin26]

O.K. Here's the setup. I'll be posting with no real agenda other than to share in what I hope will be some interesting moments. For those who already own the game, I guess this will be pointless. However, to make it somewhat useful for you and me, perhaps you could chime in with better ways of doing things? I'm no expert. I play to have fun...then win. As has already been said, I'd prefer even to have fun...then lose. But the game should be fun, so let's see what happens.

For kicks, I went nuts with population growth and econ. The general plan is to be like Vel and make some money. My Super Diplomat special ability should help convince others that it's good to give me cash and to be my friend. Man, I wish I had that special ability in real life!


Nothing wild here, though I have turned off tech trading, which should be interesting, especially considering my diplo bonus would have been really helpful here. Still, I think it's too easy to exploit the AI with tech trading, and I'm hoping it will make my research decisions more interesting. I also put on blind exploration and only 2 minor races so that it's harder to find civs (especially the free money kind, like the minors).


Finally, a few game settings. The map (above) is set to small, I've got 5 randomly selected civs ready to share the map with me, and the difficulty is "Tough," which, I believe, is where the AI and human player are on equal footing, and all AI routines are in play. Oh, I also gave the AI the added CPU boost setting for good measure. My hope is that the small map will mean more immediate action, less overall slog, and a quicker resolution to the game. For me, that would be "fun" at the moment. Aside from a few episodes in the campaign, I haven't played a game of GalCiv2 in a LONG while, so I might mess with a few starts first just so that I don't completely waste anybody's time.

[yin26]

Some starting questions for you guys: I usually rush buy the first factory, then, if there aren't any obvious special tiles, I'll put down research, market, and happiness. I also rush buy the colony ship. In the first turn or two like this, I'll focus on Social spending, which is now at 18 (I bought my ship, so don't need Military, and research is minimal now anyway). This shaves a few weeks off the next factory build, now down to 3 weeks. Is that pretty much what you guys do?

[Solver]

My primary concern is usually getting as many Colony Ships out as I can, sending them to stars I see on the minimap in hope of finding habitable planets. I crank up the spending and taxes, but do not rush social stuff. I focus on developing the social stuff after my initial colonization. Then again, this is all stuff I've come up with, so I have no clue if it's the right way to play or not.

[yin26]

I forgot to adjust my econ sliders! Pushing everything to Social spending, I almost doubled my Social production to 33. That shaved another week off the next factory build. So a factory that would normally take 7 weeks or longer to build, is down to 2. This seems like a good way to jumpstart your industry so that subsequent builds (ships and other improvements) are put into place faster.

[yin26]

I've met 3 of my neighbors: Drath, Korath, and Korx. The Drath have the Super Manipulator ability, which means they might get somebody to attack me soon enough. The Korath have the Spore ships, which Solver has noted might not be put to good use (thankfully). The Korx have the Super Trader ability and already have a freight coming my way by virtue of starting the game with all trade techs. In my first diplo decision, I made econ and tech treaties with the Korx. My hope is that these will be my money guys so I can focus on less friendly neighbors.

[Solver]

Eh. You're screwed .

I never quite manage to be friendly with the Korx, and the Drath will make sure you're always at war anyway. The Korath won't Spore-rush you, but they always put up a good fight.

Destroy the Drath!

[yin26]

Alright. Solver has given me my mission, and I agree: Destroy the Drath! Also, wow, the colony rush is so different, as everybody has said. You have your home planet, then a class 4...and that's it except for uninhabitable planets. I have two great Barren worlds within range, but I see now what people mean about deciding whether or not to make that tech investment to get those. Hmmm. Any advice?

As you can see, this is a VERY different kind of start from Dread Lords. Also, the survey ships are racing around each other like crazy to get at the specials, which seems a nice side effect of the small map.

[yin26]

I just placed my first spy on the Drath homeworld and reduced his research by a good clip. My thinking is that rather than focus on his military, this guy will want others to do his fighting while he gets ahead in tech...so I'm putting the breaks on his tech. Also, since he's the guy I'm going to try to conquer, I figured it wouldn't hurt to start my espionage there...

[Solver]

I'd get the Barren worlds just to deny them to the AI, if you can sacrifice the military development speed. Since there's two of them, two planets for one tech are, IMO, worth it.

And yeah, depending on how many extreme worlds there are, the early game can be very different.

[yin26]

Yeah, especially now that I find two of my three neighbors got 3 planets to colonize while I just have two. It's an interesting gamble, forgoing military to get those worlds settled...but if I don't, there's little hope to last mid game. Also, not being able to trade tech has put an even more interesting spin on this problem early on for me. It has also eliminated a lot of that negotiation micro you talked about, Solver.

[Solver]

Meh, I can't think of it as a proper Civ game if I can't trade techs .

[yin26]

Well, the immediate future of the human race depends on what happens in the next 18 turns. I have two colony ships in orbit, one over each planet, to claim these worlds the moment we have a chance...if we get the chance!

[Solver]

Do crank the research slider up .