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Why are tyou setting Gal Civ 2 aside?

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  • Why are tyou setting Gal Civ 2 aside?

    This question is addressed to those of you who have put GalCiv aside or will soon be "played out" on this game. What do you see as the big issues with the re-playability of this game?

    (I think, in GalCiv 1 the biggest weakness was planet management being dull but that was completely fixed with the introduction of planetary tiles in GalCiv 2).

    I think the biggest weaknesses are diplomacy and the minors. The diplomacy is very much like Civ2 ie about 20 years behind current standard expected in a computer game.

    Alliances
    You may be attacked and your ally might not join in. It might not even be possible to bribe your ally to join in. If your ally also happens to be allied with your enemy you may be attacked by your ally.

    Even worse, your ally is attacked and you are asked to help. Later your ally makes peace and in due course allies with your enemy and attacks you. So much for helping your ally.

    This problem with alliances is intertwined with "minor civs". If you ally with a minor civ you have no way of stopping them allying with other majors. You have no way of predicting which side they will join if you get into a war with the other major.

    I would like either:
    1. the possibility of an exclusive alliance, perhaps taking a minor as a vassal as in Civ4
    2. if you join an alliance, the whole alliance makes peace togeter as in Victoria.

    Diplomatic relations

    When trading with another civ, it doesn't seem to make much difference how good or bad relations are. The price is much the same.

    Also, the AI has no concept of co-operation. You can give much to a civ to help it but this has no effect on trading. You will pay the same price for Tech X whether you have given them 20 techs or just been at war. (eg. In Civ4 if relations have been good enough for long enough you can beg a tech if you can't pay, just long as you have been very nice to the other civ for a long time).

    Minors

    Long trade routes pay more so the minors like to trade with those who are far away. This means that if you have a minor in your territory it will be unlikely to trade with you because the trade route is too short. The trade with distant civilisations will improve relations until eventually the minor becomes allied with some other major. Umh, if left alone another major will have an ally located in my territory, perhaps in my undefended heartland. Leaving the minor alone in the midst of my territory may mean I will eventually have to defend all of my planets. Better to kill the minor now to prevent possible future problems.

    If the minor will not establish trade routes with me it is useless but it does have a very nice planet. Why not invade this useless occupier of prime real estate and take his beautiful planet for myself.

    The problem here is that the minor AI has no "survival instinct". (It should have the goal of still being alive when a major gets a victory). It should establish trade routes with its neighbours so the neighbour has some reason not to kill it. I would not want to kill a minor who gave me all of his trade routes. I would instead establish my own trade routes with him and keep him as my trade partner deep in my own territory where he is safe (unless he would eventually ally with another major).

    Once again, I would like to be able to take minors as vassals. The can not trade with anyone else. They are part of my empire but they manage their own worlds, fleets, research and finance. They are taken out of the diplomatic matrix (they can't sell tech or establish trade with anyone except me.

    The diplomacy and the minors are not much of a problem if you intend to wipe everyone out. They are a problem if you wish to have a relatively peaceful economic/research game.

    I find GalCiv an excellent game with immense replayability but I do find the diplomacy and the behaviour of the minors a little frustrating.

  • #2
    I actually played GalCiv1 for 3 hours today. But I admit, the game gets tiresome and repetitive fast.

    The vassalation idea seems good. It would be a useful option.
    The idea of a whole alliance declaring war/peace together a la Europa Universalis is also good.

    When trading with another civ, it doesn't seem to make much difference how good or bad relations are. The price is much the same.
    I wondered if that was the case.

    perhaps the game could be made more useful by having a "trading centers" overlay map like in EU. I never liked sending out trade freighters... It would be better if the game abstracted them like In EU you would send out merchants to win a "center of trade."
    -->Visit CGN!
    -->"Production! More Production! Production creates Wealth! Production creates more Jobs!"-Wendell Willkie -1944

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    • #3
      I quite like the freighters. OTH I also liked the caravans in Civ2 and they were abolished and replaced with automatically generated trade routes because they were not popular with the masses.

      I see Gal Civs biggest weakness as the diplomatic system. Quite frankly diplomacy is not much use in Gal Civ. You can't do much and relations hardly matter except for the distinction between war and peace. OTH It is a very powerful tool in Civ 4 and Victoria. (Victoria is a game made by Paradox Entertainment and is vaguely similar to Europa Universalis).

      The "peaceful" path to victory tends to be extremely violent, you may as well go on the rampage. OTH You can have a peaceful game of Civ 4 at a high levelk of difficulty (without building a single military unit) if you take care of your diplomacy and pick your opponents (ie Hatshepsut and Elizabeth are fine, do not pick Montezuma). In Gal Civ all major powers are psycho. The "good" ones act in much the same way as the "evil" ones, they just take a bit longer to start making extortionate demands and declaring war.

      The minors could add a lot of flavour to Gal Civ, if they did anything. They just "sit there".

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      • #4
        I know.

        I remember that I can not seem to make sure I do not get attacked.

        Though I do come up with a few countermeasures:

        1.) Start the game isolated from the rest (like in a corner).
        2.) Establish trade routes.
        3.) Build alot of space stations to deter possible threats.

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        • #5
          'Cos it still doesn't WORK!

          I stopped playing over a year ago because every time I played a decent sized game it would crash. No mods, didn't even make cosmetic changes to my ships, and a new dual-processor computer. I'd get well into a game and it would start having 'out of memory' crashes on the save.

          A couple of weeks ago, just out of curiosity I downloaded all the the subsequent patches, figuring they must have addressed this by now. Not so much. So, let's see, you invest a couple of days in a game and just when it's getting good, you can reliably predict that it will crash. Nice game when it's working, too. Feh.

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          • #6
            Pretty much the same reason as version 1. I just could not get find enough to make it fun. I got each version and then each add on and play one game or maybe not even that. I have nothing bad to say about it, well I do have issues with the subscription.

            It took the devs a long time to get it so I could auto update and then the next update failed to work. To tell you the truth I would rather play Moo3 than Galciv. Never thought I would say that or even play Moo3 again.

            My biggest gripe is all the laws passed and the little events that you have to choose one of the options. Next biggest is too many planets that are not really habitable.

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            • #7
              Originally posted by vmxa1 View Post
              My biggest gripe is all the laws passed and the little events that you have to choose one of the options. Next biggest is too many planets that are not really habitable.
              Can't you set the ratio for Habitable planets? I don't have the game on this computer, but I thought there were options like "Abundant" or "Scarce". Realistically, habitable plants are few and far between (at least that's what we think right now!) but if you set it to abundant there are tons of planets to conquer. Unless you're referring to the number of 4's and 5's that make crappy colonies.

              I actually just started playing GalCiv2 again about a week ago. The whole diplomacy aspect is pretty week. I beat up an opponent pretty badly, capturing maybe 15-20 small colonies they had settled near my empire. I am now bigger than them, with a larger population, economy and manufacturing base. I went to make peace and they're acting like they've been beating me, demanding huge sums of cash just to make peace. I was debating attempting to capture a couple of planets from their main territory and then give them back as part of the negotiation, but it's a lot of work just to end the war. Any reasonably intelligent player would see that they just lost a third of their empire and perhaps they should consider making peace while they still have an empire to rule over

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              • #8
                Sand I hear you on the diplomacy. I started playing GalCiv2 again this week too. Though I just have the GC2L...I still enjoy the scifi aspect of the game. I have been tweaking my custom ship skills, which I love about GC2, though I wish they would give you more frames to work with.

                Diplomacy is something that needs work, as was said the relations a race has with you matters little. I have started games and made plenty of cool, warm, and friendly and then out of nowhere war is declared...usually its a full on galactic war with 3 or 4 on 2 or 3. I usually become a losing end of the stick because of the multiple fronts I have to deal with. And when it comes time to make peace, the ones who were friendly tend to make it easier to get peace talks going. There are occasions though, usually with the Altarians, when they just do not want peace...even if I am beating them, they aren't actively fighting me, or they are getting pounded by another power.

                Allys are sketchy at best. Usually I can get at least 2 allies, depending on which route I have taken its either the Drengin and Yor, Korx and Drath, or a mix of them. Usually I never get a chance to keep peace with the Arceans or the Altarians, the Ionian Refuge is another one who I am usually warring with. The Dominion is easy to keep peace with, I trade with them the majority of the time anyways and they always keep a business like manner.

                That is something that should be set in place. It seems each race has a blanket program running its actions, war or peace. Korx Dominion are business men of types, they should have coding that has them act more in the manner of conducting business, taking over resources or valued worlds, instead of just all out war. The Arceans are supposedly the peacekeepers of the galaxy, yet they declare war on anyone, they should be coded to specifically target evil races and be willing to aid peaceful races. The Altarians...they are just unpredictable. The Yor don't act anything like machines. The Thalan are usually the isolationists in my game. And the Torians...pathetic race, sometimes a superpower. Better coding to give each race more flair.

                I usually run tech on fast, and jump start...I don't mind the initial slow push into space, but it seems that no matter what I cannot get a good chunk of space in my territory before the other races rush in...it seems they have no sense of range, nor poverty, nor debt when buying colony ships...it just seems like they can expand and expand at any rate they wish, anywhere they wish. All the while I am stuck with a slow expansion and eventually forced to conquer all worlds I want to inhabit.

                The settings for habitable worlds I usually keep on normal, as much as I wish there were tons of worlds out there that are habitable, I run on the idea that they are harder to find. Not rare, just not as easy to find. I develop masses of space habitats *stations*, max out in each sector that I have colonies, as well as in systems that are either uninhabited or the border regions. I usually keep several military and influence stations on the borders with enemies, usually more influence stations with allies.
                "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the Blood of Patriots and tyrants" Thomas Jefferson
                "I can merely plead that I'm in the presence of a superior being."- KrazyHorse

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                • #9
                  Became too repetative

                  First my comments apply to Twilight version.
                  I think there are several significant deficiencies with the game.
                  Diplomacy (but not in the way described above)
                  Repetitively dumb AI
                  Minors eventually need to be conquered
                  Manageability becomes a chore


                  Diplomacy:
                  * Treaties: too easy to get all the factions econ and research treaties coming to you, precluding them from going to anyone else.
                  * Tech trading: is way too powerful.
                  * I agree that friendlier relations should = better trade exchanges
                  They do however make some difference e.g. if you are the dominant military power only allies will trade you new military tech. Once you reach friendly relations with a race they can't be bribed to go to war with you.
                  * There should be meaningful ways to truly cooperate with an ally, specializing research areas, etc.
                  * Not eager to make peace when loosing: already touched on in other posts

                  Dumb AI:
                  * Shipbuilding: pre-expansion gavCil2 AI shipbuilding wasn't too bad, but it is horrible in the expansions. I never see the AI making use of the special techs like +hitPoint mods, fleet attack defense or speed mods etc. Nor do I ever see sensor ships. This puts it at a significant disadvantage.
                  * Auto war declaration: if your [large] fleet happens to pass by an allied planet they will automatically assume they are an invasion force and declare war on you, even if your ships are on route to attack a mutual enemy- this has lead to a number of accidental wars which isn't fun
                  * Too hard Ally: it was too easy to ally before the expansions Now I'm lucky to get 2 races willing to ally even if I have the requisite tech and close relations.
                  * Seems to ignore special tiles

                  Minors
                  As noted minors just sit there. They are useful trading partners and useful early/mid game for trading tech, but eventually they cease to produce useful tech and they simply become easy targets for other races to conquer... So if you don't someone else will. They need some way to be incorporated into an empire w/o conquering or something to make them not a liability to leave unconquered. They also need more power so that they actually do something.

                  Manageability:
                  * large numbers of planets = lots of time selecting what to build... this becomes boring
                  * designing ships takes too long- the auto ship designer idea would work with a lot of enhancements see AI section for better designs. It would also need to cover specialty ships colony, constructors, transports, etc. And have a nice ways to remove old designs and upgrade to new ones.

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                  • #10
                    The micromanagment and poor documentation seems like death to me.

                    Having the population growth change in massive increments from a 99% approval for +25% growth to 100% for +100% growth means every turn the slider needs adjustment.

                    The documentation is PISS POOR. The wiki still talks about patches that were obsolete years ago, and I cannot find a complete, documented changelog anywhere.

                    I have been seriously disappointed in this game, and I intentionally held off buying it for so long as to get the bugs ironed out, yet there is no breakdown of population growth, the ability screen still thinks everything is a %, the summary doesn't list all the bonuses, and planetary production doesn't give a breakdown as to where the bonuses are coming from.
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                    • #11
                      thanks. very helpful post. I read a few of your other posts and they all helped me.
                      JCB

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                      • #12
                        I totally agree with u.

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