Solver's 1.1 thoughts

[Grandpa Troll]

One other thing, I buy Gal Civ, I dont need a previous version do I?

Just the current one, (or is this the only version?)

[Solver]

No, no, you just buy GalCiv2, register with your serial number, and then download the 1.1 update from Stardock's website.

[bonscott]

Originally posted by Solver
Haha... you know, yeah, that's how I've become now. Juggle with sliders to get just the exactly maximum amount of credits. Sometimes, when I'm lazy, I do it with a precision of 10 (the up and down buttons), not a precision of 1.

Not sure if you guys know but you can use the scroll wheel to go up or down in money offered. I usually drag the big bar left or right until it turns green then quickly wheel to the most money that stays green. Still a bit of a pain but a lot faster.

[bonscott]

Nice review Solver. This weekend I finally put Oblivion down and updated GC2 to 1.1 and had a blast again. I do notice the changes a bit and I'm having a lot of fun. Especially since the Yor beat me to the last planet available so I just sent that colony ship off to the edge and found a class 26 not settled yet. I snagged it and got an event with a huge PQ bonus so I got myself a class 31 baby!

So far to me the changes in 1.1 are more subtle but are very good.

[Solver]

Wow... I've never even seen anything above class 18!

Those ethical choices, though, are too strong sometimes. Such as the ones where the Evil one gives you +45% planet quality.

[Silver14]

I've seen a 34. Couldn't get my hands on it though.



This was early in the game too, before any quality improvments could have been built.

[Solver]

Another good thing about GalCiv2: it seems to run on Linux . I am certainly no expert as far as getting things to run under Linux goes, but GalCiv2 works fine. One of the reasons is that it has no copy protection. Generally, even if all the DirectX and such stuff for a game works on Linux, trouble pops up with CD protection.

Now for something else. I just dug up my my post from six weeks ago where I detailed the problems of GalCiv2 and what I didn't like. Now, I'm going to go through those problems and post my impressions of how well 1.1 has dealt with them. First, what I called the population problem.

So, one big problem we have is that population is uber-important. That's not bad in itself, something being extremely important. But... where do you get population? On planets, once you settle them and then the population grows.

This means that, the more planets you have, the more population you have. The population immediately starts paying taxes, which is the first reason why pop is important - the second reason is that they're the source of soldiers for Transports, which are ultimately the center of any conquest effort.

GalCiv2 has limited places to colonize - habitable planets. Because of this, every time you colonize a planet, you not only get yourself that precious population, you prevent the enemy from getting it. Rushing the galaxy with colony ships early seems to be the right choice!

Now, colonizing more planets does not 100% guarantee you more population. As I said, massing colony ships to the point where your population on any planet becomes very low leads to a situation where the population on these planets is going to take a really long time to regrow. Similarily, you don't just colonize a new planet and see the population on it grow like that of rabbits during mating season.

Also, being a mad colonist requires you to push your spending up, which also requires that you increase taxes not to go bankrupt, which lowers your approval. And now approval finally has a severe enough effect on population, so there's an interesting alternative choice - have lower taxes and spending, have fewer planets, but with really good population growth.

The question is, of course, whether that's a real alternative or a perceived one. Of course, I'd need to play a few more games to tell for sure, but I am under the impression that the alternative is real. There are things to gain by having less planets, if you have enough population! For example, it's just much easier to defend. Attackers can take over a star system quickly, and that stands true even without the AI executing simultaneous attacks on several planets. So if you haven't colonized that more distant system with just one habitable planet, you've made it easier for yourself to defend when the need be.

A possible problem is with influence. It would still seem that getting more planets is, generally, the best way to get more influence, and that colonizing beats beating starbases/embassies. Jury's still out on that one, but I don't think that this influence issue will be serious.

So, the population/colony rush problem is fixed. It even deters you, albeit slightly, from warmongering.

Second problem: hellish sliders. I complained that the sliders, while representing theoretically fun and strategic gameplay elements, resulted in a hellish amount of micromanagement. You'd basically have to tweak them all the time for best results, so as not to waste production, so as to get the most out of your research, etc. 1.1 added the simple change of having production overflows. Now you can really get away quite well with just moving the sliders time to time depending on whether you're building up economically or preparing for war. And the problem of maxing out military production for the sake of maximum speed for colony ships is fixed by fixing the previous populaiton problem. So, yay.

Next up, the tremendeous power of wars. Interestingly, that was also largely related to population, so, again in a way we have an improved situation. The old problem was that you sacrificed some population for Transports, then took over enemy planets, and your population very quickly not only returned but also outgrew previous levels. Again, this very issue is fixed by the new population growth system (Brad Wardell took the biggest problem of GalCiv2 and used it to fix MANY problems, if that isn't a great game-designer move, I don't know what is). However, some things about warfare remain disappointing or worrying. Let me again quote myself.

If you're the attacker, you have a tremendeous advantage. Since you can move in enemy influence area freely, you get to decide how to position your fleet. Don't forget that you see what ships are orbiting the planet. If you're any smart, you will attack a planet the turn you declare war. Again, depending on the size of your force, you can maybe take 2 or even 3 planets on the same turn. Basically, it seems like a very good idea to take over an entire star system in one turn, and, guess what, this seems doable.

The AI is now better at detecting threats. However, for all of that, you're still able to strike before the AI can actually do anything. It won't help the AI much to know you're going to attack some 3 turns beforehand, because those three turns later you'll be striking at all planets in an AI system at once, while that's not nearly enough time to change a situation significantly on defense.

Scouting is easy, just have a few very cheap, very fast ships checking on the enemy defenses before you attack. Thus you know what troops to bring. Also... there's another issue which I in fact just discovered in 1.1. When you're moving to attack, if you see the enemy has beefed up defenses more than you'd like, you can quickly upgrade some of your ships to designs to counter the improved defenses. While this costs some money, it is still too easy. I propose, therefore, that starship upgrades only be allowed within the range of a military starbase. It would still reward the player who prepared by building a forward military starbase, but it would give the defender a bit more chance to prepare defenses without the attacker just upgrading his forces.

Overall, if you attack, you still have a very significant advantage. Partially it's game mechanics that give you this advantage, and maybe a few steps could and should be taken to reduce it, but there's also the AI component. How much you're willing to attack is, clearly, directly related to how much of a fight the AI is going to put up. And sometimes, the AI seems to "panic" when attacked. It makes an attempt to regain lost planets, but it often does so too quickly and with not enough force. That should be tweaked. Also, and this is a hard one to do, an AI that's facing an overwhelming force in its star systems, should recognize that situation and attempt to do more of a counter-attack. Human players, by their nature, leave their core planets relatively poorly-defended. And it's been true even in Civ. Therefore, a counter-attack can be highly successful. Such an AI counter-attack in GalCiv2 could be of two types: 1. a harassing counter-attack (small counter-attack fleet, aims to destroy starbses/tade at home), 2. an all-out counter-attack (aims to take a planet),

Getting this implemented is clearly no small feat. I have seen some AI counterattacks, too, but they're typically not powerful enough. For example, they send in some transports and escorts, but no real strike fleet. Thus, it's easy to just buy another defender, and such AI counterattacks are unlikely to cause you much grief. In other words, counter-attacking AI could certainly use some improvements.

On the upside, I've found that declaring war (or being declared on) isn't such a great thing if you don't commit a full-out attack on the AI. If you do make a large attack, as said, the AI is somewhat weak at countering. But if you don't, then the AI is going to do something nasty to it. For example, I've seen, in 1.1, small fleets formed that go after starbases, and they're a pain in the rear. They make you really want to contribute the time and resources to fortify your starbases, which is a good thing gameplay-wise, of course.

Oh, but there is one more thing that quite hurts the AI. That's logistics. Logistics, for example, limit how many fighters you can have protecting your Transports. So you can see an AI fleet of 3 Transports and 2 escort fighters. It's not bad, but the AI won't use its other, all-fighter fleet to protect the first one, and it should. Instead, though, you're free to attack the 3-transport 2-fighter fleet with your own 5-fighter fleet, and there you win a significant victory. The tactical AI should better accomodate this by using the other, stronger fleets to protect the fleets that have transports.

Another past quote:

The blitzkrieg-ish nature of wars is inherent to GalCiv2. And this is, in fact, not a problem by itself. Yes, it's always going to benefit the attackers somewhat, but it's not the wrong approach to take. But I believe that the snowball effect is the bane of Civ-genre games. I actually feel that Civ4 didn't manage to eliminate that either, though fortunately it isn't as large as in Civ3. The snowball effect, though, has to be countered in GalCiv2.

The large snowball effect has been countered to a degree by the new population system, in your newly conquered planets not being quite as effective anymore immediately. Also, there's another nice balancing mechanism. If you conquer a planet without using special invasion tactics, you get a planet of high quality with improvements, which is good for you. However, doing that takes many transports, which is quite a contribution in terms of your own population. Or, you can dedicate less population to the effort, but then you'll want to use some special tactics, which will result in your conquered planet being permanently or temporarily worse. A nice mechanism.

A big problem with warfare, however, is still that you capture techs from stolen planets. It's important to understand that the "techs from conquest" feature always shift the balance in warmonger's favour. It eliminates, partially, the somewhat natural-seeming balance of "builders got better techs, warmongers got a better army". Besides, as I've mentioned, getting a tech like Lasers IV from conquest is VERY powerful because you no longer need Lasers II or Lasers III, and can use Lasers IV right away. Ack.

Bottom line: the situation with warfare in 1.1 has improved, although noticeable problems still remain. Further AI improvements are required, on counter-attack preferrably, and changes to the "techs from conquest" system are needed. At the very least, it could be made optional so that players such as myself could play with an option disabling stealing of technology from captured planets.

The next problem I spoke at length about was the diplomatic AI. Basically, the AIs had no diplomatic "awareness". This, again, has improved. At least relations now seem to have a larger effect on the willingness of AI civs to trade. It's a good move. However, the AI still pays surprisingly little attention to researching diplomacy-boosting techs, and I think that it's still too easy to make civs go to war with each another. Maintaining a superior diplomatic ability plus a tech lead lets you use that to buy the galaxy into joining wars however you see fit, which can either aid your military efforts or impede the progress of the other civs while you build up.

I don't know where this fits, maybe here about the diplomatic AIs, but what's up with the major AI civ treatment of minor civs? It seems... weird. Minor civs have one planet. One. That means they're easy to conquer, tech or not. Not to mention the fact that these civs are good to conquer, as minor-civ planets always have a high class. Yet, the major AIs seem to largely ignore this opportunity. One could argue that minor civs exist to be exploited. If I start next to a minor civ, I let them build up their planet, maybe build a Manufacturing Capital or something, and then I take them over in one turn. Advantage to me.

Some AIs are crazy alright. Like the Drengin. Some are willing to trade and noble, like the Torians. However, it doesn't seem that the AIs are particularly opportunistic. Taking over minor civs as about could be a good result from opportunistic AIs. Also, a more opportunisic AI could lead to more backstabs of civs already at war and similar interesting dynamics.

The last major point I criticized originally was the interface, which was sometimes incovenient, and atrocious on other occasions. Suffice to say, 1.1 has actually exceeded my expectations in this regard. There are time-to-arrival markers, there's the fleet manager to manage fleets easier, ship design has become significantly easier, there are more popups telling you what's coming from where, and generally, there's a ton of interface tweaks that I can't and wouldn't want to all list here.

There was also the ethical issue of which I have been critical. Quoting myself,

[..] OK, now suppose that being Good is better in the global sense, and Evil choices are much better for the planet when they come up. That's a fair assesment.

The big problem is that it doesn't matter where you're leaning! Make Evil choices, and when you research Xeno Ethics, pay a heftier price and become Good! Besides, you know when Xeno Ethics is coming so you can even save up the money if you need to.

That's far too small a tradeoff, and essentially you can have your cake and eat it too with the ethics implementation. I'd say just get rid of that Xeno Ethics choice - you get what you've chosen, if you've made Evil choices, you stay Evil, period, no way to buy yourself goodness.

See... the issue is, you KNOW when you're getting Xeno Ethics. You KNOW where you're leaning. You KNOW what you want to select. Therefore, it's easy to prepare. If you make some Evil choices to gain mild to severe bonuses on the planet-level, but you want to lean Good globally, just prepare. Say you're a civ that leans Good by default. You've made enough Evil choices to make you lean Neutral. Just save up some money before getting Xeno Ethics, and take the global leaning of Good. Heck, you can save up more, and lean Good with the Drengin! I've tried it just for the heck of it, and yes, it's possible. I would probably take Evil with the Drengin just for the better weapons, but I'm trying to show that there really isn't that much of a choice.

On this one, I stay with my quoted suggestion of getting rid of the choice at all at Xeno Ethics - you just get the tech, and then you get a leaning depending on your past choices, and that's it.

So, that would conclude this post, and thanks again to everyone with the patience to read through this.

[bonscott]

Originally posted by Solver
Wow... I've never even seen anything above class 18!

Those ethical choices, though, are too strong sometimes. Such as the ones where the Evil one gives you +45% planet quality.

At least on Medium or above there is a class 26 somewhere. I've seen it in most games. But rarely do I get it.

As for ethics and strong evil choices, well, I agree with you to a point. But in this game I've actually taken the evil route every time. So now I'm halfway to pure evil. Guess what. Altarians and Torians hate my guts no matter how many trade routes I have with them. Terrans tolerate me but barely.

So I'm paying a price for taking the evil choices and I may need to build up military and wipe them out because my original plan of a diplomatic victory/peaceful game. Plus I can hardly count on my other evil "buddies" to have my back. More likely they will stab it. So you do pay for all those cool evil choices.

[Solver]

Well, if you make good choices, then you pay by having the Drengin and Yor hate you, so it's just a change in who hates you .

[tetley]

So you do pay for all those cool evil choices.

I pay exactly 2500bc for my evil choices: the price it costs for choosing neutral alignment after picking all evil choices. Haven't regretted it yet.

[bonscott]

Originally posted by tetley


I pay exactly 2500bc for my evil choices: the price it costs for choosing neutral alignment after picking all evil choices. Haven't regretted it yet.

Very good point which reminds me to research Xeno Ethics.

[Grandpa Troll]

does it take a long time time to learn or is the learning curve not too bad?

[Silver14]

I think it is simple to learn the basics anyway. There are some decent tutorials included as well. Also there is a wide range of AI intelligence levels so you can play at a lower level while learning the game.

When I started playing I think I was at subnormal intelligence or something like that. The neat thing about the dumber AI settings is that the AI will come and tell you when it knows you are up to something and at higher AI levels it would do something to stop you.

Mainly a military build up near one of the AI's planets prompted this. Not so much due to my lack of military tact as the fact the AI simply couldn't take out one of my ships and I was being lazy.

I would advise playing with a normal AI level or less, on a smaller map size. Large would probably be good, huge and gigantic may be too much to take in. So I'd start with a large map or slightly smaller.

I hope you are doing better Grandpa Troll.

[Grandpa Troll]

Spine surgery on Friday and then I should being doing fine, unless Im in the 10%-20% that has problems and then I may be doing nothjing but playing PC Games the rest of my life..but would rather it be a success.

Thanks

Gramps

[Solver]

Good luck with it Gramps .

When you get back and play GalCiv2, just start by reading the manual, and then play a couple of games on Normal difficulty. The Normal difficulty is ridicilously easy, basically you can do whatever you want and not be punished for it, so it's good for starting to explore the game.