GalCiv vs AC

[Vanguard]

Well, Galactic Civilizations provides a nice bit of 4X gameplay in a fairly clean layout.

But I just can't help thinking how much better Alpha Centauri was than this. AC was deeper, more intelligent, more strategic, had loads more atmosphere and sense of place.

It also had far better AI. I know people believe, for some reason, that Galactic Civilizations has great AI, but as far as I can tell it doesn't. The reason it can beat you is because it starts with loads more stuff in a game where you can't do anything that the AI doesn't do as well (or, in some cases, better. It would be nice if they would explain what some of the stuff in GC does). The logarithmic growth means that the AI ends up doing everything better than you because it is continually ahead of you in tech and exploration.

Also, the AI in GC never has to do anything very hard. There is no terrain in space and there isn't any need for tactics. All GC's AI has to do it build ships and point them at their targets. It does do that fairly well. But it isn't nearly the same thing as guiding mixed force armies across complex continents to attack defenders hiding in fungus.

Gal Civ's diplomatic AI is slightly better than AC's, but it has most of the same problems. AI players don't act "realistically", they act according to rules designed to give the AI as a whole an advantage. In addition the terrible Diplomatic Interface makes trying to strike a bargain more trouble than it is worth.

Overall, this is a weak 4X effort that is redeemed slightly by the moral dilemma screens. It is interesting, in the way that any 4X game is interesting. But it really doesn't hold a candle to a true work of imagination like AC.

[Pyrkaige]

Re: GalCiv vs AC

Originally posted by Vanguard
Well, Galactic Civilizations provides a nice bit of 4X gameplay in a fairly clean layout.

But I just can't help thinking how much better Alpha Centauri was than this. AC was deeper, more intelligent, more strategic, had loads more atmosphere and sense of place.

Interesting idea of comparison, and worth looking at. To answer briefly, the only thing where I'd agree here is in the atmosphere; AC had amazing atmosphere when it came to sucking you in to that weird world. Personally, though, it got rather boring once you figured out how to beat the fairly simple AI in it.

It also had far better AI. I know people believe, for some reason, that Galactic Civilizations has great AI, but as far as I can tell it doesn't. ...

From from your descriptions of GalCiv's AI, it would seem you haven't played it to a great degree or at the higher difficulty levels. Case in point:

The logarithmic growth means that the AI ends up doing everything better than you because it is continually ahead of you in tech and exploration.

The AI usually isn't ahead of me in those two aspects, in the games I play against Genius AI opponents. (It is usually ahead of me until late in the game with military production, given how I play.) If you jump into the game and try it on too high a difficulty, it will probably seem this way; I started at the very bottom difficulty level and worked up.

As for your other issues, again a lot depends on the sort of game you play, and especially the size of map. Larger games take a lot more tactical skill, and it can be fun to play "hit and run" with the computer if you manage to eke out better sensors and speed on your ships. AC had certain tactical issues to deal with as far as the terrain went, but that was generally easy to get around once you figured out how the game played itself out.

GalCiv certainly isn't the "micromanage every aspect" sort of game that AC was. You don't sit there and fiddle with a bunch of different aspects to your government's style, or build up a zillion different types of ships based on what you researched. Although I enjoyed aspects of that, personally that sort of thing gets tedious after a while, and you want to play against an AI that will actually give you a run for your money, fairly. GalCiv does that, and ultimately AC did not.

I suppose GalCiv isn't for everyone, but it seems rather over the top to call it a weak 4x effort given the ultimate strengths it has that are enjoyed by the many people who have bought it and found it intriguing. It may not be ground breaking in the sense that AC was, simply because there's less ground to break in the genre. But it takes the themes that people in the 4X arena enjoy and does them so damn well, that it ends up being an ultimately deeper game because of it. The best comparison I can think of is Warcraft III; not necessarily revolutionary in any specific part, but evolving beyond the rest of its genre to be just more... fun.

[Felch]

I agree the story does seem less immersive. That might be because it's a different story each time you play.

One thing I do like is that the AI doesn't seem to give up half way through the game like it did in AC.

Maybe if people in the mod-community worked on making more in depth events, then you would have more hooks in the plot. I think that some of the random events, like artifacts that supe-up AI civs or the Draginol (which I've read about but haven't encountered yet) do a good job of making individual games memorable.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Re: GalCiv vs AC

Originally posted by Vanguard
But I just can't help thinking how much better Alpha Centauri was than this. AC was deeper, more intelligent, more strategic, had loads more atmosphere and sense of place.

AC had the xenofungus puke color scheme, and was really a Civ 2.5 modpack that we got to pay full price for. The "sense of place" and atmosphere got old quick when the name of the game was ICS, just like with all the Civ series. Then there's the litany of bugs, including the great maintenance cost bug, etc.

It also had far better AI. I know people believe, for some reason, that Galactic Civilizations has great AI, but as far as I can tell it doesn't.

The SMAC AI stinks enormously - unless you started five squares away from Santiago (happened) and she found you first, the "AI" relied on map cheats, production cheats, and the same obsessive send a continuous stream of units up the same path ad nauseum. One PBEM game where we had a couple of AI factions and five humans, I got started next to good ol' Miriam, but with a land bridge and some good defensive terrain between her civ and mine on the close side, and a wider open area on a little less direct path. Naturally, she tried the direct route, and for 80 turns or so, I did a Fredericksburg, sitting and letting over 120 low end infantry and rovers obliterate themselves against my fortifications and losing 8 defenders. So much for tactical AI. Build a transport and go across the lake? Go the slightly longer open way that's harder to defend? Not in SMAC. I remember top level single player games where I destroyed over 1000 enemy units and lost less than 20. To give single player any challenge, people invented stuff like the "One City Challenge."

SMAC and SMACX had garbage AI, that relied just on huge cheats. The only thing that kept it from being instant shelfware for me is PBEM.

The reason it can beat you is because it starts with loads more stuff in a game where you can't do anything that the AI doesn't do as well (or, in some cases, better. It would be nice if they would explain what some of the stuff in GC does). The logarithmic growth means that the AI ends up doing everything better than you because it is continually ahead of you in tech and exploration.

You apparently aren't playing right, then. I haven't seen any indication that the AI starts with loads more stuff, although I'm sure it's handicapped in some way. SMAC, depending on level, gives the AI as much as 70% production subsidies on everything.

If you pursue the right early approach, you can outdo the GalCiv AI in exploration and anomoly harvesting. In one game I'm finishing now, my original survey ship lived up to the name "Hero" by killing enemy ships up to battleships. Between space junk harvests and all those one percent to this and that, the ship ended up with 109 hit points, an attack of 18 points, and defense of 39 points. With a movement rate of six, it's been all over the (huge) galaxy, harvesting away. Being ahead in tech doesn't matter - the trick is to focus on the right techs, consistent with what you want to do. In that sense, GalCiv is so far ahead of SMAC it isn't funny. In SMAC, I had no trouble at the top level being ahead in tech even as Miriam. Get tachyon fusion choppers, and it's all over. Transcend victory as Miriam in 200 turns? On a decent map, not much of a problem. Get the right improvements and build your science city, a ton of formers and a ton of crawlers, and put up those echelon mirrors. Micromanagement R Us.

GalCiv gives you/forces you to make a lot of tradeoffs to try to compete. SMAC gives you "how shall I overwhelm today, unless I get bored to tears playing with 120 formers and 100 crawlers."

Also, the AI in GC never has to do anything very hard. There is no terrain in space and there isn't any need for tactics.

Newsflash: GalCiv isn't a tactical level game. You're doing top level management of resources and priorities.

All GC's AI has to do it build ships and point them at their targets. It does do that fairly well. But it isn't nearly the same thing as guiding mixed force armies across complex continents to attack defenders hiding in fungus.

SMAC's AI didn't do that. It did map out predictable routes and fixate on target colonies, so you could slaughter the AI with a tenth the military forces it had, and concentrate on nothing but research and terraforming. Sometimes you can get away with that for a while in GalCiv, if you have the right start conditions with tight clusters and a large or huge galaxy. You could get away with bogus tactics a lot due to SMAC's A-Non-I stupidity, but GalCiv may well punish you. The only time SMAC was a challenge is if you got started right on top of an agressive enemy, because they know exactly where your colonies are, and might get one while you're out exploring in the first turn or five.

Gal Civ's diplomatic AI is slightly better than AC's, but it has most of the same problems. AI players don't act "realistically", they act according to rules designed to give the AI as a whole an advantage. In addition the terrible Diplomatic Interface makes trying to strike a bargain more trouble than it is worth.

Civ 2.5, er, ooops, SMAC's AI consisted of trying to extort a tech from you, then declaring war, whether the AI could do anything effective or not.

GalCiv's is substantially better than SMAC, although it has problems, like all diplomatic AI in all games.

Overall, this is a weak 4X effort that is redeemed slightly by the moral dilemma screens. It is interesting, in the way that any 4X game is interesting. But it really doesn't hold a candle to a true work of imagination like AC.

(a) You obviously don't know how to play very well, and (b) my first reaction to SMAC was that it was a graphics mod of Civ 2, with a few code flags added to create "factions" with different abilities, instead of just different "personalities." SMAC had very little creativity to it at all, 90% of it was a rework of Civ 2.

The only thing that kept SMAC from being shelfware after the first month was PBEM play. GalCiv doesn't have multiplayer, but it's the first 4x game since MoO2 that I've found to have long-term potential. MoO3 rapidly got tedious, with a choice of insane micromanagement or letting the governors butcher your production, so it's on the way to being shelfware. I don't anticipate that happening for quite a while with GalCiv.

[The Templar]

Originally posted by Felch X
I agree the story does seem less immersive. That might be because it's a different story each time you play.

One thing I do like is that the AI doesn't seem to give up half way through the game like it did in AC.

I found that the AC story got on my nerves after awhile. Playing the same story every time just wore the experience down for me.

Also, SMAC had that annoying feature where AIs would cover the oceans with those worthless cities. (I eventually modded that little "feature" out). Whereas the GalCiv AI won't colonize any planet below 14 or 15. If only the SMAC AI (or the Civ2 AI for that matter) could have done the same!

[dr. blackclove]

I thought AC was pretty much a snore, so maybe I'm the wrong person to comment on this. I love GalCiv. You have to imagine the story a little bit more than in AC, but I find that a "narrative" for my culture does emerge. Consider:

My first game I lost when the Yor Collective overran my underdeveloped and undefended worlds. Our allies, the Torians, tried mightily to save us.

My second game I won militarily. I played a "good" civilization that always did right by everyone until the end. Unfortunately, virtually the whole Drengin Empire, who were (shockingly given the attitude differences) our major trading ally, defected to form the Fundamentalists. They were just GONE. Then the Draginol showed up. I became a major military power against my will and ended up conquering everyone.

In my third game, I won with a culture victory. I had actually called the game "Evil Warmongers" thinking I'd be super militaristic. I attacked everyone with my USS Hero, wiping out colony ships to expand my empire at my own pace. Unfortunately for me, by the late game, the Drengin had double our population (they got a couple of worm events I think, they had planets of class 32) and much stronger ships thanks to well-placed resource harvesters, plus in some ways better technology. We were forced to live behind a wall of military-bonus starbases and a fleet of defensive dreadnoughts. It didn't matter that their ships were worth two of ours with THOSE defenses. Eventually I studied all the yellow techs and the whole galaxy started culture-flipping to my side. We even managed to capture one Drengin world (killing like 90 billion people total in our failed invasion and then our successful one).

That's what I love about GalCiv. Each game is so different and your victory strategy has to be adaptive. In AC I just did the same thing in every game.

[Garth Vader]

Single play GalCiv blows SMAC away.

I would classify the GalCiv AI as competent, which puts it a step above other games which are incompetent!

GalCiv AI's actually build buildings, and in a decent order, make trade routes, and generally run a decent economy.

Military builds are often bad, and the AI relies on "Alien wave" tactics to try and overwhelm you.

Due to PBEM I may actually end up having played SMAC more than GalCiv, but that depends on how fresh GalCiv remains.

I am on my 6th game, which is great considering I only played 1 and a half of Moo3 and never again want it on my computer.

[yin26]

The reason it can beat you is because it starts with loads more stuff in a game where you can't do anything that the AI doesn't do as well (or, in some cases, better. It would be nice if they would explain what some of the stuff in GC does). The logarithmic growth means that the AI ends up doing everything better than you because it is continually ahead of you in tech and exploration.

Umm, the AI only gets more 'stuff' on the Incredible level. And even on the Genius level I almost always manage to stay ahead of the AI in tech. What GC does much, much better than AC, however, is have the AI react to your actions in a much more human manner ... so you can win in a peaceful way if you play smart in that direction. You can also try to take over the galaxy, but plan for the AI to gang up in defense against you -- or even in defense *of* you if it makes sense for the AI to do so.

No, AC was off my drive in a matter of weeks. Good game but too predictable. GC, if it continues to get updates that close off some of the loopholes that make the game too easy, will stay a long, long while.

[Felch]

Originally posted by The Templar
I found that the AC story got on my nerves after awhile. Playing the same story every time just wore the experience down for me.

It was annoying. But it was a part of everything from the wonder movies to that damn part at the end when hordes of mind worms start going crazy. I prefer the different stories, with potential for a different experience every game. I kind of hope that more events will be put out.

Or, if it's possible some sort of tutorial on making our own. I've looked at the ones in the game, but I don't know what's safe to change, and I'd hate to make a mistake. (History major, not CompSci)

[The Templar]

Originally posted by Felch X


It was annoying. But it was a part of everything from the wonder movies to that damn part at the end when hordes of mind worms start going crazy. I prefer the different stories, with potential for a different experience every game. I kind of hope that more events will be put out.

Oh yeah, I forgot about those horrid little movies.

I also have the same problem to a lesser extent with MoO3 and its backstory. I prefer a minimal built-in narrative so that I can impose my own.

[Jamski]

Horrid little movies?

Every 4x game should have movies like SMAC

'nuff said.

-Jam

[campfreddie]

The movies and sound clips were what made SMAC such an immersive game. Galciv feels a little spartan in comparison.

Galciv has much better AI, especially the diplomatic AI.

However, Galciv is a bit more stat-heavy and the wasted resource issue makes all your planets a bit vanilla.

Former-spam in SMAC is replicated in Galciv by constructor-spam. Hopefully, updates to Galciv will fix this bit of micromanagement tedium.

Currently I prefer SMAC, but I think that will change after a few more updates to GalCiv.

[Ellestar]

It's good enouth that GalCiv is compared with such a great game as SMAC. MOO3 mostly compared with sh*t.

[Cookie Monster]

Originally posted by Ellestar
It's good enouth that GalCiv is compared with such a great game as SMAC. MOO3 mostly compared with sh*t.

[The Templar]

Originally posted by War of Art
Horrid little movies?

Every 4x game should have movies like SMAC

'nuff said.

-Jam

The movies I really liked were in CTP and CTP2. Not saying I liked the games (would have been good had they worked ...), but the movies were pretty good. Short, to the point, and not as talky/preachy as those SMAC movies.

I just ended up clicking through the SMAC movies. But to each his own.