GalCiv vs AC

[vee4473]

I've been thinking about this, and come to the conclusion that graphics are only slightly less important than gameplay.

Because, if ONLY gameplay was the relevant factor, then why bother with anything more than a grid with colored dots representing the different ships and planets. (and maybe some would like that)

The best gameplay with only dots on a grid will bore, while at the same time full motion 3d rendered ships and weapons with no fun gameplay will die as well...

So, i gotta say that graphics and gameplay do indeed go hand in hand. One cannot really do well without the other...at least for me.

[vee4473]

And as for the GC vs AC thing...

I have to say that I still like AC better. Can't say exactly why, just something I can feel..

Galciv is fun, but I still gotta hand it to AC for being an incredibly great game for intangible reasons at times.

Although I think that the love/hate AC feelings are rooted in whether or not you like sci-fi in the first place.

And graphically, AC was impressive to me with it's 3D terrain. Nice twist, instead of having just tiles representing mountains or hills...they actually MADE the mountains and hills.

great stuff.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by vee4473
I've been thinking about this, and come to the conclusion that graphics are only slightly less important than gameplay.

Because, if ONLY gameplay was the relevant factor, then why bother with anything more than a grid with colored dots representing the different ships and planets. (and maybe some would like that)

The best gameplay with only dots on a grid will bore, while at the same time full motion 3d rendered ships and weapons with no fun gameplay will die as well...

So, i gotta say that graphics and gameplay do indeed go hand in hand. One cannot really do well without the other...at least for me.

Gameplay is a whole bunch of factors - UI, AI, replayability and configurability, game skill levels to match up to human players' capabilities, bugs and stability, and the underlying game design - what units, tech trees, etc. AI and beta testing are only small parts of that development budget.

With SMAC as an extreme example, the development team decided for no particular good reason to do a proprietary graphics rendering engine from scratch for the static graphics. The net result (not talking color palletes or unit pictures, but the engine itself) was nothing great, but a lot of time and development budget expended. You don't have to cut much from the graphics budget, or simplify much, to have a lot of additional resources to put into critical portions of your development budget.

It's not like you have a choice of all or nothing.

[Lemmy]

Vanguard, how about you post a few scores on the Metaverse showing us all how you can beat it on the higher levels? Might add defense to your....erm... credibility issue.... at the moment.

I'd like to see that too. From everything i've read so far, i'd say harlde played the game, and not even on the higher difficulty settings.

It may be true that the AI has strategies that won't come to fruition for hundreds of years. But again, so what? The only real strategy you have to worry about is the one where they send dreadnoughts through your star systems with transports behind them. You can't do anything about any of their other strategies, so how does it figure into the strategy of the game? I mean, about the best you could do to counter any strategy on their part is to launch a massive invasion to knock out a key planet. But in my experience this is simply unrealistic at painful or above, and not worthwhile below that.

Wait, do you mean you lose your games against an inferior AI?
You don't have to go to war with those empires with Dreadnoughts you know. There is actual diplomacy involved in GalCiv, diplomacy that can help you avoid wars.

Like Civ3, GalCiv is not a strategy game. It is an anti-strategy game. The designer knows he can't design an AI that provides a good match for good human players----- it's impossible. So he designs the game so that the human player can't use his superior intelligence and learning ability in truly strategic ways. Strategic play is basically limited to the build queues, which is something the designer can anticipate and design the AI to handle. The rest of the game for the human player basically consists of tediously doing the same thing over and over again, something computers are basically better at than humans.

Replace "strategy" with "tactical micromanagement" and you'rea bit closer to the truth.

[Lemmy]

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).

Now let's really compare this to AC.
The AC AI on the highest setting gets huge production bonusses, and the player gets penalties. right?
The GalCiv AI on the highest setting only gets production bonusses, but i believe it's smaller as in AC, something like 50% bonus.

So with an even AI you'd say that AC is more difficult.
Yet beating the AC AI on the highest setting is, well, easy really. You can use the same strategy over and over again.
So far i haven't seen any proof that the GC AI is as easy to beat on the highest setting as the AC AI. There is even plenty of proof that the AI is actually hard to beat on the highest setting.
Except for some vague ingame examples, which noone here can verify, you haven't provided any convincing arguments that the GC AI really is as bad as you say

[vee4473]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat


Gameplay is a whole bunch of factors - UI, AI, replayability and configurability, game skill levels to match up to human players' capabilities, bugs and stability, and the underlying game design - what units, tech trees, etc. AI and beta testing are only small parts of that development budget.

With SMAC as an extreme example, the development team decided for no particular good reason to do a proprietary graphics rendering engine from scratch for the static graphics. The net result (not talking color palletes or unit pictures, but the engine itself) was nothing great, but a lot of time and development budget expended. You don't have to cut much from the graphics budget, or simplify much, to have a lot of additional resources to put into critical portions of your development budget.

It's not like you have a choice of all or nothing.

I think AC's 3D terrain WAS great for the type of game. Better than the same mountain/hill/desert etc... tiles scattered across the map in civ.

Maybe i'm alone.

And i really wasn't trying to break down gameplay into all of it's elements.

I just never understood how some people say that all they care about is gameplay.

I just wanted to voice my opinion that graphics are more important than alot of people think. Because graphics have the same power to increase or decrease "fun factor" (depending on how good it is) that gameplay has.

Of course, if you had to choose between good graphics/bad game or bad graphics/good game, you would most likely choose the latter.

Having said that, I still value graphics just as much and I don't think that if someone says that they think the graphics for a game could be better, then that means they don't value gameplay as much as the rest.

Because I have seen many posts criticizing Galciv's graphics (i'm not among them) answered with "i care more about gameplay". As if the guy posting the graphics opinion doesn't.

[Ellestar]

1) Game design in GalCiv was really made simple to make AI a better opponent. But still in SMAC there is even less options IMHO because AI can't do anything at all.

2) Sometimes simple graphics makes gameplay even better. If someone remembers Dune 2, in-game graphics was bad of course, but everyone can see good pictures of units/buildings in Mentat menu, and picture of the new unit/building showed before every mission - so everyone was able to imagine *real* units. This is example of the outstanding game design IMHO.

[Lemmy]

Having said that, I still value graphics just as much and I don't think that if someone says that they think the graphics for a game could be better, then that means they don't value gameplay as much as the rest.

Because I have seen many posts criticizing Galciv's graphics (i'm not among them) answered with "i care more about gameplay". As if the guy posting the graphics opinion doesn't.

I totally agree with you.
Actually, i find the GC graphics the best ever for a TBS game.
It's the little features that makes me like it so much, for example the sparks you see on your damaged ships, or the rotating starbases.
Also, for most TBS games, a high resolution can make the game look a lot better.

[salamander]

Yea galcivs extremely bland in the feel department, just nothing to make you feel that you're not simply moving around cardboard counters. Diplomacy is very good, but the whole game concept makes it very easy to build an AI for as its really not very ambitious to begin with; no terrain, ships all the same, planets very generic. I really can't see how this game has gotten good ratings, but then I disagree with most reviewers and the crap (like this game) I've bought based on good reviews lately.

Alpha Centauri on the other hand was a great game and also got good ratings, anyone who appreciates science fiction and strat games would love it. Just played a game a few nights ago and it still holds up well. The story evolves with the techs in a cool abstract way so that every game was different in a sense but you were driven to see the conclusion anyway.

[The Templar]

Originally posted by salamander
Alpha Centauri on the other hand was a great game and also got good ratings, anyone who appreciates science fiction and strat games would love it. Just played a game a few nights ago and it still holds up well. The story evolves with the techs in a cool abstract way so that every game was different in a sense but you were driven to see the conclusion anyway.

Granted, there is something somewhat bland about GC - I can't quite put my finger on it, but sure.

I must disagree with your assessment of SMAC. The story never changes, the AI makes my cat look like a supergenius, and the forest of sea cities drove me up the wall.

[Simpleton]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat


Doom III is about as relevant to a 4x TBS discussion as is playing chess at Starbucks.

The question is, would the MoO3 gamers prefer more glitz and the same AI, or more challenging AI and the same glitz?

Stars! was positively early 90's VB in it's graphic envioronment, but it developed a very devoted following nonetheless, because the replayability rocked and the AI was solid.

I agree that gameplay is the primary concern of all TBS'ers. However, graphics must have some significant importance. I recall when SMAC came out and people were harping on the dark graphics set. CIV3 also had/has its graphical critics. I submit that graphics are an important part of any TBS game and deserve attention.
For myself, the graphics of CIV3 are just right. They aren't flashy but they tell me what's happening. They're functional and pretty so the programmers struck a balance between gameplay and graphics. I would say that gameplay and graphics go together hand-in-hand. If this wasn't the case, why not just have numbers,symbols to represent the map/units and put all the effort into AI?
As far as those poor souls who play MOO3: Is there any glitz even there? The game seems like a travesty. Infogrames must be wondering where the money they gave quicksilver (or whoever designed the game) was spent. The graphics suck, the gameplay sucks, the AI sucks. Someone obviously let this project get out of hand rather than placing limits early on.
From the sounds of it, I don't think a patch or patch(s) can save the game.
However, to answer your question. Definitely, MOO3 players (those poor sots) would prefer gameplay over glitz. That being said, if the gameplay was awesome but the graphics totally ugly you would have heard many foul cries from those same players who say they prioritize gameplay, myself included.

[Vanguard]

Okay, as per the advice of Yin et alia, I have played quite a bit more GalCiv and I have also reinstalled SMAC and played some more of it.

Having done that I see no reason to change my original assessment. GalCiv is a decent 4X game which manages to leverage random events and an alignment system into a mildly interesting rehash of the Empire genre.

It is not the greatest TBS game of all time. That honor still resides with SMAC, which outclasses it in every way except, possibly, in build AI.

On that question, I will say that Galciv's build AI is very good at exploiting the intricacies of the tech tree and the weakness of the economic model. This is fine, I guess, although it is a little annoying not being able to know what tech does what.

I will point out, however, that this is not really so much "artificial intelligence" as it is just a script of what to research and what to build. It just looks intelligent because of the exceptionally arcane game system.

Other than that, the AI in GalCiv is nothing special. The military AI is dunderheaded, cheerfully willing to send an endless stream of capital ships to destroy themselves against a well defended starbase (like throwing eggs against a wall, to use a memorable phrase). The diplomatic AI is fine, but doesn't do things much differently than SMAC or Civ3. Additionally the effect of "diplomatic advantage" results in some extremely bizarre effects that heavily corrupts the entire diplomatic system.

Despite the claims put forth here that the AI is a more intelligent or realistic negotiator than SMAC, I have seen only a couple of instances where the AI is more amenable to negotiation. Just this morning I tried to negotiate a peace with the Drengins, with whom I had no particular quarral or ideological difference. I offered them an increasing set of inducements for peace with no luck, until, just to find out what it would take, I finally offered them all my money, all my trade goods, all my star systems and all my technology. That's right------ unconditional surrender of the leading power in the galaxy. Their response? "That doesn't sound like a very good deal to us." This is the AI touted to be superior to SMAC?

[MichaeltheGreat]

That's nice.

[vee4473]

getting bored michael?

how come?

[Kuciwalker]

Simpleton - what you're talking about falls more under UI than graphics. We don't need rendered, rotating 3d ships with microscopic detail. The only level of "graphics" that is important is the level that is good for playing the game - information, etc. And colored dots would be much, much worse for that.