GalCiv vs AC

[MichaeltheGreat]

Movies and fluff are nice the first few times you play, but after some number of games, they just become an interruption, IMO, except for the victory screens.

The real problem with graphics is that they often take a disproportionate amount of the development budget, because the average (i.e. low level) gamer is perceived to be more interested in glitz than in things like strong AI and long-term replayability.

In pre-release marketing, you can't hype AI, but you can splatter screen-shots all over the game press, and visual marketing is the norm, so boxes, store displays and everything else is driven by the kind of graphics you have. Stills from the different movies are used extensively in that stuff too.

If you look at SMAC, which was/is buggy as hell, not counting stability issues, and also look at the game design and implementation quality of CtP and CtP II, it's an interesting question to ask how much better would the games have been on release if half the graphics budget was shifted to design, coding and playtesting.

SMAC was hyped pre-release as being based on a new, proprietary graphics engine. So what? The results didn't justify the costs, but then you had things like the top two weapons reactors having the same value, despite the tech level difference, a wonder that didn't work, the maintenance cost bug, and a zillion cheats such as the infinite right-click paradrop bug. Then the A-non-I which seemed to me to be absolutely no better than Civ II out of the box. What a difference a budget shift could have made. IMO, the only saving grace for SMAC was multiplayer, and MoO3 looks to be abysmal for MP play, so that's not a likely source of salvation.

GalCiv's graphics are OK - nice, but not a lot of sizzle, but the game was playable out of the box, has a lot of replayability, and has reasonable semi-competent AI in a game world where really semi-competent AI hasn't yet been achieved. Given the choice, I'd much rather see more games with the development emphasis like GalCiv's than like SMAC's.

[Felch]

Oh, never mind on the tutorial, I found the ones on the Stardock forums.

Do you think they would mind if we posted that information here? It seems like it could reach some people quicker that way.

[Cookie Monster]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat
GalCiv's graphics are OK - nice, but not a lot of sizzle, but the game was playable out of the box, has a lot of replayability, and has reasonable semi-competent AI in a game world where really semi-competent AI hasn't yet been achieved. Given the choice, I'd much rather see more games with the development emphasis like GalCiv's than like SMAC's.

That is the mother of all points. GalCiv is playable right out of the box and has a challenging AI. Every TBS gamer longs for the latter. The former is a boast that few games these days can make and that's a shame. When I buy a product, any product, I should not have to wait another month after buying it for a patch to make the product usefull.

[The Templar]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat
If you look at SMAC, which was/is buggy as hell, not counting stability issues, and also look at the game design and implementation quality of CtP and CtP II, it's an interesting question to ask how much better would the games have been on release if half the graphics budget was shifted to design, coding and playtesting.

I certainly think this contributes towards a large portion of the problems with games. But oddly enough, the Civ3 boards were filled with grousing over the lack of wonder-movies when Civ3 first came out. So I don't think its just the average gameplayer focused on graphics.

On the other hand, the graphical coolness of CTP2 just added insult to the injury of an entirely botched game. The AI in that game made the MoO3 AI look agressive.

A 10-year old kid at the divorce proceeding of his parents is asked by the judge who he (the kid) want's to live with.

Kid says, "You honor, I don't want to live with my mommy because she beats me. I don't want to live with my daddy because he beats me."

Judge responds, "So who do you want to live with."

Kid answers, "The AI for MoO3 - it don't beat anybody!"

[Garth Vader]

at the joke!

[Jamski]

Well, we all know that MtG isn't a big fan of SMAC (because its not Civ2 ) but the wonder movies, bugs, etc all add to the game IMHO. Everyone who plays SMAC for a while knoes the "characters" of the various factions - who's more evil? Hive or Drengins? Chairman Yang is more "real" to me than Lord Wassisname.

GalCiv is rapidly becoming my No.2 game though - it only needs a bit more "tinsel" to make me feel that the Torians really are too nice to kill, and not simply too weak.

-Jam

[Vanguard]

First of all, I did not mean to imply that the AI in GalCiv is unbeatable------ it isn't, of course. What I meant to say was, "The only reason you can't beat the AI in GalCiv as easily as you can in SMAC is because the AI starts with tons more stuff. And it is NOT true that the AI only gets more stuff on Genius level. It starts with more stuff on all the non-simple difficulty levels.

Starting with more colony ships is a major advantage in GalCiv, since it allows the AI to bogart more stars----- which is basically the entirety of early game strategy. In addition the AI apparently knows where all the good stars are, which greatly contributes to its bogarting ability.

So the AI "cheats" all the time, although I admit that this sort of cheating is probably (slightly) less annoying than some of the grosser forms of productivity cheating.

If the AI were particularly good in other ways then I would still admit that the GalCiv AI was as good as claimed. After all, the purpose of the AI is to provide a good game that seems fair. If it does that, then I really don't care how it goes about it.

But, honesty, I have yet to see the AI in GalCiv do anything that I thought was especially intelligent. It is competant at building and moving and attacking------ but no more than competant. And how hard is it to do this stuff competantly on a map without terrain and with a highly simplistic combat system? Not really very hard. Certainly not as hard as trying to launch trans-continental amphibious invasions with air support.

Of course, there really isn't all that much that the GalCiv AI could do that would be really impressive. There just isn't much in the way of actual strategy or tactics in the game for the AI (or the player) to excel in. The game itself has to be the most simplistic major 4x game produced in quite a while. Combat is trivially simple, the layout of your empire is entirely random and not subject to much improvement, there are no real "alternative units" or unusual tactics. It is all pretty much "move to planet and attack".

I guess Stardock does deserve some credit for sticking to basics. But unfortunately they have reduced the 4X genre to a game where only the production is fun. This entire game consists of nothing more than producing the stuff needed to follow one of several "Golden Roads" to victory. There is no tactical game, no real strategic game, very little game at all, except for the admittedly quite compelling process of building up your planets.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by War of Art
Well, we all know that MtG isn't a big fan of SMAC (because its not Civ2 ) but the wonder movies, bugs, etc all add to the game IMHO. Everyone who plays SMAC for a while knoes the "characters" of the various factions - who's more evil? Hive or Drengins? Chairman Yang is more "real" to me than Lord Wassisname.

SMAC as a PBEM base was quite nice, minus some bugs - you had to trust players not to use several cheats in the rules, because there was no real way to know. As a single player game, it was just lacking. The only playtesting apparently done prerelease was ICS + rover rush on small planets, because anything outside of that was just grossly unbalanced.
Getting all of the wonders on the supposed top level is absurd, but I did it, and I got all but one several times. To keep it entertaining, I did stuff like make transport choppers (only 5 moves with the transport module) and drop rover super formers, and transport tons of them en masse to raise elevation west of the AI's main colonies, desertifying the colony tiles. Or nerve gas everyone, with lots of wormburner choppers back home, so I'd make tons more money from worm harvesting than you would from the 9000-odd years of UN sanctions.

GalCiv is rapidly becoming my No.2 game though - it only needs a bit more "tinsel" to make me feel that the Torians really are too nice to kill, and not simply too weak.
-Jam

One of these days, I might get back to those MoO3 games I left unfinished. And I think that SMAC CD is still around in a box of shelfware CDs.

[Garth Vader]

AI doesn't start with more colony ships on any level. It only knows where the yellow stars are.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Vanguard
First of all, I did not mean to imply that the AI in GalCiv is unbeatable------ it isn't, of course. What I meant to say was, "The only reason you can't beat the AI in GalCiv as easily as you can in SMAC is because the AI starts with tons more stuff. And it is NOT true that the AI only gets more stuff on Genius level. It starts with more stuff on all the non-simple difficulty levels.

Starting with more colony ships is a major advantage in GalCiv, since it allows the AI to bogart more stars----- which is basically the entirety of early game strategy. In addition the AI apparently knows where all the good stars are, which greatly contributes to its bogarting ability.

With all due respect, there are strategic counters to that. A 50% bonus to colony ship speed in the early going is nice, so I flip to 100% output, run a deficit, shift to 50% military and 50% research, and do propulsion theory -> cold fusion -> impulse right off the bat, while cranking scout ships, and heading them out for likely intersections with other races (assuming loose or tight clusters). I first colonize outermost planets to extend my range and deny them to others, then I fill in planets I've bypassed.

So the AI "cheats" all the time, although I admit that this sort of cheating is probably (slightly) less annoying than some of the grosser forms of productivity cheating.

In some form or another, game AI all cheat, since they have to move much faster than you do (who's going to wait 20 minutes on a turn while the AI figures out what it wants to do?) and is a minority of the overall development effort. Write an adaptable game AI engine, and you can retire.

If the AI were particularly good in other ways then I would still admit that the GalCiv AI was as good as claimed. After all, the purpose of the AI is to provide a good game that seems fair. If it does that, then I really don't care how it goes about it.

"Admit" means to concede what is already true.

Certainly not as hard as trying to launch trans-continental amphibious invasions with air support.

And what game does that? Certainly not SMAC, which it's "send every unit from here to x,y" approach. All SMAC does is obsess and do a bunch of goto tile orders. There's a difference between a herd of lemmings and a coordinated combined arms attack.

Of course, there really isn't all that much that the GalCiv AI could do that would be really impressive. There just isn't much in the way of actual strategy or tactics in the game for the AI (or the player) to excel in. The game itself has to be the most simplistic major 4x game produced in quite a while. Combat is trivially simple, the layout of your empire is entirely random and not subject to much improvement, there are no real "alternative units" or unusual tactics. It is all pretty much "move to planet and attack".

I guess Stardock does deserve some credit for sticking to basics. But unfortunately they have reduced the 4X genre to a game where only the production is fun. This entire game consists of nothing more than producing the stuff needed to follow one of several "Golden Roads" to victory. There is no tactical game, no real strategic game, very little game at all, except for the admittedly quite compelling process of building up your planets.

"A senior commander must focus on where, not how, to defeat the enemy." - Gen. George S. Patton III.

GalCiv focuses on the top level, and avoids micromanagement. In games like SMAC, Civ and MoO, I'm the hardest of hardcore micromanagers, because I detest the inefficient and often downright insane things the AI "governors" and "viceroys" do to screw up your planets and fleets.

GalCiv is like a big step forward from Stars! which also rocked as a top level empire management game. It's a joke to even compare it to games like SMAC, same as it is a joke to compare games like SMAC to X:COM. They're TBS, but beyond that distinction, they're not at all the same genre of game and they're not intended to be.

[Eric S]

Vangard, I suspect that you haven't played GalCiv enough to get the hang of it. There's quite a bit going on there once you figure it out, it just isn't all starship combat.

And as others have stated, the AI doesn't start out with extra colony ships. It may lease them, immediately, but you have the same option. If you can't at least come close to matching the AI's expansion, then you need to examine your playing style. It's not that hard to do that once you get the hang of it.

[MichaeltheGreat]

In another game I started last night, I opted to trade several race bonuses for the five points necessary to get +1 speed, then I followed the same initial research path of Propulsion Theory -> Cold Fusion -> Impulse Drive.

On a huge galaxy, no clusters, I have 25 planets and six more on the way, plus six resources (three mil, two research, one econ) and three resources with constructors headed for them as of September 2184.

I bounced the Yor early, was lucky to get a starfighter from an asteroid pop, and I proceeded to kill Yor colony ships until I'd colonized all the good planets around them. They eventually asked for peace, and were willing to give five techs I didn't have, so I let them live now that they're stuck being a two planet race.

You have to unbalance some of your play approach and be willing to take risks.

[The Templar]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat
You have to unbalance some of your play approach and be willing to take risks.

Yes, and the range of risks varies greatly with your actual starting position. Are you alone in a large cluster, in a small cluster with a minor race, alone in a small cluster far away from everything?

That's what I love about this game.

[Jamski]

Ctrl-N is what I love about this game

Start in a corner surrounded by 1,000 empty secors with the Drengin for company in your home system? Press Ctrl-N!

I like the way its possible to come from behind, for both the player and the AI.

-Jam

[Ray K]

gah, I just *wish* I could start with the Drengin in my home sector just so I could wipe them out before they could build up their industry