Why are you putting GalCiv aside?

[Draginol]

Chronus, the star bases allow you to do a lot of the same kind of thing.

[Master Marcus]

Well, I intend to stay on board as long as I can and I'm still in. Can't wait for the final release of the expansion, and it's good to hear that the ''nicer and most wanted'' stuff - though not fully implemented yet in the beta - is the easiest to code later on.

Though I'm still enjoying GalCiv, I have one gripe: the AI does not declare war on the player too often - and never in my games when I'm dominating. When I'm ranked number one, military and all, the AI opponents let me undisturbed and the later stages of a typical game can be quite boring - like any other TBS except CivIII. Yes, in CivIII the AI cheats but at least it can be quite of a military challenge even on normal diff levels like Regent. I win regularly at GalCiv's Painful without being challenged. But I'm doomed at Crippling, since I'm always behind the AI. So my ideal wish is that the AI can declare war on the player - either dominating or behind - by some forged alliances if needed, and also adjusted gaps between the diff levels.

[vee4473]

Since Brad is checking in on this thread kinda frequently, i'll ask a question that I have asked in the past.

Are there any plans to add a zoom function to the main play map?

Now, THAT, would be appreciated.

[Chronus]

Chronus, the star bases allow you to do a lot of the same kind of thing.

Agreed. But it's not the end result I'm looking at here. It's the how I get there.

I'm very tempted to classify Constructors and Traders as "buildings" as opposed to "units" because once they're built, you really don't derive any benefit from them until after they "perish" (i.e. they are integrated into a starbase or turned into a trade route). And of course, once they "perish" they are no longer a "unit" that you control. It's almost as if they are a mobile type of "building". This seems true with most TBS equivalents such as Caravans.

However, the Worker units in Civ 3 (Settlers in Civ 1 & 2) are the only true, economy-oriented units that I know of in any TBS game (granted, that ain't much ). They have multiple tasks to perform (build mine or roads, clear forest or pollution) and they do not perish (except when attacked or disbanded . . . consequently, they need to be protected). I suspect that for many "peace-builders", who feel flooded with a bajillion units used for military purposes, workers/settlers are a dream come true. Alas, a common and vitally important NON-MILITARY unit to move around and do things with .

Silly? I suppose . . .

Anyway, I'm looking forward to the expansion pack.

Are there any plans to add a zoom function to the main play map?

I'm just curious . . . how does that greatly enhance your enjoyment of the game?

[Egbert]

I agree with the above comments on workers and tile management and would like a another closely related point.

On of the things that gave the Civ series that "just one more turn" quality is that there were always choices to make and one often could not be sure that one had made the best choice.

By way of illustration: At the beginning of a Civ game one must not only choice which tiles to work first but also what improvements should be made to each tile and the sequence of those improvements whilst being careful not to waste any turns needlessly moving ones worker. On top of that there was also the question of whether or not one should build a granary first so one can pump out more settlers later. Also the problems of whether or not to build military units first, if so, how many and should I keep some on city defence or send the lot out exploring. Choices, choices. Even the best players have debates about these things.

OTH At the beginning of a GalCiv game there is but one choice. Ramp up military spending to between 70% to 100%, put the balance to research, ramp up spend rate to 100% and spam space with colony ships. There appear to be no debates about this strategy, the only differences of opinion are about the percentage to go to military.

A bit later in a Civ game one has choices about building sequences. Some cities should build a barracks ASAP and others never need a barracks. Should I build a market first or a temple or a barracks or perhaps a wonder or something else.

In a GalCiv game the decisions are easier. For most planets you build soil enrichment, banks, habitat, economic exchange and perhaps entertainment network unless you load the unhappy people on transports. That is about it until rather late in the game when things like stadium become available. A few big planets build a lot of improvements. Why, because most things are not worth building in most places.

[Egbert]

DIPLOMACY.

Extortion pays off too handsomely in GalCiv. Astonishing what a few early starfighters can get.

The extortion is so "extortionate" and so repitive that I automatically refuse to pay no matter what because I know there will be further outrageous demands in the very near future.

The AI seems to declare war without considering the strength of the allies of its intended victim. My current game is a typical case. The Arceans are repeatedly attacking my very weak ally, the Arvinidians. I am stronger than the Arceans, so are each of my other allies the Carinoids, the Alexians and the Scotlingas. We are locked in a cycle, Arceans attack, allies rapidly destroy Arcean fleet, make peace, Arceans attack.

Also it is pointless to pay (or bully) someone to stop fighting someone else. They start fighting again the very next turn. It is clear that each AI reviews the galactic situation each turn to see who is weak enough to push around, no consideration is given to recent events.

It seems counterproductive to ally with more than one major (or to ally with a major and a minor) as, sooner or later, they are quite likely to fight each other. I suggest an EU2 type of alliance system in which anyone who joins an alliance must also ally with ALL members of the alliance. This would make it much harder to get more than one ally, perhaps exorbitant payments to get them to ally could be made. At the moment, allying with other majors is the sort of thing one would only do on the very last turn to get a diplomatic victory.

New minors are treated as nothing more than punching bags. They start with all of my technology and only survive until they have given it all away as extortion. This may have been put in as a "game balancer" however it militates against a tech lead strategy. You work hard to get a big tech lead, a minor appears, every AI civ Civ instantly says gimme, the minor dishes out your hard earned tech lead. Sure, you can invade the minor but that takes some time to get your transport to his system, extortion starts the turn the minor appears.

I would like new minors to have a lower tech level to avoid this problem and I would like them to have some capacity to defend themselves.

BTW I do think GalCiv is, overall, a most excellent game despite all of my comments. (I play it too much).

[Egbert]

More ranting about extortion and alliances.

I note that if one is at war against an alliance then one enemy may pay you for peace then, next turn, declare war because you at war with their ally. A few turns later they offer to pay you some more for peace. This peace/war cycles then continues. One may finish up receiving ludicrous benefits from such a war.

This cuts both ways. If I have a weak ally it will go into this cycle with my opponent.

This could be fixed by having the entire alliance make peace all together. Any tributes received could either be dished out by the alliance leader or by an AI routine. (Europa Universalis 2 has an excellent alliance model for making peace). Any AI considering an attack on an alliance member should consider the strength of the entire alliance.

To prevent human abuse of alliances it may be desirable that alliances are defensive only so allies need not support me if I start a war (and I need not support an ally that picks a fight). Also, if the spoils are to be distributed by the alliance leader then it seems desirable that the alliance leader be the civ that was attacked, not necessarily the biggest civ or the human civ.

[anofalye]

*giggles*

You should be able to establish a protectorate as well over minor powers (or vanishing use to be major).

Once under a protectorate the power cede all diplomatics to you, they have no official major politic toward anyone else. They might be able to do stuff, but NOBODY should be able to declare them WAR without declaring you war as well. Maybe they should have to pay a small derisive tribute(should not be major), give you some research points and gain 1 of you old tech every many turns, so they are always backward technologically, yet, they help you a little and you give them old tech...eventually. This is not like conquering, it is in between conquering and freedom. Also someone under a protectorate should received all your "influence"(in addition to their own) to resist others empires "influence" and get also an awfull amount to resist your own empire influence and not revolt to become fully member at the first occasion, as they developp a sense of working within without been really part...

You can even complexify the thing by making mutliples step of assimilation. 1- Foreign minister 2- tech sector 3- economic 4- social(complete, it actually is part of yourself like any other place, no matter the official titles)

Anyway, just an idea...but I would love to make it possible that others understanda message like: "Those are under my direct protection, like any of my planet, so...if you wanna bring it, sure" Now, they act like grade 3 retards that can`t understand big brother will not like if you beat his little brother...Often I find myself at war with another empire just to protect a minor (yes, it is to profitable for me to abandon the minor).

And...a tech relative value should be based on how many have it...a tech that everyone but you have, is worth a LOT less in trade, as you will eventually get it, everyone have it...on the other hand, a tech only 1 person have should have a much better value.

[Master Marcus]

Originally posted by anofalye
*giggles*

You should be able to establish a protectorate as well over minor powers (or vanishing use to be major).

You can even complexify the thing by making mutliples step of assimilation. 1- Foreign minister 2- tech sector 3- economic 4- social(complete, it actually is part of yourself like any other place, no matter the official titles)
And...a tech relative value should be based on how many have it...a tech that everyone but you have, is worth a LOT less in trade, as you will eventually get it, everyone have it...on the other hand, a tech only 1 person have should have a much better value.

--I like the protectorate idea, that should be definitely considered for a second XP, but GalCiv - still a deep strategy game - has simplified tactics mechanisms so I don't think we should suggest too much of complexified details like assimilation steps - as much I would like it, overdetailed social engines for complex TBS doesn't fit for GalCiv - I'm sure Brad want to keep it affordable for the mass of gamers. For details and complexity, we can always try for a SMAC 2....

--your tech relative value, if its like in CivIII, yes, that should be it and also upon the map size/abundance of good planets.

[Egbert]

Yippee!

Just saw an update over at the GalCiv forum about some expansion thingy. Some of the stuff is in there.
And goodies.

[Master Marcus]

yes, it's mentioned also that the final release should be SEPTEMBER.

[tetleytea]

HOMM IV Expansion pack: HOMM IV sucks, and New World laid off most of their development staff, so HOMM IV expansion isn't up to par either.

HOMM II & III expansion packs: these rule. New races, lots of new units, new campaigns. And just when you thought HOMM III was dead, here comes HOMM III:Shadow of Death. Woo woo!

Command & Conquer/C&C Red Alert Expansion packs: new nationalities, new units, units shuffled around between races. But not as well-balanced as the originals. About on par with what I look for in a paid-for expansion pack.

Civ II & III: new civs, expansion pack makes multiplayer possible. On par.

Warlords II & III: new races, new units, map editing, new artifacts. On par.

Warcraft II & III, Starcraft Brood War: no new races, but new units, new campaigns, well-balanced. So maybe below par but I'm not complaining.

Empire Earth: Original: good. Expansion: sucks.

Real War: They call this a game?

Diablo II XP: Expansion pack absolutely rules, and it has new character classes (the equivalent of a new race).

Ultima Online: expansion packs open up new maps and add more stuff, and they FINALLY introduced non-PK shards. So on par, but UO sucks to begin with. Stick with Everquest.



When I mentioned I thought the Galciv expansion wasn't on par with other expansion packs, that was strictly based on the feature set I saw listed for the beta, and disregarding the price. If Galciv were a paid XP, I'd probably expect a new alien race, new race bonuses, new ships, and particularly for Galciv new difficulty levels. Like maybe split up "Crippling" into "Paraplegic" and "Quadraplegic". Also I'd probably expect some new terrain feature, like you have stars, anomalies, starbase resources, and....?

[Draginol]

The problem I think we have here is that you seem to view new races and ships as somehow being a big deal. I can only assume you haven't played the GalCiv:XU beta.

Throwing in a new race, for instance, takes less than a minute. A major racew ould take slightly more work due to artwork. New units? Trivial. A text file with some graphics.

On the other hand, adding in way points, a tech tree navigator, and hyperlinkging info all over the place required significant new programming.

Put another way, creating more of the same (more units or aliens) is a copy and paste type effort. Putting in an integrated way point system required real effort.

Same for Scenarios. Stardock developed one of the Starcraft add-ons - Starcraft Retribution and doing new campaigns and scenarios was astonishingly easy. They are basically saved games.

Strategy First is interested in us doing a GalCiv Gold at some point which will have new stuff beyond the expansion pack IF we do it (not sure yet). So at that point we can revisit things and see what sorts of things beyond GalCiv: Expanded universe people want.

[LDiCesare]

Brad, I agree with you that the features added in the XP are more than things that could be modded in. Plus you add new ships, if I remember well (I don't have the beta). But in order to mod it correctly, there are a few things that Galciv needs: A map editor would be nice for scenario design, and some tweaks in the tech tree so that a modder could design new techs which are handled correctly by the ai:
Right now, new tecsh won't be researched by all alien races because the tech ID is not on the ai's list (f.e. Arceans if I got it right). Removing all techs so that the list starts finished, adn putting all the new techs afterwards screws the game because there are some techs which have a special effect which doesn't appear in the tech files (seeing yellow stars, ability to diplomacy, alliance, change government).
Plus I'd like a feature for the ai that I'll post on the galciv board too to be sure it gets read: Allow different ai's tech researches from one game to another. Allow the player to add their own tech path for a given ai and select it.

[Egbert]

LDiceasare

You can already do a mod get the AI to research the techs you want it to research and, subject to some limitations, influence when they will research your custom tech.

BUT
Each AI seems to consistently follow the same tech path for about the first twenty techs up to Corvette technology (the drengin have their own path, the Arcaens are fixed and I find tha all other AI's consistently follow the same third path up to Corvettes). After that you can induce the AI to research your custom techs by assigning an "AI value" to each of your custom techs. You will, as you mentioned, always have a problem with the Arceans but they can eventually get your custom tech by swapping or by extorting from a minor. Once you bear that in mind I don't see any problem modding the techs.

I agree that there appears to be nothing a modder can do about those special effects that do not appear in the tech files. (I agree it would be nice if Stardock eventually did something about that but it seems not very important. Something for a future expansion pack or maybe GalCiv2 perhaps?)

Aside from the above much can be done to mod the tech tree, particularly if you are prepared to let the Arceans be disadvantaged.

If you want some more info on the research posts please see my other thread, in the "GalCiv Creation and files thingy in this forum, and if you ask I could post those early research paths. I got frustrated trying to mod the tech tree so I spent a day of boredom doing some tests and experiments. Now that I have done that research it is quite easy to mod the techs and easy to get the AI (umh apart from the Arceans) to research stuff when I want them to.