Review-in-Progress (Open Thread)

[DaviddesJ]

Originally posted by Solver

If you have a choice between getting, say, extra planet quality or extra research and not getting that, then the only right choice strategically is to get it, period. For it not to be so, there need to be other factors involved. Surely you can not pick that choice and call it a different playstyle, but that doesn't change the fact that only one choice is right strategically.

It depends on your goal. If your objective is "Win with only Good choices", then "choose Evil" is not the right choice.

Suppose I convince you that cultural victory is always easier to achieve than military victory. Does that mean that attempting a military victory is "wrong"? No. It just means you're setting a different goal for yourself in this game.

[Solver]

I really don't agree that Good vs Evil falls into this category. It's a difference in style of play, and just because one way works "better" doesn't mean it is the "right" one. You can make different choices to get different flavors of game.

If you have a choice between getting, say, extra planet quality or extra research and not getting that, then the only right choice strategically is to get it, period. For it not to be so, there need to be other factors involved. Surely you can not pick that choice and call it a different playstyle, but that doesn't change the fact that only one choice is right strategically.

[Solver]

Originally posted by DaviddesJ


Really?? I wish they had said so! I've played through several Civ4 games without ever suspecting I could do this. I will try it.

Yeah, Sirian's definitely right on that one .

[DaviddesJ]

Originally posted by Gufnork

I agree fully with Solver that Only Right Choice is bad. This game has it in pretty much every part of the game, which together with the poor AI is the main reason I dislike this game.

I really don't agree that Good vs Evil falls into this category. It's a difference in style of play, and just because one way works "better" doesn't mean it is the "right" one. You can make different choices to get different flavors of game.

If one race is "better" (easier to win with), that's not a big problem, and you don't have to always choose the best one. If one victory condition is easier to achieve than others, you don't always have to go for that one. Etc. Especially if you ignore the Metaverse, which I, like Sirian, prefer to do.

[Solver]

Another thing struck me as weird, I'm playing the Altarians, and despite making Evil choices, I'm really leaning Good. This is because the Altarians lean Good initially - but it creates an issue. Not many ethical choices seem to come up during a game, and despite me having selected Evil every time, I'm still leaning Good. Looks like with the Altarians I can make Evil choices to get the immediate benefits of Evil, yet stay globally Good to gain the global Good benefits that Sirian mentioned.

[DaviddesJ]

Originally posted by Sirian

"What would make this deal work" is in fact a button that takes you to the fairest deal possible in terms of adding things from one side or the other (whichever is short of the ideal market value).

Really?? I wish they had said so! I've played through several Civ4 games without ever suspecting I could do this. I will try it.

[Gufnork]

Oh, regarding the AI, I don't like the idea of making it act dumb at lower difficulties. Numerical penalties should be enough. I know that I am playing the game absolutely the wrong way now, and I am seeing the Terrans being clearly ahead of me in economy. But at the same time, seeing lone Transports stream in constantly gives the impression of a very stupid AI. It is indeed weird if at "Normal" level they're actually told to act dumb.

Actually, the AI is extremly dumb on every difficulty levels when it comes to a few things. See my thread on AI mistakes for more examples.

Regarding the Good vs. Evil, I've found that being evil isn't as bad is it ought to be. Sure, there is a resolution to limit trade routes for evil civs (the only evil specific one I've seen). But as for evil partners being less reliable, I don't see it. The only time I've had reliable allies is when I played evil. To me it comes down to who you want to befriend, the evil civs who have powerful military and are extremly aggressive or the peaceloving hippies? I'd rather be friends with those who actually go to war, thus making evil better in every way.

I agree fully with Solver that Only Right Choice is bad. This game has it in pretty much every part of the game, which together with the poor AI is the main reason I dislike this game.

[Solver]

OK, I have to shift my complaint, at least partially, to the labeling of difficulty levels. On Normal, the AI gets some economic disadvantages and deliberately makes bad choices (a design approach I don't quite agree with but that's another story). It's just that, by any intuitiveness standards, the difficulty called "Normal" should be the one where you and the AIs are even.

I wonder if the AI's diplomatic perception changes with difficulty. I understand, thus, that the rather stupid attacks I see on Normal are a result of that difficulty level, and I hope that the stupid diplomatic perception is also only because of the level.

[bonscott]

Difficulty level

It is a bit confusing at first but gives a bit of flexability over and above Civ 4.

Over all AI Intelligence added up makes the diffculty level. So one Genius AI and the rest all fools may make for a "Normal" diffuculty level as might all AI's set to "Normal".

This info from the Wiki: http://galciv.wikicities.com/wiki/Ga...lizations_Wiki
and specifically the Difficulty level page: http://galciv.wikicities.com/wiki/Difficulty_level

Game Difficulty Level
Cakewalk
Easy
Simple
Beginner
Normal
Challenging
Tough
Painful
Crippling
Masochistic - all Algorithms + 200% Production for the AI
Obscene
Suicidal

AI Difficulty Level
Fool - The AI's economy is run at 10% of normal, no higher level algorithms are enabled
Beginner - The AI's economy is run at 25% of normal, no higher level algorithms are enabled
Sub-Normal - The AI's economy is run at 50% of normal, no higher level algorithms are enabled
Normal - The AI's economy is run at 75% of normal, AI evaluates common human tactics
Bright - The AI's economy is run at 100% of normal, AI evaluates most known human tactics
Intelligent - The AI's economy is run at 100% of normal, AI expertly picks abilities and all known human tactics are searched and countered
Genius - The AI's economy is run at 125% of normal, All AI algorithms in place (same as above)
Incredible - The AI's economy is run at 200% of normal, All AI algorithms are in place (same as above)

The new patch is going to enhance the dumber AI's by having them try "newbie" stats. You see this already where they have enescorted transports. Something I still do myself even though I know it's a mistake. It will also enhance the higher level AI's.

[Sirian]

Originally posted by DaviddesJ

And, if they are willing to give you a tech and some gold for your tech, then you can't use "What would make this deal work?" to find out the maximum amount of gold you can get from them.

Yes, you can. Take the gold amount off the table and ask again. Wallah, it gives you the max they will offer.

"What would make this deal work" is in fact a button that takes you to the fairest deal possible in terms of adding things from one side or the other (whichever is short of the ideal market value).

The problem with the Civ4 system is that civs rarely have enough cash lying around. So you do have to fiddle it a bit. For instance, if you have 300g in cash, but you would need to add 400g to satisfy the AI's market price, then the game will put up one of your techs instead, valued at over 400g. This simply means you didn't have enough cash to make the existing deal work. You can either try another configuration of non-cash items, or not make the deal.

But it's VERY simple to use this item to get the right cash value, especially when the short side has more cash on hand than the shortfall involved. For instance, if you have 300g on hand and the AI minimum acceptable bid would be for you to add 110g, then pressing that button will put 110 of your cash in to the pot.

GC2 could easily add a "haggle" button that would go directly to the acceptable price in cash or influence.


- Sirian

[bonscott]

Evil vs. Good

Evil choices give you short term/immediate benefits at the cost of diplomatic relations. If you are pretty evil you can bet that the Altarians and Torians will hate you and will be very hard to trade with. Terrans probably also will not like you. Drengin and Yor may like you more as they are typicaly evil as well but you can't trust them long term. No honor amoung theives and all that.

But if you are good you can expect long lasting good relations and trade with the good races and bad relations with the evil (which you might not have good relations with either being evil).

So which way you go usually has a lot to do with who you want as allies.

RE: Ethics at harder levels. I believe it's all random. I got the same 2 random events in a row on the same turn once and the benefits of the choices were different each time. So it's all random that I am aware of.

[bonscott]

Especially the random ground combat is something I definitely dislike. It just forces the player to exploit, doing load/save all the time until you conquer the planet. It reminds me of my settler killing the battleship after I reloaded the game for the 48th time.

What you guys might not realize is that when a game gets loaded all the AI's get a free diplomatic round behind your back. So every time you reload the game you're giving the AI an advantage (to trade tech, declare war, form alliances, etc.)

Once you get used to it you'll understand how it works and you'll just "know" that your 3 bil troops will tromp over their 10 bil. It might take that first invasion to see how your soldiering stacks up against the AI as well as tech level. For example, one game I was at war with the Drengin (suprise). My first invasion of one of their planets showed I only had 5% more soldiering ability to them and my tech level was about even. What this meant was that each battle would be about even with WMD not factored in. So 3 bil troops would be needed to take a 3 bil population planet. This alerted me quick that I needed to rush up the planetary invasion tech branch quickly if I wanted to get the odds in my favor. So by doing this by the time I got to the Drengin homeworld I had a 25% soldiering ability advantage plus the ability to use mini-soldiers for a WMD and my 3 bil troops wiped out their 13 bil population leaving about 500 mil troops left to start the occupation.

[Solver]

Warhead: thanks . I'm also now getting the same impression as you described about quick colonization, seems like it's the way to go. I think that turning the sliders to produce units ASAP is the right thing to do in the beggining, for more colony ships and thus planets?

I really don't like the diplomatic awareness of the AIs at this point, though. They declare war on a whim, they don't seem to grasp the bigger picture or understand their position if they're weaker - if they're stronger they understand it alright. And it seems for now that, once some war starts, there will always be some war.

I like the fleet combat, just had a couple of battles between fleets and they're fun . So far, I'm interested to keep playing to see what the game has to offer and how my understanding of it changes.

[Warhead]

Whoa wrote the last comment a loooong time ago on this board. Anyway, GalCiv2 makes everything possible.

Solver, I just wanted to congratulate you on this awesome review. I really like the game and played some successful maps on "Tough" until now. Being someone who dislikes Civ III and IV for an entirely unknown reason (I miss this special "feeling" of the two first ones, SMAC and MOO2) I happily awaited the release of GalCiv2.

As I already said - I love the game. But (and that's the important aspect of your review) - you named all the things I do not like at GalCiv.

Especially the random ground combat is something I definitely dislike. It just forces the player to exploit, doing load/save all the time until you conquer the planet. It reminds me of my settler killing the battleship after I reloaded the game for the 48th time.

Maybe it would be a better way just to skip random dices and decide the combat on the basis of your ground combat technology. An option to decide this at the beginning would be fabulous.

Furthermore, in all my recent games I was bored by the starting rush. Using the sliders efficiently gave me the chance to grab like 10x as many planets as the AI had. Due to the fact that you simply need the population for taxes and infantry, there is no other strategy than rushing the galaxy (AFAIK).

After owning like 25% of it, I stopped colonizing and developed Constructors en masse to get my economy going (though with +eco and +influ there was no money shortage at all). I play 4X games to build up an empire of impressive strength, to get Titans and Deathstars ruling the galaxy at the end of the game with their sheer firepower, annihilating thousands of small ships with a huge one.

But, guess what - for the last three games, there was one AI that just colononized the rest of the stars without any resistance of the other 4 major and 3 minor races. They just didnt care, expanding so unbelievably slow that the leading AI kicked their asses even without a fight.

While I was refusing to colonize the rest of the galaxy (and securing a guaranteed win) for reasons of fun, the Ai just owned me because of the other races that were just to dump (even though they were set on the same intelligence level).

Is this also happening to you guys?

Ok, as a matter of routine I apologize for any typos or misspellings in my post I'm from Germany and English is not my native language.

[DaviddesJ]

Originally posted by Solver

The GalCiv2 screens don't have the excellent novelty from Civ4 - showing there at a glance which civs can trade which techs. I need to check every civ separately by speaking to them if I want to see what they have available for trade.

Yes, this is a huge issue for me.

Civ4 gives you a "What would make this deal work" button which makes the AI tell you how much money they want. That's good - you see the amount, and you can pay it or forget it. At least there's no wasting time to find that amount.

Even Civ4 doesn't really work that well. E.g., if they want a tech and some gold for your tech, then you can sometimes do "What would make this deal work?" to find out how much gold you need to throw in. But, often, they will ask for a second tech instead, or something else you don't want to offer.

And, if they are willing to give you a tech and some gold for your tech, then you can't use "What would make this deal work?" to find out the maximum amount of gold you can get from them. You still need to fiddle the value up and down.

Civ4 is better than GC2, but there's still plenty of room for improvement.