Review-in-Progress (Open Thread)

[tetley]

I just finished a Huge/common/common/common.... game on Challenging without firing a single shot. Dumb aliens don't know how to colonize. I think it's time to bump up the diff.

[yin26]

I'm looking at the manual again (just glanced at it the first time) and see that putting all aliens to Intelligent is definitely the way to go for a fair assessment of the AI. No econ bonuses but they use all strats against the human in "expert" ways.

[Solver]

OK, comments on my second game that I actually fully completed. It left me with an overall unpleasant feeling to some degree.

I was playing as the Drenging on the smae Medium sized galaxy vs. 5 opponents I figured that the population is key in this game, and I should get as many planets as I can. I put my points into military production, then boosted it via sliders once the game started, and was cranking the colony ships out like mad. As a result, I was able to colonize not only the planets close to me, but also steal two or three planets from other civs - that is, planets that were quite close to another civ and should have been colonized by them.

I spammed Constructors to establish good influence even in the middle of enemy territory and get some military starbases, too. My research was mostly aggressive - laser weaponry, although I also researched some infrastructural techs.

I had started close to both minor civs. I attacked the first as soon as I had a whopping four units - 2 fighters and 2 transports. The fighters, boosted by a starbase, made a quick job of the defenders, the two transports took over the minor planet which happened to also be a manufacturing capital, so I got two in this game - that one and the one I built myself. Then I went and conquered the second minor civ pretty much in the same way.

I established friendly relations with the Korx and was, in fact, just building up stuff for a while. However, I had accumulated by far the biggest population, which gave me more money than anyone else had which let me, in turn, develop infrastructure and military even quicker.

Then I started my takeover of civs, starting with the Altareans, then the Thalan, then Yor, then Torians... allied with the Kox, too. Game over. I only lost two ships throughout the game - for the default difficulty level, this was too much of a cakewalk. It took me several games of Civ4 until I started winning on Noble, and that was with a weaker AI.

OK, I understand that higher AI difficulties will provide me with more of a challenge. My complaint, for the time being, lies elsewhere. Population is the most critical aspect of the game. You get taxes from them, and you use them for ground soldiers to invade others. So you need population either way. Thus, you have to rush out and colonize as many planets as you can. There's a limited number of planets available, and if you can get more planets than anyone else has, then you are already in a dominant position! The problem is further increased by the Military & Social sliders, which should be a war/peace tradeoff, but aren't. They aren't because the Colony Ships come from Military production. Which means that turning your Military Production high is then the way to go because you can get Colony Ships very quickly (4-5 turns) and still build military ships if you want to. Just spam Colony Ships until there's no planet you can get.

Next, the tech tree allows you to get far in one direction without researching anything from another direction. For example I had advanced far enough in Laser technology while completely ignoring any sensor or shield technologies, and not really bothering with diplomatic techs, I let the AIs research those and traded for them. My concentration of research in one direction allowed me to get a vastly superior military.

The problem here is, you get a crazy snowball effect. Crazy. You settle a new planet, that gives you more population and more money, you immediately become stronger. In Civ4, on the contrary, new cities cost quite a bit and you have to build them up to become profitable. So the more population you have here, the faster your research and military production can go. Once you have a good military, fly it towards the planets of some AI and demand tribute, they will cave in. That will decrease your relations somewhat, but you can, if you want to, get them better again immediately by trading tech. Civs will trade techs even if they hate you, just offer them a deal. Or they'll bu techs from you for money. Anyhow, you cna get a deal with them and keep the relations non-hostile.

The AI has no diplomatic understanding of the situation altogether. It won't form any blocs. It doesn't realize that they need to stick together to counter this galactic militarist. OK, wouldn't have helped them much with the population I had, but they didn't even try. And, they provide me happily with the money I need to invade them!

Another thing I didn't like is how you can wipe out a civ in one turn if they don't have many planets. The Torians happened to only have two planets, I had stolen another one near them and the Altarians stole another. So then I just positioned my fleets near each planet, complete with transports, declared war and wiped them out in the same turn. Of course, having previously sold them a good amount of technology for a formidable sum of credits that made my military job even easier.

Many planets or not, you can still enter AI territory freely. And put your fleet near a planet. Hmm, if you want a war, just position your fleet near their best planet and take it the moment you declare. Depending on how big your army is you can strike at maybe 2 best planets at once. And GalCiv2 gives attacker an inherent advantage because the same unit/fleet can attack several times per turn. Becomes even easier if you have a Military Starbase in the range.

When I was fighting at one end of the galaxy, the Yor were at another near me, and I didn't have any reasonable defenses. They hated me, so why not try to attack while I'm busy at the other side of the map? The Civ4 AI uses opportunities such as that to strike and inflict at least some damage.

You can at one point create a totally kickass transport ship. Just need the advanced troop modules. And your new transport can hold 4000 troops, wow. If using Mini Soldiers, such a transport alone can probably take just about every world.

I really don't get it why a military bonus becomes an extremely powerful builder bonus. Drengin get extra military production. Extra military production would appear tobe a military bonus, but that allows for the fastest colonization and then quicker constructors, which is one heck of a builder bonus.

The whole Good/Evil system still feels weird. You can be at the extreme side of the Evil slider through your choices but nothing prevents you from being Good after you get Xeno Ethics, just pay a heftier price. Which isn't a problem when you have a huge population. Which Evil choices probably help you achieve.

Really, the whole population is everything deal doesn't seem so great. In some ways, with GalCiv2 I feel like I'm back to Civ3 with many of the same problems - a huge snowball effect for the conqueror, diplomatically inept AIs, the ability to take the strongest enemy base the turn I declare war, etc.

Oh, also, when you conquer a planet, the improvements stay. Even with WMD options, most of them stay. So if you conquer someone's homeworld or a minor civ's planet, you instantly get a very good planet that's immediately capable of producing new stuff. In Civ3, you needed to quell resistance (could be done in 1 turn though) and rebuild the improvements. In Civ4, you also usually have to wait at least 10 turns before the city becomes any useful.

I think I should, for the sake of justice, try to play a game with a builder strat. But warmongering makes it so much easier to achieve every victory! You get the culture victory through controlling territory - much easier to do through conquest than building a ton of influence bases and improvements. You can get the diplomacy victory by getting, say, two civs on your side and conquering the rest. Getting a couple of friends isn't hard in GalCiv2.

I liked the fact that civs at least surrender, saving you a few boring turns of mop-up. But other than that, their diplomatic actions are very non-intelligent (despite recognizing deals such as selling Laser II and Laser III as unfair) and sometimes their diplomacy is the straightest way to lead them to their demise.

Oh, finally - I also loaded a savegame and tried another thing, pitting the civs against each other. Easy. Just have a few techs to sell or credits, and you can arrange for almost any wars that you want. And then strike both civs at home if you want to, or just have them weaking each other perpetually while you're getting an economic lead.

Brad, if you're reading this - sorry if I sound like a negative arsehole. I don't mean to. I am just trying to highlight what I believe to be the shortcomings of this game, and I am also remembering that my experience is still very limited. But I am really inclined to believe that the problem of "population is everything" is a real one, as is the problem of acquiring that extra population sometimes being too easy.

By the way, there's this "you attacked my friend so I am declaring war on you" deal. I realised this won't work to protect minor civs because a smart player will always wipe those out in one turn, so that no other civ responds.

[Solver]

Originally posted by yin26
I'm looking at the manual again (just glanced at it the first time) and see that putting all aliens to Intelligent is definitely the way to go for a fair assessment of the AI. No econ bonuses but they use all strats against the human in "expert" ways.

I guess I may want to try that. I have no doubt they will improve in, say, their military tactics. But I'm particularly interested to see whether they become better at the "grab all the planets you can" rush and whether they start showing at least some diplomatic sense.

Yet another advantage of a huge population is that you can achieve any verdict you want in United Planets...

[DaviddesJ]

Originally posted by Solver

Really, the whole population is everything deal doesn't seem so great. In some ways, with GalCiv2 I feel like I'm back to Civ3 with many of the same problems - a huge snowball effect for the conqueror, diplomatically inept AIs, the ability to take the strongest enemy base the turn I declare war, etc.

Yeah. In 2001, GC2 would have been a great game, in the same way that Civ3 was a great game in 2001. The problem is that our definition of "great", in 2006, is a lot different than it was in 2001, because Civ4 is a lot better than Civ3.

[DaviddesJ]

Originally posted by Solver

But I'm particularly interested to see whether they become better at the "grab all the planets you can" rush and whether they start showing at least some diplomatic sense.

Personally, I wouldn't mind a variant start where people start with claims to roughly equal parts of the map. Just because the initial expansion phase, as it stands, seems neither interesting nor equitable nor fun. And because the amount of "colonization handicap" that's appropriate for the AIs, to give a balanced start, might be quite different from the amount of "production handicap" that's appropriate, to make the subsequent game challenging and fun.

Of course, this might just bring the other weaknesses of the game into sharper focus.

[yin26]

Originally posted by Solver I guess I may want to try that. I have no doubt they will improve in, say, their military tactics. But I'm particularly interested to see whether they become better at the "grab all the planets you can" rush and whether they start showing at least some diplomatic sense.

Yet another advantage of a huge population is that you can achieve any verdict you want in United Planets...

Definitely try that. I was ready to toss Civ in the trash doing a review just on Noble. I would love to hear a back-to-back review of you playing the same setup but all civs on Intelligent. That's only fair to Brad. Then give the patch a fair chance. Vanilla civ needed that first patch, too.

Other issues you raise, of course, are important. Population being one and the ease with which you can stage attacks. I think that Civ solved ICS by introducing large upkeep. What I generally find is "off" so far about GalCiv2 is its simply TOO easy to get money. You can sell techs left and right, for one, sometimes survey ships get you 2000 b.c., for another. Sometimes weaks civs will just give you money. If you try at all with trade routes, you can get 200 b.c. a turn, etc. Money all over the place! In Civ4, you simply are forced to spend and (because it costs) expand more reasonably. I hope Brad takes a good look at that. You know, population _does_ take time to grow in GalCiv2 (just like it takes time to build improvements in Civ4), but you're not being assest any kind of overall "planet logistics" fee in the meantime. That's a problem.

On the ease with which one can stage an attack, while the higher levels of difficulty *do* register the build up (try it, Solver, and let us know), my sense is that Civ did this right with borders. Listen, let freighters fly through my area of influence, no problem. If I need to kill them, that's easy enough. But I suggest that GalCiv2 treat areas of influence --if not as hard borders-- zones that require an alliance to cross freely with ships. Otherwise, war must be delcared to enter. Keep in mind that espionage is rather easy (and predictable) in the game, so the computer should be able to get enough information on civs without needing to fly freely in others' space of influence.

[tetley]

It's outer space. I think I agree with SD's design decision to make the planets the borders only. Stardock has their own game; it's not just an outer-space version of Civ.

I think I disagree about it being too easy to obtain money, because it's also easy to obtain industrial capacity. If it's easy enough to obtain both--it's time to up the difficulty.

As far as UP votes, if you have enough influence to control that, you have the game wrapped, anyway.

[yin26]

I don't think Civ has anything to do with it other than providing examples of things that work. That's all. For that matter, Civ could learn a lot from GalCiv. I still maintain that money is too easy to get on Tough. The larger issue Solver is making, though, is that if it's too easy to take over planets, you automatically start getting huge tax base bonuses tied to population. If it is always easier to win by being aggressive (and, we should say, this same criticism still remains for Civ4, too), then that's something worth looking at. For me, a neutral player, I'm happy evaluating the system as it stands and try to plan my play accordingly...some kind of selective warmongering with healthy doses of influence grabbing.

[Solver]

Personally, I wouldn't mind a variant start where people start with claims to roughly equal parts of the map. Just because the initial expansion phase, as it stands, seems neither interesting nor equitable nor fun.

I don't mind the start itself - what I don't like is that the right choice seems to be to take over as many planets as you can initially, and then go from there.

Definitely try that. I was ready to toss Civ in the trash doing a review just on Noble. I would love to hear a back-to-back review of you playing the same setup but all civs on Intelligent. That's only fair to Brad. Then give the patch a fair chance. Vanilla civ needed that first patch, too.

Definitely, I've promised you guys to try a fair assesment, so I will start a game vs. Intelligent AIs and carefully observe any changes in their behaviour.

However, my personal opinion is that the GalCiv2 AI on Normal acts far worse than the Civ4 AI on Noble. The Civ4 Noble is not only equal footing with you, the AIs act to the best of their ability. On GalCiv2 normal, AIs seem to delibarately make some bad choices which might be part of what's spoiling my impression.

GalCiv2 civs definitely notice troops buildups even on Normal. I've noticed that sending some troops to their planet and then demanding tribute produces better result. Hopefully on higher levels they're actually going to do something about it.

I don't think Civ has anything to do with it other than providing examples of things that work. That's all. For that matter, Civ could learn a lot from GalCiv. I still maintain that money is too easy to get on Tough. The larger issue Solver is making, though, is that if it's too easy to take over planets, you automatically start getting huge tax base bonuses tied to population. If it is always easier to win by being aggressive (and, we should say, this same criticism still remains for Civ4, too), then that's something worth looking at. For me, a neutral player, I'm happy evaluating the system as it stands and try to plan my play accordingly...some kind of selective warmongering with healthy doses of influence grabbing.

I'm not just saying taking planets is too easy, although it's definitely easier than taking cities in Civ4. I am, more importantly, saying that the benefits of it are great, and that those planets provide population which is the most important asset in GalCiv2.

I do not think aggression is really the way to go in Civ4. I'm not playing on the highest difficulties, but I seem to also be doing very well with little aggression and lots of building. In GalCiv2, the rewards for aggression are great. Basically, it goes like this:

Civ4 aggression: weakens your economy with each city conquered. The benefits start coming in after a while.
GalCiv2 aggression: provides instant benefits to economy and further to the military effort

I think, so far, that what GalCiv2 lacks is a real downside to war, same thing what Civ3 and other Civ games lacked. That makes me worried that war in GalCiv2 leans towards being the One Right Choice (TM).

And please don't anyone get me wrong, I don't want to turn this into Civ4 in space. I really think GalCiv2 has some great concepts, but my current opinion is that it has serious flaws in implementation. I am also starting to get rough ideas on possible fixes & improvements, which I may post if the ideas become more tangible.

Now, off to start a game the same as previous but with the AIs being at "Intelligent". I hope my crazy planet grabbing becomes less successful.

[Solver]

OK, I played that for an hour and a half. All AIs at Intelligent, which means 100% econ and "expecting and countering all known human tactics".

The first impression of that game is very disappointing. OK, some of the AIs are ahead economically, because I am doing the wrong things with my economy, but that was obviously to be expected. However, the AIs still seem to display exactly the same types of stupid behaviour as before.

I was planning to attack a good Thalian planet. I intentionally put two fleets outside of it well in advance of the arrival of Transports. No reaction. The planet had 1 scout schip and 1 colony ship, and so those remained. Transports arrive, declare war, take planet on the same turn, the planet is very good and I instantly have a military production powerhouse.

The Altarians the next turn declare war to "rid the galaxy of Evil". OK, the Altarians are strong. However, four squares up from the Thalian planet I just took there's an Altarian planet with 2 ships in orbit, none of them military. Of course, I immediately moved to sieze the planet. Declaring war with a strong fleet of mine near a planet is a bad idea.

Actually, warring's even more powerful than I thought. You get techs from it (last game, no one had any). So I take a planet and get Dianthium armor III. Woo hoo, and I have been ignoring armor all along, but now I can equip my ships with armor despite not having researched any armor technologies. Gahh!

It still seems that AIs declare war on a whim, sometimes dictated by their alignment or relations, but they still declare without a really good reason, not particularly caring if they can win and what's the tactical situation.

GalCiv2's amazingly heavy on micromanagement, maybe more than Civ3. There's the tax slider, the spending slider and the three allocation sliders. Optimally, they should be tweaked every or nearly every turn. That's some hell of micromanagement.

At least it's a good thing that I'm still doing stuff wrong, managing my economy the wrong way, etc. Oh, and on this difficulty I wasn't as successful in my crazy expansion. Managed to grab a few planets, but no longer controlled half the galaxy after expansion.

The AI seems to cheat in knowing which planet is undefended. And it ends up bad anyway. It send a Transport for my undefended planet, I saw that well in advance and put a defender there... the Transport arrived and seemed to do nothing there. I waited two turns and eliminated it.

[bonscott]

My current game, all Intelligent AI's. Very impressed so far. Large galaxy, 9 AI's, my civ is custom.

I'm in the bottom middle with Altarians to my left, Arceans to the right. I have pretty good relations with everyone except the Altarians. I think we have a lot of friction due to use being cramped and we share planets in *two* systems.

Eventually they become hostile but don't declare war. I ramp up my mini-scorpion ships. I see them about ready to add constructors to their 3 starbases in my territory, one of them military. This is bad for me and as I've done in every game so far I declare war on them, blast their constructors and can easily take out the starbases.

Now here is where cool AI takes over. The Thalan, who I have had little contact with and decent relations declare war on me because "I am threatening their trade routes with the Altarians and thus their economy" and they will have none of that. Great. Luckily they are way on the other side of the galaxy, very little threat to me.

The Drengin who I have good relations with and one trade route decide to join in on my side and declare on the Altarians. A few turns later they do the same and declare on the Thalans. And the Terrans call me up and say they like to help me but can't afford war right now but they gift me a ship. They also keep coming to me with some very nice tech trades (as in great deals for me).

One thing I think on judging the AI is that it will take quite a few games to come to a good conclusion because so much is different game to game. So far I still see some dumb things on Intelligent but it's leaps and bounds better then any other game. To me if I can take advantage of the AI that means I need to move up some.

[Solver]

From my current experience, the AI falls for some of the same things all the time, and I'm now playing vs. Intelligent AIs that are supposed to be, well, at least somewhat intelligent. They do a decent job with their economy and general military. a bad job tactically, and still perform horribly diplomatically.

I'll continue testing the game, but I'm getting too much of the Civ3 feeling right now - new planets are good stuff, war is good stuff, tech whoring is rampant, AIs have no real loyalty and no blocs. So far, I haven't seen the GalCiv2 AI perform anywhere close to that of Civ4, except that the GalCiv2 AI seems very good at establishing trade routes and their basic economic infrastructure along with Starbases.

[Gufnork]

I've played about 6-7 games, all of them with intelligent AI and above and every single game I've seen the exact same mistakes Solver describes. I strongly believe that any wise diplomatic choices the AI made in your game, bonscott, was pure luck. Their decisions to go to war or not seems arbitrary at best.

Solver, I must say that I love your posts. I agree with everything you say 100% and it's great having a respected poster expressing them, gives them a lot more weight. Hopefully the issues with the AI can be resolved with time, it hardly seems impossible. Balancing the different ways to play the game seems a bit harder though, not only balance war/peace, but also rapid/slow expansion and other things.

[yin26]

Solver: Well, you're being more than fair. There is always the patch to try at the end of the month. I recall GalCiv1 improved by leaps. However, you bring so much careful consideration of game implementation to the table (your help with Civ4's development is legendary, in my view) that I believe you are seeing things in a few games that would take me a dozen games to cement in my mind. Please, if you have the time and interest, at least give that patch a try. Also, you mentioned you had ideas for fixes to the problems as you seem them...please post them!

bonscott: You've read Solver's post. Do you think what he's seeing is a factor of each game being different? It's interesting that the two of you have such different views of the AI set to the same level.

EDIT: Gufnork, I'm glad to hear you are positive that Brad can get at some if not all these issues if he had the time, money and interest to do so. Hearing from you, Solver, Sirian and others should certainly help him weigh the costs and benefits. Others, like me and bonscott might end up accentuating the positive!