Review-in-Progress (Open Thread)

[yin26]

That's good. How about trying the no minors option, too?

[DaviddesJ]

Originally posted by Gufnork
So, how much of a handicap should I give the AI? I'm thinking no tech trade and a crappy race to give it a chance. What do you think is fair?

One or two levels above Intelligent. That's the level at which, if it doesn't seem at least somewhat challenging, there's a problem.

[Gufnork]

Well I'll play on Suicidal, that's a given. I was wondering how much extra handicap I'll give them.

No minors isn't that important without tech trade, they're not that easy to abuse without it. But yeah, that could help a bit.

[DaviddesJ]

Originally posted by Gufnork
Well I'll play on Suicidal, that's a given. I was wondering how much extra handicap I'll give them.

Oh, ok. Personally, I feel that "level to play at to evaluate the game" is quite different from "level to play at to get the best challenge". Like, I can appreciate and evaluate Civ4 at Monarch, even though it's certainly not challenging.

[bonscott]

Originally posted by Solver
OK, it seems that now the Critic Strike Team (TM), composed of Sirian and yours truly is completely immersed in Oblivion and away from GalCiv2 .

Yep, Obvlivion has sucked me away. I've played at least 20 hours so far and have barely started. That's what I love about the Elder Scrolls games.

I check the GC2 site when I take a break. The patch looks to be pretty awesome. Once released I may have to take a break and play a game or two.

[yin26]

Same here. About 20 hours. GalCiv2 patch looks awesome...so will return!

[kolpo]

The AI colonizes now MUCH more aggresively. Before the patch did I easily beat them in this respect, now are they as good(if not better) in it then me. On a difficulty I normally easily win, have I lost 2 times in a row in the begining.

Another change I noticed: making money is easier, I seem to get more tax revenue and high taxes have lesser effect on morale. The AI also seems to value population more.

[tetley]

That's been my experience, too. One more thing: check out the population growth bonus. It's a bit much. For a more fun game, I might suggest avoiding the pop growth bonus altogether and not playing vs. Torians. Stardock needs to tweak that.

[Gufnork]

After reading the changes I expected Pop Growth bonuses to be overpowered. It's always been the key and since colonization is limited by your population now...

[DaviddesJ]

Originally posted by Gufnork
After reading the changes I expected Pop Growth bonuses to be overpowered. It's always been the key and since colonization is limited by your population now...

Yeah, it's very hard to come up with any "fair" cost for something that gives you an exponential growth advantage over everyone else.

[Colonâ„¢]

Originally posted by kolpo
The AI colonizes now MUCH more aggresively. Before the patch did I easily beat them in this respect, now are they as good(if not better) in it then me. On a difficulty I normally easily win, have I lost 2 times in a row in the begining.

*nods in agreement*

I'm already happy if I manage to colonize 2 other planets next to my homeworld on normal level. (large map, all civs on)

[Dr Strangelove]

I tried the demo. I can't say that I'm impressed. The differences between GalCiv 1 and GalCiv 2 are trivial. So they made the planets show up on the main screen, so they added some more rresearch projects.

Big deal.

[Tuberski]

The scrolling on the main map is WAAAYYYY to slow.

ACK!

[yin26]

I just won a large galaxy, painful, 7 opponents game by Influence (though Conquest was maybe another hour away). Some reflections:

1. I noticed you can't upgrade a ship in your fleet unless it is separated by itself in its own tile. This was a little confusing.

2. I'm not sure on where I stand with being able to upgrade your ENTIRE fleet no matter how far this puts your treasury in the negative. One the one hand, this seems like an exploit. You merely ignore upgrading ship designs until somebody declares war on you (mainly because they see you as week militarily). Then...POOF! One turn later you are a monster, take 3-4 planets, and the AI now clearly goes for peace.

On the other hand, your spending is frozen until you are back in the positive. This means no more new ships, social buildings or research. For convenience, this upgrade approach is great, and there are some penalties. But it a) doesn't make much logical sense that your empire can do MASSIVE upgrading like this in one turn and b) I'm not sure it's something the AI does itself or can handle well when the human player does it.

3. The AIs don't seem to form blocs. It still seems too easy to buy peace or get x and y civ to attack each other such that you are never in a protracted war against more than one civ at a time. This has partly to do with my focus on diplomacy techs, I'm sure, but if I had one big wish for the AI it would be more diplomatic, situational awareness: "Normally we would accept peace against your stronger fleet, but we know you are also at war with the Drengin. Our military advisors feel that even our meager might when combined with the Drengin will successfully overpower you. And besides, the Drengin have offered us some of your choice planets as a reward."

Often, even if that particular civ is weak, it still forces you to split your fleets and to worry about losing planets to troop transports coming from more than one direction. The threat, in other words, outweighs the actual military rating when civs join forces. Yes, these should be "alliances of convenience" if nothing else, alliances that end when the war ends, perhaps. Similarly, the human should be able to join such alliances. In this way, we might see more intelligent blocs of civs rather than a series of 1v1s.

[DaviddesJ]

Originally posted by yin26

I'm not sure on where I stand with being able to upgrade your ENTIRE fleet no matter how far this puts your treasury in the negative.

That seems clearly a bug.