Review-in-Progress (Open Thread)

[Solver]

OK, here's something that might be flawed on the fundamental level of the GalCiv2 AI design. It seems to me now that the GalCiv2 AI's various parts do not "communicate" with each another and instead take their own decisions.

This came to my attention speficially when observing how the AI declares wars, be it on me or other AIs. The war declaration seems to be a product of the diplomatic AI that figures, say, that it hates me enough to declare. It also "consults" the global strategic AI in the process about the military strength, to ensure that it's not suicide, given total militaries, to declare war.

However, the tactical AI seems to be left out of the loop when making this decision. Therefore, the AI will often declare war while it has an almost undefended planet right near my border. Or while its main attacking fleet is still a distance away and needs time to arrive.

For the record, in Civ4, the AI uses all the parts to make these decisions. For example, if the AI wants to declare war, then it was first the diplomatic AI that figured it wants to do so, then the strategic AI that said it has enough power... but the Civ4 AI won't declare war immediately. It starts "war prep". It might do production or civic switches, but more importantly, it puts its forces into position. It puts its army right on the border of the enemy, declares war and moves in on the same turn. That way, the decision to go to war is coordinated on all levels of the AI.

[yin26]

Originally posted by MikeH
Right... as promised some first thoughts.

Great!

It's a little bit annoying that you have to try and trade every tech one at a time until you find what the AI player will trade with you, and as Solver said, it's a shame there is no way of telling whether you are getting ripped off or not. The Civ IV beaker comparison on tech trades is fantastic.

Indeed. I tried my hand with a tech auction thread, but I suspect we'll get something more like Civ4 before long.

Despite being a space colonisation game it allows you to suspend disbelief and get immersed. So fun in fact that I am a little gutted that I'm busy the next two evenings then going on holiday for a week and won't get to finish my game until a week thursday.

Welll, a fair first post on the game, I'd say. Looking forward to more.

[tetley]

As far as tutorials go, they are very good. Having been a Galciv1 veteran myself, though, I was bored.

[MikeH]

I have updated now (and could continue my game!!) and it seems to have fixed the shipyard crashes.

Double click, great thanks... I will try that

I might well do the tutorials, I'm a bit impatient though and want to get straight to the fun stuff.

[bonscott]

Mike,

RE: Shipyard crashing
Do you have any of the patches? The retail release had a bug that hit some people in the ship builder that caused a crash when saving designs. That was fixed in the first patch.

RE: Tutorials
Start out with the 2nd tutorial. I *highly* recommend them if you've never played Gal Civ before. You can buzz through all of them in under 20 minutes easy. Should give you a good sense of the interface and where important information is located (like your treasury ). Even though I played GC1 to death and did some beta testing for GC2 I still did the tutorials and learned quite a bit about the interface that way.

RE: Fleets
Yep, it's a bit klunky right now. New fleet manager coming in the new patch however looks like it will help things a lot. Oh, you can double-click on a fleet to bring up a menu that will give you stats on the fleet and the ability to give it orders without using the hotkeys. Same menu can come up for any single ship as well if you double-click it.

[MikeH]

Right... as promised some first thoughts.

I am only part way through my first game and have never played GalCiv before. I went for the approach of picking the humans on the easiest settings and just diving in.

I was going to do the tutorial but it started off with "how to start a game" and stuff, "er... do I click the 'new game' button? So I figured if it went into detail like that it was going to bore me senseless so I just dived in and started playing.

The interface is totally wierd. The money I have is hidden away in a dark box the bottom left hand corner. The bottom left! One of the most important bits of information hidden away somewhere my eye rarely visits and seemingly designed to never draw your attention to it ever! And why doesn't right click do anything anywhere?!

Speaking of which, is there any way to give a fleet orders other than with the hot keys? Can you upgrade a whole fleet of identical ships other than by disbanding it all first and moving the ships into a space on their own so you can get to the upgrade menu? (yeah... probably in the manual, but if there's a way to do it I couldn't see it.) Instinctively I keep right clicking on ships to bring up their menu... in fact if ships are stacked in any way I couldn't work out how to get to the indivdual ship menu.

In fact, there is some great information hidden away on the main screen, once you get used to looking for it, and the manual does explain where it is but one thing I now appreciate about Civ IV is how prominent all the really vital information is. eg. money (+income per turn), what you are researching (and how long it'll take) is impossible to miss.

Generally though it's all pretty straight forward. Having read some of the discussions here I had some vague ideas about strategy to follow and I could play along quite happily even though I really didn't know too much about what each of my decisions was going to do.

Again, after reading on here, I spammed out colony ships as fast as possible to grab as much space as I can. On this level randomly building improvements, trade routes and tech trading even if I'm not sure what the techs do exactly seems to be relatively successful. I'm top in most graphs...

It's a little bit annoying that you have to try and trade every tech one at a time until you find what the AI player will trade with you, and as Solver said, it's a shame there is no way of telling whether you are getting ripped off or not. The Civ IV beaker comparison on tech trades is fantastic.

I invaded a minor civ and captured their planet, mainly because it was a class 17 and I wanted to try out combat.

I was having some problems with the shipyard crashing that seemed to go away once I could update. The shipyard is a great feature. I've made some really bizarre ships and some of them I even got to save! It's fun though. Even though it kept crashing I kept wanting to play on... definitely has the OMT factor.

I have been mainly negative in this post but in fact despite the annoyances it is a lot of fun. It's really atmospheric and absorbing. Despite being a space colonisation game it allows you to suspend disbelief and get immersed.

So fun in fact that I am a little gutted that I'm busy the next two evenings then going on holiday for a week and won't get to finish my game until a week thursday.

More thoughts when I play more.

[yin26]

O.K. I went back to the customization of my civ and picked speed bonus. Here's the new spider colony sporting speed 6!



Here the Microphone scout has been juiced up for added speed, too. Speed of 5, with a sensor and life support:



This is a prime example of what GalCiv2 offers you the ability to do: To optimize your civ, units, and strategies. This is a fun process for me as these changes have a strong impact on the start of the game. Multiply this out across the course of the entire game, and you can see the replay value involved. Once Brad gets to some of the UI and AI issues, I'm seeing this game as a real keeper. In other words, while there are some things that can be improved (and likely will), there is no reason to wait to buy this game if you are happy to play around with mechanisms like this now.

One item of note: I dropped from Huge to Large maps because, as has been mentioned here, the UI just doesn't yet make it easy enough to manage the tons of micro needed for the StarbaseShuffle, for instance. Oh, you can do it with the zoomed out strategic view (otherwise it would be darn near impossible), but I'd like auto-options for constructors that go something like this:

"Auto-construct nearest starbase with (influence, economy, military) given priority."

or

"Auto-construct most/least complete starbase with (influence, economy, military) given priority."

or

"Auto-construct starbase closest to a neighboring civ with (influence, economy, military) given priority."

Some very simple routines like that would DRAMATICALLY change how much better bigger maps in particular would play out.

[Solver]

Yep. Well, population's still a bit too important even for the builder, but the builder game overall seems much better balanced. Then again, the problem remains that it's simply better to warmonger.

Looking forward to what changes Brad could bring.

[yin26]

Originally posted by Solver The builder game's definitely better so far...

That seems to fit with what I'm seeing. This just means that if Brad can get at some of the warmonger stuff, we'd have something pretty good across the board.

[yin26]

Originally posted by bonscott
I thought you were already doing that yin.

No, I've been pretty lax in reading up on strats and maximizing. For some reason, too, I didn't think about modding ships from Turn 1. A little slow on the uptake, I guess.

Originally posted by GufnorkYin: This is the reason why races with Ion Drive in the beginning has such a big advantage, their colony ships can have speed 4, hence my early love for the Dratha.

Indeed. Another aspect I had overlooked.

[Solver]

Wow I'll need to try out uber-fast Colonies.

The builder game's definitely better so far...

[Gufnork]

Economic games generally require diplomacy to catch up to the others after the colonization part. After that you can generally beat the AI in research by quite a bit if you were successful in colonization, since the AI's split their attention.

Yin: This is the reason why races with Ion Drive in the beginning has such a big advantage, their colony ships can have speed 4, hence my early love for the Dratha.

[Solver]

By the way, trying to play a builder game, I'm finding it more fun. Mainly because I suck at it. That is, the AIs don't really have much trouble outbuilding me, as I am still sturggling with the basics of economic strategy in GalCiv2. Those first games I would just colonize the planets and then start gearing for war. Now, trying to build, I am not a powerhouse, except in influence.

I guess it's a good thing, though it remains to be seen how a builder game would go if I actually figured out how to run my econ.

[Solver]

I've noticed that the AI is pretty good at grabbing those special resource thingies with their constructors .

[bonscott]

This ship is loaded from Turn 1 to have one extra speed. I understand that Brad is allowing the AI to copy this strategy in the next patch. Good thing, because it works!

I thought you were already doing that yin.

I've had for a few games now a "fast" version of the colony ship, constructor and frieghters. All show up immediately at the beginning of the game other then frieghters waiting for trade. My custom race starts out with Ion engins so that's what I put on them.

AI still beats me sometimes if I'm not paying attention, gotta stay on your toes!