Solver's 1.1 thoughts

[yin26]

Another angle that compounds the problem for the AI is that the human player can hum along with virtually NO military until the AI declares war. Why is this a problem? I have little maintenance costs and can put spending to social projects and research. Perhaps even worse is that once I *do* make my military, it's of the latest design...while the AI now has to upgrade or build new ships on top of his old ships to compete.

On higher levels of difficulty, a human player doing this should get absolutely pounded into submission. As it stands, the human player might lose a planet, but here, too, the AI isn't ready: rather than holding a planet with a sizeable force in preparation for the retaliation, it strips its forces pretty bare in order to launch an ineffective assault on the next planet. The result is that even if the human loses a planet or two, he can take them back fairly easily and is now on firm war footing to beat up the offending AI.

Of course, the human is in much more hurt when multiple AIs attack at once, but this seems not to happen so often. While I'm generally no fan of the AI dogpile, if the human player is at the dead bottom of the military graph, a dogpile makes some sense.

[Solver]

Yeah, it's exactly what I am complaining about, the AI declaring war and then thinking about what to do. At least 1.1 fixed many of the other AI issue, but this one still needs a good hard look.

I feel it's not that hard to change, compared to some of the stuff that has been already done.

Another thing is, of course, the ease of rushbuying. If you've got a good economy, it's quite easy for you to rushbuy a few ships to form the core of your military, and then build the rest normally, though quickly through increased military spending.

I dunno how the AI uses espionage to gather info on the human player's military, if at all. Can anyone comment on the AI's espionage use? I'm fully ignorant as to what the AI does in that regard.

[Spaced Cowboy]

I think that the colonization phase could be greatly extended by adding a tighter range factor to the ships. Until you research and equip the proper technologies and components your range should be quite limited. Most 4x games that I've played do this, but it seems like this is very weak in GalCiv2.

Only a few things should actually extend your range, like shipyards on planets (make them tougher to build), or a module for a starbase.

The whole buying a ship/building thing needs to be tweaked. That should be very, very expensive and still take some time. It just doesn't seem realistic that I can build ship/buildings in one turn. I like the other options that are presented when you select buy, but even those need to be tweaked.

Also techs should reveal resources throughout the game like in Civ4. In this manner you still will feel as though you are unlocking parts of the map as you go along.

[Solver]

Range's already limited by life support. You can't colonize planets on the other end of the galaxy unless you have friendly planets close enough already.

I feel rushbuying could use one simple tweak. Make rushbuying of an item towards which no production has been stored very expensive. Like tripe the cost. It means that buying something on the first turn of building it will be very expensive, and that's a good tweak to make.

Techs revealing resources throughout the game isn't a bad idea, but it would require further changes to game design (while I'd myself prefer to increase that discovery/exploration element). Simply put, the current resources aren't that crucial. They are a nice boost, but seem to be no more than that. I mean it in contrast to Civ4 where resources are extremely important, and some resources are the most critical things.

Right now, though, I really do believe that some extra element of discovery as the game progresses could be added even under the constraints of the current GalCiv2 design. Yay.

[Spaced Cowboy]

Yes, I know about life support, but even in a decent sized galaxy, I can almost traverse the whole thing right from the beginning. Seems like if life support range was tweaked down a bit, might make it a little more difficult to grab those far away planets.

[Topgun]

Originally posted by Spaced Cowboy
Yes, I know about life support, but even in a decent sized galaxy, I can almost traverse the whole thing right from the beginning.

Then you're not playing a decent sized galaxy.

[Spaced Cowboy]

I believe it was medium, and just the fringes were out of my reach, but moreover, once I settled colonies in range, damn near the whole enchilada was in range.

Are you telling me that life support becomes a research priority in your games to get to explore the rest of the map?

[Peets]

Range isn't priority at all
Mostly I find it useless unless you play on gigantic.

[Spaced Cowboy]

guys, think moo, you could barely reach the next system.

[EternalSpark]

I believe it was medium

There's your flaw. Yeah, in medium or below, range isn't important. Try anything larger, and you'll need it.

Are you telling me that life support becomes a research priority in your games to get to explore the rest of the map?

Indeed. Play on large or bigger, tight spacing, and don't flood the map with stars and/or habitable planets. You'll need to grab a few range techs to do anything.

[Barbazoul]

Something strange happened in my last game (v 1.11). My galaxy was randomized (large, though), and i could only keep my 2 starting planets ; i was in the middle of the map. In the worst position ever. Drengin to the north west, drath to the north east, Torians to the south east, Altarian and Korx to the west. Challenging difficulty.

I decided to try to go for an influence victory. So i mostly built constructors, and researched yellow techs. My military was really pathetic ; and everyone was "cool" with me because of it. The Drengin threatened me a lot. But what is strange is that no one declared war on me ! I was building influence star bases in the drath territory, slowly eating their empire, with no military on my home planets (3 defenders). The drath had the better starting setup (4 or 5 class 10 planets) and they could have killed me really fast. But no, they just watched their planets flip one by one.
Even more, after this first influence conquest, everyone started to like me ; i don't know why. Everyone was "warm" or even "close" with me. So i just built more and more constructors for the rest of the game, eating one civilization after another, and i finally won a diplomatic victory (because i allied with the survivors, it became too boring to just spam influence starbases everywhere).

What happened? Do your cultural influence make other civilizations love you? This game was really easy (fun at the same time), because no one attacked me. I, for sure, would attack a civilization if it was spamming my territory with influence bases... I finished this game without firing a shot (not totally true : i did conquer the Snathi early, with a few defenders).

I think the AI still has problems dealing with influence strategies ; or maybe it was because i was playing at challenging and it wasnt using all its algorythms ?

Anyway, i found a good strategy : only trade with one civilization ; then conquer it with influence. Maybe it won't attack you because of the major trade incomes that come from you. That's what i did with the Drath : i had 10 freighters going to their worlds, so maybe that's why they didn't attack me... Of course, the drawback is the "war" event that triggers from time to time : if you get at war with the civ you are trading with, you are in big trouble.

One last thing : the AI should not only consider military strength when evaluating the power of other civs. At the end of the game i was considered "weak" by the AIs, but i controlled more than half of the galaxy with influence, was ahead in research, and had the most population, and the most money. Those things should be considered when evaluating the power of a civilization ; because at this point, if one AI attacked me (because it considered my military to be "weak"), i could have created, in one single turn, an army that would beat the entire map... So even if i didn't control a lot of ships, my power was really big ; and still, i was considered "weak" by the AIs. This is strange.


PS : sorry for my pathetic English.

[Brizey]

Originally posted by Barbazoul
Something strange happened in my last game (v 1.11). My galaxy was randomized (large, though), and i could only keep my 2 starting planets ; i was in the middle of the map. In the worst position ever. Drengin to the north west, drath to the north east, Torians to the south east, Altarian and Korx to the west. Challenging difficulty.

I decided to try to go for an influence victory. So i mostly built constructors, and researched yellow techs. My military was really pathetic ; and everyone was "cool" with me because of it. The Drengin threatened me a lot. But what is strange is that no one declared war on me ! I was building influence star bases in the drath territory, slowly eating their empire, with no military on my home planets (3 defenders). The drath had the better starting setup (4 or 5 class 10 planets) and they could have killed me really fast. But no, they just watched their planets flip one by one.
Even more, after this first influence conquest, everyone started to like me ; i don't know why. Everyone was "warm" or even "close" with me. So i just built more and more constructors for the rest of the game, eating one civilization after another, and i finally won a diplomatic victory (because i allied with the survivors, it became too boring to just spam influence starbases everywhere).

What happened? Do your cultural influence make other civilizations love you? This game was really easy (fun at the same time), because no one attacked me. I, for sure, would attack a civilization if it was spamming my territory with influence bases... I finished this game without firing a shot (not totally true : i did conquer the Snathi early, with a few defenders).

I think the AI still has problems dealing with influence strategies ; or maybe it was because i was playing at challenging and it wasnt using all its algorythms ?

Anyway, i found a good strategy : only trade with one civilization ; then conquer it with influence. Maybe it won't attack you because of the major trade incomes that come from you. That's what i did with the Drath : i had 10 freighters going to their worlds, so maybe that's why they didn't attack me... Of course, the drawback is the "war" event that triggers from time to time : if you get at war with the civ you are trading with, you are in big trouble.

One last thing : the AI should not only consider military strength when evaluating the power of other civs. At the end of the game i was considered "weak" by the AIs, but i controlled more than half of the galaxy with influence, was ahead in research, and had the most population, and the most money. Those things should be considered when evaluating the power of a civilization ; because at this point, if one AI attacked me (because it considered my military to be "weak"), i could have created, in one single turn, an army that would beat the entire map... So even if i didn't control a lot of ships, my power was really big ; and still, i was considered "weak" by the AIs. This is strange.


PS : sorry for my pathetic English.

First of all, your English is fine.

I think what we are all talking about here is the liquidity of resources. It is just too easy in this game to convert one resource to another. They are all essentially equivalent. It is too easy to "switch gears". Think about what you said--you could instantly switch from the weakest military to the strongest in a single turn by simply buying a gazillion high tech ships. From a simulation point of view, this is absurd. There is not enough inertia in the game. There is no way a civilization, even if it had great understanding of the technical aspects of building warships, could possibly instantly build a lot of effective ships if it had never really built them before.

The missing element here is experience. One way to handle it is for the ships to get better and better, which they do to a certain degree as the hitpoints go up.

Another way to handle it would be for the Starports themselves gain experience instead of the ships. As ships from a particular statport engage in battle, the starport would use the infromation gleaned to build slightly better ships.

What this does is open another avenue to a powerful military. Another interesting choice with consequences.

[Barbazoul]

I agree about the resources being too "liquid". But don't forget that it's a game ; with the system you describe, you would be forced to focus only on the military during the whole game. I want to be able to do something else than military ; i want to be able to win the game with influence, or with diplomatic skills.
So in fact im quite happy that you don't HAVE TO build a strong military to win ; but it is, as you said, quite unrealistic, and the AIs don't seem to understand that even if you got 0 ship, you are so far ahead in terms of technology and economy that you could build a massive high tech fleet in one turn.

I don't really know if being able to switch from a weak military force to the strongest in one turn is a bad thing. Simulation wise, you said it, it's completely absurd.
But why am i able to do this? Because i used other strategies, that led me to a complete domination of the galaxy through other means. So, my "skill" is rewarded : im given the ability to build a high tech military force real fast.
If i were (ouch; grammar) not able to do this, then all my efforts to build my influence, technology, etc., would be useless because any civilization could wipe me really fast ; the influence victory and diplomatic victory wouldn't happen anymore.

What i did not understand in my game, is :
Why, all of a sudden, everyone began to love me (even with a poor military)?
Why did they not do anything while i was spamming influence bases everywhere(well, because they loved me , with almost no military in my planets (i only had 2 planets for the first half of the game!)?

PS : i had tech trading enabled, which allowed me to keep in the combat techs race... With tech trading disabled, maybe i would not have been able to have high tech ships ; i spent most of my research on the yellow techs.

[Solver]

The AI in GalCiv2 is aggressive enough, so at some point, you will have to build a military. For example, play a Good civ, and have the Drengin or the Yor in the galaxy... you will be attacked and you will have to build a military.

The problem is elsewhere. The problem is that you can play without having any military until you're declared war against. Then, once someone declares war on you, you have enough time to switch gears and build enough ships to repel an attack or even to execute a good counter-attack.

[Solver]

[SIZE=1]
What i did not understand in my game, is :
Why, all of a sudden, everyone began to love me (even with a poor military)?
Why did they not do anything while i was spamming influence bases everywhere(well, because they loved me , with almost no military in my planets (i only had 2 planets for the first half of the game!)?

I can't confirm this yet, but I have a feeling that how much influence you have partially determines how much the others like you. Also, if you were researching yellow techs mostly, they give big diplomacy bonuses. The AI is quite reluctant to research yellow techs, so you must have had by far the best diplo-ability of all civs in the galaxy, which is why everyone suddenly liked you.

Another problem, though, is the AI's inability to pursue a heavy influence strategy. I have seen in 1.1. some very cleverly placed Influence Starbases, that's good. However, I have never yet seen the AI concentrate on influence, build tons of Influence Starbases... it seems to build them where it really needs to, but not just forthe sake of amassing huge amounts of influence.