Strange Problem with GC2 DL

[Hydro]

I’ve had a strange problem with GC2 DL (Dark Avatar will have to arrive in the mail since the download didn’t work). Specifically, some races seem to NEVER expand from their home planet and one colony from their starting colony ship. In the last 4 or so games the Yor, Drengin, Iconians, and Thalians didn’t expand at all. My setup was painful, 7 random AIs, huge galaxy, common habitable planets, abundant planets and stars with loose clusters. The Altarians, Arceans, and Torians expanded vigorously, and the Terrans did a decent job.

Needless to say it was disappointing to see the Altarians grab PQ 14, 12, and 11 planets in system adjacent to the Yor, and see the Drengin have me (from the other side of the galaxy, no less) grab lots of worlds from around their comatose home system. These non-expanding races were, of course, doomed. When I put them out of their misery (I was Korx, so it was a natural thing to do) they had almost no development on their home world! They also had a huge bank account of many thousands of BCs (the Drengin had 10K!). On the flip side, the Altarans and Arceans were hugely powerful and spamming the galaxy with colony ships. Something was seriously wrong, and it kind of sucks some of the fun out of the game.

So, my question is have others seen this problem? Or did I just get a half-dozen bad starts? I don't recall seeing this at lower levels.

Hydro

[Solver]

Do you, by any chance, have Randomize Intelligence on? That will produce some really smart AIs and really dumb AIs. I haven't ever played against the very dumb ones, but I expect they could show such behaviour.

[Hydro]

Nope. Standard AI on Painful.

As a follow-up, I started a new game with the same setup. Same result:

22Dec2225
Me (Korx) 13 planets
Arceans 15
Altarans 12
Terrans 11
Drath 2 (Terrans and Altarans are goggling up their space)
Iconians 2 (ditto to Drath)

Others I haven't met but can imply based on their sphere that they haven’t expanded at all:
Yor 2 (partially boxed by Arceans and Altarans, but can expand in 1 direction)
Thalians 2 or maybe 3 (now completely boxed by Altarans)

I do not have Advanced Algorithms turned on, though. My system is ~1.5 yrs old now and my graphics card isn’t the best (if that matters), so I don’t know if this will cause the game to slow.

On another note, I have had the game occasionally lock when I end the turn. The only fix is to quick save (which I can do, amazingly, while it is locked), end and exit the game, and reload. Is this a memory leak?

Hydro

[Solver]

Well, you shouldn't need advanced algorithms on. I played GC2 before that option was even in, and I certainly never saw AIs on an a respectable difficulty act that poorly. The discrepancy in your numbers is too big.

I can understand that some civs get boxed in when they're unlucky and get beaten to the good planets by colony ships of others - but having 2 planets when others have over 10 is too weird.

Maybe you could post about that on the official forums - if you're experiencing some sort of strange behaviour, maybe also your savegame would be of interest to Stardock.

Oh, and about Dark Avatar - what's your problem with downloading it? It worked fine for me, although it took a while (no European download servers).

[Hydro]

Good idea. I’ll accumulate some data (trial runs) to see if this is some sort of fluke. Scientific types like me love data, and it beats the heck out of emotional arm waving.

As to the download, the reason it went belly up is that I have pokey dialup. After 7 hours (!!!) it hung at 100%. I think I need to take the plunge and upgrade to cable, which I’d do in a heartbeat is the local cable monopoly didn’t have such a record of terrible service (I jettisoned them once already). Unfortunately, the DSL alternative isn’t available, which is strange since I live in the metro area of the 3rd largest city in the US (Chicago). **sigh**

Hydro

[Hydro]

OK, here are the results from 4 test runs.

Setup:
* Huge galaxy, common habitable planets, abundant planets, abundant stars, loose clusters, abundant anomalies, normal tech rate.
* Painful difficulty, 7 random AIs (that do not have randomized intelligence). I’m playing modified Korx.

Of the runs all but #3 was pretty normal. Below is a summary of the number of planets per race ending Jan 1, 2226. In many cases I haven’t met all the races, but it was quite clear that some hadn’t expanded at all since their empires were nice perfect circles in the mini map.

Test 1
Korx 14
Drengin 2
Thalians 2
Yor 2
Torians 17
Terrans 11
Arceans 12
Iconians 2
** no race was boxed

Test 2
Korx 14
Terra 15
Alkarans 11
Terrans 16
Drath 2
Drengin 2
Iconians 2
Yor 2
** Iconian boxed

Test 3 (odd setup with most races in one portion of the galaxy; I abandoned this in 22 Oct 2225 since no race had expanded at all)
Korx 16
Drath 2
Terran 2
Yor 2
Drengin 2
Altarans 2
Yor 2
Thalian 2
** No race boxed (even if it was tight)

Test 4
Korx 15
Altaran 2
Drath 2
Terran 2
Thalian 2
Iconian 2
Arceans ~7
Torian 2
** No race boxed

Something is very suspicious here. Some races simply aren’t doing anything in any of the runs, and in Test 4 most races aren’t expanding. At the very least they aren’t keeping up with my colonization, which should not happen on Painful. Perhaps my copy of the game is corrupted?

Hydro

[Solver]

Wow, that's strange indeed. You're getting these crazy results fairly reliably. I can't see why some races would fair to grab any planets on a huge galaxy. All except the Thalians have a second habitable in their starting system, so the races stuck with 2 planets don't manage to colonize a single planet out of their system.

Maybe this would be of interest to Stardock...

[Hydro]

Well, I posted over at the GC2 web site and none other that Brad himself posted. He suggested (politely) that the AI settings probably weren’t what I thought.

Brad was right. I checked each of the games and – low and behold – all the AIs that didn’t expand were set to Fool. The others were Gifted, which is appropriate for Painful. As to how this happened, I can only guess that I fiddled with the settings at some time and they stayed that way, regardless of how I set the difficulty level. So from now on I’m going to check.

I started a new game and the AIs were all over the place, planting colonies, getting in each other’s face, declaring war. None were huddled and cowering in their home worlds. It is glorious! Now if I can just get them to ignore me for just a little bit longer…

Hydro