Dark Avatar Impressions

[yin26]

Well, the immediate future of the human race depends on what happens in the next 18 turns. I have two colony ships in orbit, one over each planet, to claim these worlds the moment we have a chance...if we get the chance!

[Solver]

Meh, I can't think of it as a proper Civ game if I can't trade techs .

[yin26]

Yeah, especially now that I find two of my three neighbors got 3 planets to colonize while I just have two. It's an interesting gamble, forgoing military to get those worlds settled...but if I don't, there's little hope to last mid game. Also, not being able to trade tech has put an even more interesting spin on this problem early on for me. It has also eliminated a lot of that negotiation micro you talked about, Solver.

[Solver]

I'd get the Barren worlds just to deny them to the AI, if you can sacrifice the military development speed. Since there's two of them, two planets for one tech are, IMO, worth it.

And yeah, depending on how many extreme worlds there are, the early game can be very different.

[yin26]

I just placed my first spy on the Drath homeworld and reduced his research by a good clip. My thinking is that rather than focus on his military, this guy will want others to do his fighting while he gets ahead in tech...so I'm putting the breaks on his tech. Also, since he's the guy I'm going to try to conquer, I figured it wouldn't hurt to start my espionage there...

[yin26]

Alright. Solver has given me my mission, and I agree: Destroy the Drath! Also, wow, the colony rush is so different, as everybody has said. You have your home planet, then a class 4...and that's it except for uninhabitable planets. I have two great Barren worlds within range, but I see now what people mean about deciding whether or not to make that tech investment to get those. Hmmm. Any advice?

As you can see, this is a VERY different kind of start from Dread Lords. Also, the survey ships are racing around each other like crazy to get at the specials, which seems a nice side effect of the small map.

[Solver]

Eh. You're screwed .

I never quite manage to be friendly with the Korx, and the Drath will make sure you're always at war anyway. The Korath won't Spore-rush you, but they always put up a good fight.

Destroy the Drath!

[yin26]

I've met 3 of my neighbors: Drath, Korath, and Korx. The Drath have the Super Manipulator ability, which means they might get somebody to attack me soon enough. The Korath have the Spore ships, which Solver has noted might not be put to good use (thankfully). The Korx have the Super Trader ability and already have a freight coming my way by virtue of starting the game with all trade techs. In my first diplo decision, I made econ and tech treaties with the Korx. My hope is that these will be my money guys so I can focus on less friendly neighbors.

[yin26]

I forgot to adjust my econ sliders! Pushing everything to Social spending, I almost doubled my Social production to 33. That shaved another week off the next factory build. So a factory that would normally take 7 weeks or longer to build, is down to 2. This seems like a good way to jumpstart your industry so that subsequent builds (ships and other improvements) are put into place faster.

[Solver]

My primary concern is usually getting as many Colony Ships out as I can, sending them to stars I see on the minimap in hope of finding habitable planets. I crank up the spending and taxes, but do not rush social stuff. I focus on developing the social stuff after my initial colonization. Then again, this is all stuff I've come up with, so I have no clue if it's the right way to play or not.

[yin26]

Some starting questions for you guys: I usually rush buy the first factory, then, if there aren't any obvious special tiles, I'll put down research, market, and happiness. I also rush buy the colony ship. In the first turn or two like this, I'll focus on Social spending, which is now at 18 (I bought my ship, so don't need Military, and research is minimal now anyway). This shaves a few weeks off the next factory build, now down to 3 weeks. Is that pretty much what you guys do?

[yin26]

O.K. Here's the setup. I'll be posting with no real agenda other than to share in what I hope will be some interesting moments. For those who already own the game, I guess this will be pointless. However, to make it somewhat useful for you and me, perhaps you could chime in with better ways of doing things? I'm no expert. I play to have fun...then win. As has already been said, I'd prefer even to have fun...then lose. But the game should be fun, so let's see what happens.

For kicks, I went nuts with population growth and econ. The general plan is to be like Vel and make some money. My Super Diplomat special ability should help convince others that it's good to give me cash and to be my friend. Man, I wish I had that special ability in real life!


Nothing wild here, though I have turned off tech trading, which should be interesting, especially considering my diplo bonus would have been really helpful here. Still, I think it's too easy to exploit the AI with tech trading, and I'm hoping it will make my research decisions more interesting. I also put on blind exploration and only 2 minor races so that it's harder to find civs (especially the free money kind, like the minors).


Finally, a few game settings. The map (above) is set to small, I've got 5 randomly selected civs ready to share the map with me, and the difficulty is "Tough," which, I believe, is where the AI and human player are on equal footing, and all AI routines are in play. Oh, I also gave the AI the added CPU boost setting for good measure. My hope is that the small map will mean more immediate action, less overall slog, and a quicker resolution to the game. For me, that would be "fun" at the moment. Aside from a few episodes in the campaign, I haven't played a game of GalCiv2 in a LONG while, so I might mess with a few starts first just so that I don't completely waste anybody's time.

[LordTheRon]

Great, I love AAR's! Looking forward to it too.

I'm thinking of starting a game on a small map too (medium at the largest). Games on small maps play nice and fast and you're on a more even footing with the AI than on a giant map.

[Solver]

Looking forward to that, Yin .

[yin26]

Freekin' Vista. Amazing. How many billion went into that? Anyway...

I agree with you about the fun in losing. In fact, that's one of my measures of a game, too: Granted, if I play well, I expect to do well...but if I play poorly, I should get crushed. Few games manage the second part of that equation well.

In that spirit, I am putting the campaign on hold to play a Tough game on a small galaxy, 5 random opponents, no tech trading, 2 minor civs only (I forget the rest). I might make kind of a visual aar (after action report) of it since I'm at home today. By the way, the campaign is still rough around the edges. It's just no fun to have a Dread Lord ship come in an rip apart your trade lanes and star bases before you're even rolling. Sure, you can slog it out, but the episodes don't so much cresendo as seemingly follow this pattern:

1. Out colonize/trade/build the enemy because he doesn't seem to spread (unless he takes one of your planets, which he's scripted to try). Even when he does get a planet, he doesn't seem to develop it much. So you can eventually win the war of attrition way down the line.

2. Use spies to cripple the few awesome starting resources he has. This reduces his ship output to a trickle.

3. Tech up and assault when ready.

There certainly are some nice things about the campaign in terms of getting you to think outside the box a bit (how do I keep the enemy who is many times stronger than I am from taking one of my planets? One answer: Spread many 1 attack point tiny ships like mines in the ocean to pick off his transports, which are usually unguarded). But mostly I'm now seeing too much predictability, uneven difficulty, and niche strategizing. Factor on top of this that some of the instruction text is woefully vague, and there is NO in-game help to keep you focused on the mission/story line other than the mission parameters themselves, i.e., "Don't get killed," and I'd have to rate the campaign through about mission 5 as mediocre to not worth trying for more than a mission or two.