Dark Avatar Impressions

[LordTheRon]

Originally posted by yin26
Hey, neither am I. Let's leave that stuff to the professionals. Any impressions so far?

First impressions are that I can't play it on my laptop which sadly came with Vista.

According to the official forums it's an nVidia driver problem. Game hangs after a couple of turns. My reward for being one of Uncle Bill's betatesters. Oh well, back to the desktop that luckily runs XP.

And now back to the game!
First impressions are quite positive. I must say that I didn't play that much GalCiv 2 altogether. I wanted to, but the game never absorbed me like GalCiv 1 did. Probably because I had a lot of other things going on when the game came out.

Played my first full game yesterday with the AI on intelligent (I could handle them in GalCiv 1). That was bit... let's call it optimistic. I got completely run over during the beginning. Started colonizing too late and never really recovered. Being neighbours of the Korath didn't help either.

But I love losing my TBS games! Shows that the AI is at least capable of beating mediocre players like me. I'm sure I'll get better and find weakspots like the ones Solver already pointed out, but it's always a good sign to see that you can actually lose. I've played too many TBS games where you really had to try hard to lose.

I really dig the extreme planets. Adds a whole deal of new strategy to the game and makes the colony rush much more interesting and not a rush perse anymore. Once again Solver hit the nail on the head as it would be even better if you could customize the amount of extreme planets in relationship to normal planets.

One thing I noticed is that you cannot easily research future techs, without selecting every single tech manually. In Civ IV this is possible and I use it a lot. It would be nice to have the possibility to select a future tech and see the game research all techs inbetween automatically. This saves a bit of micromanagement. If I want to go from weapon theory straight to railguns, I'd like to be able to just select the railguns tech and see the game research all techs in between automatically.

I completely agree with Solver about the 'this is my maximum amount of money for that tech' button for the diplomacy screen.

Those are my first impressions. I have an evening session up for tonight so more impressions to follow after that.

[Solver]

He's not. Vel's got plenty on his plate, and in what little time he does have for playing games, he plays Civ4. Should also come up with a complete guide for that .

[yin26]

80-page introduction, more like. Does anybody know if he's playing GC2? If he's not, Poly should send him a copy in exchange for his creating an "exclusive" Poly guide. We could raise money for it.

[Solver]

I can only imagine Vel playing GalCiv2, would probably result in an 80-page strategy guide two weeks later .

[yin26]

Hey, neither am I. Let's leave that stuff to the professionals. Any impressions so far?

[LordTheRon]

I'll join in the fray here! Although I'm not really a strategical mastermind, so I won't add much value to the discussion here I'm afraid.

[Solver]

Originally posted by yin26
Well, I've done what I can to promote Solver's excellent review over on the official forums. http://forums.galciv2.com/index.aspx?AID=144599 Of course, if it remains just the three of us, I'll be sure to take notes and thank you for the insight.

Bastard . Hmm, I guess I should make a post linking here at CFC - their GalCiv2 forum is getting more visitors than ours (sigh).

[Solver]

Actually, starports were dirt-cheap to rush. Colonies weren't, at around 1100 bc, but hey, it's the colony rush! You start with some money, and I usually do spend it on rushing colony ships where appropriate, if that gives me a planet for sure. I won't bother with it for a class-3 planet, but any okay or better planets are a must.

The AIs are designed to behave foolishly on lower levels, yeah. On "Challenging", they'll generally act smart, but not using all their tricks. On "Tough" they finally use all they got. On the other end, on "Normal" they are sort-of okay, but without really being smart either, and on any lower difficulties, they'll actually make many stupid decisions on purpose.

I see the logic behind that design, though I myself do not think it's a good idea. I'm fine with some extra-smart behaviour being reserved for the higher levels, along with increased aggression or such, but I don't like the thought of intentional stupidity. Playing GalCiv2 for the very first time, I was very disappointed by the AI precisely because I played on "Normal" (which was worse then than it's now) - thankfully, I was immediately told that there's some intentional stupid behaviour.

Speaking of high-level algorithms, I find that, with maximum CPU usage enabled, the AI ability to predict your actions improves by a fair bit. That's good .

I’ve found you can’t beat the Apolyton forums. Folks are civil and thoughtful

Tell that to the off-topic guys .

I’ll have to play the Thalians. The only problem might be depopulating your homeworld if colony pod production is too high.

You won't depopulate your homeworld. Though, of course, you should also start producing colonies on another planet as you grab one. With their Super Ability, you can set up a working industry really fast on a newly colonized planet.

[yin26]

Well, I've done what I can to promote Solver's excellent review over on the official forums. http://forums.galciv2.com/index.aspx?AID=144599 Of course, if it remains just the three of us, I'll be sure to take notes and thank you for the insight.

[Hydro]

Then again, there's another colonization trick the AI doesn't really use. If I colonize a planet and there are other non-taken habitables in the system, I'll colonize them ASAP. Which means, if there's not another free Colony Ship in the immediate vicinity (there's probably not), the first thing I do is rush-buy a Starport + Colony Ship on my new planet, and proceed to colonize the other planet at once. I found that waiting for a Colony to arive from elsewhere will usually just cause the AI to grab the planet instead.

Yikes! Rush buying a starport and col ship is expensive (~500bc+1000bc?), especially in the early game. That must be one darned important planet. But you're correct that there isn't likely to be another colony ship by soon. I tend to do a targeted radial pattern of colony ships (no scouts – waste of time and resources) that is biased toward my neighbors so I can get the territory before they do. Pokey spd 2 or 3 colony ships make for long transit times.

As to AI colonization, I’ll have to look again. Regardless, the AI is systematic and does a decent job overall. There are exceptions. In DA I’ve noticed that races that used to aggressively colonize (Arceans, Torians) now are more quiescent. The Korath and Drath did a poor job colonization in my last game, which is the only one they appeared in (random AI). Perhaps that is part of how the AI’s are designed? I seem to recall that at lower levels the AIs are designed to make bad decisions now and then, or that they don’t have access to high-level algorithms.

I’ve found you can’t beat the Apolyton forums. Folks are civil and thoughtful, but it does get quite sometimes.

I’ll have to play the Thalians. The only problem might be depopulating your homeworld if colony pod production is too high. The alternative of small pops on colony ships is OK, but they will take forever to grow. Still, that is better than letting some other empire get its greedy hands/claws/retractors/tentacles on it.

Hydro

[Solver]

Maybe you should go drag some other people by hair into this forum . I mostly stay out of the official forums myself. I crossposted one of my vanilla comment threads there, got no constructive posts from the locals (though Brad himself replied), but got some flaming for being negative and failing to understand the game.

That's a pretty crazy bug you caught there, though. Funny, tough quite severe.

[yin26]

LOL! Well, I can't stand the GC forums (the setup and some of the discussions) -- also, this is 'home,' as you say. Besides, Brad comes by here, and I'm sure he is printing out your review as we speak. In fact, I hope he gives your review front page coverage as it beats all the other reviews put together in terms of content.

On another note, sometimes you gotta love bugs! I'm in the campaign and am supposed to escort somebody off the map so we can escape a war. Well, the ship I had the precious cargo on got caught by a Dread Lord and was blown up...only to lead to VICTORY! Heh, that's cool. I was *hating* the idea of starting this one over -- I generally try not to have several saves to go back to as I find this encourages me to reload and not stick things out.

[Solver]

*sigh*

Common sense dictates that some of these discussion should be happening at the official GalCiv2 forums. Much as Apolyton is our home, the participating audience here isn't exactly huge...

[yin26]

I've now re-read the threads in question and see, with Civ4 at least, this has to do with "AI behavior" and not knowing where resources are, etc. Basically what Solver said.

[Solver]

Yeah, I remember that thread along with Soren's reply now. It's somewhat complicated technically, too, but overall, I found that I don't mind the extent of AI cheating that is present in Civ4. What I hate is very obvious cheating, such as the Civ3 AI always knowing where resources will pop up or knowing as soon as you move defenders out of a city. With subtle and relatively insignificant cheats, I am willing to accept those as part of a price for having a competent and fun AI.

I am, after all, a self-confessed AI whore. Have to mention SMAC here as an exception, the game has really poor AI, but I kept playing it for a long-time because of absolutely awesome depth and atmosphere.