Patch is here!

[LordTheRon]

I saw no mention of it here yet, but the first DA patch is out and it has a LOT of improvement and fixes!

So go download it!

[Stuie]

Cool - thanks for the heads-up.

[Hydro]

I downloaded it last night. I must have just logged on as it was posted, too!

It is a large file and took a LONG TIME since I am one of those poor soals with dialup.

Regardless, I have to say I'm impressed with the list of fixes and tweaks. It seems that Brad of Stardock is a fan of Continuous Improvement, which is a very good thing.

Hydro

[Hydro]

From the GalCiv2 web site.

*~*~*~*~*

Galactic Civilizations II: Dark Avatar
-1.5x Change Log-

+TWEAK: Nerfed both the Mega Pirate event and the regular Pirate event so that it picks a random AI player instead of the most powerful, and made sure that their fleet ability is not greater than 10 (which we did for the Mega event but not the normal random event).

+ FIX: Crash in diplomacy screen if the other race (like the Jagged Knife) did not have a homeworld.

+ FIX: Bug in combat code where the code that forces a winner in case of a tie was not considering if the defending ship was upgrading or not.

+ FIX: Bug in improvement code that was interfering with projects that were not upgrades completing properly (including terraforming imps). This is something that a lot of people have been complaining about.

+ TWEAK: Changed it so that the option to save ship designs to disk does not affect templates; templates will always be saved to disk.

+ COSMETIC: updated xml data files that need to be translated with a node that says which fields to translate

+ FIX: Bug where AI ships would attack mining bases and not declare war. Now AI ships will go around mining bases unless already at war with civ.

+ FIX: Bug where research from shared research treaties was not added to receiving civ’s tech research.

+ FIX: several alt-tab related crashes.

+ TWEAK: Activated code to display messages in debug.err if any ship templates or ship designs are missing.

+ TWEAK: fixed event text that had a period in the middle of a sentence.

+ TWEAK: fixed problem with a comment in PlanetImprovements.xml where having '--' in a comment was causing read errors for Galactopedia.

+ FIX: Old AI designed ships are removed from the ship design list and deleted when they are no longer in use by any civ (Should significantly neft high memory usage in late games).

+ TWEAK: Changed Superior Hulls description.

+ TWEAK: United Planets: now a higher chance of the 'Neutral Ground' issue being picked if it's not being enforced.

+ Decreased spacing between stars so that more stars can be fit on a given map (which means more planets as well)

+ Abundant setting produces more of whatever it is being specified for

+ Ship defenses use slightly less space and cost a lot less

+ Manufacturing capital now produces 33% bonus instead of 25%

+ Fusion, Anti-Matter and Quantum Power Plants are far less powerful (but still pretty powerful)

+ AI priorities on various technologies tweaked

+ AI more savvy at trading technologies

+ Ships are not quite as valuable in terms of tech trading at previous

+ Fixed AI bug where special treaties were valued extremely high if traded early on

+ AI evaluates value of special environment technologies based on whether they are useful to them or not

+ All AI players will tend to build more factories on planets

+ Some AI players are less likely to build orbital fleet managers depending on their defensive strategy

+ Last remaining AI personality will no longer build planetary improvements on special research/manufacturing tiles that don't match (previously it would sometimes override it if it felt it was for a good reason, all other AIs already avoided this)

+ Drengin aren't as aggressive at colonizing after the first couple game years unless it has a particular planet in mind

+ Drengin and Korath AI personalities now look at what their colonies are doing when deciding whether to research manufacturing or research technologies

+ Drengin and Korath AI personalities value propulsion techs far more than other players

+ Drengin and Korath AI personalities won't upgrade ships outside their sphere of influence

+ If AI determines it wants to go to war with someone, it will declare war even if relations are neutral

+ Improvements to the Altarian and Arcean AI personalities in making them research better

+ AI now keeps a better eye on planets defecting and why

+ AI will factor planet defections into its relations with a given player

+ AI will heavily factor influence starbases into relations with a given player if defections have occurred (tough or higher difficulty)

+ Torians now focus a lot more on manufacturing on planets than research

+ Torians no longer will build oribital fleet managers no matter what. They're living on the edge now.

+ Torians won't build farms on planets that have more than 12 food production

+ Torian researching significantly improved based on player suggestions/strategies

+ Improvements to Terran Alliance / Drath research based on player feedback

+ AI evaluates technologies for trading more individually regardless of player's diplomacy ability

+ AI slightly better at managing its economy

+ Fixed crash bug in which multiple new minors being created in a given game could cause a crash due to no available player slots being available

[Stuie]

The patch has definitely made tech trading more difficult... or maybe it's the fact that I'm not using the Terrans for once. Still - those colonization techs are almost worthless unless the AI has a real need for them. Before I was buying my way to a tech lead by beelining to one of the extreme environment techs and then trading it. Not a viable option (or should I say exploit) anymore.

Anyway - I'm having tons of fun in my current game with a custom race (the "Old Ones" - loosely based on the HP Lovecraft mythos). Unfortunately I over-invested in my relationship with the Drengin only to get backstabbed when I got the "assassinated Lord Kona" event. Now I'm alone facing the two most powerful AIs (Drengin and an ongoing war with the Thalans - which I started in order to help revitalize the aforementioned Drengin - oops).

[Lord of the Isles]

Originally posted by Stuie
The patch has definitely made tech trading more difficult... or maybe it's the fact that I'm not using the Terrans for once.

I was about to make a similar point; I started a new game last night moving up to Painful and couldn't decide if it was the higher difficulty level or the patch that made the difference. Guess it was the patch.

The AIs drive much harder bargains now - so much so that even as Iconian Refuge with Diplomatic Translators and an early lead in Diplomacy techs I'm often giving 4 or 5 techs to get one. And this isn't for techs that the AI tells me are central to its strategy and will need to pay an arm and a leg for (the AI leader uses a phrase like that) but ordinary average techs. Even when I'm informed that my Diplomacy abilities give me a great advantage, I still have to pay a lot for techs. Maybe too much but after moaning for some time about how easy out-trading the AI is, it wouldn't be fair to complain when Stardock fix it. We'll see how the balance is. Thus far, it's giving a testing game.

Also be good to see how the patch affects crashes to desktop. They haven't been unbearable with DA so far but still a lot more frequent than with DL.

Maybe this is a good place to suggest a stickied bug thread for DA? The current thread ends in 2006 and it would be neater to open a separate one for DA. I've one or two that I don't see mentioned in the patch notes and the GalCiv official forums are such a pain to use that I'd rather use Apolyton (and Brad does drop by I believe).

[Hydro]

I’ve noticed that tech trading has been nerfed, too. There are some techs that the AI simple will not trade or sell: extreme enviro, weapons, defense. Others they’ll simply tell you to get lost or will accept only if you give them a ridiculous amount of tech in return, e.g. 20 turns of tech for a tech I can research in 4 turns. This is even true for my Yor (the only game I’ve played from the start with 1.50x) that have +20 diplo, lots of diplo tech, diplo translator, and an ‘incredible’ diplo rating for that faction AND the faction likes me. This effectively eliminated tech trading.

I’ve also noticed the AI is very hesitant in accepting Eco and Research treaties, even with good diplo and favorable ratings (friendly or warm). I know these were downgraded in the patch, and it is interesting to see that the AI turns down a portion of my much larger eco and research in return for theirs.

What is perplexing is that the AI seems to be trading techs at a furious rate, so this limitation doesn’t apply to them. For instance, in my Yor game a tiny empire (Krynn, 3 planets) managed to get all the extreme colonization techs at about the same time as the other AIs. Also, the groups of AIs seem to progress at a suspiciously similar rate (phasers, manufacturing) as do the minor races. This suggests they are trading techs. The only way to know for sure is to track their research in the diplo screen and then compare to what they actually have – which is a lot of work. There may be other ways to check that aren’t so painful.

A few more games are needed to see how this is working. It could be my Isolationist Yor have a diplo penalty. But if this is true then the implication is that the Super Diplomat ability is severely diminished and that diplo techs which may be effectively worthless.

Another thought is that this may effectively be an AI cheat if they can engage in Group Research while excluding the human player. If this is true then I’m simply going to turn off tech trading.

Hydro

[tetley]

I'm not overly fond of the patch. It fixed a few minor things, but it broke a couple of major things like tech trading (might as well turn it off now) and defense.

[Hydro]

Actually, the new defense is both good and bad. Early it is outstanding since level 1 weapons simply bounce. Put one or two level 1 or 2 armor/shields/ECM and your ships will do very well indeed. This is especially true since most early ships have fewer weapons, and since the defense 'regenerates' between rounds.

The AI largely ignores armor, so your fleets for a very modest investment can do much better than the AI ships.

In late middle and mid game the game changes. If you have a large fleet then some armor is good since the shots will be dispersed and the armor will have a better chance of regenerating. Once weapons get to level 2 or certainly 3 they start penetrating, so at this time better defense tech is needed.

For instance, my Yor cruisers (level 1 and 2 defense, level 2 offense; att 12, def 2 to 4) waded through innumerable early Drath, Terran and Arcean fleets of small ships (att 8, no defense). Some of them got some of the highest experience I’ve seen – apx 190. The game changed when my Altaran and especially Arceans enemies started getting cruisers (med hulls) with beam attacks of 18+. I had to up my defense to at least 8-12 to make a difference, and they still penetrated to paste me now and then. But, all things equal, my fleets (with a modest tech edge) lost 1 ship (cruisers) to the enemy’s 5 (cruisers with some small fighters), and this was likely due to the fact the AI had no defense. In essence, more of their damage bounced while mine always did damage. As I mentioned above, the AI fires on most or all ships, so the dispersed firepower among a number of targets means armor can do some significant good if you 1) have decent armor and 2) have a number of ships to absorb the barrage. The Yor had more space for defense, though, due to their miniaturization edge (making my ships all the more expensive – want more, cost more).

So I’m neutral on the defense. I’m not sure it is bad; it’s merely different.

Hydro

[Stuie]

Originally posted by tetley
I'm not overly fond of the patch. It fixed a few minor things, but it broke a couple of major things like tech trading (might as well turn it off now) and defense.

What level are you playing on? Previously it was broken to the point of turning it off on anything from Painful on down - it was just too easy to get every tech from the AI. Now I can turn it on and use it sparingly; before it was just an exploit.

But I agree that there needs to be some happy medium.

[tetley]

I was playing on Suicidal before the patch, now I'm on Crippling and seeing how that goes (I finished one game and I mopped up fairly easily).

Tech trading is all but gone since the patch. I have no problem with that for now--I've never played with tech trading off before. Now I get to play with Planetary Invasion stealing and espionage.

Defense is overpowered and just plain broken since the patch. Defenses for the wrong weapon type are actually stronger than the right defense. That becomes more painfully obvious when you play Accelerated Start.

[Hydro]

Defense broken? OK. How do you tell? The combat fire-defense screen?

I'll have to pay more attention.

Looks like there are a number of items I'll have to track:
* Tech trades by AI - my observation is that the AI still seems to trade, others say no.
* How Defense really functions (as in tedley's observation of armor not working as specified)

Others?

Hydro

[tetley]

Play a Battle of the gods, for example, and attack an AI fleet that has very high defense but of the wrong type. You would expect to win, but....

[Lord of the Isles]

update to patch out 7th March

The patch was version 1.50X.66

A few hours ago I found 1.50X.68 on Stardock. Can't find any info on what it changes (there's a post on the official forums by someone bemoaning that he's tried everywhere he can think of but can't find any info).

Anyway, one thing it has changed is the AI's tech trading. Just started a game (Huge, all common, Painful, Terrans) and the AI is trading more like the original DA than the patch. Indeed, it may very well be the prepatch trading system, though it is too early to tell yet in the game.

I met the Yor first and they were willing to trade me Planetary Improvements for either of:

-- 580bc or so
-- New Propulsion Techniques & Xeno Research

Can't remember the next AI race but managed to trade something with them too. I hope this is part of Stardock's balancing since I do want to see tech trading be less of an exploit. However, it may be the lengthy and sometimes heated discussion (mostly critical of the patch changes) on the official forums have persuaded Stardock to go back to where they started from in the first instance.

[Hydro]

Thanks for the heads up! Downloading now!

Hydro