Brad Wardell

Join Date 03/2001

+137

Manual update: Super Abilties

Each civilization is really unique at doing something. The super abilities are:

Super Diplomat. Civilization is able to secure much better deals through negotiation that other civilizations.
Super Dominator. When they go to war, they receive a group of Corvette class ships. The number they receive is based on their military power.
Super Organizer. When they are attacked, all races of the same ethical alignment will come to their aid.
Super Warrior. When in battles, they get the first strike ability. That is, their ships attack first and if their opponent survives only then do they return fire.
Super Breeder. If their approval is 100% their population increases at 4X the normal rate
Super Isolationist. Can colonize barren worlds and no foreign ship can travel more than 3 spaces per turn in their area of influence.
Super Trader. Gets all the trade techs at start of game and gets 2X from trade.
Super Manipulator. Is very good at getting other races to go to war with each other.
Super Hive. Unlimited range and all factories are built in 1 week.
Super Adapter. Starts out with aquatic and toxic world technologies.
Super Annihilator. Can build spore ship which when used on a defenseless colony will eliminate all population and turn it into a toxic world of the same class.
Super Spy. Gets an agent to start with and worlds are immune from agents.

(these aren't all impemented in bta 1 of Dark Avatar).

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Philocthetes

Join Date 10/2003

+153

Good sir Draginol, I'm very glad to see this list for the new super abilities and look forward to testing them out in the beta, but you are teasing some of us with that word "manual" in your subject line

The galciv wiki showed no DA awareness when I poked around recently. Is there any chance of you hardworking folks finding time to use the wiki to get free labor from us beta folks?

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Brad Wardell

Join Date 03/2001

+137

I'd love to see people update the Wiki!

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Philocthetes

Join Date 10/2003

+153

Good wishes are swell and all that, but I was really wondering about some paid-labor effort to spark beta crowd work over on the wiki. At minimum, it seems like one of your sharp crew might be able to revise the home page so it actively invites DA beta player input.

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Philocthetes

Join Date 10/2003

+153

Boy I wish I knew why Edit fails even when there are no posts after your last one.

But I meant to add that I might represent a small set of beta folks who are documentation oriented, but need a little boost to help us make the effort of learning how to work on the wiki.

I've been a copy-editing fan of the Wikipedia for a long time (over a year?) now, but I haven't been motivated to learn about the full tagging scheme. Some regular references here in the forum and some Stardock-driven freshening of the galciv wiki could encourage many of us to pile in as volunteer documentation builders.

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DivineWrath

Join Date 05/2006

+135

Could you include what super ability a race has in thier discription? Its one of those minor details that would be useful when selecting a race to play as.

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The Super Dominator ability sounds very weak; do the Corvettes scale to match current technology levels? At the same time, Super Organizer sounds like it is should be very powerful. How is it balanced?

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Could you include what super ability a race has in thier discription? Its one of those minor details that would be useful when selecting a race to play as.

Super Diplomat - Terran Alliance
Super Dominator - Drengin Empire
Super Organizer - Altarian Resistance
Super Warrior - Arcean Empire
Super Breeder - Torian Confederation
Super Isolationist - Yor Collective
Super Trader - Dominion of the Korx
Super Manipulator - Drath Legion
Super Hive - Thalan Empire
Super Adapter - Iconian Refuge
Super Annihilator - Korath Clan
Super Spy - Krynn Consulate

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You know, when I first read that the Super Isolationist could colonize "barren worlds" I thought it meant all those many Class 0 planets. Ah, well.

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I was playingas the Krynn with the with the Super Spy ability, but it doesn't seem to function as listed.

When I clicked on the enemy agent symbol on my planets, I would get a pop-up saying that my race had the Super Spy ability, and thus the planet was immune from enemy agents. However, my planets were LOADED with enemy agents, and they were certainly reducing the effectiveness of my planets.

For instance, an enemy agent might be on a factory, and when I remove them, my productivity would return to normal.

Am I misunderstanding their power? Has this ability in particular not be implemented fully yet?

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PS - I can't edit my post. The forum keeps suggesting that I am not logged in... but here I am!

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Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2419

It's a wiki. If the community doesn't want to update it then it won't get updated. That's why I'm writing a user manual. I can't do both.

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They look good, but I wonder about the feasability of the Super-Adapters. Getting only two technologies seems to be a rather weak benefit when compared with, for instance, being able to build a massive construction facility in a few weeks. I would suggest changing it to something more along the lines of the Super-Isolationist, or giving them all of the initial colonizing technologies. Especially when compared with the Super-Isolationists, they don't have much of an advantage over the long run; the Isolationists get half as much benefit just from their starting technology, and limiting ships to only 3 parsecs per move should be devastating in the late game when ships travel 10-30 parasecs a week, much more powerful overall than a single colonizing technology.

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While those sound kind of cool, some of them do seem super unbalanced, Super Hive sounds really powerfull.

Is it the overall or the planetary approval rating that needs to be at %100 for Super Breeder?

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Draginol

Join Date 03/2001

+137

I might agree that some balancing may still be needed.

Which part of Super Hive do you feel is unbalanced? I was thinking that instead of unlimited range, that they simply start out with much greater range than other players.

Super breeders workon a per planet basis.

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The idea of paying people to work on a wiki does not really match my concept of what a wiki is.

I assume we will be able to turn super abilities on and off for a more balanced/more differentiated game.

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I assume we will be able to turn super abilities on and off for a more balanced/more differentiated game.

Options are always nice.

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Which part of Super Hive do you feel is unbalanced? I was thinking that instead of unlimited range, that they simply start out with much greater range than other players.

I'm thinking that 1 turn factories is overpowered, but along with unlimited range it just seems mind-blowingly powerfull.

Imagine creating a custom race with a *huge* reproductive rate and a Super Hive bonus. You get a highly expansionistic race that can make industrial strongholds over night.

Actually, I just downloaded the DA beta, and I'm now playing a Super Hive race. I'm loving it, because I can set up worlds so quickly, but it's still pretty unbalanced IMHO.

I noticed that in the race creation stage, there is an option not to use a Super Ability, and I thought, what's the point in that? And then I realized something... what super abilities had a disadvantage, and more powerfull super abilities had bigger disadvantages. For example, the disadvantage could be a reduced reproductive rate or research rate, and the more powerfull the Ability is, the greater the decline.

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Hi!

I wonder about the feasability of the Super-Adapters. Getting only two technologies seems to be a rather weak

You serious? Being able to colonize from the start 2 times as much planets as others can you find weak?

To understand the power of those two techs, thinka about what will happen when others will get tech for toxic and aquatic worlds, and most of those planets will be already taken? Who will have bigger economy, more research, more everything?

BR, Iztok

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One thing I've noticed with the Super Spy ability: If another race surredners their worlds to the Super Spy player, those worlds can still have enemy agents on them.

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Super-Adapters. I find this one a little weak atm.
I propose that you also give them the second tech for both aquatic and toxic so that they can have 100% production on those worlds from the start. And maybe the prequisite Extreme Colonisation too.

Super-Dominator could either be very powerful or wholly pointless. The trick is to make it useful att all tech-levels. What happened to their secondary ability to extort money from other races? I liked that one.

Super-Trader. Good to see that they get 2x trade now. I thought it was a little weak earlier. The problem with this (and super-adapter) is that currently having a super-trader AI in the game means that all AI:s will get all trade techs very early through trade. It needs to be very hard to trade for these techs from these races.

Super-Hive. I think the factory part is overpowered. The reason being that all the other players have to buy factories in the beginning and the Thalans don't, they will have a massive economical advantage. At the same time, I think it's a really fun ability and don't want to see it removed. I would instead suggest removing their range-bonus completly. They don't need it, they will rock anyway.

The other ones I think are fine as they are.

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I think that the super annihilator's spore ship technology should not be capable of being stolen or captured. Then it will get out to everyone, and their only advantage is gone. Currently it is stealable.

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Wow some of these abilties sound so overpowered a human with some of these advantages would crush the AI easily.

The following abilities are the most noticably hugely powerful abilities to me.

Super Warrior: Sounds massively overpowered I know combat has been changed a bit but this woud be like a return to pre 1.2 patch (i think) for that race. Huge advantage.

Super Breeder: This could easily be overpowered.

Super Isolationist: Speed issues are huge this could make you nearly unconquerable and give u advantage in colonisation the most important phase. Id be taking an influence bonus with this ability.

Super Hive. Factorys in one week. You could colonise and build military at frightening speeds. Super Rush strategys.

Super Adapter: Big advantage in most important phase of game.

Dont get me wrong I think Gal Civ2 has been crying out for distiction between races this is a good way to do it but can create huge imbalances if not done correctly.

Lenius.

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Philocthetes

Join Date 10/2003

+153

I can't do both.

Hay boss, I wasn't *at all* expecting *you* to do any more work! I was just suggesting that a little kicking of the user base from one of your fine crew might help get more folks like me to get of these forums and do some doc work over there. Apologies if I appeared rudely demanding. I guess I should pick up that flag myself if I'm serious.

Re the Super Hive ability, I don't know how much better off I'd be if I'd noticed it before playing about a year and a half in. The quick-factory plus unlimited ship range does seem pretty posh.

I like both the idea of shifting Super Hive unlimited range to a range bonus and of putting some disadvantage together with the advantages. Super Hive might suffer diplo or trade penalties, for example--that swarm of bugthings is too scary to do business with!

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I agree with the heneral consensus some of the bnonuses sound insanely powerful and thus exploitable, some penalties to go with them could be the way to go.

What if the Super Hives fast factories was balanced with a research penalty? Sure you can build five ships to my one, but I have better tech.

While I may be a super dominator, my influence is lacking - why dont the other races like me mummy? Guess if they wont recognise my greatness by buying trinkets I'll just have to put the boot in with my free ships....

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Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2419

I'm open to the idea of having penalties with super abilities. Let's hear some ideas.

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