I don't see how this is a big deal. If you like an unfair advantage, or enjoy just trying weird stuff, by all means do. Get your hands on a trainer / cheat program, and do whatever you please. Edit the text files, and change it to your hearts desire. Trainers always come out for games after they've been out for a month or two. Simply use one of those.

Since the Metaverse is also going to be used as a guideline to improve AI, I would *not* want games input where something terribly unbalancing was used to generate the win. It goes both ways.. someone may not want to be limited by the rules.. but I certainly do not want skewed games submitted to the Metaverse. If it gets going as they said it would, I DO want the computer AI improved as a result of games submitted to the Metaverse, and so I do NOT want people using screwed up tactics.. (i.e. using something that is clearly unbalanced).

If you like using cheats.. by all means, use 'em! LOL

fleabitfox

I don't know if the speed thing was *that* imbalancing compared to the PQ, but I do know it was one of my personal *always pick this* abilities. Just the +1 meant that your colony ships moved in 2 turns what everyone else took 3 to do and your survey and scout ships covered ground much more quickly. It made a HUGE difference in my beginning game. In my first pure 1.03 game I still took the +1, but it cost me more, and I still think it was worth it so their tweaks must not be too out of whack

Ideally, all the abilities you pick at the beginning of the game should give you equal benefit, thus encouraging you to try different strategies.

When one ability pick is so much better than the rest, then you wind up picking that one all the time and ignoring the others. Replay value dwindles.

I'll miss +15% PQ, but I also think that it was overpowered. You could drop a colony on a PQ 12 planet, buy Soil Enrichment, and have it PQ 15 the very next turn. And if/when the AI took the planet back, they suddenly had an overcrowded planet, because the planet would turn into a PQ 13.

I like the Metaverse, and think that it should be an even playing field. Like it or not, a +15% PQ isn't going to be a level playing field, because even if they AI takes it, it still means inflated scores due to the fact that you have a larger population base, which means a higher social score, and it means more production, which means a higher military score, and more research, which means a higher tech score.

Parting is painful, but good in the long run.

The +5 PQ isn't bad, for any planet over size 15 you get a +1 class bonus with it, which isn't too shabby because in this game planet size is everything.

Vernmeister, it really was that overpowered. I didn't use +15 PQ until my 7th game or so and when I did I was like "Wow, this is incredible". It was like I was playing in God mode or something. More money, more production, more research, 100% morale, better population growth, better max population, you get the picture. And of course, the game is very mod-able, if you really want to keep it then someone posted instructions on how to re-implement it. But I think you'll find pretty quickly that you'll become a much better GalCiv player working without it.

I should clarify my post, for any planet above size 15 you get a +1 class bonus over what you'd have with just soil/habitation bonuses. For example, a class 18 is a class 21 with soil/hab, it's class 22 with +5 PQ/soil/hab.

I think we all agree that the +15 PQ ability was a must pick for the player.

If I were to be trying to find ways to enchance the AI's behaviour, the first thing I would do would be to hard-code them to take the PQ ability. Not doing this would be deliberately handicapping them.

Net result of everyone going for PQ is that all planets are equally attractive to both human and computer players, there's just more of them to grab.

The abundance of good planets would slightly help the human player negate the computer players innate Stellar Cartography advantage in the expansion phase however.

Only 1 point would be left after picking PQ which would effectively eliminate any additional race customization.



~SDC~

Why does it have to be taken away from everyone just because some guys want to post big scores on metaverse?

Couldnt each trait have a color-say green and red- red meaning if you use this trait you will not be eligable to post your score on metavearse?

Then the guys who want glory can play ironman all they want while guys like Toadboy can have a nice relaxing game of pile up the 30+ planets.

I must admit I used the +15PQ trait too(It IS overpowered)but I dont mind it being cut.

But sometimes I wish for stuff like a map and scenario editor so I can make some foolish "superpower in the corner"or"monkey in the middle with all the resourses" type game just for the fun of it.Of course any altering of the rules or map would disqualify you for metavearse.

My point is Frogboy should try to make everyone as happy as possible,not just the hardcore types.

Dr.Kavorkian, have a read of http://www.joeuser.com to get a handle on the approach that Brad Wardell has. I found it very informative, even educational (especially the bit about taking action ), and entertaining.

And informative on what makes his company tick.

Damian

~SDC~

Oh that Ironman thing I said got me thinking.
there isnt an Ironman setting that Im aware of so how does metavearse know if someone didnt endlessly save his\her game and back up to get better random events or to better prepare for a defence or just explore then go back to first save?Just curious since it seems so important to have acurate non exploiting scores there.

I'd prefer the PQ+ was back. I have extraordinary bad luck... I've genuinely generated large maps that ended up with the AI each having 3 HUGE Planets (Yellow Stars), all in their starting sectors, and the only thing left in the galaxy was 2 13 and 2 14 worlds. That isn't unusal for my game playing luck, and once you are already down a few hours just exploring the map, it ruins the fun to have to continually 'Restart' just because of poor map being popped out of the RNG.

Also, half the time I ended up using the PQ bonus, because so many of the other bonuses did not, or at least did not appear to, work. PQ trait did. Look up my games, Brad. Half of them with PQ would have been other things, if they had worked.

Competing in the Metaverse is silly. First off, you cannot compete fairly unless everyone is running the same mods and settings. And since we can make our own mods... second, size and speed to win doesn't factor into the score very well.

I'll miss the PQ ability, especially if the other abilities haven't been addressed so that they all work. I can live without it, but I won't have as much fun. Thanks to basic luck, and lack of adequate maps... I know it's part of the game, map generation, and a primary weakness of the game type. But the PQ ability had been, as I said previously, allowing me to play more games without restarting. I was having more fun, as there is nothing more disappointing then wasting 4 to 6 hours an evening starting out various maps, only to discover there isn't anything about that, restart, and repeat. I'm in this for the fun, not some silly score.

Oh well. I hope Brad and the gang will consider returning it, in the future. For those of us with bad luck in with RNG generation... Too many repeated bad starts and wasted nights will get me to set aside a game for a lesser one, if it means I don't waste days of my free time in just getting a playable map.

"Ideally, all the abilities you pick at the beginning of the game should give you equal benefit, thus encouraging you to try different strategies.

When one ability pick is so much better than the rest, then you wind up picking that one all the time and ignoring the others. Replay value dwindles."


Leader,

Perhaps YOU pick the same abilities every time, but I for one, and I suspect others, do not use this practice. I intentionally try different combinations (virtually every game) to vary the game play, thus adding to replayability.


~SDC~

I don't believe the removal of +10 and +15 PQ had anything to do with metaverse scoring at all, they were removed (IMO) because the power they gave was vastly out of proportion to the ability points used to purchase them.

I understand your feelings, Starpilot, but look at what you posted from another angle: +15 PQ is so powerful that it allowed you to win when in a losing situation. Any trait that lets you overpower all adversity is probably an overpowered trait.

Also, not sure why it takes you hours to figure out a map is a dud. I have two loose criteria: one, I won't play a game when I'm stuck in an isolated 8 star cluster in the extreme corner of a gigantic map (or in a similar situation on smaller maps). Two, if I get boxed in really tight by AI civs then I either decide to slug it out or not based on just how ugly it looks. But either of those only takes maybe 30 minutes tops to figure out. And #2 isn't a 'have to' reload, it generally just means I have to switch from infrastructure tech to military tech and take what I want.

How about this.. if the AI could and often WOULD pick the +15% PQ bonus.. or more than one did each game, would you be so keen on it being in? LOL

Just imagine the AI having any ability, and ask yourself.. 'would it be to powerful if the AI had it?'. If the answer is 'yes', it is probably overpowered.

And I am still solidly of the mind if you want to cheat, fine.. but don't demand that the devs while trying to balance a game make it easy for you to do so. Complaining they are not keeping in what is a rather severe unbalance is just.. silly.

fleabitfox

The metaverse had nothing to do with it. Planet Quality is base rating for a variety of important calculations including economy, production, morale.

Being able to have all your planets instantly be at least +1 and in some cases +2 just by colonizing them was very imbalancing.

I started a game several days to a week or two ago and it was on version 1.02xx with the PQ ability. Now I can't seem to get it to accept my score into the metaverse (I didn't want to patch the game when I was almost the whole way through the game.) I have entered two previous metaverse scores with no problem. Is the metaverse rejecting my score because my game has the PQ ability?

Brian,
I started my game exactly as you did but I updated to 1.03 yesterday. Today I completed the game. No problem sending it to Metaverse.

Ok I've got to ask it.Newbie mode on: what is nerfed? :notsure: Gee I hate goin into newbie mode.

Hammer007

~SDC~

nerfed = Taken out or weakened.

To help with play balance issues.

Elrikk

~SDC~

Hammer

I'm mostly an outsider when it comes to techie-game-post-jargon too, but I'll take a shot...

:::engaging universal translator:::

As near as I can figure, "nerfing" draws its analogy from the relationship between real toys and nerf (tm, circle R) toys. A real football is hard. It flies a long way. It hurts when it hits you in the head. (c.f. Marcia Brady) A nerf football is soft and squooshy. It doesn't fly as far. It's relatively harmless when it hits you in the head. (Unless you just picked it up out of a mud puddle, but that's a different story.)

To "nerf" something, then, is to make it softer, to lessen its reach and impact. In this case (apparently) the +15% PQ bonus was a rough hunk of pigskin which clever, mighty-armed players used to bruise alien noses left and right, ruining their chances of making the big dance. The devs "nerfed" it, reducing the percentage, so that when our heroes chucked away, the Drengins and Torians stood a chance of preserving their faces and making the prom unscathed.

I freely admit I could be wrong about this. This is just what I've gathered from context.

Or what Elrikk said.

Brad, please dont ever stop improving the game. I can't believe that anyone would complain about the outstanding support you are giving to the product. You have made a devoted customer out of me.

Nerf = To make completely and utterly useless

That's the original meaning of the word anyway. It is often corrupted to refer to any reduction or downward tweaking of some feature, no matter how slight, in an effort to attach a negative overtone to such a move, although it can often be attributed to ignorance as well.

Vorlin Varelse,

1) I'm slow
2) I'm haven't mastered the military/conquerer victory path of the game yet.

I don't have anything against the military path. I just don't have the tech tree down yet. Plus, being a bit slow still at the game overall, so by the time I figure out I need to be going for military or a super cheese production/economy, the Dreg's are often demanding I give them all my tech, all my ships, my home world (which amounts to all my worlds in such a setting), and all my money, or they will crush me. After I refuse, they come knocking with frigates and battleships and that's the end of the game for me. Time to restart...

It takes me 1 to 2 hours to determine the game is unwinable from the start on a large map. Do that four times an evening. That was just a couple of days ago for me. And a good night of free time last week...

Like I said, it's just one of the downsides of random maps. You live with it. I do, rarely, benefit from the upside as well. Like having 2 nice PQ 25 worlds right next door at the start, twin worlds in orbit of the same star. You die by the RNG, you live by the RNG.

I don't accept the 'you shouldn't be able to come from behind' argument. One of the major points of these games, is that the player can come from behind. Otherwise, you end up having to always follow the optimal strategy path(s), and hitting 'restart' a lot at the beginning if your start is less then spectacular.

Star Pilot:

If you're having trouble with random maps dropping you in bad locations that aren't immediately apparent, this might be of some help...

http://www.galciv.com/forum.asp?BID=GS&id=43572

As for the tech tree, not sure if you need this but here's something too...

http://galciv.bsd.st/zai_h/