Cure worse than the disease! I see people in this thread talking about leaving Cultural Victory enabled as if that were the behavior of aliens from outer space. LOL

Fact is, if you survive to reach a point of becoming friends with all civs, the game is over. (That is why setting all the AI's to the same alignment is such a cakewalk.) The AI can't defeat you by tech. The AI won't attack you if your relations are strong enough. What's left for the AI? Culture? They don't ever do anything on culture unless by military force and/or luck they happen into a monopoly or near-monopoly on influence resources.

WHAT THE HECK DOES THE CULTURE FLIP EVEN MATTER???

It doesn't. Like the Terror Star blitz, it's just a way to record your victory with reduced tedium.

About the only thing that can upset a stable alliance is a random event: alignment shifts. (The "diplomatic incident" events that start wars are avoidable by having invested enough into espionage).


CypherPax said:


I find this point of view baffling. As I just said, the game is over when the AI no longer has a chance to beat you, and that point is reached any time you secure relations with all the remaining AI's. After that, the method of victory doesn't matter. Only if a good relation somehow goes south (rare) is the game thrown back into turmoil and doubt.

In order to win out with starbases, you need to be at peace. If you are at peace, you could win out just as easily with terror star strike as party palaces. If the AI is not attacking you, not going to attack you, you have all the time in the world to set up whatever you please with near-impunity.

For me, the moment I want out of a game is the moment the outcome has been decided. There is nothing "harder" about investing your time and energy into the complex logistics of invasions and ship wars if there is no chance left to lose. Alpha strikes, Stacks of Doom parked in the next sector, you name it. This AI lets you sucker punch it any way you please, on any timing you please, once you've gotten to good relations.

The ability to take out an entire target in one sneak attack blow is the biggest problem, in my view. The AI responds well enough once you have revealed your intent, but that won't matter if you've dealt him a strong enough blow, and especially not if you eliminate him in one blow.

If the AI will make war over cultural starbases in adjacent sectors, then we might as well strip that whole concept out of the game.

Suggestion: The AI should simply not ever sell or trade away its resource bases. Then at least, acquiring resources would take some gameplay by the player.

Suggestion: If the AI did not squawk at the FIRST cultural starbase in an adjacent sector, but at the third, fourth or fifth (to be determined randomly, just so that the player can't min/max effects with complete impunity), THEN perhaps we're on to something.

After all, one or two cultural bases, that's fair play. The trade and effects might be welcomed. Jamming them down somebody's throat, on the other hand, is WalMart Policy, predatory commerce in action, and that would stir up hard feelings.




The value of that would depend on the situation. With the player able to bribe civs to war on one another, and starbases so extremely overexposed, the AI could invest heavily only to see all its work go up in smoke.

How to make the AI smart enough to know when and where it can afford to build bases? I'm not sure. The AI's are currently dominated by the need to push everything they have into military, just to be able to survive against other AI's, or to win militarily if they can.

SUGGESTION: What the AI's should perhaps do, is to improve their existing bases more. Add more culture to their resource bases, and do something with those junk bases they plop down. Add more modules to them.

SUGGESTION: If an AI is pursuing a cultural base strategy, it should refuse all bribes to be sent into war.

SUGGESTION: If player attempts to bribe another civ to attack a civ that has lots of culture starbases already built, the target civ might be granted a chance to match or beat the offer, in which case the bribed civ turns against the human player and wars on them instead! (That would take some of the certainty and predictability off frivolous bribery strategies, that's for sure!)

And yes, the AI should be able to detect buildups near its starbases, not only in the same sector, but parked in adjacent sectors. And again, one or two such instances should not alarm the AI, but a larger pattern of them definitely should. And if the number that will push the AI over the edge is somewhat randomized, the element of risk-vs-reward is re-injected into the game, and the larger maps, currently "easier" to play by all accounts, would actually see a significant stiffening, since the kind of buildups necessary to make alpha strikes there would be more quickly and certainly detected.




Bad idea, IMHO.



Definitely. AND to alter the value based on the number of modules installed.

Plus, military and defense modules should perhaps also increase starbase hit points.




Strong medicine, but I would find this preferable to the current situation. Although more complex solutions might be better. (See above).




NO! I wholeheartedly disagree on this point!

The idea looks good on paper, but it fails to account for what the AI is actually good at, which is beelining its ships to overwhelm lesser civs who have fallen behind in production and technology.

Think of it this way. The AI's are all locked in an arms race. The human player can ignore that to pursue the diplomatic, trade, research and morale techs because the human player can finesse the diplomacy much better, thus find ways to survive without a strong navy. The AI's can't do that.

Any AI who wanders off the military path will be crushed by those who did not. This would destroy the current game balance.

The only way around this would be the Master of Orion solution: planetary defenses immensely more powerful than starships, requiring massive fleets to even contemplate overtaking a single well-defended system. Then the AI could rest on "just enough defenses" while pursuing production and research and trade.

GalCiv is the opposite of that. GalCiv is pure attack. With a pure attack game, the only hope is to have an even better attack than the other guy. I'm afraid this game is not designed to hold up to the AI's doing anything other than all racing together in a pack up the military branches of the tech tree. Mark my words, if Brad goes with sending some AI's down other branches of research, whoever does that will become the new Yor: disrespected and abused by all.




Currently, once you have good relations, the AI just hands you the game. Not sure what, if anything, to do about that, either. In my view, that IS the game. That is all there is to this game. Find your way to good relations, use the peace to build up your production, and as soon as you hit critical mass, fuss with the logistics of forcing the game to acknowledge that you have beaten it.

This is why I play with the default alignment spread. Truly, that is the only way this game appears to have been meant to be played. The full spread means that no matter what your alignment is, you're liable to have somebody unhappy with you. Keeping them busy with somebody else, or taking them out, or surviving their attacks on you while staying out of conflict with the rest of them... THAT IS THE GAME.

Those of you are cheesing the game in some way to defeat this strategic dynamic and catch a free ride to happy relations are, in my view, just going through the motions. You have the logistics to deal with of building this, ordering that, trading for this, selling that, but unless you have hot war enemies or some strained relations, there is no chance to lose the game. That's how I define challenge, the chance to lose the game. Rare is the situation in GalCiv that a loss will come after reaching stablized relations.




Irrelevant. If your influence dominates. The planet will only defect to you again. Seems rather silly to have to keep giving it back to them over and over.

What's really broken here is the stacking effect of the resources. Brad says he loves the stacking effect, so don't expect to see that nerfed at any point. Without multiple influence resources, flipping works perfectly reasonably. Only when you're loaded up with like +300% influence do the flips come absurdly easily.

What's the point of targetting the symptom instead of the cause? If Frogboy and Company are not open to toning down the resources or to capping the bonuses, or some other measure of containment, then trying to force containment through jury-rigged means with making the AI respond to various stimuli is a waste of time.

That solution is akin to the current problem with "re-importation of drugs" from Canada to the US. We make the drugs in the USA, but by law, Canada has price controls. We DON'T have price controls in the USA because having them would slow our research into new and better drugs. Well, we can't have our cake and eat it too. We should decide whether or not we prefer the costs/benefits of price controls, then behave accordingly. Exploiting a loophole in the system is only creating a crisis.

Same for influence in GalCiv. Do we, or do we not, want the massive effects of stacking multiple influence bonuses? If that is what Brad intends to stick with, then we're all here wasting our time discussing ways to declaw his arrangement.




Again. What's the point? This treats symptoms, not causes. The AI should be programmed to use cultural bases and terror stars. Currently, it is not. Thus it has no way to "fight back" when the struggles is confined to these methods, because the player has secured against all others.

We don't need the AI going nuts when the player starts pursuing victory, and hopping into a frenzy in which it plays the only card in its deck: the military option. If we are going to reduce this game to nothing but military, then do so openly, by removing everything else. At least of Master of Orion (the original) was honest on that score. Instead, let them improve the AI to where it can make use of starbases effectively, for culture, defense, and as terror stars. Only then will this side of the game come to life.


- Sirian

Wow. Lots of discussion here. Some things I've hit on.

1. I've always been an advocate that if the puter gets to final frontier first you lose. They currently changed it to you cant win via final frontier. I'd rather see it you can't win period.

2. I've been an advocate that if the player turns cultural victory off, then that should turn alien planets culture flipping to the human player off entirely (yours could still flip to them)

3. The multiplicative effects of multiple culture bombs should be extremely limited.

4. The ai's should be programmed to use culture more effectively.

5. Alliances should be more difficult. It's just too easy if you have similar alignment. And once the alliances are made it is over. Evil ai's /evil player gets mucho more points than good ai's evil player. I think one of the best points of the post above is that the game is actually a bit harder with stock allignment rather than all the ai's one allignment.

But the real problem here (and in any tbs) is critical mass. Do we beef up the ai's to hold out and make mopping up MORE TEDIUS for the human player, or should they roll over. I'd prefer they rolled over once it's clear I've won. One thing I didn't like about Moo was I spent about 40% of the game in mop up mode. I'd prefer far less a percentage.

Many thanks, Ray. Unfortunately, I lost my address book when my primary PC died (play Taps slowly, please). So, I don't have your email address anymore. If you could, drop me a line at [email protected] when you get the chance.

I've sent you the email, Samurai.

~SDC~

Ideally, the game would have a reasonably good way to measure victory, and then give you the choice. Take your victory if you want, or let you carry it out to full conquest if you prefer. Civ3 allows you to play on after the game is over, although scoring no longer changes. Master of Orion did it better, with the vote mechanism.




Which MoO are you talking about? The original was pristine. No score, just win baby. Win by the vote, or win by conquest. You only needed two thirds of the population to win by vote, ergo, even with zero support from the AI's, victory was yours to take any time you wanted it once you had amassed two thirds of the galaxy. A tech lead could allow you to increase the population on your planets, too, so you might reach two thirds of pop with less than half the stars. The mechanism, on balance, was the best I've ever seen.

Also, the MoO voting mechanism is the only intelligent diplomacy I've ever seen in a 4X game. The biggest AI rival always voted for himself. You had to be one of the biggest two to even be nominated, so that squeezed out all kind of exploits of hiding in the corner or riding somebody's coattails. You had to have two thirds of the vote go against you to lose, just as you needed two thirds for you to win. You got to vote last every time, which was useful in making sure you didn't accidentally vote your game away when choosing between two AI's because you were too small to be nominated. (The vote significantly affected your relations with other civs, too, so it did matter).

Master of Orion was far and away the best 4X game at cutting short the tedium, at recognizing when you had reached a truly winning position and allowing you to move on to the next game. It was the gamer's game: no score, no hall of fame, no pretense at being able to measure your performance. Win or lose, then play again. (And it could beat me more often than GalCiv can).

It's too bad that MOO2 ran off to model itself more after Master of Magic than MOO1. And let's not even talk about MOO3, please.

GalCiv is the most tactical game to come along in this genre since MOO1. It even does a good job at shortening the tedium once you know what you are doing. The Alliance victory? Brilliant! Kill off or make friends with the stragglers, buddy up with the strong group, game over. And you can have greater challenge any time you want it by opting to align with the weaker civs on any given map, or to eat some of the poor terrain layouts you may be handed. (Same things that mostly spell doom in MOO1, but if you beat a nasty map, wow, not many highs better than that in strategy gaming). GalCiv offers the tech victory, which is actually kind of innovative, since all other games that have offered similar victories have made them tech+production. This is pure tech. And the influence victory is pretty cool, too, if you actually PLAY IT like an influence victory, and not a way to finesse the bonus scoring of "conquest" victory. Even the conquest victory offers terror stars for a quick out, if you want it. All to the good, IMHO. And they were wise to scrap the commerce victory. Brad and crew have done more right than I can shake a stick at.

We just need to have a beefier AI now, and perhaps some more tweaks, and we'll be good to rock on for a long time.

I guess I'm just not built for milking score. The sooner the game acknowledges when I've reached a winning (or losing) position, the better I like it. I swear to god, I'd disappear into my computer room for six months if they ever released an MOO1 remake with EXACTLY the same game rules, a few bug fixes, modern graphics, and a stronger AI. I'd be in paradise.

And yet, how's this for irony. In MOO1, I was all about victory early on the tech tree. My games usually ended between tech level 20 and 35, out of 50. Hearing people talking about the weapons and gizmos at the end of the research path was alien to me. My games almost never lasted that long. I'd take the vote as soon as I could, unless I was in a rare "going for conquest" mood, since that WAS a little harder, not just longer. In GalCiv, I am almost the opposite. I tend to build until I run out of stuff, and then if I have stability, to grab alliance or culture win as soon as I can. If I have to go military, I may do terror stars, a fast way to wipe out one obstinate AI standing in the way of cultural or alliance win. In that regard, I still prefer the MOO1 gameplay, with its emphasis on defense, making it easier to survive as long as you didn't fall too awfully far behind on tech, as well as forcing you to find ways to expand your territory, because you had to become one of the top two, at least, in order to qualify for victory. There was a brilliant comfort zone there that gave you a chance to find a way to dig out of the hole, but you had to play it carefully.

GalCiv places a little too much gameplay result on the back of relations. So much so, the game is ABOUT the relations. Lack those, you're toast on Maso. Got them, the game's in the bag already. It's those standard alignment game spreads when you've got one or two enemies, one or two on the bubble, and only one or two friends. Those games may remain in doubt deep into the game, and that's great. Still, I see irony in the fact that I play one way under MoO and nearly the opposite under GalCiv. Speaks to the fact that some of the game mechanics are dramatically different, despite surface similarities.


- Sirian

Very well said, Sirian. I agree with you. MOO1, in my mind, is still among the very best (if it isn't THE best) turn-based strategy games out there.

I think the best council-style diplomacy in any other game was the one in Alpha Centauri. Not only could you propose motions (though there were only a couple available), but you have the opportunity to change an opponent's vote by paying them off. The price depends on what that proposal would mean for the opponent, and how much they like. If they don't like you, they'll never agree to vote the way you want.

Sirian-

I agree with you, but I think you misunderstood my style of play. I've very aggressive and will attack a maso AI typically in a non-Alpha Strike -- hence, I still deal with their military. It seems cheesy to win culturally when they have 5 times the military and could crush you if they were smart enough to see that.
I only enjoy winning if my win makes sense... othewise I feel like I beat the game mechanics and not the game.

-Cypher

Ok, another random thought from the kid:

What if as a requirement of playing higher difficulties, maybe only for maso, you lose the ability to turn off the various victory conditions. If you culturally dominate, you get the cultural victory, if you blast them off the face of the earth, you get the military conquest, if the AI beats you to final frontier - you lose - period.


~SDC~

Well, aren't the Arceans just a barrel of laughs? Those bastards are irritating the hell out of me in this game. I've had them at war with me twice and they are pestering me every 10 turns or so for tribute. I had to check to see if there was a "I Hate Arceans" bumper sticker on the back of the Hero...

This Huge/Maso is proving to be a bit more of a challenge than I expected. Everybody else in the galaxy thinks I'm a really swell guy, but the Arceans have hated me from day one. I'm maxed out in Diplomacy picks and I've researched as many Diplomatic techs as I can, but they just won't improve relations with me. I will give them a TG just to make them Neutral for a while, but it doesn't take long for them to return to Cool or worse. I really don't care for the fact that the stupid Drengin and Altarians surrendered to the Arceans, either. I'm guessing the Arceans are in juggernaut mode, meaning they are so big they have decided to be the galactic bully. Without a Fundamentalist event, I'm looking at one huge war looming on my horizon.

Oh, and just as a side note, I got some events I've never gotten before. The archeologists finding a planet is an old Arnor planet and improving it to base 35 PQ (EARTH!! It's 43 PQ now!) and the event where it raises the PQ of all planets in the system by 8 (There were 5 planets in the system!). I don't know if this is because of a change in 1.12 but I certainly like it!!

All-in-all, this has been a completely different game than I've ever played before. Though I don't look forward to the coming war with the Arceans, it could be one of the most memorable games ever. And no, I don't see any way to avoid war with the Arceans.

Both 1 and 2. And that was with the vote mechanism in. Had I decided to run it all the way out, I'd say 60% was mop up rather than 40. (2) and about 30-40 still mop up. (1) In moo, once you survived the initial puter assault intact, it was pretty much over and once you controlled about 1/4 of the galaxy, the outcome was no longer really in doubt. 2 was worse than 1 in that regard. Moo1 was imo the best of the moos as far as playability. The civs allow you to play on if you want but I've never taken that option.



I'll agree there. Although if you play this game just to get a win rather than for meta points with stock alien allignments, I'd say it comes close. Moo probably was more of a challenge simply BECAUSE it was so simple. Military conquest only. One thing this game (galciv) lacks is defensive capabilities late. I discussed it with frogboy and he tells me there's some new defensive ships in the works but the ai has to be taught to use them. The puter really tries to offensively rush you early. But late, you'll see planets defended by colony ships and I'm thinking dang, I really wanted an Avatar war here.

Moo never beat me though. And I worked through all the levels of difficulty. I still like to play that game on occasion. What I liked about it was it was vastly different than civ. 2 I don't play anymore (they made it too much like civ) and 3 isn't worth talking about. Galciv has come closest of any of the TBS 4x ers to actually beating me. Had I quit when it rushed me instead of seeing how long I could hold out, I'd have chalked up a loss. But even with one planet I was able to do just enough to eek out a win before It killed me.




Dittos. There were some good things of Moo2. The map and multi planet stars being way cool. I love the way Moo1 handled research. Hated the way moo2 handled it. I loved the way Moo1 handled planetary defense. BUILD MORE MISSILE BASES!!!! Real simple. I like the way moo1 handled building in general. Polution, etc. Moo2 in every other way but the map was worse than moo1 imo. And despite the Moo3 apologists yapping about Moo3 is macro more like 1, I don't consider Master of the bean, the accountancy wars (moo3) all that good.

So I'd like a Moo2 style map, but with Moo1 rules, maybe a few more tech's and weapons and races, NO ABSOLUTE DOOMSDAY WEAPON A-LA MOO2. Moo1 you had to put some thought about what weapon vs it's space and cost. Modern graphics and a slightly stronger ai would be excellent.

Unfortunately, the powers that be want more complication, more snazz, and gameplay suffers.

Theoden

You might think of firing up some terror stars before you run out of gifts for the Arceans. I did a 25 terror star alpha strike once when the game was going down the toilet. The score wasn't so hot but I won and it was rather fun too.

As long as we're going into a MOO reminiscence kick here...

I'd judge MOO1 to be the best of the 4x strategy games because of one simple factor - replayability. You could play that game for MONTHS (many of us did) and still come up with new and creative tactics.

On the other hand, I always thought the research model in MOO2 was a nice idea; it forced you to make tough choices. In every other game in the genre, including GalCiv, everybody can research all of the techs (except for the alignment restricted ones, and you can normally trade for those).

In GalCiv, I notice that my tech research pattern is pretty standardized these days. Push early for trade to get the economy going, then concentrate on Corvette for the trade value if everybody doesn't already have it, then move into the "peacenik" techs - again for trade value, but also to boost your Diplo rating, and to gain access to Galactic Wonders. MOO2 forced you to adapt your research to the needs of the moment, or gamble on waiting until a similar tech came along later - IF you were still alive.

I may be alone here, but I think the tech progression on GalCiv is really pretty static. I wouldn't mind seeing a MOO2-style tech "grouping" at all in GalCiv 2 to spice this up a bit.

vincible,

Since 1.12 is out, are you planning to push out your GOTM anytime soon?

~SDC~

One thing I've noticed... since 1.11 actually... The AI's seem less willing to offer trades. In 1.10, you could all but guarantee they'd give up Battleship for Reinforced Hulls (if you had a friendly or close AI that is, and sometimes when not), then Drones for Dreadnought or maybe a +trade-route tech for it. I have had to research the capital ship techs myself in all my recent games. Fortunately, I've not been in deep in wars in any of those.

My two wins so far in 1.12 have been really dicey on relations. They've gone way way down into the drink with me just barely able to turn it around in time. I haven't been bribing AI's to fight lately because the terrain has not lent to it in these game.

I just had a runaway Drengin sitting on Wary for eons, despite all my trade going to him and all of his to me. He had more systems than the rest of the majors combined. I had to pay tribute out the wazoo: techs were demanded the same turn I researched them on two instances. Thousands in cash was demanded several times. Gifts of ships made no dent, and I had given four techs as gifts before one finally brought him up to Cool. (Of course, I had zero diplo bonus and a minor on the far side of the galaxy built translators, which I didn't get until very late). Eventually I managed to ally, but I think I avoided war with him by the skin of my teeth. In fact, one trick I learned several games ago was that Drengin seems to like alignment 10-30 better than he does 0. I pulled back up to 10 and sure enough, not too long after that, he was up to Warm from Cool.

I do believe that's the first time on an Occasional or better habitability that I've seen one AI get so much land, he was larger than the rest combined from the very beginning!

40k for an alliance win wasn't bad, considering huge maps can barely reach 60k with conquest. After I got him to Close and allied, the mop up phase went very quickly, too. I was happy.

And with that, another conquest win for JaxomCA, and the arrival of another old time RB regular, our empire has broken into the top 10. (Sorry, 'Poly).


- Sirian

Rick,

Didn't get a chance to build anything. About 3 turns after I loaded the game up this evening and the Arceans declared homicide on me. I call it homicide because it was nothing short of murder.

It appears I am going to need to relearn how to play Maso on bigger maps. Just for a ego boost, I played a Small/Maso and won, though it was not easy. The Altarians fought me tooth and nail. I've got to say there is some serious difficulty in maintaining relations now. Version 1.12 seems to have made Maso extremely difficult for everyone but the most seasoned player. Ray had mentioned that he was interested in how many Maso players could win at this new version. I'm thinking I may drop back to Crippling for a while, just to get my bearings.

Well, it's almost time for bed. Talk to everyone tomorrow morning!

Knowing that AI diplomacy (including tribute demands) kicks in after every load, I think there is a lot of motivation to play through the early game for Maso in one sitting, especially if you have a tough start.

~SDC~

Heck, that's how I almost always play. My games average about three sessions. Some may take four, some only two, and the rare "one sitting" game played all the way through. I don't play all that many gigantic maps, though, and I take the first victory to come along. I like to spend my time playing, not mopping up or milking.

Awareness of the diplo-cycle-on-load issue has sometimes led me decide to leave the game running while I break for dinner, snack, phone, etc. And this is why the "disappearing ships" bug looms larger than it otherwise might. There IS a penalty attached to reloading.

Not only that, but crashes to desktop become a penalty to the player because of this, and those are DOUBLY penalized, since an autosave reload LOSES one round of production up in smoke. (Is that a bug or a feature?)


- Sirian

Moo1 restricted techs. Though everyone had the same tree, some tech's weren't available sometimes. It was pretty random but it made it interesting. I remember having to steal 20 or so techs before I finally got Black hole Generators which I couldn't research. Also you had to change strategies depending on your race and the races around you. Ex: Darlocks concentrate in one category and steal the rest. If the sillicoids were close by you had to quickly get your colonize Baron, etc in or they'd take all those type planets. Moo2 made you choose, but unless you were the klackons, you could chose between all of them and you only researched one at a time.

Moo1 still made you take hard choices. What I liked was you decided what percentage of your research to put in each of 6 different categories rather than just go through the list like Civ or Moo2.

It's time for the second annual Hobbit tossing Olympiad. Get your entry in on threadzilla before it's too late. As always, no spells allowed.

The Metaverse Review is out!

Special Friday Edition!
http://metaversereview.joeuser.com

Headlines Include:

~ Galactic Civilizations: The Altarian Prophecy
~ Battle Wages at 2,3,4 spots
~ Horrible Hobbit Tossing Contest

And Much More!

Hi folks,
I've been out of touch these past few days because of a really nasty cold. Anyway, I probably won't be posting much for the next several days as well.

I'm waiting for the patch to fix the bugs in 1.12 before I play another game.

Overall, I don't think 1.12 really changed things that much to motivate me to play more Galciv.

~SDC~

Oh yeah, I've volunteered the Fellowship's help to Ralegh if he decides to update the Galciv strat guide.

One of our members, Gibbie99 is one of the co-authors together with Ralegh.

~SDC~

With the "uncreative" racial pick in Moo2, you could never complain about having the same game every time...