Actually, I can see one reason: if you need bonuses from Wonders and don't want your ally to get them first. For the most part, though, you have a point.



It automatically restarts the failed mission, but you do have to remeber to save at the start of the game if you plan on quitting GalCiv before you do manage to win as it is now....

~SDC~

Pure gameplay experience feedback:

Somehow, I didn't get the correct impressions of the victory conditions from the mission descriptions. On both scenarios 1&2 (after hearing about 3, I'm taking a normal game break ;)) I was rather stunned to be suddenly booted to the "you won" screen.

It felt kinda cheap, as nothing significant had happened for several turns in both games, I didn't feel I was doing all that well, was just waiting for some socials to build, then BAM! I win.

Don't get me wrong, I think that adding ways to win above and beyond what GC already has (more ways to win and more viable strategies to do so than any other game I've played, cheers) is a flipping brilliant idea. I didn't say "Me no smash Korx, me feel cheated!", pleast note.

Maybe give some thought as to how to enliven the gameplay experience by being either more informative or else more cryptic in the texts? Maybe hints dropped as events, with no descriptions? Aka instead of "You control X, you will win in Y turns" like the standard game, maybe roll out the story in event windows? Triggers could be things like be meeting races, first build of mission critical ship types (colony ships, transports, constructors, freighters, warships) etc.

It wasn't 'till I hit the forum that I realized I had won because my relations with the Altarians (who I knew I couldn't fight, so I was trading like crazy with as a matter of principal) had passed to "close".

On scenario 1, I had initially thought that the Korx surrendered, but it's possible the Altarians had a stack of transports take a bad angle to the last Korx world and I just didn't spot 'em. Still a surprise to win, though. "Well, that's buggy" was my first thought , since I didn't think his transports were gonna make it past the battleaxes in orbit.

this is what i was trying to say about the appearance of the drath appear, it was very sudden. Placing more messages/events will allow the user to get more involved into the story line.

And deathy, i think frogboy stated the difficulty of mission 3 had been made easier in the latest build, most everyone who was having problems did this on previous versions.

Black_Shade, it sounds like AP needs to make an AUTOSAVE at the start of turn one for every scenario in the campaign. That would allow players who miss doing this the chance to to reload that scenario if they quit for dinner/have a power outage/want to replay a scenario. Sounds like a good idea to you?

yes, this is exactly what i mean. An auto save at the start of each level that does not get overridden like normal autosaves- and have the save be labeled for that level (i.e. AutoSave-Mission x).
[Message Edited]

No it wouldn't cut it at all.
The point is to restart a mission from scratch, including the choice of picks. For instance let's say you start mission 3 with +60 diplomacy and +PQ to get more out of your planets and your altarian friends. You realize it was a bad idea and want to retry with, say, +1 speed + 1 range and a different pol party. You should be able to do this.

There's an option to restart the mission now, if you click on the reset button on the campaign select screen.

LDiCesare, if you autosaved on turn one of a scenario, you could abandon the scenario and restart it... including from the picks.

Should be immaterial now though, IIUC what CariElf said.

i dont mean 1 mission, i mean all missions. If ive beaten the campaign, i should be able to replay any mission i want without having to replay all previous missions. (i.e. currently, you can only restart a mission you have a save on or mission 1, so an autosave at the start of every mission that doesnt get over ridden would be nice).

I sign on, and poof, there's a new version, so some of my comments are a bit out of date, but here's my list

General Stuff

a) I'd like to see some carryover in the missions. Some tech, some planetary development, some ships -- even though I might lose my favorite survey ship in mission 3 For example, for each scenario set the starting tech at one level, and the maximum allowed techs at a later level. This opens the door to a new mission, one where everyone has the same tech, and there is no tech development. The goal could be to secure some important resources needed to break through to the next level of technology.

The Altairians frequently told me they were joining me against the Korx, and the Korx often told me they were attacking me to protect their Torian allies, despite the fact we were all at war.

c) In the War missions, the UP can declare a cease fire!

d) The game isn't remembering my username and email addy on the screen at the end. Perhaps if I play a real game, and submit it, it'll save it

e) The end of campaign scores don't always line up with the camp/miss/new total

f) I somehow lost the cumulative score during mission 6, so at the end I was at 0. Check (l) below for a guess as to what did it.

g) In one of the team vs team missions, the Altairans built Diplos. As a result, they thought me barbaric, and wouldn't trade. I ended up restarting that mission, heh.

h) As noted earlier, restarting a mission with new picks is not easy.

i) The second autosave isn't properly named

j) When saving a game, a list of games to save over is no longer generated. (just noticed they're back in latest version)

k) Once the Altairans are Teammates, doesn't seem to matter if I turn evil.

l) Checking through the scenarios, the minors are supposed to be off. This is a good, I think. In one of the missions, after loading from the improperly named previous autosave, I think a couple minors popped up. I bet that's when I lost my cumulative score too.

Mission Specific

Mission 1: Currently, new storyline info can only pop up at the beginning and the end of the mission. Mission 1 should really start with Admiral Rabid Rob taking command of one of Terra's new colonies in the deeps of space. We have detected signals coming from here and here, please investigate and make friendly contact if possible, if not, secure the quadrant from aggressors. Later, when I meet the Altairans, and then the Korx, then new info should appear.

Mission 2: I think this mission should also require an Alliance with the Altairans. This would also be a way to control the level of technology as the missions progress.

Mission 3: The Excalibur is really fast, and can see everywhere on the map. The second thing bothers me the most, but that's built into the AI I think... Perhaps put a beacon on the Excalibur so we could see it in return? I'd classify this as a more advanced scenario, it should be later in the sequence, since the difficulty should gradually build. Actually, though, I was quite amused by this scenario, since I ended up flooding space with sensor probes and frieghters to keep the Excalibur distracted while I sent Transports and Star fighters way around to grab the planet. Woot!

Mission 4: Oh, were those Drengin? This mission would work better if both the Drengin and Arceans were a fair bit advantaged over the humans. This is also a good time to build up the galactic background story.

Mission 5: Since all the resources were Over There, this led to a very interesting development in my war. I put up 1 starbase, cranked up its defense and offensive bonuses, and then proceeded to kill the Korx with my ampped Corvettes. LOL

Mission 6: This map is too small. It's very easy to just charge in and take their planets.

Mission 7: I hate to think what would happen with the high level Influence penalties if anyone else grabs the center.

Mission 8: Starting in the same square scared me, I immediately restarted at a lower level. We didn't flip each other with Influence, if we don't have to worry about teammate influence, that should be mentioned somewhere. If it is something that has to be worried about, this mission is evil incarnate at higher levels

Mission 9: The end is a bit shocking. Suddenly all these other empires are mentioned, and the background story of the galaxy pops in from nowhere. Having news bulletins pop up about developments in the far corners of the galaxy during previous missions would create a larger, galactic atmosphere. To add to the fun, draw up a picture of the galaxy, with Sol clearly marked (add more later as the galaxy developes, eg, Terran space expands and Altairian space shows up when they Team with us). Draw a little square on the galaxy pic, and do a traditional "exploded view" to the mission area map.

/essay

It's too bad the Korx won't give me a chance to help them, muhahaha!
A good start, with hints of more to come!

~SDC~

Missions 3 and 5 would not end for me, because the Altarians took out the opponents by flipping their worlds. Apparently this didn't meet the victory conditions, even though there were no more enemies on the map. That's what I get for trying to play on Cakewalk! I upped it to normal and won with no problems.

I saw multiple examples of morality problems in the info screens- "string not found", switching to the good or bad interfaces with only one good/bad pick (40-45 or 55-60 range) and such.

I general, I liked the campaign, because it forced me to play different strategies and difficulty levels than I normally do. I am looking forward to the new metaverse scenarios, since just posting the max scores to the metaverse on the highest difficulty level has lost its appeal.

Thanks again to Stardock for continuing to expand a game that has been out for a long time!

This worked fine for me (in 1.49k). I haven't tried it in 1.49m yet.

~SDC~

Quote: "Missions 3 and 5 would not end for me, because the Altarians took out the opponents by flipping their worlds. Apparently this didn't meet the victory conditions, even though there were no more enemies on the map. " End Quote.

Ditto for me. Should allow for Altarians defeating the enemy. So far the campaigns make me feel like a gimp. Both allies and enemies outplay me, get a million techs and begin culture flipping me. I think I would have you (Stardock) make it so if your allied/on a team you can't flip your allies with culture. Also PLEASE revise tech trading for the campaigns, where they will take a 1-1 trade if similarly close in tech cost or 1-2 or even 1-3. It's utterly SILLY that my only ally and teammate won't trade jack with me.

Let me say that other than that, I love it. Good ideas for campaign its not the same thing all the time.


~SDC~

mission 3 is much easier now, as the AIs ship(s) are restricted to sectors that they control at the start due to the BS having very small range. It is about on par with the other levels in difficulty now, and requires no new strategies (i.e. sending scout ships all over the map and praying that the excalibur targets those and not your transports).

[Message Edited]

I don't know if you re-tweaked it or everyone else is just smarter than I am, but I'm finding mission 7 to be nothing more than an exercise in frustration. I've retweaked my starting bonuses multiple times, outraced the AI to the inhabitable systems, pared my research tree to bee-lines for very specific and mission beneficial techs, re-tooled my entire standard build order for planetary development, and so on, and in this latest try I'm just *barely* hanging on and I think I'm about to see the same thing happen again that I've seen before: after spending hours of my life on a game, that should allegedly be fun, I'm about to watch everything I fought for gradually taken from me until I lose.

I'm only trying this on challenging but the AI is outproducing me on research, tech, economy, influence, and production by several magnitudes with far less systems each than I control. I *think* part of it may be the brain dead nature of my ally because of the AI-Human penalties relative to the AI-AI love fest of the Korx-Drath. I'm also not sure what the quality of the systems the AI has, but that may also may be in need of tweaking.

If I lose this time, I'm dropping down to whatever the difficulty is below Normal. It's a boring mission with little in the way of inventiveness for the human player. That is my main criticism of the missions: they're ALL puzzle missions that give the player little to do but determine the target and then click the buttons to get there.

The general tweaks to the main game are an improvement and the AI plays much more difficult (I find Tough to be as hard or harder than Painful with generic GalCiv circa last fall). However, if the campaign is supposed to be the real selling point there's a good deal of tweaking and hopefully changes in the presentation left to be seen.

OK, after having a chance to calm down and try mission 7 at normal, there is definitely some tweaking needed. At challenging, I found it impossible, one notch down it was a cakewalk. I don't know what changes exactly between the difficulties on the campaign and how that interacts with the maps, but this one could stand a bit of balancing for the public release.

Code monkey? Lord of the Arachnids? I've never seen you on this forum before.

The campaign always resets itself to 2178 the starting year of the last campaign. Call me fussy but I feel that the next mission should start after the former is finished.

Howdy, casual player #598 here. Three things:
1- Every two hours or so when Im playing the campaign I get booted to the desktop and am unable to restart the game unless I restart my computer... this could be my computer acting up. If no one else has noticed this than ignore number one.

2- On scenerio 3 the first time I played the Altarians rushed the center and eventually took the Korx capital by cultural means! Ack! Had to restart the game when it became clear I could not win.

3- It would be nice if the story was more clear and engaging. No offence but currently its quite boring to just see whats going on after each victory. Perhaps if every few turns in the begining or somthing some kind of story dialogue appeared or if random events that werent so random could tell the story...

4- Did I say three? Oops. The Altarians are big bullies. I was under the impression that we were allies, and somtimes they do give me ships. But they screw me over diplomaticly and at the UN whenever they get the chance... makes me want to go evil and kick their (*%##....

The campaign really need a sense of time as I said earlier and it needs to have more events attached to the plot and story.

Perhaps it also needs a time limit purely so that their can be a real sense of technological devolopment between campaigns with the timer set to the beginning year of the next game so that the tech development is coherant.

Story wise I find the campaign to not be that thrilling. I could be wrong but I see to remember that it was supposed to explain the Human/Alterian likeness, but I don't feel it to be that great. The story is in any case a bit thin, and I don't feel like any sense of involement in it. I found myself not really caring enough to read the story and had to replay it just to read things. The telling just feels dry, no real suspense.

Play wise its ok, my only problem was the Alterian's focus on influence. This seems to be worse at the lower difficulty levels actually. On higher levels they must focus on things besides influence as I can mostly keep up with them, but on Cakewalk they were actually flipping my planets. Kind of ironic when I almost loose the game because my team mate is annexing my systems. Also the 9th campaign was tricky as you have a nice fleet, but no income. This puts you into the deep red unless you trade them away, and the Alterians seem to be-line for the influence resource in your starting system. Obsessive people.

There were some alignment issues on text, especially in the team listing on the mission info page.

Another thing that annoys me is the fact you have to research everything again, someone needs to invent a hard disk


~SDC~

Don't know, if that has been reported yet. But since repeating helps, I'll report it anyways:

I just played Mission 3.

The Altarians were extremely fit in this mission. So it came, that when I just was a bit established in Economy and on, they started to conquer the Korx. I tried to jump in but my Transports always were to late.

After the Altarians had conquered every last Korx-Planet the game went on.

By insulting them like hell it finally happend, that our "Team"-Status broke up and I could cancel the Alliance.

I took the planet that was to be the mission-goal. Nothing happend except of course the Altarians becoming very angry and wishing the floor with me.

I actually took The "victory" planet by force then they started to culture flip me - even so I should have one as soon as I took the planet - the cutlure flip took a few turns.

It was pretty boring way to end, and the Alterians are selfish sh*t's as team mates - totally unrealistic really. I'm tempted to fight them off the map now and see if the scenario will end that way.

Basically in scenario 3 - as many people have said, the victory condition is broken.

I am using 1.49N[rc].003. There are a lot of bugs in this release which I have seen reported elsewhere for isntance "String Not Found" on alignement, and the Autosurvey is broken.

Here is one I havent seen mentioned yet - If I buy a trade good that someone else has produced, I cant then sell it ? Why ?

From this forum it is clear that most of this is all old news - so it is rather strange to see "we are about to go Gold".

~SDC~

It hasn't been mentioned because this isn't a bug. The race that builds a trade good has a monopoly on selling and trading it.

~SDC~

As was mentioned, this is basic game rules 101 for GC. A trade good that you get is merely a license. What has never made sense is why you don't get the license to sell it if you conquer the planet which holds the 'factory' for the trade good.




Read my ideas in other feedback threads about the need to get a real litmus test for interest in the game. Whatever the PR front, when the chips are down, Stardock is behaving like every other game company and shipping now, patching later.