Duplicate post. Please delete.

Here is one of the biggest issues I find in GC2... it's not a gamebreaking issue or anything like that, but it is a replayability issue. Because if a game does not stay challenging, then people will not continue to play it.

   Knowing that you are going to win 1/8th way through the game (or less).

This is almost ALWAYS the case, and it comes down to 'how fast do I think I can actually destroy everyone else, so I waste as little of my time as possible'. I always 'know' if I am going to win after the first year (immense maps), the colony rush is done or finishing and then it is very easy to manipulate most AI's to your will... then economy picks up and starts flowing by year 2 and that's it. Game over, everyone gets blasted by you for the rest of the game.

I often refer to Civ3 (I still like 3 better than 4), because I see it as quite an epic... granted the AI cheated huge, and diplomatically you could not quite 'take advantage' of the AI as you can in GC2... but on difficulties in Civ3 that are comparable to Suicidal in GC2, Civ3 games were much much tougher, I felt like it was a struggle to stay in the game, and the difference (or the 'gap') was never soooo wide that it made the game feel like your just 'mowing everyone down'.

Granted, in the end if you start conquering others, it becomes like this, but not right after the colony rush (and never after year 2). GC2 develops in a strange way during it's games, you almost have to be 'lucky' and hope the AI does some intelligent things to have a good game. My current suicidal game, out of every single civ, only me, the Korath and Drengin have any respectable weapons, the rest are just pathetically out of sync tech-wise. It's like they are grass and we are the lawn-mowers. And even Korath and Drengin - sometimes they quit building EVERYTHING for months at a time (including ships). <-- posted that problem somewhere on the forums, you won't notice unless you check their planets every turn to make sure they are actually still playing (they basically will do a 'set the overall production slider to Zero).

I post to forums more than play the game anymore, I may not even finish Suicidal and just go up another difficulty level in hopes of something. But doing this just requires that I take advantage of various AI shortcomings more until that 'special' 2nd year hits when I am guarenteed the win.

What do you think GC3 could add to make the game feel more of an EPIC struggle, than just a runaway blowout?

Im quoting myself here , and answering my own question... GC3 needs to make their tech tree in a way to FORCE AI opponents to stay militarily on par to an extent. Right now the AI has soooo many decisions to choose from, they don't know what to do. Military should be #1 for all civ's... if they are behind, research military... if they are on par, research something else, if they fall behind again, research military.

The AI needs to be FORCED to do this, because Stardock (or any company) is not going to dump resources into making AI smart enough to know to do these types of things.

I think Stardock may have opened a can of worms on the whole 'AI will adapt it's defenses and weapons to it's enemies' thing. It doesn't do anything of the sort... here's the reason that idea does not work that well in GC2:

1. Researching down a new weapon tree costs ALOT more than the first tree, Takes too long to make this a way to counter another civ's defenses with something else.

2. Defenses are soooo cheap to research, that the AI should be able to put up some better resistance, but they don't do it anyways. (If you play with Auto-ship design ON, which is probably what the AI uses, you would see why, most all of those ships aren't that great).

3. As said before (i think by Sole Soul, among others), AI will not change it's research priorities, and it is very hard for the AI to do so.

4. Game Military Tactics in GC2 rely SOLELY on what weapons and defenses ships have on them, NOTHING ELSE. There are no other tactics in GC2, and since the AI has a hard time doing this very well, I believe that this is what creates the situation of the game feeling like it is often a runaway blowout instead of an epic. (This is the reason they NEED to add 'space terrain' in order for the game to have a better military tactical feel).

Because you (and people in general) are smart enough to do it on their own. Companies generally don't dump that many resources or money into developing AI because they don't see a return from that investment. Generally they make AI in a way that appears to act in a 'real human fasion' but is actually do to the fact that the AI has to do certain things (to make sure it stays competitive with the much more intelligent player).

If they do that, that would be great, otherwise I would prefer they limit the AI's ability to choose to do w/e it wants, and make it research military if it is falling way behind. If they did, it would not be 'noticable' and most would praise the AI for being smart enough to keep up. In many of my GC2 games, some AI opponents didn't research a single weapon or defense tech (Thalan did so in my suicide game) and the game was 3 years in.

True, but all that money does the AI no good at all when they are dead. So making the AI research military will keep it from getting trampled. Something like: IF (AI-Military "sucks", Research "military") ELSE (Research "Something Else") . That's all I'm trying to get at. After all, research allows the AI to use it's economic and production infrastructure to it's fullest potential. And a strong military will keep that potential from being crushed.

That doesn't work. Mere "research" is not going to deal with the fact that the other guy has 5x the ships you have, because while you were busy researching, they were busy using their 5x better economy to build a larger military.

The fundamental problem with the AI isn't it's high-level decision making: what techs to research and who to attack. It's high-level strategic decision making is probably the best in the genre. The problem is that the AI doesn't know how to build its cities. It hasn't got a clue what to do with a PQ-15 planet. Or a PQ-7. It has no idea how to properly optimize its empire. And since economy is so decisive in this game, that is a fatal flaw in the AI.

Granted, there's also the minor issue that the game is actually quite terrible at estimating things. For example, I've never had a military that is numerically strong. That is, my military rating always sucks. Even when I'm rolling over someone with ships 2 hull sizes larger than their best, my military is crap compared to theirs. The computer really believes those rating numbers, so it often falls into situations where it attacks someone (me) that it really shouldn't have.

So playing Suicidal, this should put the human player at an enormous disadvantage (which it in theory does), but since the AI does not take advantage of this, it does not. Often the AI economic bonus on high difficulties is so big, that they don't need to build economic buildings (and often don't), and they still reap in the BC. They often bring in more BC on 1 of their planets with no econ buildings than 1 of my planets stock full of them.

The Drath in my Suicidal game had something like 350,000 BC sitting in their bank, but militarily they are putting out ships with Laser 2 while me, Korath, and Drengin have Phasors. The Gap is so big, that anyone of us could crush them in a matter of a few months at most. If they actually researched military to stay par (or even somewhat on par), the human player, ME in this instance, wouldn't be able to 'abuse' them so much into doing my every wish. <-- or even the Korath, who make half the civ's pay tribute to avoid war. This in itself would create a more Epic feel. Epic being 'it's going to take ALOT in order to win'. Most of the minors had more than Laser 2 at that point. And I'm sure you've seen this yourself, it's not something that happens just every now and then.

The thing that made Civ feel Epic, was the fact that in order to take ONE CITY, even if you were a military powerhouse, you had to make sure your territory was well defended and you had to pretty much dump a large portion of your military into taking and 'holding' the 1 enemy city, and then continue bringing in reinforcements to keep going. As the enemy would often through a whole LOT at you, and if you were not prepared, you would lose that city, and it would turn into a war of attrition if you are not careful.

Exactly, the military tactics of the game are one dimension, being that ships can have weapons and defense and are good for Everything. This wouldn't be so bad if the AI kept up to par (or attempted to) with the rest of the galaxy. But they do not do it. I'm sure GC3 will rectify this situation... But they do indeed need a better tactical layout than this, to make a GalCiv that wishes to win via other methods can do so without becoming an absolute military jaugernaut also. Space terrain, as I mentioned, is one of the ways this could be done, and making certain ships better at defense and others better at offense, some good at attacking other 'types' of ships and so forth, would add a whole new dimension that is badly needed.

Good point, to make a similar mechanic in a space setting is not practical. Sure you could have some space solar panels sitting about, but I would be against going that route. On the terrain side though, there are many creative ways to create all kinds of tactical scenarios, but they would have to program the AI to be able to use these to some degree, otherwise it would make the human player much to powerful.

Whereas, e.g., civ3 implemented the 'corruption' idea to make larger civ's harder to handle and manage (although this was a highly contreversial topic, and it almost made people not want to expand or conquer to far out), Civ 4 did a much better job (i think, haven't played it in a while) but Galciv has no model to make HUGE civ's harder to manage. Thus, just as you said, huge civ's will begin a runaway win on the rest of the galaxy. Huge AI civ's will also do this, with only the human opponent to stand in their way. And this is another reason why you can almost predict a win based solely off the initial colony expansion phase. The reason some players play only if they get the worst starting postion possible.

Some type of model needs to be implemented to make having HUGE empires slightly less effecient than having just 5 planets. EDIT: for example, the Research Coordination Center 'coordinates research on that planet'.... Different Planets though, would have a much tougher time coordinating research being lightyears apart, therefore your research should be less effecient than the actual number of research units you are bringing in.

Tech's that have been researched already and are owned by many civs, should go down in research price. This idea is a good one, and has been used before in similar games. It makes it so civ's that are behind still retain the ability to keep up to an extent (since those tech's are older and somewhat 'known', their scientists don't have the trouble researching them as the ones did that made the breakthrough).

Have you ever noticed, that the Torians tend to be #1  even when they suck overall at everything? I've seen them rated around 5th and 6th or higher in every individual category, yet overall they are #1. Given from what Alfonse said "The computer really believes those rating numbers, so it often falls into situations where it attacks someone (me) that it really shouldn't have." , this probably makes the Torians as well as the rest of the AI feel that they are more powerful than they really are.

I think so, too, judging from the population line graph.  Although in this game it really was more a question of:

The Torians had like 100 ships with 3-5 mass driver attack scores.  Because I researched the tech and sold it to them.  And because the scoring system didn't take into account that I had researched up the entire mass driver defense tree beforehand...  Right.  The scoring system is busted, and I pay no attention to the rankings, myself.

Ok, a few things to improve 'epic playability' in the game then, compiled from posts so far:

1. AI needs to be is an actual opponent, not merely a designed obstacle. AI should actively see other players as opponents, and should actively pursue a victory condition that they see they can most likely achieve.

2. AI should not be push-overs in diplomacy. Make it much harder to manipulate and bribe AI's to do your every wish. Example: get rid of trading influence points (adds nothing but abuse to the game), keep trades fair, but add elements of 'difference'... such as Friendly civ's will trade more fairly with you, civ's that don't like you will want more for less... depending on how a civ 'feels' at the current moment, it may be more giving or less giving... just to randomize things up a bit, make it tougher to make AI's go to war with everyone, taking whole 'PLANETS' and 'STAR SYSTEMS' from the AI for crappy techs.

3. A "Corruption" Model. To avoid runaway games, some sort of small penalty should apply to having excessive amounts of planets, although nothing as extreme as Civ3 was. In reality, research would be slightly slowed due to planets lightyears apart needing to coordinate their efforts on a single goal. Fraud and corruption are real things, and economics should see a slight decrease when empires become very large. Production, though I would say should stay as is, since workers don't slack off because they live in a large powerful empire, although perhaps an ever so slight decrease due to the logistics needed for transportation of supplies throughout an empire.

4. Enhance AI's ability to build social improvements in a more intelligent manner. If each AI assigned itself a long-term goal, say every 20 turns or less, on what victory condition it felt it was best able to achieve, it could follow a planet building / re-building scheme appropriate to best achieve that goal. If it is research, AI builds more labs. If it is military, it builds more factories. If it is diplomacy, it builds better relations. If it is influence, more culture centers. If the AI is running low on funds, build more econ buildings. This would make an enormous difference in gameplay. I'm confident that Stardock will take care of this though. Probably doesn't even need to be mentioned.

5. Tech's that become known by more civilizations, become cheaper to research. If all civ's know a tech except for one, then it would be a relatively cheap tech to research. If you are the first civ to research a tech, then research time is full price.

6. Enhance AI's ability to create better units. Perhaps base it on an algorithm that states: a Civ's high production planets will produce best possible ships, mid production will produce good ships, low production will produce cheap ships. Simple, yet effective... and more human like, since I'm sure most players don't build ships on low production planets if it takes 168 turns to complete. AI could evaluate current and potential enemies, their weapons and defenses, and have the ability to more quickly change their designs.

7. Change the fact that the Attacker always has the advantage. If all things are equal, defenders should have the advantage, due to familiarity of their area, better tactics due to being in their space and developed defense plans, better logistical support.... If they add ship classes to the game, where various classes have different advantages, some specialize in defense, others in offense, and the AI builds them appropriately, it would create more of an epic feel. Taking a planet would be "Finally! I took Epsilon Eridani III! Tough, but worth it!" other than how it is now "Took another planet, only 56 planets in the universe left".

8. Having 'Ship Classes' would emphasis the tactical use of ships of all hull-sizes (many ideas have been given about this, and are all terrific ideas). Making a small-hull a Fighter class would give it an attack advantage. Small-hulls that are Defender class get defense bonus. Corvette class would be a mix of both and specialize against Fighter class. Assist class Medium hulls can assist other ships speed, weapons and defense. Escort class get improved offense and defense when escorting certain types of ships. Similar to how many games of this type are... it would add a great amount of tactical variety to the game.

9. Add various Space Terrain... after all it is a galaxy, which would include nebula, matter outflows, globule's, clusters, various galactic medium, debris discs, stellar bands rings and trails, voids, magnetic fields, radiation fields, filaments, walls, stellar winds, galactic bubbles, nova, jets. Probably wouldn't need too many, so the map isn't clustered, but these can give benefits or penalties to ships that enter them. Bonuses and Penalties could apply to Offensive weaponry, defenses, sensors, speed, damage to the ship, and could also give various other bonuses (similar to how anamolies do now) at random. This would add more tactics to come into play, and would make flying through space a little more interesting.

10. Tech tree research priorities. Don't even need to mention it, tech tree will most likely be massively overhauled by Stardock anyway for GC3. Hopefully they optimize the whole system, to keep play a little more balanced between all civ's in the game. If the AI can research tech's that it needs to survives, this would improve play ten-fold. This way, it can actually be the 'best' player that wins.

11. Enhanced AI ability to estimate it's opponents abilities and act accordingly.

12. Disrupt opponent's Economics, Research, and Production. In most similar games (civ4 for example) you can disrupt a city's production by destroying improvements. This cannot be done in GC3 to any extent that really makes a difference. Only spies can actually do this and cause big problems. I agree with hairlessOrphan, More options are needed for attacking or undermining someone else's economy, research and production, in and out of war. Space bombardment has said it will never be used, so planetary bombardment is out of the question.

13. Make it harder for the player who is far ahead. Once your ahead, it gets EASIER to get way way ahead. I agree, and something should be implemented to make this not so easy. Numbers 3 and 5 in this list are a couple ways to help accomplish this. Also, all civ's should become more way more aggressive towards the civ that has a large lead. Of course this will only happen if they make the AI an opponent, and not simply an obstacle.

13. More realisitc diplomacy. More realistic actions from the AI due to breaking alliances, surprise attacks, and betrayal. AI's should become untrusting of anyone who 'screws them over' for a while at least.

14. Well, that's it for now If GC3 has alot of these things implemented to some extent, it would make beating Tough difficulty seem like Suicidal is now!

What else do I want in 3? ExtremePlanetTypes.xml!

Which has to be built. You must research the tech for it and build it.

That assumes that the two societies in question intercourse frequently. That's not usually the case for inter-stellar societies.

Now, that might be an interesting side-benefit of trade. Instead of trading techs specifically, you agree to share tech, such that the research cost for techs the other guy has is lowered by some percentage.

Agreed, although aganist weak civ's it's almost annoying taking the OCC (by accident) and then having to deal with tons of weak little ships all over the place 1 at a time. The tech should give the ability that the OCC does, as you said... and perhaps the OCC building itself should just give orbiting ships must greater bonuses (Of course not many would build it then, since there is no point to ever build defensive structures with the current model).

To give the defender the advantage. That's what we're talking about here.

A player who is defending worlds must defend each world individually with different ships. And in a game like GC2, where an enemy has relatively easy access to any planet, you would have to put multiple ships at all of your worlds to take advantage of this.

As it stands now, there's no point in even trying that. There is no inate bonus to defending, so you may as well just use your attacking army as mobile defense.