GalCiv 4a - game on the way to being a classic?

from Stardock Forums
Beta 4 with that "gigantic" galaxy of 12x12 had me a little worried. Especially since it would unexpectedly crash and slow down as the game progressed.

But beta 4A shows just how important the larger sized galaxies are. The game really changes and for the better.

I didn't have any crashes in my 6 hour game today.

All AI players were set to average and played gigantic. So here are my observations:

# Culture is too powerful. Once you start conquering people, you are almost for sure gona win by having culture take out everyone inside of military. Culture needs to be an alternative path to victory.

Suggestion: Instead of just factoring in overall culture look at CULTURE PER CAPITA determine the "background" culture level in sectors. No accidental culture conquests then. You have to go for it.

# Save Game Settings. I can really tell that December is when the game saves because there is a marked pause on gigantic. With the game stabilizing I would like to be able to set the auto save so that it happens less often.

# Even Bigger Galaxies. This new size galaxy really puts GalCiv head and tail above other strategy games. The bigger you make the game the more you will get hard core strategists to love the game. Then you don't have to worry so much about stuff like ship design requests.

# More setup options. If we have to play as human then let us personalize the AI more. I want to be able to set a general difficluty level and have the game set up the aliens. Or at least have the option to do that. I also want to be able to specify more behaviors for them.

# More talking from the AI. Right now the only time I hear from the computer players is when they want something. I want to hear more conversation.

# The "Eat Bugs" dialog is still there. How about have that dialog do an analysis of what that player thinks of us?

# Fleet suggestion: When a fleet kills a ships all the ships in the fleet get the experience / the # of ships.

# More modules. I would rather have more star base modulees that don't do very much than to have fewer ones that do more because then I always can do something to improve my star bases which keeps the game flowing.

# Did I mention that bigger galaxies would be a good thing?

# The end screens need work. 6 hours of work and the summary was pretty generic and the numbers pretty meaningless.

# Bugs with data. "Most powerful ship: Freighter" Huh? How can a freighter be that powerful?

# Bugs with minor races: How can you tell what your relations with a minor race is?

# all the minor races are gray.

# Looks like the news about social events is fixed in 4A. Good. That was a major pain.

# Need some explanation on propaganda on the details screen.

# I can still flatten any computer player with destabilization

# Espionage and Destabilizing are BOOOORRRINNNG. I am not saying I need to be able to pick from a list of activities or something but I want to see more happen as a result of spending money on this.

# AI is still too oblivious to my attacks. If I park a transport near by and don't move it for a few moves that should make them nervous.

# Still need some work on the flow of battles.

# I want an option to have the computer players actually play out their battles in full.

# Need more UP issues soon. When are these going to come? Same for the random events and anoms. Need more variety.

# Like above, need more flavor test in the game for the ai.

# Like above, need the wonders to have more to them than just improving X by Y percent. Other than eyes of the universe, they all seem kind of generic.

Keeping all this in mind, I think GalCiv is going to be the top turn based strategy game of 2003. I'm looking forward to MOO3 but I think GalCiv has the edge. And I think if the things I mention here are looked at and addressed it'll be even better.
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Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
Great feedback. I'll comment more tomorrow. ;)
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
Nice stuff Chris.

I must be cr*p at the Culture aspects of the game as I never seem to be able to get this to pay off for me in my games. If it is too powerful then it needs looking at but it doesn't work for me - what do you do to make culture work for you and therefore cultural victories so all-powerful?
Sins of a Solar Empire II
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
I suppose it is all in the matter of approach. The first thing you have to do is find two influence resources and a morale resource and by the time you reach the mid-game and upgrade them to the max.

Early on Go for intersteller business and buy both the propaganda machine and the resturaunt of eternity, about 80% through your colonizing cycle. The earlier the better.

Build defenders/corvettes when you can to keep rivals off your back, but before long they will be fighting their own infrastructure more than you.

Go after morale and economic boosters in that order, while pumping up your morale with entertainment network/habitat imp./stadium, etc. Just claim as many morale/economic resources as you can and boost them when you can spare the time.

The trick is to spend a lot of money early and get a high culture before they have the structure to cope with it.

Two things in the newer version have made this harder: The layout of the galaxy and the raising of the bar for a system to revolt.
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
Thanks Tylan great synopsis, I can see how this would work and it involves many things I don't currently do as I have been trying (vainly) to focus on a technology or technology related victory. I may try it and see how it feels.

I guess the main point being made here and elsewhere (ref John Snider and Chris Hamp's excellent threads) is that if you follow this or a similar suggested route to a culture/influence victory - is to powerful?

I would open this out by adding that from my persepective as a 'technologist' that a 'technology route' to victory is either too hard or not a recognised route! ;). Either that or I am really bad at this game.

My 'tech' route to victory (or not) would involve the following general approach -

# Game set-up with two or three points dispersed to boost tech advantage on top of selecting a tech government.

# Distribute remaining points for scanning and speed (in other words to boost initial expansion at the expense of not allocating points to military, diplomacy or Influence etc)

# Initially focus lots of empire resource into research, growth, income and 'powerhouse' production, to fuel expansion. I.e. research technology on drives, pop growth, and spend on colony ships (as opposed to military) and invest in tech quite early on for trade routes and production/manufacturing (at the expense of military tech culture, Wonders etc).

# Maximise income and try to out-produce and out-quality my opponents.

# When the time is right - strike! with better forces and superior production capacity.

Outcomes - I usually fail.

Observations - Military Government advantages on ship strengths etc vastly overpower any tech leads I seem to have at any stage. End-game (when I have no more of my favoured tech's to research), even with all military techs researched and applied to my ships I can't compete with established military advantaged races.

With this (perhaps flawed?) tech route to victory I hardly ever get races defecting to me. This means once the collapse starts and you end up with the (currently inevitable) two mega empires - I ain't one of them! :D

Once planets start defecting (and then races) the non technology focused races zoom ahead in tech terms as they can apply resources to trade techs (I assume?) and/or obtain techs from empires defecting to them.

S
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
1) I had 1 fleet attacked. My transport was destroyed and not my 2 escort battleships.
2) I'm 10 hours into 18/18 grid. excellent performance, no lag (yet). for beta 5, how about 24x24 grid?
3) are you planning to release a map editor similar to civ 2 editor (which is simpler/better than civ3). I would pay extra $10 just to create my own 36x36 map.
4) need option to soften/remove the grid lines on the mini-map. Hard to see ships/planets/resources.
5) need real-time clock showing current time, which I lose track of when playing this game (wife gets angry).
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
performance has been very impressive 12 hours straight into this game. Here are some comments on the 4a fixes.

trade goods are not as powerfull as they used to be. Thanks Brad it makes the game harder but definately more enjoyable.

The a.i. is much improved. As i was wiping the torians with my terror star (my first, i usually go for alliance or cultural victories) Iwas cocky and all of a sudden th a.is rangers appear out of nowhere and the terror star ws dust. Boy was i mad at the a.i. so much so that the a.i. seemed alive. When you can get that far into the spirit of the game it makes it a great experience.

thanks for the new and interesting quirks. I thinks it great that new things keep popping up. (like my ambassador screwing up) Keep them coming because the more variety will keep the game fresh.

watching my nephew play for the first time was an eyeopening time. The wonder in his eyes and how he reacted to the ai's was cool. "these guys are hard" he said after his first wipe out. 3 games later he's totally into it and wonders when i will get off the internet so he can continue. He's made me promise to buy hime the game for his birthday.

a couple of minor things

on the info screen if you select guard on a few ships it goes to rename. clicking done and then guard again gets the ship to guard.

on the save game feature. if you click on a previously save game and retype the name to something else it asks you if you want to overwrite the file. This make some sense but my nephew was confused and came running downstairs to tell me he broke something

LOL
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
Thanks guys. I haven't had much time yet to go over the lists but in general I agree with what is being said.

Definitely want to do more on the diplomacy screen. The issue is that UI stuff on that screen is a nightmare and it's an area I don't touch. I don't even know how to encode the graphics or anything, I can only tweak gameplay and AI and fix crashes so there are limits to what I can put in.

I expect we'll have another build next week that addresses a lot of stuff. But my top priority is to address the lockup problem people have run into and any remaining crashes.