Frustration kills keyboards...

from Stardock Forums
at least in my case. :p Once again, the darn *minor* civilizations have handed me (and all of the *major* civilizations) our collective butts. The Fundamentalists came in, taking over two of my systems, and on the following turn declared war on me. Mind you, this was still very early in the game, so early in fact, that my first constructer hadn't even been completed yet. Anyhow, somehow or another, they came out almost immediately with battleships, and remained at war with me throughout the entire game (which in and of itself was frustrating to say the least.) When their first battleships started showing up, I still hadn't even gotten the research for defenders. Naturally, every ship I built and tried to launch off from any of my systems were immediately destroyed. :sniff!: Then, as they were keeping me down, they declared holy wars on the Dregin and the Yor, and wiped them out in very short order. Their limitless supply of cash eventually had their cultural impact at such a great influence, that Alterian and Torian systems were defecting to the Fundalmentalists in droves (a system defected every couple of turns.) I was so frustrated at this point since this seems to be the way almost every game has been going for me. The major races aren't who I'm playing against until the minor races either soften me up so much that I'm literally defenseless, or the minor race simply eliminates me themselves. I'm *very* tired of losing game after game to the Alexians, or the Fundamentalists, or the I-League. :notsure: After the session I described above, my frustration with the AI of the minor races had reached it's boiling point, and I proceeded to lift my keyboard off the desk, and flung it across the room. It's dead now, and has clickity-clacked for the last time. (:( Fortunately, I had this old crappy keyboard in my closet, to use until I go out and pick up a new one. But let this be a warning to you all... If you're getting to the point of frustration with the minor race AI that you're about to commit keyboard murder, get up, breathe deep, and walk away for a few hours. :p When you come back, *don't* continue the game you were getting crushed in, start a whole new one, and your keyboard will live to see another day.

By the way, I was playing the the major races on 'fool' for difficulty (I know, I'm probably a dolt having to play it on fool, but this is my first 4X strategy game, and I'm still learning my way through.) I'm petrified to turn the AI up on the major races where I can't even contend with the minor ones yet.

Thanks for reading this, and Save the Keyboards!!! :p

-GeorgeT
422 views 10 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
I wish I could throw my keyboeard...but then it will be my laptop flying across the room LOL and I cant aford that...guess I am gonna have to stick to cups and calculators :)
Galactic Civilizations III
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
A quote from the box."Gameplay events are designed to ensure that each game is a different experience."Hmmmm! Doesnt seem to be working out that way.Unless tossing your keyboard is a unique experience.
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
Sorry your keyboard got broke.

I am finding things out that are completely crazy.

But I play a lot of games and am not getting mad at my equipment.

The AI is some of the cheatingest AI I have ever seen.

I could last longer in a Chess match against Garry Kasparov.

I started a small map. Before my first colony ship could even find a class 15 planet, 1 quadrant away, here comes the enemy from at least 2 quadrants away, heading straight for the only good planet in sight!

Then, 3 turns later, he's got a constructor ship building a Star Base, in my adjacent quadrent.

The enemy AI `knows' where everything already is! On a small map, this is devastating.

I found a Battleaxe ship in some floating junk, so I decided to attack the Star Base. I clicked on the Star Base, to check the stats, it showed 0 (zero) attack power. So I attacked it, and then `poof' my ship goes up in smoke. What did I get hit with? - alien hot air?

GalCiv has such cool atmosphere, but beating it, is more like performing a `work around', than any real strategy.

It's easy to focus your tech, and building projects after a few games, once you know what's going on, but all you can do is look for loop holes in the AI.

Hopefully, they'll smooth it out.
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
The AI starts with Stellar Cartography (knows where the yellow star systems are located but not the planet qualities inside the systems) and usually goes in debt to buy colony ships early in the game. It can be frustrating on small maps to see things gobbled up around you if the AI is close enough to reach the planets nearby and you don't use the same strategy to quick build colonies. Similarly, they will focus on military construction and go in debt with constructors to claim resources near their colonies. So the AI doesn't really cheat... they just use some "creative financial management" to make a run at getting as much as they can before their finances run out, then it seems to depend on race as to the strategy they use after securing their turf.

As for the minor civilizations... I'm still not sure what to think about them. In the game I won on a medium map, one of the minor civilizations was the most technologically advanced AI with only a few less techs than I had at any point in the game. They never beat me to a wonder but they were powerful enough to give the AI civilizations a very hard time when I bribed them to go to war with the major civilizations :)

I believe when a new minor civilization appears they have randomly generated technology levels, unless they were the result of planets breaking off from one or more major civilizations, then they seem to have all the techs of the races they belonged to before they defected. At least it seems this way from what I've observed in the games I've played so far. I haven't had any minor civilization cause my downfall yet, but I'm knocking on wood and keeping my fingers crossed as I type this ;)

~SDC~
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
lol talon90! :) If I turn out to be the only one to break a keyboard over this game, then I guess it does, in some small way, qualify as a unique experience, in which case, the box would be correct. :p

StarGalax, thanks for the keyboard sympathy. :) Fortunately, I've been looking for an excuse to get a new one, but I'll be honest, my wife wasn't too thrilled to see what I'd done to the now-dead one. My first gut-reaction with the amount of frustration I was feeling at that point originally made me want to put the cd under my chair and run over it a few times. :p Fortunately for the cd, (and unfortunately for the keyboard,) I restrained myself from destroying the cd and just kind of flung the keyboard in disgust. I agree that the AI, at least in the case of the minor races, is cheating in some ungodly fashion. That's without going into the extra frustration of random events like space sharks coming in and wiping out all my spacecraft and bases. As I said earlier, this is my first 4X strategy game, and although the interface is really easy to learn, it's hard to figure out where what technology trees take you to what ultimate goals within the game environment. The added 'pressure' put on by the minor race ai, coupled with devastating random events, can be very frustrating to someone as new to this type of game as I am, to say the least. I am enjoying the game tremedously, at least until the minor races or random events destroy me practically every time. Yeesh, sorry for going on, I just hope the AI adjustments that will eventually become available will address these issues and, as you said, smooth it out. :)

Well, back off to my game. Hopefully I can get the cultural victory I've been working towards soon. :)

Happy Conquesting! (and remember, keep your keyboards safe :p )

-GeorgeT
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
Oh... forgot the question about the starbase. If a ship (or starbase) has more than double it's offense in defense rating then it gets to use half of it's defense rating as an attack rating in "counter-attacks" against any ships that attack. Think of this as defensive weaponry. Starbases can be built up to have defenses capable of taking down several battleships or overlords with defensive fire before they are destroyed.

~SDC~
Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top
azakain... Thank You! That's something about starbases that has been nagging at me. I couldn't quite figure out why I was attacking a base with an attack of 0 and a defense of 5, and I kept loosing corvettes. :p

I think my biggest problem is that when all the major races are on the 'fool' setting, the minor races don't seem to be effected by that, and in turn, seem to be playing at a much higher difficulty level. Also, I've had 'new' minor civilizations defect from within my own star systems. Logic would lead me to believe that their technology level couldn't possibly be any higher than the base technology of the system they've taken over, since it's a new civilization. Plus they haven't had any time to build up any kind of starfleet. However I've attacked on the turn following the 'rebellion' using my battleaxes from the star system that was directly adjacent to them. In this case, it was against the Fundamentalists. Battleaxes were the biggest thing I had researched at the time. The first round they came out with battleships. Within 5 rounds of battle, they started pumping out dreadnaughts. Long story short, the war with the Fundamentalists went very badly, I went broke, my planets all defected, and those that didn't were quickly invaded and swept up by the goody-two-shoes Altarians. :p

Down with the Fundamentalists and the Altarians! (at least when I'm playing evil. lol)

-GeorgeT
Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top
Aye, the minor races don't seem to operate along the same lines the major races do. The major races can be handled if your doing well. In 75% of my games the minor races are more of a problem than the major races. *shrugs* Hopefully they tune down the minor races a bit and make the random events a wee bit better.

~SDC~