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Reply to Hows the new AI? in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

Most of the strategies I've read for the highest difficulty levels involve people using high diplomacy modifiers to counter-act the AI's high economy modifiers. Actually, not even counter-act, they harness the super-productive AIs for their own purposes, leashing them for diplomacy. Perhaps it would be appropriate to lower the AI economic bonus a tad at higher difficulty levels, but give them a scaling diplomacy bonus? Right now it seems as thought the AIs at higher levels are su

Reply to Do we need the "One-Hitpoint Rule"? in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

Actually, the rule is not "the stronger fleet win with 1hp", but "the attacking fleet win with 1hp". Well, that can't be it, because I lost several combats attacking single-hitpoint battleships. It's why I decided to adopt the 1-hitpoint huge tactic myself. I disagree...I find it more realistic than the alternative. It's more realistic if a 1-hitp

Do we need the "One-Hitpoint Rule"? in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

There's a rule in the game where if two fleet annihilate each other, the fleet that's deemed stronger in terms of total attack and defence will instead survive with one hitpoint. I think this rule is unrealistic and unneccessary. It undermines the value of defence and creates some really cheesy situations. What's wrong with letting them both die? That seems like a very possible sci-fi outcome. If two egg-shells wielding sledgehammers meet, the result should be two broken eggshells.

Reply to Enhanced Economic Activity event in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

I like this event. It affects everyone, changes the game balance, and can leave people in the lurch when it ends. It's not a 300% boost, but it can turn you from losing money to making money. Remember that the surplus or deficit is only the difference between your overall expenses and overall income, which are usually much larger. It's easy to move from -20 BC/turn to +300 BC/turn by changing your spending.

Reply to AI Risk Evaluation? in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

One fleet it should be able to have a really good idea of the outcome (perhaps via simulation). Even a chain of two or three fleets attacking you could expect it to play out. If it takes 10 of their fleets to take out one of your small fleets, that's quite far to look ahead. It starts to hinge on the much more nebulous question of how much it is worth to him to take you out versus other opportunities.

Reply to Starbase Defence and DA Combat in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

Or better, simulate a battle a hundred times during the game's development, and distill the results down to a polynomial equation as a function of weapons, defense, and hit points. Starbases tend to win early on because of their hit points. That's probably what it does now. Cook up a formula to try to approximate the outcome. Given what I see in terms of AI ship design though, it can be a long way from acc

AI Ships Healed by Damage in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

In my battles against the Yor last night, I was facing Frigates with ~150 missile attack and zero defence. My small's could post about 30 attack. If I sent a fleet of 5 smalls against a lone frigate, it will destroy the frigate with one or two smalls remaining. If I send the small ships one at a time, the first small would bring the frigate down to about 7 hitpoints. After the next attack, the frigate would not only survive but be back up to full hitpoints! I understand there m

Reply to Starbase Defence and DA Combat in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

I dunno if the AI is very good at reviewing battle outcomes? But that would be considerably difficult to code in. Well, it would be pretty easy to size up it's odds for each combat. Simply simulate the battle a hundred times and look at the average result. Heck, if it is considering follow-up attacks on the same turn, simulate the 2 (or 3 or 4) chain sequence of attacks a hundred times and see how it turns out. I also think the AI sh

Reply to Hows the new AI? in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

I agree that it's hard to develop a good AI for a game like GC2. I don't quite agree about the lack of resources though. GC2 has had a *lot* of development time for the AI because the guy who does the AI is also the guy who controls the purse strings. He also has a lot of experience working on the AI for these sorts of game which I think is more valuable for this than Expert Systems or having a graduate-level CS degree (and I have one). In comparison to most strategy games, I don't thin

Reply to Spore Ship AI weakness in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

Does Spore Weapons tech have any prerequisites? I would prefer to give it more prerequisites than to just radically increase it's cost. Maybe hang it somewhere off the planetary invasion line?

Reply to DA Theorycraft in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

One clarification: the fraction of your fleet destroyed in a given round is going to be more like: (EA - kD)/(D + HP) where k is the fraction of your total defence points that are expected to regenerate at the end of the round. In large battles, k will be very small, because only one ship per fleet can regenerate hitpoints at the end of every round (all others are dead or untouched). The upper limit is the fraction of your defence covered by one ship. However, in a small fleet

Reply to AI dies of plague in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

In my game, I would have gladly sold the cure except tech trading was disallowed. I think a fix would be to give the plague cure a ridiculously high priority if the no tech trade option is selected.

Reply to Hows the new AI? in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

The AI is pretty good, but it does occasionally make these really bone-head moves that remind you that it doesn't actually understand the game. In my current game (on crippling), I was forced to try to rush the humans because I hardly had any planets of my own. That went ok, but the Altarians labelled me the galactic aggressor and everyone and his neighbour decided to declare war on me. So far so good. I captured a human radioactive in order to deny him a base in that region,

DA Theorycraft in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

On the surface, the combat system in GC2:DA is much more complicated, but in a way, it is easier to analyse. If you haven't, please check the sticky post describing the combat system in the beta forum. I don't know if something like this has been posted before, but I'm going to post a formula for the 'theoretical' combat effectiveness of a fleet in DA and then describe how I arrived at it, the assumptions that go into it and where it breaks down. Theoretical Fleet Power = At

Starbase Defence and DA Combat in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

It looks as though the starbase defence modules follow the same progression (5, 10, 20) as they did in the original, v1.0 GalCiv2. Given changes in logistics, defence research cost and the new DA combat system these values are really appropriate anymore. Through the various patches, defence on ships has become more compact and easier to research, but I haven't seen any corresponding improvement to starbase defence. Similarly, logistics have been expanded, meaning starbases can face larg

AI dies of plague in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

I'm playing a no-tech-trading game with 7 (or 8?) opponents. The plague event occured about a year and a half ago, causing a continual erosion of planetary populations. I researched the plague cure and it's prerequistite in about 7 weeks, but so far, none of the AI players appear to have researched the cure after 75 weeks. This event is breaking my game, because the AI doesn't place a high enough priority on finding a cure. I recently conquered the Yor and their worlds were a sad collec

Reply to when are pre-order purchases charged? in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

If you had access to the beta, you would have been charged immediately or when the beta began (whichever was first). So if you pre-ordered 5 days after the beta started, then the charge was applied 5 days in the past? Do you use pre-cogs or a time-machine?

Reply to AI - Roleplay or Play to Win? in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

I like the idea of it being harder to go to war with empires with whom you have good relations. In general a system that constrains the player's actions a bit in terms of how and when they can go to war (or stay out of one) would be pretty interesting.

Reply to What about combat? in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

I used to like the 'and the kitchen sink' approach to making games, but I've started to hate games that attempt too much. Moving ships around in every tactical combat, moving armies around in every invasion, detailing the life stories of all your officers and the social histories of your civilization all becomes a bit too much. A lot of what interests me about games these days is clever abstractions. Can you make systems that are simple yet deep, that are tractable for the AI and quick

Reply to DA Combat System in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

Well, all combat rolls are a lot less luck dependant than before (exception made if you only have 1 weapon) because of the law of great numbers. Lower variability (due to more, smaller rolls) does help with the reliability of defences, but it's not my main point. The main point is that for situations with lots of guns and high defen

Reply to DA Combat System in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

While it is clear that defences don't stand up as well against multiple attackers, one on one with larger ships they are much *more* effective than before. Consider a ship with 100 beam attack (10x10) attacking a ship with 100 beam defence (10x10). Using the previous combat system, that ship has a 50% chance of doing damage, and there's a reasonable chance of doing pretty signficant damage (25 or more hp). It's even possible to do 50-100 points of damage. This was a big risk in

Reply to Espionage spending, I think you should check it often in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

I think he meant that his budget surplus went from 50 BC/week to 250 BC/week.

Reply to Sword of the Stars is looking good. in Off-Topic GalCiv2 Forums

There's this meme going around that Sword of the Stars is some kind of kid's version of a 4x game, or perhaps made for people without the intellectual ability to handle a game with more numbers. I don't think that's a fair assessment at all. The economic portion of the game is heavily abstracted in favour of a deep and not abstract at all tactical combat engine. The game has some flaws but I don't think these are worse than those in the initial version of Galciv2, and I have some cause to expect

Reply to Sword of the Stars is looking good. in Off-Topic GalCiv2 Forums

I picked up the full game a few days ago and I really enjoy it. The demo doesn't do it justice, as you can't get the full possibilities of tactical combat with such few technologies and only the smallest ships. You don't have as much control over the appearance of your ships as GC2 (what other game does?), but you have quite a few interesting decisions in terms of equipment and weapon loadout, with lots of tradeoffs. Combat looks great. Not so much because models are super-det

Reply to how can the ai colonize this fast? in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

Lenius, I don't understand how you can execute your strategy. If you buy 4 colony ships and run 100% industry, by the end of turn 4 you should have less than 800 bc left. You aren't making much because of low taxes and you gutted your homeworld population in the first 4 turns. Getting enough production to build a colony ship every other turn will set you back another 300bc or so. Another 12-16 colony ships built will cost you 1300-1700 bc pl