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Reply to Need money to make money, need factories to make factories in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Yes, it's quite ironic that the quickest way to hamstring your industry is to research industrial technology early. Want to kill your research ability? Go as far down the research path as you can, as early as you can. You could guarantee yourself a win by giving all the AIs Discovery Spheres or the final manufacturing tech on the first turn, as long as YOU didn't have to take it...

Reply to Weapons and Defense in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Those are some nice plots. You might want to change the scaling on the cumulative research axis so it's easier to see what's happening earlier on in the game. Perhaps switch to square-root scaling. Also, I wonder if there isn't something wrong with your calculations. Several of the 'special' techs seem to be below their base curves. While I might expect that on cost, on rating/unit I really don't see how that can be true.

Reply to Why is my starbase a lemon? in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Starbases don't grant defence unless your ship has at least some defence on it's own. Similar for attack. Build ships with say 1 laser and 1 armour and you are golden.

Reply to Advanced Buildings - time to build in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

It will take a long time to build all the advanced structures, even if you have an efficient build order. They are just very expensive. Don't expect to ever get a lot from acquisitions where you've wiped out all the infrastructure.

Reply to Starbase Defense in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Your ships need to have to have some defence in order to get the defence bonus, just like they need attack in order to get the attack bonus.

Reply to Why isn't it called Galactic Civilizations 4? in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

It wraps around after two. I look forward to playing the brand new Galactic Civilizations I on my nano-circuit implant in 30 years.

Reply to Support for Modding Starbase HP in Modding GalCiv2 Forums

Ah, I didn't know you could incorporate multiple defences per component. That would certainly be handy. It does seem like an odd exception not to have starbase HP in the files.

Reply to Tip: Build your own custom freighters in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Arming them? I don't know. If you build them with the cargo hull, they only have one hitpoint. Use a combat hull, and you are essentially paying all the upkeep for a combat ship that is crippled because it has to devote space to the trade module. The upkeep would really cut in to the trade route profit per turn, and it would take you that much longer to recoup your investment, since the initial ship costs that much more.

Reply to Support for Modding Starbase HP in Modding GalCiv2 Forums

If you are changing the range of numbers radically, what do you intent to do about the sqrt() scaling on non-optimal defences? Effectively say non-optimals don't work at, even in the early game? I'd like to see some way to address this, as well.

Surrender Strands AI Ships? in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Over several games, I've noticed a pattern that seems pretty detrimental to the AI's effectiveness. AI fleets that are engaged against another player who then surrenders seem to become 'leaderless'. That is, they don't respond to higher-level threats that are outside of their immediate area. In my current game at 'painful' difficulty, I am playing the Altarians in a 10-player, huge map game. Towards the end of the early game, my neighbours t

Reply to AI only researches one weapon tech line? in Research GalCiv2 Forums

I'm seeing this effect as well. The different AIs all choose the same weapon. In my current game, we started with 9 opponents. I've seen ships from 7 of them, and they all chose beams. I've seen it a couple of times. It certainly makes MY choices easier... Edit: This was a no-tech trade game.

Reply to The value of a good defense? in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

...which directly contradicts what Shrapnel posted on the forum, namely, that both attack and defense roll 0-max. Yeah, something doesn't add up. I have never seen a ship do zero damage to a target with zero defence. Maybe they should just post the relevant snippets of code. It's crazy that we still h

Reply to The value of a good defense? in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

Saber Cherry, your model showed 2-2-2/0-0-0 beating 1-1-1/1-1-1? That would be somewhat surprising even if attack rolled 0-n. Keep in mind that the second type has at least 2 defence to every attack, and possibly 3 defence, depending on exactly how off-type defences are calculated.

Reply to Players Beyond Tough? in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

So, any takers? How many people can reliably beat 'tough'?

Players Beyond Tough? in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

In his recent journal entry, Brad presents a lot of interesting information about the AI, his approach and philosophy. Apparently, Stardock set a very ambitious target: that only 5% of players can reliably beat the 'intelligent', no-bonus AI. One of the reasons people like Galactic Civilizations II's AI is because it

Reply to Starbase Defense Assist - where is it gone? in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Looking through the galactopedia, it looked like the higher levels of starbase assist technology offered stronger attack boosts, but not stronger defence boosts. Is this correct? Is it intentional?

Reply to Exploit or legit strategy ? in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

Does anyone else do this ? IMO the AI should probably be following the same strategy when anomolies are set high. It probably should, but it's not a high-priority enhancement. In the meantime, just be aware that you are making the game easier than it otherwise would be by setting high anomalies. Whate

Reply to The value of a good defense? in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

In those cases I think I might use defense on the small ships and pure offense on the large, so I'll see. It won't work. The enemy will simply target the large ships first in that scenario.

Reply to AI: Guard your transports please in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

I've seen the 'mega fleet of sitting ducks' phenomenon a few times myself. I think the problem is that the AI doesn't appear to consider time as a factor in it's 'sneak attack' evaluation. It's a great strategy to send an unguarded transport to an undefended planet if it can get there in a single turn. It's more risky if it will take two turns to get there. If it takes 20 turns, forget it. Any intel you have on the target area is totally use

Reply to The value of a good defense? in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

So in conclusion: Defence is far from useless. It can be more important than who attacks first! Thanks for doing the experiment, but I don't think your results can generalize. One problem is, that despite assurances that ships roll 0-to-rating for attack, a ship will never roll a zero

Reply to Does difficulty affect planet quality? in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

I don't think it has any effect. Playing games on Crippling I seem to get as many as normal.

Reply to 1.1 Balance Problem in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

In one of the games I played for beta, the Torians were expanding dramatically and got into a long war with the Drengin. The Drengin influence area on the map was fairly small, and the Torians had about a 70% stronger economy and a stronger military rating. During the course of the war, I heard many reports about Drengin planets defecting to the Torians. Bad news for the Drengin, right? Not really. The Drengin were continually pushing milita

Reply to Increaseing cargo size for ships in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Right now the ship designer doesn't have the concept of limiting the number of any particular components that you can have on a ship (other than through space limits). So, that would have to be added, or the first 'negative space' you could add would give you infinite space. I would like to see more range for building more elite ships that maybe don't make sense economically (ie, they will lose to an equal-cost fleet).

Reply to Speed trumps Defense and it probably shouldn't in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Considering that: 1) The scenarios where some defense is better than all offense are few, 2) Defense must be researched in addition to offense, and 3) If your enemy changes weapon paths, you're hosed, I think the game would benefit from some tweaking to how defense can be improved. I think you are rig

Reply to Speed trumps Defense and it probably shouldn't in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Actually as was posted elsewhere, this is unlikely given the relative values of logistics, though this could change with 1.1 and the new logistics values for big ships. Running the numbers, I think you are right. It SHOULD work out that way, but even 4 tiny ships can only really eat a huge at reasonab