The only time planet trading would "make sense" is if you were trading one of your far-flung enclave colonies for one of theirs inside your territory. However, I'm pretty sure the AI can't recognize this situation. Any other situation where planets can be traded, demanded, or even gifted are ripe for abuse.
I like the idea of giving some kind of positive bonus to choosing the Good option on events. I always go Evil. Good is never good.
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@Developers: Just because the map is hex does not mean that sector lines must also be. Adding a visual grid of large squares over the map would be trivial to implement. They need not have any game function. They could just be a visual reference.
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In a traditional game like Go or even Golf, a better player will receive a "handicap" in recognition of being the better player. This is not considered "cheating". It merely evens the odds. Having experience in both programming and AI, I can say it's virtually impossible to create a 4X game AI that will beat experienced human players. The only way to compensate is to give the human player a handicap. (Or conversely, by giving the computer players a bonus.) Of course</e
Looks like RoboSport for the younger generation.
[quote who="abelisari" reply="1229" id="3524913"] Quoting MabusAltarn, reply 1228 Many would, I must be an exception because I like techtrading in my games. That's the point, I like it too. And also, it's much more realistic then trading planets. So,
What difficulty level are you on? I find that buying planets is next to impossible most of the time.
I just finished another game on Huge, common planets, full house, on Masochistic. I got up to about T3 on weapons before i decided to quit. I was becoming the runaway leader in every stat. Overall, not a very exciting game. The other empires were researching weapons just fine, but were wasting most of their resources fighting each other while i gobbled up all of the freshly opened resources. The Torians, Korath, and Altarians were all doing pretty good jobs of launching successful invasions.<
[quote who="SilasOfBorg" reply="1209" id="3521274"] I'd consider up to T3 "well tested". Observations, in no particular order: [/quote] I make the same observations. The last game i played i cancelled due to "no contest" (in my favor). The next game i play will be larger and higher difficulty, but those games take a long time to get through. I can speed up testing by moving tech speed up, though.
I'm currently mid-game on my weapon cycle test. This game has been a snooze, even on Crippling. I'm evaluating this from a high-level player perspective and not looking at any specific stats. Iconians have been pushovers. They usually go tech-bonkers by now. The Korx have actually done pretty well, but show not much interest in conquest. Torians and Arceans i'm completely eradicating. Terrans and Krynn never got off the ground. Not sure why (haven't seen that corner of
Stray idea: Add a "migration lag" to the triangle slider. This prevents shifting your entire economy around on a dime and adds strategic depth. It would take a certain number of turns to get the slider from where it is to where you would like it to be. More change = more time. It would automatically move a bit towards your target spot each turn until it finally gets there.
I just need something short that tells me, at a glance, "is this better or worse than [other weapon]?"
[Ruminating] Actually, that's not a bad idea... "Weapon Power Level: [X]" Where X is: ( Tier Level - 1 ) * 3 plus: [ 1 => worst of tier, 2 => average of tier, 3 => best of tier ] This would produce "Power Levels" of 1 to 18. examples: T1 drivers would be 3 (0 + 3) T2 drivers would be 5 (3 + 2) T3 drivers would be 7 (6 + 1) T4 drivers would be 12 (9 + 3) . . . <
Short 5-word mini-descriptions would be best. I don't generally read the "color commentary". I really wish there was some way of expressing "size" on the tech description. I understand why it can't give a hard number. (That's really a complaint about the whole galciv2 ship design system, but i'll ignore that) We also have to consider that T3 weapons are better than T1 weapons of any sort, so descriptions like "better than beams" is misleading in different conte
I have a feeling that if the game does not explicitly tell new players about these weapon type relationships, they probably wouldn't ever notice. So it wouldn't factor into their decision making unless they had played through each of them in many different games to get a feel for how they play out. So i think you're right. It makes a difference, but there are other factors that make a bigger difference.
Early feedback: I'm playing a large, full-house scenario on Crippling with fast tech speed (i normally play normal speed). It's been mostly quiet so far, but i'm now at mid-game and wars are starting to break out. There seems to be a decent mix of weapon types being researched. I don't think the changes make a huge difference to type selection. It's more or less random I'm thinking. The overall feel of it is not much different. Probably b
Okay, thanks. I'm eager to get into it, but i was waiting until the rest of the adjustments to starbases, defense, etc were in. I'll try it out this week hopefully. Many other more important things come first, of course.
So, for review, if i want to give the weapon mod a try, i need to: Overwrite the .exe Install 5.7.2, as per normal mod installation procedure Unpack and overwrite the files in the weapon mod zip file Correct? Or are the weapon tweaks already folded into 5.7.2? @Mabus / Silas: If we intend to have weapon tweaks (of whatever sort) in the final CU, i would like to propose that we label this as an official SVN 6.0.0 branch and kee
[quote who="SilasOfBorg" reply="1148" id="3518371"] Defenses will be identical across the board in terms of both component cost and space. The weapons being highly variable/cyclical is "interesting" enough, I think. [/quote] Because mismatched defenses still do a pretty good job, i don't think defense balancing would be a big deal. I often research weapons and then slap on whatever defensive tech i can trade for, matching or not.
So if i understand you correctly, not only were you able to get the weapon eras to work, you also changed the "acceleration" for each weapon type? That is interesting. If you can fold that into a mod i can download, i might be able to squeeze in a game this weekend.
My approach is a little bit different. I usually try to rush up to Large+ hulls and stack on defence. Otherwise i'm just trading ships with opponents. With a few large, defendable ships, i can zip around and smack down waves of little gnats. My firepower is not diminished until the entire large ship is destroyed. Differentiating the weapon types creates a reason to choose one over the other. As a clueless player, they all look the same and none offers any advantage over t
[quote who="SilasOfBorg" reply="1124" id="3517703"] Any other comments about single cycle (each weapon shines in early, mid, or late game) vs double cycle (as I've described in this post) would be quite welcome at this point. I'm leaning towards double cycle, if I can manage it. [/quote] Double-cycle would have the most benefit. With single cycle, i would probably totally ignore missiles. My games are never that long. Stupid AIs that go for missiles
Lev's thoughts on "weapon eras": I'm starting to like this idea compared to others modding solutions because it nullifies the question "which weapon is best overall?" or even "What's the difference between any of them?" Now a player must ask, "Which weapon is best RIGHT NOW?" Weapon eras make stealing or trading for weapons in a different series meaningful. Players must plan ahead to have the right weapon at the right time. This increases the lev
[quote who="Maiden666" reply="1120" id="3517623"] Quoting SilasOfBorg, reply 1119 If "most" games end before Tier 4, maybe we need to look at weapon research costs. In my case this is because I don't play huge/gigantic/immense sized games, so it's natural to research only half of
[quote who="Maiden666" reply="1115" id="3517545"]Quoting leiavoia, reply 1111 3) Give each weapon type it's own game-era in which it dominates. example: An early military advantage weighs far more heavy than a late. In your example all empires that would pick the yellow weapon will most likely be defeated before they would see the
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