Jasamcarl

Reply to Tech trade impossible? in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

I'm a world developer for a popular MMORPG and I understand balance issues and the difficulty of keeping games challenging without killing the fun factor. Four years of experience has taught me to make adjustments in small increments. Don't add +10 to a creature's Attack Bonus, add +1 and see what that gets you. Tech trading has been eviscerated . -------------- Galaxy Medium, Habitables: Uncommon, Painful, Races:5, Me: Terrans Game's

Reply to Tech trade impossible? in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

This is idiotic. Suicidal was made 'impossible' because the AI is not longer handcuffed by the cheesy diplomatic system that was a huge player cheat and allowed it to made the ai act against its interests. To the degree that the AI now acts in its interests, the AI was improved; a simple, but effective fix. Unfortunately this isn't the case, either. I've seen the AI act against it's own interests in a trade. Rece

Reply to Tech trading after 1.5x. in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

I'm sorry, is there proof that the AI is giving to each other freely?

Reply to Tech trade impossible? in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

IF they adapt the game to player strategies it's ok until they limit the changes to the maximum levels. The effect on medium and low levels is not to make them harder (because they are not harder at all), only to make them flat. I just played some turns at tough and i noted that you can still trade at this level. The problem is that i didn't have any necessity to do it because before the end of the 2nd year i was already the most advanced race (a custom one with no tec

Reply to Tech trade impossible? in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

This patch effectively turned off several of the features of the game. Tech trading is basically gone, the whole concept of hit points and repair is basically obsolete with the new defense, and Suicidal is made impossible without particularly improving the AI. I liked the beta better than this. This is idiotic. Suicidal was made 'impossible' because the AI is not longer handcuffed by the cheesy diplomatic system that was a huge player cheat and allowed

Reply to DA Oddity or potential bug in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

One of the changes in the last update was to seperate AI warmaking from diplomatic relations somewhat, atleast for relations that were 'neutral' or worse. This might reflect that.

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

Alternatively, it's also possible to code other changes to the game. For example, you could modify the game such that military ships can only penetrate so far into enemy influenced-space. Limiting the range of military strikes makes battlefronts more influential and makes it a lot more difficult to take over multiple systems in one turn. I don't know about using influence borders for that. However, life support *sh

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

@ Entrophy Avatar Fair point. In that sense, its not that bad an idea... but it's only part of the solution. If the AIs need one person to die off before they take the hint, it may already be too late! @ Jasamcarl No, I'm not saying that. All I was saying was that ALL AI is usually difficult, in my experience, to get it to do what you want, even on fairly trivial problem. All problems aren't equal, obviously. And I'm not talking abou

For the Devs, 'Diplomacy Exploits: Some Straightforward Potential Solutions' in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

Because I some support from atleast a couple of posters in the 'How's the AI thread', I thought I would lay my ideas out clearly for the dev's conscerning the fixing of diplomacy and tactical exploits. Diplomacy in this game has simple, transparent mechanics. There are diplomacy scores which affect the interaction between 'players'; the player with the higher score is likely to get the better end of the bargain, forcing the second player to act against its own interests. I love the 'gam

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

I would argue that it is a relatively simple solution, albiet one that would require tweaking to have optimal values for the variables in question. I'm aware I don't have access to the AI code, of course, so it could be more complicated than I'm guessing, but it seems like a fairly trivial kind of check. Loop through all foreign vessels in your space, look to see what planets and resources they are within

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

I'm not sure what you are talking about. The AI ALREADY does this, in fact I count on it to get the AI to declare war on me. If relations are very good to start off with, sometimes it takes a little more for me to make them suspicious enough to declare war, but that is why the strategy works at all. If they never declared war, then I would have to do it myself, and suffer negative diplomacy modifiers. What I do is make it look like I'm always defending myself by manipu

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

I would argue that it is a relatively simple solution, albiet one that would require tweaking to have optimal values for the variables in question. I'm aware I don't have access to the AI code, of course, so it could be more complicated than I'm guessing, but it seems like a fairly trivial kind of check. Loop through all foreign vessels in your space, look to see what planets and resources they are within a single turn of, and base some kind of suspicion modif

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

I'm not sure what you are talking about. The AI ALREADY does this, in fact I count on it to get the AI to declare war on me. If relations are very good to start off with, sometimes it takes a little more for me to make them suspicious enough to declare war, but that is why the strategy works at all. If they never declared war, then I would have to do it myself, and suffer negative diplomacy modifiers. What I do is make it look like I'm always defending myself by manipu

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

Probably the best counter to a sneak attack is to make sure you have fleets of your own watching whatever foreign ships are coming near your planets and starbases, so that you're ready to beat them down immediately if hostilities start. Whether you should execute a preemptive strike should be based on an analysis of how much damage they're prepared to do in the first turn. In other words, for each ship/transport/spore ship they have at a distance close enough to hit a

Reply to The Good, the Ugly, the Bad of DA in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

Its not about DA being perfect, and its not about making suggestions to improve it, its about not filling the messageboards with dishonest drama about the extent to which those imperfections matter. A review score is presumably suppossed to direct readers, most of whom are already gamers, in their choices over which games to purchase. Comparing a game to some strawman of perfection does not help them do that and simply dumb. </DIV

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

Actually, the more I think about, it might be more straightforward to simply give a large upfront diplomatic penalty for the use of the quick strike tactic, as oppossed to changing the war declaration rules, which could be cumbersome.

Reply to The Good, the Ugly, the Bad of DA in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

.e. you don't have a notion of a perfect expansion pack beyond some vague b.s. about being bug free and gameplay perfect. Ok, let's see. First, pick up a dictionary, and look up the word perfect. It's under P. Now, as for comparing expansions for rating purposes, that's idiotic. How do you do that? By the number of features added? By the quality of those features - and if so, according to whose standards? For features that w

Reply to The Good, the Ugly, the Bad of DA in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

I think it's a very bad thing to call anything perfect. Firstly, nothing is perfect and to give it that sort of pedestal implies that nothing in DA could be improved: Which is a very bad mindset to have. I'm sure the developers pay more attention to what people didn't like and their opinions of improvement rather than being showered with compliments which could make them complacent. And insults really don't help anything. Its not abou

Reply to The Good, the Ugly, the Bad of DA in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

"To be perfectly honest, asteroids, planet environments, custom player creation, they should all have been introduced in the base game, not in an expansion pack." AGREE! As for the best expansion being the "10" to which all other expansions should compare to, that's about the most absurd opinion I've heard on the subject." Further Agree. 10/10, 5/5 should be reserved for expansions where everything asked for and clearly missing, within reason

Reply to The Good, the Ugly, the Bad of DA in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

Why don't you post YOUR idea of a 10/10 expansion so that I can rip it to shreds? Ok, how about a bug free, cheese free, thoroughly tested gameplay and campaign module? Rip me to shreds please. Sure DA has some new stuff (even though...), some fixes and improvements. The fact is, some of them were *needed*, like the combat system (even though it now presents other problems). Is DA perfect? Nope. Not a 10 then. <

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

Be that as it may, any reasonably democratic society usually frowns on 'unjustified' wars against allies. If you really care about realism (as oppossed to a realistic justification), make this one of the downsides to non-imperial governments. Some sort of penalty should be attached, though to balance out the huge, obvious advantage it gives to a player while still retaining the mechanical relevance of an alliance. I would agree i

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

Wrong. They *sound* very basic. They are in point not that basic when it comes to coding. They are principles, not a coherent strategic system. And the thread is not pointless if you follow a 'rules change' strategy as oppossed to a strictly 'ai change' one.

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

Be that as it may, any reasonably democratic society usually frowns on 'unjustified' wars against allies. If you really care about realism (as oppossed to a realistic justification), make this one of the downsides to non-imperial governments. Some sort of penalty should be attached, though to balance out the huge, obvious advantage it gives to a player while still retaining the mechanical relevance of an alliance.

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

I would also say some sort of (perhaps temporary) morale penalty for declaring war on an ally (standard penalty * number of treaties) should probably be considered. This would penalize the backstabbing player decently.

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

And I agree with Legacy, Yamota. You're suggestions simply aren't at all practical. There is no AI that would be able to out tactic a human player without some sort of rule change.