EIGHTATE8

Join Date 02/2006

Curious Omissions and some suggestions

Well I've been playing for a few days now and am really enjoying the game. I have found now that there are a number of things that I really miss, mostly from MOOII. I know this is a different game and with a different focus but if theres going to be an expansion pack or some major updates here is a list of things I would really like to see.
1) Tactical combat. I know you've heard this one already. Not terribly important as I found myself skipping it after awhile in MOOII but I remember some great moments where a unique design and tactic made all the difference, which brings me to number 2
2) Unique ship loadouts. Where are the unique weapons? There are only three types of weapons and researching better ones is basically a long line of MkI MkII and so on, kind of boring. No fighters, assualt ships, teleporters, cloaks, reflection fields. With such a huge emphasis on ship design I'm really let down by the loadout choices.
3) Freighters and food. So in the future you can't ship food from one planet to another. You can make specialized planets for research and manufacturing etc. but not for farming.
4) Blockading planets. The classic pressure move, blockade a nations ports, they can't bring in food or new supplies. Breaking a siege on one of my planets before they starved was great fun in MOOII. Strangely absent here.
5) Espionage. Granted its pretty cool here and useful but I'd like to be able to switch the focus of my spies to things like terrorism or helping planets join your empire and lower approval.
6) leaders and ship captains. Adds some personality.
7)Ship movement lines. Just helpful to know which direction a ship is going during your turn.
8)Unique planet resources. Like the gems and gold but more
9)Council bills. I'd like to suggest my own bills in the council
10) Population transport. Cant your people move from overcrowded worlds or worlds under constant attack to nicer more peaceful ones?
Thats all I can think of now, I realize most of these things are right out of MOOII but they were all good parts of the game and most of them at least would work really well in GCII. I hope some of that helps.

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Well for #1 and #2 it's because the AI can't handle it. Once you get good at MoO2 you make some really vicious ships and fleets and start wiiping the floor with anything in your path, winning battles where you are outnumbered 5 to 1 or extremely out-teched (ala antarans) You might think it's a lame reason to keep out special weapons and lots of different choices but if the AI can't handle it you have a very shallow game and have to resort to playing on the hardest difficulty and like waiting 10 turns before even making a move to make the game challenging and that is lame. The loadout choices are much more than what I was expecting, GC1 had just stock ships with A/D ratings, that's it. GC2 is a huge improvement, gives you some variation without breaking the game balance.

3-4, bleh who cares, small details

5-10 Yes, yes, those who be awesome additions. 8 would probably be the easiest to put in, I think 6 and 9 could really turn this game into one of the greatest tbs games, I mean spies and the UP council are just boring and not fun, but the potential is there, sometimes I wonder if I was the only one to play SMAC.

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Oh yeah if you are really in love with tactical combat (I miss it so much too) Space Empires V is coming out sometime this year, dunno when because they rarely update their website http://www.malfador.com/Se5.html but the feature and improvements list are just amazing, I just hope they can deliver.
*edit*

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1) Tactical combat. I know you've heard this one already. Not terribly important as I found myself skipping it after awhile in MOOII but I remember some great moments where a unique design and tactic made all the difference, which brings me to number 2
2) Unique ship loadouts. Where are the unique weapons? There are only three types of weapons and researching better ones is basically a long line of MkI MkII and so on, kind of boring. No fighters, assualt ships, teleporters, cloaks, reflection fields. With such a huge emphasis on ship design I'm really let down by the loadout choices.

what xFlukex said.

3) Freighters and food. So in the future you can't ship food from one planet to another. You can make specialized planets for research and manufacturing etc. but not for farming.
4) Blockading planets. The classic pressure move, blockade a nations ports, they can't bring in food or new supplies. Breaking a siege on one of my planets before they starved was great fun in MOOII. Strangely absent here.

3) wouldn't fit with how the game is designed now, unfortunately. It's unrealistic.. just like it's unrealistic that a small population can do all the research.. but the entire planetary improvement system would have to be changed.

4) Since food is unrelated.. you blockade in different ways. For example, raiding trade routes.

5) Espionage. Granted its pretty cool here and useful but I'd like to be able to switch the focus of my spies to things like terrorism or helping planets join your empire and lower approval.

Hopefully it will be expanded in a future update pack. I haven't been using it too often.

6) leaders and ship captains. Adds some personality.

This should be something that can be added to the game in a future update pack as well.. though it might be hard to balance it. I hope the Devs will consider it.

7)Ship movement lines. Just helpful to know which direction a ship is going during your turn.

A lot of people is asking for this already, I believe. Not only should there be a line to tell where the ships are going.. there should also be an indicator of how long it would take.

8)Unique planet resources. Like the gems and gold but more

This is in the game already, though in a different form.
The planetary tiles have different bonus that raises your manufacturing, morale, research, influence. Come to think of it, I don't think I saw one for economy yet.

It would be a good idea for the Dev to stick in some real points instead of % bonus for variation. Perhaps a gold mine that will give you 10 gc per turn if a factory is build on it.

9)Council bills. I'd like to suggest my own bills in the council

That would be a great idea that shouldn't be too hard to do. It would also be nice if each civ will randomly take turn voting.. so your vote would go somewhere that counts.

As for 10.. population works differently in this game. Don't think there would be too much of a point to such transport unless population system is rehauled.

(btw, i am going to post some of the ideas in these two threads where most of the ideas are located..
namely: STICKY: EASY TWEAKS to make the game better for you
https://forums.galciv2.com/?ForumID=162&AID=102717
for suggestions that the dev can do in 1 hour or less

Bugs, Annoyances, and Suggestions
https://forums.galciv2.com/?ForumID=274&AID=102222#805910
just as the title suggests.)

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2) Unique ship loadouts. Where are the unique weapons? There are only three types of weapons and researching better ones is basically a long line of MkI MkII and so on, kind of boring. No fighters, assualt ships, teleporters, cloaks, reflection fields. With such a huge emphasis on ship design I'm really let down by the loadout choices.

I see your point...I also see xFlukex's point. MOO2 could get really easy if you knew how to exploit it...however, I don't think it's impossible to create an AI that could handle all that tech.

4) Blockading planets. The classic pressure move, blockade a nations ports, they can't bring in food or new supplies. Breaking a siege on one of my planets before they starved was great fun in MOOII. Strangely absent here.

This wouldn't really work the way GalCiv2 is set up. Each planet already has to supply its own food, and there's nothing else it needs to survive. So, no pressure. Maybe trade routes or starbase bonuses to that planet couldn't function, though...

While we're on MOO2 and planets, though, one thing I wish GalCiv (in any of its incarnations) had was planet VARIETY. In MOO2, you had Radiated and Toxic and Barren and Ocean and all kinds of descriptive worlds. In GalCiv, a planet's either usable or it isn't, and the only important thing is the planet class...not as interesting.

At least GalCiv 2 improved on the first here, though - I like how each planet only has so many squares, and some of the squares have cool bonuses.

8)Unique planet resources. Like the gems and gold but more
10) Population transport. Cant your people move from overcrowded worlds or worlds under constant attack to nicer more peaceful ones?

These are already in the game. Haven't you ever gotten a planet that had a square with fertile soil (food bonus) or Precursor artifacts (research bonus) or whatever? Last game I got a planet that had a Precursor mine (+700% manufacturing!) on it. That became my most important world - even though it was only a class 10 world, it was cranking out stuff at insane rates.

As for transports, just put a bunch of colonists on a troop transport or colony ship, and send them to a nicer world. In GalCiv 1, they'd get added to that world's population when the ship entered orbit, and I assume that's true in GalCiv 2, too.

9)Council bills. I'd like to suggest my own bills in the council

Ah, like Alpha Centauri. It wouldn't even have to be your OWN bills, you could pick from a list of all of them. (If it was like Alpha Centauri, you'd first have to be voted chairmain of the UP council, and you could only suggest a bill once ever X years.) Actually, screw that - I'd liked to have seen the social engineering from that game applied here. Combined with Gal Civ's senate model (if you're running a democracy-enabling ethic or whatever), that would have made the most awesome government in an empire-builder yet.

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Kazriko

Join Date 07/2004

+10

Hrm. I remember doing 10 in Galciv1 with Colony ships. You could load billions of people on one colony ship that was low-morale and push them off to a 30+ quality planet where even the max population wouldn't hurt morale. I can't remember how many planets I've had that i've actually hit the 100 billion mark on and couldn't expand them further.

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1 - No no no no no no no no no!!!

2 - Cloaks and the like tend to really ruin things. In essence you have a fleet of 100% invincible ships if the enemy doesn't have a counter. Maybe they could have a bit more depth, such as missiles/mass drivers/beams working in different ways, but if you add much more than there is at the moment you're adding little more than complexity and giving the AI a hell of a problem.

3 - Billions of tons of food isn't that easy to move, and in terms of time, cost, infrastructure would cost more than putting 1 lousy farm down on the planet. Hey, it has to be made in a farm somewhere, might as well have that farm where you need it.

4 - Possibly, but ONLY if it could be managed in AI at least as well as a human player.

5 - True, espionage could be doing a little bit more.

6 - I think starts changing the game away from what it is. Still, you can do that now kind of by naming and loving individual ships (And their crew).

7 - Yes, this would be nice.

8 - You've got that to some degree with the bonus tiles. Just imagine that "+100% production bonus" really means "you discovered maginc production monkeys on this planet, and have enslaved them!"

9 - Yes, that would be nice.

10 - Colony ships do this exact thing, or troop transports if you want to change your mind and whack an undefended planet you come across on your journey.

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Well I'm glad people are taking a look at this.
I totally agree with you about tactical combat, when exploited it is an extreme AI weakness (esp. when you attack and you get your whole turn before the computer and wipe out half of its ships). OK maybe not in this one fine.

I still think blockadeing was great and should be used in any war simulation. Granted it would take some serious retooling but maybe keep it in mind when makeing the next game, I hope the fan base here is incentive enough for a little more money to be dumped into such a venture.

Transporting food, hmmm it still seems to me that it happens these days on earth and with increases in technology making travel to great distances viable it would be used on a galactic scale because some planets just wouldn't be able to produce enough food but would be excellent for other reasons (rocky desolate planets being useful for mining but not farming) Cost prohibitive but perhaps necessary for certain planets.

Colony ships huh? I havn't tried that, are you saying that I can make a colny ship and then have it set down on an already colonized planet to move pop.? If so cool. But I've been playing on large galaxies and really quickly expansion is done with so I just want to move guys from the approval depleted (due to pop) planets to others. Also it would be cool if it happened involuntarily.

I know about the special tiles and they are totally cool, I was just missing when you first find a planet and scan it and find something cool like natives, or gems. And also I've found so far that a farming bonus tile is more of a penalty since the population will soon cause a major approval penalty. Thats when I wish I could ship off food to another planet.

And finally I was thinking of one other thing and that was the planetary defenses like the missle launcher and fighters so you could defend a planet without just using ships. Or like the Ion cannon in empire strikes back.

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Even the ship captains/"hero" units would probably mean a lowlevel change of the combat system. Right now, combat is handled by having all attacking ships gang up on the easiest target each turn. That would mean that you'd probably lose those cpatains pretty quickly unless you're putting their ships in fleets with a bunch of cannonfodder.

The black ops sound really fun, especially to flip a planet faster or destroy an orbital fleet manager. It could turn into a balance desaster though.

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I still think blockadeing was great and should be used in any war simulation. Granted it would take some serious retooling but maybe keep it in mind when makeing the next game, I hope the fan base here is incentive enough for a little more money to be dumped into such a venture.

I could see it as an option if you had warships (no troop transports) and clicked to put them into orbit on an enemy planet. A dialog box could pop up (like the upgrade starbase one) and it can ask you to do a couple of things like:

bombard planet - will destroy structures and population

blockade planet - destroys all trade routes and puts some kind of % reduction on research, economics, morale and income of the planet (perhaps new modules could be researched to add to this, like a propaganda module to decrease morale further).

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I'm pretty sure you CAN move people between colonies. Hit launch, and load up a transport or colony ship at an inhabited world. Fly to another inhabited world. Hit launch; adjust the slider to 0, hit OK. The ship will launch and leave the people behind.

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RonLugge

Join Date 05/2004

+50

Can't launch transports / colony ships with a pop of 0

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Can't launch transports / colony ships with a pop of 0

No, but you can launch them with 1 in.... that's pretty close to 0 all things considered!

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Tactical combat was one of the greatest things about MOO II. You researched new weapons and built new ships, strategizing about new techniques and combinations of weapons, trying to squeeze the most in on a hull design. Then came the test of your carefully planned fleet, seeing if it could hold up against a fleet of enemy ships.
The whole three different kinds of weapons in GC2 seems kind of shallow in comparison. Also I want to control my ships in combat; why make a game that plays itself?
I guess I really want a MOO II remake as well, but GC2 can be fun even though it is different.

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Voqar

Join Date 03/2003

+21

1) don't care - it gets tedious and old fast
2) some different modules might be nice - cloaking to reduce (not eliminate) sensor trackability, for ex
3) so what happens if it gets cut off? planet instantly rebels to nearest food source? the present system works pretty good
4) don't care, tiny detail
5) personally don't care but I know a lot are interested in this. on a game of this scale (where you're managing entire galaxies of planets it doesn't seem like something that should be dealt with at a high level of detail
6) was fun in MOO, but this isn't MOO and they can't lift EVERY idea from MOO. ships get xp which works pretty well.
7) seems like a worthy option to have
8) already in
9) maybe if you build a wonder or have control of your own govt and a majority vote, but by then you are mopping up a victory
10) use a troop transport

Before any thing further is added I want the "intelligent" AI to stop doing stupid things like sending unescorted troop transports into my highly guarded space and I want them to develop their planet tiles better.

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#! and #2 are a nasty combination for AIs to handle. I haven't seen any game AI handle both in a way that made exploits difficult, let alone prevented them.

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To add onto what you you said...

11. Easy upgrades. Upgrading one ship at a time gets very tedious (or maybe I've just not found out how to do multiple upgrades at once?). I reacently had like 15 of the same type of ship and wanted to update engines and lasers. Ugh. Took a long while.

12. The map gets pretty cluttered and it gets hard to pick out enemy ships from the rest of the display. Any way to flag ships with their owner? Or to flag any ships?

I second all of the other recommendations. Overall a good game, but not quite a great one.

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Easy upgrades. Upgrading one ship at a time gets very tedious (or maybe I've just not found out how to do multiple upgrades at once?). I reacently had like 15 of the same typ

There is a little checkbox that says [ ] UIpgrade all ships of this type

12. The map gets pretty cluttered and it gets hard to pick out enemy ships from the rest of the display. Any way to flag ships with their owner? Or to flag any ships?

Zoom out all the way, everything is color and symbol coded.

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I like the idea of blockading in general, but I think that your ideas make it a little too powerful. The same thing goes with bambarding the planet, the loss a single factory can be a big deal for the planet. Taking out a wonder could be downright devastating.

The same thing goes with destruction of trade routes. Trade routes represent a fair amount of time to build up, and even one turn of a blockade could cripple the civ if a major trade planet was the target.

I think it would work better if the trade was merely suspended for the duration of the blockade, as penalties to production. I also think that any ships built on the planet should fight at a disadvantage when built during a blockade. I also wouldn't be opposed to seeing a fairly small and cheap module required to participate in the blockade.

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