Admiral Ironfist

Join Date 03/2006

Does resource mining unbalance the game?

I thought I would throw this discussion out there since I think it is relevant. I've noticed that resource mining has a dramatic impact on the game...too dramatic. A good example is a game I played where another race was overwhelming me with influence. I researched all the influence techs, and all of the government techs. I even put one or two cultural exchange centers on each planet. Even after all of that, their influence had creeped deep into my territory. Really, really, deep. I had to build influence starbases around my own planets just to keep them from revolting. Finally I had to declare war and just wipe them out. That's when I noticed that they happened to have control of two influence starbases in their territory. It didn't really sink in until I played a game where I had control of two influence resources. Suddenly, I'm overwhelming my opponents, and I wasn't even trying. I only built a couple cultural exchange centers in my whole territory, and I hadn't researched very many influence techs, but I was dominating the galaxy. They eventually all fell like dominoes.

My point is, I like a balanced game. I want to win because of my strategy, not because I got lucky. All I'm asking is, put an option in to disable resource mining when making a new game. Simple solution that keeps everyone happy.

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Nope. Nerf them if you wish, but they aren't hard to overcome if you play to your own advantages.

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They only really become a problem for the exceptionally lucky. If the AI's smart, and they get 2 military resources, there's little you can do about it militarily (assuming that they're keeping anywhere near you weapons-wise. If you can out-pace them and get larger hulls, then you need to strike quickly).

Plus, you can always find them and initiate a deep-range strike at them. At the very least, they'll lose the bonus for a time while they go rebuild it. And if you hide your deep range strikers, you can keep taking out the base.

Is it unbalancing for the player? Perhaps; it does augment the human's natural advantage of flexibility. If a human finds 2 military resources, you can bet that he's going to be using that advantage.

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I am having no trouble with my current game, and I haveen't got a single one of the resources in my galaxy.

I do, however, have the largest bar in the galactic power graph, having taken out the Iconians completely so far.

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Nope. Nerf them if you wish, but they aren't hard to overcome if you play to your own advantages.

A player can overcome the disadvantage, but can the computer? Will it organize a deep strike into your territory to take out your resources? Does it know that you must have influence resources someplace, then go looking for them if its borders are receding while yours are expanding?

My problem with them isn't that they make the game too hard, it's that they make the game too easy once you've got a couple of them. A couple of influence resources means an easy influence victory, whether you're actively pursuing that victory path or not. The kind of bonuses you get from a single resource could amount to half of your race's starting picks once you get it upgraded. They're a huge factor in the way the game plays, much more important than they should be. None of the AI's defend them nearly well enough considering their importance.

While others may enjoy having the resources be the pivotal factor in the game, I'd like to be able to turn them off completely. Either that or mod them into line, but I haven't tried modding GalCiv2 yet.

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I'd like to see how the game would play without them as well. I find the initial constructor build phase very time consuming and not very exciting. I'd rather be building a military fleet for action. I don't really have a balance problem with them, just a time to build them problem.

I'm getting off topic but I wish instead of having to build 30 constructors to build 1 starbase you only needed 1 constructor and then built the rest of the base the same way you build up a planet, through spending.

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Um isn't this part of the challenge of the game?Try thinking of ways to counter act it instead of taking away the obstacle.

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How do you counteract an influence resource? The immediate answer is either you get one of your own, or take theirs away from them, and make it yours...the influence resource then becomes PIVOTAL, which is the complaint, I believe. A good way to counteract it might be to mod it into something smaller than it is or get rid of it entirely. Personally I never liked the entire influence system in this game. Always semed pretty hokey to me that some starbase could cause the alien planets to rebel..

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They are unbalancing and make the game too easy. It is ridiculously easy to launch deep space strikes, cripple the enemy, and just go hogwild.

I really would like an option to turn them off. Playing with all opponents set to intelligent, a ton of resources, end game, and I have fleets of fighters with 2000+ laser ratings flying around.

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Um isn't this part of the challenge of the game?Try thinking of ways to counter act it instead of taking away the obstacle.

It's these kind of comments that annoy me, but I'll try to remain calm. Talon, what more do you propose I do to "counter act" the influence in the situation above, other than go to war...which is what I did. I researched all techs that increase influence and it didn't matter. My only other option would be to build nothing but embassies on my planets, which, I feel, is dumb.

To me, a challenging game is chess. Where nobody has an advantage. It's just your skill versus' your opponent's. There's no wild luck variables that change the outcome of the game.

Lets keep in mind here that I didn't demand they remove it from the game, I said allow us to turn off resource mining. That's all, nobody is hurt. If you want to play with resources turned on, you can. If not, turn it off. Everyone's happy.

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Let's just make all races with the same skills, just different colors. No resources, no trading just EXACTLY the same EVERYTHING. This seems to be what some people want.

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Franco fx

Join Date 04/2003

+59

How to say this?

I honestly think it is fine to discuss the game and voice opinions on what should and should not be changed or added to the game. I just sometimes wish that Stardock would write it all down and ponder it for a year or so.

When 1.0 was released I liked the game and I still like 1.1 but it is not the same game and some of the changes have not necessarily made the game better.

IMHO more time should be expended on promoting modding and the game should be left alone (except for bugs)until the expansion is released. No other game I know of has been so fundamentally changed in such a short time.

My favorite games of all time have been SMAC, AOE, the CIVs and MoO all of these games were patched and eventually expanded but none were fundamentally changed by the patches.

Please understand it is not my intention or wish to supress the discussion and I certainly don't care what is allowed to be turned off and on. I am simply voicing my own opinion about future changes.

It is impossible to be all things to all people.

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Franco, Stardock didn't make many of those changes independantly, a lot were done in response to overwhelming player requests.

I love chess. However, lets discuss the overpowering of the queen.

An opponent with a queen against one without has a huge advantage. Obviously, if he isn't very skilled, he'll lose it. But he'll take out a few pieces, and properly get his opponent into check, quite a few times. The queen can do anything any other piece can, and the only piece that can really remove it without baiting it into a trap are knights.

Think of the starbase as the queen. And the knights as inferior yet still decidedly armed ships they chuck at you. Not a death train, they normally fleet and organise. YES, they can recognise them. YES, they attack them as a priority. I've seen the Drengin ignore a powerful, yet still just about inferior, fleet of mine (which if they killed would have hurt my military rating a fair bit) that they could probably have taken, and go for my economy resource.

I hadn't got a good economy, and was relying on it at the time, since my production was down while a lot of my newly acquired planets had caused me some economy problems. While waiting for one to finish converting to a cash-flow planet, which would have probably granted me victory in the war, I relied heavily on the starbase. And they killed themselves on it. I thought I was safe, and another fleet came out. Dead starbase, I lose the game because my economy crashed.

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Franco fx

Join Date 04/2003

+59

Stardock didn't make many of those changes independantly, a lot were done in response to overwhelming player requests.

Absolutely Marcathonas, and some were good and all well intentioned. The law of unintended consequence is the problem. In the case of resource starbases, I have found that the AI in 1.1 does not pursue resources (or anomalies)like they did in the previous release. Where I once had a hard time getting my share of resources and an easier time rushing planets, I now get most of the resources and somewhat fewer planets. When the change was made I am sure that no one at Stardock intended for the AI to ignore resources right next to their own homeworld.

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i like to be able to make the game more of what i want to play, the type and pace of game that I want to play. I like to be ABLE to turn teck trading off, to be ABLE to turn minor races off, to be ABLE to turn off resorces seems to me a reasonable request .... more freedom to the player

"I" find half the fun of this game is in the journey, to tell you the truth, I think winning isnt everything in this game, but having fun with some of the game mechanics in teh journey of my civ

i guess what im saying is give more more choices to customise my game, i fail to see how anyone/thing can be hurt by these kind of choices at the start of your game

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Franco fx

Join Date 04/2003

+59

I will make a blanket statement that any options to turn things off and on are fine with me. I completely agree that no one is hurt by that.

The problem is the "well since we are doing this let's just go ahead and tweak the AI behavior, population factor, econ system, weapons, tech, etc, etc."

Like our mother used to say, "Stop picking at it, you'll get it infected".

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The AI does care about your borders. If you examine the window that tells you the +/- effects on your relations, you will ususally see it there somewhere. I've seen races decalre war on me in the past, when our relations were previously good. The relations nose dive happens when my influence is covering their worlds.

I don't see it as much different to an opponent having more/less worlds than you. You might as well say opponents with more worlds have an advantage, so everyone should only have one planet. He got there first, so its his. If you don't like it, capture it!

However, I do think some of the bonuses are better than others, so perhaps the influence bonus should be toned down to fit in with the others, but I would be against removing them completely. If it was optional to play without them or not, then that would be another story, I'm all for it.

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Hi!
Just a quick observation from one of my previous 1.1 beta games. It was in large uni, with low amount of habitable planets - about 4-6 per player. I can tell you that upgrading two influence resource was a heavy waste of resources. Planets were so far apart, that even with ~70% ponus on influence mine didn't spread enouth to even touch theirs. So if you want to decrease the influence pressure, play in less habitable universes.

However I agree with the option to be able to turn those resources off. In some games they really unbalance the things - esp. when an already big "monster" gets even more bonuses by grabing most of them.
BR, Iztok

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