Seeing as how they most seem to be arguing about Galciv 2, probably not very many.

It may be old and out of date, but look at IG2:Alliances. It has tactical combat that works pretty well. It's not overly sophisticated (kind of like the game itself, especially the AI, which sucked badly). The game can support tactical combat with an option but I'm glad the devs are going to wait for the third installment of the game to incorporate it. It seems like a hell of a lot of grief to reprogram the game to accept tactical combat with unique ship designs, variable weapons, shields, and movement effects, as well as damage accumulation, adjustment, and visual representation. I shudder (and I really mean that) to think of how many lines of code and how many new graphics would have to be programmed to change GC2. Let 'em do it for GC3 (or whatever) and at least get paid for it.

I wonder how many people noticed it's a poll for galciv 3 not galciv2. I for one noticed.

No comment.

There were many posts about tactical combat on this forum and in the end I must say:

There's no use argueing about the pros or cons. It's a matter of taste, either you like TC or you don't. The no-camp may have many good arguments, but that certainly doesn't change the desires of TC fans to have this game feature, and vice versa.

Whatever....I can't accept the phrases of people saying things like "a decent TC is impossible to create", that's just rubbish. The goal is not to have an ai that beats 100% of all human players, the goal is achieved when it offers a challenge to most people. In the end it depends a lot on how much time and money the developers can invest into such a feature. With the proper commitment a good ai for TC is possible. If time and money is missing, you probably leave your hands off of it.
Ultimitly it will be the devs decission if it is worth to include TC in GC3, depending on the customers demands and stardock's own ressources and interests.

oh yeah, as far as evaluating your ships:

"weaker ships" is also kind of subjective, and it isn't just about ships. i've played games with lots of cheap, disposable fighters making up my military. i usually perfer building medium+ sized ships wtih lots of defenses.

i'm not sure if you're playing 1.1x or 1.2b, because the combat rules are different. in 1.1x, your ships are more effective when they're faster and pure offense (at least, that's my feeling). you don't need a lot, and in fact fewer ships work better if you've got a weapons tech researched to nearly the end.

if you're playing 1.2, it's trickier. in earlier versions, the attacker fired first. in 1.2b, both sides fire at the same time. one thing i liked to do (before i started playing with mods completely) was to pick the repair bonus and give myself HP bonuses: "that which fights and runs away... in galciv not only lives to fight another day, but also levels up and gains bonus HP (thus the point of the repair bonus, however if you're playing SD's example mod, there's a repair tech tree, making the initial bonus less significant).

so... the point is, there isn't a perfect formula you can use to design the best ships. the designs that work best are the ones that get the job done. i usually describe my tiny fighters as "cannon fodder" because i don't really care if they live or die. i've rigged my current model fighters with 2 positron torp IIs; after my weapons bonus, their attack is something like 40. even if some of them only ever fire 1 round, it's still worth the ~200 production points in my mind. when i started my last war, i had about 250 of them. i'm down to about 25. no big deal. i swithced my production to a medium sized "fleet model" ship anyway, which costs about 750 production points. however, if one of these ships levels a few times and gains a decent HP bonus, i upgrade it to a "war raptor" class, which has twice the defenses, doom rays instead of disruptors, and costs about 2K if i'm remembering correctly. i do have a huge class, but after fighting these wars i realized i didn't even really need anything larger. it's just nice for my empire's ego

when i started the war, i had my capital ships (about 25 war raptors and 5 huge "roc of domination" class ships) two or three per fleet; the rest of the fleets were composed of defenseless tiny singers with lots of offensive power. the example mod brings logicstical values up to the high 50s (and since the example mod supports mini customization, i copied it for logistics, tweaked the numbers a bit, and paid for 8 points, capping me out at fleets of 60 logistical points). so, my fleets were 3 capital ships and 22 fighers. it'd have balanced differently in an unmodded game to be sure, but regardless the arceans, despite their neutrality learning centers, were only supporting fleet of 20 logistical points. i was losing 2-5 fighers per combat, but the rate of loss was slowing as well. by the time the fleets were down to 10 fighers, the fighers' HP was usually up to 18-22 (rediculous for a figher? maybe, but i think higher HP for a leveled ship doesn't represent a "stronger" ship, but pilots better able to avoid taking the full brunt of weapons fire). it became harder and harder to kill my fighters, and all the while the capital ships i really cared about went unscathed.

besides losing about 100 cheap fighers, about 3 of my war raptors have taken less than half of their HP in damage. big deal, the war is over. the arcean empire, the second strongest player, surrendered to my ally in 5 short weeks. i don't even feel like finishing off the thalans; i'm just gonna start a new game.

but your milage may vary. in 1.1x and earlier versions, pure offense is probably a better way to go. i like the 1.2 battle system a lot more. i just wish the AI in this game hadn't fallen behind technologically. it also seems like the AI, even on maso, doesn't thoughtfully construct fleets so much as set a fleet-building rally point and let the ships fall where they may.

GC2 is big indeed, however, no bigger than any of the mod's RTR mods created for Rome:TW. Tons of cities and dozens of battles at any given point between 16 oponents and the turns flew by.. In addition the tactical combat itself in GC2 is much much smaller than R:TW.
It's true the AI in any tactical game leaves allot to be desired. R:TW was decent but could be exploited. However, so can the AI in any strategy game. Anyone else notice you can sell Warp drive MKIII to the AI then in the same turn sell the MK II for full price? We can all make excuses but again this comes down to personal preference. Sure I skipped tons of meaningless battles or battles where I had overwhelming odds. That does not mean I didn't appreciate the beauty of tactical combat (and coincidentally a major selling point for me).

R:TW is an all time favorite of mine and I love GC2. There is nothing wrong with wishing to see what works in one game imlemented in another of your favorite games.

I would even settle for the options many have already suggested.. such as at least a minor attempt to flee from combat. I would settle for a better looking computer controlled combat I want to see the ships strafe and make bombing runs while the capitol ships lay everything to waste. Right now they all kinda swim in circles like ships missing a whole side of oars.
I guess frankly while I love the game and have been absolutely addicted to it since I picked it up; I just don't get the epic feel from going into battle.

Frookie: I have to applaud your latest post! You always clearly and intelligently state your opinions. You also usually do this in such a way as not to offend most people. I don't quite have your skill in this. For example: In my opinion, no matter what reasons the No Tak Kombat Klub give for not wanting tactical combat, what it really comes down to is selfishness. They would deny us what we would like so they can have what they want.

I can't remember ever seeing a tak supporter post something like " The devs have only have a limited budget and only so much time so they need to use it on tac combat and not waste it on enhanced diplomacy"[ or multi-player or heroes or better AI]. The no-takkers are always using this type of statement against tak supporters. I, and I believe about every other tak guy, would like the options for all these things in the game. The game would be richer, deeper, more satisfying and just plain more fun with the options for these in the game.

Currently, I find Galciv2 a wonderful and addictive experience. It would be even more so if many of the items from the poll were added or enhanced, especially tactical combat!

While it is clear that tak won't be included in GC2, I still think it's necesary to add some spice to combat in this game, because as it's now, combat feels a bit dull. Other games have a real strategic element to combat without having tak. Take civalazition: In civilazion, there's a bunch of strategical thoughts before going into battle. Here a couple of examples:

-Your troops get a defense bonus when they are attacked standing on a hill, fortification, city with defense improvements etc.
-Your troops get a considerable defense bonus when entering "defense mode" for a couple of turns (are immobile though).
-Troops have a variable speed, depending on the terrain they are marching on( Hills, Grassland, Jungle etc.)
-Different units have strenght and weaknesses against other units. Fo example the Axemann gets a 50% bonus against melee units, the spearman gets a 100% bonus against horse units etc.


Stuff like this should also be included in GC2. right now you just "brainlessly" send your ships into enemy territory, and blow everything up that comes your way. When two hostile fleets meet they enter battle mode and the fleet with the highest attack/defense/hitpoints value will statistically win. Thats absolutely all to battle imo.

Why not having the weapons in GC2 having stenghts and weaknesses? For example Beams being good at shooting down small ships, massdrivers being strong against medium ships and missles being strong against large ships. Something like fortification we already have with military starbases, even though I think they are way to easy to destroy. Why not creating areas in the galaxy where ships only can pass slowly, because of large astroid fields etc? Or Lets say, include very dense astroid fields that can only be passed by tiny ships, being too dense for larger ships to pass.
Furthermore the benefit of larger ships seem very small. It has been stated by stardock that they want all ship sizes to be a viable option throughout the whole game. The effect of this is that the benefit of having large ships is minimal, all hulls ar somewhat balanced. Give me a reason to build larger hulls pls. I don't want to go further into this, since there are other threads talking about pyramid fleets and the like. In every case there is a lot of room for stratregical features in fleet creation, giving small and large ships diffrent roles.

Ok I don't have time to write anymore since I'm in the middle of a school lesson, no time here to make big thouths right now. Maybe my ideas are not very well thought out, but making battle a more strategic case is desperatly necessary in my oppinion. This would add a damn much to game depth, and that without tak.
And to the ones crying that the ai can't handle this(yes, it would require more complicated ai), to them I say, go play pacman or something like that, that game has very low ai requirements and therefore should satisfy you.

hey joeld! how you doing? What can i say, I just tell it like i see it - thanks.

Morghenes you are onto the right lines, any developement of the combat system is not something to be taken lightly...Don't get caught!

And this is why galciv 2 will not be remembered as a legendary game. Which is a shame as it is pretty damn close. BTW good call on the option, that will definitely keep both camps happy.

It's not fair to expect Galciv2 to be a legendary game. It's a solid ,decent game, that adds features carefully. It certainly isn;t meant to be a genre creating game like C&C nor is it meant to wow you with super innovative features never seen before.

Of course there can be legendary games that are just solid implementations of existing features and are legendary because of great synergy , but there are very few I can think of that fit the bill. Most of the classics I can think of added at least one innovative feature (usually a bunch) and even games that don't aspire to be legendery, usually have 1 or 2 twists of existing features.

Galciv II doesn't care about game innovation for the sake of game innovation. It's Galciv I tagged on with some standard 4x space features missing in the last edition and it's good/ It's familar even to those of us born and bred on 4x games.

Kind of like Heroes of Might and Magic V really.

I've seen Rome: Total War mentioned a lot in these types of threads as an example of successfully blending turn-based strategy with tactical combat. Personally, I found the battles in that game more annoying than anything after a while. Basically the same thing all the time (at least for me):

really dude, any improvement to moving ships to attack enemy then squinting to watch it bobble about like a limp fish in a tank and just - watch: would be better. As for your comment on Rome total war, you should go back a few years for shogun TW - The Tak in that was Excellent, the best i've seen and it was not really cheesable. The strategic side of it was pretty bland, but the fighting was awsome. Rome TW: I hear that there have been some improvement to it recently w.r.t. mods by players, so it might be worth a good checking out. I'm sure if you were played around with some more tactics you might enjoy it more, how about trying to pull off a complete enclosure, which is darn right impossible. Or implement flying wedges of carvalry to hit the flanks. It really is what you yourself make of it, don't just use what seems to work best. BTW i've yet to play RTW, so this is just conjecture, these tactics might not work.

It's not fair to expect Galciv2 to be a legendary game. It's a solid ,decent game, that adds features carefully. It certainly isn;t meant to be a genre creating game like C&C nor is it meant to wow you with super innovative features never seen before.

hey richrf - how do? The games I described above are, for various reasons legendary. There was indeed a great deal of synergy in that the seperate parts became greater than the sum of the whole, but also the way they played was intuitive and felt just right, you expected it - and it was. there was style, innovation and flair. And above all else they were fun - right to the end. GC2 has most of these attributes, but the lack of a really decent combat system and planetary invasion held it back. There are others, but these were the most important far as I can tell. Fair? maybe not, but what is these days?

The problem with tactical battles IMO with games like Civ4 and Galciv 2 is it would hurt the strategic part of the game just like it does with games like RTW and MTW.

These are just examples of poor tactical combat implementation. for Tak to be included in any version of GC it would have to be good enough to give people a challenge, any less is just pointless and would detract from the game. It CAN be DONE and done well, so I don't actually see this as a valid reason to speak against tactical combat.

HEY I have an idea for Tactical Combat: Remember the "Governors" for planets?

shanjaq - That is actually a pretty neat idea. Fleet admirals! [ Missed you on the last run ]. But I would like it to be a little deeper, how about this?

Everytime you build a fleet you get to pick an admiral and name him etc. He wins battles and instead / aswell as the ship hit point increase he gets points and with enough points he gets more abilities such as fire twice or improved defences or critical blows...whatever. This is pretty much along the heroes line, but is more appropriate to GC2. What do you think?

Why not having the weapons in GC2 having stenghts and weaknesses? For example Beams being good at shooting down small ships, massdrivers being strong against medium ships and missles being strong against large ships.

An increase in diversity indeed. Seeing as Tak will not be included in GC2, ...maybe, an increase in battle options and diversity would be much appreciated by all.

Basically I hope they put the tactical similator as turn based. It is too confussing to do RT fights. Plus that is where carriers could be developed. I am sooo damn tired of all the RT games when you have huge empires it does not work well small ones ok but in my opion small games are over before they start (ending about the time people get Nano Rippers and medium ships.