And what about those people, like myself, who don't play multiplayer?

I would have rather seen more sophisticated ship designs and customization..... I big it up to those people who can actually make mods of ship hulls etc, like Kyro. I'm no good at that area of modding.

God knows what "Other" might be, but there we go.

As to tactical battles, I agree somewhat. If it were to be done, and as an optional part to the game, then what would be the point..... If Stardock do take this poll to heart, and decide to make an update, or to use this poll for GC 3, then I would rather see it as a purchasable pack, so that you can still play the game without it.... That way, the people who want it can buy it, and people like you and me won't have to, if we don't want to.

But that is my opinion

Hello all, this is my first post. (I purchased GalCiv2 last Thursday and having been smoking the GalCiv crack ever since. I need to get some sleepppp....)

To the original poster, can I imagine Civ with tactical combat?

YES! I can. Though, one doesn't have to imagine so much, just play one of the TBS games with tactical combat.

Have you ever heard of or played any of the Total War series of TBS games, such as Shogun and Medieval? Also, have you played Homeworld or Homeworld 2?

If not you should certainly give them a try.

The developers of the TW series were the first to sucessfully marry TBS and real-time tactical battles. Shogun (and Medieval, if memory serves) were both heavily voted Strategy Game of the Year.

Homeworld/Homeworld 2 are RTS games, BUT they are absolutely EXCELLENT examples of what real-time tactical combat should be for GalCiv.

IMO, nirvana would be well implemented marriage of GalCiv with Homeworld2.

Now to be objective, you are quite right!!! Any attempt at marrying TBS and real-time tactics would be a gargantuine effort!! It would take extraordinarily talented, dedicated people with true intrigrity toward the goal.

For example, to make such a marriage truly what it should be, would require TWO separate and distinct AI's, each of which MUST be extraordinary. That means the development resources needed to be applied for each AI would have to be equal (or in some fantastic way made equivalent) to that of TWO separate games; additionally, two separate game engines (graphics and otherwise), and so and so on....

Anything less would be a lesser game. One of the challenges for any developer would be in finding ways/techniques to *leverage* the efforts/technologies in order to reduce costs. This would be a serious challenge. Another thing to consider, then I'll stop is that the graphical requirements in terms of what players will find acceptable exceed the standards of what the average TBS/GalCiv player finds graphically acceptable.

In other words, would it really make sense or be popularly acceptable to implement real-time tactics for GalCiv if the *graphics* were not at or above the present day standards of the average RTS/FPS game?

Now that would be a major effort on the part of GalCiv's developers, in effect, they would be creating a whole new game with all that entails. Big dollars, big effort, time consuming. Now, one way to get around that to some or all degrees would be for them to purchase/lease an existing real-time game engine. One in which they could use wholly or with some modding effort applied to adapt to their specific needs. I would suggest that they go the lease/purchase way, rather then engage in a 'from scratch' development. To this aim, I, personally, would suggest that GalCiv's developers look into what could be done with the Homeworld engine, along with what financial arrangements could be made with Homeworld's owners.

Using the HW engine would be the best case, as everything necessary for 'space battles' , that is TRUE three deminsional battles, not 3D graphics but deminsional 'space' is already existing. To marry GalCiv to Homeworld, two major efforts by the GalCiv developers would be needed:

First, they must some how figure out how to marry, that is correlate the two 'worlds, that each game engine creates. That is any point on the Strategy map (Gal Civ) must correlate directly with that of the battle scene of the Homeworld engine. For example, click and start a battle near Mars will, the battle needs to take place *near* Mars with all the commensurate space terrain that the Strategy Map indicates. No small feat!! If any of you have played the Total Wars series you'll understand directly what I mean.

This *could* be done, and be done, I strongly presume, with a realistic budget that GalCiv2's recent success could probably allow. Yet, it would be financially RISKY! Wardell and company are probably one of the few development crews that *might* be positioned to take on such a probject, as they don't fully depend upon profits for GalCiv to pay their mortgages!!!

Oh, almost forgot, the second focus would be AI. HW's AI is only passable, so either a new, from scratch, AI would need to be build or the present AI, GREATLY enhanced. As it is, HW's is NOT up to GalCiv standards. Perhaps, this effort could be farmed out to either HW's original AI creators or to other competent teams. Doable!

Lastly, the original poster brings up a good point:

"Don't you people see how many combats happen in a turn?".

Right, but you need to look at those combats. Now, I'm rather new to GalCiv, but I am VERY familiar with the TW series. In the TW series, combat that occurs in simultaneous *game-time* is handled by presenting the player with one battle at a time, and preceding each battle is a pop-up screen where the player has a few options:

1. To engage in the battle as the *field* general;
2. To engage and allow the AI to *automatically* resolve the battle;
3. To surrender the battle; or
4. To Retreat.

In this way the player controls how his time and effort can be applied. Normally, how this works out is that extremely minor battles which have little *strategic* effect are allowed to be resolved by the AI, option "2" above. Only the MOST important battles, those whose outcome will have *strategic* effect are actually fought by the player, option "1" above. The options to Surrender or Retreat, once the player makes a choice are, also, handled by the AI.

Now, as you may note, the one caveate is the AI. A poor AI that produces uncceptable results when it is asked to handle the minor battles will make the game a tedious affair as no one will *trust* the AI, and consequently will never choose option "2". The quality of the AI is really important, of course, the AI should never be capable of doing as well as the player, if he choose to fight the battle himself (some penalty s/b acceptable for this choice), but the results/battle outcome s/b to a degree acceptable when the time 'saved' is considered and the outcome not strategically important.

This the way it is handled in the TW series, and while not perfect, works very well and is a method that could be adopted.

Homeworld/Homeworld 2, btw, have been discontinued.

Sorry to make my first post so long. For those who haven't, feel free to check out the games I mentioned:

www.totalwar.com
www.homeworld2.com/

The simple fact of the matter is tactical space combat would put the AI at an even greater disadvantage. I have played all three of the Total War series and while they could be enjoyable games, the AI for the tactical combat has always been easy to exploit. Even on the highest difficulty settings, certain tactics and use of terrain always yield a substantial victory for the human player, so much so that I almost never found it acceptable to allow the AI to resolve my battles for me because I could always do it dramatically better than the AI (same with homeworld series, once map was anaylzed and AI tactics figured out, cake walk).

That being the case, unless dramatic improvements over previous tactical AIs from other games could be meade by Stardock, with tactical combat the human player would gain even larger advantages over the AI in that the human players superior use of tactics, "terrain" (I guess there could be terrain in space), etc. would allow the human player to wipe out large AI fleets with minimal damage to their own. At least as it currently stands other than choosing when to fight and what kind of firepower to use the human player in GalCiv doesn't have the opportunity to further exploit AI through tactical combat.

In my opinion the depth and enjoyment of the game would be best served through a vast expansion of the use of diplomacy, espionage, and the UP council.

Yay for Tactical Combat winning the poll. Boo! to all the GalCiv1 fanboys who don't want it. Yay for the Master Of Orion Fans! WHO HAVE SPOKEN! I want Moo1 or Moo2 Slider Combat NOT RTS. Even though making an RTS Like Moo3, Conquest Frontier Wars, Homeworld ect. would be easier.

There are two simple points that completely show why tactical combat does not belong in GC2, or even GC3.

1.) GC2 is BIG! You can end up with not just 20, but as many as 50 or even 100 combats in ONE turn.Even if you could somehow resolve a tactical battle in, say, 30 seconds, that would mean possibly as much as an hour for just one turn to finish. Perhaps some people want to spend an hour, or several hours depending on how quickly each battle can be resolved, finishing a single turn, but I can't believe the majority of people who are voting for tactical combat have really though about the time investment of just one game with such a level of tactical combat.

>Toranaga Sama> None of the games you mentioned come even close to the level of TBS that GC2 does, not Total War, and especially not Homeworld. Homeworld follows the path of one fleet, a la Battlestar Galactica, and TW doesn't involve nearly the number of "bases" (generic term for planet, city or whatever resource-producing center is used in a given game) as GC2 does, especially as the maps get larger. There simply is no comparison. To us your suggested method of handling this volume of combats only shows its weakness in a TBS game, because a whole new mode of play and a whole new AI would have to be created just to manage a tiny fractional part of any given game. A huge waste of programming resources. There are no real, good 4X games with detailed tactical combat, it just doesn't make sense to put that much work into such a small part of the game. Just look at how much of a flop Moo3 was due to the almost Microsoft-level of featuritis (combined with really crappy AI). Even Microsoft themselves are not so stupid as to do that in a game. I am not even going to get into analysis of the reasons behind the fact stated in your own comment that "Homeworld/Homeworld 2, btw, have been discontinued."

One of the single biggest complaints received about Moo2 was how boring and slow tactical combat got with large fleets and large galaxies, which is why Moo3's tactical combat system had a more generalistic method of control.

2.) Quite simply, tactical AI has never really been well done, even when the game company is one of the biggest and best. Maybe when we all have Pentium 9's that can process truly adequate AI algorithms in a reasonable amount of time, and game budgets can afford the development costs of them, tactical combat will really be worth doing in a game based around tactical combat, but again, in a massive 4X game it will still be a very small part of the game.

I've said it before, I'll say it again, this is a game where you play the part of Caesar, not Theodosius.

I would like to add one thing to say to Stardock. Please for the love of God do not implement Tactical Combat Like "Reach For The Stars" or "StarShips Unlimited Divied Galaxies". I HATE those forms of Tacitcal Combat.

I don't want full turn-by-turn, shot-by-shot tactical combat as much as I want to be able to pick which ships my fleet should target.

For example:
I have a fleet of big battleships with good attack and defence - they have a fleet of big battleships with good attack and defense and a few little all attack fighters. I want to be able to shoot at the battleships and to ignore the fighters, but instead, my battleships overkill the fighters first instead.

Don't you people see how many combats happen in a turn?

have you been playing 1.2b? few combats go by that way in the newer battle system, at least for me since defense has been a more important factor. yes, many combats happen in a turn. but i think part of the point is to move away from that.

i did vote for tactical combat, but it was a very difficult choice. several fans have made good points as to why it would be a bad idea.

i think part of the difficulty is voting is now knowing exactly what style of tactical combat might be used. personally i'd absolutely hate a MOO2 style.

i'm guessing most people are voting for tactical combat a la MOO2, which will really disappoint me.

basically... i want the battles to look better. that's the only real time i get to see my ship designs doing anything interesting. i could care less about hands-on control. in turn-based grid systems like MOO2, Space Empires 4, or Age of Wonders, it can be tedious. and as it was said, when there are potentially dozens of battles in a single turn, it can be uselessly time consuming.

i'd say the eye-candy side of battles as it is now gets 7 or 8 out of 10 in my book. my biggest complaint is that my larger ships just sort of sit in place and wiggle. well, the other annoying thing has come about in the 1.2 battle system; the visual representation and the dice rolls don't line up (if you do lethal damage to a ship as the offender, it blows up, but their weapons still fires from empty space during your opponent's rolls b/c that ship still had a turn of firing... basically, i think the explosion sequences need to be moved to the end of the defender's turn). well, point defneses and armor could look a bit better too, but i'm trying not to get carried away.

on a strategic level, i'd be pretty satisfied with a few options in combat, like targeting priorities, and the ability for some ships in the fleet to (try to) retreat.

now, if SD really wanted to knock my socks off, they could develop tactical combat along the lines of Starfleet Commander. i'd really love it if, say, i saw an incomming fleet with a huge, very dangerous warship, i could send the closest available fleet in, whose goal would simply be to disable that ship's engines and retreat if possible. buy time and whatnot.

it could also make sensors have a tactical advantage, because you can't effectively target something you can't see.

speed would be more meaningful, since a ship's flight path would bear directly on how quickly it can get in and out of the fire zone.

and of course it'd make available all the other things people love in tactical combat, like ship capture,

a system like SFC's would also open the door for making the weapons in GC2 more qualitatively unique. in SFC, there are power systems you have to worry about. you can't just fire your weapons endlessly: phasor capacitors need to be recharged, and missile racks need to be reloaded (and you can run out of missiles). of course GC2 ships don't have generator comps (yet), but off the bat there's all ready the difference between beams which hit instantly and drivers and missiles which have a delay.

i wouldn't even be that upset if i lacked the ability to pilot my own ships. as the ruler of your empire, you probably would never command a ship in combat. maybe; i guess it depends on the empire. sometimes it's fun to be in the driver's seat, but sometimes i'd rather just get the battle over with.

maybe they could work in a new ability bonus, how about 'officering' off the top of my head, that affects how smart the AI is in tactical combat.

BUT i think if tactical combat is really going to enhance GC2, i feel it needs to be more than slightly complicated game of chess. the difficulty i have with fully RT games like starcraft, which make no mistake i loved, was managing my hordes of units. i lke TB games because i can think about how to position this horde and that horde. but when the actual combat comes in, and i've got to either move each unity by hand or leave it up to a fairly unsophisitcated AI... the game starts to lose me. the graphics become just a bit better than playing D&D, but at least in a paper/dice game, where you lack great visuals you at least have the freedom to act outside of programming (barring an anal retentive DM).

If nothing esle you should know im 100% sure there will be an option to disable tactical combat. So really there is no need for crying on this one. If people want ot see it then they shoudlg et it. I myself don't care for it but if they put it in I'll give it a try.

hey folks, just because it tops the polls does NOT mean the stardock crew are commited to doing it. for the reasons stated here and others there is VERY little chance that tactical combat will be added. the 'much work' factor pretty much guarentees it. they are quite aware of their limited programming resources and make a point of not squandering them, look at their comments on the multiplayer issue if you doubt this. that said it looks to me like diplomacy is in the lead, not tactical combat

the poll is there to keep the stardock crew informed about the desires of their customers, not to make the game development process into some sort of democracy. thank god for that, you CAN'T make a game like that, at least not a deceint one. just be happy they care enough to ask thanks stardock, rock on!

hey folks, just because it tops the polls does NOT mean the stardock crew are commited to doing it. for the reasons stated here and others there is VERY little chance that tactical combat will be added. the 'much work' factor pretty much guarentees it. they are quite aware of their limited programming resources and make a point of not squandering them, look at their comments on the multiplayer issue if you doubt this. that said it looks to me like diplomacy is in the lead, not tactical combat

Actually there is absolutely no chance at all, Brad has already said he doesn't think he could get the AI to not be at a big disadvantage. But he himself voted for it, so /shrug.

Tactical Combat would be a lovely feature. The problem is making it work in a balanced, fun an exciting way. Why not make it sort of turn-based, yet the player still holds some control. I'm taking this idea from RPG games I've played. For instance maybe you could pause the battle, tell your ship to fire some special ordinance or something at the enemy ship and then unpause and continue watching. This allows the player to some-what manipulate the battle in his/her favor without having to actually playing an RTS game. Maybe certain power-ups for your ships that allow for their attack to go up, but their defence down or something to make some interesting battle dynamics. It would be interesting to have your ship power up the super cannon or something, yet the ship is left vunerable to enemy attack. I'll admit, watching a battle can be repetitive at times.

If anything I would like to see some more races in Gal Civ 3, or the ability to play against your custom races. Some more dimplomatic aspects and such, although not to the point where you go through a long process of MM each turn. Some new technologies and such on the tech-tree. And maybe some voice-acting for each race too. Advisors would be nice etc.

I'm curious whats this "hero" thing about. What would a hero do for your empire.