ideas/suggestions after a recent game

I had a fairly entertaining, and completely crash-free game of DA, and decided to post a few thoughts or ideas I had during the course of the game. These are not particularly DA-specific, but still something I think would improve the game. I hope you're open to feedback.

1) The number of choices in United Planets decisions should be always limited to max. three, mirroring either ends of the decision and the middle ground.

* This would mirror nicely the Good/Neutral/Evil thinking in the game.
* Whenever there's four choices, it's much harder to know where the AI leans towards, and reduces the chances of player being able to affect the end result.

2) "Omega Fleet Manager" should either be retired completely, be an upgrade to e.g. Starports, or there should be one defense-oriented upgradeable planetary improvement rather than separate ones. Planetary defense improvements as they now are, are fairly useless.

* I find it unrealistic and fairly silly to be able to kill ships one by one. Would you send your ships to die alone one by one if you have the ability to manage 5-ship fleets?
* This would make it worthwile to keep defenses on planets, and reduce some micromanagement of having to block other player's fleets with your own.
* MOO2 takes things further with planetary defense of being able to construct planetary weapons, that participate on the defense together with your fleet.

3) Attacker seems to get a too great an advantage when conquering planets.
In traditional warfare, you usually are said to need 3:1 advantage when attacking. Now, I understand that's not what we want, and taking planets shouldn't be made impossible for the AI. Still, consider the following example where I let a single Thalan troop transport to hit my planet.

Thalans had 1000 troops, soldiering value of 13, tech 155000, advantage 25.
I had 7500 defenders, soldiering 105, tech 298000, advantage 13.
I lost 2000 population to the Thalans' 1000.

In my opinion, something's a bit wrong here... I had:
- 7 times the amount of troops
- 2 times better tech
- 8 times better soldiering bonus
- 1/2 of their advantage

You do the math

4) Ships, up to your logistic rating, should participate in defense together with starbases. I understand it may be difficult to make starbases belong to a fleet, but when ships or fleets are in the same square than a starbase, they could defend together. For this purpose, starbase could have a logistics rating of 15, and only participate when 'there's room for them' in the defending fleets' logistics.

Thanks for reading!

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Not sure about the invasion side of things as i rarely look into the maths that much. However it does appear to be wrong!
As for the other points, i would agree with you on most of them. I dont build plan def so not sure on that as i keep a few fighters in orbit along with a sector fleet nearby.
Nice points !!

D

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1) I can go with that.

2) I would like to see some planetary help to invasions. Soldiering bonus is lame, IMO. Especially if you think its going to help you. As a defender, you have to make sure they don't land. Maybe if it was 150% soldiering bonus I'd actually build planetary defense. Fleet manager are decent build. I'd like to see a planetary missile base (or lasers or mass drivers ) help out defending the planet. IMO they should re-label the tech to "Planetary Offense". I mean hey that soldiering bonus is there on offense as well. No one wants or should want someone to land on their planet and hope for the best.

3) I agree the attacker does have a huge advantage, but I disagree about needing to change the formula around. Firing positions are better on higher ground, right? Say those assault landers are dropping out of the atmosphere right ?

4) Not sure if that is do-able. Sounds like a good idea, but it's one of those that might mean adding stuff to AI to handle their calculations. Which means it may not be so good an idea if it needs a lot of work to put it in..

Now for some thoughts of my own:

5) Drengin Super Power: How Super is Super? I'll leave that for the devs, but it makes me wonder in regards to them.. They get ships to help fight whenever they declare war. Every time! Every race, minor or not. Declare a truce and war again... There's just waay to many free ships. None of the other super powers are super game breaking cool like that. That's how I judge that this should get a tweak down.

6) Is Diplomacy worth it? Super-Breeder? Manipulator? Organizer? Some powers have a certain sucky-ness compared to others. Especially if you consider #5.

7) Korath super power is stealable. You get the tech, you can build spore ships. Fair? I think not. I can really have TWO super powers that way.

8) I'd like to have more of an influence on what gets voted on next time rather than it being totally random all the time. Like I swear the trade routes for evil races always comes up to hose my when I choose to be evil, never when I am good and it could actually help me. The mining fairness law. That is soo cool. The no sneak attacks law.. Protected freighters. I can name quite a few I'd like to see and usually don't.. its always all random.

9) Starbase building blahs.. too many constructors needed to get anything done.
I'd like to see increased power of individual modules and less required to build up a starbase (leaving the total overall bonuses/attack/defense values the same ).

10) I can guess it's coming later but it's definitely worth mentioning. Modders Guide to the Galaxy -- i.e. what's changed, how to change the new things, etc.. which directories to put stuff in.. does having mods in GC2 folders mean anything or not (\program files\galciv2\mods vs. \program files\galciv2\darkavatar\mods )

--SS

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Sir_On_The_Edge

Join Date 07/2006

1-5) Totally agree with original posters.
6) It is worth it, but a little balance is still needed.
7) That's a bug.
8) Disagree. Random is good.
9) Maybe this should be another teck that you have to reaserch.
10)Totally agree.

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3) You're right, the defenders can have a lot of advantages and still take a bigger beating than the invaders. However:
*Not all citizens are trained soldiers, and may even be liabilities
*The attacker can land wherever and however he wants on the planet, meaning that the defenders are spread very thin
*The attacker has full space superiority. I imagine that troop transports would be a hell of a lot of support for an army on the ground.

5)A better way to do it might be to simply give them another fleet of ships at certain time intervals. I imagine the super ability is a representation of privately owned warships wanting in on the fight, so it would make sense that they'd get pumped out continously as Drengin citizens zealously support the war effort

7)I have to agree... its a strong super ability right up to the point that someone else takes it from you. It's not a bug though... its apparently intentional.

8)Hell yes. If I've got that influence advantage in there, I want to be able to use the United Planets as another appendage by which to do damage or improve my standing. It'd also add a purpose to buying influence off people, since you'd know when it'd be worth your trouble.

9)Hell yes. As it is, it's far too expensive and time consuming to set up starbases, especially if you want to defend them from attack. 'Course, it'd ALSO be nice if the starbase fortification techs had some teeth...

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3) Attacker seems to get a too great an advantage when conquering planets.
In traditional warfare, you usually are said to need 3:1 advantage when attacking. Now, I understand that's not what we want, and taking planets shouldn't be made impossible for the AI. Still, consider the following example where I let a single Thalan troop transport to hit my planet.

Thalans had 1000 troops, soldiering value of 13, tech 155000, advantage 25.
I had 7500 defenders, soldiering 105, tech 298000, advantage 13.
I lost 2000 population to the Thalans' 1000.

Are you sure that they didn't use any invasion tactic?

They could have use tidal wave or core detonation to raise their advantage so high. The problem is not that they did so much damage to you, it is that you don't know which tactic they used.

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Alstein

Join Date 07/2004

+55

2 and 4 I definitely agree with.

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I've lost on defense with a 5-1 troop ratio in my favour, and superiour tech and soldiering. I agree that it would be nice to at least be informed about the invasion tactic used.

8) I'd like to have some way of gauging what other civs are going to vote for. Voting blocs appeal to me far more than the outright buying of IPs.

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My $0.02

1) Sure but I doubt they would. Also aren't those in an XML file? If they are you can mod them to fit however you feel they should work.

2) Are you talking about the planetary improvement that boosts ship HP in orbit? I don't know about you but I've built that in several games when I've got a world that is vital to protect. I think a set of planetary improvements that give planet based weapons for attack ala MOO2 would be cool. If you don't want to send ships out one at a time to attack the enemy then build the Obital Fleet Manager. That's what it is for.

3) Ever hear of orbital bombardment? This is the primary reason for the attackers advantage. I do agree it would be nice to get an after action type report for ground combat so you can see precisely what influenced the battle.

4) Starbases as part of fleets sounds like a good idea until you realize that they are really only powerful until about the mid point in the game. After that it is possible to build ships that slaughter even a fully upgraded starbase. Also given how targeting works I think they'd be sitting ducks you couldn't protect. No I'd much rather be able to intercept the attacking fleet with mine before it has any chance of destroying my precious starbase.

5) My guess is that the devs will put a time limit on how often that super ability triggers just to prevent the cheese of war/peace/war/peace/war. Also I think they pay maintenance on those ships. So really it cripples the economy something awful if you all of a sudden have an extra 50-100 ships lying about.

6) Diplomacy plays a huge role in determining how the AI reacts to you in general. Of course whether this is an advantage or not depends solely on your style of play. So I don't think these are any less worthwhile then the Drengin's power.

7) Intended. Though it is the only super ability that works in this fashion.

8) Yeah it would be nice to have some control over what gets proposed and some way to actually influence said vote other then trading for influence in the diplo screen.

9) Eh... set rally point and forget.

10) Yeah I'm sure that will be around. Also there is a new site on the main page geared towards modders.

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