Stormbinder

Join Date 04/2006

Question about super abilities and balance of the game

After taking a half year break from GalCiv2 (great game, which I played to death) I've just purchased DA and I am about to dive into it. I am reading the manual to fimiliarize myself with changes.

I have a question about super abilitites to GalCiv2 expoerts: do you guys use them in your games? They certailnly add unique flavor to different races, which is a good thing. However some of them seem to be *very* powerful so I am a bit worried if them may disbalance the game to some degree - both in my hands and in the hands of AI. For example, I used to win some games on suicidal as humans by relying heavly on their dimplomacy advantage. But now if playing as humans I get "Super Dimplomat" advantage on top of thier high diplomatic skills, I wonder if it would be a bit too much. Or if I get Super Orginizer skill as a human, and forge alliance with all races of my ethic allegence - wouldn't it mean that half of the galaxy will rush to my aid if I get attacked? And so on...

So what do you guys think about it?

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Mystikmind

Join Date 06/2004

+20

It is a known issue that the super abilities are imbalanced. I hear they are fixing it in the next update?

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They are fun to play with though...

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Philocthetes

Join Date 10/2003

+153

Even though I'm playing MV games finally, I still don't really have a competitive approach to GC2 so the "balance" question always seems like an open door to endless quibbling. Balance what? It's just me & my favorite toy.

What I can say about the Super Abilities is that they add interesting new twists and some real pains (sometimes both, like Super Isolationist). IMO, Super Manipulator is not much fun to have in the game b/c it appears to make dogpile scenarios far too common. But I still feel a little guilty with every non-default setting I choose for an MV game, so sometimes I leave them their chance to play.

My best advice: try a couple of games with them enabled and judge for yourself.

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I think they can unbalance a game, but then who says that all races in a galaxy will be equal? Just as long as it doesnt make it too easy for me, but then i could always raise the difficulty.

When playing against the Drath, yea i make sure im nice to them because of their super ability, that thats good, that i have to treeat different races differently. But all in all i dontthink the superablitities are that powerful for anyone that they can cause the gamne to be too hard or too easy. They seem to be more of a little boost.

Of course that is very general, some abilities are better than others. Since you mentioned the Alterians, the superorganizer is good but it still only applies to silimarly aligned races and those that have a certain relationship to you (i think). so its not like"everyone" will come running all the time. It will depend.

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Since you mentioned the Altarian superability....There are places for abuse here. For instance, go evil as the Altarians. You still have their superablity. But none of them guarantee victory and they are still fun!

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Thank you very much for your replies, I now understand the situation a bit better.

Currently I am in the middle of my first DA game. I am playing as humans, large galaxy, 9 opponents, masohistic difficulty level. Thanks to the tech trading (which seems to be more difficult than I expected, even with human's Super Negotiator ability) I am leading the tech race, although my military is almost non-existant at this moment(I am paying a fortune to my evil neighbors to not attack me, so far it has been working, but I am not going to push my luck too far).

The game is great, even better than Dread Lords. My only problem with DA so far are Minor Nations. What's the heck is wrong with them??? I mean IIRC they were always easy picking, but in my game none of them have build a single ship in several hundreds turns to defend themselves, despite having all the tech for ships and weapons. WTH?!?

For some reason major AI nations do not attack them, but I do. Needless to say getting few partly developed QL15 worlds is a huge boon to my economy, but it doesn't feel right. In fact it feels almost like cheating, since it is very unrealistic for a minor AI nation not to lift a finger in its own defence.

Have Minors always acted this way, or are they currently broken? (I am playng with the latest 1.7beta 3 patch)

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Philocthetes

Join Date 10/2003

+153

Have Minors always acted this way, or are they currently broken? (I am playng with the latest 1.7beta 3 patch)

That sounds odd to me. My last full game was on 1.6 (or 1.61?) and the minors most certainly produced ships and even manged to hold some resource mines through the whole early game. Could be an odd statistical moment, could be some tweaking of the minor AIs going on for 1.7...

I think they can unbalance a game, but then who says that all races in a galaxy will be equal?

That's about half what I meant by scoffing the balance talk, except you manged to use "unbalance"

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