Fans don't like complaining, so I will constructively complain.

Here is one, I spend a lot of time researching sensors because I want to design a good drone. This is what I get. Servey - size 9, cost 45, sensor rating 2 Mk III - size 3, cost 4, sensor rating 1 MkII - size 3, cost 3, sensor rating 1 Wow! glad I wasted time on that tech!! MkII is the obviouse choice! I even had a test to make sure. I put a servey on a ship and got a sensor rating of 4. Then, I used 3 MkIIs and got a sensor rating of 5! Not to mention the cost I WAY less!! What the hell is wrong here? This is just like the stock exchange thing. How long will it take for all these little things to be figured out? It is like the beta testers didn't notice anything.

Have you the data for all kind of hulls? I think that size and cost vary based on the hull. And what is true for a small hull may be false for another size

BTW, isn't sensor MK IV the last kind of sensors that can be mounted on a ship?

survey is something different then sensors
It's to find anamolies. That's why it's so big.
If you go further in the research brand, you'll find similar small but good sensors things for your ships.

Alliances I don't seem to be having problems!
I often get someone close with me. I just try to emliminate the - factors and after a while they get close with me and I can ask an alliance. Granted they have never asked me before.

The rest I agree with you. I'm starting to like this game less and less.

Then, I used 3 MkIIs and got a sensor rating of 5! Not to mention the cost I WAY less!! What the hell is wrong here? This is just like the stock exchange thing. How long will it take for all these little things to be figured out? It is like the beta testers didn't notice anything.

Well, the version in beta didn't have any tweak on sensor range. And size was pretty small. It allow you to create incredible awacs allowing you the see a whole small map.

The Stock Market thing was fixed in the latest patch 1.0X.1.
Note that you have to start a new game to get the new improved one.

Minor races:
I agree to a point. They seem fairly useless. I have seen some good suggestions for improving them in this forum, for example letting them colonise planets in their system.

Fog of war:
I agree, it would be nice if it would cover planets unless you had sufficient espionage.

Population & farms:
I have 1 to 2 farms on 75% of my planets in my latest game. I have no problem with the morale. IMO A mix of farms&morale building in addition to economic buildings is far superior to only building one or the other.

Starbases:
You do know that you have to send additional constructors to add modules to the starbase? One newly-built economic starbase in itself don't give your planets any bonus.


Military AI:
This is the only problem I have with the game at the moment, all the others IMO are minor compared to this. I never feel threatened by the enemy. Doesn't matter that they have double the amount of ships when most have minimum movement and are quite bad.
The AI needs to design better ships. It cares too much about costs and builds too many smaller hulls when larger are available.
The beginning of the game is especially problematic. In my latest game, I noticed that all 9 AI races built their heavy fighters with only one component, a weapon, to minimize costs and build time. At the same time. I had heavy fighters with double or triple the speed and more than one weapon per ship. Naturally, they were outclassed and almost never had the opportunity to attack.
The AI should be hardcoded to at least add one of the best engine available to all ship designs that are small hull and larger (except their Defenders). Don't know if it's doable with tiny ships since I always play default Yor with 25% miniaturization bonus and never build them for anything except scouts anyway.
They need to realise that it's much better to attack than defend. They need to form fleets better, not mix in a heavy fighter (for example speed 3) with a couple of frigates (speed 6). They shouldn't make huge stacks of solo ships in one parsec, especially not 2 parsecs from one of my planets and then declare war. They should always declare war in the beginning of their turn, not at the end, so that they get first strike. Their huge stacks of solo ships should be formed into multiple fleets.

In my current game when I attacked the Altarians, he had his huge stack of ships outside of Altaria. He had one fleet in it. I went there with one of my fleets consisting of 4 medium-size ships. I destroyed the fleet and a couple of ships. Pressed end turn. What does the AI do with the rest of his solo ships in the stack?
Nothing. He doesn't attack, it's possible that he made one fleet in the stack but that's all. He should have made as many fleets as he could and then destroyed my fleet.
Instead, I destroyed the rest of his stack. I don't remember exactly but at the most, I lost one medium ship. And the rest got a huge hp-bonus.

I really like this game but the way I play it, evil conqueror, I have no problem to win over the AI at all, this at intelligent AI. Im sitting hoping that the fundamentalists should conquer half my empire or something to give me a challenge.
The most difficult fight I have had in this game was with pirates. They actually killed one of my fleets. Then I sent a veteran fleet with extreme high hitpoints and crushed them.

Fans don't like complaining, so I will constructively complain.

This feels like the 2nd BETA Testing Phase!
I'm both excited about GalCiv2 , but at the same time very disappointed with it! It definitely came out extremely unfinished! E.g. the GPU Throttling Bug which crashed every single game on highend PCs (which the ever scable 3D engine is purported designed for)... Even with the latest V1.0X.010 patch, it still happens sometimes. Hope Stardock do a proper fix soon rather than like they said "added a sleep(5)" which should throttle the gfx and reduce overheating...

Population

derekroth1, you're definitely doing something wrong. The bulk of $$$ (90%+) comes from the population paying taxes. The Economics system is indeed very complicated and I'm still trying to figure it out... In order to maximise tax, NEVER up the tax, but to keep it low at say ~20-30%, and maximise the population. Keeping tax low keeps your peasants happy Don't build excessive farms & entertainment centres, instead do research and upgrade the existing buildings As Needed; cancel all unnecessary building upgrades to save $...

Pain in my ass

In my too... Stardock do fix this and related irritating bug/oversights. Draw a huge blinking circle around selected ship, show its current route, and don't auto jump to another ship!

Survey Module

Just a presonal perference, but I don't see the point of having a special survey module. So would prefer universal scanners instead of having to waste precious shipboard space on a single-narrow-purpose item. (It's not as if lots of anolmalies will regenerate over time right? even if yes, also a waste of maintenance cost to maintain a surveyor ships around)

derek, I don't agree with all your complaints, but I have the same general feeling. The first few games were very fun, but it's becoming more and more irritating and tedious.

In the current state, I think I won't play much more games, the fun is buried under lots of little annoyances.

Hopefully 1.1 is coming. Don't succumb to the tentation of adding too much new features. just clean-up the mess, and make the game as it should have been at release.

Actually i dont have any problems at all with either the economy or the morale after 5 games of learning (sure thats alot, but still).
I usually have a few 24billion pop planets just pumping out taxes, like 3 farms and 3-4 entertainment stuff, the rest of the tiles are for market centers and an economic capital.
The thing to do is to research what you really NEED right NOW, if you have problems with morale, research xeno entertainment and up, if you have problems with cash, research that, if everything goes good, research for faster research or better weapons/defence.

I agree with you to an extent, especially the fleets that move even tough you didnt select them, but in the end you WILL learn the game and you will be successful (unless you really suck =D )

For ME, the only reason i stopped playing until 1.1 is because of the damn ship upgrade buggyness, im sick of ships either refusing to be updated or that i gotta make a MK1 MK2 etc version, redesigning the entire ship, each time i just want to add another engine or change the defences.
If i dont, i get multiple ships in the quickbuild window (the normal build is still good), or it simply ignores the saved updated ship, and builds the old design anyway.

A big problem with the game is that the documentation. Esp the in game documentation is realy bad. I don't see why clickable hyper-links were not added in tech tree for example. The info is there in the game, I now use a third party program to get info on the techs. The game is pretty much unplayable without it.

I will do my best to address a few of these points, though I have only played a few games.

>>Minor races:
I, too, would like to see more the minor races items and trade more with them. As they are now, they are actually supposed to be there for you to milk them for technology and stuff. You shouldn't be having that much of a problem with them...

>>Transparency:
Take a look at those charts that you get access to by clicking the Bar Graph button at the bottom. First time I found that it explained quite a bit

>>Along with this catagory comes starbases.
You need to send more constructors to the starbases to upgrade them. I have noticed that by the end of the game, many of my starbases have maybe 20 upgrades on them. What I tend to do is have all of my planets with starports, but I let most of the minor ones just slowly build constructors, which I then send around to upgrade various starbases.

>>Tradable items are another thing.
Again, take a look at that bar graph button. It ought to have an area that explains your various bonuses you are recieving.

>>Cosmetics:
Not a bad idea regarding masking ships around a planet.

>>(sensor stuff)
Sensors change size and cost depending on the hull, I believe. So on a small, it may be possible for a mk2 to be cheaper. I hadn't looked into it, but nice eyes there.

>>Population:
Money money money. More people make more money.

>>Pain in my ass:
Arr, I think this is a bug. I agree, so I've tried to not use fleets as much for the time. The selection box should probably be made more obvious.

>>AI:
I have personally seen some clever stuff and some dumb stuff at normal AI level. But both seem reasonable, so the only thing I can comment on is that the AI's ships do often seem overly weak.

>>Alliances:
Huh, I've even seen the AI ally up on my games. Does the AI even have the Alliance tech? I figured out that if they don't have it, you can't even propose an alliance to them.

>>Surrenders:
Huh? Most of the time, I have noticed that the AI surrenders to an enemy of mine, just to piss me off. It works, too! I'm not sure what you mean as far as this complaint, though.

Thanks for skimming!

Sincerely,

Chris Grenard

Pain in my ass: I am sick of accidentially sending my fleets on a wild trip accross the galaxy because this game somehow allows me to have two fleets selected at the same time. I don't know how many times I though "what the hell, my fleet dissapeared!", only to find it moving to the same resource that I sent my constructor to. This is driving me crazy. I find myself clicking on class zero planets before I move anyting just to make sure I don't have some other fleet unknowingly selected before I make a move.

I detailed this one out on the bug thread, it happens when you have a stack of ships on the same tile and you select and move only part of the stack. Just have to pay attention, make sure the information on the bottom menu reflects the ship you have selected.

Population: Is this good for anything besides making people hate me? I build a farm on my economy planet to try and maximise on taxes. Well, the tiny bit of taxes I get is nothing compared to the amount of entertainment I have to build to keep them from getting pissed. I have to lower my tax rate to damn near nothing. Population is worth zero. Farms are a waste.

For every farm built you need one entertainment center. If you keep this ratio, you should be around 70% happy at 35% tax. Remember bonuses and upgrades too, so if you have a farm on a 300% bonus it will require 3 entertainment buildings to keep the pop happy. Also when you get a new tech, if you double food production you better research the upgraded version of entertaiment next. I never exceed 30 billion even on my largest planets, most planets are at 17 billion.

Starbases need to be upgraded to be effective, a Trade starbase next to a couple production planets and you can pop out a destroyer every turn. Military starbase upgraded and your ships will be nigh invinsible within its range. Mine starbases, upgrade those suckers to the max. My problem with starbases is the full time job of building constructors and getting them to the right base is a major pain. Also starbase spamming is possible, just show up to your next target with 10 constructors build anf arm a military base on their doorstep then attack.

Alliances: These are too difficult to get. I have never had another race ask me for an alliance. Even if they are getting crushed, and they are friendly with me. I can't offer it to them either, becaue they are not "close" to me yet. What the hell is the point? I have to sell my own mom before they even consider it.

Has not been an issue with me I have infact won a diplomatic victory. Could be something in the way you play or are you only playing with the mean civs, though I have even had them on my side too. When given those options to do good nuetral or evil deeds do you go evil? I tend to always go good, and the good civs think I'm the cats meow and are always showering me with gifts.

Surrenders: This is another cool feature that needs to be rethought. These guys are worse then a 12 year old playing risk online. The AI simply surrenders too easy

So far the only time they have ever surrender to me is when they are down to their last planet. I have as yet not done an all out military campiagn, I seem to always get a diplomatic or cultural victory.

The AI I am in agreement with you, so far I am only at med difficulty. I figured they would start to kick some butt in harder difficultys but it doesnt sound like it. My favorite stupid AI move is very early in the game before anyone has a chance to build weapons, a couple of the bad guys will build a defender, see you have no weapons and declare war on you. Of course they cant do anything with the couple of ships they have and after awile when you start to build up ships, there back saying it was all a joke.(you can always get aton of cash and a couple techs at this point) I actually use this declaration of war as my sign to start building military.

oh and the minor civs, heh I like that feature, could use some tweaking but I hope it stays. Ps those extra techs they have, bonus scoopage as far as I'm concerned, I always pump those guys dry, just before my influence bases finally get the best of them and they join the empire. And if they wont join one way they always join the other way.

There are alot of bugs in this game, I am usually quite vocal about that kind of thing, but with no copy protection, good customer relations and the fact this is a indie release I am unusually patient with this game. I guess its the impression that I know stardock will not just leave us hanging and all will be dealt with in time. IMO the only game breaker for me ATM is the massive influence after conquering a planet bug, that can totally ruin a game.

Alliances> if you want to ally make sure you have close relations. Make sure that the AI has Alliance tech, if not give it to them, then ally with them. simple.

Surrenders> This is influenced by a number of things. If they hated you for a long time they will usually not surrender to you. Influence/culture is a factor. Diplomacy and proximity seem to be factors as well. There are techs and skills which will also help improve the chances of them surrendering to you.

AI> I've been impressed by even the normal level ai. It's hobbled some what at that point so if you want no holds barred then you need go up two level on the difficulty. That should switch all the AI's to Intelligent which is the max level they can be at before they get economic boosts.

Each race has it's OWN AI. They also each have their own number of strategic algorithms that it will choose from at the begining of a game. Each race has its own personality.

You are most likely to get smacked down by the Arceans, Dregin, Drath, and Altarians. If you play against the humans they will usually be very powerful by the late game if things went well for them. They generally bide their time and build up. One on one the Dregin AI in a duel can be difficult. In a large Galaxy with a full house things get more unpredictable. Usually someone will rise to superpower.

The ai likes numbers in the begining but later will switch to building higher quality fleets. Some Ai's will reserve alot of their fleet, Some will attack agressively. If you want to get the crap kicked out of you then you should be playing a large galaxy with 5 or more civs and have all the AI's set to intelligent. I doubt you will survive.

Brad has said, quote " If you can beat the ai on intelligent, then I want to hear from you"... end quote. I can't do it, yet. If you can, then please write Brad and tell him how you beat the AI's on intelligent (remember they don't cheat at this level). He will then make changes to the AI to adapt to your strategies. If you really are beating the AI on tough then try beating them at the next higher level and post how you won please.

That said there probably needs to be an Ai level between normal and tough as has been previously suggested else where.

One other thing. You are correct on the fact that this game needed to be friendlier to those who did not play galciv1. The documentation didn't explain aspects of game play well enough. There should be a stickied thread that has a faq for people that are still foggy about some aspects of game play. There should also be a stickied strategies thread as that would also help brad tweak his Ai even further.

Galciv1 was/is a great game and needed some patience to master. Galciv2 while superior in alot of ways still needs patience to master. It really is waaaay to addictive. I've played 6 full games of it and I can't get over how great it is. Looking forward to the future updates as well.

If you want to get the crap kicked out of you then you should be playing a large galaxy with 5 or more civs and have all the AI's set to intelligent. I doubt you will survive. Brad has said, quote " If you can beat the ai on intelligent, then I want to hear from you"... end quote. I can't do it, yet. If you can, then please write Brad and tell him how you beat the AI's on intelligent (remember they don't cheat at this level). He will then make changes to the AI to adapt to your strategies. If you really are beating the AI on tough then try beating them at the next higher level and post how you won please.

I wish it were so. I play large galaxy with all 9 AI:s set to intelligent.
I have no problems at all. If you want to know why/how, read #4.

And a medium galaxy with 9 intelligent AI?

I haven't tried that.

Minor races:
Influence starbases can give diplomatic bonuses even if the IP isn't used in the planetary council, and I wonder if they influence who opponents will surrender to?

Transparency (Trade):
If you rely on trade for all your Economy then you've certainly learned a lesson on why you shouldn't put all your eggs in the same basket. Research and build some economy buildings on the planets .... or never go to war

Though sometimes, yes, it's a bit opaque. Often, in my experience, if you find yourself extremely punished you have most likely neglected a particular branch of research.

Cosmetics:
My theory is that "ships in orbit" are pretty visible. They just hang there in empty space, massive energy signatures and emissions of untold substances. However, there are planetary defences that project false sensor images and can make the number of ship in orbit look twice the amount.

Population:
Like with your unbalanced economy you get friggin spanked if you do not explore the Xeno Entertainment branch. If you don't you can fill your planet with multimedia centers and not make a dent in public opinion. However, research more entertainement techs and see those babies get upgraded and public opinion swing back into your favor.

Pain in my ass:
I haven't suffered much from this particular bug/feature, but I really hate the lack of management options if you have a stack of ships and/or fleets. It's annoying to have to move them to adjacent tiles just because you have a few bcs and want to upgrade, say, one fighter in your tile.

AI:
I haven't played on any of the hard levels but the AI is definitely non-aggressive on the lower settings. They hardly do anything to attack my star bases if outside their own sphere of influence.

Alliances:
It's not completely transparent to me either, but I remember a time where something like 3 or 4 races were killing me, and suddenly those Aceans stepped in voluntarily and donated a star ship to me. But I had also been trading a lot of techs with them and probably cutting them some pretty good deals.

Anyway, thanks for a good post even if I don't agree with all of it.

Just to clarify,

I don't want minors removed, I just want them to be better.

I know you have to upgrade starbases. I do it all the time, but they are still not entirely clear to understand.

I don't see how all things can be explained in the bargraph/chart page.

I had a planet with 22bil or something like that. 25% taxes and three of those stadium things that look like race tracks. Still, my approval kept dropping and dropping. Had to build transports to cut back on population.

The servey problem was my misunderstanding. But, it is easy to have misunderstandings with this game.

I think that on tough level, the AI is set to intelegent. Beating the game was a breaze.

I don't complain because I can't get the economy to work and therefore I lose. I complain because everyone here tells me to do the things that I am already doing. Yes, I must be doing something wrong. But I do research the economy techs, and I most sertainly research the morale techs. But economy is my weak point I guess. Still, it would be nice to hear some real advice using game mechanics. Telling me to research morale techs doesn't help much.

Even with trade goes to sh!t and the whole universe decends into chaos, I can still win. It is too easy to sell a bunch of techs to some billionair minor race every few turns in order to keep youself alive.

Come to think of it, the game is so complex that I don't think it is possible to provide documentation adequate enough to explain everything. I like complexity, but I also want clairity.

I know I have to be warm to get an alliance. I have also won a diplomatic victory. Again, I understand how to play I just don't see why I need to give a race 10 techs and 1000 bucks to get them to do it.

Maybe some of my surrender problems have to do with the fact that I was playing on a small map. But when everyone only has 2 to 4 planets after the initial rush, then it means that when the AI loses one planet, he surrenders. Perhaps there needs to be some balance setting for different map sizes.

Brad has said, quote " If you can beat the ai on intelligent, then I want to hear from you"... end quote. I can't do it, yet. If you can, then please write Brad and tell him how you beat the AI's on intelligent (remember they don't cheat at this level). He will then make changes to the AI to adapt to your strategies.

I can easily beat the AI on Suicidal in a Gigantic/Abundant galaxy. The AI does better in bigger galaxies, because their high-level bonuses help them more (and it takes more work to take them out when they have 2 dozen planets instead of 4). But nevertheless, the AI simply cannot build quality ships or fight a war. A human with a quarter of their military rating can usually annhiliate them. Most of the problems were laid out clearly in Brad's AI improvement thread, so here's hoping we see some good progress in 1.1.

I don't agree with all of [b]derekroth1[/b's complaints, but I'm also finding the game more frustrating than fun at this point. I plan to give it another go after the 1.1 patch is released to see if it's gotten any better.

I agree with some of the gameplay points and have experienced some of the bugs described, but about half of what the OP posted is user issues (ignorance). You could argue that the game interfaces and manual could explain some things better but many of these topics have appeared on the forums multiple times and have been thoroughly explained (population, for ex).

I believe brad did say a couple things that they are giving him a better ship building API and he is adding stuff to the AI. the rest of your stuff is pretty much wrong i think derek. as has been explained by other people here, so I will not waste my time responding to it.

I had a planet with 22bil or something like that. 25% taxes and three of those stadium things that look like race tracks. Still, my approval kept dropping and dropping. Had to build transports to cut back on population.

Well, you should go to the galciv2 wiki and look at the morale calculation. It will explain you why morale enhancement have a very hard time when you have too much population. To make it simple, morale modifier from population are counted 2 times and one of this time is to reduce bonus from morale ehancer. At the extreme, if your morale modifier from population is -100%, your morale enhancer buildings have no effect.

Sorry for the ignorance, didn't think it was necessary to spend countless hours researching to understand a game with an inadequate manual. I will check out the wiki, thanks peach phoenix.

Also I forgot to mention, Getting mines on the morale resources. Building the moral wonders and getting a bunch of survey ships out early to grab all those anomalys, these are things I do for moral. Also I forgot I play with a custom civ and I get the initial 20% moral boost from that. I agree the documentation is weak, this is a very complicated game and the manual definatly does not give enough information.

EDIT my mistake my custom civ has a 15% morale boost

so if you have a farm on a 300% bonus it will require 3 entertainment buildings

I may be stupid here but doesnt 300% bonus mean that it counts as 4 farms? Since 100% bonus makes it count as 2 farms. It could be that Frogboy messed up his labeling and the 100% bonus should really be 200%.

Also I almost never use farms because I play with crazy tax rate throught the game :/ I should try to lower my taxes :/ At 50% tax I can only squeze one farm on a small planet otherwise the people go nuts

There's not much that's constructive in that post, imo.

Sounds like he's played teh game maybe an hour.

Alliances: These are too difficult to get. I have never had another race ask me for an alliance. Even if they are getting crushed, and they are friendly with me. I can't offer it to them either, becaue they are not "close" to me yet. What the hell is the point? I have to sell my own mom before they even consider it.

I agree.

The need to be "close" to another civ before you can ally them is completely rediculous. There are plenty of examples in world history of countries allying other ones that are certainly not "close", such as the allies and the soviet union during WWII or the hundreds of complex alliances which were formed and disbanded during 15th-20th century europe. During times of war countries will ally with pretty much anybody who will fight on their side. to inforce a stipulation that they must be "close" is just silly.